Polity 4 - The Technician (32 page)

‘Do all
Polity citizens . . . back themselves up?’ he had asked.

‘Not
all,’ Grant had replied.

‘How do
you know who?’

‘You
don’t, unless they tell you – it’s personal.’

Tombs
turned to Shree. ‘Like me you breathe the air here. Have you taken advantage of
this mind-recording technology?’

‘No, not
yet.’

Turning
back to Grant, ‘And you have not either?’

‘No,’
Grant replied. ‘This stuff is new to us – we weren’t born in the Polity.’

‘Was
Sanders?’

‘Born in
the Polity?’ said Grant. ‘No, born in Zealos, though got herself smuggled out
of Masada and trained as a medtech in the Polity.’

‘She
wasn’t backed up?’

‘Not as
far as I know,’ Grant lied.

Tombs
shook his head, his expression miserable. Grant had expected more of a reaction
from the man, expected him to talk of souls or some other religious claptrap.
Was he now sufficiently emotionally invested? Grant didn’t know. Penny Royal,
once again awake, close, and looming like an invisible wall of knives, was
silent – nothing coming over Grant’s comlink.

‘So what
now and where now?’ asked Tombs, still gazing up at the ascending ship.

Grant
did not want to admit that he didn’t know. Tombs had returned to sanity,
perhaps a sanity he hadn’t possessed before, but revelations were not
forthcoming and they still had no idea what the Technician had done to him.

‘What do
you think?’ he asked – easy response of question to question.

Tombs
reached up and touched his face, switched his gaze to the nearby town and
stared at it with a bitter intensity. ‘I am an outcast, a pariah, and an
anachronism who only has value by dint of what is hidden in my mind. But I am
curious about the things I have heard that relate to that.’ His attention now
snapped to Grant. ‘Unless you want it otherwise I want to hear direct from
those involved about what has been discovered here on this world, so I can
assess the truth.’

‘What
sort of truth would that be?’ Shree asked.

‘There
is only one sort of truth,’ Tombs shot at her.

‘No,
there’s our sort of truth and there’s your sort of religious truth.’

Tombs
just stared at her bitterly for a long moment then swung back to Grant. ‘I
heard you talking about this Tagreb, about the researchers who revealed the truth,’ he emphazised the word, ‘about what the Atheter
did to themselves. I want to go there and speak to these people.’

‘That
can be arranged,’ said Grant. Now Penny Royal was being uncommunicative he
needed to put some distance between himself and the other two so he could talk
to Amistad – to find out what should be done next, maybe arrange transport to
the Tagreb if that was what the drone wanted.

‘Slowly.’

The word
ghosted over his comlink from Penny Royal. Grant was beginning to understand
the brevity of the AI’s instructions. He glanced over towards Greenport and
came to an instant decision. ‘Come on then.’

He led
the way in towards the port town, towards the gate, but turned right before
reaching it, following a foamstone path circumventing the town, finally
connecting to the road leading down to the port itself. Shree walked close at
his side while Tombs walked a pace or two to the right, keeping a small but
significant distance between them. The man also surveyed their surroundings
with singular focus, often halting to gaze at those structures that had
appeared here over the last two decades.

‘I saw
Hell,’ he said when they drew athwart the factories being built on the
foamstone rafts to one side of the port road. ‘What do you see?’

Grant
found no reply for a moment, stumped by Tombs’s use of the past tense. ‘I see
pond workers’ huts swept away and replaced by Polity technology, Polity wealth
and a better life for us here.’

Tombs
nodded then abruptly headed over to the edge of the road, squatting down beside
where a bank had mounded up, perhaps by the action of tricones underneath, and
where purple-orange spikes of lizard tails were sprouting.

‘Where
the hell are we going, Grant?’ Shree asked.

‘To my
ATV.’

‘Surely
this is important enough to warrant some fast transport?’

‘Apparently
not.’ Grant gazed at her, not wanting to reveal his interpretation of Penny
Royal’s Slowly.

She
stared at Tombs, showed a flash of irritation, quickly concealed. ‘Why does he
dawdle so?’

Though
at first Grant had liked the idea of her coming along, he had begun to find her
company grating. On the face of it, it seemed action was all she wanted, that
providing drama for her news service was all-important to her, yet he sensed an
underlying viciousness that made light of her claim to be seeking a new life.
He felt it in himself too. Why had he struck Tombs? Why react with such anger
to the kind of nonsense the man had been spouting for two decades? Trying to
step back from his contempt for the man, Grant could see that maybe that had
been his last chance, that his anger arose from the feeling that Tombs was
changing, and that in the future such anger might no longer be justified.

‘We’re
in no hurry to get anywhere but inside that man’s head,’ he replied.

‘So we
just let him saunter along doing what he wants,’ said Shree. ‘He should be
pushed. He should be forced.’

‘How,
precisely?’

‘Confront
him with the realities here. Rub his nose in them. Show him the dracoman town,
maybe Zealos, maybe even the Atheter AI – that should wake him up.’

Perhaps
she didn’t know that the Atheter AI was now even less communicative than Penny
Royal – it wasn’t common knowledge.

‘What’s
he doing?’ she added.

Grant
shrugged and walked over to the erstwhile proctor. Tombs was now down on one
knee, looked like he might be praying, and Grant felt a momentary justification
for his violence up in Charity. But no, with gritty
mud-smeared hands the man was raking his fingers through the soil, picking out
mollusc shells and making a small stack of them beside him. The soldier felt
something cold touch his spine when he saw the shells bore Euclidean patterns;
they were the shells of penny molluscs.

‘Who
designed my clothing?’ Tombs asked.

‘It’s
what they provided aboard the ship, but I reckon Penny Royal or Amistad had
something to do with it.’

Tombs
nodded, scooped up the shells and deposited them in his pocket. ‘Yes, I
remember Amistad – a machine made in the shape of some arthropod. It terrified
me.’ He looked up at Grant. ‘I have to wonder why they make themselves into
such shapes.’

‘Amistad
was a war machine, once,’ Grant replied. ‘Its shape was both functional – evolution
still comes up with the best designs – and intended to terrify the Prador, an
alien enemy the Polity once fought.’ Even as he said it, Grant felt unsure.
Many Polity machines bore shapes that were a cause for unease, and they weren’t
all made for war.

‘The
Prador, yes, I know about them.’ Tombs stood and peered back the way they had
come as if looking for someone, but Shree wasn’t over there, no one stood over
there. The man then closed his eyes for a moment, dipped his head then raised
it, eyes open now and glistening. He continued, ‘Evolution . . . but how much
of it is there here?’

‘You
mean since the Creation,’ said Shree from just behind Grant, saying precisely
what he had been about to say.

‘No,
since the uncreation of the Atheter race.’

Grant
now felt contempt for himself – how easy those old patterns of thought.

Tombs
still held one shell which he cleaned against his clothing, smearing mud over
the text in the cloth with almost blasphemous unconcern. He gazed at the
pattern on the shell, then nodded towards Greenport.

‘Those
who tried to kill me used shapes like these to replace Satagent text on
clothing that was a negative of that worn by proctors.’ He paused, forehead
furrowed. ‘I saw it as the writing of demons.’

‘You saw it? So how do you see it now?’

‘Patterns.’

Grant
tried to make sense of that but found only confusion. ‘Shall we get on?’

Tombs
followed him as he moved off. Grant noticed how the erstwhile proctor now
walked at his side whilst Shree kept her distance, perhaps better to record
them for her news service.

Soon
they were down on the hard-standing where Grant had parked his ATV. Gazing
across at the port he saw that no ships were docked, though one was visible out
on the sea, either heading away or heading in, he couldn’t tell.

‘We’ll
take the North Road up towards Zealos, turn off at Bradacken, then it’s
wilderness driving all the way to the Tagreb.’ Grant hauled open the ATV side
door and climbed inside, ducking forward to head for the driver’s compartment.
Here were seats for driver and co-driver, with two further seats behind. He
glanced back as first Tombs then Shree entered. The proctor halted in the rear
compartment and studied his surroundings with the same peculiar intensity with
which he had been gazing at Greenport. Did he recognize this vehicle? Did he
recognize the since much modified and updated vehicle that had served as an
ambulance – the one in which Grant had taken him back to Triada Compound after
the Technician tore him apart?

After a
significant pause, Tombs moved forward and took one of the rear two seats,
whilst Shree moved up and took the seat beside him. Grant had expected at least
one of them to come up and sit beside him. Why Shree hadn’t done so became
evident shortly after Grant started up the ATV’s engine and headed towards the
port road.

‘So,
Jeremiah Tombs, perhaps you would like to give me your opinion on the
Theocracy, on the Polity occupation of Masada – your impressions of everything
you’ve seen and experienced since your . . . recovery?’

A
personal interview, then. Was Tombs aware of Shree’s position as a reporter for
Earthnet, and what that entailed?

‘Shree
Enkara is your name,’ said Tombs.

‘Yes.’

‘Once a
rebel whose main enemies were those in the same position as I used to occupy,’
said Tombs. ‘If one of our number disappeared we would hold a wake precisely
ten days afterwards, the presumption being that if they were lost and out of
communication in the wilderness they would be dead within that time, or that if
they had been captured by you they were dead anyway. How impartial is this
interview going to be, Shree Enkara?’

It
seemed Tombs knew the situation precisely.

‘If
partiality on my part doesn’t result in this being pulled, it’s usually
detailed by secondary narrative, either from an Earthnet presenter or, if not,
by AI. You’ll get a fair hearing, though whether or not you deserve one I leave
to others to decide. Tell me, Tombs, how many beatings did you deliver, how
many people have you killed?’

It
seemed Shree had decided on partiality.

‘I delivered
one beating, with a stick, whilst in proctor training. This was overseen by the
Bishop of Triada and considered an essential part of my induction.’

‘Did you
enjoy it?’

‘I
vomited publicly afterwards and the Bishop had me beaten by one of the other trainees
as punishment.’

‘I’m
sure the Bishop wanted to ensure his proctors received proper
training.’

Shree’s
voice had an edge to it now. This wasn’t going anything like she wanted.

‘I am
sure he had time to regret that when rebels sewed him up in a sack and threw
him into a squerm pond,’ Tombs shot back. ‘I wonder if the squerms tore him
apart before he drowned.’

‘We’re
getting away from the subject now, which is you. How many people have you
killed?’

‘I may
have hit someone during the fire fight in Triada Compound. I cannot be sure –
we were too busy running and dying at that point.’

‘Surely
you were involved in executions? Surely you were present when someone was
pinned down over new flute-grass growth?’

‘No, I
never saw nor was I involved in that. I saw my commander shoot a pond worker
through the head once, but that’s all.’

‘How did
that make you feel?’

‘I threw
up – safely out of sight that time.’

‘So
you’ve never killed anyone.’

‘As a
proctor, no.’

‘So you
have killed someone?’ said Shree, sniffing blood.

After a
long pause Tombs spoke slowly and distinctly, but with a catch in his voice, as
if he were on the edge of tears. ‘I killed a medtech I only know as Sanders as
I escaped Heretic’s Isle.’

Why had
he given Shree that, Grant wondered. ‘Her full name is Jerval Sanders,’ he said
and, only after saying it, realized why Tombs had spoken about this. He was
making his confession.

‘Jerval,’
Tombs repeated.

‘Did you
vomit after you killed her?’ Shree asked nastily.

Grant
concentrated on his driving. If this interview went out, Tombs would not look
so bad and Shree was damning herself, especially when it became known that
Jerval Sanders wasn’t dead and Tombs had been fooled into believing he killed
her. Grant grimaced. Only a short time ago he had felt that the burden of guilt
Amistad had loaded on the man was a just punishment. Now he wasn’t so sure. He
knew it was one of the mental drivers that had pushed Tombs to mutilate himself
and thus, by some weird form of sacrifice, restitution, recover his sanity, but
was there any need for it now?

‘This
interview is over,’ said Tombs.

‘Why, I
haven’t even got to the good stuff yet. I want your thoughts on the Theocracy
and the occupation, on the Polity . . .’

‘No,
Shree Enkara, you want to hold me up as an example of why you think you are
right. You want to affirm your own bitterness, your own faith.’

‘Faith
is a good subject too.’

Tombs
didn’t reply and, when Grant glanced back, the man was leaning against the side
of the vehicle, gazing out of the side window, his expression grim, bitter.