A Darkling Plain

There was no one, and no one challenged them as she carried him to Popjoy’s gate. It was late. Batmunkh Gompa was a glittering curtain of lights drawn across the sky beyond the lake. Snow was falling, flakes patting Fishcake’s face like chilly little fingers; like the cold fingers of the ghosts of children.

The Stalker set Fishcake down and smashed the gate’s strong locks and Fishcake pushed them open, looking nervously at the lighted windows of the house that showed through the trees at the far end of a long drive. His Stalker took his hand as they stepped together through the gateway, the gate swinging shut behind them. “We shall ask Dr. Popjoy to give you some food before he works on me,” she promised.

“What if he won’t?” asked Fishcake. “Work on you, I mean?”

“I will make him,” whispered the Stalker. “Don’t worry, Fishcake.”

Fishcake looked again toward the house, and put a hand into his pocket to clasp the little horse she’d made him. He still didn’t want his Stalker to put herself at the mercy of this sinister-sounding Engineer. He almost pulled her back through the gate, but already it was too late. In the garden ahead, where shadows lapped beneath the trees, things were moving. Spiky shapes that had looked like statues suddenly turned their heads; green eyes lit like flames.

“Stalkers!” whispered Fishcake’s Stalker, hearing the clank and hiss as they came to life. She sounded scared.

“But you’re a Stalker,” Fishcake said.

“Oh, so I am. Thank you, Fishcake. I forget sometimes…” She pushed him gently behind her, out of harm’s way, and unsheathed her claws.

The house had three guardians; big, polished battle-Stalkers customized by Dr. Popjoy, finned and spiked like heraldic dinosaurs. Light silvered their spade-shaped, featureless faces as they loped across the snowy lawns. Fishcake’s Stalker limped toward them. They were stronger, but she was cleverer. She dodged their clumsy, flailing blows. Her blades flashed as she drove them through the couplings of each Stalker’s neck in turn. Sparks spewed and fluids squirted. The beheaded bodies lurched aimlessly about, colliding with one another and falling over, thrashing and clattering on the flagged path as Fishcake’s Stalker turned toward him. She reached out to him with one hand and then snatched it away, touching her own face. Her sightless eyes flared; her head jerked. “No!” she whispered.

“Anna!” wailed Fishcake. He squidged himself back against the cold bars of the gate as she struggled with herself. She shook herself and came toward him. She grabbed his chin, twisting his face upward. She was not Anna anymore. What had made her change? Had the fight with the other Stalkers tripped some circuit in her head? Or had Fishcake done it himself, by reminding her of what she was? He shook with sobs, wishing there were some way he could bring Anna back.

“What is this place?” she hissed, listening to the wind in the trees, the lap of waves along the lakeshore. “How long was the Error in control?”

“D-Doctor Popjoy,” was all that Fishcake could say, through his tears. “He lives here…”

“Popjoy?”

“Anna thought, she thought …”

“She thought that he could make her even stronger,” the Stalker whispered, and gave a hissing laugh.

“What about Sathya?” he said. “What about my horse? Remember—”

“Be silent.” She let Fishcake go and went over to the ruined Stalkers, who were falling still at last. Bending down, she felt across the ground until she found a wrenched-off head. She unplugged one of the cables from her own skull and inserted it into a socket on the head. The dead Stalker’s eyes began to glow again. She lifted the head and held it up in front of her like a lantern. As she swung it toward Fishcake, he understood that she was looking out at him through its eyes. He wondered if she was disappointed, after all their time together, to see how small and frail he was.

“Come,” was all she said. “We will see Popjoy, as the Error intended. I will make him expunge her permanently.”

Fishcake wanted to run, but he went with her instead, as he always did. He didn’t know what “expunge” meant, but he could guess. He wanted to hold his Stalker’s hand, in the hope that his touch might somehow bring Anna back, but she was not in a hand-holding mood; she flapped him away and went limping fiercely along in front of him, still holding up the baleful head.

As they neared the house, a dozen big Stalker-birds launched themselves from the trees outside and began to circle the intruders, closer and closer, slivers of light falling from their beaks and claws. Fishcake tried to hide himself in the folds of his Stalker’s filthy robe, but she just raised her arms and whispered to the birds in some battle code, and they settled meek and watchful on the lawns, waiting for her next instruction.

The front door was ironwood, bound and studded with actual iron, but it splintered easily under a few kicks from the Stalker Fang’s good leg. Behind it lay a pillared atrium where a Resurrected butler lumbered out of an alcove to bar the way. “What is your business?” it droned.

“I have come to meet my maker,” replied the Stalker Fang in her usual cool whisper. She smashed the butler to pieces and left its wreckage scattered on the tiles. Fishcake scurried after her across the atrium, through another shredded door, and down three stairs into a sunken den walled with soft draperies and lit by a toffee-colored glow. A small, bald-headed old man was rising from his couch to ask what the commotion was about. He went very still when he recognized his visitor. A glass fell from his hand, splashing wine across the carpet.

“Keep away! My birds will fetch help! They’ll fly to Batmunkh Gompa and—”

“Your birds are under my control now, Dr. Popjoy,” whispered the Stalker. “Stupid creatures, but they have their uses.” She moved toward him, swinging the head in her outstretched hand so that the light from its eyes swept the room. Fishcake glimpsed things running away—Stalkerized insects and animals, a dog with the head of a dead girl. On a plate balanced on the arm of Popjoy’s couch sat a neat wedge of fruitcake, which Fishcake snatched and crammed into his mouth. Eating messily, he pushed open a door in the far wall and looked through into some sort of workshop: cadavers on slabs and shelves heaped high with curious machinery.

“It wasn’t me!” Popjoy was whimpering, assuming that the Stalker Fang had come for revenge. “I didn’t know Grike would attack you! It was all that girl’s doing; that Zero girl! She’s dead now; did you hear? The townies got her, down in Africa. Naga’s quite cut up about it, they say; sticks to his quarters and won’t issue orders. Everyone will be relieved to hear that you’re back! You’ll be on your way to Tienjing, I suppose? To reclaim power? I can help you…”

“Tienjing no longer matters,” whispered the Stalker, holding the head out to stare at him. “The Green Storm no longer matters. The world will not be made green again by air fleets and guns and the squabbling of the Once- Born.”

“Of course not, of course not.” Popjoy edged away until he was pressed against a wall and could edge no farther. His face shone sweatily in the green light. “So what can I do for you, Excellency? What small service can this feeble Once-Born offer … ?”

The Stalker did not answer at once. She moved the severed head, following the flight of a Resurrected bee around a lamp on a side table. Then, in a voice softer even than her usual graveyard whisper, she said, “I remember things.”

“Ah…”

“I remember being Anna Fang.”

“Oh? Interesting.” Fishcake, who was watching from behind the couch, could see that Popjoy really was interested, despite his fear.

“The memories overwhelm me sometimes,” the Stalker confessed. “It has been worse since I reached Shan Guo. Sometimes it is as if I become her.”

“Then the stuff I installed has started to work at last!” cried Popjoy triumphantly. “The damage you suffered must have dislodged something, or perhaps in repairing itself your brain has made some connection that I could not achieve with my crude instruments.”

“How is it possible?” demanded the Stalker. “Are they real memories?”

“Hard to say,” mused Popjoy. “How do you define a real memory? But it’s nothing to be frightened of. I think I can correct it… May I take a look? Inside?” He tapped his own bald head, and grinned, his fear replaced by a nervous excitement. “If you could wait till morning, when my laboratory assistants arrive to help me with my little retirement projects…”

“No.” The Stalker Fang was already moving toward Popjoy’s workshop. “No one must know that I am here.