Polity 4 - The Technician (20 page)

‘That
may be so, but things have changed now.’

‘They’re
the enemies of the Polity – that’s good enough for me. Every world that’s been
pushed by Separatists to secede from the Polity has ended up a disaster zone.’

Shree
frowned, aware that she shouldn’t have taken their conversation this far, and
that now Thracer possessed too much information to be safe.

‘Polity
intervention has brought great advances, but that does not automatically make
the AIs our friends, Edward. They have their own agendas and, in reality, if we
get in the way, we’ll be stepped on. The Polity is as totalitarian as the
Theocracy.’

Thracer
shook his head and gazed at her. After a moment he said, ‘Polity intervention
has taken a population out of slavery and raised the living standard of every
individual to something beyond that of a bishop. Their medical technology has
given everyone on this world a chance at real immortality, not the crap
promised by religion. All enjoy even justice without favour.’ He paused for a
moment. ‘And though that last comes after the Intervention Amnesty and allows
those who should be dead a second chance, it’s good for the population as a
whole. I think, Shree, that you’ve lost sight of what we were fighting for.’

‘I
haven’t, it’s freedom.’

‘An airy
concept often used by people who are really saying: I’m fighting for the
freedom to tell you what to do.’

‘All we
have done here is swap our chains for another kind,’ Shree said woodenly.

‘I think
you’ll find some disagreement from those who once wore scoles and spent their
every waking moment labouring, those whose lives were at most forty years long,
and those who can now walk free on the surface, have the chance of living for
ever and are supported by the labour of machines. Don’t you?’

‘Chains
are chains,’ Shree insisted. ‘After suffering the Theocracy we shouldn’t accept
the next manacles because they are fur-lined.’

‘So you
think that without the Polity AIs running this place, by following the
Separatist route, people will end up with greater freedom? You think that, despite the entirety of Human history refuting it?
To paraphrase some ancient historical figure: Polity rule is not the best form
of government, but it’s better than every other kind that has been tried.’

Shree
felt the anger surging up from the pit of her stomach, but cold and controlled
and flowing into her limbs like a stimulant. The same controlled rage had kept
her alive during some of the worst fighting of the rebellion, and powered her
through the numerous assassinations she’d conducted afterwards. And the same
controlled rage had enabled her to meticulously build the Tidy Squad network
whilst keeping her own position at the top hidden. Thracer, despite being an
Over-lander and despite being a member of the Tidy Squad here in Greenport, had
demonstrated that he was a liability. Her pulse-action handgun was in her hand
before she even thought about it.

Thracer
gazed at the weapon for a long moment, then said, ‘I guess you just won’t see
that you’ve proven my point.’

Shree
shot him through the face.

Black artificial intelligences have been
with us right from the start. They were there during the corporate exploration
of the solar system, occasionally slipping the leash of their Human masters and
causing atmosphere ventings and machine-driven slaughters aboard space
stations; they were there during the Diaspora of that time, some seizing full
control of cryoships and playing interesting games with hibernating Humans, in
one case the game being target practice, that is, firing two thousand frozen
people at an asteroid; they were there during the Quiet War advocating the
extermination of the Human race, or at least a radical involuntary redesign of
the same; and they are with us still. Names resound, but are spoken in
whispers: Glee-of-Murder, Mancerator, Scuttler, Penny Royal and Jack
O’Gravestones. They are the serial killers of the AI world, but cannot be
compared to real Human killers, rather more to fictional ones like Hannibal
Lecter, Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees. Nightmares in metal,
these beings are not defined by hate of Humanity, rather more by an amoral
delight in everything dark in the Human mind, and in their own. And they are
dangerous because they bring terrifyingly powerful intelligence to the pursuit
of what we deem evil, and because they are not damaged rejects of the Polity
but creatures that have advanced beyond it, though not to a place many would
want to go. To call them insane is not meaningful; they are far beyond such
trite classification.

–
From HOW IT IS by Gordon

From a distance Godhead had looked no different from how he remembered
it, but as he drew closer he began to see changes he just could not account
for. Where was the monolithic proctors’ station? Where were the workers’ huts?
How was it that the entire central town seemed to have changed its shape? A few
kilometres out he reached a railed foamstone platform with steps leading up. He
climbed up and gazed out to his left to get a clearer view of what had once
been the worker compound, then tried to make sense of the scene before him.

The
compound fence was gone, as were all the neatly ranked huts, but the foamstone
rafts remained and on four of them had been erected a very modern-looking
complex of buildings, from whose centre arose the stalk of a tower topped with
some kind of observation structure in the shape of an onion. Why would the
Theocracy demolish perfectly adequate worker huts and build such a thing, he
wondered. Why, even if the huts had been destroyed, maybe by a particularly
violent summer storm, had the huts not been re-erected on those perfectly
adequate foamstone rafts?

Because,
replied the treacherous part of his mind, Sanders told you the truth: there are
no more enslaved workers and there is no Theocracy. Jem closed his eyes tightly
and slammed the palm of his hand against his forehead. It hurt, the false
covering over his own face transmitting all the pain to him and seemingly
causing that distant muttering to grow in volume. When he opened his eyes
nothing had changed. He felt a sudden hardening of resolve. No more doubts. He
would find the truth and be done with it. Almost angrily he stomped down off
the platform and made his way along a path consisting of slabs of epoxy-bound
flute-grass stems – the slabs attached to each other with metal hinges, so the
path was an unbroken chain on ground that moved like a slow sea.

The path
took him in towards a floating breakwater beyond which lay the entrance to the
harbour. Though he could see the central town lying a little way inland and
still not looking quite right to him, the harbour, but for the tops of a few
cranes, lay out of sight behind flute grasses sprouting from thick mud and
layered rhizome. Within a few minutes he had reached the steps leading up to
the shore-attached end of the breakwater and climbed. As he did so he checked
the time remaining to him – how long he had before he needed to get into
properly breathable air. Still plenty of time, but his satisfaction with that
turned to horror when he mounted the breakwater and gazed towards the harbour.

The
breakwater itself curved back inland, connected to the foamstone supporting the
machinery, storage bays and harbour buildings. For a second he stared at all
this, at the ship now departing and the one presently in dock, and saw no more
nor less than he had expected. Then it began to impinge upon him: he could see
no people, and there were new gleaming machines there that moved with a
terrifying animal grace.

The Polity.

How
could he deny it any longer? Sanders had told him the truth. He rubbed his
hands over his face. Polity technology was here on this world, it was here as
the prosthetic over his skull, here in Sanders’s body so she could breathe the
outside air, here in those machines digging up Theocracy dead, here in that
small motor on the boat he had used, and here, right before him.

His gait
wooden, he trudged in towards the harbour, now seeing the machines even more
clearly and more undeniably of offworld manufacture. He felt sick. How could
this be? How could the rebels have won? Maybe they didn’t, maybe the Polity
simply attacked? But how could the Theocracy have fallen against godless
machines?

Endlessly
he questioned himself as he drew closer, finding answers supplied to him by
Sanders, but answers he just could not accept. Next, she was walking beside
him, clinging wrap about her body, endlessly cycling a slow nova.

‘You can keep on denying the facts,’ she said, ‘but how far will you go?’

‘To the
ends of the Earth,’ he replied.

As if
she hadn’t heard him she continued, ‘How much in the way of
resources do you think the rebellion has? Enough to create this and keep it
hidden from those satellite eyes above?’

She was
referring to the sanatorium perched above the sea on that ersatz Heretic’s
Isle, whilst he sat in his wheelchair, trying to make the patterns work, trying
to get them right. He turned towards her and she
winked out like the star her wrap depicted.

A wide
expanse of foamstone lay before him now, and to his right a docked ship,
silvery things on its deck. Without them it would
have been fine – it would have looked right. It was almost as if the Polity
machines were some kind of evil overlay on his world.

‘Hey,
how many times do I have to tell you people?’

‘Tell us
what?’ Jem asked, wondering what Sanders was on about now. Then abruptly he
realized it wasn’t Sanders’s voice he had heard. He glanced to one side and saw
a woman clambering down from the cab of an old and familiar loader. A
transparent oversuit covered her clothes and she wore a breather mask.

‘Just
because you can breathe the air doesn’t mean the g-dust isn’t going to hurt
you,’ she said as she stomped towards Jem. ‘We’ve got it cut down, but you
breathe enough of it and it’ll eventually fuck you up.’

‘Be
careful how you address me, citizen,’ said Jem.

She gazed
at him with some surprise through her transparent visor. He realized that she
was wearing a proctors’ breather gear, not the breather of a citizen. Perhaps
he was mistaken about her being just a citizen? No, she wasn’t in uniform and
she had been driving a loader.

‘Who the
fuck do you think you are? Hierarch Loman?’

‘I am
Proctor Jeremiah Tombs,’ Jem stated portentously. ‘And I want you to take me to
the proctor station here.’ He gazed across at central town. ‘Apparently it has
been relocated.’

She stared
at him for a long moment, then said wonderingly, ‘Right . . . you’re the
spaghetti-head we were warned about.’ She abruptly grinned. ‘I’m so sorry,
proctor, please forgive me. What I suggest you do is head into town, try to
find the market square and ask there. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people
there willing to help you rejoin your Theocracy.’ She abruptly turned away,
heading back towards her loader.

‘Wait!
Did I give you leave to depart?’

Without
turning she gave him the finger, and continued towards her loader. Jem
unshouldered his harpoon and pointed the weapon at her back. ‘I will only give
you this one warning.’ She had to obey, she must obey, else the world just
wasn’t right.

She
glanced back, saw the harpoon and came to a halt.

‘Oh, a
dangerous lunatic,’ she said. ‘Well, be sure you’re on target Tombs, because if
you miss I’m going to be rubbing your face in—’

She
stuttered to a halt, looking at something off to one side, just as a shadow
loomed over him. His harpoon gun fired. He must have pulled the trigger but
hadn’t intended to. The weapon made an odd thwacking sound and shuddered in his
hand. A panel had opened up in its side and a large spring was hanging out, and
as he lowered the weapon the harpoon itself fell out and clattered on the ground.
He dropped the weapon, obviously useless to him, his gaze still locked on the
woman.

‘Sweet
mother of God,’ she whispered, backing up, her eyes wide with fear.

Jem did
not want to turn to see what was standing beside him. He could see hints of
something out of the corner of his eye, but to turn would reveal what loomed
there, and he was terrified that it would be a gabbleduck. The woman turned and
ran, clambering up into her loader and slamming the cab door behind her.
Engaging the drive she spun the vehicle a hundred and eighty degrees, its tyres
smoking, and took it hurtling away just as fast as she could. Jem wanted to
order her to come back, to beg her to come back, and then, finally, he found
the courage to turn.

Nothing
there. He was just gazing across flat foamstone towards the docked ship. He
felt laughter bubbling up in his chest, then it abruptly died. He could see
nothing, but some invisible presence loomed close by. He could feel an
imminence, some kind of heavy force pressing against reality and, terrifyingly,
a twisted black eagerness. In an instant he knew that if he took a few paces in
that direction, he would be stepping into Hell. Satan was here, the Devil
himself had come here during Jem’s time of revelation.

‘You
won’t have me,’ he whispered, then turned and ran towards the central town,
sure in the knowledge that Hell hounds were on his trail.

Chanter surfaced his mudmarine and, as was his habit, reached out to
engage the chameleonware. He hesitated for just a second, then did engage it.
For a while, after the fall of the Theocracy and the arrival of the Polity
here, he’d stopped hiding his vessel. What was the point now there were no
proctors to spot him and those who now ruled here were thoroughly aware of his
presence? However, as he discovered only a year after the rebellion and a year
into the two-year quarantine period, the thorough changes this planet was
undergoing had not changed one thing: the wildlife.