Polity 4 - The Technician (21 page)

He had
surfaced, as was his habit, at a location the Technician had occupied for a
full day–night cycle, which meant it had probably fed. The transponder signal
from the beast, still somewhat intermittent, told him it was now fifty
kilometres away, so he was safe from it. The second hooder, half the size of
the Technician but still a formidable beast, had slammed into his mudmarine and
spun it over once. It then came down on it again and started to try and take it
apart. Chanter was able to engage the drive and take the vessel back under, the
hooder only releasing its hold when he reached a depth of thirty metres.

Later on
during the quarantine period, he learnt that the erstwhile rebels had started a
program to affix beacons to every living hooder, so as to give warning to any
out on the surface of their approach, and by searching frequencies he found
that of the beacons. Later still, after the quarantine ended for most of the
world – still some areas were prohibited even now – every hooder had received a
beacon, and a satellite surveillance program watched for young hooders surfacing
and ensured they were tagged soon afterwards. He’d felt safe then, and again
ceased using the chameleonware when no hooders were nearby. An enormous
gabbleduck, turning his mudmarine on its side and seemingly trying to play it
like a drum with its huge black claws, had cured him of the inclination. It was
only after this particular attack that he realized just how lucky he had been
to have survived on Masada for so long.

Now,
here was definitely a place for chameleonware while he exited his craft, and
other precautions afterwards. His own transponder and the Polity beacon placed
the Technician only five kilometres away from him and, whilst that was far
enough for him to safely exit his vessel and head to his destination and yet
close enough for most other wildlife to have fled the area, there was always
the chance that a gabbleduck sat out there, for hooders ignored them until they
were dying.

Whilst
still inside his vessel Chanter used his sensors to check the area, then linked
to satellite surveillance to check further. The Technician was precisely where
it should be, lying coiled in a perfect spiral as if taking a snooze, whilst
the upper disc of the mobile observation tower lay almost over his own present
location. Nothing else hostile was visible in any section of the
electromagnetic spectrum he used to scan, but he now checked a seismic map of
the area.

Two
hundred metres away from him, just under the surface, lurked a three-metre-long
mud snake, its presence there seeming to justify his new paranoia. What if,
during all those times he had walked out to check out some new sculpture, a mud
snake had been sitting directly below him? Thus, very messily, would his
studies have ended.

The mud
snake lay too far away to get to him before he reached the tower and, as was
often the case when a big hooder was about, had burrowed down deep and curled
into a wood-louse ball. Chanter unstrapped himself, picked up his pack and
exited his craft and, when a few metres away from it across the rhizome mat,
instituted another of his new precautions. A signal from a remote control he
held sent the mudmarine down under the surface. Really, sophisticated
chameleonware would be no use at all if a big hooder blundered into the craft
by chance – it would be like the thing being hit by a monorail. He then turned
to look up at the tower and platform silhouetted against the sun.

Bases
down on the surface had to be defended, with fences, autoguns and all sorts of
devices to discourage the voracious wildlife. Going overland out into the wilds
was plain dangerous – it might be that you could know the location of hooders
in the area, but what if they moved while you were out there so you ended up
surrounded, and what about the other wildlife? Polity AIs tended to want
citizens to adhere to the laws, but made no laws to stop people suffering the
consequences of their own stupidity. Hundreds of would-be researchers and
solvers of the puzzles here had ended up having to be airlifted to safety,
whilst hundreds more with less luck had ended up inside the things they had
been studying. Observation of the wildlife from the air wasn’t
energy-efficient, whilst satellite observation, though presenting clear images,
was too divorced from the ground.

The
engine that drove the observation tower lay well below ground and was made of
ceramics tough enough to withstand the depredations of the tricones. The
platform stood too high for any of the wildlife to reach, whilst the stem, also
tough ceramic, was as ignored by the wildlife as a rock. It was a workable
solution to the problems inherent in studying the Masada fauna, but to Chanter
seemed too intrusive, too massive, too much of a statement of Polity arrogance.

As he
set out towards it, Chanter recollected that this tower had been designed by
one Jonas Clyde, working from a Polity Tagreb – the Taxonomic and Genetic
Research Base. He had made a comprehensive study of the biology of the hooders
and, along with another researcher called Shardelle Garadon, who had been
studying the non-language of the gabbleducks, the ‘gabble’, was credited with
putting together everything about the Atheter racial suicide here. However,
Chanter very much doubted they were the first to know about it, just the first
to bring it into the public arena. An Atheter AI had been down on this world
since just after the rebellion, and it seemed likely Polity AIs had been in
communication with it and knew everything there was to know about that race.

When
Chanter reached the base of the tower, a ring-shaped elevator girdling the stem
descended towards him, fast. It slammed to a halt just above the ground, a ramp
door folding down to touch the rhizome. Chanter climbed it, his feet slapping
wetly on the diamond pattern metal, seated himself in one of the ring of
chairs. The moment his bottom touched the seat the elevator ascended, not so
fast this time, but fast enough to press him down into the seat, then lift him
half out of it as it slowed to a halt below the platform. A door opened into
the stem, and he found his way up to the top, and walked out onto the platform
where Amistad lurked.

‘My
application?’ he asked as he approached the scorpion drone.

‘Ignored,’
the drone replied, turning to face him with metal feet clattering against the
floor that sounded like an old diesel engine starting. ‘But you’re not unique.
Only on the world Shayden’s Find where it was discovered, during its
transportation here and for three years after it was installed here on the
surface, did the Atheter AI communicate with anyone. After that it ceased to react
in any way.’

‘Is it
dead?’ Chanter asked.

‘It’s
still drawing power and other monitoring shows it’s still . . . thinking, but
that’s all. The speculation is that having ascertained for certain that the
Atheter are effectively extinct, it has chosen mental ascension.’

‘Why
don’t the AIs do something?’ Chanter asked in frustration.

Only
after finding the Technician’s ancient sculpture had he realized that during
all his years here on Masada he’d fallen into a kind of fugue. Now, when he
studied his journals, he saw a man who had dropped so deeply into esoteric
explorations of art that he’d utterly lost his way.
Now, with the revelations about the Atheter, he had begun to see his way to the
surface again. Some resolution to the whole picture seemed just about within
his reach, yet, frustratingly, even intelligences like Amis-tad were still in
limbo. So what chance did he stand?

‘That’s
problematic,’ said Amistad. ‘When the AI was powered up aboard the ship used to
transport it here, it took over the ship AI. It is powerful indeed, perhaps
beyond even the power of a sector AI or something like Jerusalem. Intervention
could be very dangerous. And there’s also a moral issue.’

‘Moral
issue?’

‘The
Atheter AI is an alien intelligence, so cannot be judged by Polity standards of
mental health, of sanity. We cannot really know whether intervention is
required, nor do we have any right to intervene.’

‘Seems
specious to me – and you’re not so wary of intervention when it comes to a
Human mind.’

‘Definitions
of sanity and mental health are clearer there,’ Amistad replied.

‘So
we’re just nowhere, it seems,’ Chanter grumped.

He
walked out to the rail, for which there was no need, since a very sophisticated
shimmer-shield surrounded the platform – the rail was just a psychological prop
for the Humans who came here, and a place to mount sophisticated scanning
controls. He gazed across at the distant Technician, still coiled in a perfect
spiral, then activated a field lensing control. Immediately a section of the
shimmer-shield before him framed out, and he expanded the view until it seemed
he stood as close to the Technician as he had only once before, when he got
close enough to it to fire his transponder into its body.

‘Not
very active today,’ he noted.

‘According
to your journals it’s been going somnolent like this ever since the rebellion,
or rather ever since you found it again after the rebellion – perhaps this is
some sort of response to the threat of Jain technology here.’

Chanter
glanced round, but the drone remained unreadable as ever. ‘What makes you say
that?’

‘It was
that same technology the Atheter suicided to avoid, so their biomechs are
probably aware of it too. Also the Technician has been undergoing some major
internal changes during its periods of sleep.’

‘It stopped
producing its sculptures during the rebellion too,’ Chanter said.

‘How can
you be sure? Throughout your time here you discovered one sculpture every
couple of years on average, and not necessarily new ones. It could have stopped
years before or years afterwards.’

‘Perhaps
it’ll begin again . . .’

‘You are
no further in your understanding of those sculptures?’ Amistad enquired.

‘I’m
thinking that maybe it tries to recreate the creatures it destroys – some
primitive form of prey worship as seen in cave paintings done by prehistoric
Humans.’

‘You try
to understand art, Chanter, but only with your own mind because to you it has
to be something more than the mathematical, the scientific. It has to be
something mystical, mysterious, almost beyond the grasp of logic. It’s almost
as if you are searching for a substitute to worship.’

‘Fuck
you,’ said Chanter, but without heat, doubt lodging in his skull.

‘It’s a
shame that beyond the scientific tools you use to study the physical structures
of those sculptures, you use nothing else. Copious analytical tools are easily
at your disposal, and using them you might discover something . . .
interesting.’

‘Art is
not science,’ said Chanter stubbornly, now turning and heading for the exit
from the platform.

‘That
everything can be analysed, catalogued and understood does not destroy its
value. Mysticism is the function of a mind looking for alternatives to
reality.’

Chanter
fled the platform, went back down into the mud.

During the rebellion many buildings had been destroyed here in Zealos,
but now they had been replaced and Polity technology and building materials
were evident everywhere. However, to Sanders it felt very strange to so freely
wander these streets. Even now, after coming here intermittently over the last twenty
years, she still expected the hand of a proctor on her shoulder and a demand
for identification. This had happened just prior to the rebellion, when she and
some other rebels had come here to steal medical supplies from a Theocracy
store. Luckily they escaped with their lives, though the proctor concerned
ended up in a city sewer.

Church
Street lay ahead, and two of the four churches that lined it were still
frequented by the many believers living here, though they came furtively and
often disguised, aware that Tidy Squad spotters were in the vicinity, and that
if they were recognized they might find themselves subject to public ridicule.
The two other churches, however, had been put to different use. Episcopal See,
which had been a burnt-out ruin just after the rebellion, had been rebuilt as a
meeting hall for rebel soldiers. The big Church of Zelda Smythe, its dome
collapsed and two of the four steeples extending above its bell towers toppled,
had been lovingly restored, its steeples plated with silver and its dome with
gold. But no one went there to recite the Satagents and sing the praises of the
prophetess, though it was true that communicants came to speak with something
akin to a god.

A
covered walkway terminated at a side door to the church, but the main doors
were now exposed to the open street. Sanders climbed red marble steps to the
big, arched grapewood door, turned the single black iron ring at its centre and
pushed the door inwards against the internal pressure differential. She stepped
inside, the door swinging silently closed behind her, and studied the interior.

Pews
still stood on either side at the back of the central aisle, and ahead of these
lay the rough stone prayer floor where the deeply religious could bloody their
knees and graze their foreheads as they worked up a lather reciting the
Satagents. At the four corners of the church, doors opened into the residences
of the Bishop, his vicars and staff, along with apartments for those attending
for an intensive course in faith reinforcement. Of course none of these people
were here now. All those in the Brotherhood, within Zealos, who had been turned
into zombies, were shot by the rebels and buried in a massive pit outside the
city, until Polity machines came to retrieve the dangerous corpses. Many of
those in the Theocracy yet to receive their Gift
were hunted down and slaughtered too, others fled and some survived – Sanders
had tended a few of them on Heretic’s Isle.