Polity 4 - The Technician (23 page)

–
From QUINCE GUIDE compiled by Humans

Jem staggered out of the still standing harbour gates, his sprint through
the guano storage bays to get away from the Devil seeming to have drained the
last of his strength. He went down on his knees in an area that appeared more
familiar to him, a row of open-top trucks parked to his right and a small
proctors’ guard post to his left, neglected and its windows smashed.

He
fought to regain breath, return some strength to his limbs, wondered if his air
supply was running out early and, so thinking, lurched to his feet and headed
for the short road leading up to the central town.

Worker
huts had once stood on either side of the road, but now new structures were
being erected on the foamstone rafts – long low buildings which, when he saw
one yet to acquire a roof, seemed packed with complex and already moving
machinery. Other machines worked between these huts, perfectly designed for
laying foamstone blocks, or cutting and welding into place bubble-metal beams
and plastic-laminate roof panels. Then amidst them, amidst that madness, Jem
saw something to utterly confirm that Hell had arrived here at Godhead.

Skeletons
walked amidst these new structures: the skeletons of men and women but coated
with gleaming chrome. They were labouring to build the engines of damnation
here on Masada. Only now, seeing this, did he truly comprehend that phrase
‘godless machines’. It wasn’t that the Polity denied the reality of God,
rather, the Polity had accepted and welcomed to its steel heart the legions of
Hell. When one of these skeletons turned to gaze at Jem with utterly Human eyes
in its silver skull, that seemed more horrifying than either empty sockets or
some satanic red gleam. He moved on as fast as he could manage, gasping, eyes
blurred with tears.

How
could this all be true? How could it possibly be true?

The road
ramped up onto the thicker foamstone raft of the central town and, though Jem
recognized covered walkways for what they were, and saw hints of old
structures, most of the buildings here were new. He recognized so very little
of this. What had happened here?

Avoiding
one of the larger covered walkways, he turned into a narrower street, hoping to
reach a walkway perhaps less used, and then find access to breathable air.
Maybe inside somewhere he could find a breather mask and an oxygen supply, then
perhaps he could head back here and steal one of those trucks. He didn’t want
to stay inside Godhead and find it turned into some Sodom and Gomorrah.

Twenty
metres into this street he saw a man and a woman jogging towards him from
ahead. He turned towards the entrance into an alley; someone there too, then
another approaching from behind. He continued walking, moving over to the side
of the street to avoid the two ahead, but they came straight towards him – it
was him they were coming for.

‘I’m
guessing you’ve noticed some changes here, Proctor Tombs,’ said the man,
halting before him.

‘Who are
. . . you?’ Jem managed, studying him, noting the lack of a breather mask and
the metal aug affixed to the side of his skull.

‘My
name’s David Tinsch,’ the man replied. ‘But you don’t know me. Me and my son
were sent to work the ponds after someone just like you accused me of heretical
speech, had me beaten and took away everything I owned. My son died of
septicaemia when the scole attachment went wrong.’

Jem
wanted to say sorry, then cursed himself for the inclination.

Tinsch
looked over to one side where the woman now squatted on the paving, some sort
of control panel before her on fold-down legs.

‘Where
is it?’ he asked.

‘Coming
this way, and fast,’ she replied.

Jem
stared at her. She was wearing the negative of a proctors’ uniform, demon
script running from armpit to leg. He recognized the writing at once. How was
it he recognized that, yet even at that moment could not visualize the writing
of the Satagents? Was he being absorbed into Hell?

‘How
long?’ asked Tinsch.

A
resounding crash echoed from somewhere distant, seemingly back along the route
Jem had traversed. He glanced round to see a pillar of lightning stabbing up
into the sky above the buildings. A curved hardfield flashed into being up
there, something black and nebulous briefly visible behind it, then both the
shape and the field flashed out of existence, sending a wavefront of fire
speeding overhead. He watched this pass out of sight, then lowered his gaze to
the two men now approaching him from behind. Both wore the same negative
uniforms as the woman.

‘At this
rate, five minutes at best,’ said the woman. Jem returned his attention to her,
dizzy, a sickness in his stomach, but noting her fear as she continued, ‘It
just took out the first hardfield.’

‘Best we
get this done now,’ said one of those behind Jem.

Hands
closed on both his arms. The two dragged him forward and threw him down on the
ground, nose smacking agonizingly against the paving and lights flashing across
his vision. Before he could recover they were on him, turning him over on his
back and pinning him there. Tinsch, whose clothing was of a plainer cut than
the others, strode forward and squatted over him, holding out between his
finger and thumb an aug just like the one he wore. It was a metallic version of
the Gift, Polity tech, and Jem realized they were
about to take him into a brotherhood of a very different kind. In this final
act they would recruit him to their legions.

‘That
necessary, David?’ asked one of the black-clad men whilst drawing a big
evil-looking dagger from the sheath at his hip. ‘This doesn’t have to be
complicated.’

‘When
that thing gets through it might kill us all,’ said Tinsch.

‘We know
that,’ replied the other. He scraped the tip of his knife against a package
affixed to the front of his belt – a series of antipersonnel mines. They all
wore these, Jem realized. They each wore enough explosive to gut this entire
street.

‘But if
we ream out his brain we’ve got a bargaining chip.’ Tinsch tapped a finger
against the metal aug. ‘The AIs will want this, and it’s directly linked to my
aug – if I die then the small explosive inside it detonates.’

‘Small
comfort to the rest of us,’ the knife wielder quipped.

Another
crash, and another line of fire flaring across the sky.

‘Second
hardfield gone,’ the woman called. ‘For Christ’s sake get it done!’

‘Turn
his head.’

Jem
fought just as hard as he could, but the arms holding him were like steel. Out
of the corner of his eye he could see Tinsch lowering the aug to the side of
his head. He could see the standard anchor ring there – designed to attach the
aug to the bone behind the recipient’s ear – but the thin needles already
beginning to extrude from within that ring weren’t standard at all.

A low
thunk issued from one side, and Jem recognized it as the sound of a stun-stick
connecting. The pressure came off him and the aug retracted slightly. Managing
to turn his head a little he saw the woman sprawled across her console.

‘Put it
away,’ said a gravelly voice.

That big
knife swept in towards his throat. Another impact of a different kind and the
knife wielder yelled and spun aside, the handle of another knife protruding
from his shoulder whilst his own blade clattered to the paving. Something
cracked – a disc gun firing – and the other one pinning him sprawled away too.
Jem grabbed up the fallen knife and scrabbled across the paving past the figure
striding in. He should have felt some relief, some gratitude, but felt only a
tugging, gnawing fear deep inside his head. He recognized the newcomer’s voice,
and that recognition lay deeply embedded in the darkness within his skull –
threatened to tear it open.

‘You
fucking traitor!’ Tinsch still clutched the aug in one hand, his other hand
straying to the explosives on his belt.

‘That’s
debatable,’ said the newcomer.

Reaching
a wall, Jem heaved himself up and, gasping for breath, rested his shoulder
against it. He held the knife out to fend off any new attack, but it seemed he
had slid into irrelevance. The newcomer stood with his back to Jem. Short grey
hair topped a wide-shouldered rangy physique clad in flute-grass fatigues. The
disc gun the man held pointed unwaveringly at Tinsch’s forehead. One of the
other men lay on the ground, hands pressed to his stomach and blood leaking
between his fingers. Jem’s other attacker stood with one hand at the handle
protruding from his shoulder, his other hand sliding down towards the explosive
on his belt. Jem closed his eyes. They were all going to die now, but that was
alright, just so long as the one with the gun did not turn, did not reveal his
face.

After a
pause the newcomer continued, ‘Did you really think you could do this? Did you
hear your last two hardfields crash? Did you get another dramatic fireworks
display?’

Jem
opened his eyes. Tinsch and the two negative proctors all had hands at the explosives
on their belts, the one with the stomach wound repeatedly, desperately,
stabbing a bloody finger at some control. And all three explosives were simply
failing to detonate.

‘I get
that you thought Miloh would delay it long enough for you to put up hardfields
between.’ The grey-haired man shook his head sadly. ‘Good plan, but you have no
idea what you’re up against. It divided out there, sent one half of itself off
to deal with Miloh, while the other half continued to shadow Tombs here. And it
didn’t even have to do that – Miloh was no real danger, nor are you.’

‘It’s
here?’ said Tinsch, his hand finally dropping away from his suicide bomb.

‘Been
playing with you all along.’ The grey-haired man gestured to the woman sprawled
beside her console. ‘It was turning off your hardfields from the inside, while
its other half provided the fireworks display. But I’ve stopped the game, and
just hope that’s enough – that it’ll let you walk away from here.’

The
gut-shot one was dying, Jem realized, his face deathly pale and blue under the
eyes, his black clothing soaked with blood, the demon script stained red and a
pool spreading all about him. An artery torn open. Where had Jem seen such a
wound? Why did he know?

Grey-hair
tilted his head for a moment. ‘Seems you get to live.’

The
knife wielder suddenly accelerated backwards and slammed into the far wall of
the street. He shrieked, the knife in his shoulder sinking deeper, the handle
disappearing inside him. Oddly no blood leaked from the wound, and then he was
just hanging there, pinned by the shoulder, his feet kicking half a metre above
the paving.

Tinsch
next, his arm coming up against his own volition – he seemed to be fighting it,
his hand moving round in a smooth arc whilst his body writhed and kicked. His
hand slapped against the side of his skull, then dropped away. Now having
acquired a second aug on the opposite side of his skull to the first, he
abruptly went down on his knees.

‘No . .
. please,’ he said, then after a moment started crying.

The
demons haunt their own, Jem realized. Hell offered no relief, no better
treatment for its allies. He swung his gaze to the woman. She was sitting up,
her console in her lap, eyes closed as if in meditation. Jem could not see her
hands, for her wrists ended against the sides of the console, seemed to be
connected to it.

The
wounded man now. He stood upright in that pool of blood, and the pool seemed to
be growing smaller, whilst colour returned to a face locked in a rictus of
terror. As the last of the blood disappeared something seemed to happen down by
his feet and he abruptly dropped, sinking up to his ankles in a paving slab. He
looked down, terror transforming to a knowing horror, tried to move and went over
on his back, his knees in the air.

‘Nooo!’
Tinsch wailed. ‘Please, I’m sorry . . .’

‘You get
to live,’ said Grey-hair. ‘To live.’

He
turned to look at Jem, features utterly clear now behind a practically
invisible visor: a hard face, dull green eyes, a scar across the back of his
cheek leading to where part of his earlobe had been severed. Utter and complete
recognition now. Here stood the soldier. Jem got to
his feet and ran without a further thought. The constant background mutter
turned to a growling, like some engine starting up. Horrific painful memories
clamoured in the vaults of his mind and he abruptly realized the truth.

It was
all lies.

Everything
he had seen had been twisted out of shape, for wasn’t the one trying to destroy
his faith the Prince of Lies? From the moment Sanders affixed this demonic
prosthesis over his skull, it had been feeding him its bile, its fiction, its
madness routed straight out of Hell. It had overlaid his world with false
visions of the aftermath of a successful rebellion and Polity intervention
here.

He had
to remove it.

The Tagreb sat amidst the flute grasses like an iron lily opened on the
surface of a weed-choked pond. Here it served as a base from which its AI and
its staff could make a taxonomic and genetic assay of the fauna and flora of
Masada, create a database, then from that make the planetary almanac. After
this was done, the base was supposed to remain as a permanent fixture for the
use of the planetary residents, as specialized researchers completed their work
and moved on to the next world, the next Tagreb landing. However, the
specialists here were becoming a bit of a permanent fixture, the life of Masada
having the fascination of a monorail crash.

Chanter
approached the place from underneath, studying with interest the seismic images
presented on his screen. He could see the various pipes terminating in
extraction heads the Tagreb had injected into the ground to suck up water for
internal supply, for the fusion reactor and to crack for oxygen. These, Chanter
understood, were often pulled back up when too many tricones gathered, only to
be injected elsewhere. There were also sensor heads down there, and the flat,
scan-proof interfaces of hardfields, between which extended cattle prods to
keep tricones at bay.