They were looking for him, of course. His ship had evaded detection on the way down from orbit by disguising itself as random orbital flotsam, but whoever was controlling the mechants must have realized there was a chance at least one of the spy-ships had made it past their defences.
Jacob continued watching through the night until the lights eventually passed into the next valley, and only then allowed himself the luxury of sleep.
He emerged from the cave at dawn on his fourth day on Darwin, by now ravenous with hunger, climbing to the top of a tree and crouching low on a branch in order to peer out across the forest canopy. He could see that the search for him continued to move further and further away from his hiding place: beams of light flickered across the mouth of an estuary several kilometres to the north.
From time to time, as he waited to be rescued by whichever Tian Di sleeper agents picked up his transceiver alert, he would glance up at the impossibly vast bulk of the world-wheel that straddled Darwin’s equator. Patterns of light danced around the wheel’s inner curve, and up and down the spokes that connected the wheel to the continents and oceans below. From time to time displays of light, not unlike auroras, encircled the wheel like a phantasmagorical wreath, billowing like silk sheets cast into a turbulent wind. Whether it were some strange natural phenomenon, a byproduct of industrial processes, or indeed some form of artistic display, Jacob could not begin to guess.
The search lights finally faded behind a veil of grey rain that tumbled from the sky, blown in from the sea. Jacob returned to his cave and checked the transceiver for what might have been the thousandth time, but there was still no response.
He could not discount the possibility that the agents who had arrived before him might have been uncovered and terminated; but if that were the case, he felt sure their killers would not only have located their transceivers, but used them to track him down the moment he had sent out his distress call. The fact that they had not done so suggested those agents were still out there, somewhere.
Of course, there was always the possibility that if the sleeper agents had been captured, they had first managed to destroy their transceivers, or perhaps . . .
No. He pushed his transceiver back into a pocket of his combat suit. It was too easy to get caught up in paranoid fantasies, isolated and alone out here as he was. If he received no response within the next few days, he’d just have to strike out on his own and take his chances.
He set about foraging in the woods close by the cave, and found some wild nuts that proved bitter but edible. He tried a fruit analogous in appearance to berries, small dark clusters the colour of bruised knuckles, but just one was enough to make him violently sick and leave him with a fever that very nearly incapacitated him. He managed to crawl back inside the cave, where it took the microchines infesting his gut several hours to neutralize the berry’s poison and calm the fever.
When he next emerged from the cave, pale and shaky, night had fallen once more, and he saw a single light flickering through the line of trees dotting the slope below his cave.
They’ve found me, he thought with a lurch. Darwin’s security forces must have decided to renew their search for him. The chances of him surviving any encounter out here, without backup, against whatever mechants the Coalition were now employing, were vanishingly small.
Jacob waited, silent and still, for several minutes, then came to the conclusion that this was almost certainly a lone individual moving through the woods on foot. He could hear them stumbling through the undergrowth, their flashlight swinging this way and that.
Scrambling into the shelter of a tree’s wide, blade-like roots, he waited again.
Before long he saw the figure of a man make its way into a clearing below the cave, nervously clutching a torch in one hand. Jacob studied this individual from amongst deep shadows. The flickering auroras from the world-wheel faintly illuminated the stranger’s face, and Jacob saw that the man’s hair was grey and unkempt, his eyes pale and watery-looking. His mouth moved as if he were perpetually on the verge of saying something but then changing his mind. He was not young, and the lines on his face and the stiffness of his movements suggested he had not made use of any gerontological treatments presumably available to the Coalition’s citizens.
Jacob’s lattice searched its databases for a facial match, and found a near-perfect correlation with a sleeper agent named Melvin Kulic who had been sent to Darwin more than a century ago. The match was not quite perfect, however, suggesting this man was instead a descendant of Kulic’s, born since his arrival on Darwin.
Jacob felt a bristling of unease. This was not the reception he had been expecting.
‘Are you there?’ the old man called out, his voice wavering with uncertainty.
A moment later the old man jerked around, flashing the light across the clearing as if he he’d heard something, but Jacob had made no sound.
The light from his torch flickered across the tree behind which Jacob hid. Jacob drew back slightly, momentarily unsure whether or not he should reveal his presence.
That this old man had come looking for him, rather than the agents he had been expecting, implied something had gone badly wrong. His mind churned with possibilities. If he revealed himself, would he be walking into a trap? At the worst he could kill himself, safe in the knowledge that he had prepared instantiation backups prior to his departure from the Tian Di.
That settled it. And, besides, there was nothing to be gained from hiding any longer.
Jacob stepped away from the tree, watching as the old man flashed his light here and there around the clearing. He hadn’t seen him yet.
‘Listen,’ the old man’s voice quavered, ‘if you’re there – and if that damn thing hasn’t just gone haywire telling me you’re here – you’d better think about . . . Shit!’
The old man staggered backwards when he finally caught sight of Jacob standing just a few metres away. He stumbled over a root or rock hidden in the undergrowth, and let out a gasp of pain when he landed clumsily.
Jacob stepped forward, reaching out a hand and helping the old man back up onto his feet. At least if it were to prove expedient or necessary to kill this stranger, there would be no possibility of witnesses.
‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ said the old man, his face a mixture of awe and terror. ‘From the Tian Di.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s your ship?’
‘You’re alone?’ asked Jacob.
The old man squinted, and Jacob realized with a start that he had trouble with his eyes.
‘Your eyes,’ asked Jacob. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘My . . .’ The old man stared at him in befuddlement. ‘Of course,’ he replied after a moment. ‘You won’t know about the Edicts.’
‘Edicts?’ Jacob grasped at a sliver of memory. ‘You mean the Left-Behind – their Church Edicts, is that what you mean?’
The old man nodded. ‘The pastors won’t stand for any kind of messing around with the body now,’ he said. ‘Not any more, anyways.’
‘Tell me your name,’ said Jacob.
‘Jonathan Kulic. My father was . . . one of you.’
‘Where is he?’ Jacob demanded. ‘Why didn’t he or Bruehl or any of the other agents come here to meet me?’
‘I . . .’ the old man faltered. ‘My father died, years ago.’
‘Died? Of what?’
‘He . . . he came to believe in the Edicts.’
Jacob stared at him. ‘I don’t understand. How is that even possible?’
‘He didn’t have faith in the Edicts at first,’ Kulic replied, ‘that much he finally told me just before his death. But when he did come to believe in them, he let the microchines in his body – is that what they’re called? – die out. After that he grew old so quickly, some in our community believed he had been touched by God, or perhaps punished by him.’ Kulic shook his head. ‘He never even told my mother where he’d really come from, but he confided in me, on his deathbed.’