Polity 4 - The Technician (60 page)

Penny
Royal wasn’t down below now, nor was the armoured sphere containing Eight –
Amistad had seen that on the way in. Exploding from the surface, he planed out,
gravmotor functioning intermittently, its fault returning. Ahead, smoke and
steam boiled into the sky, a harsh red glow at its base. Huge waves heaved
below, their forerunners already hitting the coast two hundred kilometres
behind.

‘Update,’
the drone requested.

‘It
seems the mechanism reacted to a Jain technology infection just as its masters
programmed,’ Ergatis replied.

An image
feed opened and Amistad watched the mechanism’s last moments, stretching to an
all but invisible line straight into Masada’s sun. Next came a view, and data,
from one of the close-watch solar satellites. Readings indicated that the thing
materialized deep in the radiative zone of the sun, and above that a sunspot
slowly appeared, a hundred thousand kilometres across. The outpouring of
radiation forced the satellite to shut down most of its receivers, batten down
its hatches against the solar storm. But the meagre sensor data available
revealed regular hexagonal structures all across the sun spot. They lasted for
ten minutes before dissipating. This had been seen before: the massive
energy-fed growth of Jain-tech in that environment, before its eventual
destruction.

‘And
here?’ asked Amistad, whilst concentrating on internal repairs. Connections
made, and all of a sudden all his legs were working. Shame that only a few of
his weapons were available, since he felt certain he would soon be needing
them.

‘North
and south coast tsunamis. Greenport is gone.’

Images
now of the harbour there, drained of water to feed an approaching wall of it
three hundred metres high. The buildings of Greenport stood against this, but
the city raft upended and tumbled, then all disappeared in a maelstrom that
travelled many kilometres inland.

‘Casualties?’

‘Thankfully
few, since we evacuated the place and most of the residents were either inland
or out at sea on the ships.’

‘The
north?’

The wave
here crashed against rocky coast, clawed up mountain slopes and then receded.
Along less mountainous strips of coast it surged inland, but there were few
habitations there. Amistad did, however, spot a hooder writhing in white water
that swept it out to sea.

‘Rescue
ships are on the way, and we’re getting supplies and rescue personnel through
the Flint runcible.’

All this
was out of Amistad’s remit, really, but what lay ahead remained the drone’s
responsibility.

A small
island had risen out of the sea, a caldera at its centre shaped like a gibbous
moon, cooling magma steaming from a slope extending down from its horns side.
Visibility wasn’t great, but enough for Amistad to see something black on the
upper part of the slope, where the outpouring had formed a solid crust,
something like a sea urchin clinging to its undersea rock.

‘Penny
Royal?’ Amistad queried, but with every defence up and ready for anything that
might accompany a reply.

Nothing.

The
drone used steering thrusters to slow, but with his gravmotor malfunctioning,
came down hard on the lower part of the slope. He stumbled through lava with
the consistency of stiff porridge, clambered onto hardening crust, felt that
break, clambered further until on secure ground, then stood there shaking each
leg in turn to flick away hardening rock.

Up above
Penny Royal had changed, spreading out into a triangular mat of spines and
gradually flowing up the slope towards the caldera lip. Amistad stalked after
the black AI, frantically checking through his supply of weapons. Some missiles
could certainly be fired, and his particle cannon had just come back online.
Would these be enough? Perhaps it would be better to just keep the AI in sight
until reinforcements could be summoned? No. If Penny Royal had reloaded the
eighth part of its consciousness it might take some time to incorporate it, so
there was a good chance the AI would be vulnerable right now.

‘Penny
Royal!’ Amistad called, and scrambled up the slope. Progress was slow with his
legs perpetually puncturing the crust of hardening rock.

Ahead,
the black AI reached the rim, mounded together then stretched upwards into a
tree of thorns. Perhaps good positioning: one missile now and the thing would
be inside the caldera. Maybe that’s what it wanted, maybe it still retained
enough sanity to know it did not want to be what it had once been?

‘You lied,’
whispered Penny Royal, swinging towards Amis-tad an array of spines unnervingly
like icicle eyes.

‘Is that
so unusual?’ Amistad replied, now edging round, up to the caldera rim just ten
metres away. He took a quick peek over the edge. The magma down there was
plenty hot, but it would probably take everything in his armoury to keep Penny
Royal in it for long enough.

‘Am
angry . . . concerned.’

Uh?

‘Why did
you keep it?’

‘Scientific
interest.’

The
spines abruptly surged closer, extending on necks of plaited tentacle. Did
Penny Royal want a physical fight here and some Holmes and Moriarty ending in
the fire below? Amistad targeted the rock below where the AI had rooted itself,
selected a chemical missile and loaded it.

‘Interest
is finished,’ said Penny Royal.

The
black AI shifted, spines rippling, slid to one side to reveal what it had been
squatting over. There lay the armoured sphere that contained Eight, unopened.

Like
some child’s model of a hand, four spines folded out on corded tentacle, swung
to one side, paused for a moment, then swung back, slapping into the sphere. It
tumbled over the edge, bounced on the slope below then splashed into boiling
magma. It wouldn’t be destroyed, not yet; it would take ages for the heat to do
any damage. Amistad shifted right to the edge, almost went over, rocks
dislodged and tumbling down, but then scrabbled back. What did he really want
that thing for? Was he keeping it because of his attraction to madness – a
prime sample for some collection? A missile spat down, hit with a sharp
detonation like some massive fuse blowing. The side of the sphere peeled open
on arc fire and it turned over, began to sink.

For a
moment Amistad thought he had fired the missile himself, but no, Penny Royal
had just killed part of itself.

‘We have
things to do,’ said the AI.

‘Quite,’
Amistad agreed. ‘Quite right.’

The analgesic cream Sanders had provided was working now, and his face no
longer felt like someone had taken a bead blaster to it. However, he did feel
as if something had scooped out a huge part of his mind and left an aching
blankness inside, which was essentially what had happened.

The
Weaver’s memories were no longer available to him, just memories of memories
which, as time passed, grew increasingly strange to him. Yet it wasn’t the deep
stuff he found himself becoming disconnected from, not the attitude, the
wisdom, the inner thoughts, but all those memories of the Atheter’s direct
interaction with the world around it, which in the end were the larger portion
of its mind.

‘Is there
a problem?’ Sanders asked.

The
gravan had begun making a horrible rattling sound the moment they took off, and
had got worse ever since.

‘No
problem,’ Grant replied from the controls. He reached out and tapped something
on the computer screen before him. ‘Just damage to the bodywork – I’m getting a
safety warning but only because bits might fall off and hit someone.’

Jem
eased himself to his feet and moved forward to stand behind the two of them,
only realizing why he had moved when he saw the barrier lying ahead.

‘Ripple-John’s
sons might still be alive,’ he said.

Grant
glanced up at him. ‘And?’

Jem
could find no answer to that. He had changed, but those who had tried to kill
him would not have changed at all. There would be no truce with them, no meeting
of minds or any peaceful resolution of their differences.

‘And
nothing, I guess,’ Jem replied.

They
slid over the barrier and, because all the flute grasses in the area had been
flattened by the recent blasts, the remains of Ripple-John’s ATV were clearly
visible. It lay on its side, but had been partially dismembered, many of its
component parts stacked in a neat pile. Between the vehicle and this stack of
parts squatted the enormous gabbleduck Jem had seen out here earlier.

‘What’s
it doing?’

‘We can
take a look,’ Grant suggested, ‘but I don’t want to get too close.’

The
gabbleduck tilted its head and watched them descend. Grant brought the gravan
down a good twenty metres away from the creature, which would give him time to
take off again if it decided to take too close an interest in the vehicle. The
creature peered at them for a further moment, then returned to the task in
hand. It seemed it had dismembered the ATV so as to strip out all the optics
and the superconductive wiring, which lay in neat coils on the ground before
it. However, it had evidently lost interest in them upon unearthing the
electric engine. Presently the armature of the motor lay on the ground beside
it, the wire from it steadily being unravelled as it wove the wire into something.

‘I’ve
never seen them do that before,’ said Sanders.

‘They
never have,’ said Grant.

‘Something
we will have to get used to,’ said Jem.

They
both turned and looked at him questioningly.

‘Jeremiah,
what do you mean?’ Sanders asked.

What did
he mean? Just because one Atheter had resurrected itself in the body of a
gabbleduck did not mean that all gabbleducks would cease to be animals, did it?
He riffled through those memories of memories. The Atheter had possessed their
equivalent to Human augmentations, but had gone further, incorporating them
into their bodies. They shared information via those organic transceivers in
their skulls, processed information in other organs, absorbed it almost
unconsciously. Inside their skulls they possessed permanent links to the
Atheter virtual world, and that ability had not been erased by the mechanism,
in fact the Atheter themselves hadn’t seen this ability as something separate
from their evolved form, nor as something to be disrupted, erased.

‘Gabbleducks
speak nonsense,’ he said, ‘but why do they use our words to speak it?’

Grant
and Sanders continued gazing at him, now puzzled. They couldn’t see it and, at
that moment, Jem realized that no one had seen it before.

‘A
gabbleduck found far out in the wilderness, one never having come into contact
with humans throughout its life, will speak our words.’

‘That’s
. . . true,’ said Sanders.

He
realized by her expression that she had begun to understand.

‘They’re
like Humans in an aug network, but with the augs an organic part of their
brains,’ Jem explained. ‘For two million years that network consisted of
nothing but the minds of animals, then Humans arrived. Who knows what radio or
microwave channels open into the mind of a gabbleduck? But certainly all of
Masada became swamped with signals when we arrived here. They probably listened
to us speaking the moment the first Human radio transmitter was used on this
world.’

Grant
nodded acceptance of that, then pointed at the big gabbleduck. ‘But that?’

‘Now
there’s a real Atheter mind in the network either consciously or unconsciously
broadcasting stuff for which the receivers were made. I would guess that what
we’re seeing with our friend out there is being repeated all across the
continent.’

The
gabbleduck abruptly put aside the thing it was working on, and began to heave
itself to its feet, seemingly gazing towards them with predatory intensity. But
it was not them who had drawn its attention, but Blitz, who now slammed open
the side door of the gravan and stepped inside, pointing his father’s flack gun
straight into the cockpit.

Time
slowed for Jem. In the background he could see the gabbleduck, now on all
fours, hurtling massively towards them, kicking up great clogs of rhizome-bound
earth, whilst close too, Grant was slipping a hand down towards his holstered
disc gun. Outside, Sharn was dragging himself to the door, his clothing soaked
with blood and his legs dead behind him. Obviously, along with Ripple-John, it
was the brother Kalash who had died.

Jem
moved.

He
crossed the intervening space in a second, aware throughout every fraction of
that second of Blitz’s finger tightening on the trigger. He slapped at the
barrel of the weapon, the shot slammed a hole through the side of the gravan,
pieces of metal ricocheted. He then forced the barrel up, chopped down with his
other hand, breaking Blitz’s hold, drove his elbow back into the man’s sternum
and shoved him away, stumbling and falling. Still moving, Jem stooped through
the door, slapped away the weapon Sharn had just drawn, caught his collar and
dragged him inside.

‘Get us
out of here, now!’ he snapped, turning.

By now
Grant had drawn his disc gun, but just stared, his mouth hanging open.

‘Now, I
said,’ Jem added.

Grant
dropped his weapon in his lap, took the gravan up off the ground. ‘Move fast,’
he said, it not entirely clear who or what he was referring to.

Jem
gazed down the barrel of the flack gun at his two prisoners. Blitz still looked
rebellious, angry. He backed up against the wall of the van, started to get his
feet underneath him. Sharn just looked exhausted and lay with his head against
the floor, blood starting to pool around him.

‘Tell me
why I shouldn’t pull the trigger,’ said Jem.

Blitz
just continued to gaze at him with barely controlled hate, seemingly readying
himself to do something stupid. Sanders replied, ‘Because you’re better than
them. We’ll just hand them over to the police – let them sort it out.’