Free Polity 4 - The Technician by Asher Neal Page A

you’d have thought the
prosthetics industry dead in the water. Not so. It being most people’s
preference to have genetically matched limbs or organs grown in a tank,
prosthetics are used while they are growing. Fast replacement prosthetics have
also been developed where access to advanced medical technology is limited:
plug-in limbs for soldiers on the battlefield, self-embedding syntheskins,
pop-in eyes that grow nanofibre connections either to the optic nerve or all
the way back even as far as the visual cortex, self-planting teeth and
self-connecting chest-pack hearts. The technology is such that now the
prosthetics can be more durable, sensitive and stronger than whatever body part
they replace, and some prefer them to that part. There are those who, over the
years, gradually replace their bodies, ending up in a full Golem chassis, then
opting for the ultimate prosthetic replacement by having their minds loaded to
crystal.
    –
From HOW IT IS by Gordon
    Masada (Solstan 2453 – 16 Years after the Rebellion)
    The mud pipe lay between two peninsulas of stone – the foothills of the
Northern Mountains – and funnelled in towards his destination. Tricones
gathered here in their trillions, intent, in a battle for Lebensraum that would
last a billion years, on rendering the whole mountain range down into nice,
damp loose mud in which to lay their eggs. Chanter listened to the sound of
them thumping against the hull of his mudmarine and noticed, when one hit
particularly heavily or loudly, that he was beginning to flinch. It occurred to
him that his long years here had perhaps not done his mental condition a great
deal of good – he had developed agoraphobia, and the fear of the open spaces he
intended to face had begun to grow more and more intense the closer he got to
them.
    Ten kilometres
in and the mud pipe narrowed to just metres across but, having already mapped
it, he knew he only had to get through this section, to enter an old volcanic
vent, up which he could rise to the surface. Yes, perhaps he did have some fear
of open spaces, but it was much compensated for by his utter lack of fear of
his claustrophobic environment.
    Beyond
the narrow section where the pipe debouched into the vent, there were no
tricones at all. It was as if the creatures possessed some ancestral memory of
narrow escapes from surges of lava, for Chanter could see no other reason for
them not to be here. After closing his seat straps across he inclined his
mudmarine to the vertical and headed rapidly to the surface, accelerating as
soil turned to mud and then finally to water. Here, in the bottom of a caldera
lake, he levelled the vehicle again, made his first use in a long while of its
buoyancy tanks by releasing a cloud of bubbles, motored in towards the slope to
the shore, tractored up this and finally surfaced, chameleon-ware engaged.
    Chanter
sat for a long moment gazing through the main chainglass cockpit screen as the
electrostatics cleared it of filth. The shore here, below a crumbling stone
slope leading up to the lip of the crater, was choked with lizard tails of a
strange sickly yellow-orange hue. Perhaps some volcanic poison was the cause of
this and also the reason for the lack of tricones in the vent. Almost without
thinking he tapped instructions into his console, injecting a probe into the
mud below to snatch up a sample, then realized he was prevaricating, for this
was not why he was here. As the probe retracted, its sample automatically
routed to the marine’s internal analyser, he used the conveyor drive to drag
his vehicle ashore amidst that yellow growth, then unstrapped and stood up.
Next, without giving himself time to think about it for too long, he donned
tough monofilament overalls, large boots specially made for his webbed feet,
took up the backpack he’d made ready, and exited his craft.
    Outside
Chanter sniffed the air, picking up the distinct whiff of sulphur dioxide
underlying the very specific stink here on