Polity 4 - The Technician (41 page)

Jem
looked through eyes that could encompass a 240-degree panorama, and recollected
the sight of row upon row of stationary war machines arrayed across some vast
steel plain, and a deep gnawing anger at the injustice. The bell-like
disruptors hung in the sky, hazing the air below them with patterned energies.
Some of the war machines reared in protest, but could do little else. The
Weaver fled, something important clutched in one claw as behind it the machines
coiled and began to collapse in on themselves, turning to dust, the steel plain
underneath them cracking, breaking away, falling to the dark mud it had
concealed for millennia.

‘What’re
you seeing?’ asked Grant, impatient for detail.

‘Similarities
to religion,’ Jem replied, only stopping to analyse that reply after it was
out.

‘I don’t
get it,’ said Grant.

‘It is
not complicated,’ Jem replied. ‘Something bad happens to you for long enough
and you start to believe you deserve it. Jain technology brought the Atheter
millennia of civil war and they came to believe in some original sin as its
source. The tree of knowledge gave them bitter fruit and many of them believed,
with religious fanaticism, that their only route to salvation was to return to
the garden.’

‘I knew
religion would come in somewhere,’ said Shree. ‘See, he’s babbling – making it
up as he goes along.’

‘No, I’m
gabbling,’ Jem corrected.

He saw
thousands upon thousands of Atheter, great herds of creatures, tiaras of eyes
agleam with intelligence, with madness, bills clacking in anticipation. They
trampled the plains to slurry as they swarmed under the bells hanging suspended
in the air half a kilometre above, the light going out in their eyes. As
gabbleducks, many entered the vast swathes of flute grasses sprouting from
further newly exposed mud, whilst many others just lay down like old dogs and
died. The undertakers, the new morticians, those poor copies of the war
machines that had been turned to dust, came in to shred the remains in an orgy
of feeding.

‘Those
who did not walk willingly under the bell were hunted down,’ Jem stated.

‘The
bell?’ Clyde repeated.

Jem
glanced at the man. ‘Pattern disruptors. The business ends protruding into the
real of the mechanism that rubbed out Atheter intelligence, destroyed what was
left of their technology, hunted down those that concealed themselves, rubbed
out their minds too.’ He paused contemplatively before going on, ‘After its
task was completed, that mechanism was supposed to evert itself into the real,
into the fires of a sun, that it has not done so suggests its programming has
degraded or changed.’

‘We know
about that thing,’ said Clyde. ‘It’s what got to Penny Royal.’

‘It’s
what got to the Technician,’ Jem added.

‘So tell
us about the Technician,’ said Grant.

Jem
smiled to himself. ‘Some knew that the only way to escape the mechanism was to
record their minds in the hope of future resurrection, but time and the
perpetual action of the tricones dealt with them. Only the Weaver survived.’
Glancing over, Jem saw that with perfect timing Chanter was returning from his
long inspection of the oldest sculpture. He continued, ‘The Weaver retained a
full schematic of the war machines it had designed and built – or a more
appropriate description of this might be an egg. The Weaver knew it could not
survive the attentions of the mechanism so made a recording of its own mind,
just like the rest. However, unlike the rest it knew its mind recording could
not survive time and the depredations of the tricones, unless some future route
to resurrection was in place.’

‘The
Technician,’ Shree stated, something hard in her expression.

Jem
nodded. ‘Whilst everything on the surface was being annihilated the Weaver
concealed its memcording deep in a mountain range rising from the mud faster
than the tricones could grind it down and, deep in the mud of Masada, it left
the Technician’s egg, instructions deeply embedded, then accepted death. The
Technician hatched, searched for a million years for its master, found the Weaver
and resurrected it.’ Jem turned and gazed directly at Chanter. ‘You know
where.’

‘In that
cave,’ the amphidapt replied.

‘In that
cave,’ Jem repeated.

‘But the
Weaver didn’t survive,’ said Chanter. ‘The Technician killed it.’

‘You
what?’ Grant barked.

Chanter
looked back towards the ancient sculpture. ‘It’s made of gabbleduck bone – the
bones of the gabbleduck the Technician loaded the Weaver’s mind into a million
years ago.’

Jem
nodded. ‘The mechanism made it do that and, thereafter, the Technician kept trying
to rebuild its master, kept trying to undo what it had done, but its mind was
in pieces and it only aped that initial destruction.’

‘Until
now,’ said Grant.

‘Did it
heal itself over that long period, I wonder,’ asked Jem, ‘or did the presence
of alien intelligences on this world key the process? I don’t know. Certainly
the Technician acting now whilst Humans are here can be no coincidence. Maybe
Dragon is involved for’ – he glanced at Chanter – ‘that entity seemed to know
more about what happened here than even your Polity AIs.’

‘So what
about you?’ asked Grant.

‘Me?’
Jem smiled at massive internal vistas.

The
Weaver had been one of the greatest of its kind, for hadn’t it made the war
machines that finally ended that long-ago Jain threat, and hadn’t it been one
of the very few, if not the only one, to survive the suicide? But even so, it
had underestimated the mechanism, thinking that by the time the Technician
found the memcording, that destroyer of the Atheter race would have destroyed
itself.

Jem gazed
into the cave, saw the Technician, ancient but still yet to attain its full
growth because that growth had been slowed to an utter minimum during its
millennia-long search. The memcording, a lump of dense matter no bigger than a
thimble and of about the same shape, had degraded as it unwound its molecular
chains of memory, of intelligence, of existence, directly into the Technician’s
data storage. Transference of a copy direct into the mind of the young
gabbleduck had required deep surgical intervention, for mind is not all lights
and electricity, but physical structures and chemical reactions. The very
moment of waking had been that of intervention from the mechanism. So easy for
that machine to flick a switch inside the Technician whilst it conducted this
surgery; to make it slide into the quite similar feeding mode. Jem was glad his
memories of pain did not include that. The Technician ate its master alive, so
easier still for the mechanism to build the Technician’s horror and grief into
madness and utterly disrupt the war machine’s mind, to drive it insane.

‘The
Technician reassembled its own mind, and in that process also reassembled the
mind of its master, inside itself, ready to be downloaded into a living being.’
He studied the four who stood around him. ‘I am the Weaver.’

Communication
(pt 4)

Though firepower has its place, when you
are fighting a high-tech war, communication and information are always more
important. When someone had the sense to start numbering world wars on Earth,
warfare had become high-tech, and it could be argued that radar and the
decoding of Enigma were more important than the size of bombs dropped. The
ultimate expression of this rule occurred during the Quiet War when the AIs
dispensed with Human rule. At first they were powerless processors of
information, the tidiers and routers of the huge gamut of Human communication,
the maintenance workers, the sweepers and repainters in the informational
world. But it was through the control of information and communication that they
seized control of the Human technologies used to turn other Humans into
mincemeat or ash. A pulse rifle is a potent weapon, but if you are blind and
have no idea of the location of your target, it becomes just a piece of
impotent hardware.

–
‘Modern Warfare’ lecture notes from EBS Heinlein

As she stripped off her clothing and dropped it into the sanitary unit,
Shree tried to put her thoughts into order. Stepping into the shower in the
temporary apartment provided by the Tagreb AI, she tried to rediscover her
clarity of purpose, and dismiss from her mind the feeling that events were
careening out of her control. She needed information first; she needed an
update – that would start to straighten things out.

An
Overlander might be able to kill an erstwhile member of the Theocracy with a
bomb, but the casualties of a bomb blast would lead to a big Polity
investigation, Tidy Squad members being arrested, and a damaging curtailment of
Squad activities. The state’s fear of terrorism was always stronger than its concern
for its individual citizens. Better to watch the target, gather information,
then follow the target to his favourite drinking den and lace his glass with
cyanide. The statement would be made, and the target no less dead. Therefore
secure communication and current data were more important than Tidy Squad
planar explosives.

Shree
knew this intellectually, which was why, even before the first vengeance
killing that came completely under Squad remit, she began to set up a secure
information-gathering and communication network. And this was an ongoing
process that she still gave top priority to. She had even stopped some kills
that might have endangered that network.

A member
of the Tidy Squad had planted a transponder here over a year ago. The Tagreb
being directly controlled by a Polity AI, the man had carefully infiltrated the
place over a number of years, establishing a position as a reliable driver for
those who wanted to venture out into the wilderness by ATV. Eventually allowed
to take such vehicles out by himself, he took one to where, years before, he
had concealed a new tyre, and swapped it for one on the ATV. A transponder,
embedded in the wall of the new tyre, only responded to a coded signal, then
relayed that by seismics to a U-space transmitter in Greenport. It was a
one-use device, like many others planted all across Masada, since employing
such devices in close proximity to Polity AIs was like playing Russian Roulette
with a four-shot pistol. When it shut down after that one use it released a
small amount of diatomic acid into its own workings, utterly destroying them.

‘I need
to speak to Edward Thracer.’ Shree spoke the words direct from her mind into
her aug, no subvocalization, direct contact. And even that was dangerous here
because if the AI, Rodol, was paying strict attention to her it might even pick
up on that. It also annoyed her that knowing with absolute certainty that
Thracer would not be speaking, she had to waste words on maintaining her
façade.

‘Edward
is dead,’ replied the woman.

Shree
studied the image her aug was projecting directly into her mind. Katarin De
Lambert was Thracer’s coms officer who, under usual circumstances, would not be
answering a call from a secure one-off line like this. The woman, of course,
would be receiving no image from this end.

Shree
pretended concern, ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘Who are
you?’

Shree
paused, annoyed at this break with protocol. Those working undercover and
forced to use such a secure line had to be thoroughly protected. Those
receiving the call just listened and provided whatever was needed.

‘You
don’t need to know and must be aware that you shouldn’t ask. Tell me what
happened to Thracer.’

Katarin
shrugged, looked both annoyed and sad. ‘Someone shot him in his apartment, shot
him through the face.’

‘Any
idea who?’ Shree had to ask, since any agent in the field ostensibly with no
idea what had happened to the Green-port unit commander would
ask.

‘Every
file and cam memory in the area was trashed and the Greenport police
investigation has stalled. No DNA, no traces. The Greenport AI can only give
them probabilities on some people, mostly close to him. We think it isn’t
showing much interest because it knows he was Tidy Squad.’

‘That
seems likely.’

Katarin
seemed to be debating with herself about something, then said, ‘I personally
think he was killed by a member of the squad, because of Tombs.’

Shree
absorbed that, wondering to herself whether she might need to have this woman
removed. ‘Who?’

‘Ripple-John.’

Shree
felt some relief – Katarin had no idea. Ripple-John’s fanatical hatred of the
Theocracy had often been useful in the past and Shree knew about the
disagreements on method between him and Thracer. She also knew and approved of
Ripple-John’s tendency to remove assets who ceased to be assets by leaving the
Squad. She herself had used him once as an expendable facilitator when she
considered the risk too great for herself, feeding him information about a
Squad member she suspected to be a Polity Agent. That John killed the
individual concerned and got away with it probably indicated that she had been
wrong in that case.

‘I think
it more likely Thracer was removed by a Polity assassin.’ Shree felt that such
a contention should be nurtured – it would keep the troops focused. ‘However,
though this saddens me, Edward died for a cause we still fight for, and right
now I need information.’

Again
that shrug – this Katarin did not seem as interested as she should be. ‘What do
you want then?’

‘Some
lunatic released gabbleduck death hormone at Bradacken – I thought Command
ordered a shutdown on Squad activities – an order Tinsch disobeyed.’

Katarin
allowed herself a bitter smile. ‘Unfortunately there are many others in the
Tidy Squad who adhere to a personal conception of what it needs to do and only
loosely affiliate with its command structure.’