Polity 4 - The Technician (51 page)

‘We could never see it,’ the AI replied.

‘No, but Dragon did, straight away.’

The ATV
began to pull away but, at that moment, the big gabbleduck Jem had seen earlier
decided to intervene. It rose up out of the flute grasses beside the vehicle,
massive, pyramidal, reached out with one big heavy forelimb and brought a claw
the size of a scrapyard grab down on its roof. The ATV’s forward motion ceased,
its wheels spinning and throwing up a spray of mud and chunks of rhizome. Jem
saw the roof distort as the gabbleduck closed its claw – took a grip – then in
a moment the wheels were clear of the ground. The creature picked it right up
before its face and studied it with evident curiosity, turned it over and began
prodding at the underside with one long black claw. It looked almost like a
child with a motorized toy, checking to see where the batteries went. That claw
then strayed, hitting one of the rapidly spinning wheels. The tyre shredded,
spraying out yellow sealant foam from the auto puncture repair, straight into
the creature’s face.

‘Bohob,’
it said, and discarded the vehicle.

The ATV
crashed down on its roof, its front screen exploding outwards and snapped power
cables shorting on its now upward-facing underside, through the bodywork and
into the ground, which began to smoke. Jem winced, wondered if any of the
passengers had survived that. He turned away.

Time to
go. The other gabbleducks were concentrating on the vehicle, whilst the big
monster was wiping foam from its domed head like a bald and sweaty fat man. Jem
moved off, neither hurrying nor moving furtively. He knew enough about a
gabbleduck’s senses to realize they would be aware of his presence. If he ran
their hunter’s instinct might impel them to chase him. If he tried to creep
away, that same instinct might shift them into stalking mode. But really, it
was all might and maybe, because few logical rules applied to these creatures.
Even though his skull contained the mind of one of their ancestors, he did not
know what they would do.

The
clearing soon out of sight, Jem moved into an area where the grasses had been
crushed down, and picked up his pace. From behind he heard nonsense talk, the
screech of metal rending, then gunfire. Ripple-John and his sons had a small
chance of survival. If they got away from the gabbleducks they just might be
able to make it on foot back to civilization. But even should they reach a
place where the hostile local wildlife couldn’t get to them, they would never
be safe. They had released the death hormone and they had killed Chanter, and
would be hunted relentlessly. Jem dismissed them from his mind.

‘I want you to contact the gravan I
arrived here in and make a communications link for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there is something aboard that
vehicle we need, something we need very much.’

The
communication link opened, again seemingly no different to using a Dracocorp
augmentation. He saw Leif Grant peering down at him and wondered what the man
was seeing on his screen.

‘You can
return now,’ Jem said out loud, not sure why he felt the need to speak like
that.

‘Tombs?’
said Grant.

‘The
same.’

‘What
happened . . . how are you talking to me now?’

In the
background Jem saw Shree Enkara leaning across to peer at the screen. She
looked angry, and had a numb-patch plastered to her temple.

‘My
captors have been . . . inconvenienced. I am talking to you via the Atheter AI,
which I am now heading towards. I want you to come to me.’

Grant’s
expression registered shock, then after a moment he said, ‘Okay, will do.’
Shree’s expression hardened – certainty, purpose there. Of course. Dragon’s
agent here, the dracowoman Blue, had picked her as the perfect way to convey a
very important item to the designated spot. Blue had seen, so long after
Dragon’s death, a better way to bring that entity’s original plan to fruition.

‘That’s
all,’ said Jem, and the link faded.

The
barrier seemed so utterly ineffectual. The rafts supporting the uprights of
each arch were mere coins of foamstone a metre across and half a metre deep.
The arches themselves seemed to be just curved chrome pipe the thickness of a
man’s wrist. All around them the flute grass had been trampled flat across a
wide area. As a precaution Jem moved off the trail into a nearby stand yet to
be trampled down. Now linked into the Atheter AI he understood why this area
had seen so much activity, and recognized the danger here.

The
Atheter had spectacularly failed to recreate that mythical garden of their past
because, over the long millennia of their civilization, they had lost track of
the distinction between evolved and manufactured biology in both themselves and
the life forms they surrounded themselves with. Within the skulls of all the
wildlife of this world grew some form of the same microwave receiver and
transmitter the AI had used to call the gabbleducks. And that wildlife had been
frequently attracted to this area by the muttering of the AI stirring in sleep.

Jem
paused at the edge of the flute-grass stand, ten metres of open ground ahead to
the barrier, a further ten metres beyond it. Far to his right he observed a
heroyne stilt-legging through the barrier and waited till it was out of sight
before moving. He quickly hurried across, had reached the barrier when he heard
something crash out of the grasses behind him.

‘Going
somewhere, proctor?’

Jem
turned. From the vehemence in the shout he had expected to see Ripple-John, but
no, it was the son called Blitz. The man strode towards him, jerkily,
Ripple-John’s flack gun clutched tightly in his hand. He had been through the
wars: clothing muddy and ripped, blood smeared down the side of his face and
soaking through at one thigh. He raised his gun and Jem stepped back.

‘My
brother is dead,’ said Blitz. ‘My father is dead.’

‘And why
am I to blame for that?’ Jem asked.

Blitz
halted, raised his weapon.

‘Gabbleducks,’
he said. ‘You . . . they came because of you!’

‘And
therefore?’

‘It’s
because of you they’re dead!’

‘Am I to
blame for defending myself?’

‘Theocrat!’
Blitz spat, and opened fire.

Jem
remained utterly motionless as flack missiles exploded against the hardfield
only a few centimetres ahead of him. Any resentment the Atheter AI felt towards
him had obviously been outweighed by its understanding of the situation, for it
had started the hardfields the moment he crossed the line between the inside
and the outside of the barrier. Jem now took a further couple of paces back.

With a
shriek of pain and frustration Blitz charged across the intervening ground. He
shouldered hard into the force-field and rebounded, crashed back to the ground,
then after a moment pushed himself up on his forearms, and just lay there
panting.

‘Take
your surviving brother and go,’ said Jem. ‘You have maybe twenty minutes before
the Technician reaches the barrier at this point.’

Blitz
pushed himself up, gasped, then managed to get to his feet. He turned, stood
there swaying, just staring at Jem. Seeing him, now, Jem recognized something
of himself there.

‘I was
indoctrinated to believe certain things,’ Jem said. ‘How different are you?’

‘I don’t
believe in any damned god!’ Blitz shouted.

Jem
shook his head regretfully. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself for not questioning
your father. It’s not your fault that he and your brother are dead.’

He
turned and began walking away. Behind him, a rumbling explosion accompanied
Blitz’s scream of rage as he emptied the flack gun against the force-field. He
shouldn’t have wasted the bullets. He would need them.

Amistad scuttled around the ring of the tokomac to a glassy blister
covering a socket array connecting to the thing’s sub-AI computer, pressed a
claw against an indentation beside it and turned it. The blister lid rose
slightly then swivelled aside like a fold-out lens. Even while doing this the
drone kept his long-range sensors on other activity within the Braemar system
to ensure preparations were under way. Four white-hot streaks scored across the
face of Masada as the four insystem gamma-class attack ships decelerated in
upper atmosphere. Lightly touching the mind in each vessel the war drone
listened to their internal chatter. All very professional and so unlike the insane
conversations Amistad had conducted with his fellows during the Prador–Human
war.

‘Haiman
Drode’s data reveals three U-space faults developing in the device’s vicinity,’
Amistad told them. ‘This indicates that it is already deploying the “bells” or “pattern
disruptors” it used to wipe out the minds of the Atheter, and which it also
used against the AI Penny Royal.’

Amistad
gave an internal instruction and the tip of one claw split to extrude a spray
of self-guiding optic plugs. The thing about warfare in space was that when the
EM started ramping up, communications got disrupted. This was precisely why the
Polity had started making independent war drones just like Amistad. Therefore,
if you wanted to control some large lethal piece of equipment, just like the
one Amistad was squatting on, it was always a good idea to ensure a hard link.

‘Low
orbital deployment?’ one of the attack ships queried.

‘Tombs’s
words “under the bell” indicate the disruptors were visible during the racial
suicide, therefore yes, low deployment and a readiness to go tropospheric. I
need fast intercept over the main continent so stay geostationary or
grav-balanced there.’

‘We can
surface-deploy,’ the attack ship noted.

Amistad
paused in what he was doing, immediately called up and inspected the schematics
of these ships, within just a few seconds realizing that they could launch
almost as fast as they could drop out of the sky. ‘Two of you down: one in the
Northern Mountains and one mid-continent.’

‘Will
do.’

Amistad
added, ‘It seems likely these disruptors will materialize before the main
mechanism itself so don’t wait on that – confine your efforts to surface
defence. They must be destroyed.’

‘What
about collaterals? These things’ll have a U-space energy feed and might go off
like air-detonated atomics.’

‘We have
no positive proof of the device’s intent, but we cannot afford to wait and see.
If one of those things powers up over a settlement we could end up with tens,
if not hundreds of thousands of mind-wiped Human beings. We have to risk blast
damage and collaterals.’

‘Understood.’

Focusing
in and cleaning up the image, Amistad watched fusion torches slowing the attack
ships at a rate that would have turned Human crew to jelly, had there been any
aboard. Each ship bore the shape of a cuttlefish bone, but with weapons
nacelles protruding. Each was also of a primary colour: orange, yellow, blue
and red. They were modern vessels, with speed and power not seen in attack
ships of an equivalent size during Amistad’s war years. They would do their
job. Amistad returned his attention to the task at claw, reached forward to set
the optic plugs into motion. They groped around for a moment then found their
sockets. A microsecond later the geostat weapon fell completely under his
control.

‘What
are you up to?’ Ergatis queried from down on the surface. ‘You could have
asked.’

‘You’ll
have enough on your plate, I suspect,’ replied the drone. ‘Have you considered
ordering evacuation of the main settlements?’

‘Yes,
but I guess you’ve not been paying attention.’

‘Enlighten
me,’ said Amistad, meanwhile running checks on his recently acquired toy.

‘As soon
as it became evident that device was on its way here I raised the terrorist
threat level based on a high likelihood of the Tidy Squad having obtained a CTD
and being intent on using it against a main population centre, which is about
the same threat level as these disruptor devices, and easier to understand.’

Amistad
paused to harden a link down to Ergatis and absorb data. Many of those with
their own transport had taken off to the squerm farm villages. Others were
dispersing on foot.

‘My
problem is that if I issue a full evacuation order the distrust of us here is
so high that over half the population will disobey it, and if I enforce it that
will only increase bad feeling,’ Ergatis continued. ‘That, however, is not the
main problem. The problem is that I have nowhere to evacuate people to.
Crop-pond areas would do for those who have adapted themselves to the
environment here, but the majority are not so adapted. Enforced evacuation
would result in many deaths.’

‘Have
you considered telling them the truth?’

‘Considered
and rejected. They would ridicule the idea that a two-million-year-old machine
is on its way here quite likely intent on turning them all into brainless
animals – the ease of rule of an informed populace does not apply here. Perhaps
in another fifty years they’ll be sufficiently educated to listen to us.’

‘Very
well – keep me updated.’

Amistad
ran a couple of small tests, reaction jets flashing lines of white vapour out
all around the weapon’s tokomak and the object beginning to turn. He then ran
another firing pattern which set it on a course curving round from its
previously geostationary position. No need for it here now, the system dreadnought
was already in view – a distorted sphere of mirrored metal, one hemisphere cut
out from which it almost seemed all its internal components were spilling – it
would have to do for now.

‘Senator,’ Amistad addressed the ship. ‘You are to take
position alpha over the continent. Liaise with the attack ships, give them what
back-up you can, but most important I want you to constantly map local and
planetary U-space to track any interference. Almost certainly, once the
mechanism arrives it will deploy further disruptors and I want you relaying
that data immediately.’