“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.
CHAPTER 17
The isolation chamber was clad in a honeycomb of identical interlocking grey panels, one of which functioned as a passwall. A handful of the panels were illuminated at any one time, but the pattern changed slowly and randomly, robbing the weightless prisoner of any fixed frame of reference. Clepsydra was floating, knees raised to her chest, arms linked around her shins. The patterns of lights erased all shadow, lending her the two-dimensional appearance of a cut-out. She appeared to be unconscious, but it was common knowledge that Conjoiners did not partake of anything resembling normal mammalian sleep.
Since his emergence through the passwall didn’t appear to have alerted her to his presence, Dreyfus cleared his throat gently.
“Clepsydra,” he announced, “it’s me.”
She turned her crested skull in his direction, her eyes gleaming dully in the subdued light of the bubble.
“How long has it been?”
The question took Dreyfus aback.
“Since you were transferred from Mercier’s clinic? Only a few hours.”
“I’m losing track of time again. If you had said ’months’ I might have believed you.” She pulled a face.