Polity 4 - The Technician (61 page)

Sort it out.

Just
like with Shree, yes. These two were guilty of kidnap, attempted murder and
murder itself, and once found guilty, as they undoubtedly would be, they would
be mind-wiped, erased from existence. Quite right. These two, along with their
father and their brother Kalash, had set the hooders on Bradacken way station,
and they had killed Chanter. There should be no mercy for them. Only now did
Jem wonder about his impulse to drag them inside the gravan, and realize he was
tired of hate, so very tired of it. He started to lower the weapon.

Something
crashed against the side of the gravan, sending it penduluming through the air,
four even grooves visible in the bodywork from the inside. Another thump on the
underside as they rose, denting up the floor underneath Jem, an odd whining
sound coming from the gravmotor. He staggered, reached out to grab the edge of
the door to steady himself, some mental undercurrent telling him he just knew what would happen next. Blitz threw himself forward,
hammering his head into Jem stomach, grabbed the gun and wrestled for control
of it. Trying to tear the weapon from the man’s grasp, Jem spun him, slamming
him against the wall of the van. A bang like some explosive going off and the
whole panelled side of the van peeled away, a wind roaring inside. Blitz fell
through, and still holding the gun, dragged Jem after.

‘It’s
fucking got hold of us!’ Grant shouted, wrestling with the controls.

He hung
suspended from the side of the vehicle, one leg wrapped round a remaining panel
strut to prevent him falling – Jem considered that the least of his worries.
Blitz, suspended below, still clung to the gun, trying to turn the barrel
towards Jem.

Blitz
should be clinging for his life, yet killing Jem seemed so much more important
to him. No truce, no forgiveness here. The man hated what Jem had ceased to be
long ago, and could see nothing else. Blitz had been fed that hate with his
mother’s milk and was little more than a mental clone of his father. Jem swung
his gaze across to the gabbleduck, up at full stretch from the ground, its body
extended out like a great gnarled oak but for the huge quivering sac of its
belly. It met his gaze and, for a brief instant, it seemed an understanding
passed between them.

A great
calm suffused Jem as he tilted the gun, the barrel towards his own face. Why
not, what did any of it matter? Blitz’s grip slipped as a black claw swept
across and closed about his legs – that first claw releasing its hold on the
gravan. Blitz slipped a finger down to the trigger and pulled it back. The
weapon clicked and buzzed, a red empty light flashing on it. Blitz, having
loosened his hold on the weapon to press that trigger, now lost his grip
entirely and screamed on his way down.

Jem hung
there as the gravan rose, his calm quickly washing away. Oblivion was such an
easy choice to make, and too easy when it was no choice at all, as in the case
of Sharn, who by the time Sanders reluctantly stooped over him, had already
bled out on the floor.

They
returned to Dragon Down mostly in silence, but for one brief exchange.

‘So what
are you going to do now?’ Sanders asked.

Jem
considered the sons of Ripple-John with the hate impressed in their minds even
as those minds developed. He considered Shree, who could not give up the war
that made her, and he considered himself, indoctrinated from birth to believe
and have faith, then in an odd second life turned into a vessel for the
thoughts of another.

‘I don’t
know what I’m going to do,’ he replied, ‘but I know what I’m going to be.’

‘And
what’s that?’ Grant asked tiredly, at last thinking to slide his disc gun back
into its holster.

‘For the
first time in my life,’ Jem told them, ‘I’m going to be myself.’

Amazing that such seemingly huge claws could weave so intricately,
thought Amistad, and so many of them were busy weaving all across the main
continent of Masada.

‘What do
you think it’s making?’ he asked.

‘Home,’
replied Penny Royal, completely invisible, but hovering protectively behind
Leif Grant.

The
observation tower stood tall behind them, a long-stalked steel mushroom moved
here so those squatting on it and in it could keep watch on the growing
structure ahead. Amistad had already seen such a structure before, recorded in
the eye of a hooder. It stood on the muddy plain amidst a spring growth of
flute grass spearing from the ground like a million bloody knives – something a
swarm of weaver birds might make, if they swarmed; some similarity to the nests
of paper wasps and some to a modular construction space habitat for Humans – a
convoluted basketwork city that played a dirge whenever the wind blew from the
north.

There
had been no communication, none at all, no demands, nothing until now. All
across Masada gabbleducks had begun behaving strangely, weaving odd shapes out
of flute-grass stems then abandoning them for Humans to puzzle over. Amistad
wondered what Chanter would have made of that – something, certainly. Here
though, the Weaver had been disappointingly inactive, just living, like an
animal, until the Polity lifter came in to right the Atheter AI and make
repairs. It just watched the lifter and the maintenance robots, then, once they
departed, it moved into the building and there in its structure wove a small
home. Next, over ensuing months, other gabbleducks began to turn up here to
weave dwellings for themselves. Were they just animals copying? Were they just
somewhat adroit mocking birds? All Polity science could give no definite
answer, somewhere between, perhaps, in that territory where physical
manipulation of the world came before consciousness of self.

But now
a communication, direct from the Atheter AI: something had to be returned.

Seeking
an answer to the mystery here, Amistad studied the gabbleducks he could see,
tried to discern something within the structure ahead, but nothing leapt out.
He swung his gaze to the big grav-sled trundling along behind himself, Penny
Royal and Grant.

‘He
comes,’ said the black AI.

‘So
there’s nothing I can say if it tells us to get the fuck off of Masada,’ said
Grant.

‘Nothing
at all,’ Amistad replied, turning to Grant. ‘In fact Earth Central has already
designated evacuation ships.’

‘That’s
annoying.’

‘That’s
the AOP, and you agreed it was right when you took the job.’

After
Tombs had departed Masada, doubtless to go and find some place where he could
at last ‘be himself’, Leif Grant had sunk back into morose introversion. Then
Sanders went and snapped him out of it, renewing something they’d had before
and, incidentally, delivering the news that the position of Human ambassador to
the Atheter was open to him, if he wanted it.

Amistad
returned his attention to the scene ahead, noting a hundred identifying
features on the approaching gabbleduck and knowing it to be the Weaver. It
halted five metres in front of them, twitching its head slightly as it studied
them. It also seemed to Amistad, by its long pause whilst gazing towards Grant,
that the Weaver might be able to see Penny Royal too.

‘It’s
your show now,’ Amistad told Grant.

In his
capacity as expert on all things Atheter, Amistad was here merely as an
adviser. In its capacity as recovering lunatic, Penny Royal was here under
Amistad’s charge.

Grant
glanced at the drone, whispered a sarcastic, ‘Thanks a bunch,’ then stepped
forward. ‘We’ve brought what you asked for,’ he said out loud.

A
thought from Amistad brought the massive grav-sled round to one side, then had
it settling down on the new flute grass with a sound like a steamroller over
gravel. The Weaver turned and studied the three huge chunks of the Technician
lying on the sled, nodded contemplatively, then turned back towards the trio.

‘You
have Policy on the occupancy of alien worlds,’ it said.

Here it
comes: get off our planet.

‘We do,’
Grant agreed, abruptly folding his arms and looking pained.

The
Weaver pointed at the pieces of the Technician. ‘I have this,’ it said, then
stabbed a claw behind. ‘And this.’

‘Yess,’
said Grant slowly, unsure where this might be going.

Humans
were just so slow sometimes . . . well, most of the time really. Amistad
focused on some of the lower parts of the conglomerate town growing here, noted
the damage, the chewed-up basketwork, the ground churned by subterranean
activity and dotted with pan-pipes molluscs. There wasn’t much here to build a
civilization on when tricones kept eating your foundations.

‘You
have what we threw away,’ the Weaver noted. ‘You have what we shattered and
ground into grit.’

‘I see,’
said Grant, and maybe he did, because he smiled.

The
Weaver sat down on its haunches, lifted a claw to its bill and began to work at
something between its holly-like white teeth. After a moment it flicked this
away, tracked its course to the ground then swung back towards Grant.

‘No more gabble. Now we negotiate,’ it said.

As usual my thanks to the staff at Macmillan, including Julie Crisp,
Chloe Healy, Amy Lines, James Long, Catherine Richards, Ali Blackburn, Steve
Cox (especially for that ‘No more gabble’) and many others besides. In fact my
thanks to all there who help bring this book to shelves in Britain and across
the world, so that includes the foreign buyers and translators out there too. I
also have to make a special mention here of cover designer Neil Lang and the
superb artist Jon Sullivan. Hey, I really like what you’re doing with the
covers, guys, I like it a lot. Further thanks must go out to all those fans who
find me on my blog, on Facebook and elsewhere, to chat, offer support, advice
and generally to reply to the stuff I put out there. With you lot a broadband
connection away I feel almost as if I’ve got a social life! And last but not
least, all my love to Caroline, without whom I would be a lonely, introvert
weirdo, rather than just a weirdo.