The Prefect

CHAPTER 16

Dreyfus was still drowsing as the deep-system cruiser completed its docking, nudging home into its skeletal berthing rack. He’d slept all the way back to Panoply, from almost the moment when his escape pod was brought aboard the ship and he was reunited with Sparver and Clepsydra. He dreamed of reeking halls of raw human meat hanging from bloodstained hooks, and a woman gorging herself on muscle and sinew, her mouth a red-stained obscenity. When he woke and sifted through his memories of recent events, his experiences in the Nerval-Lermontov rock felt like something that had happened yesterday, rather than a handful of hours earlier. The rock itself no longer existed. The impact of the fully laden and fuelled freighter had pulverised it, so that nothing now remained of its secrets except a cloud of expanding rubble; a gritty sleet that would rain against the sticky collision shields of the Glitter Band habitats for many orbits. Even if Panoply had the resources, there’d have been little point in combing that debris cloud for forensic clues. Clepsydra was now Dreyfus’ only witness to the unspeakable crime that had been visited upon her crewmates. But it wasn’t Clepsydra who was foremost in his thoughts. As soon as he pushed through the cruiser’s suitwall, Dreyfus badgered Thyssen, the tired-looking dock attendant.

“Thalia Ng, my deputy. When did she get in?” The man glanced at his compad. He had red rings around his eyes, vivid as brands.

“She’s still out there, Tom.”

“On her way back?”

“Not according to this.” The man tapped his stylus against a line of text.

“CTC haven’t logged her undocking from House Aubusson. Looks as if she’s still inside.”

“How long since she docked there?”

“According to this… eight hours.” Dreyfus knew that Thalia had only had a six-hundred-second access window. No matter what obstacles she’d encountered, she should have been out of there by now.

“Has anyone managed to get through to her since Deputy Sparver’s attempt?” The man looked helpless.

“I don’t have a record of that.”

“She has one of your ships,” Dreyfus snapped.

“I’d say it was your duty to keep adequate tabs on her,

wouldn’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Prefect.”

“Don’t apologise,” Dreyfus growled.

“Just do your job.” He grabbed a handhold and pulled himself towards the exit.

“If you think you’re having a shitty day,” Sparver told Thyssen, “you should try ours on for size.”

The two prefects and their Conjoiner guest cleared the dock and transitioned through to one of the standard-gravity wheels. They detoured to the medical section and left Clepsydra in the care of one of the doctors, an impish man named Mercier whom Dreyfus trusted not to ask awkward questions. Mercier affected the appearance and manners of a bookish scholar of the natural sciences from some remote candlelit century. He dressed impeccably, with a white shirt and cravat, his eyes forever hidden behind green-tinted half-moon spectacles, and chose to surround himself with facsimiles of varnished wooden furniture, conjured museum-piece medical tools and gruesome illustrative devices. He had a perplexing attachment to paperwork, to the extent that he made many of his reports in inked handwriting, using a curious black stylus that he referred to as a ’fountain pen’. Yet for all his eccentricities, he was no less competent than Dr Demikhov, his counterpart in the adjoining Sleep Lab.

“This is my witness,” Dreyfus explained.

“She’s to be examined humanely, treated for malnutrition and dehydration and then left well alone. I’ll return in a few hours.”

Clepsydra cocked her crested bald egg of a head and narrowed her eyes.

“Am I now to consider myself a prisoner again?”

“No. Just a guest, under my protection. When the crisis is over, I’ll do all in my power to get you back to your people.”

“I could call my people myself if you give me access to a medium-strength transmitter.”

“Part of me would like nothing better. But someone was prepared to kill to keep you a secret. They succeeded in killing your compatriots. That means they’ll be more than prepared to kill again if they know you’re here.”

“Then I should leave. Immediately.”

“You’ll be safe here.”

“I think I can trust you,” Clepsydra said, her attention on Dreyfus, as if no one else was in the room.

“But understand one thing: it is a significant thing for a Conjoiner to trust a baseline human being. People like you did terrible things to people like me, once. Many of them would do the same things again if the chance arose. Please do not give me cause to regret this.”

“I won’t,” Dreyfus said.

Dusk was falling in the long shaft of House Aubusson. The mirror-directed sunlight pouring through the window bands was being slowly dimmed as the bands lost their transparency. Soon the habitat would be dark even when its orbit brought it around to Yellowstone’s dayside.

From the curved viewing gallery of the polling core, more than five hundred metres above the ground, Thalia watched the shadows encroach like an army of stalking cats. She could still make out the pale-grey trajectory of the pathway they had tried to follow out of the formal gardens, towards the objective of the endcap wall. But the grey was darkening, losing definition as darkness won. Soon even

the concentric black hoops of the window bands would be indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain. She would be able to make out neither the path nor the endcap. The attempted crossing, which had seemed achievable only hours earlier, now struck her as hopelessly misguided. It would have been ill-conceived if all they had to contend with was enraged and panicked citizenry looking for someone to mob. But now Thalia knew that the darkening landscape was in all likelihood crawling with dangerous machines, serving an agenda that definitely did not involve the preservation of human life.

But, she thought, seeking composure before she turned around, the citizens in her care must not see how frightened she was. She had come into their world bearing the authority of Panoply and that was the role she was obliged to continue playing. She had failed them once; twice if she included the mistake with the polling core that had created this mess in the first place. She could not let them down again.

“So what’s the next step in your plan?” Caillebot asked, with a sarcastic lilt that Thalia couldn’t help but detect.

“The next step is we stay put,” she said.

“Up here?”

“We’re safe here,” she said, mentally deleting the ’for now’ that she had been about to add.

“This is as good a place to wait as anywhere we could have picked in the habitat.”

“Wait for what, exactly?” Caillebot asked.

She’d been expecting the gardener to start needling her as soon as they were inside the core.

“For Panoply, Citizen. They’re on their way. There’ll be a deep-system cruiser docked with us before you can blink.”

“It’ll take more than a few prefects to deal with those machines.”

Thalia touched the buzzing remains of her whiphound. It was uncomfortably hot against her thigh, like a metal bar cooling down from a furnace.

“They’ll have the tools for the job, don’t you worry about that. All we have to do is hold out until they get here. That’s our part of the equation.”

“‘Hold out’,” repeated Paula Thory mockingly. The plump woman was sitting on one of the inert-matter benches encircling the pearl-grey pillar of the polling core.

“You make it sound so easy, like waiting for a train.”

Thalia walked over to the woman and knelt down to bring them face to face.

“I’m not asking you to run a mile. We’re perfectly safe up here.”

“Those barricades won’t hold for ever.”

“They don’t have to.”

“Well, isn’t that reassuring.”

Thalia fought to keep herself from snapping at the woman, or worse. Paula Thory had only joined the chain gang grudgingly, when she realised that she would be the only one refusing to assist in the work effort. It had been difficult and exhausting, but between them they must have shoved at least three tonnes of junk down the elevator shaft, and at least as much again down the winding spiral of the staircase. They’d created a barricade out of ancient dead servitors and decrepit computers and interface devices, many of which must have come to the Yellowstone system from Earth and were probably several hundred years old at the very least. There’d even been something huge and metal, a kind of open iron

chassis crammed with cogs and ratchets. It had made a most impressive racket as it tumbled down the stairs.

Thalia had called for a rest period, but three citizens—Parnasse, Redon and Cuthbertson—were still shovelling junk down the lift shaft and stairs. Every now and then Thalia would hear a muffled crump as the material hit the bottom of the shaft, or a more drawn-out avalanche of sound as something tumbled down the stairs.

“It doesn’t have to hold for ever because we’re not staying up here for ever,” she said.

“Help will arrive before the machines get through the barricades. And even if it doesn’t, we’re working on a contingency plan.”

Thory looked falsely interested.

“Which would be?”

“You’ll hear about it when all the pieces are in place. Until then all you have to do is sit tight and help with the barricades when you feel willing and able.”

If Paula Thory took that as a barb, she showed no evidence of it.

“I think you’re keeping something from us, Prefect—the fact that you haven’t got a clue how we’re going to get out of this mess.”

“You’re perfectly welcome to leave, in that case,” Thalia said, with exaggerated niceness.

“Look!” Jules Caillebot called suddenly from his vantage point by the window.

Thalia stood up, grateful for any excuse not to have to deal with Thory.

“What is it, Citizen?” she said as she strolled over.

“Big machines are moving in.”

Thalia looked out over the darkening panorama. Though it was becoming increasingly difficult to make out distinct objects anywhere in the habitat—nightfall had come with dismaying speed—the machines Caillebot spoke of were at least partially illuminated. As large as houses, they were moving in several slow processions through the civic grounds around the Museum of Cybernetics. They advanced on crawler tracks and huge lumbering wheels, crushing their way across walkways and through tree lines.

“What are they?” Thalia asked.

“Heavy construction servitors, I think,” Caillebot said.

“There’s been a lot of building work going on lately, especially around the new marina at Radiant Point.”

Thalia wondered what kind of damage those machines could do to the stalk supporting the polling core. Although she had not voiced her thoughts to the others, she had convinced herself that the machines would not do anything that might damage the core itself. Abstraction might be down for the citizens, but as far as she could tell, the machines were still being coordinated via low-level data transmissions that were dependent on the core. But that was just her theory, not something she was in any mood to see put to the test.

“They’re carrying stuff,” Caillebot reported.

“Look at the hopper on the back of that one.”

Thalia struggled to make out detail. She remembered her glasses and slipped them on, keying in both magnification and intensity-amplification. The view wobbled, then stabilised. She tracked along the procession until she identified the machine Caillebot had indicated. It was a huge wheeled servitor, thirty or forty metres long, with scoops at either end feeding the trapezium-shaped hopper it carried on its

back. The hopper was piled high with debris: rubble, dirt, torn sheets of composite mesh, chunks of machined metal of unfathomable origin. Thalia moved her viewpoint along the procession and saw that there was at least one other servitor hauling a similar load.

“You say those machines were working at the marina?”

“I think so.”

“If they’re being tasked to work elsewhere, why would they be carrying all that junk?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither. Maybe it’s just debris left over from the work on the marina, and they just haven’t been sent a specific command to unload it before moving elsewhere.”

“Possible,” said Caillebot doubtfully, “but the marina wasn’t built on the remains of an older community. They’d have needed to landscape soil, but I can’t imagine there’d have been much in the way of actual debris to clear.”

Thalia snapped her focus to the head of the column.

“The procession’s stopping,” she said. The machines had reached the base of one of the stalks that formed the ring surrounding the Museum of Cybernetics, close to the point where Thalia’s party had emerged from the underground train station.

“I don’t like this, Citizen Caillebot,” she said, temporarily forgetting her promise to Cyrus Parnasse that she would look and act at all times as if she was confident both in her abilities and of shepherding the citizens to safety.

She’d lied when she said an escape plan was being hatched. In truth, they had progressed no further than working out their options for barricading the machines. Parnasse had tried to put an optimistic face on it, but they both knew those barricades wouldn’t hold for ever against determined brute force.

“I don’t like it either,” the landscape gardener said.

The procession broke up, with various machines moving slowly into position around the base of the stalk. Thalia had the eerie impression that she was watching some kind of abstract ballet. It all happened silently, for the windows of the polling sphere were both airtight and thoroughly soundproofed. The debris-carriers were standing back from the stalk, while what were clearly specialised demolition and earthmoving servitors brought their brutal-looking tools into play. The machines commenced their labours almost immediately. Shovels and claws began to dig into the flared base of the stalk, chipping away boulder-sized scabs of pale cladding. At the same time, a little further around the curve of the stalk, Thalia saw the sun-bright strobe of a high-energy cutting tool.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said, as much for her own benefit as Caillebot’s.

“They’re attacking the wrong stalk. They know we’re not at the top of that one.”

“Maybe attacking it isn’t the idea.”

She nodded. Caillebot had been on her case after the upgrade had failed, but now his tone of voice and body language suggested he was prepared to bury the hatchet, at least for now.

“I think you’re right,” she said. Then she tracked her glasses onto one of the other processions, at least a kilometre away, tilted gently towards her on the footslopes of the habitat’s curving wall.

“Those machines are dismantling something as well. Can’t tell what it is.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Caillebot asked.

She passed him the glasses. He pressed them cautiously to his eyes. Prefects weren’t meant to share

equipment like that, but she supposed if there was ever a time when the rules were meant to be bent, this was it.

“That’s the open-air amphitheatre at Praxis Junction,” the gardener said.

“They’re tearing into that as well.”

“Then it isn’t just us. Something’s going on here, Citizen Caillebot.” He returned her glasses.

“You notice anything about those lines of machines?”

“Like what?”

“They’re all moving in more or less the same direction. Maybe they didn’t come from the marina after all, but they’ve still come from the direction of the docking endcap, where you came in. It looks to me as if they’ve been working their way along the habitat, stopping to demolish anything that takes their fancy.”

“How would machines cross the window panels?”

“There’re roads and bridges for that kind of thing. Even if there weren’t, the glass could easily take the weight of one of those machines, even fully loaded. The panels wouldn’t have been an obstacle to them.”

“Okay, then. If they’re headed away from the docking endcap, where are they likely to end up?”

“After they’ve swept through the whole habitat? Only one place to go—the trailing endcap. No major docking facilities there, so it’s a dead end.”

“But they can’t be carrying all that stuff for nothing. They must be gathering it for a reason.”

“Well, there’s the manufactory complex, of course,” he said offhandedly.

“But that doesn’t make any sense either.” Thalia experienced a premonitory chill.

“Tell me about the manufactory complex, Citizen Caillebot.”

“It’s practically dead, like I already told you. Hasn’t run at normal capacity for years. Decades. Longer than I can remember.” Thalia nodded patiently.

“But it’s still there. It hasn’t been removed, gutted, replaced or whatever?”

“You think they’re going to crank it up again. Start making stuff on a big scale, feeding it with the junk the machines are collecting.”

“It’s just an idea, Citizen Caillebot.”

“Ships?” he asked.

“Not necessarily. If you can make single-molecule hulls, there’s nothing you can’t make.” As an afterthought, she added: “Provided you have the construction blueprint, of course. The manufactory won’t be able to make anything unless it’s given the right instructions.”

“You sound relieved.”

“I probably shouldn’t be. It’s just that I was thinking of all the unpleasant things you could make with a manufactory if you had the right blueprints. But the point is the only blueprints in the public domain are for things you can’t hurt anyone with.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

“Try locating the construction blueprint for a space-to-space weapon, Citizen Caillebot, or an attack ship, or a military servitor. See how far you get before a prefect comes knocking.”

“Panoply keeps tabs on that kind of thing?”

“We don’t just keep tabs. We make sure that data isn’t out there. On the rare occasions when someone needs to make something nasty, they come to us for permission. We retrieve and unlock the files from our archives. We issue them and make damned sure they’re deleted afterwards.”

“Then you’re certain nothing nasty can come out of that manufactory?”

“Not without Panoply’s help,” Thalia said bluntly. Caillebot responded with a knowing nod.

“A day ago, Prefect, I’d have found that statement almost entirely reassuring.”

Thalia turned back to the window, ruminating on what the gardener had just said. The machines were working with the manic industry of insects. They had chewed deep into the lowest part of the stalk, exposing the geodesic struts that formed the structure’s scaffolding. Judging by the rubble and remains being shovelled into a waiting hopper, the cutting tools were making short work of that as well.

“It’s not going to last long,” Thalia said. Then she turned around and looked at the polling core, hoping that she was right about the machines needing to keep it intact, and therefore being unable to launch an all-out attack on the stalk supporting the sphere in which they were sheltering.

She’d been wrong about several things already today. She hoped this wasn’t another.

Dreyfus knew something was amiss as soon as he approached the passwall into Jane Aumonier’s sphere and saw the two internal prefects waiting on either side of it, whiphounds drawn, tethered by quick-release lines that ran from their belts to eyelets in the doorframe. The passwall itself was set to obstruct.

“Is there a problem?” Dreyfus asked mildly. He’d occasionally been barred from talking to Aumonier when she was engaged in some activity that exceeded his Pangolin clearance. But it had never required the presence of security guards, and Aumonier had generally given him fair warning.

“Sorry, sir,” said the younger of the two guards, “but no one’s allowed to speak to Prefect Aumonier at the moment.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

“Not without authorisation from the supreme prefect, sir.” Dreyfus looked at the kid as if he was being asked to answer a deceptively simple riddle.

“She is the supreme prefect.”

The young guard looked embarrassed.

“Not presently, sir. Prefect Baudry is now acting supreme.”

“On what grounds was Prefect Aumonier removed from her position?” Dreyfus asked disbelievingly.

“I’m authorised to tell you that the decision was taken on the basis of medical fitness, sir. I thought you’d been informed, but—”

“I hadn’t.” He was trying to keep his fury in check, not wanting to take out his anger on this kid the way he had abused Thyssen earlier.

“But I still want to talk to Prefect Aumonier.”

“Prefect Aumonier is in no fit state to talk to anyone,” said a gruff male voice behind Dreyfus. He pushed

himself around to see Gaffney floating towards him along the same corridor he’d just traversed.

“I’m sorry, Field, but that’s just the way it is.”

“Let me talk to Jane.” Gaffney shook his head, looking genuinely regretful.

“I hardly need impress on you how precarious her situation is. The last thing she needs right now is someone upsetting her unnecessarily.”

“Jane isn’t going to be the one who’s upset if I don’t get to see her.”

“Easy, Field. I know you’ve had a tough time today. But don’t use it as an excuse to lash out at your superiors.”

“Did you have any part in removing Jane?”

“She wasn’t ’removed’. She was relieved of the burden of command at a time when it would have been an intolerable imposition for her to have continued.” In his peripheral vision, Dreyfus saw that the two guards were looking straight ahead with resolutely neutral expressions, pretending that they were not party to this high-level scuffle. Neither man had summoned the senior prefect. Gaffney must have been lurking nearby, Dreyfus thought: waiting until he tried to visit Aumonier.

“What’s your angle here?” Dreyfus asked.

“Lillian Baudry’s a good prefect when it comes to the details, but she doesn’t have Jane’s grasp of the big picture. You’re counting on her making a mistake, aren’t you?”

“Why on Earth would I want Lillian to fail?”

“Because with Jane out of the picture, you’re one step closer to becoming supreme prefect.”

“I think you’ve said more than enough. If you had the slightest idea how ludicrous you sound, you’d stop now.”

“Where’s Baudry?”

“In the tactical room, no doubt. In case it’s escaped your attention, a crisis has been brewing while you’ve been pursuing your own interests.” Dreyfus spoke into his bracelet.

“Get me Baudry.” She answered immediately.

“Prefect Dreyfus. I was hoping to hear from you before too long.”

“Let me talk to Jane.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be wise. But would you mind coming up to tactical immediately? There’s something we need to discuss.” Gaffney looked on with a faint smile.

“I was on my way there before I ran into you. Why don’t we go there together?”

Baudry, Crissel and Clearmountain were in attendance when Dreyfus and Gaffney arrived in the tactical room. The seniors were peering at the Solid Orrery from different angles. Dreyfus noticed that four habitats had been pulled out of the swirl of the ten thousand and enlarged until their structures were visible.

Crissel indicated a vacant position.

“Take a seat, Field Prefect Dreyfus. We were hoping you could explain something to us.”

Dreyfus remained standing.

“I understand you were part of the lynch mob that removed Jane from power while I was outside.”

“If you insist on characterising events in those terms, then yes, I was party to that decision. Do you have a problem with it?”

“Have a guess.”

Crissel stared at him equably, refusing to take the bait.

“Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention, but there have been worrying changes in the state of the scarab, likely harbingers of something medically catastrophic.”

“I’ve been paying plenty of attention.”

“Then you’ll know that Demikhov is deeply concerned about Jane’s future prognosis. All that thing on her neck is waiting for is a trigger. When her stress hormones float above some arbitrary level, it’s going to snip her spine in two, or blow her to pieces.”

“Right,” Dreyfus said, as if he was seeing something clearly for the first time.

“And you think removing her from office is the key to lowering her stress levels?”

“She’s in the safest therapeutic regime we can devise. And when this is over, when the crisis is averted, we’ll look into a strategy for returning Jane to at least some level of functional responsibility.”

“Is that what you told her? Or did you lie and say she could have her old job back when things have blown over?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Gaffney purred, the first time he had spoken since their mutual arrival. He’d taken a seat next to Lillian Baudry. His hands rested on the table, the fingers of one caressing the clenched fist of the other.

“Take a look at the Solid Orrery, Field.”

“I’ve seen it, thanks. It’s very pretty.”

“Take a better look. Those four habitats—ring any bells?”

“I don’t know.” Dreyfus smiled sarcastically.

“What about you, Senior Prefect Gaffney?”

“Let me spell it out for you. You’re looking at New Seattle-Tacoma, Chevelure-Sambuke, Szlumper Oneill and House Aubusson. The four habitats Thalia Ng was scheduled to visit and upgrade.”

Dreyfus felt some of his certainty evaporate.

“Go on.”

“As of just over six hours ago, all four habitats have been unreachable. They’ve dropped off abstraction.” Gaffney scrutinised Dreyfus’ reaction and nodded, as if to emphasize that matters were exactly as grave as they sounded.

“All four habitats dropped off the net within sixty milliseconds of each other. That’s

comfortably inside the light-crossing time for the Glitter Band, implying a preplanned, coordinated event.”

“You’ve always vouched for Thalia Ng,” Crissel said.

“Her promotion to field was fast-tracked on your recommendation. Beginning to look like a mistake now, isn’t it?”

“I still have total faith in her.”

“Touching, undoubtedly, but the fact is she’s visited four habitats and now they’ve all fallen silent. All she had to do was make a series of minor polling core upgrades. At the very least, doesn’t that suggest procedural incompetence?”

“Not from where I’m standing.”

“What, then?” Crissel asked, fascinated.

“I think it’s possible…” But Dreyfus tailed off, feeling a sudden reluctance to state his theory openly. The seniors regarded him with stony-faced indifference.

“The deep-system cruiser that rescued us—is it still flight-ready?” he asked.

Baudry spoke now.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because the one way to settle this is to pay a visit to Aubusson. That’s where Thalia was due last. If one of my deputies is in trouble, I’d like to know about it.”

“You’ve done enough gallivanting around for now,” Gaffney said.

“We’re in a state of emergency, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Baudry coughed gently.

“Let’s deal with the other matter, shall we? And please—sit down.”

“What matter would that be?” asked Dreyfus with exaggerated civility. But he took his seat as Baudry had requested.

“You brought a Conjoiner into Panoply, in express contravention of protocol.” Dreyfus shrugged.

“Protocol can take a hike.”

“She can read our goddamn machines, Tom.” Baudry looked to the others for support.

“She’s a walking surveillance system. Every operational secret in our core is hers for the taking, and you let her stroll into Panoply without even putting a Faraday cage around her skull.” Dreyfus leaned closer.

“Isn’t it written down somewhere that we look after victims and go after criminals?”

Crissel looked exasperated.

“We’re not the law-enforcement agency you seem to think we are, Tom. We’re here to ensure that the democratic apparatus functions smoothly. We’re here to punish fraudulent voting. That’s it.”

“My personal remit extends further than that, but you’re welcome to yours.”

“Let’s focus on the matter at hand—the Conjoiner woman,” Baudry said insistently.

“She may already have done incalculable harm in the short time she’s been inside Panoply. That can’t be helped now. What we can do is make sure that she doesn’t do any more damage.”

“Do you want me to throw her into space, or will you do it?”

“Let’s be adult about this, shall we?” Crissel said.

“If the Spi- if the Conjoiner woman is a witness, then naturally she must be protected. But not at the expense of our operational secrets. She must be moved to a maximum-security holding facility.”

“You mean an interrogation bubble.”

Crissel looked pained.

“Call it what you like. She’ll be safer there. More importantly, so will we.”

“She’ll be moved when Mercier says she’s well enough,” Dreyfus said.

“Is she breathing?” When Dreyfus said nothing, Crissel looked satisfied.

“Then she’s well enough to be moved. She isn’t going to die on us, Tom. She’s a survival machine. The human equivalent of a scorpion.”

“Or a spider,” Dreyfus said.

There was a gentle tap on the main doors. Crissel’s eyes flashed angrily to the widening gap. A low-ranking operative—a girl barely out of her teens, with a pageboy haircut—entered the room timidly.

“Pardon, Seniors, but I was asked to bring this to your attention.”

“It’d better be good,” Crissel said.

“CTC contacted us, sirs. They say they’re picking up reports about House Aubusson and the Chevelure-Sambuke Hourglass.”

“They’re off the network. Yes. We know.”

“It’s more than that, sir.” The girl placed the compad on the table, next to Gaffney. He picked it up by one corner, inhaling slowly as he digested its message. Without a word he slid it to Crissel. He glanced at it, glanced again, then passed the compad to Baudry. She read it, her lips moving slowly as she did so, as if she needed the sound of her own voice to lend the report a degree of reality.

Then she slid the compad over to Dreyfus.

“He doesn’t have authority,” Crissel said.

“His deputy’s inside Aubusson. He needs to see this.”

Dreyfus took the compad and read it for himself. His Pangolin boost was fading and it took more than the usual effort to read the words. At first he was convinced that he had made a mistake, despite the fears he was already nursing.

But there had been no error.

Two separate but similar incidents had occurred, within a few minutes of each other. One ship had been on final approach for docking at the Chevelure-Sambuke Hourglass when it was fired on by the habitat with what appeared to be normal anti-collision defences. The ship had sustained a near-fatal hull breach, too large to be patched by the intervention of quickmatter repair systems. The ship had abandoned its docking approach and put out an emergency distress signal, to which CTC had responded by redirecting two nearby vessels. The crew of the damaged ship had all survived, albeit with decompression injuries.

The second ship, on an approach to House Aubusson, had been less fortunate. The anti-collision defences had gored it open in an instant, spilling air and life into space. Its crew had died with merciful speed, but the ship itself had retained enough sentience to put out its own distress signal. CTC had again directed passing traffic to offer assistance, but this time there was nothing that could be done to save the victims.

All this had happened within the last eighteen minutes.

“I think we can safely rule out coincidence,” Dreyfus said, placing the compad back on the table.

“What are we dealing with?” Baudry asked with rigid composure.

“A systemic defence-system malfunction triggered by the loss of abstraction? Could that be the answer?”

“Everything I know about defence systems says that they can’t malfunction in this way,” Crissel said.

“Yet it rather looks as if someone doesn’t want anyone coming or going from those habitats,” Gaffney observed, reading the CTC report again.

“And the other two?” Baudry asked.

“What about those?”

“They’re isolationist,” Dreyfus said.

“New Seattle-Tacoma is a haven for people who want their brains plugged into abstraction and don’t care what happens to their physical bodies. Szlumper Oneill is a Voluntary Tyranny gone sour. Either way, neither’s going to see much in- or outgoing traffic on a given day.”

“He’s right,” Crissel said, favouring Dreyfus with a conciliatory nod. He turned to the still-waiting operative.

“You’re still in contact with CTC?” Without waiting for an answer or conferring with the other seniors, he continued, “Have them identify four unmanned cargo drones currently passing near the four habitats. Then put them on normal docking trajectories, just as if they were on scheduled approaches. If these were malfunctions, then someone inside may have had time to disable the anti-collision systems by now. If they weren’t, we’ll have confirmation that we’re not dealing with one-off incidents.”

“There’ll be hell to pay,” Gaffney said, shaking his head.

“Whatever those cargo drones are hauling, someone owns it.”

“Then I hope they have good insurance,” Crissel replied tersely.

“CTC has the right to requisition any civilian traffic moving inside the Glitter Band, manned or otherwise. Just because that clause hasn’t been invoked in a century or so doesn’t mean it isn’t still valid.”

“I agree,” Dreyfus said.

“This is the logical course of action. If you were still allowing Jane her rightful authority, she’d agree to it as well.”

The operative coughed awkwardly.

“I’ll get on to CTC immediately, sir.”

Crissel nodded.

“Tell them not to hang around. I don’t want to have to wait hours before finding out what we’re looking at here.”

An icy silence endured for many seconds after the girl had left the room. It fell to Dreyfus to break it.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said.

“We know exactly what’s going to happen to those drones.”

“We still need confirmation,” Crissel said.

“Agreed. But we also need to start thinking about what we do once the news comes in.”

“Hypothesise for a moment,” Baudry said, a quaver in her voice that she could not quite conceal.

“Could we be dealing with a breakaway movement? Four states that wish to secede from the umbrella of Panoply and the Glitter Band?”

“If they wanted to, they’d be free to do so,” Dreyfus said.

“The mechanism already exists, and it doesn’t

require shooting down approaching ships.”

“Maybe they don’t want to secede on our terms,” Baudry said, in the manner of one advancing the suggestion for debating’s sake rather than out of any deep personal conviction that it was likely.

Crissel nodded patiently.

“Maybe they don’t. But once you’ve decided to opt out of Panoply’s protection, out of the democratic apparatus, what do you gain from staying inside the Glitter Band anyway?”

“Not much,” Dreyfus said.

“Which is why this can’t be an attempt at secession.”

“A hostage situation?” Baudry speculated.

“Fits the facts so far, doesn’t it?”

“For now,” Dreyfus allowed.

“But you don’t think that’s what we’re looking at.”

“You don’t take hostages unless there’s something you want that you don’t already have.”

Crissel looked pleased with himself.

“Everyone wants to be richer.”

“Maybe they do,” Dreyfus answered, “but there’s no way hostage-taking is going to achieve that for you.”

“So they’re not trying to become richer,” Baudry said.

“That still leaves a universe of possibilities. Suppose someone doesn’t just want to opt out of our system of government, but dismantle it completely?”

Dreyfus shook his head.

“Why would they want to? If someone wants to experiment with a different social model, they’re welcome to do so. All they have to do is recruit enough willing collaborators to set up a new state. Provided they let their citizens have the vote, they can even stay within the apparatus. That’s why we have freak shows like the Voluntary Tyrannies. Someone somewhere decided they wanted to live in that kind of place.”

“But like you said, they have to abide by certain core principles. Maybe they find even those basic strictures too stifling. Perhaps they want to force a single political model on the entire Glitter Band. Ideological zealots, for instance: political or religious extremists who won’t rest until they force everyone else to see things their way.”

“You might have something if we weren’t looking at four completely disparate communities. Thalia’s habitats have almost nothing in common with each other.”

“All right,” Baudry said, clearly wearying of debate.

“If it isn’t about forcing through a political end, what is it about?”

Once again Dreyfus thought back to the things he had learned inside the Nerval-Lermontov rock, including the possibility that not everyone in the room could necessarily be trusted. He had wanted more time to evaluate his position, more time in which to bring at least one of the other seniors around to his side and use them as leverage to put Aumonier back into the saddle. But the news concerning the latest attacks had forced his hand sooner that he would have wished. He had to say something or he would be guilty of withholding vital data from his own organisation.

“The prisoner told me something,” he said, choosing his words with exquisite care, like a man picking his way through a minefield.

“Obviously, I can’t be certain that she was telling the truth, or that her isolation hadn’t turned her insane. But all my instincts—all my old policeman’s instincts, you might say—told me she was on the level.”

“Then perhaps you’d better tell us,” Gaffney said.

“Clepsydra believes that some group or organisation within the Glitter Band has obtained intelligence concerning a coming crisis. Something worse than what we’re facing now, even given the latest news.”

“What kind of crisis?” Baudry asked.

“Something catastrophic. Something in the order of a collapse of the entire social matrix, if not the end of the Glitter Band itself.”

“Preposterous,” Crissel said. Gaffney raised a restraining hand.

“No. Let’s hear him out.”

“Clepsydra believes that this group or organisation has devised a plan for averting whatever disaster they’ve seen coming, even if that means denying us our usual liberties.”

Baudry nodded in the general direction of the Solid Orrery.

“And the blackout, the hostile actions we’ve just heard about?”

“I think we could be seeing the start of a takeover bid.”

“Voi,” Baudry answered sharply.

“You’re not serious. Surely you’re not serious.”

“Makes perfect sense to me,” Dreyfus said.

“If we couldn’t be trusted to guarantee the future security of the Glitter Band, what would you do?”

“But only four habitats… there are ten thousand more out there that are still ours!”.

“I think Thalia was the key,” Dreyfus said.

“Unwittingly, of course. Her code was contaminated. It must have been tampered with to open a security loophole that didn’t exist before. Thalia was supposed to make that upgrade Bandwide, across the entire ten thousand, in one fell swoop.”

“But she didn’t want to do that, I recall,” said Baudry.

“No,” said Dreyfus.

“She insisted on identifying four of the likely worst cases and running manual installations. That way she could correct errors in realtime, on the spot, and make sure no one was without their precious abstraction for more than a few minutes. Once she’d supervised those four installations, she could tweak the code to make sure the remaining ten thousand went without a hitch.”

“But those habitats have been without abstraction for hours,” Crissel said.

“That isn’t Thalia’s fault. Her diligence didn’t cause this, Michael. It prevented an even worse crisis. If Thalia had done the easy, obvious thing, we wouldn’t be looking at four habitats off abstraction, we’d be looking at ten thousand. The takeover would be complete. We’d have lost the Glitter Band.”

“Now let’s not get carried away,” Gaffney said, smiling at the others.

“We have enough of a mess to deal with without indulging in apocalyptic fantasies.”

“It isn’t a fantasy,” Dreyfus said.

“Someone wanted this to happen.”

“Why, though?” Crissel asked.

“What group of people could possibly organise themselves to seize control of the entire Band? It’s one thing to take habitats off abstraction. But the citizens inside won’t just roll over and accept that. You’d need an armed militia to actually subjugate them. Thousands of people for each habitat, at the very least. We’d be looking at an invisible army ten million strong just to have a chance of making this work. If there was a movement that powerful, that coordinated, we’d have seen it coming years ago.”

“Maybe it’s a different kind of takeover,” Dreyfus said.

“What did the Conjoiner say about the people behind this?” asked Baudry.

“Not much.” Dreyfus hesitated, conscious that every divulgence carried a measurable risk.

“I got a name. A figure called Aurora. She may have some connection to the Nerval-Lermontov family.”

Baudry peered at him.

“They lost a daughter in the Eighty. Her name was Aurora, I believe. You’re not seriously suggesting—”

“I’m not making any inferences. Maybe I can get more out of Clepsydra when she’s feeling stronger, and she’s certain she can trust us.”

“You’re worried about her trusting us?” Baudry said.

A knock at the door signalled the return of the operator. She entered the room with a trace less diffidence than before.

“And?” Gaffney asked.

“The drones have been requisitioned, sirs. First is scheduled to dock at Szlumper Oneill in eleven minutes. Within twenty-two minutes, the remaining three will have completed approaches to their respective habitats.”

“Very good,” Gaffney allowed.

“I’ve secured high-res visual feeds of all four habitats, sirs. I can pipe the observations through to the Solid Orrery, with your permission.”

Gaffney nodded.

“Do it.”

The Solid Orrery reconfigured itself, allocating much of its quickmatter resources to providing scaled-up representations of the four silent communities. They swelled to the size of fruit, while the rest of the Glitter Band shrank down to a third of its former size. Tiny moving jewels signified the requisitioned drones, steered onto docking approaches. The prefects watched the spectacle wordlessly as the minutes oozed by.

Make me wrong, Dreyfus thought. Make all this turn out to be the deluded fabulation of a worn-out field prefect, resentful at the shabby treatment accorded his boss. Make Clepsydra’s testimony turn out to be the burblings of a mad woman, driven insane by years of isolation. Show us that Thalia Ng really did make mistakes, despite everything I know to the contrary. Show us that the first two attacks were accidents caused by hair-trigger defence systems twitching like headless snakes when abstraction went down.

But it wasn’t to be. Eleven minutes after the girl had spoken, the anti-collision systems of Szlumper Oneill opened fire on the approaching drone, destroying it utterly. If anything the fire was more concentrated, more purposeful, than on the previous two occasions. The jewel-like representation of the drone swelled to a thumb-sized smear of twinkling light, then reformed into the pulsing tetrahedral icon that symbolised an object of unknown status.

Three minutes later a second drone attempted to dock at House Aubusson, and met with precisely the

same fate. Five minutes after that, a third drone was annihilated as it braked to engage with Carousel New Seattle-Tacoma. Three minutes after that, twenty-two minutes since the girl had spoken, the guns of the Chevelure-Sambuke Hourglass directed savage fire on the final drone.

The Solid Orrery reformed itself into its usual configuration. A brittle silence ensued.

“So maybe it’s war after all,” Baudry said eventually.