Polity 4 - The Technician (38 page)

‘So it’s
just like the other hooders?’ said Shree.

Grant
focused on Tombs. ‘Is it just like the others?’

For a
few seconds the man just continued gazing at the distant but rapidly
approaching creature as if he hadn’t heard, then swung his attention to Grant,
with eyes wide and a slightly crazy smirk twisting his mouth. ‘Of course it is
not just like the others. Golem are similar to Humans, those augmented
creatures called haimen are similar to Humans, but never can they be described
as “just like” Humans. The differences here’ – Tombs stabbed a finger towards
the Technician – ‘are of a similar nature.’

‘What
did it do to you, Tombs?’ Grant asked.

‘What
did it do?’ Tombs now tilted his head to one side, gazing at the great white
hooder as if studying the activity of a beloved pet. ‘The nature of the beast
is to feed and so it did, cutting me as all hooders cut their prey so as not to
release poisons contained in the black fats. So fine was its surgery it cut
without allowing me to bleed, just as Penny Royal cuts. With deep respect it
lovingly peeled away skin, fat and muscle and consumed them.’ He turned back
towards Grant and the soldier stepped back, couldn’t see anything Human in the
man’s expression. ‘But there is more to the nature of this beast – something
retained almost like instinct after the mechanism stamped on its consciousness
and rewired its mind like a child using a penknife to adjust a computer.’

‘Mechanism?’

‘Penny
Royal knows.’

‘And
what more is there to the Technician’s nature?’

‘Its
weaver did not choose oblivion, soldier. So many did not, which is why the
tricones grind so fine.’ Tombs kicked at the matted rhizome they stood upon.

‘I don’t
get it,’ said Grant, though some he did. The mechanism must be that Atheter
machine that tore Penny Royal apart, but what was this weaver and that stuff
about the tricones?

‘What is
the Technician’s distinguishing nature?’ Tombs asked rhetorically. ‘Grief,
soldier; a grief inconsolable for a million years and an anger that must have
been great enough to enable it to rebuild the wreckage of its mind.’ Tombs
reached up and traced some shape in the air with his forefinger, but he looked
bemused. ‘That can be the only explanation for how it recovered from the
mechanism.’

‘Run!’ a
new voice boomed through the air. ‘Run and hide!’

This was
Penny Royal, speaking out loud for the first time.

‘It’s
heading directly towards us,’ Grant said. ‘We need to get out of its path.’

‘But it
can’t see us,’ Shree protested.

‘Of
course not,’ Grant replied. ‘Just coincidence.’

His hope
not to be contradicted was immediately destroyed when Penny Royal informed
them, ‘On the contrary.’

‘What do
you fucking mean?’ asked Shree.

Grant
surveyed their surroundings. They could conceal themselves in that stand of
lizard tails, but that was the best they could do. There was no point just
continuing to run. If Penny Royal could not stop this creature then it would
surely catch them.

‘The
proctor confirms its nature,’ Penny Royal stated. ‘The war machine is fully
functional and can see us.’

‘Come
on.’ Grant reached out to grab Tombs’s shoulder, only to find that steely
resistance there again. Tombs peered down at Grant’s hand, but did not react so
violently this time, just brushed it away.

‘It is
not necessary,’ the man said.

Shree
was already running, her thin-gun clutched in her hand.

‘You
might like to stop a while under that cowl again, Tombs, but I’ve no intention
of letting that thing near me.’

Tombs
blinked, looked vaguely confused for a moment, and then whatever had laced
steel through his body seemed to drain out of him. The man looked over towards
the approaching Technician, huge now, beginning to rear above the air
disturbance that was Penny Royal, now shedding its chameleonware.

‘Yes,’
he said, turning, stumbling at first, then breaking into a steady lope after
Shree.

Grant
followed, pulling his own disc gun out of its holster. He wondered if he would
be capable of turning the weapon on himself should the big white hooder get to
him, or would he, like so many, still hope to survive even as the sharp
darkness closed over him? His legs felt slightly weak, wobbly, as he ran on an
adrenalin surge, never seeming to go fast enough. Even as he stepped up onto
the islet of dry rhizome and pushed aside clattering lizard tails, there came
from behind a sound like a monorail running full-tilt into a mountain of glass.

Grant
threw himself down beside the other two and peered out. Penny Royal was now
fully visible, a big black sea urchin, perfectly spherical, but with tentacles
curving out from between lower spines to spear into the rhizome mat below.
Twenty metres out from the AI the curved interface of a hardfield cut the air,
and the Technician was skating along this, its armoured underside and
knife-like legs visible, its cowl screeching along leaving a trail of odd
pinkish flames. Even as it slid towards the side of the hardfield, Grant could
see the effect of whatever it was doing. Penny Royal sank halfway into the
ground, the rhizome mat all around it steaming, then bubbling to release hot
gouts of smoke.

‘War
machine?’ said Shree breathlessly.

‘Maybe
an original,’ Grant replied, then swallowed to try and relieve the tightness in
his throat.

The
hardfield blinked out and the Technician slammed to the ground, then
accelerated off to the left leaving in its wake a long cloud of broken
flute-grass stems. Was it running? No, it curved round, continuing to build up
speed. Penny Royal now began to re-form, first flattening out, all its spines
directed upwards, then this mass peeling off the ground on a thick plait of
tentacles and cupping like a radar dish towards the now approaching hooder,
stalked red eyes folding out on either side for triangulation. Grant saw the
inner spines of that cup fold in, connect, and from them a distortion, like a
ball of glass worms, writhed into being before the cup, then shot towards the
Technician.

‘What
the hell is that?’ Shree hissed.

‘Beats
me,’ Grant replied.

‘It is
hardfield energy formatted to induce a viral attack within the Technician’s
systems,’ Tombs stated.

They
both turned to gaze at him. He was up on one knee now, his hands on his raised
knee and his chin resting on them.

‘How the
fuck do you know that?’ Grant asked.

Tombs
stared at the soldier, the alien back in his face. ‘It is obvious,’ he stated.

The
worm-thing unravelled to strike the forefront of the hooder’s cowl, turning
into a wave of energy travelling the length of its body. The creature nosed
into the ground, peeling up a mountain of debris before it. Even from where
they hid they felt the impact, the ground shuddering underneath them. But then
the creature rose again, skated over that mountain, came down with its body
arcing like a caterpillar, then snapping straight. Glass worms in the air
again, issuing from between the Technician’s segments and corkscrewing along
the length of its body, then on towards Penny Royal. As they struck, the black
AI just lost coherence, came apart like a flower losing its petals, turned into
a cloud of spines loosely connected by a cage of tentacles.

‘Fuck,’
said Shree, and took a moment to check the action of her thin-gun. Grant
glanced at her, certain now that she wouldn’t be using that weapon first on
herself. He abruptly knew her thoughts. Maybe if she wounded Tombs and even
Grant himself, she would be able to get away while the hooder fed.

Penny
Royal began to reform, components slotting back into place. From this mass a
proton beam speared out, struck the Technician’s cowl, but only half a second
before that cowl slammed straight into the AI. The entire hooder shuddered to
an abrupt halt, and for half a kilometre behind the AI the ground rippled,
split, and ejected fumaroles of mud. The immense sound bludgeoned the ears, as
if from some massive building coming down. The very air seemed to strain and
something, some very cord of existence, seemed to snap. The Technician backed
away and Penny Royal hung off the ground for a moment, shivering, then just
started to fall apart, steam rising from where its components landed in churned
mud.

‘Now we
die,’ said Grant as the Technician’s cowl swung towards them.

‘Where’re
your damned Polity satellite weapons?’ Shree asked viciously.

‘They
won’t use them, not against this.’ Yes, Tombs was valuable because of what his
mind contained, but the Polity AIs wouldn’t destroy its original source to save
him, or them. Grant turned towards her, but she wasn’t looking at him, but
peering past him at Tombs. Grant glanced round. Tombs had stepped down from the
islet of dry rhizome and begun walking out to meet his nemesis.

‘Get
back here!’ Grant yelled, struggling forward then tumbling down from the little
islet, regaining his feet and going after Tombs. Was the man trying to
sacrifice himself to save them? What the hell was he doing?

The
Technician rose, its cowl up and flaring, opening out in a way Grant had never
seen before, from any hooder. The movement of its feeding apparatus seemed odd,
as if it were trying to form patterns like data maps. Its eyes, Grant noticed,
weren’t red, but a dull yellow. Tombs came to a halt.

‘It is
all right,’ he said, but whether he was addressing Grant or the monster before
them Grant didn’t know.

Abruptly
the hooder bowed, nosed closer along the ground, its massive cowl slowly
drawing to a halt, its rim just a metre from Tombs’s chest. The man just stood
there, arms akimbo, head tilted to one side. Then he reached out and that cowl
eased closer. He rested his hand on it for a moment, before abruptly turning
away. Crazy smile there, utterly weird. Behind him the Technician once again
set itself in motion, swinging away and propelling itself off across the plain.
Tombs dipped his head, pulled the string to which he had attached a penny
mollusc shell up over it, then tossed this to Grant, who fumbled it and had to
stoop to pick it up.

‘Your
AIs want answers, don’t they?’ Tombs enquired.

‘Yeah,
sure they do.’

‘Well I
have one for them.’ He gestured to the shell Grant held. ‘Not all the Atheter
chose to destroy their civilization, and some tried to save things by encoding
them in the life of this world.’

Grant
gazed at the pattern on the shell.

‘It
means oblivion,’ Tombs told him. ‘But only one state of oblivion, one nuance of
it.’

Taxonomic and genetic research bases, or
Tagrebs, look like giant iron tulip flowers when stored in the vast holds of
the research vessels that deliver them. Launched, a Tagreb maintains this shape
during entry into a planetary atmosphere while its AI comes online. The AI then
slows the Tagreb in lower atmosphere with fusion thrusters before finally
descending to a chosen location using gravmotors. Upon landing the flower
opens, folds four petals down to the ground. From this five plasmel domes inflate
– one at the centre and one over each petal. Their internal structures –
floors, ceilings, walls and stairs – are inflated at the same time. The AI then
decides how best to continue.

On Masada the Tagreb AI, Rodol, first
injected a thick layer of a resin matrix into the boggy ground below to protect
the base from tricone depredations, before injecting the same substance into
the hollow walls and floors of the structure itself. Next the AI woke its
telefactors, which immediately took the requisite materials outside the base to
construct an electrified perimeter fence and four gun towers. Unusually, these
towers were supplied in this case with proton cannons capable of punching holes
through thick armour, for some of the natives were anything but friendly. After
three days the base was ready for the next stage. Automated landers descended
inside the fence and the telefactors began bringing in supplies: food, bedding,
nanoscopes, full-immersion VR suites, soaps and gels, nano, micro and submacro
assembler rigs, an aspidistra in a pot, autodocs, autofactories, holocams,
coffee makers . . . Every item was slotted into its place or plugged in.

On day six Rodol brought the fusion
reactor fully online, supplying power to the multitude of sockets throughout
the base. Lights, embedded in the ceilings, were ready to come on. Sanitary
facilities were ready to recycle waste. Rodol stabbed filter heads down into
the ground to suck up water, which was first cracked for its oxygen to bring
the internal atmosphere to requirements, and thereafter pumped into holding
tanks. The Humans, haimans and Golem arrived shortly afterwards; disembarking
from shuttles with massive hover trunks gliding along behind them. Only a few
days after was it discovered that the five gravplatforms were not nearly enough
for those who wanted to do field work. Grudgingly, Rodol cleared Polity funds
to pay the local population for twenty aerofans and five fat-tyred, all-terrain
vehicles. Then the research began . . .

–
From THE MASADAN CHRONICLE

‘Penny Royal?’ Amistad enquired.

‘Fzzzt,’ came the reply, but along with that an image feed
of the three Humans now out of concealment, and the Technician off in the
distance, still moving away.

The
albino hooder wasn’t tracking the death hormone like the other hooders, which
further confirmed Penny Royal’s analysis of Tombs’s earlier statement: the
Technician was once again fully functional, and had aims beyond the usual
drives of a hooder. Doubtless it had brought itself to this state through its
twenty years of napping. It was also damned dangerous; catching, copying and
reformatting Penny Royal’s patterned hardfield attack was something Amistad
doubted he himself could have done before his recent upgrade. Also the proton
beam hit had caused little damage, somehow refracted through another design of
hardfield. Amistad knew of few Polity war drones that could take Penny Royal
apart so quickly.