Read Online Polity 4 - The Technician by Asher Neal - Free Book Online Page B

gestured to Jem again. ‘It leaks through. Very slowly his memory
returns to be incorporated in his mind as an indirect experience: a normal
Human memory. And with it we get leakage of the download too. It is a process
with which we do not want to interfere, at least directly,
for fear of destroying the data.’
    ‘Leaks
through?’ said Sanders. ‘Yes, I guess it does, but at least the knockout feed
stops him screaming. He just lapses into unconsciousness.’
    ‘But
remember his drawings.’
    Yes, the
drawing. Jem returned his attention to the clear collection of Euclidean
shapes, erased a couple then drew them back in just so.
    ‘Those
penny molluscs?’ queried Sanders.
    Jem
looked up to see her standing over him, flinched when he saw that the drone had
also moved closer, peridot eyes watching him impassively, then returned his
attention to the sketch pad. Yes, he was nearly there with this one. He began
muttering the Second Satagent.
    ‘Before
the tricones completely churned up the area where the Technician attacked him,
Commander Grant had someone make digital two-dimensional photographs there,’
said the drone. ‘It’s a shame he did not have better recording equipment
available to him, but we must make do with these. Penny molluscs had been
attracted by the blood and were scattered all about the area. Whether these
were all present when he lay there is unknown, but we do know, from closely
studying the photographs, that thus far he has precisely drawn the shapes seen
on the backs of twelve of those creatures.’
    ‘He’s
remembering them.’
    ‘So it
would seem.’
    Sanders
turned to the drone now. ‘By the way, you keep referring to “we” – who else is
here studying Jem? I thought you were working alone. I thought you decided any
form of linkage to local AIs would interfere with your thought processes.’
    ‘My
associate is a little shy of company and wishes to remain incognito for the
present.’
    One last
line in place and, satisfied, Jem scribed around the drawing the perfect circle
of a penny mollusc shell. The thing itself arose utterly clear in his mind
then, there on the bloody flute grass. His skinned hand was closing on that
grass, and looking up he saw the scorpion drone – no, it was rising up, two
columns of yellow eyes blinking into being down its underside. Then, nothing.
    Triada Compound (Solstan 2457 – Present Day)
    Leif Grant stepped up to the airtight door leading from what had once
been a pond workers’ bunkhouse, then a hospital, and which had now been
returned to its original form and classified by the AI governor of Masada as a
planetary relic. Remembering a long-ago conversation at this place, he realized
that Sanders had been right about why he had saved Tombs’s life, but only
partially right. When that massive alien creature Dragon, who he had known as
Behemoth back then, came and knocked out the laser arrays before crashing to
the ground to enact its peculiar and worrying rebirth, the rebels of Masada
took the opportunity to leave their caves and seize the surface. They knew they
wouldn’t be able to hold it for long, since the rebellion had been all about
getting Polity intervention, and inevitably Deacon Aberil Dorth quickly
responded by bringing troops down from the cylinder world Hope
to attack. No quarter was given on either side. The rebels, and those of the underclass
freed by them, were especially vicious in their reprisals against the likes of
the proctor who had once occupied this very bunkhouse during its brief service
as a hospital. The religious police had been the source of all the beatings,
the torture and the enforced worship they had endured.
    The
moment he stepped outside, his Polity tech breather automatically closed a
shimmer-shield across his face and began to feed him breathable air, for he
still remained wary of undergoing the adaptation to the atmosphere of his own
world. He headed out across a meticulously cropped lawn of blue grass. This
lawn