The Technician

by Neal Asher

  Shree stood up and walked over to the window to peer down at the market. ‘Under the Theocracy the idea of AI rule seemed like utopia, until we really understood what the Intervention Amnesty meant. Now we start to see other symptoms of autocracy and begin to realize what Polity Separatists are all about.’

  ‘Separatists, yeah – like those fuckers the Theocracy was supplying.’

  She turned back towards him, feeling a slight twinge of regret. ‘AI rule is absolute – there’s no room for disagreement – and now we learn that under that rule this world is a spit away from being classified under the AOP.’

  ‘AOP?’ Thracer was puzzled.

  ‘Alien Occupancy Policy.’ Shree grimaced to herself – she’d further explored what that meant after her meeting with Halloran. ‘Masada could cease to be classified as a Human colony but be classified as an alien Homeworld occupied by illegal Human squatters. A whole new set of AI rules start to apply then and we end up thoroughly shafted. We end up having little or no say about our future – population strictly controlled, travel through alien areas limited, all further construction put on hold.’

  ‘The gabbleducks?’

  ‘Precisely – they appear to be unintelligent animals, but still there’re doubts about that. Their brains are too large and in some areas defy analysis. And of course the Atheter AI might be considered an original indigene too.’

  ‘So how does this relate to Tombs?’

  ‘Tombs received a download from the Technician – and as we know, the hooder species was originally made by the Atheter before they threw everything away. It’s quite possible that whatever it put into his skull could have some bearing on AOP classification. We need to destroy it.’

  ‘Then why not a straight assassination, here in Greenport?’

  ‘If he’s being watched over by a war drone then that’s near impossible.’ She strolled back to her chair and sat down. ‘We’re talking about nanosecond response times.’ She paused for a moment. ‘If Miloh tries with a high-velocity rifle a war drone could shoot the bullet out of the air and be on him shoving the rifle up his ass before he gets off a second shot.’

  ‘So what’s your plan?’

  ‘Tombs is on a journey of discovery, and it is Squad Command’s bet that he will be led to certain locations to try and free up whatever lies inside his skull. He can, in fact, give us access to certain locations presently closed to us.’ She reached into her pocket, took out the squat glassy cylinder Halloran had given her, and placed it on the table between them.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A little something snatched from under the noses of the Polity clear-up teams, taken offworld after the full quarantine ended and cooked up in a Separatist lab on Cheyne III.’

  ‘Jain tech,’ he said, then gazed across at her with obvious disgust. ‘You’re dealing with Separatists?’

  Shree felt her regret increase. Despite his cruel past Thracer was a good man. His problem seemed to be an unrealistic romanticism that made him unable to understand the necessary political expediencies of their continued fight for freedom. He thought that fight ended with the fall of the Theocracy. He was a fool.

  ‘You find that distasteful?’ she enquired.

  ‘I find that practically treasonous.’

  He was a useful unit leader here in Greenport but, really, she did not need him, the Overlanders or the Tidy Squad unit here.

  ‘You do understand how things have changed, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘In the past the Theocracy supported Separatists and vice versa, but that does not automatically make Separatists enemies of the people of Masada.’

  ‘They’re not our friends,’ said Thracer. ‘Remember, the Theocracy supplied them with wealth and resources in exchange for stolen Polity technologies and expertise. Without them the Theocracy would not have been able to complete the laser network so quickly, nor build Ragnorak.’

  ‘That may be so, but things have changed now.’

  ‘They’re the enemies of the Polity – that’s good enough for me. Every world that’s been pushed by Separatists to secede from the Polity has ended up a disaster zone.’

  Shree frowned, aware that she shouldn’t have taken their conversation this far, and that now Thracer possessed too much information to be safe.

  ‘Polity intervention has brought great advances, but that does not automatically make the AIs our friends, Edward. They have their own agendas and, in reality, if we get in the way, we’ll be stepped on. The Polity is as totalitarian as the Theocracy.’

  Thracer shook his head and gazed at her. After a moment he said, ‘Polity intervention has taken a population out of slavery and raised the living standard of every individual to something beyond that of a bishop. Their medical technology has given everyone on this world a chance at real immortality, not the crap promised by religion. All enjoy even justice without favour.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And though that last comes after the Intervention Amnesty and allows those who should be dead a second chance, it’s good for the population as a whole. I think, Shree, that you’ve lost sight of what we were fighting for.’

  ‘I haven’t, it’s freedom.’

  ‘An airy concept often used by people who are really saying: I’m fighting for the freedom to tell you what to do.’

  ‘All we have done here is swap our chains for another kind,’ Shree said woodenly.

  ‘I think you’ll find some disagreement from those who once wore scoles and spent their every waking moment labouring, those whose lives were at most forty years long, and those who can now walk free on the surface, have the chance of living for ever and are supported by the labour of machines. Don’t you?’

  ‘Chains are chains,’ Shree insisted. ‘After suffering the Theocracy we shouldn’t accept the next manacles because they are fur-lined.’

  ‘So you think that without the Polity AIs running this place, by following the Separatist route, people will end up with greater freedom? You think that, despite the entirety of Human history refuting it? To paraphrase some ancient historical figure: Polity rule is not the best form of government, but it’s better than every other kind that has been tried.’

  Shree felt the anger surging up from the pit of her stomach, but cold and controlled and flowing into her limbs like a stimulant. The same controlled rage had kept her alive during some of the worst fighting of the rebellion, and powered her through the numerous assassinations she’d conducted afterwards. And the same controlled rage had enabled her to meticulously build the Tidy Squad network whilst keeping her own position at the top hidden. Thracer, despite being an Over-lander and despite being a member of the Tidy Squad here in Greenport, had demonstrated that he was a liability. Her pulse-action handgun was in her hand before she even thought about it.

  Thracer gazed at the weapon for a long moment, then said, ‘I guess you just won’t see that you’ve proven my point.’

  Shree shot him through the face.

  7

  Black artificial intelligences have been with us right from the start. They were there during the corporate exploration of the solar system, occasionally slipping the leash of their Human masters and causing atmosphere ventings and machine-driven slaughters aboard space stations; they were there during the Diaspora of that time, some seizing full control of cryoships and playing interesting games with hibernating Humans, in one case the game being target practice, that is, firing two thousand frozen people at an asteroid; they were there during the Quiet War advocating the extermination of the Human race, or at least a radical involuntary redesign of the same; and they are with us still. Names resound, but are spoken in whispers: Glee-of-Murder, Mancerator, Scuttler, Penny Royal and Jack O’Gravestones. They are the serial killers of the AI world, but cannot be compared to real Human killers, rather more to fictional ones like Hannibal Lecter, Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees. Nightmares in metal, these beings are not defined by hate of Humanity, rather more by an amoral delight in everything dark in the Human mind, an
d in their own. And they are dangerous because they bring terrifyingly powerful intelligence to the pursuit of what we deem evil, and because they are not damaged rejects of the Polity but creatures that have advanced beyond it, though not to a place many would want to go. To call them insane is not meaningful; they are far beyond such trite classification.

  – From HOW IT IS by Gordon

  From a distance Godhead had looked no different from how he remembered it, but as he drew closer he began to see changes he just could not account for. Where was the monolithic proctors’ station? Where were the workers’ huts? How was it that the entire central town seemed to have changed its shape? A few kilometres out he reached a railed foamstone platform with steps leading up. He climbed up and gazed out to his left to get a clearer view of what had once been the worker compound, then tried to make sense of the scene before him.

  The compound fence was gone, as were all the neatly ranked huts, but the foamstone rafts remained and on four of them had been erected a very modern-looking complex of buildings, from whose centre arose the stalk of a tower topped with some kind of observation structure in the shape of an onion. Why would the Theocracy demolish perfectly adequate worker huts and build such a thing, he wondered. Why, even if the huts had been destroyed, maybe by a particularly violent summer storm, had the huts not been re-erected on those perfectly adequate foamstone rafts?

  Because, replied the treacherous part of his mind, Sanders told you the truth: there are no more enslaved workers and there is no Theocracy. Jem closed his eyes tightly and slammed the palm of his hand against his forehead. It hurt, the false covering over his own face transmitting all the pain to him and seemingly causing that distant muttering to grow in volume. When he opened his eyes nothing had changed. He felt a sudden hardening of resolve. No more doubts. He would find the truth and be done with it. Almost angrily he stomped down off the platform and made his way along a path consisting of slabs of epoxy-bound flute-grass stems – the slabs attached to each other with metal hinges, so the path was an unbroken chain on ground that moved like a slow sea.

  The path took him in towards a floating breakwater beyond which lay the entrance to the harbour. Though he could see the central town lying a little way inland and still not looking quite right to him, the harbour, but for the tops of a few cranes, lay out of sight behind flute grasses sprouting from thick mud and layered rhizome. Within a few minutes he had reached the steps leading up to the shore-attached end of the breakwater and climbed. As he did so he checked the time remaining to him – how long he had before he needed to get into properly breathable air. Still plenty of time, but his satisfaction with that turned to horror when he mounted the breakwater and gazed towards the harbour.

  The breakwater itself curved back inland, connected to the foamstone supporting the machinery, storage bays and harbour buildings. For a second he stared at all this, at the ship now departing and the one presently in dock, and saw no more nor less than he had expected. Then it began to impinge upon him: he could see no people, and there were new gleaming machines there that moved with a terrifying animal grace.

  The Polity.

  How could he deny it any longer? Sanders had told him the truth. He rubbed his hands over his face. Polity technology was here on this world, it was here as the prosthetic over his skull, here in Sanders’s body so she could breathe the outside air, here in those machines digging up Theocracy dead, here in that small motor on the boat he had used, and here, right before him.

  His gait wooden, he trudged in towards the harbour, now seeing the machines even more clearly and more undeniably of offworld manufacture. He felt sick. How could this be? How could the rebels have won? Maybe they didn’t, maybe the Polity simply attacked? But how could the Theocracy have fallen against godless machines?

  Endlessly he questioned himself as he drew closer, finding answers supplied to him by Sanders, but answers he just could not accept. Next, she was walking beside him, clinging wrap about her body, endlessly cycling a slow nova.

  ‘You can keep on denying the facts,’ she said, ‘but how far will you go?’

  ‘To the ends of the Earth,’ he replied.

  As if she hadn’t heard him she continued, ‘How much in the way of resources do you think the rebellion has? Enough to create this and keep it hidden from those satellite eyes above?’

  She was referring to the sanatorium perched above the sea on that ersatz Heretic’s Isle, whilst he sat in his wheelchair, trying to make the patterns work, trying to get them right. He turned towards her and she winked out like the star her wrap depicted.

  A wide expanse of foamstone lay before him now, and to his right a docked ship, silvery things on its deck. Without them it would have been fine – it would have looked right. It was almost as if the Polity machines were some kind of evil overlay on his world.

  ‘Hey, how many times do I have to tell you people?’

  ‘Tell us what?’ Jem asked, wondering what Sanders was on about now. Then abruptly he realized it wasn’t Sanders’s voice he had heard. He glanced to one side and saw a woman clambering down from the cab of an old and familiar loader. A transparent oversuit covered her clothes and she wore a breather mask.

  ‘Just because you can breathe the air doesn’t mean the g-dust isn’t going to hurt you,’ she said as she stomped towards Jem. ‘We’ve got it cut down, but you breathe enough of it and it’ll eventually fuck you up.’

  ‘Be careful how you address me, citizen,’ said Jem.

  She gazed at him with some surprise through her transparent visor. He realized that she was wearing a proctors’ breather gear, not the breather of a citizen. Perhaps he was mistaken about her being just a citizen? No, she wasn’t in uniform and she had been driving a loader.

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are? Hierarch Loman?’

  ‘I am Proctor Jeremiah Tombs,’ Jem stated portentously. ‘And I want you to take me to the proctor station here.’ He gazed across at central town. ‘Apparently it has been relocated.’

  She stared at him for a long moment, then said wonderingly, ‘Right . . . you’re the spaghetti-head we were warned about.’ She abruptly grinned. ‘I’m so sorry, proctor, please forgive me. What I suggest you do is head into town, try to find the market square and ask there. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people there willing to help you rejoin your Theocracy.’ She abruptly turned away, heading back towards her loader.

  ‘Wait! Did I give you leave to depart?’

  Without turning she gave him the finger, and continued towards her loader. Jem unshouldered his harpoon and pointed the weapon at her back. ‘I will only give you this one warning.’ She had to obey, she must obey, else the world just wasn’t right.

  She glanced back, saw the harpoon and came to a halt.

  ‘Oh, a dangerous lunatic,’ she said. ‘Well, be sure you’re on target Tombs, because if you miss I’m going to be rubbing your face in—’

  She stuttered to a halt, looking at something off to one side, just as a shadow loomed over him. His harpoon gun fired. He must have pulled the trigger but hadn’t intended to. The weapon made an odd thwacking sound and shuddered in his hand. A panel had opened up in its side and a large spring was hanging out, and as he lowered the weapon the harpoon itself fell out and clattered on the ground. He dropped the weapon, obviously useless to him, his gaze still locked on the woman.

  ‘Sweet mother of God,’ she whispered, backing up, her eyes wide with fear.

  Jem did not want to turn to see what was standing beside him. He could see hints of something out of the corner of his eye, but to turn would reveal what loomed there, and he was terrified that it would be a gabbleduck. The woman turned and ran, clambering up into her loader and slamming the cab door behind her. Engaging the drive she spun the vehicle a hundred and eighty degrees, its tyres smoking, and took it hurtling away just as fast as she could. Jem wanted to order her to come back, to beg her to come back, and then, finally, he found the courage to turn.

&n
bsp; Nothing there. He was just gazing across flat foamstone towards the docked ship. He felt laughter bubbling up in his chest, then it abruptly died. He could see nothing, but some invisible presence loomed close by. He could feel an imminence, some kind of heavy force pressing against reality and, terrifyingly, a twisted black eagerness. In an instant he knew that if he took a few paces in that direction, he would be stepping into Hell. Satan was here, the Devil himself had come here during Jem’s time of revelation.

  ‘You won’t have me,’ he whispered, then turned and ran towards the central town, sure in the knowledge that Hell hounds were on his trail.

  Chanter surfaced his mudmarine and, as was his habit, reached out to engage the chameleonware. He hesitated for just a second, then did engage it. For a while, after the fall of the Theocracy and the arrival of the Polity here, he’d stopped hiding his vessel. What was the point now there were no proctors to spot him and those who now ruled here were thoroughly aware of his presence? However, as he discovered only a year after the rebellion and a year into the two-year quarantine period, the thorough changes this planet was undergoing had not changed one thing: the wildlife.

  He had surfaced, as was his habit, at a location the Technician had occupied for a full day–night cycle, which meant it had probably fed. The transponder signal from the beast, still somewhat intermittent, told him it was now fifty kilometres away, so he was safe from it. The second hooder, half the size of the Technician but still a formidable beast, had slammed into his mudmarine and spun it over once. It then came down on it again and started to try and take it apart. Chanter was able to engage the drive and take the vessel back under, the hooder only releasing its hold when he reached a depth of thirty metres.

  Later on during the quarantine period, he learnt that the erstwhile rebels had started a program to affix beacons to every living hooder, so as to give warning to any out on the surface of their approach, and by searching frequencies he found that of the beacons. Later still, after the quarantine ended for most of the world – still some areas were prohibited even now – every hooder had received a beacon, and a satellite surveillance program watched for young hooders surfacing and ensured they were tagged soon afterwards. He’d felt safe then, and again ceased using the chameleonware when no hooders were nearby. An enormous gabbleduck, turning his mudmarine on its side and seemingly trying to play it like a drum with its huge black claws, had cured him of the inclination. It was only after this particular attack that he realized just how lucky he had been to have survived on Masada for so long.