Polity 4 - The Technician (19 page)

‘How can
a proctor be any more than a coffin dodger?’ asked one of the other men at the
table, his words succinct, vicious.

Grant
dipped his head. He wanted to slap some sense into these people, but he also
perfectly understood them. His stomach tight, he raised his head and focused on
the speaker.

‘When
the Technician took Tombs apart, it plugged into his brain and downloaded
something,’ he said succinctly.

‘Bullshit,’
said the man.

Grant
shrugged, which was not the response he wanted to make, and continued, his tone
even but hoarse. ‘I guess you never wondered why Tombs is still a madman, why
Polity mindtechs haven’t straightened out his kinks. The AIs don’t want to
damage that download because of its source.’

‘So
why’d they let him get away?’ asked Thracer.

‘Because
the realities now, here on Masada, should shock him back to sanity and allow
the AIs to get to that information.’ Grant said it straight, succinct, hiding
his own doubts.

‘Oh, we
can acquaint him with realities,’ said the vicious man.

Thracer
glanced at the man, expression blank, then said, ‘You’re asking us to accept
that a hooder is capable of inserting information into the mind of a man. They
may be the descendants of organisms fashioned for war, but I know nothing about
such a capability. Hooder biology is mostly known and understood.’

‘The
Technician used to make those weird sculptures – we all know that. Do other
hooders do that?’ Grant asked.

‘So it’s
a bit different,’ said one of the others, shrugging.

‘A lot
different,’ said Grant. ‘Even during the rebellion some Polity gink was here
tracking the Technician and snatching its sculptures before the proctors could
find and destroy them. He found one in the mountains four years back. It’s a
million years old. Hooders don’t live that long, so it seems the Technician was
made practically immortal, and there ain’t been anyone capable of doing that on
this world for two million years.’

‘And
your final point?’ asked Thracer.

‘Don’t
try to kill Tombs, don’t try to have him killed, and warn off any Tidy Squad
members preparing to kill him.’ Grant glanced at the vicious man, then returned
his attention to Thracer.

‘Are you
threatening us?’ Thracer asked.

‘Just
delivering a warning,’ said Grant, now standing up. ‘I’m going to be watching
over him, and others will be watching too.’

‘What
others?’

‘One’s a
Polity drone that fought in the Prador war. It’s a machine you seriously don’t
want to fuck with. But concern yourself with me first. Anyone tries to take
Tombs and I will stop them.’

Mr
Vicious looked up. ‘How does it feel, Grant, trying to keep alive a piece of
shit like that?’

‘It
makes me feel filthy,’ said Grant. ‘But the Theocracy is gone and the AIs are
here – we can’t be selective about what parts of their rule we’ll accept.’

‘Yeah,
whatever,’ said Mr Vicious.

‘You’ve
delivered your warning, Commander,’ said Thracer. ‘We’ll consider it.’

It was a
dismissal. Grant nodded and moved away. He hoped that Thracer would realize
that Tombs alive was more important to Masada and its people than petty
vengeance – hoped the man could rein in the hotheads in his organization.
Really, he didn’t fear for Tombs’s life, he feared for theirs. Amistad had
recently made it quite plain to him. The drone itself wasn’t watching Tombs,
that job had fallen to one of the drone’s ‘associates’, and it would not limit
its response to any threat to the man’s life. Something had worried Grant about
the way Amistad referred to that ‘associate’. It was almost as if that
individual might be more lethal than the drone itself, and since Amistad was a
veteran of the Prador war, carrying enough munitions to take out a city and
enough bile to enjoy the process, that didn’t bode well for any assassination
attempts.

Some time in the past a storm had detached a clump of flute grasses from
the main inland growth and one of the complex retreating tides had dumped it.
Here the continent was reclaiming some of its land as the grasses now spread their
rhizomes across waves of shingle. Jem had felt certain such a small stand of
grasses would not contain anything nasty, for within it there would be nothing
to hunt, so there he fell into a sleep of exhaustion.

He woke
once in the night, the glare of Amok turning the grasses around him to silver,
and noted penny molluscs scattered on the damp ground all around him. Staring
at the patterns on their shells he tried to make some sense of it all, but
found only an unbearable sadness rising in him. He tried to find comfort in the
First Satagent, but the world around him just drank up the words and replied
with a distant and mocking ‘Sudburf hogglemiff’, and he fell silent, both
sadness and fear mingling in his chest.

Everything
seemed to be testing his faith. Reality seemed to be testing his faith. And
with that disconcerting thought playing in his mind, he tried to find sleep
again, but that background mutter haunted a mind stirred by flashes of
scripture, memories of childhood and the endless theological classes, and easy
sleep now evaded him. At some point he slid into dream and found himself gazing
at the words of his Satagenial and simply not comprehending them, terrified
because the teacher would be along soon with his flute-grass cane that hooted
and whistled when the man delivered the inevitable thrashing.

Jem
jerked awake, Calypse high and misty above, and sunlight casting cage shadows
across him from the surrounding grasses. He sat up, not sure what proportion of
the night he had spent in real sleep. After a moment he opened his pack and
took out his remaining flask of cold coffee, drank deeply, then eyed the sealed
packs of food he had brought along. He knew he should eat, but did not relish
the prospect. Already doubts were coming back to haunt him; a continuous
nagging pain at the core of his being. What Sanders had told him seemed the
only rational explanation for the things he had seen: twenty years ago there
had been a successful rebellion here, after which the Polity brought in its
satanic machines.

He ate
because he needed the strength, but without relish, then repacked his supplies
and lurched to his feet. Heading out onto the shingle he first noted that
Calypse had drawn the sea in close, the waves lapping at the rhizome mat here,
then he saw two trails running across shingle and the mudflat, drawing two
lines between where he stood and the inland grasses. Something big had come out
here in the night and then returned. He shuddered, took a diagonal course back
towards the mudflat where walking would be easier, then finally reaching the
compacted mass, which was much interwoven dead grasses, he picked up his pace,
realizing that by now he had rounded the peninsula. Checking the time display
on his watch he saw that over a day of his air supply remained, so he must
cover a distance he estimated at about thirty kilometres within that time. He
should have no problem, just so long as this world did not throw new barriers
in his path.

Still linked via her aug to Thracer’s comunit, Shree turned to gaze
through the panoramic window of Thracer’s apartment as Grant stood up from the
table in the market square below and departed. He’d been recruited to act as
close protection for Tombs, a guide, a mentor. Obviously Grant’s past history
with the proctor was why he had been asked, but though for her own plans it was
what she wanted, it surprised her that he had accepted. His dislike of the
Theocracy had been as fanatical as her own, and he had often been considered
for recruitment to the Squad. Something had changed, obviously, but as Halloran
had said, circumstances were now in her favour.

She
listened in on further discussion at the table. Miloh and David Tinsch were
having none of it. Fuck the Atheter. What value was information about a race
that trashed its own civilization and lobotomized its descendants? They lived
in the untidy now and it was time to make Masada just a little bit cleaner.
Protection? Right. Let’s see how Tombs would be protected from an HV bullet at
a thousand metres, though, of course, they’d much prefer to bury the bastard up
to his neck in guano and see just how long he managed to keep screaming.

‘I
disagree, I’m afraid,’ said Thracer. ‘We’ve only glimpsed what these Polity
drones are capable of. Remember, just two of them here took out most of the
Theocracy air force and they, apparently, were nothing like the things made
during the Prador war.’

‘So we
let the fucker live?’ said Miloh incredulously.

‘When
the AIs have got to whatever it is inside his head, they’ll lose interest in
him.’ Thracer smiled. ‘Then we take him down.’

Miloh
pushed his chair back and stood. Tinsch, who wore rather ordinary clothes to
disguise a gut full of hate, stood also.

‘Bullshit,’
said Miloh. ‘You damned well know that this might be our only chance at him.’
He stepped away from the table and departed.

‘I never
thought you’d go soft on us, Edward,’ said Tinsch, just a hint of
disappointment in his voice, and he headed off after Miloh.

The
party began to break up then, its earlier conviviality now dead. After the last
of them departed, Thracer stood and took his leave, wending his way across the
market, out along the covered walkway, then up to his apartment. Shree shut
down her aug link, then gazed at the door as he entered. He paused to stare at
her, his look unreadable, then tiredly walked over and took the seat opposite
her.

‘So?’ he
asked.

‘He told
you no lies.’

‘Then
Tombs can’t be killed – you know how things are now. We need as much
information as possible about the Atheter, about the history of this world. We
need to be able to fight our case.’

Shree
gave a slow nod, then said, ‘Did you think Tidy Squad’s interest was only in
turning him into a corpse?’

‘What
else?’

‘Politics.’

Thracer
suddenly looked even more tired. ‘Tell me.’

Shree
stood up and walked over to the window to peer down at the market. ‘Under the
Theocracy the idea of AI rule seemed like utopia, until we really understood
what the Intervention Amnesty meant. Now we start to see other symptoms of autocracy
and begin to realize what Polity Separatists are all about.’

‘Separatists,
yeah – like those fuckers the Theocracy was supplying.’

She
turned back towards him, feeling a slight twinge of regret. ‘AI rule is
absolute – there’s no room for disagreement – and now we learn that under that
rule this world is a spit away from being classified under the AOP.’

‘AOP?’
Thracer was puzzled.

‘Alien
Occupancy Policy.’ Shree grimaced to herself – she’d further explored what that
meant after her meeting with Halloran. ‘Masada could cease to be classified as
a Human colony but be classified as an alien Homeworld occupied by illegal
Human squatters. A whole new set of AI rules start to apply then and we end up
thoroughly shafted. We end up having little or no say about our future –
population strictly controlled, travel through alien areas limited, all further
construction put on hold.’

‘The
gabbleducks?’

‘Precisely
– they appear to be unintelligent animals, but still there’re doubts about
that. Their brains are too large and in some areas defy analysis. And of course
the Atheter AI might be considered an original indigene too.’

‘So how
does this relate to Tombs?’

‘Tombs
received a download from the Technician – and as we know, the hooder species
was originally made by the Atheter before they threw everything away. It’s
quite possible that whatever it put into his skull could have some bearing on
AOP classification. We need to destroy it.’

‘Then
why not a straight assassination, here in Greenport?’

‘If he’s
being watched over by a war drone then that’s near impossible.’ She strolled
back to her chair and sat down. ‘We’re talking about nanosecond response
times.’ She paused for a moment. ‘If Miloh tries with a high-velocity rifle a
war drone could shoot the bullet out of the air and be on him shoving the rifle
up his ass before he gets off a second shot.’

‘So
what’s your plan?’

‘Tombs
is on a journey of discovery, and it is Squad Command’s bet that he will be led
to certain locations to try and free up whatever lies inside his skull. He can,
in fact, give us access to certain locations presently closed to us.’ She
reached into her pocket, took out the squat glassy cylinder Halloran had given
her, and placed it on the table between them.

‘What’s
that?’

‘A
little something snatched from under the noses of the Polity clear-up teams,
taken offworld after the full quarantine ended and cooked up in a Separatist
lab on Cheyne III.’

‘Jain
tech,’ he said, then gazed across at her with obvious disgust. ‘You’re dealing
with Separatists?’

Shree
felt her regret increase. Despite his cruel past Thracer was a good man. His
problem seemed to be an unrealistic romanticism that made him unable to
understand the necessary political expediencies of their continued fight for
freedom. He thought that fight ended with the fall of the Theocracy. He was a
fool.

‘You
find that distasteful?’ she enquired.

‘I find
that practically treasonous.’

He was a
useful unit leader here in Greenport but, really, she did not need him, the
Overlanders or the Tidy Squad unit here.

‘You do
understand how things have changed, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘In the past the
Theocracy supported Separatists and vice versa, but that does not automatically
make Separatists enemies of the people of Masada.’

‘They’re
not our friends,’ said Thracer. ‘Remember, the Theocracy supplied them with
wealth and resources in exchange for stolen Polity technologies and expertise.
Without them the Theocracy would not have been able to complete the laser
network so quickly, nor build Ragnorak.’