Polity 4 - The Technician (39 page)

Unable
to keep still, the big scorpion drone moved to the edge of the viewing platform
as he further considered what had been learned. Tombs’s initial reaction
indicated that the man had known the Technician wasn’t there to kill them,
though his subsequent reaction and him hiding himself with the others indicated
a mind in a perpetual state of flux. Penny Royal had already recorded this
cerebral activity; occasional increases in function, neural activity ramped up
to levels the Human brain could not sustain for long, a side-effect being the
kind of physical muscular integration only found in those who had either loaded
martial arts programs or had trained for years. Knowledge, whose source could
not be the original Tombs, was also surfacing in the man’s mind.

Tombs
had known precisely the nature of Penny Royal’s defence against the Technician.
It was the kind of knowledge possessed only by those once involved or still
involved in high-tech warfare, and Tombs’s experience only extended to
Theocracy rail-guns, chemically propelled projectiles and the usual bottom-end
energy weapons.

Other
comments were of note. Tombs opined that not all the Atheter had wanted to
destroy themselves – a conjecture Amistad had already considered because the
likelihood of every member of a high-tech civilization agreeing on such a
matter must be positively minuscule. The man had stated that this was why the
tricones ‘ground so fine’, which perfectly fitted current knowledge. The
tricones chewed solid objects down to a size of no more than just over three
millimetres and, now having applied this measure to what it knew about Atheter
memstorage, Amistad had ascertained that pieces of an Atheter memstore of this
size were not large enough to retain fully identifiable mental structures and
would chemically degrade within a few centuries, wiping out anything else
remaining in them. The purpose of the tricones was to grind up the remnants of
the Atheter civilization but, more importantly, it was to destroy those Atheter
who had tried to save themselves by storing their minds.

Then, of
course, Tombs’s brief exchange with Grant.

Oblivion.

‘How did
you miss that?’ Amistad routed his enquiry to the distant Tagreb.

Rodol
took its time replying. ‘I’ve transmitted the information to our foremost
expert on the Gabble – Shardelle Garadon – along with all the penny mollusc
shell patterns we have on file.’

‘I’m
looking at them now,’ said the drone, those patterns visible to him in a
virtual mental space. ‘And you still haven’t answered my question.’

‘The
Atheter themselves missed it,’ Rodol grumped.

‘You
know as well as I,’ said Amistad, ‘that those Atheter who did not choose
oblivion probably stored the shell patterns as alleles within the penny mollusc
genome, set and ready for some later mutation or unravelling telomere to
release them.’

‘Yeah,
probably.’

That the
Tagreb AI had missed the glyphs of the Atheter language incised into the shells
of those molluscs perfectly demonstrated the necessity of the AI approach of
feeding different minds different sets of ‘facts’. Knowledge blindness was
equally endemic amidst all intelligences, whether their minds ran in crystal or
grey watery fat.

‘Why
didn’t we pick up on this stuff from the Atheter AI?’ Amistad asked.

‘Because
all its communications have been in a Human format, and before it effectively
shut down it was parsimonious with its knowledge and about as Delphic in its
communications as Dragon.’ Rodol paused. ‘You are up to date on current
knowledge, Amistad – now you are a prime, nothing is being kept from you.’

Amistad
had been wondering if he himself had been fed a ‘different set of facts’ that
excluded stuff from the Atheter AI. Rodol’s claim that this wasn’t so did
nothing to reassure the drone.

‘So what
else have we missed?’

‘We are
reviewing data files, and are now looking for hidden knowledge,’ said Rodol.
‘And already some anomalies are coming to light – some unusual redundancies.’

‘Like
what?’

‘Like it
seems that the Atheter art department was overrun with subversives.’

‘What?’

‘Thus
far it appears that beyond saving the Atheter written language for posterity,
the penny mollusc shell pattern serves no other function. It neither
camouflages nor is it one of those preposterous developments related to
mating.’

‘Oh
dear,’ said Amistad. ‘I do hope you haven’t passed this on to Chanter yet.’

‘Perhaps
best to let him find out about it later.’

‘Yes, I
think so.’

‘So tell
me about redundancy.’

‘Further
assessment of the studies of the photoactive amoebae in a hooder’s eyes reveal
that producing light does not serve to increase the survivability of either the
amoebae or their host, and that the amoebae contain apparently redundant and
extremely complex mechanisms to modulate the frequency, direction and colour of
that light, all across the spectrum from 350 ultraviolet to 780 infrared, which
we know is the precise spectrum covered by a gabbleduck’s vision.’

‘Go on.’

‘Also of
note is that it is the differences in this modulation that led us to
classifying over four thousand separate genera of photoactive amoebae – there
is very little else to distinguish each genus.’

‘And
this means?’

‘Image
files.’

Had some
Atheter, facing extinction, stored its family snapshots in the amoeba genome?

‘Do you
have any clear yet?’

‘Yes, we
do have some fragments.’

The
image file arrived in an instant. It showed a complicated tangle of tubes
interlinking a variety of globular shapes. Holes were punched into the
interiors of these objects, and in the darkness of some of these glinted things
suspiciously like eyes. Amistad chose one hole and took magnification up to its
pixel limit to reveal the head of a gabbleduck, no, an Atheter, something
metallic woven across the top of its bill. Next swinging perspective to one
side, Amistad saw that the whole structure seemed to be made of a basket weave
of flute-grass stems.

‘Their
cities sang,’ Rodol noted.

‘An
appropriate moment for me to butt in,’ some other abruptly interjected.

As Rodol
tumbled away, the one interjecting leapfrogging from the Tagreb AI and
occupying all the bandwidth of the communication, Amistad felt a momentary
anger at the interruption, suppressed at once when he realized its source.

‘Appropriate
in what way?’

This new
intelligence reached out and touched Amistad’s mind, replaying something that
had come direct from Penny Royal. The drone saw Tombs telling Grant, ‘Its weaver did not choose oblivion, soldier. So many did not,
which is why the tricones grind so fine.’

‘They
wove their cities,’ said Amistad.

‘Their
whole technology was based on the weaving process,’ replied the Earth Central
AI, ruler of the Polity. ‘It indicates that Masada was truly their Homeworld and
that flute grasses are a natural product of evolution, and not part of an
engineered ecology, though that is beside the point. The point, rather, is
this.’

An image
file arrived, digital recording, Polity format, data packet accompanying it.
Amistad gazed upon a massive horn-shaped object poised over a green gas giant,
sucking substance from that Jovian world like some monstrous leech – a woven horn-shaped object with high-scale density and
evidently alien technology packing its interior. Running the timeline forward
Amistad watched the thing complete its feeding, ignite a nuclear blast behind
it and hurtle out from the giant, to then suddenly stretch, down to nothing,
spearing away into the dark.

‘Its
rather novel U-jumps are limited to ten light years at a time,’ Earth Central
explained. ‘We suspect both its method of U-jumping and their limited distance
are not usual, but due to an imbalance in its U-space engine.’

‘The
Atheter device,’ Amistad stated.

‘Yes,
and coming your way.’

Checking
projections in the data package, the drone saw that, at its current rate of
travel, this thing would arrive over Masada within five days.

‘And
what am I supposed to do about this?’ Amistad asked.

‘You’ll
deal with it, of course,’ Earth Central replied succinctly, then cut the
connection.

Chanter used his cutter on the curtain of rhizome, stepped out of his
mudmarine, stomped across the fallen vegetable matter then stood with his arms
folded and a chunk of anger rolling in his gut. He certainly was interested in
this product of the Technician, but rather resented Amistad co-opting him from
chasing after that entity and employing him as a damned taxi driver. He tapped
one webbed foot against the damp ground, making wet platting sounds, and peered
at the three approaching.

The
woman, apparently, worked for that brothel keeper of media whoredom, Earthnet,
so he dismissed her from his consideration. The soldier was more interesting,
since he had been there when the Technician did what it did and had then,
although Tombs was a proctor, saved the man’s life. To Chanter this meant that
despite his martial background, Grant might possess some understanding of the
Technician and its work, might have seen something beyond prosaic reality, and
might know art. Tombs himself was of greatest interest, and the amphidapt
studied him closely.

Tombs
looked nothing like a proctor any more, but there should be no surprise in
that, twenty years having passed since he wore the uniform and beat pond
workers into submission. He also moved oddly, his disjointed gait carrying him
to the more prominent and thick drifts of rhizome, even though all the rhizome
layer here, unlike the churned and smoking area over to the right, seemed
perfectly flat and easily capable of supporting the weight of a man. He walked
like someone carrying a heavy load, as if worried about sinking, but as he drew
close, Chanter read no worry in the man. Tombs’s expression was utterly
unreadable. His eyes seemed like hollows in a skull.

The
three halted before Chanter, Shree and Grant studying him curiously whilst
Tombs slowly lost that alien expression and took on the one of a man lost in
some internal dream world. Shree and Grant of course knew about adapts, but
Chanter supposed they weren’t yet used to seeing them on this backward world.

‘I’m to
take you three to the Tagreb,’ Chanter snapped.

‘And
Penny Royal.’

Chanter
shivered and peered over towards that churned and smoking ground. ‘What
happened here?’

‘Amistad
didn’t tell you?’ asked the soldier.

‘No, I
just got a terse instruction to pick you up and was told that you would fill me
in – seems the drone’s a bit busy now.’

‘Penny
Royal had a rather close encounter with the Technician.’

‘Is it
hurt?’ Chanter asked, peering anxiously towards the churned area.

‘Lying
in pieces over there,’ said the woman.

Chanter
felt something lurch inside him; all his reason for being. Some black objects
were visible, had the Technician been destroyed? He swung back towards them.
‘Where is it?’

Grant
pointed at those black objects and led the way. Chanter fell in behind the man,
then quickly overtook him. In a moment they reached the objects and Chanter
immediately recognized them as pieces of the black AI, and realized his
misunderstanding.

‘And the
Technician?’ he asked casually.

‘In a
lot better shape,’ Grant replied. ‘Didn’t look like it had a scratch on it.’
Chanter continued to conceal his relief as the soldier gestured to Penny
Royal’s remains. ‘You got some way we can get these inside your . . . vehicle?’

‘Certainly,’
Chanter nodded, then after a moment called, ‘Mick! Out here now!’

The
odd-looking robot peeked out of the mudmarine, the two over there quickly
moving away from the entrance as it extended one long-toed foot to test the
quality of the ground. After a moment it clambered out like some giant iron
cockroach that had been stepped on but still survived, scuttled past the other
two, observing them with one hinged-up stalked eye, and came over to Chanter,
halting before him like a sheepdog awaiting instructions.

‘All
this,’ Chanter gestured to the scattered remains of Penny Royal. ‘Collect it up
and put it in the cargo blister. No need to be careful with it – this isn’t one
of the Technician’s sculptures.’

Mick
scuttled past them, folded out one arm and closed long fingers around a single
spine, yanking it up to reveal the heptahedron of grey metal attached to its
base, and a length of tentacle extending from one face of that. This went onto
Mick’s ribbed back, where the tentacle writhed slightly. The next identical
component went on, and studying the rest Chanter realized that all Penny
Royal’s components were of this format. He swallowed drily upon seeing one of
those tentacles turn and attach to the heptahedron at the base of a separate
spine. It seemed likely the black AI wasn’t dead, just inconvenienced. He
turned back towards his mudmarine, Grant walking beside him.

‘So
you’re Chanter,’ said Grant.

Chanter
restrained himself from sarcastic comments about how common mudmarine-occupying
amphidapts were on Masada and contented himself with, ‘Evidently.’

‘I’ve
known about you for years, of course,’ said Grant. ‘Known that like me you’ve
been working for Amistad.’

Chanter
felt some chagrin at that. ‘We are colleagues,’ he said. ‘We exchange
information and are useful to each other – no more than that.’

Grant
shrugged, and said no more as they returned to the other two. Here Chanter
gazed with distaste at Shree.

‘You, I
will transport to the Tagreb with these two, but you’ll report nothing about me
unless I allow it – I’ve been subject to Earthnet hatchet jobs before.’