‘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 real-time, 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. ‘I don’t like this room. It feels haunted.’
‘You must feel very cut off in here.’
‘I just don’t like this room. It’s so dead that I’m starting to imagine phantom presences. I keep seeing something out of the corner of my eye, then when I look it isn’t there. Even the inside of the rock wasn’t like this.’
‘I apologise,’ Dreyfus said. ‘I committed a procedural mistake in allowing you into Panoply without considering our operational secrets.’
Clepsydra unfolded herself with catlike slowness. In the sound-absorbing space, the acoustics of her voice had acquired a metallic timbre. ‘Will you get into trouble for that?’
He smiled at her concern. ‘Not likely. I’ve weathered worse storms than a procedural slip-up. Especially as no damage was done.’ He cocked his head. ‘No damage was done, I take it?’
‘I saw many things.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘Many things that were of no inter
est to me,’ she added. ‘It may reassure you to know that I’ve buried those secrets far below conscious recall. I can’t simply forget them: forgetting isn’t a capacity we possess. But you may consider them as good as forgotten.’
‘Thank you, Clepsydra.’
‘But that won’t be the end of it, will it? You might believe me. The others won’t.’
‘I’ll see to it that they do. You’re a protected witness, not a prisoner.’
‘Except I’m not free to leave.’
‘We’re worried someone wants to kill you.’
‘That would be my problem, wouldn’t it?’
‘Not when we still think you can tell us something useful.’ Dreyfus had come to a halt a couple of metres from Clepsydra’s floating form, oriented the same way up. Before entering the bubble, he’d divested himself of all weapons and communications devices, including his whiphound. It occurred to him, in a way it had not before, that he was alone in a surveillance blind spot with an agile humanoid-machine hybrid that could easily kill him. Autopsies of dead Conjoiners had revealed muscle fibres derived from chimpanzee physiology, giving them five or six times normal human strength. Clepsydra might have been weakened, but he doubted that she’d have much trouble overpowering him, if she wished.
Some flicker of that unease must have showed on his face.
‘I still frighten you,’ she said, very quietly. ‘But you came unarmed, with not even a knife for protection.’
‘I’ve still got my acid wit.’
‘Now tell me exactly what it is I have to fear. Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something very, very bad.’
‘It’s begun,’ Dreyfus said. ‘Aurora’s takeover. We’ve lost control of four habitats. Attempts to land ships on them have been met by hostile action.’
‘I didn’t think it would be so soon.’
‘When Sparver and I found you, she must have realised Panoply were closing in fast. She decided to go with just the four habitats that were already compromised rather than wait for the upgrade software to be installed across the entire ten thousand.’
Clepsydra looked puzzled. ‘What good will that do her? Even if you have lost control of those habitats now, you still have access to the resources of the rest of the Glitter Band, not to mention Panoply’s own capabilities. Aurora will not be able to hold out indefinitely.’
‘I’m guessing she assumes she can.’
‘All the times I sensed Aurora’s mind, I detected an intense strategic cunning; a constantly probing machinelike evaluation of shifting probabilities. This is not a mind capable of pointless gestures, or elementary lapses of judgement.’ Clepsydra paused. ‘Have you had any formal contact with her?’
‘Not a squeak. Other than our theory about the Nerval-Lermontovs, we still don’t really know who she is.’
‘You believe she was one of the Eighty?’
Dreyfus nodded. ‘But everything we know says that all of the Eighty failed. Aurora was one of the most famous cases. How can we have been wrong about that?’
‘What if there was something different about her simulation? Some essential detail that varied from the others? I told you that we were aware of Calvin Sylveste’s procedures. We know that he fine-tuned some of the neural-mapping and simulation parameters from one volunteer to the next. Superficially, it appeared to make no difference to the outcome. But what if it did?’
‘I don’t follow. She either died or she didn’t.’
‘Consider this, Prefect. After her Transmigration, Aurora was truly conscious in her alpha-level embodiment. She was aware of the other seventy-nine volunteers, in close contact with many of them. They’d hoped to form a community of minds, an immortal elite above the rest of corporeal humanity. But then Aurora saw the others failing: their simulations stalling, or locking into endless recursive loops. And she began to fear for herself, even as she suspected that she might be different, immune to whatever deficiency was stalking her comrades. But she was truly fearful for another reason.’
‘Which was?’ Dreyfus asked.
‘By the time the last of the Eighty was scanned, the true nature of what Calvin was attempting had begun to percolate through to the mass consciousness. What he had in mind was not simply a new form of immortality, to improve upon what was already available via drugs and surgery and medichines. Calvin sought the creation of an entirely new and superior stratum of existence. The Eighty wouldn’t just be invulnerable and ageless. They’d be faster, cleverer, almost limitless in their potentiality. They would make the Conjoiners seem almost Neanderthal. Can you guess what happened next, Prefect?’
‘A backlash, perhaps?’
‘Groups began to emerge, petitioning for tighter controls over the Eighty. They wanted Calvin’s subjects to be confined to firewall-shielded computational architectures - minds in cages, if you will. More hardline elements wanted the Eighty to be frozen, so that the implications of what they were could be studied exhaustively before they were allowed to resume simulated consciousness. Even more extreme factions wanted the Eighty to be deleted, as if their very patterns were a threat to civilised society.’
‘But they didn’t get their way.’
‘No, but the tide was growing. Had the Eighty not begun to fail of their own accord, there’s no telling how strong the anti-Transmigration movement might have become. Those of the Eighty who were still functioning must have seen the walls closing in.’
‘Aurora amongst them.’
‘It’s just a theory. But if she suspected that her kind were going to be hounded and persecuted, that her own existence was in danger even if she didn’t succumb to stasis or recursion, might she not have devised a scheme to ensure her own survival?’
‘Fake her own stasis, in other words. Leave a data corpse. But in the meantime the real Aurora was somewhere else. She must have escaped into the wider architecture of the entire Glitter Band, like a rat under the floorboards.’
‘I think there is a very real possibility that this is what happened.’
‘Were there other survivors?’
‘I don’t know. Possibly. But the only mind I ever sensed clearly was Aurora’s. Even if there are more, I think she is the strongest of them. The figurehead. The one with the dreams and plans.’
‘So here comes the big question,’ Dreyfus said. ‘If Aurora’s really behind the loss of those four habitats - and it’s starting to look as if she is - what does she want?’
‘The only thing that has ever mattered to her: her own long-term survival.’ Clepsydra smiled gravely. ‘Where you figure in that is another matter entirely.’
‘Me personally?’
‘I mean baseline humanity, Prefect.’
After a moment Dreyfus asked, ‘Would the Conjoiners help us if we were in trouble?’
‘As you helped us on Mars two hundred and twenty years ago?’
‘I thought we were over all that.’
‘Some of us have long memories. Perhaps we would help you, as you might help an animal caught in a trap. Lately, though, we have our own concerns.’
‘Even after everything Aurora did to you?’
‘Aurora poses no threat to the greater community of the Conjoined. You might as well take revenge on the sea for drowning someone.’
‘Then you’ll do nothing.’
He thought that was the end of it, but after a long silence she said, ‘I admit I would find . . . consolation in seeing her hurt.’
Dreyfus nodded approvingly. ‘Then you do feel something. You’ve notched down those old baseline human emotions, but you haven’t expunged them completely. She did something horrific to you and your crew, and part of you needs to hit back.’
‘Except there is nothing to hit.’
‘But if we could identify her vulnerabilities, find a way to make life difficult for her . . . would you help us?’
‘I wouldn’t hinder you.’
‘I know you looked deep into our data architecture before I brought you into this room. You told me
you’d seen nothing of interest. But now that the damage is done, I want you to sift through that information again. It’s all in your head. Look at it from different angles. If you can find something, anything, no matter how apparently inconsequential, that sheds any light on Aurora’s location or nature, or how we might strike back, I need to know about it.’
‘There may be nothing.’
‘But there’s no harm in looking.’
A tightness appeared in her face. ‘It will take a while. Do not expect me to give you an answer immediately.’
‘That’s all right,’ Dreyfus said. ‘I’ve got another witness I need to speak to.’
Just when he thought they were done, that she had said everything she wanted to say to him, Clepsydra spoke again.
‘Dreyfus.’
‘Yes?’
‘I do not forgive your kind for what they did to us on Mars, or for the years of persecution that followed. It would be a betrayal of Galiana’s memory were I to do that.’ Then she looked him in the eyes, daring him not to reciprocate. ‘But you are not like those men. You have been kind to me.’
Dreyfus called by the Turbine hall and sought out Trajanova, the woman he’d spoken to after the earlier accident. He was gladdened to see that two of the four machines were now spinning again, even if they were obviously not operating at normal capacity. The machine nearest the destroyed unit was still stationary, with at least a dozen technicians visible inside the transparent casing. As for the destroyed machine itself, there was now little evidence that it had ever existed. The remains of the casing had been removed, leaving circular apertures in the floor and ceiling. Technicians crowded around both sites, directing heavy servitors to assist them in the slow process of installing a new unit.
‘You’ve obviously been busy,’ Dreyfus told Trajanova.
‘Field prefects aren’t the only ones who work hard in this organisation.’
‘I know. And my remark wasn’t intended as a slight. We’ve all been under pressure and I appreciate the work that’s gone on down here. I’ll make sure the supreme prefect hears about it.’
The Revelation Space Collection Page 401