The Prefect

CHAPTER 26

Thalia’s trembling hands nearly dropped the whiphound as she finished weakening the final support spar in the sphere of the polling core. It had been agonisingly slow, and not just because the whiphound had grown too hot to hold for more than a minute at a time, even with a scarf wrapped around her palm. The weapon’s sword function had begun to falter, the filament occasionally losing its piezoelectrically maintained stiffness, the molecular cutting mechanisms losing some of their efficacy. The whiphound had ghosted through granite as if she was cutting air with a laser, but now towards the end she had to strain every muscle to persuade the filament to keep working its way through the structural members. The ninth had been the worst; it had taken nearly half an hour just to cut partially through, so that the strut would give way when she detonated the whiphound in grenade mode.

“Is that enough?” she whispered, even though the sound of the buzzing, crackling whiphound seemed loud enough to render whispering pointless.

“It’d better be,” Parnasse said.

“I don’t think that thing of yours is good for much more cutting.” Thalia retracted the filament.

“No, I don’t think it is.”

“I guess we’d best just thank Sandra Voi that that thing held out as long as it did. Only has to do one more thing for us now.”

“Two things,” Thalia said, remembering that she still intended to sabotage the polling core.

“Show me where we have to place it, anyway.”

“Anywhere around here should do the trick. A centimetre’s not going to make the difference between life and death.” Thalia placed the bundled whiphound under one of the weakened spars.

“Like here?”

“That’ll do, girl.”

“Good. I should be able to find this spot when I come down again.”

“How does grenade mode work on that thing?” Thalia eased aside the wrapping surrounding the shaft until she had revealed the whiphound’s twist-controls.

“You twist that dial to set the yield. I’ll turn it to maximum, obviously. It’ll give us about point one to point two kilotonnes, depending on how much dust’s left in the power bubble.”

“And time delay?”

“Those two dials there, in combination.”

“How long a delay will it give you?”

“Long enough,” Thalia said. Parnasse nodded wordlessly. They had done what they could down there, and while it might have been possible to weaken one or two more struts, Thalia doubted that they had the time. The barricade teams were already reporting that the noise of the servitors was louder than it had ever been, suggesting that the machines were only metres from breaking through. Thalia had heard them while she had been cutting. They had begun to climb past the top of the stalk, into the sphere itself. We’ve probably get less than an hour, she thought. Even thirty minutes might be pushing it now. And that was without considering the war machines that she believed were planning to ascend the outside of the stalk, or even the inside of the elevator shaft.

Thalia and Parnasse climbed back through the forest of structural supports until they reached the ceiling door that led into the lowest inhabitable section of the sphere. A minute later they reached the floor of the polling core, where most of the party were now awake and nervous, aware that something was afoot but as yet ignorant of Thalia’s plan.

They had questions for her, but before she spoke to them, Thalia moved to the nearest window and looked down towards the very base of the stalk. She noted, with a knife-twist of apprehension in her stomach, that the concentration of military-grade servitors was now much less than it had been before. It could only mean that most of the machines were now ascending the stalk, working with methodical inevitability towards the level of the polling core.

“Call off the work squad,” she told Caillebot.

“Tell them to drop what they’re doing and get back up here.”

“Why?” he asked.

“What about the barricade? Someone needs to keep watch on it.”

“Not now they don’t. It’s served us well but we won’t be needing it any more.”

“But the machines are getting close.”

“I know. That’s why it’s time we got out of here. Get the squad, Jules. We don’t have time to debate this.”

He stared at her, frozen as if on the verge of framing an objection, then turned and descended the short staircase down to the next level, where the current barricade team was still doing what they could to reinforce the obstruction.

“What’s going to happen?” asked Paula Thory, standing up from the sprawl of clothes that she had made into a makeshift bed.

“We’re getting out of here,” Thalia said.

“How? You’re not expecting us to climb down those stairs, are you? We can’t very well fight our way past those machines.”

“We won’t be fighting our way past anything. If all goes well, we won’t have to deal with a single servitor. Before you know it, we’ll be outside House Aubusson, in clear space, waiting to be rescued.”

“What do you mean, in space? None of us have suits! We don’t have a ship. We don’t even have an escape pod!”

“We don’t need an escape pod,” Thalia said carefully.

“We’re in one.”

Dreyfus noticed that Aumonier was clenching and unclenching her hands, her chest rising and falling with deep breaths.

“I thought you’d appreciate some company,” he said.

“In person, I mean.”

“Thank you, Tom. And yes, you’re right. I do appreciate it.” She paused.

“I just issued that statement, by

the way—including your remarks.”

“They needed reassurance.”

“They did. You were right.”

“Have we gone dark yet?”

“No—I’m holding off on removing network services until we’ve finished with the Spindle. I want the citizens to know that we’re dealing with something bad, but that we’re doing all in our power to keep as many of them safe as we can.”

“Won’t seeing the Spindle nuked to kingdom come scare them half to death?”

“More than likely. But if it means they start listening to local constabulary, it’s a price worth paying.”

Dreyfus looked at the largest screen.

“How long now?”

“Three minutes.”

Three minutes until the weevil flow hit the Toriyuma-Murchison Spindle, he thought. Panoply ships had done what they could to thin or deflect the flow, but their efforts had proved almost entirely ineffectual. They were only holding station now in case there were survivors after the Democratic Circus had done her work.

The deep-system cruiser hovered aft of the Spindle, two missiles locked on target and armed, dialled to a yield high enough to take out the as-yet-dormant machinery of the habitat’s manufactory. Panoply had always had a contingency procedure in place for the act of destroying a habitat, and the crew would have run through such a scenario many times during training. The sequence, from the issuing of the command to the firing of the weapons, was supposedly immune to error. It required not just the authorisation of the supreme prefect, but also a majority of seniors. Mechanisms even existed to deal with the possibility of sudden changes in rank due to death or injury, so that the order could still be given even if there’d been a direct attack on Panoply.

And yet, Dreyfus thought, the crew wouldn’t have been human if they didn’t at least consider the possibility that the order was erroneous, or had originated through malicious action. They were being asked to do the one thing that cut against everything Panoply stood for. Like a surgeon putting out his hand to receive a scalpel, and being handed a gun instead.

But they’d do it, he thought. They’d allow themselves that one flicker of doubt, and then they’d get over it. The protocol was watertight. No mistake was possible: if the order had come in, then it was logically guaranteed that it had been issued by the supreme prefect herself, with the approval of her seniors.

The crew had no choice but to act upon it.

“One minute thirty,” Aumonier said. Then her tone shifted.

“Tom: I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“Go on.”

“It may be a difficult question. You may be uncomfortable about answering it truthfully.”

“Go on anyway.”

“Is something happening? Something I don’t know about?”

“What kind of something?”

“I’ve been hearing sounds. I’ve been in this room for eleven years, Tom, so I’ve become quite astonishingly attuned to my surroundings. I’ve almost never heard any noises from elsewhere in Panoply, except for today.”

“What kinds of noises?”

“The kinds of noises people make when they’re trying very hard to do something without making any sound. Something that involves heavy machinery and tools.” She faced him directly.

“Is something going on?” He’d never lied to her, in all the years they’d known each other. Never lied, or bent the truth, even when that would have been the kinder thing to do.

Today he chose to lie.

“It’s the mouth bay,” he said.

“The launching rack was damaged when one of the cruisers came in too hard. They’ve been working around the clock to get it back into shape.”

“The mouth bay is hundreds of metres away, Tom.”

“They’re using heavy equipment.”

“Look at me and say that.” He met her gaze steadily.

“It’s the bay. Why? What else do you think it might be?”

“You know exactly what I think.” She glanced away. He couldn’t tell whether he’d passed or failed the test of her scrutiny.

“I’ve been trying to get Demikhov to talk to me. He’s using every excuse in the book not to return my calls.”

“Demikhov’s been busy. That business with Gaffney—”.

“All right, so he’s been busy. But if you knew something was happening… if you knew they were planning something… you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Dreyfus said.

Except now.

“It’s time,” she said, returning her attention to the display.

“Weevil contact in three… two… one. Impact is confirmed. They’ve made groundfall.” She raised her arm and spoke into her bracelet.

“This is Aumonier. Detach the Bellatrix and instruct her to proceed at full-burn. Repeat, detach the Bellatrix.”

They still had cam feeds from the docking hub of the Toriyuma-Murchison Spindle. Hundreds of people were still crammed into the boarding tubes, being ushered aboard the waiting liner. Dozens of constables, marked by their armbands, were assisting in the boarding process. Dreyfus already knew that many constables had elected to remain inside the Spindle rather than leave on earlier evacuation flights. A few hours earlier they’d just been ordinary citizens, going about their daily lives.

“Bellatrix is secured for space,” Aumonier said, reading a text summary on her bracelet.

“She’s moving, Tom. She’s undocking.”

The feed had locked on to a single boarding corridor. The viewpoint was from inside a transparent-walled tube filled with civilians, constables and servitors, floating in an unruly multicoloured jumble. The vast, white, porthole-sprinkled side of the Bellatrix loomed beyond the glass, huge and steep as a cliff. And the cliff was starting to move: pushing away from the tube with a dreamlike slowness. At the far end of the tube, hundreds of metres from the cam, Dreyfus made out a sudden puff of silvery white vapour escaping to vacuum. He presumed that the airlock doors had closed, but a small amount of air had been sacrificed into space.

The Bellatrix kept receding. He focused on the golden glow of her airlock. Formless debris spilled out. Something was wrong there, he realised. The liner’s outer doors should have closed by now.

“Jane…” he began.

“They can’t close the doors,” she said numbly.

“The locks on the Bellatrix are jammed. Too many people are trying to squeeze through.”

“It’s not just the liner,” Dreyfus said.

Air was still rocketing into space from the end of the docking tube. But now it was carrying people with it, sucked out by the force of decompression. It started at the far end and then raced up the tube, towards the cam. Dreyfus watched in horror as the people nearest the cam realised what was coming. He saw them scream and reach for something to hold on to. Then it hit them and they were just gone, as if they’d been rammed down a syringe by an invisible plunger.

He watched them spill into space by the hundreds: civilians, constables, machines, clothes, possessions and toys. He watched the people-shaped things thrash and die.

The cam greyed out.

Another feed showed the Bellatrix turning, giving a view along its white flanks. The outrush from the open airlock had ceased. Interior doors must have closed.

“She’s on drive,” Dreyfus said. The liner’s quadruple engines cranked wide, spitting tongues of pink fire. The enormous vessel hardly appeared to move at first. Gradually, though, the slow but sure acceleration became apparent. The Bellatrix began to put distance between itself and the habitat. Departing from the Spindle’s forward docking hub, the liner would have the entire bulk of the habitat between it and the fusion explosion when the missiles hit home.

Aumonier lifted her bracelet again.

“Connect me to the Democratic Circus,” she said, barely breathing before speaking again.

“Captain Pell: allow the Bellatrix to achieve ten kilometres. Then you may open fire on the habitat’s aft assembly.”

Since the Bellatrix was maintaining a steady half-gee of thrust, it took only sixty seconds for the liner to reach the designated safe distance. By then, all surrounding habitats—those that hadn’t already been taken by Aurora—were on a state of high defensive alertness, anticipating not just the electromagnetic pulse of each nuclear strike, but also the likely risk of impact debris. For Dreyfus the seconds slowed and then appeared to stall altogether. He knew that Aumonier would have preferred to give the liner more space, but she was mindful of the weevils escaping and doing more harm if they waited. The evacuees aboard the Bellatrix would just have to hope that the shielding between them and the engines would serve to protect them from the worst effects of the blast.

A voice, rendered small and reedy in transmission, spoke through her bracelet.

“Pell, Supreme Prefect. Bellatrix has cleared safe-distance margin.”

“You already have my authorisation to fire, Captain.”

“I just wanted to be certain that nothing’d changed, Ma’am.”

“Nothing’s changed. Do your job, Captain Pell.”

“Missiles launched and running, Ma’am.”

The cam feed switched to a long-range view of the Toriyuma-Murchison Spindle. With distance foreshortened by the cam angle, the Bellatrix almost appeared to be still docked.

The missiles surged in, etching two bright streaks of exhaust fire, as if they’d gashed open space to reveal something luminous and clean behind it.

They detonated.

The nuclear explosion—the double bursts occurred too close in time to separate—whited out the cam view. There’d been no sense of the fireball expanding; it was just there, consuming everything in a single annihilating flash.

It happened in deathly silence.

All the displays in Jane’s room flickered momentarily as the electromagnetic pulse raced across the Glitter Band.

Then the whited-out view dulled through darkening reds until the background blackness was again visible, and something mangled and molten was drifting there, something that had once been a habitat, but which now resembled more the blackened, tattered remains of a spent firework. The nukes had destroyed the manufactory, but in doing so they’d blasted away at least a third of the habitat’s length, leaving the rest of the structure cracked open along structural fault lines. The air inside wouldn’t have had time to escape through those cracks before it became searingly hot. No one would have had time to suffocate, either. But they’d have had time to see the fire surging towards them, even as that fire burnt the eyes out of their sockets.

If only for an instant, they’d have known what had been done to them.

“Status, Captain Pell,” Aumonier said.

“Initial indications suggest complete destruction of the manufactory. Bellatrix reporting minor damage, but no additional casualties. Likelihood of further survivors is… low.”

“That’s what I expected,” Aumonier said, with almost infinite resignation.

“Destroy the rest of the habitat, Captain. I don’t want those weevils using it as a bridgehead even if they can’t make new copies of themselves.”

Dreyfus felt the weight of what they had just done squeeze in on him like a vice. In the time since he had last blinked, thirty-five thousand people had ceased to exist. He couldn’t focus on that kind of number, any more than he could focus on the nine hundred and sixty who had died in Ruskin-Sartorious. But he had seen the faces of the people in the Spindle’s docking tube; he’d seen their inexpressible terror when they knew that the air was going to suck them out into space and they were going to die, unpleasantly, with their lungs freezing into hard, cold husks before their hearts stopped beating. The face of one middle-aged woman came back to him now, even though she’d just been one of many people squeezed into the boarding tube. She’d been looking directly into the cam, looking—so it seemed to him now—directly at him, her expression one of quiet, dignified pleading, placing her utmost faith in him to do something about her predicament. He knew nothing of that woman, not even her name, but now she came to stand in his imagination for all the good and honest citizens who had just been erased from existence. He didn’t need to imagine her death multiplied by thirty-five thousand. The loss of one decent citizen was shame enough. That it had happened by Panoply’s hand made it all the more repellent.

But that didn’t mean Jane had been wrong to do it.

“I never thought I’d have to do this,” she said.

“Now I’m wondering if I’ve just committed the worst crime in our history.”

“You haven’t. You did the right thing.”

“I killed those people.”

“You did what you were meant to do: think of the majority.”

“I haven’t saved them, Tom. I’ve just given them time.”

“Then we’d better make it count, hadn’t we? If nothing else, we owe it to the citizens of the Spindle.”

“I keep thinking: what if I’m wrong? What if they really will be better off under Aurora’s government?”

“The people gave us the authority to protect them, Jane. That’s what we just did.” Jane Aumonier said nothing. Together they watched as Captain Pell finished off the rest of the habitat.

Now that there was no possibility of sparing survivors, the yields were dialled as high as they could go.

The blasts snipped the remains of the Spindle out of existence. Perhaps it was Dreyfus’ imagination, but he detected an easing in Aumonier’s mood when the evidence of her actions had finally been erased.

“You know the hard part?” she asked. Dreyfus shook his head.

“No.”

“The hard part is we have to do exactly the same thing to the Persistent Vegetative State. By the end of the day I’ll be lucky if I have less than a hundred thousand dead on my hands.”

“They’re not on your hands,” Dreyfus said.

“They’re on Aurora’s. Don’t ever forget that.”

She came to them shortly afterwards. Her transmission rode a secure Panoply-restricted data channel, one that remained active when the public networks were silenced and the citizens roused from the great dream of abstraction. The incoming data signal was subjected to ruthless scrutiny, but it was free of any hint of concealed subliminal influence or embedded weaponry. After consultation with the supreme prefect, it was concluded that nothing would be lost by displaying the image to the seniors gathered in the tactical room.

They found themselves looking at a girl: a child-woman on a throne wearing elaborate brocaded clothes. Her parted hair was reddish-brown, her expression watchful but not hostile.

“It’s high time we spoke,” Aurora said, in a strong, clear voice with excellent elocution.

“State your demands,” Jane Aumonier said, her projection addressing the image from her usual position at the table.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything, Supreme Prefect, except your absolute capitulation.”

“Keep her talking,” Dreyfus mouthed. Panoply’s best network hounds were trying to backtrack the transmission all the way to Aurora herself, wherever she was hiding.

“You must have demands,” Aumonier persisted.

“None,” the child-woman said firmly, as if it was the answer to a parlour game.

“Demands would imply that I need something from you. That is not the case.”

“Then why have you contacted us?” asked Lillian Baudry.

“To make recommendations,” Aurora replied.

“To suggest a way in which this whole matter can be settled with the minimum of inconvenience to all parties, as swiftly and painlessly as possible. But make no mistake: I will succeed, with or without your cooperation. I am merely concerned that the citizenry should be subject to the least amount of disruption.”

“You sound very confident of success,” said Aumonier.

“It is a strategic certainty. You have seen how easily I can take your habitats. Each is a stepping stone to another. You cannot stop the weevils, and you will not fire on your own citizens except as an absolute last resort. Ergo, my success is logically assured.”

“Don’t be so sure of yourself,” Aumonier replied.

“You are still in a position of weakness, and I have no proof that you haven’t murdered all your hostages. Why shouldn’t I assume they’re all dead, and just destroy the habitats you now control?”

“Be my guest, Supreme Prefect. Go ahead. Fire on those habitats.”

“Give me proof that the citizens are still alive.”

“What would be the point? You would rightly distrust anything I showed you. Conversely, even if I showed you a smoking ruin, the corpses of a million dead, you would suspect an ulterior motive, that I was encouraging you to attack for nefarious reasons of my own. You would still not fire.”

“You’re wrong,” Dreyfus said.

“You can convince us that the people are alive in one very easy way. Let us speak to Thalia Ng. We’ll trust her testimony, even if we don’t trust yours.”

Something crossed her face—a moue of irritation, quickly suppressed.

“You can’t,” Aumonier said, “because you’ve either killed her, or she’s out of your control.”

One of the network analysts pushed a compad in Dreyfus’ direction. He glanced at the summary. They had narrowed down Aurora’s location to a locus of thirteen hundred possible habitats.

“My concern is for the absolute welfare of the citizens,” the child-woman said.

“Under my care, no harm will come to any of them. Their future security will be guaranteed, for centuries to come. The transition to this new state of affairs can be as bloodless you wish. By the same token, all casualties incurred during the transition will be upon your conscience, not mine.”

“Why do you care about people at all?” Dreyfus enquired.

“You’re a machine. An alpha-level intelligence.”

Her fingers tightened on the edges of her armrests.

“I used to be alive. Do you think I’ve forgotten what it feels like?”

“But you’ve been a disembodied intelligence for a lot longer than you were a little girl. Call me judgemental, but my instincts tell me your sympathies are far more likely to lie with machines than with flesh-and-blood mortals.”

“Would you stop caring for the citizens if they were slower and weaker, stupider and frailer than yourself?”

“We’d all still be people,” Dreyfus countered.

“Tell me something else, Aurora, now that you’ve confirmed your origin. Are there more of you? Were you the only one of the Eighty who survived?”

“I have allies,” she said cryptically.

“You would be as unwise to underestimate their power as you would mine.”

“But for all that power, there’s still something that scares you, isn’t there?”

“Nothing frightens me, Prefect Dreyfus.” She said his name with particular emphasis, making it clear that she knew of him.

“I don’t believe you. We know about the Clockmaker, Aurora. We know how it keeps you from sleeping at night. It’s a machine intelligence stronger and quicker than you, even with your allies to back you up. If it got out, it would rip you to shreds, wouldn’t it?”

“You overestimate its significance to me.”

“It can’t be that insignificant. If you hadn’t destroyed Ruskin-Sartorious, none of us would have been any the wiser that you were planning this takeover. You’d have achieved your goal in one fell swoop, taking the entire ten thousand at a stroke. But you were prepared to risk everything to remove the Clockmaker. That doesn’t sound insignificant to me.”

The analyst drew his attention to the compad again. The locus of habitats had now shrunk to eight hundred candidates.

“If you had control of the Clockmaker, you would have turned it against me already.” She leaned forward slightly, her voice hardening.

“In truth, you neither control nor understand it. Even if it was in your possession, you would fear to use it.”

“That would depend on how much you provoked us,” Aumonier said.

“There has been no provocation. I have merely begun the process of relieving you of the burden of care of one hundred million citizens. I care about them more than you do.”

“You murdered nearly a thousand people in Ruskin-Sartorious,” Dreyfus answered.

“You killed the prefects sent in to regain control of House Aubusson. That doesn’t sound like a very caring attitude to me.”

“Their deaths were necessary, to safeguard the rest.”

“And if it takes a million, or ten million? Would they be necessary deaths as well?”

“All that matters is that no one else need suffer. We have already discussed the inevitability of my success. If you resist me, people will die. People will die anyway, because people panic and do irrational things and I cannot be held accountable for that. But there is a way to bring this to an immediate conclusion, with the absolute minimum of fatalities. You have my takeover code: it’s the instruction set your agent so helpfully installed in the first four habitats. Make it universal. Broadcast it to the rest of the

ten thousand. I will have them all eventually; this way it will be with the least pain and bloodshed.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Aumonier said.

“Then I shall give you an incentive. I am convinced that many millions of lives will be saved by speedy transition to my rule. So convinced, in fact, that I am prepared to sacrifice a certain number of citizens to underline my point. You have six hours, Supreme Prefect. Then I shall begin humane euthanisation of one in ten of the citizens already under my care.” The child-woman eased back into her throne.

“You may stop the deaths at any time by broadcasting the code to the ten thousand. If you choose not to, the deaths will continue. But my weevils will still give me the ten thousand, whatever you do.”

“One hundred and thirty habitats,” the analyst whispered in Dreyfus’ ear.

“We’re zeroing in.”

“Before I sign off,” Aurora said, “let me assist you in one matter. Doubtless you are trying to localise the origin of this transmission. If you are employing your usual search methods, you will have narrowed the field down to between one hundred and one hundred and fifty habitats by the time I utter these words. Were I to stay on the line, you would locate my point of origin inside two minutes. I’ll spare you the trouble, shall I? You will localise me to Panoply. I’m sure it’s one of your candidates.”

Dreyfus looked at the analyst. The analyst nodded briefly, his face losing colour.

“I’m not really in Panoply. It’s a mirror bounce; very difficult to crack in the time I’m giving you.” Aurora smiled slightly.

“Just in case you were thinking of turning those missiles on yourselves.”

It had never exactly been day in House Aubusson—the dust-smeared window panels hadn’t let in enough light for that—but now even that half-daylight was sliding back into twilight, and another machine-stalked night would soon be upon them. Thalia supposed they had done well to last this long, but she could extract no comfort from the realisation. They had pushed their luck, that was all. They would not see another dawn unless they left Aubusson, and there was only one way that was going to happen.

She refrained from more detailed elaboration until Jules Caillebot had returned with the barricade squad. Paula Thory was almost incandescent with rage and incomprehension, and her mood was beginning to rub off on some of the others. But Thalia held her ground, standing with her arms folded in front of her. Nothing would be gained by showing even the slightest trace of doubt now. She had to appear in absolute command, utterly certain of success.

“We’re leaving,” she said as soon as Parnasse and Redon managed to quieten the party.

“Cyrus and I have already made the preparations. We either do this or wait for the servitors to arrive. No one’s going to rescue us in the meantime.”

“We can’t leave,” Thory said.

“We’re in a building, Prefect. Buildings don’t move.”

Without answering her, Thalia walked to the architectural model. It was now resting on the flat, damaged surface of the transparent casing that had once covered it. Between them, Meriel Redon and Thalia had removed most of the structures surrounding the stalk, corresponding to the actual demolition work that had taken place overnight.

Thalia reached into her pocket and removed the white ball that represented the sphere of the polling core, dusted it against her thigh and placed it gently atop the stalk.

“For the benefit of anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, this is us. Machines are trying to get at us through the stalk, and more than likely they’re climbing up the outside as well. So we have to leave. Here’s how it’s going to happen.”

She touched a finger against the side of the ball and toppled it from the stalk. It dropped to the side and rolled away across the denuded grounds of the Museum of Cybernetics until it ran off the edge of the model and fell to the floor.

“Oh. My. God,” Thory said.

“You’re insane. This isn’t going to happen.”

“That… doesn’t look survivable,” said Jules Caillebot.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Thalia said.

“For a start, we’re not going to just drop half a kilometre. We’re going to topple and roll. The sphere will travel down the side of the stalk, but it won’t ever hit the ground. The stalk widens near the base and then flares out until it’s almost horizontal. We’ll be moving fast, but there’s nothing to stop us rolling around the bend and continuing along a horizontal trajectory. It’s going to be bumpy, sure, but with the momentum we’ll have gained during the drop we should roll a long way, particularly as there isn’t much left out there to slow us down. We can thank the robots for that. If they’d left the surrounding stalks in place, we wouldn’t have a hope.”

“Girl’s right,” Parnasse said, standing next to Thalia with his arms folded and a look on his face that dared anyone to contradict him.

“Structurally, the sphere’ll hold. We can expect to roll two, three kilometres before we run out of momentum.”

“But surely we won’t be able to just roll off the stalk like that,” said the young man in the electric-blue suit.

“What do you want us to do? Run back and forth until we topple over?”

“We’ve taken care of the rolling part,” Thalia said.

“Cyrus and I have weakened the connections between the stalk and the sphere. It’ll hold for another hundred years as it is, but I’m going to give it a little nudge in the right direction with my whiphound. I’ll set it to grenade mode, on maximum yield. It’ll give us a pretty big bang. It should sever the remaining connections and push us in the right direction. We’ll topple.”

“We’ll be smashed around like eggs in a box,” Caillebot said.

“Not if we secure ourselves first.” Thalia indicated the metal railings encircling the polling core.

“You’re going to strap yourselves to these guards, as tight as you can. Meriel’s going to make sure everyone has enough clothing to do a good job. You’ll need to be secure during the roll. I don’t want anyone breaking loose when we end up upside down.”

“Maybe I’m missing something,” Caillebot said.

“You talk of us rolling two or three kilometres.”

“Correct,” Parnasse said.

“That isn’t going to help us much, is it? By the time we’ve unlashed ourselves, the robots will have caught up with us again.”

Parnasse glanced at Thalia.

“I think you’d better tell them the rest, girl.”

“The robots won’t be catching up with us,” she said.

Caillebot frowned.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not stopping. We said we could roll two or three kilometres. That should be enough to take us across the nearest window band.”

“Oh no,” Thory said, shaking her head.

“Don’t even think—”

Thalia grimaced. She walked over to the woman and faced her down.

“Here’s the deal, Citizen. I don’t

have a fully functional whiphound any more. If I did, I’d run you through some of the more interesting things I can do with it. But I do have a pair of hands. If you make one more remark, if you open your mouth to speak, even if you so much as give me a funny look, I’m going to wrap those hands around that fat neck of yours and keep squeezing until your eyeballs pop into your lap.”

“I think you’d better listen to the girl,” Parnasse said.

Thalia stepped back and resumed her earlier position.

“Thank you, Cyrus. Yes, we’re going to roll across the window band. The band’s pretty tough, I admit—it’s already holding back air at atmospheric pressure, and it’s designed to tolerate occasional stresses above and beyond its normal loading. It could withstand collision by a small ship, a volantor or a train coming off one the bridges. But it isn’t designed to cope with something as substantial as the sphere. Parnasse and I both agree that the band will collapse under our weight, allowing us to drop into open space.”

“Where we’ll suffocate and die,” Caillebot said.

“Followed quickly by everyone else still inside House Aubusson as the air rushes out through the hundred-metre-wide hole we’ll have just dropped through.”

“There’s no one else to worry about,” Thalia said.

“We’ve kept it from you until now, but all the evidence at our disposal says that the machines have embarked on the systematic murder of all the other citizens. They’ve been rounded up, euthanised and shipped off to the manufactory to be stripped down and scavenged for useful elements.”

“You can’t be certain that there are no other survivors,” said the woman in the red dress, her face pale.

Thalia nodded.

“No, we can’t. Some other groups may have held out for a while. But we’re the only party able to protect ourselves by virtue of being near the polling core. No one else will have had that security. There’ll have been nothing to stop the machines storming everyone else en masse.”

“But what about us?” asked Cuthbertson, his mechanical owl still perched on his shoulder.

“We’ll still need air, even if everyone else is already dead!”

“We’ve got it,” Thalia said.

“There’s enough air inside here to keep us alive until we’re rescued. It won’t be going anywhere because the sphere’s already airtight. Provided the portholes hold, we’ll be fine. Internal doors will stop the air leaking out of the bottom of the sphere, where it used to meet the stalk. If there’s a slow leak, we can live with it. Rescue should be on us within a few minutes of breakout, if my guess is right.”

“You’re confident of that?” Caillebot asked.

“I’m even more confident that we won’t have a chance against those machines when they break through.” Thalia planted a hand on her hip.

“That good enough for you, or do you want it in writing?”

Meriel Redon coughed.

“I know it sounds like madness, at first. That’s what I thought initially when they told me about this plan. But now that I’ve had time to think things through, I see that this is the only way we’re going to survive. It’s roll or die, people.”

“How soon?” Cuthbertson asked.

“Very,” Thalia said.

“We need to think about it. We need time to talk it over, see if we can’t come up with another plan.”

“You’ve got five seconds,” Thalia said, looking at him belligerently.

“Thought of anything? No, didn’t think so. Sorry, but this is the plan, and there’s no opt-out clause. I want you all to start securing yourselves.

Anything you can’t do, I’ll help you with. But we haven’t got time for a debate on the matter.”

“It’s going to work,” Redon said, raising her arms to silence the party.

“But we have to do it fast, or those machines are going to be through to us before we know it. Thalia’s given us a way out when we had nothing. Don’t think for one second that I’m thrilled about what we’re going to attempt, but I see that we have no choice.”

“What about the polling core?” Caillebot asked.

“Have you forgotten about sabotaging it?”

Thalia produced the whiphound, gripping it in a glove-wrapped hand.

“I’m going to take it down now. Then I’ll head downstairs to see if I can hear any activity behind the barricade. If I don’t, and there’s no sign of the machines trying to break in elsewhere, then I may reconsider our escape plan. But if I decide to go ahead, I won’t have time to come back up and tell you until we’re almost ready to roll. You’d better assume that’s what’s going to happen.”

She stepped through the gap in the railinged enclosure, extending and stiffening the whiphound’s filament. Without ceremony, she swung it into the polling core’s pillar at chest height, straining to push it deeper until the resistance was too much. The core flickered in protest at the damage she was inflicting, fingers of sharp-edged black radiating away from the wound. She withdrew the filament and came in again, slicing at a different angle. The whiphound buzzed fiercely, the handle throbbing in her hand. Thalia sweated. If she failed to disable the core and somehow incapacitated the whiphound’s grenade mode, it would all have been for nothing.

She removed the whiphound. Now most of the pillar was consumed by geometric black shapes. At some level it was still functioning—her glasses confirmed that there was still some low-level abstraction traffic—but she had certainly impaired it, perhaps to a degree where it would not be able to send coherent packets to the servitors. That would have to suffice. The marrow of quickmatter at the heart of the core would prove resilient against the whiphound, healing as the filament passed through it, and she could not risk overtaxing the weapon. Thalia let the filament go limp and spool back into the handle. She had done all that she could.

“Let’s see if we did any damage,” she said to Parnasse.

She left the polling core level, glancing back to make sure the citizens were all engaged in securing themselves to the railings. She was pleased to see that they were, despite the ramshackle nature of some of their bindings. There was some grumbling going on, some indignation, but Meriel Redon was doing her best to make them understand that there was no other way.

Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary, she thought. Maybe taking down the polling core would be the end of it.

But when Thalia and Parnasse reached the top of the barricade, she knew that the machines were still alive. If anything they sounded louder and closer than ever. Thalia had the palpable impression that they were about to break through the obstruction at any second. The machines sounded enraged, their dim mechanical fury only doubled by what she had just attempted.

“Roll it is,” Parnasse said.

“Looks like it.”

They started jogging away from the barricade, towards the next set of stairs.

“Any idea why those things are still moving if we just took down the core?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Cyrus. Could be they were uploaded with enough autonomy to keep functioning even without direct supervision. Could be I didn’t damage the core enough. Could be they made another one, somewhere else. It isn’t that difficult if you know the protocols.”

They reached the next level down and arrived at the trap door in the floor, still open as they had left it.

Parnasse rolled up his sleeves, moving to lower himself into the gap ahead of Thalia.

“It’s all right,” she said.

“I memorised the way pretty well the last time we came down here. You showed me where to place the whiphound. I’m sure I can find my way without you.”

“All the same, girl, I’m coming with you.”

“I’d rather you were back up with the others, Cyrus, making sure they do what they’re told.”

“Redon’s got them under control. I think you convinced them there was no other choice.” Thalia had been striving to maintain a facade of certainty, but all of a sudden doubts magnified inside her.

“There isn’t, is there?”

“Of course there isn’t.”

“But what if I’m wrong?”

“Nothing could be worse than waiting for those bastards to break through. Even if this doesn’t work, it’ll be a hell of an improvement on being ripped apart by killer robots. At least we’ll go out with style.”

“Even though there’ll be no one to applaud our efforts?”

“We’ll know, girl. That’s all that matters.” He gave her an encouraging pinch on the arm.

“Now let’s get that whiphound in place.”

They clambered through the tangle of intervening supports until they reached the area where the struts had already been weakened or cut through entirely.

“Thank our lucky stars this isn’t quickmatter,” Parnasse said, “or those cuts would have healed over by now. But the rules say you can’t have quickmatter anywhere near a polling core.”

“I like rules,” Thalia said.

“Rules are good.”

“Let’s unwrap the baby.” Thalia removed the whiphound from its protective bundle. It was trembling, with parts of the casing beginning to melt from the heat. The smell of burning components hit her nose.

“Okay,” she said, twisting the first of the dials.

“Setting yield to maximum. Looks as if it’s accepted the input. So far so good.” She paused to let her fingers cool down.

“Now the timer,” Parnasse said. She nodded. She twisted the first of the two dials necessary to input the setting. It was stiff, but eventually the dial moved under her fingers until it reached the limit of its rotation. The double-dial fail-safe existed to stop the whiphound being set to grenade mode accidentally.

“Five minutes,” she said.

“It’ll start counting as soon as you twist the other dial?” Thalia nodded.

“It should give us enough time to get back upstairs and lashed down. If you want to go ahead now, to make sure—”.

“I’m not going anywhere without you. Set the timer.” Thalia took hold of the end of the whiphound and began to twist the other dial. It moved easily compared to the other one, clicking around through its settings. Then it stopped, long before it had reached the correct limit. Thalia tried again, but the dial would not pass beyond the point where it had jammed.

“Something’s the matter,” she said.

“I can’t get the second setting locked in. Both dials have to be reading three hundred seconds or it won’t start the countdown.”

“Can I try?” She passed him the whiphound.

“Maybe you can force that dial past the blockage.” He tried. He couldn’t.

“It’s jammed pretty good, girl.” Parnasse squinted at the tiny white digits marked next to the dial.

“Looks like we’re stuck at one hundred seconds, or less.”

“It isn’t enough,” Thalia said.

“We’d never get back up and lashed down in one hundred seconds.”

“There’s no other way of setting that counter?”

“None.” Then something came over her, a kind of awesome calm, like the placidity of the sea after a great storm.

She had never felt more serene, more purposeful, in her life. This was it, she knew. It was the point she had waited for, with guarded expectation, knowing it would arrive at some time in her career, but that she might not notice it unless she was both alert and open-minded. This was her opportunity to redeem whatever it was her father had done wrong.

“Girl?” Parnasse asked, for Thalia had fallen into a momentary trance.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“We can still do this. I want you to leave now, Cyrus. Get back to the others and strap yourself down. Make sure you close all airtight doors on the way.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to wait a whole three hundred seconds. Then I’m going to complete what I came here to do.”

“Which is?” Her voice trembled.

“Uphold the public good.”

“Is that right?” Parnasse said.

“Yes,” she answered.

“I don’t think so, girl.” She started to protest, started to raise her arm in defence, but Parnasse was faster and stronger.

Whatever it was he did to her, she never saw it coming.