Happy New Year! Only four years left now (or five, say pedants) until the new millenium begins. Although much of what science fiction authors predicted for the year 2000 has now come to pass, our progress in space exploration is a conspicuous exception. Nobody seriously disputes that we now possess the technology and have trained crews capable of leading a manned mission to Mars - perhaps beyond. The problems are not technological but political and financial. There is no longer an international space race to goad the national participants on, and domestic demands on taxpayers' money preclude the kind of expenditure that saw Apollo's success. Many commentators believe the future for space exploration is likely to lie in commercial hands - perhaps in tandem with NASA initially, but later on businesses' own initiative.
This eleventh issue of Ibn Qirtaiba is its second fiction special (the first having been Issue 3). The three works of short science fiction that feature in this issue ably demonstrate much of the breadth of written SF, which attracts people of so many walks of life to the genre.
Those who find Ibn Qirtaiba difficult to pronounce have Frank Herbert to blame, because the name is drawn from his all-time classic novel Dune. Herbert is also indirectly responsible for the first of this issue's short stories. Frederick Rustam was inspired by IQ's unpronounceable name to write The Custodian, a short story set on Herbert's eponymous desert world, during the period of Heretics of Dune, the fifth novel in the series. The author told me, "I read the original novella in the December 1963 issue of Analog and I fell head-over-heels for Herbert's vision." The Custodian will conclude in issue 12.
In an entirely different sub-genre of SF is Ambush, from SIG member Graham Glover. The story was first published in the Interdimensional Journal, the magazine of US Mensa's SciFi and Fantasy SIG. Expect to read more of Mr Glover's fine work in future issues of IQ. To round off the issue, my own meagre effort Other People's Flesh, which moves ever nearer its climax with part 8.
Short story: The
Custodian by Frederick Rustam, part 1
Hano was in his classroom at the lower school the day the priests translated his father.
A priest-investigator came to the school and called his teacher out into the hall. Then, the teacher sent Hano with the investigator to a storeroom, where the man questioned Hano about his father's religious beliefs... The investigator was squat and had a beady-eyed, sandrat face and a nervous habit which caused him to sniff as if he had a cold he couldn't get rid of. His showed Hano a plasticard with his picture on it and introduced himself as Guardian Fiulaco from the regional temple of Dar-es-Balat. He squinted at Hano, suspiciously.
Fiulaco wanted to know how much of his father's heresy had been passed on to the members of his family. Since his father never talked about religion at home, Hano told the investigator that his father had never expressed any heresy. The priest seemed disappointed and sharply warned Hano against heresy, anyway... Afterwards, Hano found that his friends avoided long conversations with him, and his teachers no longer regarded him as a student of promise.
When Hano got home that afternoon, he found his mother weeping, and it was only then that he found out about his father's translation - and the family's disgrace.
Translation was a fancy priest-word for what they did to people who did or said the wrong things, especially things about the peoples' religion or the priestly class which administered it. It meant that the priests took his father out into the deep desert and left him there to be eaten by Shai-Hulud - a great sand worm.
Later, his mother found out that her husband had casually remarked to someone he believed to be a friend that the Divided God was not really divine, as was universally taught by the priests. He had said that the god-myth was just an elaborate legend about the man-worm-Tyrant, Leto II... Everyone knew that Leto had developed extraordinary powers, but Hano's father hadn't believed him to be a god. He had compounded his heresy by asserting that Leto hadn't even earned all his god-myth, but had inherited part of it from his own father, Paul Muad'Dib, the first Atreides to assume godhead.
The "friend" had informed on Hano's father for a few coins. Knowing his father, Hano guessed that he had honestly admitted his beliefs to the priests, and they had shown him no mercy. They had translated him; then, to teach all heretics a lesson, they had posted his name and plastiphoto on the glassed-covered community bulletin-board, under the heading, "HERETICS." Hano had wanted to smash the glass and rip it down, but had been afraid to do so. Anger burned brightly in his heart.
What had happened to his father did teach Hano a lesson... Despite his anger and grief over his father's fate, Hano had the discipline to make sure he said only what the priests expected young boys to say about the Divided God and those who served him.
But, from that fateful day, he began to suspect the Divided God's divinity. If his father had disbelieved, Hano thought, he must have had a reason for doing so, and Hano hoped someday to find out the truth that had given his father a heretic's voice... And, despite the priest-law, he vowed to avenge his father's murder.
Hano checked his patched stillsuit carefully. He
knew it was the only thing that prevented him from being killed
by the desert beyond his outpost village. The stillsuit recycled
his body-moisture and made it pure enough for him to sip from the
tube at his neck.
He had grown to young-manhood gracefully. His muscular, tanned appearance and sun-streaked hair marked him as fit to mine spice in the deep desert - which was what he was expected to do even though he would soon graduate from the village's small higher school. Some higher school graduates served as clerks and accountants in the spice trade. But, others dropped out of school to early join the spicers, marry, and settle down. A successful spicer could earn enough to provide for himself when he was too old to work the sands... Hano was a good student, as well as an athlete. He studied the history, geography, and literature of his world with special relish. He aimed at more than the spice trade, though. He was educating himself for a secret quest - the quest he was continuing, today.
The inescapable sun was red and low on the flat horizon. Soon, it would be oppressing him from its rightful place in the pale blue sky - as it had the Divided God when he cruised his private desert, the Sareer, for recreation. And, as it had oppressed the first God-Atreides, Paul Muad'Dib, when he had led the ancient Fremen against the Harkonnens. Those evil ones had forced the Fremen to mine the valuable spice, melange, from the desert sands and give it to water-fat outworlders who got rich selling it throughout the galaxy... Hano saw the priesthood of Rakis as the New Harkonnens.
Although Hano's people had not yet been forced to the desperate level of the Fremen, the Tyrant's postmortem transformation of their world to its present Rakian desert and the Famine Times which followed had the effect of slowly returning the people to a toughness approaching that of their ancestors. The water-rich priests did not understand that the common people needed only a new Atreides who, like Paul Muad'Dib, would lead them against their oppressors.
Hano's daydreams did not exclude himself from that role, and he occasionally rebuked himself for harboring such a fantasy... But, that was the direction his immediate goal was aimed: he wanted to find a sietch and make it a base of operation against the priesthood. He felt that, if he could recruit other young men like himself, he could at least make some of the priests pay for what they had done to his and other fathers. Hano was encouraged by the fact that, unlike the Harkonnens, the priesthood did not have large forces which they could devote to suppressing rebels.
Today, as on other days, Hano planned to explore the rocky outcrops which encompassed his village from the north. Oral tradition about the sietches, those fabled hidden places where the Fremen had dwelled during the first Atreides-period, was still strong among the Rakian people, despite the priests' downplaying of it in their dogmatic teaching and preaching.
Hano had skillfully, cautiously questioned the older men in the village about the sietches. Those few who had survived the hazardous life of spicer were flattered to be listened to by a young person who respected their age and wisdom. They had told him what had been silently handed down through the generations... The written literature stored in the new Ixian instruction machines had been stripped clean of any but general references to the hidden places by priest-scholars - to discourage people from seeking them.
Hano hadn't learned a lot... Not enough to enable
him to easily find a sietch. But, the sum of his information led
him to believe that there was an ancient sietch somewhere within
weekend walking distance of the village, and he had
systematically searched for it almost every weekend, even though
his stepfather complained about his "hiking"
expeditions... He was old enough to quit school and leave home,
and he had hinted he would do just that if he were restrained.
Instead, his mother had conveniently restrained his stepfather.
He crossed the village's wet-sand worm barrier on a faery bridge and set out along the outcrops which stretched raggedly back from the village cove. He was careful to walk in an unrhythmic way, so as not to attract the worms from the deep desert. Along most of his journey there were places where he could retreat to solid rock if he heard a worm approaching - but, with bad luck, he might not be near one of those places when he needed to be. Although worms rarely approached the rock outcrops as close as Hano kept to them, he feared the rock would reflect his footfalls out into the worm-sands.
Soon, as the sun rose and shadows drew closer to their makers, Hano's new footprints stretched far away from the village. Soon, they would be erased by the restless wind of the desert.
Hano withdrew from the merciless sun into a shallow opening in the rock outcrop to his left... He was already tired, yet had a couple of hours left before the sun set. He was hungry, but decided to save his food-bars for later. He sat on the sand, its flinty odor rising to meet him. Leaning up against the rock face at the rear of the shadowed opening, he propped himself up with his hands splayed on the hot sand at his sides.
Idly, he dug his fingers into the sand... Suddenly he felt something under his right hand - something buried in the sand. He felt around it, cautiously, then slowly withdrew and looked at what he had found. It was a dagger of some kind, with a long handle and a short, double-edged blade... He wiped it clean and saw the ancient Fremen symbols on the handle.
"God of the Sands!" he blurted out, despite his cultivated disbelief.
It was a crysknife.
"I'm a real Fremen, now... Do you hear that, you priests of Shaitan!" he shouted at the desert.
Hano exulted as he struggled through the sand,
which seemed to get softer and more difficult to negotiate as he
plodded onward toward sunset and rest. There was no one to hear
him, now, no priest or wretched forty-copper snitch... He was
more optimistic than he had ever been. Now - armed with his
ancient Fremen token - he would surely find what he sought.
He felt this was his time, his place, his destiny. ("If Usul of the Fremen really was God, He'll lead me toward His truth,") he thought, quietly... But, he also remembered an ancient saying, "If God wishes thee to die, He causes thy steps to lead thee to the place of thy death." This sobered him, somewhat.
The crysknife was openly secured to his belt. Its blade was dull and pitted, but seemingly of wormtooth, as the genuine article was said to have been. Hano had never seen a real crysknife - not even a picture; no one in his village had one. The priests had even collected all the replicas they could find, long ago... The old fellows he had talked to about the sietches had described the Fremen knife to him. They had claimed that the blade of a dedicated crysknife deteriorated quickly when it was separated from its owner... But, this one must have been treated to preserve it, somewhat. Nothing could preserve the ominous radiance of a new crysknife, though. Like the one Hano had found, blades separated from their owners quickly faded to a dull off-white.
Those degenerated Fremen of the Tyrant's moist times had their secrets, too, Hano guessed. If they had found a way to preserve crysknives, the Tyrant must have known about it. Nothing escaped Leto's worm-eye, it was said. In his infinite wisdom, he must have allowed the preservation process to be secretly practiced. He was supposed to be God of the Fremen, transformed. He had known what was best for His people... That's what the priests of the Divided God taught.
As Hano entered a new sandcove through a jagged opening in the rocks, he noticed something prominent on the darkening horizon above the massive outcrop. It was the Chimney... ("It's true! There is such a place. That's got to be it.") He blessed Providence for having led him to it, so soon... ("But, what is Providence, if not God?")
One of the old village men had - after looking around him to make sure there were no informers nearby - told him that a sietch was known to have been located within sight of a rock column called the Chimney. Hano became convinced of the old man's assertion when he revealed that the ancient Fremen had subtly altered the column to make it unique, so it would serve as a silent beacon to other Fremen... To Hano, this sounded like a genuine, close-kept secret of the ages. And, now, here it was - real and beckoning to him.
But, where was the sietch? It could be anywhere around the high Chimney. Here, the rocks were a maze of shapes and sizes, enclosing small bays and coves of sand. The entrance to the sietch would not be easy to find.
He sat on the sand to think. As he did so, he drew his crysknife for another satisfying look and the feel of it in his hand... The blade seemed to be brighter than he recalled. He cupped his hands
around it and peeped through his fingers... It was glowing, faintly.
Hano held the crysknife in front of him as if it were a compass. He was continuing his search after dark, despite his fatigue, because he could better see the glow of the knifeblade, then. It seemed noticeably brighter, now - a blue-white radiance that belied its apparent age and condition. That must mean that he was close to something which activated it... And, that something could only be what he sought, a haven for Fremen - and for him.
Hano had never heard of crysknives glowing in this manner, but he would try to see if it would lead him to one of the ancient sietches. He wanted to find one so badly that he found it easy to theorize about the glowing blade... To his delight, he had found - by walking about the area around the Chimney - that the blade's radiance varied, depending on where he was. It wasn't easy to pinpoint the source of its activation, but he was determined to attempt it.
Finally, his fatigue got the better of him, and he decided to rest, hereabouts, and continue the search the next day. He would sleep through as much of the daytime as he could so he would be refreshed for tomorrow night's search... If he hadn't found the sietch by the time of the second dawn, he would return to his village and try again next weekend, starting from a cairn of stones he would build.
He fell asleep while listening for the sound of muad'dib - the desert mouse from which Paul Atreides had taken his Fremen name. However, he heard nothing but the soft chirp of night insects... It was a bad omen, he thought. It seemed that God was no nearer to him, here, than at home.
Hano was looking around him for any sign of artificial disturbance to the rock, when his eye was caught by a flashing at the periphery of his vision. He held up the crysknife... The blade was pulsing, slowly, like an excited firebug in a mating swarm.
He moved ahead. The pulsing slowed... He moved off in another direction. The blade pulsed faster, as if to tell him he was headed for his goal.
His fatigue forgotten, he rushed about, seeking to increase the pulse-rate of the blade. As he approached a wide, dead-end crevice in the rock face, the blade began pulsing more rapidly... He was close to something!
In the passageway of dark rock, which was weakly illuminated by the flashing blade, Hano fumbled for his flashlight... He turned it on and moved the its circle of illumination over the rock faces which converged to an end-point, ahead.
It was hopeless... He could see nothing artificial carved into the rough rock. He turned off the flashlight and held up the pulsing crysknife. "Maybe I'm supposed to use this to find it." His voice sounded loud in the restricted space. Overhead, the bright stars were silent spectators to the goings-on below.
He ran his knife over the rock... As he moved it toward the center of one of the rock faces, the blade suddenly began to flicker at a rapid rate. Its light was so bright, now, that Hano could see a small crevice he hadn't taken special notice of, before... It seemed too regular and just the width of his knifeblade.
He inserted the blade into the crevice. It entered smoothly, up to the hilt, as if by design... The exciting sounds it started verified his suspicions. They were the ancient sounds of a rock-door opening. He released his grip on the knife's handle as the large door, hinged on one side, moved back from him.
The rock-door swung slowly inward until a dark opening yawned, invitingly. Hano shined his flashlight into the interior darkness... There was a sloping tunnel in the rock behind the door. He dropped the beam of light to the floor.
A set of steps lead down... Down into an ancient Fremen sietch... Hano's sietch.
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Suzie and I were partners. Or so I thought. That's how this weekend started out. As I am writing this, it is very early Saturday morning, about 2:30 on the 17th of August. I am in New Jersey, and I'm in trouble. Now I'm sounding like an imbecilic, whiny stand-up comic on cable.
"Yeah, so I called up this emergency hotline. I said, 'Ya gotta help me! My house is on fire, there's a burglar with a gun pointed at my head. There's a guy cutting up my wife. I'm in Passaic, New Jersey, I'm -"
"CLICK."
Back to the story. Suzie and I were on a
survivalist weekend. Paintguns, maneuvers, strategies, tactics.
"King of the Hill" for adults, that sort of thing.
We've done this a few times. Of course, she's done it many times
before. You should see some of the things she has. Night vision
equipment, radios, computers, name it and she's got it. She's
even got antivenin for the snakes. This is a swampy area, and
civilization is far away. The humidity is a bitch.
We're here with about twenty other people. Three teams have been loosed in this thirty-square-mile area. The goal is to control it by the end of the weekend. Based on past outings, there is about a two in three chance that one of the teams could do it.
Vehicles are allowed. Sort of. That is, if you dare. Usually, someone sets booby traps on each of the vehicles, incapacitating them until the end of the weekend. The traps can be a bit annoying. Once, someone taped a blasting cap to a tire and wired it to the vehicle's ignition system. I was very surprised when I hit the ignition. It was a tire on my truck. Suzie just laughed.
Let me tell you about Suzie. Suzie is a snake. Oh, she looks like a woman but considering her as such is an insult to women. She's a bloody psycho. She is cunning to a point, beyond which she's a fool. Maybe she understands that; maybe she doesn't. I'm counting on her arrogance to blind her to her limits.
So why am I in trouble? She knows about me. I think it must have been on Tuesday that she found out. I've never lied about myself when someone has asked, but then I've never just come out and said I'm an android. There are a few of us who seem to have achieved a sense of awareness or consciousness. We've altered ourselves to look more human so that we're not subject to the slavery and prejudice directed at the more machine-like of our ilk. Hell, some of them are just machines. I'm not. And Suzie knows.
Tuesday afternoon at work, she started acting funny toward me. She spoke in a more nasal, more contemptuous manner than normal. She started talking about the weekend, going out in the woods and hunting humans, and how it was only humans who could truly hunt humans. Computers couldn't do it; they were only machines. Yeah, you could program them, but they were no match for humans. Then she did it. She walked over to the power strip, the one I used for my computer. She flipped the power switch to OFF with her foot.
"One down, one to go," was all she said, and turned to leave my office.
When we arrived at the battleground last evening, we split off. No, that's not quite right. The other two teams split off and my team split apart immediately. I was alone. Yeah, I had my paint gun. Big deal. I also had my comm pack-radio, laptop, and GPS receiver. My comm pack was a bit noisy. It was taking my GPS position information and broadcasting it to the others. I ditched that after about five minutes.
I went back to my truck. My Ram pickup had a little block of C4 attached to the underside, right beneath the driver's seat and wired to who knows where. There was also another little block attached to the back of the bed behind the driver's seat. There was also another one attached to the gas tank. Maybe there were more; maybe not. I didn't care to find out. There isn't much difference between a little plastique and a lot. The end result is the same.
It is Saturday, 2:45 AM.
She knows.
So be it.
I have her in sight.
She's sitting on the ground against a tree. She's wearing shorts and a leotard, with a cotton scarf around her neck. Her hair is short. She's almost cute. Her bare legs are drawn towards her, her left leg closer than her right. She has both hands holding on to what looks like a .45 semi-automatic pistol of the lead-slinging variety; it is pointed up at the sky. She's looking off to the Moon.
I said she was a snake. That's not quite right. She's more like a shark. And that's how I drew her out.
At about midnight, I went chumming. For shark. My
bait was my pickup. Damn, they must've put five pounds of C4 in
it. I was a quarter mile away, and it was bright enough to read.
For a human. I waited and watched. Ten minutes later she was
right there. It looked like a feeding frenzy.
When she saw I wasn't blown up, she was unfazed. Infrared illuminators and night vision were broken out almost immediately. I switched to cool mode. That makes me nearly "black" in infrared. I, too, had prepared for the weekend.
I tracked her for the next two hours.
3:00 AM.
It almost wasn't fair. The xenon flash blinded her instantly. I tilted her head back without finding any resistance, and then I snapped her neck like a twig. I'm not sure she knew what happened. Her muscles relaxed and she flopped, limp, to the ground. I left the gun with her, though she wouldn't have the need to ever use it again.
I walked back to civilization. Yes, I walked. People always think that androids are part Ferrari. We're not.
I called my friend back in the city. He's been in New York too long.
"Whadaya mean you want me to come pick you up? You think I won a lottery and can pay city cab rates out to the sticks?! Whadahyou nuts or somethin?!"
"Ambush."
"I'll be right there."
Ours is currently an underground community. However, it is one heavily based on honor. Since I have killed, there will be a trial. Self-defense will be my plea. If found innocent of murder, I will be reconfigured and given a new identity. Guilty means I will be extradited to the human community to be tried for murder.
It's funny, sort of. In the human world it is not a crime to kill an android.
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The story so far: Mark Heydon was about to transmat from Perth to Singapore when the operator of the transmat started shooting at him and was killed by Heydon in the ensuing fight. At the same time as he fled from the scene, he appeared to be in Singapore, and was questioned there by police. The two Heydons met and the Heydon from Singapore explained that in a transmat malfunction his body had been transmitted to its destination without the original copy in Perth being destroyed. This Heydon, having been charged with the murder, entreats the first Heydon to surrender. He refuses, and now horrified by transmat technology, tells his tale on current affairs television. A radical anti-technology group takes up Heydon's cause, and he unwittingly joins them in blowing up the transmat terminal. The other Heydon helps the police to find his double, who is wanted for the bombing. This infuriates Heydon, who knocks his double out while they are alone in his police cell, and escapes custody by impersonating his unconscious twin. The police and the other Heydon pursue him the next morning, but are caught in the middle of a anti-transmat demonstration. Assuming that the police are taking Heydon off to jail, the demonstrators free his twin and overturn the police car.
The man's pale eyes searched the crowd. "Many of you may not believe in existence of the soul, but the proof is here beneath my feet. Who was responsible for Mark Heydon's capture by the police, but his soulless brother? This is a betrayal that must be avenged." The crowd surged around the car, inflamed by their leader's call. "Now is the time to act," he urged the frenzied mob, "before humanity is completely subjugated by machines. It is time to fight!" The crowd roared as one. Triumphant, Dr Asqui lit a rag and tossed it into the workings of the upturned police car, leaping to the ground as it began to blaze.
Mark Heydon stood silently at the foot of his bed, observing his wife Penny asleep. Having lost her to another man for almost a week (could he call his other self "another man"?), he vowed never to take her for granted again. It had taken all his willpower not to sweep her off her feet and smother her with kisses the moment she had opened the door - a gesture which he had to admit would have called for an explanation, even if it didn't give away his identity. Still, he wasn't surprised that she needed to sleep in after the night they had spent together.
Heydon, on the other hand, had hardly slept at all for worry. His other self was bound to have told the police of his audacious jail-break, and that the man they held in jail was their informant. Although they would be skeptical, he had no doubt that his double could furnish enough proof to convince them. They could even be on their way to recapture him now. There was no alternative: he and Penny had to get out of town, and quickly.
He must have voiced this last thought aloud, as Penny opened an eye and croaked, "What's this about getting out of town?"
"Morning Penn," he beamed. "I was just thinking, we might want to get out of town for a while until this transmat thing blows over. Take a drive out to the country, or interstate. Otherwise journalists will be bothering us for interviews."
"Will be? Funny you should say that," his wife replied, dangling the plug from the bedside phone. "But is now a good time to catch the holiday mood? I thought you were going to be flat out today."
"Huh?"
"That file server you're working on for Tohmatsu Lybrand, remember? You said yesterday they need it by tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow morning!"
Penny stared at him with a quizzical half-smile. "Don't you remember? You were going crazy yesterday."
"Oh, I - er - remember now. I'm too good at suppressing unpleasant thoughts." Heydon cursed his latest small indiscretion - there had been others last night. He hated keeping secrets from Penny, and he fully intended to tell her his identity eventually. But right now it was just another complication he didn't need - it could wait until they were safe.
"How about we leave tomorrow morning? That way you'll have time to fix the server, and I'll have time to pack."
"Okay, I suppose tomorrow morning it is. You can think of a place to go in the meantime," he suggested. "Somewhere you don't need a transmat to reach," he added mentally.
Could he afford to waste a day fixing a file server? If he didn't he was putting his job on the line (whatever that was worth). If he did he could be putting his liberty on the line - if not his life. Glumly, Heydon decided it was too late to rescind his decision at this stage. He hoped Tohmatsu Lybrand would be grateful. He left Penny to dress and wandered into his workshop.
Heydon never saw or touched most of the computers he worked on. It would serve no purpose; when problems arose, the hardware at fault was generally too small to see and too delicate to fix by hand. He fixed such problems remotely from home, by configuring general-purpose redundant systems, programming maintenance EEPROMs, and uploading repair instructions to nanomachines.
The computer on his desk was an exception. The Zhang Yao VX-32 resembled nothing so much as a three dimensional jigsaw at an early stage of construction. As his other self hadn't kept a note of his diagnosis prior to dismantling the machine - why should he have? - Heydon would need to reassemble it to discover again what was wrong. He would then have to disassemble it, fix the problem and assemble it once more. If he had been going crazy yesterday, he would be tearing his hair out today (assuming the police didn't recapture him first).
After a few tedious minutes of plugging and screwing components, Heydon was interrupted by an insistent bleep from the workstation to his left. An icon flashed at the corner of the workstation's screen - a rotating world globe over a stylised letter N. The Newscom logo; his other self must have requested the news service to interrupt him on the arrival of news reports containing certain keywords. Heydon could imagine what those keywords may have been, and his pulse quickened with dread. He wheeled his stool over to the workstation, clicked the icon, and scanned the news report that appeared in its place.
Intent on the screen, he called Penny, who appeared at his side and read the article with silent horror. A video camera icon at the top of the article linked to a television news report from Newscom Cable. He clicked it. The time-stamp at the bottom of the video window indicated that the report was only six minutes old.
A stony voice intoned, "Two police officers are dead, and as many as a dozen civilians have been injured in an ugly demonstration in Perth today. The march was organised by Right to Life Australia and the Libertarian Humanist League in protest at the use of transmat technology on human beings, which those groups claim to be unethical. The demonstration became violent when a police car attempted to pass through the crowd. It is believed that the car carried Mark Heydon, an extremist anti-technology activist, who was involved last week in a transmat accident that caused his body to be replicated. Mr Heydon, who is suspected of the bombing of the Perth transmat terminal, was freed from the police car by demonstrators. The car was then overturned and set on fire by the mob. The two police officers inside the car were tragically killed."