by Neal Asher
Now, here was definitely a place for chameleonware while he exited his craft, and other precautions afterwards. His own transponder and the Polity beacon placed the Technician only five kilometres away from him and, whilst that was far enough for him to safely exit his vessel and head to his destination and yet close enough for most other wildlife to have fled the area, there was always the chance that a gabbleduck sat out there, for hooders ignored them until they were dying.
Whilst still inside his vessel Chanter used his sensors to check the area, then linked to satellite surveillance to check further. The Technician was precisely where it should be, lying coiled in a perfect spiral as if taking a snooze, whilst the upper disc of the mobile observation tower lay almost over his own present location. Nothing else hostile was visible in any section of the electromagnetic spectrum he used to scan, but he now checked a seismic map of the area.
Two hundred metres away from him, just under the surface, lurked a three-metre-long mud snake, its presence there seeming to justify his new paranoia. What if, during all those times he had walked out to check out some new sculpture, a mud snake had been sitting directly below him? Thus, very messily, would his studies have ended.
The mud snake lay too far away to get to him before he reached the tower and, as was often the case when a big hooder was about, had burrowed down deep and curled into a wood-louse ball. Chanter unstrapped himself, picked up his pack and exited his craft and, when a few metres away from it across the rhizome mat, instituted another of his new precautions. A signal from a remote control he held sent the mudmarine down under the surface. Really, sophisticated chameleonware would be no use at all if a big hooder blundered into the craft by chance – it would be like the thing being hit by a monorail. He then turned to look up at the tower and platform silhouetted against the sun.
Bases down on the surface had to be defended, with fences, autoguns and all sorts of devices to discourage the voracious wildlife. Going overland out into the wilds was plain dangerous – it might be that you could know the location of hooders in the area, but what if they moved while you were out there so you ended up surrounded, and what about the other wildlife? Polity AIs tended to want citizens to adhere to the laws, but made no laws to stop people suffering the consequences of their own stupidity. Hundreds of would-be researchers and solvers of the puzzles here had ended up having to be airlifted to safety, whilst hundreds more with less luck had ended up inside the things they had been studying. Observation of the wildlife from the air wasn’t energy-efficient, whilst satellite observation, though presenting clear images, was too divorced from the ground.
The engine that drove the observation tower lay well below ground and was made of ceramics tough enough to withstand the depredations of the tricones. The platform stood too high for any of the wildlife to reach, whilst the stem, also tough ceramic, was as ignored by the wildlife as a rock. It was a workable solution to the problems inherent in studying the Masada fauna, but to Chanter seemed too intrusive, too massive, too much of a statement of Polity arrogance.
As he set out towards it, Chanter recollected that this tower had been designed by one Jonas Clyde, working from a Polity Tagreb – the Taxonomic and Genetic Research Base. He had made a comprehensive study of the biology of the hooders and, along with another researcher called Shardelle Garadon, who had been studying the non-language of the gabbleducks, the ‘gabble’, was credited with putting together everything about the Atheter racial suicide here. However, Chanter very much doubted they were the first to know about it, just the first to bring it into the public arena. An Atheter AI had been down on this world since just after the rebellion, and it seemed likely Polity AIs had been in communication with it and knew everything there was to know about that race.
When Chanter reached the base of the tower, a ring-shaped elevator girdling the stem descended towards him, fast. It slammed to a halt just above the ground, a ramp door folding down to touch the rhizome. Chanter climbed it, his feet slapping wetly on the diamond pattern metal, seated himself in one of the ring of chairs. The moment his bottom touched the seat the elevator ascended, not so fast this time, but fast enough to press him down into the seat, then lift him half out of it as it slowed to a halt below the platform. A door opened into the stem, and he found his way up to the top, and walked out onto the platform where Amistad lurked.
‘My application?’ he asked as he approached the scorpion drone.
‘Ignored,’ the drone replied, turning to face him with metal feet clattering against the floor that sounded like an old diesel engine starting. ‘But you’re not unique. Only on the world Shayden’s Find where it was discovered, during its transportation here and for three years after it was installed here on the surface, did the Atheter AI communicate with anyone. After that it ceased to react in any way.’
‘Is it dead?’ Chanter asked.
‘It’s still drawing power and other monitoring shows it’s still . . . thinking, but that’s all. The speculation is that having ascertained for certain that the Atheter are effectively extinct, it has chosen mental ascension.’
‘Why don’t the AIs do something?’ Chanter asked in frustration.
Only after finding the Technician’s ancient sculpture had he realized that during all his years here on Masada he’d fallen into a kind of fugue. Now, when he studied his journals, he saw a man who had dropped so deeply into esoteric explorations of art that he’d utterly lost his way. Now, with the revelations about the Atheter, he had begun to see his way to the surface again. Some resolution to the whole picture seemed just about within his reach, yet, frustratingly, even intelligences like Amis-tad were still in limbo. So what chance did he stand?
‘That’s problematic,’ said Amistad. ‘When the AI was powered up aboard the ship used to transport it here, it took over the ship AI. It is powerful indeed, perhaps beyond even the power of a sector AI or something like Jerusalem. Intervention could be very dangerous. And there’s also a moral issue.’
‘Moral issue?’
‘The Atheter AI is an alien intelligence, so cannot be judged by Polity standards of mental health, of sanity. We cannot really know whether intervention is required, nor do we have any right to intervene.’
‘Seems specious to me – and you’re not so wary of intervention when it comes to a Human mind.’
‘Definitions of sanity and mental health are clearer there,’ Amistad replied.
‘So we’re just nowhere, it seems,’ Chanter grumped.
He walked out to the rail, for which there was no need, since a very sophisticated shimmer-shield surrounded the platform – the rail was just a psychological prop for the Humans who came here, and a place to mount sophisticated scanning controls. He gazed across at the distant Technician, still coiled in a perfect spiral, then activated a field lensing control. Immediately a section of the shimmer-shield before him framed out, and he expanded the view until it seemed he stood as close to the Technician as he had only once before, when he got close enough to it to fire his transponder into its body.
‘Not very active today,’ he noted.
‘According to your journals it’s been going somnolent like this ever since the rebellion, or rather ever since you found it again after the rebellion – perhaps this is some sort of response to the threat of Jain technology here.’
Chanter glanced round, but the drone remained unreadable as ever. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘It was that same technology the Atheter suicided to avoid, so their biomechs are probably aware of it too. Also the Technician has been undergoing some major internal changes during its periods of sleep.’
‘It stopped producing its sculptures during the rebellion too,’ Chanter said.
‘How can you be sure? Throughout your time here you discovered one sculpture every couple of years on average, and not necessarily new ones. It could have stopped years before or years afterwards.’
‘Perhaps it’ll begin again . . .’
‘Yo
u are no further in your understanding of those sculptures?’ Amistad enquired.
‘I’m thinking that maybe it tries to recreate the creatures it destroys – some primitive form of prey worship as seen in cave paintings done by prehistoric Humans.’
‘You try to understand art, Chanter, but only with your own mind because to you it has to be something more than the mathematical, the scientific. It has to be something mystical, mysterious, almost beyond the grasp of logic. It’s almost as if you are searching for a substitute to worship.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Chanter, but without heat, doubt lodging in his skull.
‘It’s a shame that beyond the scientific tools you use to study the physical structures of those sculptures, you use nothing else. Copious analytical tools are easily at your disposal, and using them you might discover something . . . interesting.’
‘Art is not science,’ said Chanter stubbornly, now turning and heading for the exit from the platform.
‘That everything can be analysed, catalogued and understood does not destroy its value. Mysticism is the function of a mind looking for alternatives to reality.’
Chanter fled the platform, went back down into the mud.
During the rebellion many buildings had been destroyed here in Zealos, but now they had been replaced and Polity technology and building materials were evident everywhere. However, to Sanders it felt very strange to so freely wander these streets. Even now, after coming here intermittently over the last twenty years, she still expected the hand of a proctor on her shoulder and a demand for identification. This had happened just prior to the rebellion, when she and some other rebels had come here to steal medical supplies from a Theocracy store. Luckily they escaped with their lives, though the proctor concerned ended up in a city sewer.
Church Street lay ahead, and two of the four churches that lined it were still frequented by the many believers living here, though they came furtively and often disguised, aware that Tidy Squad spotters were in the vicinity, and that if they were recognized they might find themselves subject to public ridicule. The two other churches, however, had been put to different use. Episcopal See, which had been a burnt-out ruin just after the rebellion, had been rebuilt as a meeting hall for rebel soldiers. The big Church of Zelda Smythe, its dome collapsed and two of the four steeples extending above its bell towers toppled, had been lovingly restored, its steeples plated with silver and its dome with gold. But no one went there to recite the Satagents and sing the praises of the prophetess, though it was true that communicants came to speak with something akin to a god.
A covered walkway terminated at a side door to the church, but the main doors were now exposed to the open street. Sanders climbed red marble steps to the big, arched grapewood door, turned the single black iron ring at its centre and pushed the door inwards against the internal pressure differential. She stepped inside, the door swinging silently closed behind her, and studied the interior.
Pews still stood on either side at the back of the central aisle, and ahead of these lay the rough stone prayer floor where the deeply religious could bloody their knees and graze their foreheads as they worked up a lather reciting the Satagents. At the four corners of the church, doors opened into the residences of the Bishop, his vicars and staff, along with apartments for those attending for an intensive course in faith reinforcement. Of course none of these people were here now. All those in the Brotherhood, within Zealos, who had been turned into zombies, were shot by the rebels and buried in a massive pit outside the city, until Polity machines came to retrieve the dangerous corpses. Many of those in the Theocracy yet to receive their Gift were hunted down and slaughtered too, others fled and some survived – Sanders had tended a few of them on Heretic’s Isle.
Walking down the aisle towards the altar and the twin lecterns, Sanders looked up at the paintings decorating the inside of the dome. Depicted was a mishmash of religious art: the cupids as winged Buddhas, classical Christian demons, along with the goddess Kali and other more obscure monsters, supposedly tormenting the unrighteous, whilst the righteous wore glowing crowns, flowing robes and Dracocorp augmentations. Sanders had only come in here twice before, both occasions after this place was restored. However, she felt sure that then the righteous had not worn such expressions of sickening piety, nor had the damned seemed to be having such fun, or the demons been so amused.
The lecterns stood just ahead and off to either side of the altar. From the big lectern on the right the Bishop would have delivered his sermon, whilst from the left-hand lectern one of his vicars would have controlled the pictures appearing on the screen wall behind the altar, presently concealed behind heavy gold-braided curtains, whilst also keeping a close eye on the congregation. The altar itself was a Bridge console from an ancient First Diaspora U-space colony ship – the one Zelda Smythe supposedly brought her people here in. Upon it stood a framed picture of the woman herself – a religious icon – around which rested a bizarre collection of religious artefacts: a Christian cross with Christ nailed in place, a wooden carving of Ganesh, a small stone Buddha, amber worry beads and a scroll reputed to be one of those from beside the Dead Sea. All these, the religious believed, belonged to Zelda Smythe and helped her towards revelation and her amalgamation of religions, as did the library behind the left-hand lectern, numbering such works as the Koran and the Bible, actually on paper, and numerous other religious texts.
‘I see you’ve been playing with the artwork, Ergatis,’ she said, finally coming to stand before the altar.
‘I like to keep myself amused,’ replied a deep godlike voice. ‘It’s a specially formatted family of nanites in the paint itself. They also have a random evolutionary component so I won’t know what they’ll do next.’
Sanders very much doubted that. The being she was now addressing could probably calculate every possibility and encompass every one in its mind, all within a microsecond. It just chose not to. Ergatis had, unusually, not named itself after the world it governed, but then this AI was in a slightly unusual position for one of its kind. It did not control the planetary runcible, since the still extant danger of Jain technology here made it necessary to place the runcible on one of the Braemar moons – Flint, where the Theocracy shipyards had once been. Also, a question hung over its governorship, what with Masada maybe ending up being classified as an alien world inhabited by illegal Human colonists.
‘So,’ Ergatis continued, ‘you’ve come to register your protest and try to obtain some sort of explanation. Am I right?’
‘Of course you’re right,’ Sanders replied impatiently. ‘You were probably running a copy of me as a subprogram before I walked in the door.’
‘You may be memchipped and backed up, Sanders, but your mind is your own property. Anyway, I don’t need to run a copy of you to make that prediction. So, state your objections and ask your questions.’
‘Two years ago Amistad, without Tombs’s permission, had him adapted to the environment of this world. I let that go because my pay-off was to be able to replace his head prosthetic, to regrow his face, and because I felt sure the drone knew what it was doing – it had after all been given carte blanche in Tombs’s case.’ Sanders paused in frustration. How to logically put her case which, really, was just based on a gut instinct?
‘Do go on.’
‘Amistad did nothing to stop Tombs believing he still wears a prosthetic and actively intervened when I tried to convince him that his face is now his own. I would have been dismissed from my position at the sanatorium if I’d brought up the subject again.’
‘Yes, unfortunate, that.’
‘Amistad is partnered with an ostensibly “cured” black AI called Penny Royal. I did some research on that creature, and there’s still an outstanding “do not attempt to apprehend but destroy at a distance” order on it, yet it’s here supposedly working for the Polity.’
‘The order you discovered in an outdated databank has since been deleted.’
‘There’s
never any amnesty for Humans who commit murder,’ Sanders stated, feeling the injustice.
‘The situation there is more complicated. Penny Royal is not a singular distinct being. Of its previous eight states of consciousness just one of those states was the murderer. That conscious state has now been . . . removed.’
Sanders nodded. She’d just have to accept that. ‘Tombs reached some critical mental nexus when he finished drawing his shell patterns, assaulted me and attempted to escape – not that he was really a captive anyway. Amistad intervened, then went on to allow him to escape, incidentally rendering me unconscious and setting the scene so it looked to Tombs like he had killed me. The man is now out on the surface of Masada – a danger to himself and to others.’
‘That’s so, but what precisely is your problem?’
‘I am not entirely convinced that Amistad’s aims concur with those of the Polity. I think the drone’s interest in madness outweighs any interest in curing it.’
‘Oh I agree.’
Sanders took a step back, stunned, gazed up at the ceiling where a steel angel wore a smile she was sure it hadn’t had before. ‘You agree?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Then isn’t it time you intervened? Isn’t it time this was taken out of Amistad’s . . . claws and handed over to someone more capable, more responsible?’
‘One would think so, yes,’ replied Ergatis, then, after a surprisingly long pause, ‘Six years ago I had the power to negate Amistad’s carte blanche, but not now. You have to understand that war drones were the grunts of the Prador war, the slightly dim fighting machines we used and, traditionally, that is how those that remain are still thought of. However, many of these drones are like the soldiers who came back from the front with a great deal of anger and drive which they threw into educating themselves.’