Polity 4 - The Technician (27 page)

‘Call it
. . . catharsis,’ said Grant.

‘You’ve
got to be kidding.’

‘What do
you know about him?’

‘He was
a proctor who survived an attack by the Technician, which was why you saved his
life. What happened to him drove him off the other side of weird and he’s spent
the last twenty years believing the Theocracy still exists. It also seems
likely that Polity mindtechs have been let nowhere near him because, just
maybe, the Technician did something to his mind.’

‘You’ve
got it about right,’ said Grant.

‘Do I
have your permission to send this to Earthnet?’

‘You’re
recording now?’

‘I’m
always recording – got a link straight to my visual cortex perpetually
downloading into terabyte storage.’

‘You
need permission?’

‘Not
really – everything is vetted by the news service AIs.’

‘In what
way?’

‘For
distortion of the truth by reporting methods, reporter narrative and subsequent
cutting and pasting. I’m just asking you personally.’

‘Then
you can send, but only if it’s vetted by Amistad first.’

‘Amistad?’

‘Ask
Ergatis.’

Jem
opened one eye slightly to see her tilting her head, her expression slightly
unfocused. He realized she must be communicating through her aug, just as that
communication ceased and she returned her attention to the soldier.

‘I’m
informed that Amistad is unconcerned about what I send to Earthnet, but that
whether I can accompany you and continue reporting is up to you,’ she said.

He
tapped a finger against a comunit in his ear. ‘That’s what I’ve been told too.’

‘And
your answer?’

‘How
important is this to you, Shree?’

She slid
one of the glasses across the surface of the table as if moving a piece in some
board game. ‘You know how it is – you dedicate your life to the rebellion, to
fighting the Theocracy, and when the fight is won that leaves a great hole
inside you. Some of us can never recover from that – the likes of the
Overlanders and the Tidy Squad are an extreme example in the way they cling to
the past.’ She moved her glass again, checkmate. ‘As a sometime Earthnet
correspondent over the last twenty years I’ve found a way to fill that hole,
but there have been so many strictures on what I can report and so much I’ve
looked into that Earthnet simply dumped that it’s been difficult.’ She looked
up at him. ‘This, really, is my big break.’

‘Okay, I
understand,’ he replied. ‘But I want a say in what you report. It can’t be
realtime – you’ll send at the end of each day when I get the power of veto on
what you send.’

‘That’s
standard when reporting like this. Your power of veto begins with you being
able to just walk away from me,’ she said, then smiled, reached out to take
hold of his chin and planted a kiss on his lips.

The two
were revisiting some previous relationship, Jem realized. Remembering Sanders’s
attempts to manipulate him – her sometimes crude efforts to get a reaction out
of him – Jem felt he knew the reality here. The man was a Human male being
twisted by the wiles of a female, deliberately ignoring her equivocation
because his own instinctive imperatives had some other goal in mind. For a
moment Jem complimented himself: obviously his Theocracy training, and his
faith, made him more able to see through such subterfuge. Then doubt trammelled
that away, because he had no memory of ever thinking so analytically before.
Abruptly uncomfortable with the workings of his own mind, he sat upright and
let the outside world back in.

‘So
you’re back with us,’ said Grant.

Jem
stared at the two of them for a long moment and quailed inside. They had no
welcome in their expressions, they weren’t glad he had recovered his mind for
his own sake, but because it served a purpose of their own. That made him sad
and, though he tried to ignore the feeling, he wanted their acceptance of him.

‘I am
back and I am remembering,’ he replied, his voice catching.

And he
was. He remembered being on an inspection of sprawn canals when Behemoth
arrived to destroy Flint, then the satellite lasers, before crashing to the
ground. He and his fellows broke out the heavy weapons because at that point
the possibility of the rebels attacking overland became a certainty. After that
the Septarchy Friars were silenced and the Hierarch became impossible to
disobey. However, no matter how forceful his orders to crush the rebellion, Jem
and his fellows had been unable to resist the force that attacked Triada
Compound – Commander Grant’s force – and beat a steady retreat through the
flute grasses. Then came that other thing in a subverted Polity dreadnought,
the destruction of Ragnorak, the concerted scream over the aug network as
thousands died when the newcomer gutted cylinder world Faith
with fire, and next the worm in his skull, trying to flee it and running
straight into an albino hooder, darkness and agony descending . . .

‘But how
much do you remember?’ asked Grant.

Jem
swung his legs off the couch and inspected himself. He was clad in clothing
with a cut the same as a proctor’s uniform, even down to the boots. However,
the material wasn’t white, but a pale pearly grey, and the text running from
armpit to ankle was not the usual from the Satagents, but something else from
Zelda Smythe:

‘You are the vessel of divinity and perfect copy of some fragment
of the mind of God’ ran down one side, whilst up the other side ran, ‘But your internal vision is imperfect.’ It ended there,
the text that side terminating at his waist, the bit about the strength of
faith enabling clarity of vision being missing. Jem looked up.

‘I
remember all that happened to me during your damned—’ He caught himself,
recognizing deliberate provocation arising in him from set patterns of thought
and an anger that he groped for but couldn’t find. For a moment the two before
him slid in and out of his mental compass, one moment looking utterly alien,
the next becoming utterly recognizable. And, though they were recognizable as
the enemy, their familiarity felt like a refuge, a haven. He began again, ‘I
remember everything that happened to me during the rebellion, and some of what
occurred after is returning to me.’ Jem inspected the memories of his
perpetually adjusted self-delusion; how he had considered himself the subject
of some faith-breaking experiment and had twisted new data to fit that delusion
– the delusion that had resulted in him killing Sanders.

‘But,
I’m told, “with insufficient emotional investment”,’ Grant replied, obviously
uncomfortable with the words. ‘Apparently, to become sufficiently invested, you
need to see the Monument.’

‘Monument?’
Jem wondered just what they considered ‘emotional investment’, for guilt hung
inside him like an axe head.

‘We’re
no longer on Masada, Tombs,’ the soldier said. ‘This ship’s taking a little
journey just for you.’

In retrospect, Amistad felt that leaking the news that Tombs had left
Heretic’s Isle had been a mistake. It had resulted in Tidy Squad killers being
apprehended, as intended, but the direct mind interrogations being conducted
even now had revealed nothing new about ‘Squad Command’ or the ‘Squad Leader’.
And now news services were onto the story and pushing for more, especially
after Shree Enkara’s recent broadcast. Amistad didn’t like it, but the offer
Uffstetten of Earthnet had made, after making deals with other news services to
farm out the story to them, seemed the best one going. Having just Shree Enkara
watching and recording would be better than having Masada swamped with
reporters. But still, Amistad should not have allowed the news to be leaked in
the first place. This whole issue with Tombs was so much more important than
netting a few Squad killers. Perhaps, after the coming upgrade, such errors of
judgement would be less likely?

Poised
upon the viewing platform, Amistad rattled his feet against the metal as he
watched the upgrade unit descending. The octahedron lay five metres across, its
eight polished plane faces revealing nothing of the incredible complexity packed
inside it. It came down on internal gravmotors, tumbling silently.

Now that
events were rapidly heading towards their resolution, Amistad felt an
unaccustomed impatience. Perhaps this was the result of thorough mental
dyspepsia and the subsequent lack of mental integration. So much information,
so many facts to put together, and still no shape emerging as to what that
resolution would be. Perhaps the upgrade would help, perhaps not – Amistad felt
that it was the information from Tombs that would impart clarity, yet that
information would not be forthcoming until after the man had been scrubbed of
all his illusions. At this point the temptation to instruct Penny Royal to key
directly into the man’s mind and tear from it said steadily surfacing
information had become almost irresistible. However, Amistad calculated that an
over 10 per cent chance remained that such contact would distort the
information. Too much of a risk to take, despite the fact that within the
calculated period of that percentage dropping below 2 per cent, there remained
a large risk of Tombs now being assassinated.

The unit
slowed to a hover over the platform, turning slowly as if inspecting its
surroundings, which was highly likely because the thing possessed intelligence,
though of a rather odd kind. Then it finally descended the last few metres to
crunch down on the diamond-pattern metal.

There
were no other observers up here today. Those presently aboard this strange
pillar of a vessel had been instructed to remain below, whilst today there
would be no more specialists heading out this way from the Tagreb. Amistad had
decided he did not want anyone watching this particularly personal time.

With one
face flat against the deck, the octahedron clunked, separating along the edges
of each of its faces. These then folded out and down, gleaming technology
revealed within also unfolding, unpacking and expanding, almost like some
incredibly complex chrome fruit being turned inside out. Jointed arms
stretched, coils of optics and segmented pipes unravelled, short telescopic
towers rose and opened brassy tubeworm heads, and a squat tic-like robot
unpacked itself and inflated, testing limbs terminating in multi-purpose
tool-heads. Next, sliding plane faces across the deck, the whole thing opened
out further to leave a space – a space just large enough for a scorpion war
drone to walk into.

Amistad
hesitated. For over a century he had borne this outer shape and only a slightly
adjusted interior. Acquiring more mind had required
some swapping about of internal components but little else, since additional
processors and memcrystal had taken up very little space. However, over that
last century Amistad had reached both physical and mental limits to expansion.
His mind was like a much repaired and strengthened wall which now, to be
stronger, needed to be torn down and rebuilt. But did Amistad want to go there?

He had
been perfectly happy with his investigations of madness and perfectly equipped
for the limited tasks he set himself. However, if he was to become the prime
authority on all things Atheter, which currently extended far beyond Masada
itself and also incorporated the Atheter AI, then he needed to transcend,
needed to integrate at a higher level.

‘I am
ready,’ the tic-like upgrade robot informed him.

Amistad
hesitated for a second longer, then realized it wasn’t fear of the upgrade
itself that held him back but, quite simply, fear of the responsibility. Really
the time had come for Amistad to stop pissing about out on the periphery of the
Polity, to stop playing, to come home and at last grow up. He advanced amidst
the complex machines and settled down on his belly plates, extending his limbs
and placing his claws tip-down against the deck. A nervous shudder ran through
him, then he forced himself into stillness and waited.

‘Close
down autodefences,’ the tic instructed.

Amistad
began shutting down a weapons system that had nearly acquired a distinct
intelligence of its own. Beam weapons, railguns and munitions carousel powered
down, whilst his immune system, which would automatically react to computer,
microbot and nanite attack, reluctantly went offline.

‘Autorepair
too,’ the tic added.

It
comforted Amistad to detect a note of nervousness in the upgrade robot’s
communications. But, of course, working on something made for total war against
an alien race was a risky procedure at best. Amistad offlined all the internal
microwelders, recasters, nanoscopic reconstructors and other internal repair
bots, shut down the rerouting systems and instructed the nanite armourers all
over his outer shell to go on hold. Suddenly, at that point, he felt something
he had felt only once before, at his inception aboard the factory station where
he had been built: vulnerability.

‘I
commence,’ said the tic.

Telescopic
tool heads and crane-like mechanisms bowed to the task, closing on Amistad like
the spikes in an iron maiden. Cutting lasers began firing up, but merely to
soften metal for the hypersonic neutronium cutting discs that followed. Amistad
observed armoured shell coming away in sections to expose internal
ceramocarbide bones, powerful stepper motors, optics and s-con cables. He felt this happening until shutting down millions of
microscopic sensors underlying the departing shell. When his claws went he
writhed with the feeling of inconsolable loss, even though he knew these would
be returned. And soon he looked nothing like a scorpion, had become almost
indistinguishable from the machinery that surrounded him.

Now the
tic robot itself moved in close to work on the main internal components of
Amistad’s body. A fusion reactor just half a metre across connected up whilst
Amistad’s own reactor disconnected and slid away. Upload connections
established, one after the other, to each of the previous upgrades to his mind,
and data began to slide away in a destructive process that nearly autostarted
his immune system until he clamped down on it. Very shortly Amistad forgot
things and began to feel less intelligent, only the sensed presence of the
quantum protomind offered any reassurance, that being where Amistad was going.