Polity 4 - The Technician Read Online Free

yellow eyes of the demons were back, and they were sharpening their
knives again.
    A motor whined and the bed vibrated underneath him as the section under
his back tilted upwards to slowly bring him to a sitting position. His right
eye seemed sealed shut, the vision of his left eye was blurry, but a woman in
white stooped close and squirted something in it, and it began to clear. He
tried to blink to speed the process but nothing happened. It was as if his
eyelid had been glued back.
    Like
clumsy mist giants, vague memories bumbled through his mind. There had been a
fire somewhere, explosions, shooting . . . and clearer than anything else at
all, strange Euclidean shapes that somehow made up an overall pattern. A
clicking sound sent cold fingers crawling down his spine and he swung his
attention to its source: some kind of machine looking like a big chromed insect
mounted on a pedestal. They had Polity technology
here!
    He
surveyed his surroundings further. His bed stood in a row of ten on one side of
the aisle down the centre of what looked like a pond workers’ bunkhouse. There
were ten beds on the other side of the aisle. Five of the beds were mechanized
hospital beds like his own, and all occupied, whilst those remaining were bunk
beds separated out singly, a further eight of which were also occupied. The
walls of the bunkhouse had recently been painted white, obliterating the words
of holy scripture and guidance usually scribed across them, which was puzzling.
    Medical
machines occupied spaces between the beds; some he recognized as of Theocracy
manufacture, others, like that insectile thing, were smaller, neater, Polity machines. Directly across the aisle from him, a
medic, a man clad in white, was helping the occupant out of one of the
mechanized beds. Burns ran down the side of the patient’s face, one arm and the
side of his body ugly under some kind of transparent coating. There must have
been some sort of major accident in which Jem himself had been involved. He
shuddered and returned his attention to the woman, who next manipulated
something at his throat. A sound issued from there, part sigh, part groan.
    ‘Okay –
that’s the voice synthesizer keyed in,’ she said.
    Abruptly
he remembered waking here before, and trying to speak – trying to demand that
she not use anything but Theocracy technology on his body – but his mouth had
been frozen and all he could do was issue sounds from the back of his throat.
He tried again and, even though his mouth remained frozen, the machine at his
throat complemented the sounds issuing from there.
    ‘I do
not require some godless Polity machine to enable me to speak.’
    She
stared at him for a long moment, then said, ‘In ancient times they used to call
it being in denial. Surely you’ve heard enough to know by now?’
    Two
columns of yellow eyes opened, and from somewhere issued a horrible whickering
and clicking. Then all swept away in a swirl of those Euclidean shapes.
    ‘I seem
unable to blink,’ he stated.
    ‘Surely
the reason for that’s obvious, if you think about it?’
    ‘What
have you done to me?’
    ‘Kept
you alive. You’re the only known survivor of an attack by a hooder, which is
why you are alive.’ She sounded angry now. ‘Your fellow proctors haven’t been
so fortunate.’ She gestured to the other beds. ‘I’ve processed three hundred
cases through here and you’re the only one of your kind I’ve seen.’
    Faith is dead.
    ‘That is
ridiculous, remove these restraints at once.’ But even as he spoke he felt
terrified by something rising in his consciousness. Faith
is dead? What did that mean? He tried to make a connection through his aug, his
Gift, but got nothing.
    ‘Or is
it more than denial?’ she wondered. ‘Tell me, Tombs, what do you remember?’
    ‘Some
sort of incident . . . an accident.’ He paused to collect his thoughts.
‘Obviously it was major or else I would now be in a city hospital rather than
in this temporary