Polity 4 - The Technician (49 page)

‘This
seems decidedly dodgy,’ said Amistad.

‘There
is a related offworld report.’ Ergatis relayed it at once.

The
victims, it seemed, had come from Cheyne III. They were Separatists who years
ago had dropped off the radar. Their own residences, when found, revealed
nothing at all, but travel data had them going often to one particular
location: a small, illegal otter-bone warehouse. When ECS raided it they found
a laboratory within the warehouse, completely burnt out by a localized fire –
some high-temperature incendiary had been used. In the ash were the remains of
some very high-tech equipment and a further three corpses. There the trail had
ended.

Was it
instinct or intellect, Amistad wondered, that made him utterly sure this all
had something to do with events here and now?

‘They
brought something here from that laboratory,’ Amis-tad stated. ‘I would guess
that dracomen, through Dracocorp augs, hijacked a Separatist cell and used it
for their own purposes.’

‘That
seems a bit of a stretch,’ Ergatis replied.

‘It
does,’ said Amistad, ‘and I cannot pursue it now.’

‘The
mechanism,’ stated the other AI.

‘Yes.’
Amistad paused to contemplate, then continued, ‘It is evident that a series of
events, instigated by Dragon, assisted along their course by dracowoman Blue
and involving the Technician, Tombs and the approaching mechanism, are coming
to a head.’

‘But you
must act without reference to them,’ Ergatis stated.

‘Yes, I
must.’

The fact
that the mechanism would be here very soon was more important than unresolved
though related questions about events below. The thing on its way here looked
quite capable of trashing worlds and Amistad had to deal with it first. He shifted
position on the tokomac, directed his sensors away from Masada and opened up
communications with the warships presently in the Masadan system.

Grant took the gravan high above the flute grasses and the trails cut
through them from Dragon Down, checked coordinates on his map screen then
applied acceleration. As he flew he checked behind, noting that Tombs still sat
on the floor in the rear of the van. After insisting that they go out to
exchange him for Sanders, he had just followed meekly when Grant headed out,
and had said nothing since.

‘This is
crazy,’ said Shree from the seat beside him.

‘It’s
his choice,’ Grant replied. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought you’d have any
objection to him handing himself over to the Tidy Squad.’

‘It
would certainly be newsworthy,’ she replied non-committally.

‘And
news is what you’re all about, is it not, Shree?’

Grant
jumped. He hadn’t heard Tombs move up behind them, and now began to wonder why
the man was suddenly making him feel so nervous. Glancing at Shree he could see
the same reaction in her.

‘So what
if it is?’ said Shree.

‘Do you
know what I was doing with the dracoman Blue?’ Tombs asked.

Grant
glanced round at him, furtively, unable to analyse why he felt the need to
flinch. The man was just gazing ahead through the gravan screen, expression
pale and serious.

‘No
one’s seen fit to explain that,’ he said grudgingly.

‘Dragon
sent two of its dracomen to the surface before the rebellion. One to monitor
and one to be eaten. Blue and her brother.’

‘You
what?’ said Shree.

‘The
brother was pure information and a method of transmitting that information. Her
brother was the Technician’s cure. Chanter saw and understood that, but I
suspect his mind was insufficiently engaged to see the rest.’

‘The
rest?’ Grant was getting the creeps now. Perhaps he’d made a big mistake
acceding to Tombs’s demand to bring him out here, he obviously still had a lot
of value inside that skull of his. Grant looked round to see the man staring at
him. His eyes seemed completely black.

‘Why heal
the Technician?’ Tombs asked. ‘Just to annoy Polity AIs, this being Dragon? I
think not. What is the Technician’s purpose?’

Grant
just wanted to concentrate on flying the gravan. His map screen told him the
containment fence around the Atheter AI was only a few kilometres away and
they’d be over it in minutes. But the question was directed at him, only him.

‘It
wants to resurrect its master, this Weaver,’ he replied.

‘Yes.’

‘But if
it does that the thing that first fucked it over would stop it,’ Grant continued.

‘Therefore?’

‘Dragon
did something else?’

‘Precisely,’
said Tombs. He reached over and placed a hand on Shree’s shoulder. She seemed
about to shrug him off, but then froze. Was she feeling that rigidity, that
unnatural strength that Grant himself had felt? ‘Dragon understood something
that the Atheter, the Weaver itself, and the Technician too did not understand.
The Atheter terror of Jain technology, the terror that led to their madness and
racial suicide, is a weakness that can be exploited.’

The
barrier now started to come into view ahead through a low mist. The thing stood
five metres tall. On first inspection it looked like no barrier at all, since
it consisted of a long array of arched sections made from tubular ceramal. But
within the foamstone rafts into which the arches were rooted were hard-field
projectors, and the arches themselves contained all sorts of sensory gear. The
animals of Masada could pass through this barrier freely, but the moment a
Human, dracoman or any other intelligence tried it without permission, the
hardfields would block their way. Grant turned the van into a course parallel
with it.

‘You’re
not making sense,’ said Shree. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide.

‘Jain
technology is the key – Dragon knew that,’ said Tombs. ‘But it was a key that
had to be kept safe until the lock it fitted could be moved into position.’

‘And
what lock would that be?’ asked Grant.

Tombs
just ignored that and continued: ‘The Technician is a war machine, a very
sophisticated biomechanical war machine that has survived for two million
years. Its purpose is battle, destroying the enemy. Protecting its Atheter
masters was just a result of that, a secondary purpose, and one it served in
one case throughout those years. But, like a soldier closely guarding a
civilian, it has always been hampered. It could never risk itself in battle
whilst it actually contained the one it was protecting.’

‘The
Weaver,’ said Grant, not sure where this was going.

‘The
Weaver, yes . . . only when forced to defend itself has the Technician fought.
When the Theocracy tried to kill it, it responded, but in a limited way, only
destroying the direct threat to it and its master before going into hiding.
Even the likes of Amistad don’t really understand what it is capable of, though
perhaps Penny Royal now has some intimation.’

‘Wait a
minute,’ said Shree. ‘You’re saying it’s no longer hampered?’

‘Yes,
I’m saying that.’

‘Right,
we’re going back to Dragon Down,’ Grant said.

‘No,’
said Tombs.

Grant
looked round at him. ‘If I’ve got this right, you’re saying the Technician no
longer contains a copy of the Weaver, which means the only one in existence is
the one in your head. That’s too much to risk. You can’t die.’

‘I am
not going to die,’ said Tombs, ‘and you are going to take me to Sanders.’

It
happened so fast Grant didn’t even have time to take his hand from the gravan’s
joystick. Tombs’s hand made a snapping sound as it came down. He felt a slight
tug at his waist, then, the barrel of his own disc gun was pressed down into
the gap between his collar bone and his neck. He looked across as Shree slumped
back and fell to one side, unconscious.

‘You’re
risking too much, Tombs,’ said Grant.

‘Was
that a risk you considered when you fought the Theocracy?’

‘I don’t
understand – you’re more the Weaver now than the original Jeremiah Tombs . . .’

‘You are
right, you don’t understand. The Weaver has changed me, the Weaver constantly
changes me, but guilt keeps me Human. Though it does not want me to risk
myself, it cannot stop me from doing this.’

‘But
once free of guilt you’ll be gone – the alien mind inside you will swamp you
completely?’

Tombs
shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But if the Weaver remains swamped within me it seems,
ostensibly, that certain things cannot happen, and if they cannot happen I will
be dead anyway.’

‘You
need to explain that better.’

‘The
mechanism will have detected the Weaver within me and will know that the war
machine it had neutralized is once again active. It will come here to ensure,
by deploying the full array of its disruptors, that its own purpose is
completely fulfilled. This is as was intended by Dragon, in the plan that
entity provided along with the cure that was Blue’s brother.’

‘The
mechanism, the thing that fucked up Penny Royal?’

Tombs
gave a slow nod. ‘Certainly. It is also likely that it will have moved into a
new programming state, will have integrated knowledge of an alien civilization
here – a civilization that has already interfered in its purpose. It seems
likely Amis-tad has gone to organize the Polity defence, but it won’t be
enough. The Technician now needs to be given new orders – it needs to cease
being protective and go into full battle mode – and the orders for it to do so
must come from a living breathing Atheter.’ He looked pained for a moment,
adding, ‘Apparently.’

‘But . .
. the Weaver is in you . . . and what do you mean “apparently”?’

Tombs
didn’t answer, just pointed. ‘There.’

The ATV
had been parked a few hundred metres out from the arched barrier. Grant could
see people nearby, but only two of them, one standing and the other lying on
the ground. Doubtless Ripple-John’s sons were concealed either in the ATV or in
the surrounding flute grasses.

‘Land,’
Tombs instructed.

Grant
wanted to just disobey, to turn the gravan round, but his own disc gun was
still pressed in below his neck and he very much doubted Tombs was bluffing. He
eased the joystick down, spiralling the gravan towards the ground. He aimed for
the edge of a wide muddy track, not wanting to have to push through flute grasses
immediately on departing the vehicle. Soon the gravan crunched down through
grass beside the track, landing with a thump and settling with a sigh. Grant
shut down its gravmotors and mini-turbines, listened to both hum down into
silence to leave only the rustle of grasses and the ping and crack of cooling
metal.

‘Okay,
let’s go.’

Grant
unstrapped and pushed himself up out of his seat, the gun barrel still hard
against the base of his neck until Tombs abruptly snapped it away and stepped
back. Grant peered at Shree, wondered if he should go for her weapon, but knew
he just would not be fast enough. Rather than use the cab door he followed
Tombs into the back of the van, and as the man opened the door and stepped out,
followed him.

‘What do
you want me to do?’ Grant asked as they stomped through squelchy mud.

‘You
take Sanders back to the van and you get out of here.’

‘What’re
you going to do?’

‘Whatever
is necessary.’

Following
the path round they reached the edge of the small clearing in which the ATV was
parked. Tombs halted, then abruptly held out the disc gun butt first.

‘I am of
course your prisoner,’ he said.

Grant
accepted the weapon, clicked off the safety and pointed it at him.

‘You
understand that you won’t be able to get me back to the gravan,’ Tombs
continued. ‘Already two of Ripple-John’s sons are between us and it, whilst the
third is ten metres behind the ATV with a missile launcher.’ Tombs turned to
gaze at Grant. ‘That was probably just in case you changed your mind about
landing.’

How the
hell could Tombs know that?

Tombs
began walking whilst Grant stared at the gun he held before abruptly following.
In moments they reached the clearing, close enough to see the nasty flack gun
Ripple-John pointed down at Sanders’s head.

‘That’s
far enough,’ said the Overlander, then, ‘Jeremiah Tombs.’

Tombs
didn’t react, just stood unmoving.

‘So how
do you want to do this?’ Grant asked.

Ripple-John
smiled. ‘It’s nice that you’ve seen sense, Leif. Did he give you much trouble?
I don’t suppose he did. They were always bullies and braver in packs.’

‘I’m not
here for a pleasant chat, Ripple-John.’

The
Overlander held one hand out to the side, his expression apologetic. ‘Sorry to
put you in a position like this, but you brought it on yourself when you
considered proctors anything more than coffin fillers.’ He nudged Sanders with
the toe of his boot. ‘Get up.’

Only
then did Grant see that her ankles were no longer tied together. With some
struggle, because her hands were still bound behind her back, she got to her
knees and then to her feet.

‘Simple
exchange,’ said Ripple-John. ‘She walks over to you whilst Tombs walks over to
me. Anything untoward happens and both you and Sanders, die. My boy Kalash has
you in his sights now.’

Grant
stepped over behind Tombs and nudged him in the back with his disc gun. ‘Get
moving.’

It was
like pressing the barrel against a tree trunk, but after a moment Tombs took
the first step, then another.

‘Go on
bitch, get out of here,’ Ripple-John instructed.

The two
paced across the clearing towards each other. Sanders halted when she was close
to Tombs. ‘I’m sorry, Jeremiah, so sorry.’

Tombs
dipped his head in acknowledgement but kept walking. When Sanders reached Grant
the strength seemed to drain from her and she stumbled. Grant caught her, let
her lean on him. With care he reached down and freed the knife from his boot,
reached round and cut the length of optic cable binding her wrists.