Polity 4 - The Technician (8 page)

The
moment he stepped outside, his Polity tech breather automatically closed a
shimmer-shield across his face and began to feed him breathable air, for he
still remained wary of undergoing the adaptation to the atmosphere of his own
world. He headed out across a meticulously cropped lawn of blue grass. This
lawn had not existed when last he was here, and the fence now standing
perfectly restored before him had been crushed into the ground by his own
side’s tanks. It was evening now, and the moon Amok tumbled across the
aubergine sky against the backdrop of a nebula like a knotted glass octopus.
The light of both of these reflected from the chequerboard of ponds lying
beyond the fence, in which the Theocracy underclass had once raised the lethal
squerms whose proteins were then the only source of offworld wealth here. There
were squerms in the ponds even now, though those that tended to them were
armoured swimming robots like metre-long, green-chromed water beetles.

Grant
walked over to the gate and pushed it open, then headed out onto the paths
lying between the ponds. Remembering that last visit, he glanced over to one
pond in which glinted brassy writhing movement. The battle tank had been
removed. Back then the burnt-out vehicle had still emitted wisps of smoke,
which meant there must have been a leaking oxygen supply inside still supplying
the embers. Other wreckage had been scattered here and there, both Human and
mechanical. There had been a corpse – a Theocracy soldier, his augmentation
grey against the half of his head that remained.

Why
hadn’t Grant killed that proctor when he found him out there lying on a bed of
trampled flute grass? Sanders had been correct about anyone surviving an attack
from a hooder likely being held in superstitious awe. In fact, Jeremiah Tombs was still held in superstitious awe by many, especially
now some portion of the truth about this world had come out. Grant might
perhaps have allowed Tombs to live just because of that. But there had been
more to it than just superstition, or awe, even though the hooder Grant had
seen lift its massive spoon-shaped head from the proctor had been none other
than the mythical Technician. There had been that breather mask, that damned
breather mask . . .

Grant
had been sure that the man had some questions to answer, and the interrogator
would probably be a Polity forensic AI tapped directly into his brain to ask
them. Yet for over twenty years those questions had remained unasked, and Tombs
was a basket case and last internee of what had once been a prison hospital on
one of the southern islands. His sanity lay within the compass of Polity
technology, yet the AIs did not want to tamper with what had been done to him,
and that was probably because they did not yet understand it.

Grant,
erstwhile soldier and colonel in the army of the underground, shuddered and
peered down at the ground just ahead of him. The particular corpse that had
lain here had been surrounded by a few departing dryben, small creatures that
seemed related to the sprawns the workers had raised in some ponds, but which
were native to Masada and, like maggots on Earth, were the undertakers of this
world. Something about the death had called them to the surface, but contact
with it was driving them away, for alien meat did not contain the proteins they
required. However, Grant remembered how the corpse had been crawling with penny
molluscs, their domed shells with their even colourful patterns, just like the
same molluscs that had surrounded Tombs . . .

Grant
abruptly turned away, heading back towards the bunkhouse and the ATV he had
parked behind it, questioning the impulse that had caused him to revisit his
past. He understood what drove that impulse. Those discoveries made by Polity
researchers here, and the presence of an Atheter AI out there in the wilds, had
both weighed heavily on his mind. But now, it seemed, an ancient war drone had
arrived, its remit to find some answers. And he felt certain that some of those
answers would be to questions he often asked himself, about Jeremiah Tombs.

Prosthetics

With the advent of genetic manipulation
to enable someone to grow a new limb, or with the technology available for them
to just take rejection-proof body parts off the shelf, you’d have thought the
prosthetics industry dead in the water. Not so. It being most people’s
preference to have genetically matched limbs or organs grown in a tank,
prosthetics are used while they are growing. Fast replacement prosthetics have
also been developed where access to advanced medical technology is limited:
plug-in limbs for soldiers on the battlefield, self-embedding syntheskins,
pop-in eyes that grow nanofibre connections either to the optic nerve or all
the way back even as far as the visual cortex, self-planting teeth and
self-connecting chest-pack hearts. The technology is such that now the
prosthetics can be more durable, sensitive and stronger than whatever body part
they replace, and some prefer them to that part. There are those who, over the
years, gradually replace their bodies, ending up in a full Golem chassis, then
opting for the ultimate prosthetic replacement by having their minds loaded to
crystal.

–
From HOW IT IS by Gordon

Masada (Solstan 2453 – 16 Years after the Rebellion)

The mud pipe lay between two peninsulas of stone – the foothills of the
Northern Mountains – and funnelled in towards his destination. Tricones
gathered here in their trillions, intent, in a battle for Lebensraum that would
last a billion years, on rendering the whole mountain range down into nice,
damp loose mud in which to lay their eggs. Chanter listened to the sound of
them thumping against the hull of his mudmarine and noticed, when one hit
particularly heavily or loudly, that he was beginning to flinch. It occurred to
him that his long years here had perhaps not done his mental condition a great
deal of good – he had developed agoraphobia, and the fear of the open spaces he
intended to face had begun to grow more and more intense the closer he got to
them.

Ten kilometres
in and the mud pipe narrowed to just metres across but, having already mapped
it, he knew he only had to get through this section, to enter an old volcanic
vent, up which he could rise to the surface. Yes, perhaps he did have some fear
of open spaces, but it was much compensated for by his utter lack of fear of
his claustrophobic environment.

Beyond
the narrow section where the pipe debouched into the vent, there were no
tricones at all. It was as if the creatures possessed some ancestral memory of
narrow escapes from surges of lava, for Chanter could see no other reason for
them not to be here. After closing his seat straps across he inclined his
mudmarine to the vertical and headed rapidly to the surface, accelerating as
soil turned to mud and then finally to water. Here, in the bottom of a caldera
lake, he levelled the vehicle again, made his first use in a long while of its
buoyancy tanks by releasing a cloud of bubbles, motored in towards the slope to
the shore, tractored up this and finally surfaced, chameleon-ware engaged.

Chanter
sat for a long moment gazing through the main chainglass cockpit screen as the
electrostatics cleared it of filth. The shore here, below a crumbling stone
slope leading up to the lip of the crater, was choked with lizard tails of a
strange sickly yellow-orange hue. Perhaps some volcanic poison was the cause of
this and also the reason for the lack of tricones in the vent. Almost without
thinking he tapped instructions into his console, injecting a probe into the
mud below to snatch up a sample, then realized he was prevaricating, for this
was not why he was here. As the probe retracted, its sample automatically
routed to the marine’s internal analyser, he used the conveyor drive to drag
his vehicle ashore amidst that yellow growth, then unstrapped and stood up.
Next, without giving himself time to think about it for too long, he donned
tough monofilament overalls, large boots specially made for his webbed feet,
took up the backpack he’d made ready, and exited his craft.

Outside
Chanter sniffed the air, picking up the distinct whiff of sulphur dioxide
underlying the very specific stink here on Masada of putrefaction – something
had died nearby, within the last week. Swinging his shear to chop a path he
made his way through the vegetable mass, regretting he could not bring his
robot, Mick, with him, but it wasn’t made for this sort of terrain. The smell
grew stronger as he advanced until he broke through into an area where the
lizard tails had been crushed flat at the base of a crumbling lava slope
leading up to the crater rim. And here he found the source of that stink.

The
gabbleduck was down on its belly, as if crouching like some massively obese cat
preparing to pounce. Its bill lay flat on the ground and its eyes were now a
pepperpot of holes in its bare skull, which prawn-like dryben were using like
holes in a wasps’ nest. Chanter took a hard sharp breath and quickly scanned
his surroundings. This was unusual, very unusual, practically unique. The
remains of gabbleducks were a great rarity, for hooders – usually avid
predators that avoided carrion – always gathered in numbers when a gabbleduck
was dying, or dead. They would then go into a feeding frenzy, crowding each
other out in their eagerness to feed upon every last scrap of the creature
until absolutely nothing remained. Gabbleducks, it seemed, produced an oddly
complex hormone whilst they were in the process of expiring, and this hormone
drove hooders crazy. There seemed no evolutionary basis for this, but then evolution
wasn’t always the answer. It certainly offered no answers for why the
Technician produced its grotesque sculptures.

Chanter
walked over to the massive corpse, noting further dryben crawling in and out of
holes eaten in through its body, and then he glanced up the lava slope. It must
have expired up at the top there and rolled down, but still this didn’t explain
why no hooders had been attracted here to obliterate the remains. Perhaps some
connection with the sickly lizard tails and the lack of tricones down in the
vent? Chanter grimaced and headed for the slope, further puzzled as he climbed
to see penny molluscs clinging in neat spirals to the stone. As he climbed he
felt some degree of worry, for a dead gabbleduck would certainly be of interest
to the Polity researchers now on this world and the AIs above would know that
it was here. His visit might draw their attention, though he was not so stupid
as to believe that the AIs weren’t already aware of his presence here on
Masada.

At the
top of the slope he pulled his palmtop out of a side pocket of his backpack and
called up the map showing his present location and the path he must tread to
reach the coordinates Dragon had given him all those years ago. The arrow
directed him to his left along the crater rim, though when he checked, he saw
his destination lay twenty kilometres directly ahead. The trekking program had
obviously found something there he needed to go round, a cliff or crevasse,
maybe a river. He set out, big flat feet clumping down on shale bound together
by the mycelial fibres of mountain fungus. Luckily it was early in the season
for this growth and it had yet to turn the rocks slippery, though the downside
of this was that he would be unlikely to see any of the fungus-sucking
herbivores that dwelt up here.

Halfway
round the crater rim the arrow directed him down a gentle slope into a canyon
formed by black basalt walls standing only a few metres high. He trudged on
down to this, but at the base of the slope halted and scanned around. Maybe that
gabbleduck back there, and the oddities within the crater, had left him with
this creepy feeling, but he got the distinct impression that something was
watching him. He glanced up. Perhaps something was, maybe some AI, keeping a
sensor directed towards that corpse, now idly tracking his course. He shook
himself and stomped on, legs already beginning to ache from this unaccustomed
exercise.

After
five kilometres, Chanter chose a suitable rock and sat down heavily, telling
himself his amphidapt body was as unsuitable for this terrain as Mick’s
delicate machinery, but he wasn’t fooling himself. He would have been just as
knackered walking this distance over the rhizome mat of the flute-grass
prairie. This wasn’t about adaptation, but about him having spent too much time
sitting on his fat froggy backside. He unshouldered his pack and took out his
lunchbox, opening it to expose a writhing mass of green nematodes, dipped
forwards and snatched up a clump with his sticky tongue, chomped them all
writhing and salty in his mouth, and swallowed with an eyeball-sucking gulp.
Enough. He stowed the lunchbox away, shouldered his pack then, after a long
reluctant pause, stood up again.

Fifteen
kilometres from his mudmarine Chanter really just wanted to turn round and head
back, and it appalled him that every step now took him further from his
vehicle, and was one he must take on the way back. However, both determination
and self-disgust drove him on – that, and the knowledge that his lunchbox was
still full and that his pack contained a nice monofilament tent with integral
bed. By the time he reached the long teardrop entrance giving access into the
side of a big tubular cave seemingly enfolded in a wave of stone, the sun was
setting and Calypse gleamed bright in the sky. Here he paused, scanning through
his finger webbing in infrared to check nothing nasty lurked inside before he
entered. For a moment he felt panic upon recognizing the shape of a hooder, but
soon saw that its individual segments lay some distance apart, perhaps shaken
loose by some tremor, like a row of beads on a plate, the carapace of its legs
scattered on the dusty floor all about it, and knew it was long dead.

‘This
what you wanted me to see, Dragon?’ he wondered out loud, then shuddered at the
echo of his voice issuing somewhere to his left.