Polity 4 - The Technician (24 page)

Some
time after the Tagreb established itself on the surface, its AI decided that
mobility might be a good idea here, so constructed bubble-metal treads for it
to run on. Beneath the defensive perimeter fence lay a four-metre-wide
foamstone raft, below which tricones gathered like barnacles. Four huge spokes
attached the whole engirdling raft to the Tagreb itself and so propelled it
along with the base. The research Tagreb seemed a living organism, perpetually
shifting its underparts to prevent them being bitten, slowly shifting itself
across the surface. A starfish maybe, or a sea urchin – that last being
something Chanter did not want to think about too much as this particular
creature’s mind finally got in contact.

‘I
wondered when you would be paying us a visit here.’ The Tagreb AI, Rodol, spoke
from his communicator. ‘Leonardo Da Vinci invented machines, explored the
structure of the Human body and other structures besides, and he painted and
drew with great skill. But he was from a time when the false division between
art and science had yet to be firmly established.’

AIs
talked to each other, Chanter knew. They talked to each other a lot.

‘Why do
you claim the division is false?’ he asked, at a loss for any other words.

‘Art is
just another way to describe and classify reality – its mystical aspects merely
a function of ignorance.’

‘Yeah,
whatever,’ said Chanter, already finding himself disliking this particular
intelligence. ‘I’m here to see Jonas Clyde and Shardelle Garadon.’

‘Shardelle
is unavailable, since she is presently working with the haiman Kroval Liepsig
on Earth studying the deliberate disconnection from coherence and derision
factor of the gabble. Jonas Clyde, however, is here but presently deliberately
disconnected from coherence himself. I’ll check if he is prepared to see you.’

‘Where
do I go?’ Chanter asked.

‘Surface
your mudmarine beside ATV Ramp Three – it is behind my direction of travel so
your vessel should remain within the perimeter fence for four days,’ Rodol
replied, a schematic of the Tagreb appearing on Chanter’s screen with Ramp
Three indicated. ‘If your stay is going to be longer, then link your system to
me and I’ll keep your vessel beside the ramp continuously.’ Now a linking icon
appeared.

Chanter
did not want to link up because he did not expect to be here for long, and to
do so would also breach his security; however, if Rodol wanted to take control
of his mudmarine, there wasn’t really much he could do about it. He reached out
and touched the icon, giving his permission, then motored directly to the ramp
he had been directed to.

Once
again stepping out onto the surface of this world, Chanter studied his
surroundings. The ramp extended from an all-terrain vehicle garage, but one ATV
stood out here too, its big fat wheels turning with incremental slowness as it
kept pace with the Tagreb. The base itself sprawled across the ceramal petals
it had folded down when it landed, after having first been ejected from the
research spaceship the Beagle Infinity. Now
cluttered with numerous additional buildings – storehouses for organic samples,
additional laboratories and accommodation areas – it looked less like the
single complete and sparse structure it had been. Here lay a small circular
town, perpetually on the move. He climbed the ramp, walked in past two ATVs,
one of which gleamed like new, the other being washed free of mud by a
hose-trailing robot like an upright iron cricket on wheels. A third ATV lay
beyond these two. It looked like someone had fed it between the rollers of a massive
mangle.

‘The
ostensible reason for her departure,’ said the voice of Rodol, issuing from
nearby.

‘What?
Who?’

‘Shardelle
Garadon felt there was still more to learn about the gabble by direct study.
She wanted to find another old gabbleduck who was close to death, since she
believed that in that state part of its real underlying mind might show
through,’ Rodol explained. ‘She found her creature and kept track of it,
whereupon it abruptly changed course and headed at great speed up into the
Northern Mountains, to a place called the Plate – a circular plateau – where it
turned back to her ATV and sat on it. You see the result.’

‘So
nearly dying destroyed her spirit of scientific inquiry?’ Chanter asked, unable
to keep the sarcastic tone out of his voice.

‘No, she
thought the gabbleduck’s actions, in leading her to where its attack on her ATV
would have more effect than just pushing it down into the mud – an indication
of hidden intelligence revealing itself,’ said Rodol. ‘The real reason for her
departure was so she could work closely with Kroval – she gave her near-death
experience as an excuse to disconnect completely from communication and so
avoid the massive amounts of incoming data from the sudden proliferation of
would-be gabble experts springing up all over the Polity.’

Chanter
snorted as he stepped through the door at the back of the garage, pressure
differential impinging, the oxygenated air almost aseptic. He now stood in a
room racked with various survival suits and lined with glass-fronted cases
containing discrete Polity breather gear. One of the suits, until then utterly
still, stirred into motion and he realized it was occupied. The individual
inside glanced at him with reptilian eyes, a glint of frost slowly clearing
from the visor below them. An adapt like himself, wearing a suit to keep her
cool on a world too hot for her. She headed through the door into the garage.
He turned and eyed the two doors exiting from this place.

‘Where
do I go?’ he asked.

‘Jonas
has taken some aldetox, and when he has also finished his triple espresso he
will see you in the museum,’ Rodol replied. ‘Take the door to your right and
follow the directions now entered in your palmtop.’

Through
the door, palmtop out and direction arrow clear, Chanter stomped down corridors
clean and white, feeling a childish satisfaction that he was still leaving
muddy footprints behind him. By the time he reached the museum his webbed feet
were dry and his skin felt decidedly papery, but the sight that met him when he
stepped through double sliding doors dismissed the discomfort from his mind.

The dead
hooder extended along the length of a hundred-metre wall – the spinal column of
a giant. Of course he had seen all this before, but it was the spoonlike hood,
turned so its underside faced out, that drew his attention. He’d seen hooder
remains, and he’d seen anatomical schematics, flatscreen and holographic, but
to actually stand beside something like this and gaze at what was the last
thing some people had seen before the darkness closed over them and the agony
began, held a horrifying fascination.

Down
either side of a ridge that ran on the underside of the hood were rows of eyes
like glassy beads. At both ends of the ridge jointed limbs were folded, these
terminating in curved spatulas, small spikes extending from their bases along
their inner faces. To either side of the ridge lay rows of glassy tubes, some
flat, some turned in and some folded out, these last showing telescopic
sections, all toothed. Next out were rows of glassy scythes, some shedding
their inner faces to expose sharper material, much in the way a cat sheds its
claws. Outside these lay tangled organics like the insides of some animal,
looking soft at first then hardening down into the rim of the hood. Here and
there protruded black tentacles, some terminating in pincers, others in things
that looked oddly like paint brushes.

Chanter
stepped closer, eyed a column-mounted scan scope – a device that could scan any
of the EM spectrum, and at any focus from nanoscopic upwards – then abruptly
stepped back when the eyes lit with a red inner glow and all that surgical
cutlery began to move like the workings of an ancient mechanical printer
running a diagnostic.

‘The red
glow isn’t the real thing,’ said a voice behind him.

He
turned to see Jonas Clyde standing there. The man wore slippers, knee-length
trousers and sleeveless shirt, and he clutched a coffee beaker in his right
hand. His blond hair was cropped, eyes electric green and skin bearing a tan
that didn’t come from Masada. Though he looked athletic, there was a distinct
unsteadiness to him now – the aldetox had yet to purge from his body the
effects of whatever he had been drinking.

‘I’m
hoping none of this is real.’ Chanter gestured to movement within the hood.

‘All
synthetic muscle and electro-nerves,’ Clyde explained. ‘This exhibit was
sprawn-infested and long into decay when it was discovered.’

‘So what
causes the glow?’ asked Chanter. ‘What makes their eyes glow when they’re
alive?’

‘The
same luminescent amoebae you find on some of this world’s beaches. It’s not
mutualistic, symbiotic or parasitic really – just a foible of the designers.’

‘The
gabbleducks,’ said Chanter. ‘The Atheter.’

Clyde
nodded like someone whose head might not be firmly attached. ‘Glad you’re here,
Chanter – I’ve been wanting to talk to you for some time.’

‘And I
you.’

‘Though
not for so long.’

‘No.’

They
stood staring at each other, and to Chanter it felt almost as if he had finally
come face to face with some old enemy. He could find no real reason for the
feeling, it just existed.

‘So
what’s brought you here?’

‘I’ve
read your studies, your reports and your précis for the almanac, but I’m here
to find out what else you’ve learnt. You’ve said nothing about the Technician,
yet one would think that creature would hold as much fascination for you as it
does for me.’

Clyde
winced, walked over to lean against the scan scope. After a moment he tossed
his cup down on the floor and just watched as a beetlebot scuttled out of its
alcove and snatched the cup up, polished away the spill of coffee then shot out
of sight again.

‘The
thing you learn, being a Tagreb researcher, is that half the time you’re
looking into things that have already been studied by minds far in advance of
your own.’ He turned to look at Chanter. ‘We’re not researchers, Chanter, but
research tools. They withhold stuff, they sometimes give us false information
or information with a particular emphasis or slant. All this is to direct their
tools, us, to a particular point, to elucidate it, to expose some new angle.
It’s quite depressing.’

‘But the
Technician?’

‘All I
knew was that it was an interesting legend among the people here,’ said Clyde.
‘Not really my territory but that of the social anthropologists. I was
preparing to leave this world, having mapped both the hooder genome and its
physiology, having ascertained that it’s really an organic machine, an
artificial creation.’

‘But
learning that the Technician is a reality kept you here?’

‘No, not
really – I learnt about it a little while after I was going to leave.’ Clyde
now gestured to the other side of the long room. Here stood a row of exhibit
cases, but they were all empty. ‘So, Chanter, don’t you think it’s about time
you allowed others to study your collection of sculptures?’

That
threw Chanter. They were his sculptures – how dare this man make such a demand?
Then he felt a moment of chagrin. The art of the Technician should be on
display for all. How could he allow his own selfish greed to keep this work
from the world?

‘I
suppose,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Fair
exchange,’ said Clyde. ‘You bring your collection here where, frankly, it would
be much safer, and you get to use the specialist pattern- and shape-analysing
programs Rodol designed, which, as we both know, is your real reason for being
here.’

AIs
talked to other people a lot too.

‘Very
well,’ said Chanter then, after a pause, ‘but tell me what kept you here, if
you didn’t know about the Technician.’

Clyde
shrugged. ‘It was a toss-up between me and Shardelle. We were given a
non-negotiable instruction that one of us had to remain here. Shardelle won the
coin toss.’

‘Who
instructed you?’

‘An
arachnid associate of yours.’

‘Amistad?’

Clyde
nodded.

‘Why?’

‘Apparently
one Jeremiah Tombs needs to speak to us, when he’s ready.’ Clyde pushed himself
away from the scan scope, the aldetox obviously having fully kicked in now.
‘Seems he’ll be ready sometime soon.’

Information, once out of safe storage, was like something Pandora might
recognize. Usually, when a supposed secret escaped out into the public domain,
it was because the AIs were using the time-honoured technique of aptly timing
leaks. However, it seemed to Shree that the news of Jeremiah Tombs’s escape had
leaked too early. What purpose could be served by alerting Overlanders, the
Tidy Squad and Theocracy haters everywhere that the erstwhile proctor had
become a viable target? Unless, of course, this was all about entrapment.

Tidy
Squad members had been apprehended whilst attempting to kill Tombs, but then
the likes of Miloh were all too obvious in their hate, and had probably been
closely watched by the Polity anyway. No, the entrapment had been aimed at
ex-rebels who apparently bought into the regime, were generous in their
forgiveness and did not openly reveal their hate, like Tinsch, who it seemed
might have been captured, and like her.

Perhaps
the AIs had unearthed something about the alliances she had been making with
offworld Separatists and understood Tombs’s importance in that respect. Perhaps
they understood that Tombs was precisely the one they needed to draw out the
Squad Leader. It seemed likely he was bait in a trap but, unfortunately, he was
bait she could not ignore.

‘Uffstetten
here,’ said the face appearing in her visual field – fed directly to her optic
nerves from her aug.