“I’m afraid you’re too late. You’ve just missed the demise of the Persistent Vegetative State.”
Without sitting down, Dreyfus moved to a position close to the Solid Orrery. The number of red lights hadn’t changed since last time he’d seen it, but he could draw no consolation from that, knowing what it had cost just to slow Aurora’s advance.
“How many’d we get out?”
“One hundred and seventeen thousand, out of a total population of one hundred and thirty. Not bad, all
things considered, especially as we were basically dealing with corpses.”
“We’ve now concentrated our evacuation efforts on the targets we think Aurora will go for next,”. Clearmountain said.
“Our monitors show that the weevil flows are already changing direction, now they know the Spindle and the PVS are out of the picture.”
“You mean ’nuked’,” Dreyfus said.
“Whatever. So far, though, we can’t say where the flows are most likely to hit next. There are a number of possible candidates. Unfortunately, none of them are habitats where we’ve already started evacuating. We’re starting from scratch.”
“Where are the evacuees going?”
He could tell from their reactions that his question wasn’t a popular one.
“In an ideal world, we’d ship them far across the Glitter Band, well beyond Aurora’s expansion front,” Clearmountain said.
“But even with the high-burn liners, that would involve an unacceptable round-trip delay. Our only practical strategy has been to move the citizens to relatively close habitats, so that the turnaround time can be minimised.”
“Go on.”
Clearmountain cast a glance at the other seniors.
“Unfortunately, Aurora’s projected front is now beginning to impinge on some of the habs where we’ve been moving people.”
“I see.”
“Which means that when we start evacuating those habs, we’re also going to have to shift the recent refugees. With our current resources the situation is borderline containable, but as the front expands, and the number of endangered habitats grows geometrically, the refugee burden will soon become the predominant limiting factor.” Clearmountain offered his palms in a gesture of well-intentioned surrender.
“Some tough calls may have to be made when that happens, Prefect Dreyfus.”
“Today we nuked two occupied habitats. We’ve already made tough calls.”
“What I mean,” Clearmountain said, with a strained smile, “is that we may have to focus our activities where they can do the most good.”
“Isn’t that exactly what we’re already doing?”
“Not to the degree that may shortly become necessary. In the interests of maximising the number of citizens we can evacuate away from Aurora’s takeover front, we may have to prioritise assistance to those citizens least likely to hinder our efforts.”
“I see where you’re going. You think we should leave the coma cases to die.”
“It’s not as if they’ll know what hit them.”
“All those citizens went into voluntary coma on the understanding that the PVS would be looking after them, and that Panoply would be standing by if the PVS failed in its care. That was a promise we made to those people.”
Clearmountain looked exasperated.
“You’re worried about breaking a promise to a citizen with the brain functions of a cabbage?”
“I’m just wondering where this ends. So the coma cases are inconvenient to us. Fine, we lose them. Who’s next? Citizens who can’t move as fast as the rest? Citizens we just don’t like the look of? Citizens who maybe didn’t vote the right way the last time there was a poll on Panoply’s right to arms?”
“I think you’re being needlessly melodramatic,” Clearmountain said.
“There was a reason for this visit, wasn’t there, other than to cast doubts on an already complicated evacuation programme?”
“Clearmountain’s right,” Jane Aumonier said, her image speaking from her usual position at the table.
“The coma cases are a blessed nuisance, and we’d have a much easier time of it if we just pulled life-support on the lot of them. They’re going to retard our evacuation programme and therefore increase the danger to the rest of the citizenry. But Tom’s even more right. If we cross this line just once—if we say these citizens matter less than those citizens—we may as well hand Aurora the keys to the kingdom. But we’re not going to do that. This is Panoply. Everything we stand for says we’re better than that.”
“Thank you,” Dreyfus said, his voice a hushed whisper.
“But we can’t let the coma cases impose too heavy a drag on the evacuation programme,” Aumonier continued.
“That’s why I want them dealt with now, so we won’t have to worry about them in the future. I want them leapfrogged well ahead of the front—out of the Glitter Band, even, if we can identify a suitable holding point.”
“That’ll tie up ships and manpower,” Baudry said.
“I know. But it has to be done. Do you have any suggestions, Lillian?”
“We might consider an approach to Hospice Idlewild. They’re used to dealing with sudden influxes of incapacitated sleepers, so they should be able to handle the coma cases.”
“Excellent proposal. Can you sort that out?”
“I’ll get right on it.” After a lengthy pause she said, “Supreme Prefect Aumonier…”
“Yes?”
“It’s been nearly six hours now. Since Aurora’s transmission.”
“I’m well aware of that, thank you very much.”
“I’m just saying… given what we now know of her capabilities… and the difficulties we’re having with the evacuation effort, and the finite number of nuclear devices in our arsenal—”
“Yes, Lillian?”
“I think it would be prudent at least to consider Aurora’s proposal.” Her words came out awkwardly, the strain written in her face.
“If her success is guaranteed, then we have an onus to do everything we can to protect the citizenry during the transition phase. Aurora has threatened to start euthanising citizens in the habitats she already holds. I believe she will follow through on that threat unless we broadcast the takeover code to the rest of the ten thousand. If we wish to save as many lives as possible, we may have no choice but to comply with her demand.”
“I don’t think we’re quite ready to hand her the keys to the castle,” Dreyfus said, before anyone else had time to respond to Baudry’s words.
“With all due respect, Field Prefect Dreyfus—” she began exasperatedly.
“With all due respect, Senior Prefect Baudry, shut up.” Dreyfus looked pointedly away from Baudry, to Clearmountain.
“I dropped by for a reason, and it wasn’t to rubber-stamp our surrender. You have any objections if I commandeer the Orrery for a moment?”
“If you need to run the Orrery, you have authorisation to conjure a duplicate in your quarters,”. Clearmountain said.
“Let him run it,” Aumonier said warningly.
“What have you got for us, Tom?”
“It may be nothing. On the other hand, it may be a clue to the present location of the Clockmaker.”
Aumonier lifted an eyebrow. He hadn’t briefed her in advance, so she was as much in the dark as everyone else in the room.
“Then I think you should continue, with all haste.”
“I’ll need to wind back a few hours. Everyone happy with that?”
“Do what you need to do,” Aumonier said.
Dreyfus began to spin back the Solid Orrery to the point when he had begun tracking Saavedra’s cutter.
“Let’s remind ourselves what we’re looking at here,” he said, as the timetag digits reversed themselves.
“The Orrery’s more than just a real-time record of the disposition of the Glitter Band and its habitats. It also shows Yellowstone. That isn’t just some static representation of what the planet looks like from space. It’s a constantly changing three-dimensional image, pieced together from countless orbital viewpoints.”
“We’re well aware of this,” Clearmountain said.
“Hear him out,” purred Aumonier.
“Everything that happens on Yellowstone, the Orrery keeps a record of it. Changes in the weather, the cloud colouration… it all goes into the memory. Even those rare occasions when the clouds clear to reveal the surface. But there’s more to it than that.” The digits froze: the Orrery had wound back to the time of Saavedra’s flight. Dreyfus dabbed a finger into the jewelled disc of the Band.