Polity 4 - The Technician (3 page)

Like
clumsy mist giants, vague memories bumbled through his mind. There had been a
fire somewhere, explosions, shooting . . . and clearer than anything else at
all, strange Euclidean shapes that somehow made up an overall pattern. A
clicking sound sent cold fingers crawling down his spine and he swung his
attention to its source: some kind of machine looking like a big chromed insect
mounted on a pedestal. They had Polity technology
here!

He
surveyed his surroundings further. His bed stood in a row of ten on one side of
the aisle down the centre of what looked like a pond workers’ bunkhouse. There
were ten beds on the other side of the aisle. Five of the beds were mechanized
hospital beds like his own, and all occupied, whilst those remaining were bunk
beds separated out singly, a further eight of which were also occupied. The
walls of the bunkhouse had recently been painted white, obliterating the words
of holy scripture and guidance usually scribed across them, which was puzzling.

Medical
machines occupied spaces between the beds; some he recognized as of Theocracy
manufacture, others, like that insectile thing, were smaller, neater, Polity machines. Directly across the aisle from him, a
medic, a man clad in white, was helping the occupant out of one of the
mechanized beds. Burns ran down the side of the patient’s face, one arm and the
side of his body ugly under some kind of transparent coating. There must have
been some sort of major accident in which Jem himself had been involved. He
shuddered and returned his attention to the woman, who next manipulated
something at his throat. A sound issued from there, part sigh, part groan.

‘Okay –
that’s the voice synthesizer keyed in,’ she said.

Abruptly
he remembered waking here before, and trying to speak – trying to demand that
she not use anything but Theocracy technology on his body – but his mouth had
been frozen and all he could do was issue sounds from the back of his throat.
He tried again and, even though his mouth remained frozen, the machine at his
throat complemented the sounds issuing from there.

‘I do
not require some godless Polity machine to enable me to speak.’

She
stared at him for a long moment, then said, ‘In ancient times they used to call
it being in denial. Surely you’ve heard enough to know by now?’

Two
columns of yellow eyes opened, and from somewhere issued a horrible whickering
and clicking. Then all swept away in a swirl of those Euclidean shapes.

‘I seem
unable to blink,’ he stated.

‘Surely
the reason for that’s obvious, if you think about it?’

‘What
have you done to me?’

‘Kept
you alive. You’re the only known survivor of an attack by a hooder, which is
why you are alive.’ She sounded angry now. ‘Your fellow proctors haven’t been
so fortunate.’ She gestured to the other beds. ‘I’ve processed three hundred
cases through here and you’re the only one of your kind I’ve seen.’

Faith is dead.

‘That is
ridiculous, remove these restraints at once.’ But even as he spoke he felt
terrified by something rising in his consciousness. Faith
is dead? What did that mean? He tried to make a connection through his aug, his
Gift, but got nothing.

‘Or is
it more than denial?’ she wondered. ‘Tell me, Tombs, what do you remember?’

‘Some
sort of incident . . . an accident.’ He paused to collect his thoughts.
‘Obviously it was major or else I would now be in a city hospital rather than
in this temporary medical centre.’ He tried to gesture to his surroundings, but
still his arm was restrained.

‘The
Underground?’ she suggested.

Ah, it
was obvious now.

‘I see –
those maggots planted a bomb did they?’

She
gazed at him incredulously, then just shook her head and walked away.

Jem
inspected his surroundings again and began to wonder if his assessment of the
situation was true. There were Polity machines being used here, and the
scripture had been painted out on the walls . . . Perhaps, though this place
bore some resemblance to a pond workers’ bunkhouse, it wasn’t that at all. With
sudden horror he realized. He was a prisoner of the Underground! They had done
something above, at Triada Compound, and snatched him. Those in the other beds
were rebels injured during whatever had occurred. Perhaps he too had been
injured but, what seemed certain, soon they would start interrogating him. He
tried to fight against his restraints, but moved not at all. Polity technology;
they had a nerve blocker on him, which was probably why he couldn’t speak
properly. He could do nothing.

‘I can’t
do a complete reconstruction.’

She was
back, placing a chair down beside his bed, something wrapped in white cloth
under her arm. This item she placed on the bed beside him as she sat. Then she
took another object out of her pocket – a small hand mirror – and put that on
the bed too, face down.

‘You
will get nothing from me,’ he said. ‘You may have taken my Gift
but I am still a member of the Brotherhood.’

‘At this
juncture, shock tactics can sometimes restore memory.’ She nodded to herself.
‘But I’m not a mindtech so I can’t be sure – in fact there’s no one here with
that training – I just checked.’

‘I will
reveal nothing, even under electro-stimulation.’ That he had nothing to reveal
was the most frightening thing. They might not believe him and just continue
torturing him.

‘Yes, you
religious police were big on electro-stimulation.’

Whickering
clicking.

His gaze
shot to the insectile machine. Was that what they would use?

‘Physical
reconstruction from your neck to your knees went well,’ she said. ‘Using
cellweld techniques, carbon muscle frame and collagen foam I was able to
rebuild most of it, though you can no longer produce spermatozoa and it will
take about a month for the muscle to grow into the frames.’

What in
Smythe’s name was she on about?

‘I’ve
used transparent syntheskin over this, which will gradually acquire skin colour
as your skin cells multiply through it – we used up all the precoloured stuff
elsewhere.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I’ve used the same skin on your right
arm, and your fingernails will regrow, but I was unable to rebuild your left
arm. Until such time as the Polity gets here and ships in supplies, you’ll have
to make do with a prosthetic.’

He was
beginning to see the shape of it now. This was the
interrogation, though he had yet to identify the thrust of this woman’s
technique.

‘You
have a very convoluted method of making threats,’ he said, trying to remain
calm. But he physically remembered . . . something .
. . a line of agony ascending from his knees, yellow eyes watching, and
something sharp, ever so sharp . . .

‘I could
do very little about your face.’

‘Some
new rebel interrogation technique,’ he said, a ball of terror growing in his
chest. ‘We are so much better at it.’

She
bowed her head. ‘Yes, the Theocracy was very good at inflicting pain. Some
think it a shame it was snuffed out so quickly. Others want some payback on
those of you that survived, which is why Grant has an armed guard on this
building.’

Grant?

Faith is dead, jabbered a voice in his mind.

She
raised her gaze to his face and he saw her wince.

‘You
said earlier you did not need a “godless Polity machine” to enable you to speak
and you also wondered why you cannot blink. Here are the facts: the hooder, one
that apparently goes under the title of the Technician, inflicted damage upon
you that should have killed you. However, it very meticulously sealed blood
vessels as it cut, and it didn’t take off your breather mask until it reached
your face, where it did the most damage. This might be just the standard way
hooders operate. We can’t be sure. You’re the most we’ve ever found of one of
their Human victims.’

‘The
Technician does not exist. Hierarch Chalden declared it a myth propagated by
those whose faith is not strong enough. Anyone caught spreading rumours of its
existence must be subject to punishment six.’

Faith is dead.

A sound
issued from the voice synthesizer. A glitch, obviously, for it sounded like a
giggle.

‘Punishment
Six. Yes, that’s when you pin someone out naked over the spring growth of flute
grass, so the sprouts steadily punch through their bodies.’

Jem
suddenly felt flute grass underneath him, dry old grass, papery against his
remaining skin. But it wasn’t the grass making that sound in the darkness all
around him. Stars above? No, even rows of them, yellow . . . He began to recite
the First Satagent, as he had then.

‘Religious
babble,’ she said. ‘After it took off your mask it took off your face. It took
all the soft matter off your skull even as far back as your tonsils. Why it
left you one eye is a mystery. Perhaps it’s an artist, not a technician. You
cannot speak because you have no lips or tongue and you cannot blink because
you have no eyelids.’

His
recitation stuttered to a halt. He was having a nightmare, that was it. This
whole situation seemed to possess its own internal logic but, when examined
from a distance, the inconsistencies were evident. What was that over there?
Something moving at the end of the building, where that big shadow lay . . .

‘It went
even further than that,’ she said. ‘There are numerous holes through your
skull, numerous incisions, bleeds, what looks like cautery inside your head and
the remains of fibre connections like you get from an aug. All the facial
nerves have been removed right back to your spine. The damage is beyond the
reconstruction technology I have available. Until we get some real Polity
expertise here, all I can do for you is this.’

She
pulled the cloth from the object on the bed, revealing a hairless human head
fashioned of some stark white material. It had one eye, yellow like old glass,
the other missing. He stared at that yellow eye then glanced away, but it
seemed to leave an after-image in his vision. A clicking sound, he looked back
in utter terror, only to see that she had hinged the head open like a clam to
reveal gleaming electronics inside.

‘It came
by special delivery,’ she said, frowning in perplexity, then went on, ‘Like the
voice synthesizer it detects relevant neural activity and translates it into
action. You’ll be able to speak, to eat, and your sense of smell will return.
It will also route blood to underlying bone to prevent it dying.’

She
tapped a lump inside the open head, then turned it over and opened the mouth to
reveal a tongue, pure white. He realized the lump she had tapped was a mouth
lining seen from the skull side. Turning it back over, she now pointed to the
back of the yellow eye, then picked up the wormlike connection extending from
it.

‘The
hooder left your optic nerve in place and, though it did something odd with it,
we can still make a connection so you get binocular vision back.’ She now
pointed up at his face. ‘It left you your eardrums, which is why you can hear
me, but with the extra connections in this prosthetic your hearing will improve
too.’

She
closed the head up, and there, again, that yellow eye. He tried to blink to
clear the previous after-image of it, could not, and now there were two
after-images, then three. The darkness had grown now to fill one entire half of
this room, and that medical machine, the insectile one, seemed a lot lot bigger
now.

‘I don’t
. . . believe you,’ he managed.

She
sighed, picked up the mirror and held it up to his face. A skull, with one
glistening eye in one socket leered back at him. Then he was blind, in
darkness, and the medical machine was looming over him. Yellow after-images
further multiplied there, became two columns of yellow eyes. The voice
synthesizer was screaming; a raw, horrible sound. He began to fall somewhere,
Euclidean shapes flashing into being around him and swirling like snowflakes.

‘Okay,
that didn’t go so good,’ someone said.

But Jem
was gone.

‘They’re here, good,’ said Sanders. ‘That’s the final nail in the
Theocracy’s coffin – it’s finished.’

Jem felt
a flash of frustrated anger at her certainty. How could she not understand that
the Polity, a political entity run by godless machines, had no future at all?
It was a building constructed over a tricone mud vent and the only uncertainty
about its fall was the timing. And the Theocracy? Under direct instruction from
God, Zelda Smythe had taken the best from the old religions of Earth and
written the Book of Satagents: the basis of the true and final religion until
The End of Days. So the Theocracy was forever.

‘And
we’ve received instructions about you,’ she added, turning from her new
companion to address him. ‘You’re going to a sunny island for some R and R.’

He had
heard the aerofan outside, the whine of an ATV engine then later the roar of a
big transport coming down, and from that surmised that he had to be somewhere
on the surface of Masada. For a moment he entertained the hope that Theocracy
troops were coming to rescue him but, by the lack of reaction from the other
staff here, he suspected not. Then there was a soldier with Sanders – a man he
felt sure he recognized.

‘So
how’s he doing?’ the soldier asked.

‘He’ll
live,’ Sanders replied.

The
soldier pointed at Jem’s face. ‘So that’s the prosthetic? Seems a bit primitive
by Polity standards.’

‘That’s
the thing,’ said Sanders, ‘but if you knew what kind of damage lies underneath
it you’d think differently. The only way to complete restoration would be
controlled regrowth under AI supervision.’

‘Which
ain’t gonna happen while the AIs stay up there.’ The soldier stabbed a finger
up at the ceiling, then gazed intently at Sanders. Jem experienced an odd
reaction on seeing that there seemed some connection
between them. He, Jem, should be the focus of her attention, not this
unimportant grunt.