Polity 4 - The Technician (45 page)

‘If
she’s going to be of any use we have to first get her out of here,’ Blitz
noted.

Ripple-John
leant across the bed and picked up a remote control, studied the touch pads for
a short while then pointed it at the trunk presently sitting in the middle of
the floor. Humming to itself the piece of luggage rose up a short way, then
turned to face the door.

‘And
here’s our solution to that,’ he said.

Taxi-driver again, Chanter thought to himself
as he studied the seismic images on his subscreen. In the mud down here he
could see some remains that twenty years of tricone attrition had failed to
obliterate. There a wormish scrawl half a kilometre long; scattered around it,
curved fragments of eggshell, but from eggs big enough to contain creatures the
same size as a Human. Chanter did not like being here at all, in fact he had
avoided being here ever since that first time, because his distrust of and
doubts about Dragon had carried over to that entity’s offspring.

‘This is
it, isn’t it?’ Tombs asked, peering up at the screen from his position seated
on the floor.

The man
either knew how to read seismic maps or recognized the images on the screen,
which made no sense. He had been a Theocracy proctor prior to the rebellion,
then bat-shit mad ever since. He should have no knowledge of anything he was
seeing here.

‘Yes,
this is it,’ Chanter replied, reluctantly angling the mudmarine up towards
coordinates provided by Rodol.

‘Some of
it remaining,’ said Grant from the fold-down bed. ‘It must be tough material. I
thought Polity researchers dug it all up.’

‘They
dug most of it up,’ said Shree from beside him, ‘but dumped the project as the
dracomen established their town.’

‘Maybe
the dracomen objected – felt a grave was being disturbed,’ Grant suggested.

Shree
only snorted at that.

Chanter
had been strongly requested to bring the three here
to Dragon Down. He understood the tactical reasoning behind this, since whoever
had set the hooders on Bradacken had not been captured and might still be in
the area. But there was more to it than that. As a sweetener, Amistad, in a
very brief exchange, had informed him that the dracomen possessed information
concerning the Technician – something he might be interested in. He felt the
AIs wanted him here, though why wasn’t really clear, but was it ever?

Within a
few minutes the marine surfaced, and Chanter noted a lack of resistance
indicating either a thin or non-existent rhizome mat up here. The frictionless
viewscreen cleared to show Dragon Down off to the left, and an ATV heading away
far to the right.

Next a
subscreen flickered on to show a draconic visage. Chanter reached out to check
the settings of the transmission, contrast and colour – one finger-touch on the
keypad running an instant diagnostic. Nothing wrong. This dracoman female –
there an odd contradiction – was actually as blue as she looked.

‘Chanter,’
said the creature before him.

‘You
know me?’ Chanter replied.

‘I’ve
known of you for a long time,’ she said. ‘Let me introduce myself: my name is
Blue, for evident reasons – one of twins as it happens. My brother sacrificed
himself to the Technician even before the Theocracy died.’

The
company of these three over the last six hours had been enough to grate on
Chanter’s nerves, and now he felt something creeping up his back. He wanted to
get the hell away from here just as fast as possible but still, information
about the Technician . . . This Blue, it seemed, might be the source.

Why had
the Technician stopped making sculptures? Its last new one Chanter had found
some years before the rebellion, and from what he had recently learned, they
were supposedly the product of a dysfunctional war machine. It had been mooted
that the Technician lost its dysfunction itself, but how coincidental: a
million years of madness followed by some Atheter machine definition of sanity
now, with Humans and others here. And hadn’t Dragon known things? Known where
Chanter could find that oldest sculpture?

‘I’m
here to deliver a visitor for you,’ he said, noncommittal.

‘And
visit for a while yourself, I hope?’

‘I’m
told you have something for me.’

‘Certainly
– please come and join me.’

‘Yeah,
sure.’ Chanter clicked off the screen then sat staring at it pensively.

‘Dracomen
here before the rebellion?’ Grant said wonderingly.

‘Dragon
was interfering here for years,’ said Shree. ‘Does it surprise you it had its
agents down on the surface?’

‘Yes, it
does. Even though the brotherhood had Dracocorp augs I thought Dragon only came
here itself the once.’

Chanter
considered that. Had it been here before, or had it obtained that information
through its agents? He stood up and turned to find himself nose to nose with
Tombs. ‘A little space here please.’

Tombs
did not move. He had one of those weird looks on his face again.

‘Intricate
weave,’ he said. ‘Now it comes clearer to me. The mechanism did not fail. The
Technician was consigned to a Hell it could not escape alone.’

‘Are you
going to get out of my fucking way?’

Tombs
blinked, regained some Human expression, stepped aside.

The door
opening ahead of him, Chanter stomped outside, then glanced back as the other
three followed. When the door closed behind them with a satisfying thunk, he
decided then that enough was enough – after this he would be returning to his
mudmarine alone and be damned to any requests from
Amistad. Heading across soft mud towards the dracoman town he didn’t care
whether his passengers followed him or not. He gazed ahead, noted the
greenish-yellow hue of dracomen, the occasional Human, then one that stood out
as it walked from the town towards them. Finally, after crossing ten metres of
rhizome-netted mud, he checked back on the other three. Grant and Shree were
only a couple of paces behind, but Tombs was hopping oddly along some metres
behind them, trying to step from thick rhizome island to island, obviously
scared of sinking into ground insufficiently boggy to swallow a lead coffin.

‘Blue, I
presume,’ said Chanter, stepping up onto one of the gridded walkways spearing
out from the town. The words aped something historical, he was sure, and felt
he had chosen them because something historical, for him, was about to occur
here.

‘That I
am. Pleased to meet you at last, Chanter.’ The draconic female gestured to the walkway
beside her and, when Chanter joined her, gazed beyond him.

‘Leif
Grant and Shree Enkara,’ she said. ‘You have both been here before and know we
have accommodation where you can rest and get something to eat.’

‘But
you’ll be looking after Tombs and Chanter for a little while,’ said Grant,
obviously having been so informed by Amistad.

‘What’s
this all about?’ asked Shree.

Grant
turned to her. ‘Blue has something to show them, but it’s not for us to see.’

Chanter
noted the brief flash of rage in her expression.

‘I don’t
agree with that,’ she said.

‘So
you’re going to argue with dracomen, here?’ Grant enquired.

‘Why
wasn’t I told?’

‘Why
should you be told?’

She
abruptly stepped up onto the walkway and marched in towards the town. Grant
watched her go for a moment then said, ‘I don’t like this myself, dracowoman
Blue.’

‘It’s
nothing you need concern yourself with, Leif Grant,’ said Blue. ‘Nobody will be
able to harm Tombs here.’

‘Still,’
said Grant.

‘Though
what happens next will have its effect on Tombs’s mental condition, it is more
a resolution of a personal nature than something that might concern you.’

‘Yeah,
whatever.’ Grant marched off after Shree.

‘Jeremiah
Tombs,’ Blue said, now turning to the ex-proctor as he finally approached the
walkway.

‘Nominally,’
he replied, concentrating on his footing.

‘Of
course.’

Tombs
reached the walkway, relief evident in his expression.

‘Resolution
of a personal nature?’ Chanter queried.

‘Isn’t
art personal?’ Blue shot back.

‘What’s
this all about, Blue?’

‘Follow
me and find out.’

Chanter
did so, annoyed but curious. Blue had mentioned art, which was a lure he could
not ignore, perhaps foolishly.

As they
walked in it seemed to him almost as if the town reached out to engulf them
like some white leviathan, and in doing so constrained his freedom to act. He
shuddered on seeing how perfectly the colour of the bulbous buildings around
him matched that of the Technician’s carapace. They wended their way to the
centre, through the strange little park there, where Chanter saw Shree and
Grant disappearing into a large oblate building – the only one here with
windows – then moved beyond through a gap between walls that seemed to threaten
to roll in and crush them, finally to a small spherical house with a single
door that opened as Blue approached on hinges of muscle like a clamshell.

‘After
we have finished here you can rejoin your fellows.’ Blue gestured back the way
they had come, then ducked inside.

Despite
the odd feeling he got upon entering Dragon Down, Chanter followed her quickly
as his usual agoraphobia began reasserting itself. Once inside he looked back
towards the door, where Tombs was hesitating, ducking down and peering inside.

‘Yes,’
said Chanter, irritated. ‘You’re not a gabbleduck and you can get through the
door.’

Tombs
entered, whereupon Chanter ignored him and studied his surroundings.

The
floor drew his attention first. It consisted of differently shaped glass tanks
all perfectly interlocking and smooth underfoot. Within many of these, curious
forms of fauna squirmed or hopped. In others flora grew beautiful or grotesque,
whilst in others still, resided things that were either both, or neither. Flat
surfaces, crammed with equipment both mechanical and biological, sprouted like
mushrooms from the floor. Beside one of these stood a saddle-like dracoman
stool, and next to this rested two chairs for Humans, one looking quite old,
the other new enough to still have its scales. A round film screen rose from
the mushroom table, below which rested things like leather flying helmets
sitting at the end of snakelike tubes, the insides of the helmets uncomfortably
like the inside of a reptile’s gullet.

‘Please,
be seated,’ said Blue.

Chanter
seriously considered just turning, shouldering open that clamshell door behind,
then running for his mudmarine, but something beyond this little diorama
riveted his attention. Numerous alcoves had been cut into the walls all around,
some of them containing objects he could not identify and others that he could,
like the Human skull with a proctor’s dress cap perched upon it. The alcove
nearest the three chairs, however, contained something that had been the focus
of his life for so long, for there resided one of the Technician’s sculptures.

For a
moment, Chanter had no idea what to say for, reviewing his previous exchanges
with this dracowoman, he knew more about the sculpture here than he really
wanted to. He cleared his throat, held up his hand, the webs between his
fingers stretched taut, peered through the infrared-sensitive skin and saw
nothing unexpected, but through the skin that rendered ultraviolet saw the
sculpture etched in an eerie glow.

‘So,’ he
said, lowering his hand, ‘you’re blue right to the bones?’

‘Certainly
– it is a pigment I use in bodily functions similar to breathing, and permeates
me through and through.’

‘What
was your twin brother’s name, Azure, Cerulean, maybe Lapis Lazuli?’

She
turned to gaze at the sculpture. ‘He had no name, for he possessed no identity
and no recognizably individual mind.’ She made a graceful gesture towards the
sculpture. ‘I like to think of this as the Technician’s tribute to him.’

‘The
only tribute it could make,’ said Tombs, voice flat, less Human even than
Blue’s. ‘And the last sculpture it ever made.’

Chanter
swallowed drily. Though in one part of his being he wanted to be anywhere but
here, at his core he knew he simply could not be elsewhere. So, at least two
dracomen were here on Masada before Dragon sacrificed itself and was reborn.
One of them stood nearby, whilst the remains of the other resided over in that
alcove.

‘So
you’re going to tell me about all this?’ he asked.

Blue
gestured towards the two weird organic-looking helmets. Chanter had rather
hoped she wouldn’t do that, but wasn’t really surprised. He walked over to
them, picked one up, slightly revolted at its warmth, stepped over to a chair
and plumped himself down in it then, gazing at Blue defiantly, thrust the
helmet down on his head. Something stung him, almost at once, then needles
began burying themselves into his scalp and things started to get a little
strange. He had time only to see Tombs taking up the other helmet, before the
particular reality he occupied shattered and dissolved, revealing some
underlying stratum. The memories of Dragon, and its children, began downloading
into his skull:

. . .

The
Theocracy lay ahead, nearly ready for change and joyous manipulation. Already a
large proportion of the upper Theocrats were using the dracocorp augs supplied
to them by Cheyne III separatists, and as Dragon approached, it sensed the
growing network. However, that network had not yet reached full ripeness with
someone taking an ascendant position in it; someone Dragon could then seize
control of and through them manipulate everyone else. In fact, it seemed that a
large proportion of aug network channels was being taken up by prayer from some
group called the Septarchy Friars – something that could slow the whole
process.