Polity 4 - The Technician (2 page)

Chanter
awaited extinction, waited for his vehicle to be crushed and for the loose mud
here to slide in and engulf him, but then the instruments blinked back on
again, and he gazed in perplexity at his screens. Something, it appeared, was
going through his files methodically and at high speed. At present he
recognized the layout of his journal, though the words were blurring past too
fast for him to read. Next came the images of all the sculptures he had
collected, along with his speculations about what they might mean. Seemingly in
a response to this a hissing issued from his communicator, along with something
else that sounded like distant laughter.

‘Little
toad man,’ said a voice, spooky, perfectly coherent yet in some manner quite
obviously that of no Human, but Dragon itself. ‘See how in your form I live
again?’

‘What
are you doing . . . Dragon?’ he asked.

‘I grow
ready for sleep.’

‘I don’t
understand.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why
have you seized my craft?’ Chanter asked, and when no answer was forthcoming
added, ‘I’m no threat to you.’

‘No.’

Chanter
wasn’t sure if that was a denial or agreement, but then, judging by some of the
documents he’d glanced at under the title ‘Dragon Dialogues’, the ambivalence
shouldn’t surprise him.

The file
search ended and seismic imaging returned. The tentacle had drawn the mudmarine
very much closer to the main body now, but had ceased to reel him in. With
invisible icy fingers drawing down his back he gazed at those nymphs, those
things being created from the very substance of Dragon. They bore something of
the shape of Human children, and something very much of the reptile. Was Dragon
somehow mocking him? Had Dragon expected him to come? This was madness.

Abruptly,
all but one of the pseudopodia released their hold of his craft, the one
remaining still engaged with his sensor array, through which Dragon had
penetrated his computer system. He considered restarting his craft’s conveyor
drive, but knew he could not flee fast enough to avoid being snatched up again.
He must be given permission to leave if he was to survive this.

‘You
destroyed the laser arrays,’ he tried.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘The
question you ask.’

‘Yes,
it’s the damned question I ask,’ said Chanter in frustration. ‘Is your lack of
clarity a function of your vast intelligence or vast stupidity?’ The words were
out of his mouth before he could recall them and he winced. It occurred to him
that his long isolation, the years spent speaking to no one but his machines,
had rather undermined his conversational judgement. However, Dragon seemed
unconcerned about his outburst.

‘I go
now,’ the creature said. ‘I fragment.’

And so
it was. There on the screen, the remaining hemisphere of this part of Dragon
entire was coming apart, dividing into those individual cells which, even as
Chanter watched, were inflating and beginning to rise towards the surface.

‘Go
here, little toad man.’ Coordinates appeared on one of his screens, precise
Masadan coordinates he recognized as somewhere in the mountains – a place he
tended to avoid since that meant travelling on the surface. ‘Or grovel in the
mud without answers.’

The last
pseudopod flicked his mudmarine dismissively and the whole tentacle began
retreating into the fragmenting mass, but even as it did so it writhed to an
abrupt halt and it too broke apart as the mind directing it went away – ceased
to be, as Chanter later learnt, one mind but broken into the minds of many.

Chanter
fled the scene just as fast as he could and the chaos above kept him grovelling
in the mud long afterwards. Dangerous Jain technology arrived up there in the
form of a massive subverted Polity dreadnought and it seemed the whole world
was in danger of extinction. Rebel forces battled Theocracy soldiers turned
into zombie servants of the one wielding that technology, and those that fought
beside the rebels bore some of Chanter’s form: dracomen, risen from the ground
as from the sowing of the dragon’s teeth. Chanter rose once or twice to the
surface to view the ruination, as he fruitlessly searched for further
sculptures, and he spent long years searching for the Technician, which at some
point during the rebellion had managed to shake off his tracking device and
gone to ground.

Only
later, much later, when it seemed less likely he would end up on the wrong end
of a Theocracy or rebel bullet, or be infected by some dangerous technology,
long after the Polity finally raised the quarantine, did he take a long hard
look at those coordinates. Maybe he was being too damned cautious, maybe his
caution was the reason the answers he sought perpetually evaded him.

The question to ask is not how the
Masadan Theocracy fell, but how such an idiotic regime managed to survive for
so long. It allied itself with Polity separatists and arrogantly ignored how
much this would annoy the Polity. It allied itself with one of the Dragon
spheres, seemingly oblivious to the dangers inherent in adopting Dracocorp
augmentations, and to the danger of betraying Dragon. Also deluded enough to
think itself destined to win some future war against the Polity, it used a
weapon obtained from Dragon to destroy a Polity space station, and grabbed
Polity citizens to enslave in its shipyard on Flint. And, as if these actions
weren’t suicidal enough, below it, on the world it ruled, it had created a
slave underclass it treated with joyous sadism, thus ensuring the growth of an
underground, truly under the ground, hoarding weapons and supplies and steadily
recruiting more and more fighters. The Theocracy had set itself up for a fall,
and so it did. Dragon came first and wiped out the laser arrays with which the
Theocracy subjugated its people. The rebels took advantage of this and seized
the surface of the world, and Polity intervention looked imminent. But, since
this shit storm did not seem sufficiently catastrophic, a madman controlling a
five-million-year civilization-destroying technology turned up too, in a
world-smashing Polity dreadnought, seized control of anyone wearing a Dracocorp
aug and incidentally began tossing about apocalyptic weapons like matchsticks.
Did I say the Theocracy had set itself up for a fall? Violent obliteration
might be a better description of what happened to it.

–
From HOW IT IS by Gordon

Heretic’s Isle (Solstan 2457 – Present Day)

The light was different here; the sky a pale violet during the day and
only during the night returning to the deep aubergine Jeremiah Tombs
recognized. Sanders was here again, her blond hair tied back, and a gauzy wrap,
which cycled a slow holographic display of a sun going nova, cinched about her
naked body. She gazed at him with familiar pained frustration.

‘Good
morning, Jem,’ she said. ‘How are you today?’

He began
mumbling the words of the Third Satagent, and she just turned away, heading
over to the steps that led down towards the sea. He touched the ball control on
the arm of his chair to roll it to the terrace edge, and leaned forward to peer
over the stone balustrade, watched her walk down.

Stunted
flute grasses grew in spiky clumps on the rocky slope below, and near where the
steps terminated at the pale-grey volcanic sands grew a stand of lizard tails,
also stunted, and frazzled and curled like singed hair. Reaching the strand,
Sanders strode out, glittering footsteps behind where her feet disturbed
luminescent amoebae between the grains. At the shore she discarded her wrap and
it fell through the air like flame. He looked away from such shameful nudity,
but then his gaze strayed back as she entered the sea and began swimming.

This was
all so wrong.

He
wanted to shout at her, to tell her that she should not be outside without a
breather mask or a scole to oxygenate her blood, for the air here was unbreathable
– didn’t contain enough oxygen to support Human life. Then he realized that he
too was outside, and bewilderment overcame him.

And he
retreated inside himself, just as he had the last time, and the time before
that. Just as he had been doing for longer than he could bear to remember.

Triada Compound (Solstan 2437 – Rebellion Aftermath)

Concentrating on the patterns, on the collections of colourful Euclidean
shapes swirling through his mind, helped to keep the agony at bay. This vision
seemed to be all Jeremiah Tombs possessed now his sight had faded to a dull
snowy blur – that, and a memory of hellish yellow eyes poised above him,
surrounded by the clicking whickering of glass scythes sharpening themselves
against each other in the darkness.

How had
it all gone so horribly wrong?

The
chanting of the Septarchy Friars, which kept Behemoth from seizing control of
the minds of all members of the Brotherhood, had not been enough to keep the
creature from coming to the planet Masada to exact its vengeance. It destroyed
the satellite laser arrays then hurled itself to the ground in fiery
destruction . . .

No, that’s not it.

The
agony surged through him and someone groaned, that noise turning into the
perpetual chant of the Friars . . .

No, no, they are gone.

After
Behemoth destroyed itself, Hierarch Loman had the Friars silenced and grew in
stature and power across the channels of the Dracocorp augmentations that all
in the Brotherhood wore – their Gift from Behemoth.
Loman’s every order became impossible to disobey.

Liquid
over his eye, someone wiping. Vision blurred at first but slowly improving. A
jab in his neck, and at once the pain began to recede.

‘Look,’
said a voice nearby, ‘either take him out back and put a bullet through his
head, or let me get on with my work.’

‘Our
people are first,’ came the gruff reply.

Clearer
vision now, and Jem could see a female clad in white overalls as stained with
blood as the soldier’s clothing. He wore fatigues the colour of old flute
grass. He carried a rail-gun strapped across his back, with its lead coiling
down to its power supply at his belt. Releasing the woman’s arm he stepped back
and gazed down at Jem, his expression unreadable.

‘I don’t
take orders from you.’ Her tone was didactic, precise. ‘I might have been born
here, but now I’m a Polity medtech and my job is first to save lives, then to
repair bodies.’ She gestured around her at something out of Jem’s sight. ‘None
of these are in any danger now.’ She pointed at Jem. ‘He needs major
reconstructive surgery just to stay alive.’

‘Yeah, I
guess he does,’ said the soldier, his expression now registering puzzlement and
even pity, which was not something Jem would have expected from such as him.

‘How the
hell is it he’s alive?’ she asked.

‘Damned
if I know – no one’s ever survived one of those bastards.’ His voice was
gravelly, harsh, that of someone used to bellowing orders.

‘You
misunderstand me: how is it that he is alive, in this compound? I cut away what
was left of his uniform, so I know what he is.’

The
soldier shook his head, shrugged.

The
woman smiled. ‘So, Commander Grant, you’ve spent most of your life fighting the
Theocracy and, like so many from the Underworld, you’re firmly atheist, yet it
seems you’re not as immune to superstition as you would think.’

Jem’s
vision began to blur again, and whatever she had given him seemed to be running
through his body in waves. He felt terribly weary, wanted to sleep. He tried
closing his eye, but vision remained.

‘Whadda
y’mean?’

‘It’s
only because of what he survived that you saved him and brought him here,’ she
lectured. ‘There isn’t a Human resident on this planet who doesn’t regard the
predators of this world with superstitious awe. Admit it.’

‘He’s
got to be questioned,’ said the soldier, turning away. ‘We need to know what
happened.’

‘Grant,’
said the woman as he moved to stride off.

‘What?’
he shot back, annoyed as he turned.

‘Perhaps
you should retain that awe.’

‘Why?’

‘Well,
oddly enough the hooder saved his life. I’ve already checked him over and there
were signs of burn around the mycelia entering his skull. With perfect timing,
it cut off his aug just as that device was being hijacked – cut it off while
taking off his face.’

The
words meant nothing to Jem as the two seemed to draw off down some long dark
tunnel, but something about what they had just said impelled new memory to the
surface of his mind.

Faith is dead.

After
Behemoth’s demise and the Hierarch’s ascendancy, the Devil had come. It threw
Ragnorak, the weapon the Theocracy was going to use to annihilate rebels who
were truly underground, into the face of the gas giant Calypse. It burnt Faith and it killed the Hierarch – an object lesson in the
consequences of hubris. And Faith, a cylinder world
containing ten thousand souls, eviscerated by the fire of some appalling
apocalyptic weapon.

Then
through their Gift, their Dracocorp augs, the Devil
seized control of the Brotherhood – their augs turned ashen against their
skulls and their minds dancing to his pipes. Jem remembered trying to fight it,
seeing his comrades from Triada Compound turned to zombies all about him,
remembered failing as he ran into an encounter during which, in his own
personal hell, something relieved him of his Gift. Then, all at once, Hell came back.

‘Isn’t
that painkiller working?’ asked the soldier.

‘Yes,’
replied the woman.

‘Then
why the noise?’

‘I don’t
know.’

The
hellish yellow eyes of the demons were back, and they were sharpening their
knives again.

A motor whined and the bed vibrated underneath him as the section under
his back tilted upwards to slowly bring him to a sitting position. His right
eye seemed sealed shut, the vision of his left eye was blurry, but a woman in
white stooped close and squirted something in it, and it began to clear. He
tried to blink to speed the process but nothing happened. It was as if his
eyelid had been glued back.