(eng) Neal Asher - Polity Universe 08 by The Technician

Author:The Technician [Technician, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Its last inmate now no longer here, the sanatorium had taken on a ghostly, almost doleful air. Sanders gazed up at it from the small landing field cut into the mountain slope on the landward side, reluctant to return there, because she was also reluctant to bring this part of her life to a conclusion. Then, angrily, she stepped out of her rented gravan, walked to the side loading door and thumped the lock plate.

Inside rested two large plasmel trunks. Taking a remote from her pocket she selected ‘follow’ on the screen menu then turned and headed for the crushed-stone path that led straight up, rather than taking the curving supply road – best get this over with quickly. After a short while her anger waned, and she glanced back at the two hover trunks dogging her footsteps, gratified to see that the rough path seemed no problem to them despite their usual environment being runcible terminals or space ports.

Soon she reached the grapewood door into the rear courtyard. In Theocracy times this door had been closely fitted and sealed and she would first have had to pass through the outer door of an airlock to reach it. Now, what with the airlock having been removed along with the roof of the courtyard within, the weather had got to the old wood and it had shrunk, and its seals peeled away. Yanking down the central handle she pushed it open and entered.

The courtyard had once contained all sorts of exotica grown here by the Bishop of Heretic’s Isle. The image of that man quietly tending his plants before heading off to oversee the bloody games they had played here sat uncomfortably in her mind. She noted that though native growths were sprouting from the pots and raised beds within, some of that man’s plants had survived. It seemed significant – some things could never be wholly erased. She crossed flagstones, the trunks emitting a low whine as they followed, entered through the next grape-wood door, the seals round this new and working, felt the puff of pressure differential as she entered and noted the abrupt slowing of her breathing as her adapted lungs themselves adapted to the extra oxygen here.

In from the courtyard lay a long room containing all an enthusiastic botanist would want, then beyond this the kitchens. Treading a familiar route, Sanders passed old confinement cells, torture rooms stark and empty but for the occasional fixture that once supported frames, manacles, gallows. Finally she entered the modernized section of the sanatorium – redecoration here, no sign of the past use of this place – then eventually came to the door into her quarters.

Gazing around at the place she had slept in for two decades, she felt a surge of nostalgia and old regret. She focused on a chair over the back of which her nova wrap still cycled its hot display of a dying star, walked over and picked that up, then took the remote control from her belt and pressed ‘packing’.

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