Polity 4 - The Technician (56 page)

Amistad
experienced a weird moment of bewilderment. Earth Central had seen the data
provided by Cheops and by the haiman Drode and yet had seriously underestimated
what they were up against. Then again, Amistad had seen the same data and
considered a warship like Scold more than adequate.
So much for the omniscience of AIs. He shook himself internally, switched more
to memory and experience rather than reliance on new processing power, and
rediscovered cynicism. Frankly, as a veteran of the Prador–Human war, Amistad
knew that mistakes like this weren’t that uncommon. And he now began to try and
find some new solution. Perhaps it could be provided by what resided in that
armoured sphere anchored to a plate of ancient coral underneath the southern
ocean?

‘Do you
have anything for me?’ Amistad asked Penny Royal.

‘Atheter
AI interacting with Tombs, but it has shut down access to all sensors in the
area. Technician inside the barrier. Unusual wildlife activity. Nothing else.’

‘I will
be going dark for a while, do not be concerned.’

‘Why?’

‘Informational
warfare up here,’ Amistad lied.

He shut
down all connections with Penny Royal, shut down other communication channels
from himself to other intelligences, even physically disconnecting some of
them. All he left himself was his U-space transmitter, and allowed only one channel
to open in that when he sent a heavily encrypted signal.

Activation
and contact, and Amistad flowed into Eight’s realm, the door firmly closed
behind. The virtuality had changed. Amistad now seemed to be standing in a
snow-swept landscape, white and clean and, with its lack of the imagery of
torment, utterly unlike anything Eight had provided before.

‘I like
what you’ve done with the place,’ the drone said.

A gust
of wind cleared powdery snow to reveal Eight’s reply: Humans up to their necks
in ice, trying to scream but only gusting snowflakes from their mouths. These
streams of flakes began melding into one single stream which began circling the
drone – a visual representation of the expected attack.

‘I’ve no
time for this,’ said Amistad. ‘I want everything you have on the mechanism. I
will take it now.’

The
swirling storm stuttered and broke apart in the air, went into reverse to
coagulate into a single thick column of snow that entered the mouth of just one
of the victims below. Amistad concentrated on this one, watched its head bloat
grotesquely and the ice about it begin cracking. A fist smashed upwards, then
reached over, sausage fingers splaying, and a giant of a man with the physique
of a sumo wrestler and blue skin webbed with purple veins began to clamber out.
Icicles extended from this giant’s eyes as he finally reached the surface and
began to stalk towards Amistad.

The
drone prepared isolated storage within himself, put all his internal defences
on full alert and turned the new upgraded power of his mind towards bolstering
those defences and making them more reactive. Perhaps now he could handle
anything Eight might throw at him.

The
figure walked right up close, its head level with Amis-tad’s own, and the
icicles extended further until they finally touched the drone’s own eyes. Here
a representation of the upload channels, waiting for permission to connect. If
Amistad allowed this now there was a chance that something might escape from
here; that all his work with Penny Royal might be undone. But this eighth state
of consciousness seemed to know some way to defeat the mechanism, and for that
Amistad had to take the risk. He allowed contact.

An icy
storm of information flowed in, filling up three secure storage crystals.
Amistad allowed it to continue whilst important facts could be gleaned from it,
fully aware that much of it formed a viral attack. In the first few
microseconds the drone learnt about the battle between Penny Royal and the
mechanism, but he needed more data about the thing itself, how it functioned,
what weaknesses it possessed.

There
were few. It soon became evident that the mechanism contained warfare
technology far in advance of much in the Polity and, through its underspace
links, almost limitless resources. Then, at the last, Amistad saw it: the off
button.

Swinging
out one claw, Amistad smashed the humanoid away to send it tumbling across the
ice. On an informational level he closed all access, let nothing more in.
However, already he felt like he had swallowed a dose of poison. He backed away
in a direction Eight could not see, departed, once again slamming the door
closed behind him.

Floating
free in space, Amistad fought the viral attack propagating from his secure
storage. He now possessed vital information about how the mechanism could be
stopped, but to communicate that information to any other entity right now
would be a kiss from a diseased mouth. Internally, he directed an ultrasound
beam weapon, smashing one of the three storage crystals. A mistake, because a
fraction of a second before everything in that crystal broke down, along with
its structure, the breaking process itself first cracked the crystal’s
security. Programs like armoured bacteria in turn laden with all sorts of nasty
viruses spread through the drone, dumping their loads to shut off all the
internal ultrasound cleaners and then going on to work on other internal
defences. Before they could go too far, Amistad managed to physically eject a
second crystal through a skin port, and hit it with a laser, turning it to a
micalike glitter in vacuum.

The
third crystal became more of a problem as a virus took away his ability to
eject internal components. Within just a few seconds the programs from Eight
had control of nearly a quarter of his systems and were getting mighty close to
breaking through to his core mind. As he fought against this, he now noted
something odd, some kind of networked program forming. Trying to understand the
shape of this, and the intention, Amistad did not see it until too late. Data
aligned, seized internal physical components and did their work, rerouting one
optic and making a connection with it between the remaining crystal and the
drone’s U-space transmitter.

The
crystal emptied, transmitting all its contents which, almost certainly, would
find their way to Penny Royal. No need now to eject or destroy the crystal, but
the internal battle was by no means over. The viral attack began to mutate and
Amistad knew at once that he would not be contacting the outside world for some
time yet. Annoying, that. He now understood that others knew about the
mechanism’s off-button and were doing something about it, but he couldn’t warn
them that a previous ally might shortly turn into a dangerous AI psychopath.
And the final irony was that with his processing power, his intelligence, back
down to what it had been before, he had the answers he had been seeking.

When the Polity seizes control of a new
world, it usually does so because it has been asked to by 80 per cent of the
population – a majority that would have been the envy of past Human
democracies. However, that majority is only attained over an open-ended voting
period usually culminating when things are so bad on the world concerned that
the population feel that anything would be better – usually in the middle of
catastrophe, often natural but more often man-made. Polity intervention forces
normally turn up when some bitter war has obliterated infrastructure and is turning
genocidal. The moment the AIs take over, they institute the amnesty. They want
a clean slate, a new beginning, are not interested in what went before or in
war crimes trials, since at the point of intervention where to attribute blame
has become murky indeed. However, many historians have questioned the very
loose enforcement of Polity law in the years directly after intervention, and
noted how the worst of those who would have been defined as war criminals in
some previous age tend to end up in a body bag, despite the protection the
amnesty is supposed to afford them.

–
From a speech by Jobsworth

As he entered the stand of flute grasses Grant realized his mistake and
threw himself abruptly to one side. A series of shots tracked across where he
had been standing, grasses briefly flaring and smoking stems falling. Lying on
the ground he winced, pressing a hand against his ribs, the pain concentrating
his attention, reminding of the old days. He drew his disc gun, checked its
action, but didn’t return fire. He waited, gave it a good minute, then smiled
to himself when he heard grasses rustling ahead and over to his left. Shree
seemed impatient to get away. In the old days she would have waited a lot
longer.

Grant
slowly rose up into a crouch, then began making his way forward as quietly as
possible, carefully pushing stems aside and ensuring they didn’t noisily spring
back once he was past. This slow and laborious process had prolonged his
survival in the past during numerous encounters with Theocracy soldiers and
proctors. However, when he heard the flat cracking of a thin-gun some distance
ahead he knew it was time to move fast rather than quietly.

He began
pushing hard, head low, forearms brushing the grasses aside. Spilling out into
a channel between stands he checked to his right and saw footprints then,
seeing a heroyne step out only thirty metres further up the channel, gunshot
wounds evident on its armchair-shaped body, he leapt the channel and forged
ahead. He knew that Shree had always loathed the things, but against all logic
and sense she must have fired on this one. Her recent failure must have
seriously knocked her out of whack to allow her to do something so stupid.

If a
heroyne got over-excited it would certainly eat a Human being, but its senses
weren’t those of a siluroyne or gabbleduck, since it detected its usual prey of
mud snakes by feeling their subterranean movement through its feet – it was
possible to avoid a heroyne’s attention by just keeping very still. However,
just as with those other predators, if you pissed off a heroyne it could become
viciously persistent, kicking over every bit of grass in the area in its search
for you. But then perhaps he misjudged Shree, perhaps the creature was already
over-excited by the events here and she had inadvertently stumbled straight
into it.

‘Hey,
Shree!’ Grant called. ‘Why’re you upsetting the local wildlife?’

‘You
keep coming after me, Grant, and you’re dead.’ Shree replied. ‘You’re slow and
you’ve forgotten how to do this.’

Some of
the flute grasses ahead had been flattened, the rest were islands of tangled
broken stems. Working his way through one of these he began to notice heaped
drifts of stems and occasional chunks of torn-up rhizome. She was heading
towards where that thing had been knocked out of the sky and, if she kept
going, would end up in an area where the grasses had been either completely
flattened or scoured away. That would put her in the open. All he had to do was
ensure he stayed behind her, which shouldn’t be too difficult since she was
leaving a perfectly visible trail. Abruptly realizing how very
visible that trail was, he halted at the edge of a clearing where flute grasses
had been flattened in a spiral, probably by a small whirlwind, and squatted
down.

What
would he have done in her situation? Of course, she was right, he had been
slow. She would have looped back towards her own trail, and lain in wait for
him. He moved off to his right because, of course, the area ahead was perfect
ambush territory. Slowly circumventing the clearing, ten metres into the
grasses, he tried to find her trail. Fifty-fifty chance – she could have looped
round to the other side. He paused, decided to take a risk.

‘I’m
trying to save your life, Shree!’ he called. ‘Either I retrieve that cylinder from
you or the Technician does it – your choice.’

‘Generous
of you,’ she said from close by.

Grant
threw himself for cover, heard the crack of her thin-gun, then felt an impact
against his thigh. He hit the ground wrong, pain jabbing from his ribs, rolled and
snap-shot behind him. He came up, dragging his leg, tried to locate her. He did
so by her gun’s flash, the second shot slamming into his shoulder and spinning
him.

‘Toss
your gun away or my next shot will be through your head,’ she said, much closer
now.

He
peered behind him. She stood five metres back, weapon held steady with both
hands. He did not doubt she meant what she was saying. He tossed his gun and
turned, pain lancing through his shoulder, his right leg feeling like dead
weight.

‘So
you’ve got me, Shree, but that don’t change your situation at all.’ He heaved
himself up into a sitting position. ‘You’ve got days of walking to get anywhere
you can get hold of faster transport, and the Technician is out here, ready for
you.’

‘So you
say,’ was all she could manage, but she looked scared.

‘Give it
up, Shree,’ he said. ‘Give me the cylinder and you can run – I won’t come after
you.’ He gestured down at his leg, which was really starting to hurt now. ‘I
can’t come after you.’

She took
one hand away from her weapon, reached inside her coat, took out the cylinder
and held it up. ‘This? How about if I just toss it out here somewhere?’

‘Tombs
seemed pretty confident. I’d say the Technician’s got some way of detecting it,
which again is why I say just give it to me and run. You saw that thing in the
sky. Do you think this is only about—’

Flute
grasses rustled behind him – something big moving – and he felt his skin crawl,
didn’t really relish the idea of lying in the Technician’s path. Shree’s eyes
grew wide. She shoved the cylinder back in her coat, took a firm grip on her
gun again.

‘Shree—’

A big
long leg ending in a three-toed webbed foot came down from overhead, crunched
against the ground only a few metres ahead of him, a shape blotted out the sun
above. She began firing, pumping shot after shot into that shape. The second
foot came down just in front of the first. The heroyne emitted a cawing
ululating shriek, its long neck a curved arc against the sky. The beaked and
eyeless head seemed just a two-metre extension of that neck, and the beak gaped
wide. Shree turned to run, but the heroyne’s head darted down, the beak closing
on her like a giant pair of blunt scissors. It snatched her up; a wading bird
snapping up a frog.