The evening
shadows were thick and purple over the eroded eastern hills when the thing
awoke.
It awoke little by little, one stage at a
time. Somewhere deep inside it, a switch clicked, sending electric impulses
which told its brain to become active. Still half-sleeping, it began the
process of bringing itself awake. Like a man blinking his eyes, it tested its
sensors, turning them on and off one by one; and like him stretching his arms,
it turned on the motors mounted behind its wings, its propellers turning, first
slowly, tasting the air, and then faster, chewing hungrily.
All around it, inside its underground
shelter, was darkness, and, except for the whirring of its electric motors,
silence. There were no crew close by, handling trolleys and fuel tanks,
watching to see everything went well. No eyes watched. Far away, on the other
side of the hard-packed earth of the valley floor, a sentry leaned against the
side of an armoured vehicle and glanced incuriously in its general direction;
that was all.
Fully awake, now, it went over its mission
for the night, step by step. It was not a particularly difficult mission. It
was nothing it hadn’t already done before. But still, going over the steps by
rote, it checked.
Beneath its long, elegant wings, as long
and slender as those of a wandering albatross soaring over the distant sea,
were the heavy blunt-headed missiles. It had not used them on its last mission,
and they still hung in place, ready and waiting. It checked them, too, and
found everything satisfactory. If something had been wrong, this would have
been the time for it to attempt to correct them, and if that didn’t work, to
call for help from the repair teams. But there was nothing.
Motors humming, it waited for the night.
It was a marvel. Nothing had ever been made
like it before, had never even been thought possible outside the writings of
authors who imagined they were creating dystopic fiction. In the world in which
the stories had placed it, there were fleets of its kind, fighting colossal
battles against each other, or against heroic resistance fighters in the
wreckage of cities which had been shattered to scrap.
In the world which it actually inhabited,
it flew above quarry utterly helpless to fight back, and it hunted alone.
The first stars had just appeared when it
finally rolled out of the shelter, up the ramp, and onto the valley floor. Here
and there, partly embedded in the earth, were little ultraviolet lights,
invisible to human eyes. It could see them, though, and they marked out a path
for it, as clear as a signposted highway along the valley floor, past the
stretches sown with buried landmines, past the other disguised underground pens
and weapon stores.
Reaching the end of the short runway, it
checked for wind. The motors picked up speed, the blades spinning faster and
faster, the sound running up from a low hum to a moan, the moan to a scream as
of the shrieking of the warm evening air being cut apart, and further, to a
level almost beyond hearing. It trembled, poised like a gazelle on its tall
legs, and then the brakes slipped from its wheels, and it rolled down the
hard-packed earth, until the air beneath the long wings was moving fast enough
to bear it aloft.
Like a shadow-demon of the night, it rose
into the darkling sky, only the agonised susurration of shredded air to mark
its passage.
Banking in a great curve, it turned towards
the north, towards its hunting grounds.
*****************************************
The
sickle moon had begun shimmering over the eastern horizon when it crossed the
border. There was, of course, no marker on the ground, no fence or river to
mark the frontier, just the wrinkled, rocky hills, one as identical to another.
But it had brushed electronic fingers over the ground, and had asked questions
to a chunk of metal and plastic and silica spinning round and round the planet
high overhead; and the satellite assured it that it was exactly where it had to
be.
Raising its nose slightly to bring more of
the hunting grounds into view, it climbed.
Sometimes, it had specific prey, one given
over to track and consume, a gift to it, to be shared with nobody else.
Tonight, as much more often, it had no such quarry; it was merely out to forage
for what it could. All night might easily go by, and it might find nothing.
That might have frustrated other hunters,
but it knew neither hunger nor frustration. If it found nothing tonight,
tomorrow it would come again.
This time, though, it found something
almost at once. It was still far away, a tiny speck crawling along a hillside,
like an ant along a thread. Diving slightly to pick up speed, but not altering the
pitch of its motors beyond that required for maximum endurance, it turned for a
closer look.
The closer it came, the more clearly the
images grew through its cameras. The thread broadened into a road, the ant into
a car, a largish car whose engine sent a heat-image as clear as though it had
been driving along at high noon. Its dim headlights fumbled through the night
like searching fingers.
Throttling back to keep the vehicle below
and ahead, the thing fixed the cameras on it, the image intensifiers going to
work. The vehicle was no longer a smear of light on the heat sensors now – it grew,
lines sharpening, the broad roof turning from a pale oblong into a sheet of
metal on which dents and patches of rust were visible. The back windscreen was
a black rectangle moving through the night.
It was possible prey, the thing above
decided. The algorithms checked out – a vehicle travelling alone at night,
nondescript, battered; it was almost enough to justify consuming it without
further delay.
But there were further protocols to follow,
a few more things to check; and the road was narrow and twisting, and it had
time. Slowing further, allowing itself to sink a little closer to the ground,
it whispered to the satellite far above, telling it of its plans.
The headlights, blotches of washed out
yellow, flickered along the hillside, unpausing, unaware.
It knew well in advance where the car was
going. The satellite, checking its route, whispered back the location of the
town that lay ahead; a town the thing had hunted over more than once already. A
teeming maze of clogged streets and buildings made of raw brick, it was filled
with the Enemy, and filled with prey.
The car below was now promising prey. The thing
switched its targeting computer in anticipation of the meal to come. All it
needed was the final confirmation.
The car was climbing the hillside, the town
on the plateau above a splash of white and yellow light, glitter flung by a
giant. The thing lifted up higher, a great bird of prey, one camera tracking
the car while the others studied the town, seeking out other meals, other
quarry. The propellers whirred.
Entering the town, the car took one side
street, and then another. And, as though tied by invisible strings, the thing
above followed, too, slipping through the night sky. One of its underwing
pylons lowered, pivoting, an electric impulse arming the stubby, heavy missile.
The thing was getting ready to eat.
At this hour, though it was still
relatively early, the town’s streets were already deserted. A lorry passed in
the distance, piled high with boxes; possible quarry, but not this time, not
for now. A movement in a dark alley, a smear of heat in the infrared camera,
but too far away and too brief to follow, even though it seemed as furtive as
it was momentary.
And then, all of a sudden, the car turned to
the side of the street and stopped.
It stopped so suddenly that the raptor
above was taken by what passed with it for surprise. It had already passed
overhead, and had to turn in a tight, wheeling semicircle to come back towards
it. But at no point had its cameras lost sight of the vehicle, not for a moment;
and they watched as the man got out of
the car and slammed the door shut.
There it was, the final confirmation. The
man fitted all the specifications. He was about forty, and heavily muscled, his
shoulders bulging under his shirt. He had a thick beard, visible clearly in the
camera’s eye; and he carried a bag in one hand, a large bag, more than bog
enough to pack weapons and explosives, which was heavy enough that he set it
down on the pavement for a moment before picking it up again.
Crosshairs moved to intersect over the man’s
torso. The thing sent one more impulse down the wires, to the missile under the
wing.
The waiting was over; the time had come to
eat.
Nothing happened. The missile did not go streaking
down to turn the prey into a ball of erupting fire and fragmented flesh. People
in the neighbouring houses did not throw themselves under their beds as their
windows blew in, showering glass on them. Quickly, the thing tried again,
sending the impulse once more.
Again, nothing happened. Some tiny
component, some bagatelle, a microchip or relay or electrical connection had
failed, and the missile would not fire.
There were other missiles, of course, but
they would have to be armed and targeted, and the thing had already overshot
the quarry. Banking so hard that it almost stood on a wingtip, it turned again,
fulfilling its orders, though knowing that it was already too late.
It was already too late. The man had
disappeared into one of the buildings beside the alley, and there was no
telling which. Also, the programming didn’t allow strikes on houses without
specific orders. And in this case there were no specific orders.
If
it had been human, it might have been furious and frustrated. Instead, all it
did was rise higher and turn back towards the frontier, towards its base on the
valley floor, and its pen under the sheltering ground.
The quarry had escaped this time; but there
would be other prey, and it would be back again.
********************************************
As he
waited for his wife to open the door, the man frowned and shook his head. For
some time he’d been having the strangest feeling that he was being watched and
followed. Once or twice he’d turned his head to look, but the road behind his
car had stayed dark and empty.
Well, whatever it was, it was gone now.
His wife opened the door, her face tense,
and relaxed visibly when she saw him. “Why were you so late?” she asked,
pulling at his arm in her haste to get him inside. “I was so worried!”
“I was held back at the hospital,” the man
said. “Two emergency surgeries, and of course the phone network was down.”
“It’s Papa,” the woman called over her
shoulder. “She was waiting up for you,” she said with a distracted smile. “She
kept saying she wouldn’t go to sleep till you were back. I think she’s gone to
sleep now, though.”
“It’s all right,” the man said, dropping
the bag with the groceries on the floor. “I couldn’t get her doll, I’m afraid.
It wasn’t there in the usual shop, and I didn’t have time to go looking
elsewhere.”
“You can get it another time,” the woman
said. Her eyes brimmed with sparkling tears. “I’m just so glad you’re back
safe. I kept having the most awful thoughts.”
“I’m fine,” the man said, and once more he
remembered that strange feeling of being followed and watched. Well, if there had been something it was probably
keeping him safe anyway.
“You work so hard,” the woman said. “And I
worry about you so much. You’re all we have, the two of us.”
“I’m fine,” he repeated, and drew his wife
to him with his fine delicate surgeon’s hands. “Don’t worry. Everything’s all
right.”
Blinking away the tears, she reached out
and hugged him as though she’d never let him go.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2016
