“How messy?”
“Axes through doors messy.”
“But they couldn’t all have been insane.”
“They weren’t. But there weren’t nearly enough stable cases to hold the society together.”
Another staircase brought them to the lowest level of the atrium, where the pathway ambled between dried pools and ashen flower beds. Dreyfus speculated that it might once have been an agreeable place to pass time, at least in comparison with the claustrophobic confinement of the rest of the facility. But now he felt like an intruder breaking the stillness of a crypt. He told himself that the Firebrand agents had violated the sanctity of the place before Sparver and he had arrived, but the sense of being unwelcome did not abate.
Rooms, all of them larger than any they had seen on the upper levels, ringed the atrium space, cut back into the rock for many tens of metres. Corridors plunged even deeper, curving away to other parts of Ops Nine. At the far end of one, Dreyfus saw the daylit glow of what he presumed was another atrium space, perhaps at least as large as the one they were in. Several corridors ramped down into the ground, suggesting that there were further levels of habitation beneath. Dreyfus paused, unsure which route to take. He had expected to encounter someone in the central operations area, or at least find a clue as to where everyone had gone. But apart from the Panoply items they had already seen, there was no evidence of immediate human presence.
He was about to debate their next move when Sparver made an odd clicking noise, as if he’d got something lodged in his throat. Dreyfus snapped around to look at his deputy.
“Sparv?”
“Check out the sculpture, Boss.”
Dreyfus had paid little attention to the metal object since arriving on the lowest level. He’d appraised it just enough to see that it was indeed what it had appeared to be from above: a spiky black structure fashioned from something like wrought iron, suggestive of a cactus, anemone or angular palm tree, but equally likely to be a purely abstract form. It towered three or four metres over his head, throwing jagged shadows across the flooring. It consisted of dozens of sharp bladelike leaves radiating out from a central core, most of which were angled towards the ceiling. What he hadn’t noticed—but which had not escaped Sparver’s attention—was that there was a human skeleton at the base of the sculpture.
Despite all his years as a prefect, Dreyfus still flinched at the sight. He had seen corpses, but not many of those. He had seen even fewer skeletons. But the shock subsided as he realised that the skeleton could not have belonged to someone who had died recently. Most of the flesh had been consumed, leaving only a few grey-black scraps attached here and there. The bones, those that had not crumbled, were mottled and dark. Of clothes, and whatever else the corpse had been wearing, no visible trace remained.
The hapless victim must have been tossed from the high balcony, or perhaps dropped from some makeshift bridge stretched across the atrium, to fall on one of the larger spikes. The skeleton lay at its very base, the spike having rammed apart its ribcage. The skull lolled to one side, empty eye sockets regarding Dreyfus, the lopsided tilt of the jaw conveying incongruous amusement, as if it was taking a ghastly posthumous delight in the horror it caused.
But the real horror, Dreyfus decided, was not that someone had been murdered here. Dreyfus hardly approved of summary justice, but at this remove there was no telling what the victim might have done to deserve this brutal end. The horror was that the agents of Firebrand had not seen fit to do something with the bones. They had gone about their business, equipping this base for rehabitation, as if the skeleton was merely an unavoidable part of the decor.
Dreyfus knew then that he was dealing with more than one kind of monster.
“Put down your weapons,” a voice said.
Dreyfus and Sparver spun around, but it was already too late. The muzzle of another Breitenbach rifle was aimed down at them from the intermediate-level balcony. With the weapon on maximum beam dispersal, Dreyfus knew, it could take out both of them with a single pulse.
“Hello, Paula,” Dreyfus said.
“Put down the weapons,” Saavedra repeated.
“Do it immediately, or I will kill you.”
Dreyfus worked the sling of the rifle over his shoulder and set the weapon down on the ground. With obvious reluctance, Sparver followed his lead.
“Step away from the guns,” Saavedra said. She began to walk around the balcony, keeping the muzzle of her rifle trained on them all the while. Reaching the staircase, she began to descend. She wore Panoply trousers, but her upper body was clothed only in a sleeveless black tunic. It made her look thinner, more doll-like, than when Dreyfus had confronted her in the refectory. Yet she cradled the rifle as if it weighed nothing. The muscles that moved under her skin looked as hard and sleek as tempered steel.
“I haven’t come to kill you,” Dreyfus said, as her booted feet clattered down the stairs.
“You’ll have to answer for what you did to Chen, and Firebrand will have to explain its part in the death of the
Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. But I have no difficulty believing you acted out of a sense of duty; that you thought you were doing the right thing in sheltering the Clockmaker. A tribunal will see both sides, Paula. You have nothing to fear from justice.”
She reached the floor and started walking towards them.
“You finished?”
“I’ve said my piece. Let me walk out of here with the Clockmaker and I’ll do all I can to make things easier for you.” Saavedra kicked the rifles aside.
“Why are you so interested in the Clockmaker, Dreyfus? What does it mean to you?”
“I won’t know until I’ve got it.”
“But you’re interested in it.”
“I’m not the only one, am I?”
“You mentioned Ruskin-Sartorious. Do you know why we had to move the Clockmaker?”
“I presume someone was sniffing around.”
“And who would that someone have been, I wonder? Who was so concerned to locate it, after all the years it had been hidden? Who is still concerned?”
“Gaffney was working for Aurora. She’s the one who wanted to locate and destroy the Clockmaker, because she perceived it as a threat.”
“And you think it’s safe?”
“Aurora was afraid of it. That’s good enough for me.”
“Thing is, Dreyfus, I don’t have any proof that you’re not lying to me.”
“How about this? If I wanted to destroy the Clockmaker, I could have dropped a missile on this whole facility thirteen hours ago. Instead, my partner and I have walked in with the intention of negotiating.”
“It’s true,” Sparver said.
“We just want access to the Clockmaker. You’ve kept it all this time because you thought it might be useful one day. Well, guess what? This is the day.”
“I really don’t know much about Aurora,” Saavedra answered.
“Yes, I’m aware of the crisis in orbit, the loss of the habitats, the evacuation effort. But I still don’t have a clear picture of who’s behind it. Can you enlighten me?”
“Is anything we say going to make you point that gun elsewhere?” Dreyfus asked.
“Let’s see how you get on.” Dreyfus took a deep breath, as much to calm his nerves as to prepare to speak.
“We think we know what Aurora is. She’s a rogue alpha-level; one of the original Eighty. Unlike the others, she didn’t fade or loop. She just made it look that way. In reality, she’d moved on, become stronger and faster.”
Saavedra’s lip twitched derisively.
“So where’s she been for the last fifty years, or however long it’s been?” “Fifty-five. And we don’t know where she’s been all that time, except that she’s been planning something for much of it. The takeover is just the start. She wants complete control of the Glitter Band. Humans won’t be allowed to live in it any more. It’ll just be one vast support infrastructure for an immortal mind.”