They all turned to look at the Solid Orrery, with its representation of the Glitter Band and off to one side the tight pollen cloud of the Parking Swarm, lying in a high but not too distant orbit. None of them needed to be reminded of the potential destructive power of the Ultra ships gathered in that swarm, or the tensions that had come to the boil in the past.
“It doesn’t fit,” Dreyfus mused aloud. “Doesn’t mesh. Ultras haven’t figured in the other deaths. Why now?”
“Perhaps they’ve only just slipped up,” said Internal Prefect Claudette Saint-Croix.
“If there was a common factor linking these people, some reason for a systematic vendetta, we’d have picked up on it by now,” Dreyfus said. “Besides, there was never a Painflower associated with the other deaths. Why would they switch from one method to another, just for the sake of the widow?”
“We can’t dismiss the connection just because it makes us uncomfortable,” said Miles Jaffna.
“I don’t suggest that we do,” Aumonier said. “But we won’t assign undue significance to this incident until we know more about the Bronners. Maybe the widow will tell us something, now she knows how close she came to dying.”
“And the Ultra?” Dreyfus asked.
“Ng and Bancal are still best placed to investigate the Terzet Friller death at Addison-Lovelace. They’ll proceed there now, and leave Grobno under whiphound detention at the Shiga-Mintz Spindle. When the Heavy Medical Squad arrive for the widow they can collect Grobno at the same time.”
“I’d like some time with him,” Dreyfus said.
“You’ll get it,” Aumonier replied. “But we’ll tread carefully with this one, Tom. I’ve managed to keep the Ultras on our side for the last two years. I’d rather like to keep things that way.”
Sparver had done well with the whiphound, managing to get the Painflower off Ghiselin Bronner with only a few superficial cuts to show for the process. The local medics were with her now, assessing her condition and dressing the minor wounds and puncture points already inflicted on her by the Ultra device. She was still in a state of shock, eased into a chair in one of the adjoining rooms while the medics fussed around her, clearly excited that they had been caught up in such an unusual incident.
“You’ve got the man?” the widow asked.
“Yes, he’s in our custody now. And under that chameleoflage cloak he’s just a weedy boy with a few neural tweaks.” Thalia had been over this once already, but Ghiselin Bronner evidently needed extra reassurance. “We have the weapon he used on the constables. It was a stun-pistol, very short range and not capable of killing anyone.”
“Are they going to be all right?”
“Dane and Trelon? Yes—they’ll get over it. He only wanted to put them to sleep while he dealt with you.” Thalia touched the woman’s hand, where it rested on the chair. “That’s where I end up with some awkward questions. According to my deputy—”
“The pig.”
“Yes.” Thalia licked her lips, not really liking what she had heard in the woman’s tone. “According to my deputy, this has all the hallmarks of the Ultras settling a grievance. They couldn’t get to you without getting past the constables, but the agent was obviously under orders to use minimum force in the process. You were the only target, in other words. And in light of what happened to your husband—”
“Which I still haven’t been told about.”
“There are some aspects of his death which are sensitive.” Thalia was trying to offer sympathy, but the widow’s manner was making it hard. “Let me turn it around, though, if you don’t mind. You were the one who requested additional security measures.”
“And look how well that worked.”
“Something must have concerned you, Madame Bronner. You were told that your husband’s death was a medical event, yet you immediately reacted as if he’d been killed and you were likely to be next.”
“They got to him, clearly. Why is that a mystery?”
Thalia would have dearly liked to consult with Dreyfus and Aumonier and all the others in the tactical room about how much she could and could not say. But it was on her now, and she supposed making such a call was exactly what it meant to be a Field Prefect. “We don’t think there was any Ultra involvement in your husband’s death.”
“An Ultra was just trying to kill me!”
“I need you to be frank with me, Madame Bronner. Ultras don’t pick on random citizens for interrogation. Was there some reason that you and your husband might have got on the wrong side of them?”
Ghiselin Bronner raised a hand. “Please—she’s tiring me with these questions.”
A medic and a constable came over to her side, intent on steering her away from the widow. Thalia was about to assert her authority when Sparver intervened, saying in a low voice: “We’ll get our chance with her when the Heavy Medicals arrive. Some new orders just came in from Panoply. We’re to head straight to Addison-Lovelace.”
Thalia edged away from the others.
“With the Ultra?”
“No—Lady Jane wants the Heavy Medical Squad to bring him in. Quicker than waiting for us to detour to Addison-Lovelace, knowing we could be there for a good few hours.”
“Typical,” she muttered.
“Is it?”
“Of course. The first time the case opens up into something larger, I’m sidelined.”
“It’s just expediency. We could run the prisoner back directly, but then there’d be a delay getting someone to Terzet Friller, and that’s just as critical.”
“You think the Ultras will send anyone else, either to silence the first one or have another go at Madame Bronner?”
“Good luck to them if they do, between your whiphound and all the constables that have just showed up. No, they’ve had their one try and maybe it was enough. For all we know the kid was already relaying information to his superiors when we arrived.”
Thalia did her bit for Panoply-Constable relations by saying thank you and goodbye to all present, taking special pains with Dane and Trelon, assuring them they would be kept fully informed of developments relating to the Ultra. This was only true up to a point, she knew. If the present incident intersected strongly with the Wildfire investigation, then there would be a limit to what could be shared, at least while the emergency was being kept under wraps. But it was good to let the constables know they had been appreciated.
Hindsight was a wonderful thing. A few months ago a general directive had gone out to all prefects to do their best to bolster relations between Panoply and the local constabularies. Thalia had made nothing of it at the time, but knowing what she did now the implications were stark. Panoply was looking ahead to the inevitable point when the number of Wildfire cases became impossible to manage. At best there were a thousand prefects—actually rather fewer who were available for field duty. But the constabularies added up to a potential voluntary citizen militia numbering close to five million, if all were activated and mobilised across all habitats. Still only one in twenty of the entire populace, and that was an optimistic upper estimate, but perhaps enough to make a difference, or at least delay the collapse of all order.
They reached the corvette, at last able to talk as freely as they wished. Inside the ship there was an update from Panoply, a biographical summary of the Ultra, cross-matched from biometric and genetic data sampled by her whiphound and then fed through to the Search Turbines.
“He’s only known to us because he screwed up already,” Sparver said. “Dreyfus is saying it doesn’t fit in with what we already know about Wildfire, and I’m inclined to agree.” He was unbuckling his belt and whiphound, stowing them for the duration. “I’ll tell you something else.”
Thalia had half her attention on the flight controls, locking in a rapid crossing to Addison-Lovelace. “Go on.”
“Far from being an outlier, Antal Bronner has started looking like a clear fit to Dreyfus’s theory. What’s more risky than getting on the wrong side of the Ultras?”
“Supposition, until we know more.”
Sparver touched his snout. “Trust your deputy’s instincts.”
They undocked, pushed back, cleared the immediate airspace around Shiga-Mintz and then fell onto their course. To save time rounding up her subjects, Thalia called ahead and requested a general gathering of Terzet Friller’s colleagues at some location close to the docking hub, regardless of present shift patterns or those applicable at the time of death. She was careful to stress the routine, procedural nature of the interviews, making it clear she was not looking for a culpable party.
“Dreyfus wouldn’t have done it that way,” Sparver said, when she had closed the link. “He’d have kept them stewing. No point letting people know they’re off the hook before you’ve grilled them.”
“When I want your opinion about Dreyfus’s way of doing things,” Thalia said, stung, “I’ll be sure to ask for it.”
She checked the console. They were still more than thirty minutes from docking, and she felt she had said all she needed to for the time being. If she said more, something very unwise was likely to slip out of her mouth.
It was going to be an exceedingly long half-hour.
5
Julius could have found his brother the easy way, by querying his location in the consensual information field, but that would have gone against the spirit of their games. Not that they were much given to hide and seek lately. They had grown in the last year, and there were narrow places inside the white tree that it was difficult for Julius to squeeze through, and all but impossible for the larger, beefier Caleb. Beyond that, both boys now accepted that they had much more challenging pursuits available. Nonetheless the tree still formed the focal point of their day’s play and education. Julius knew if he could not find his brother in the winding white chambers of the Shell House, the tree was as good a starting place as any.
There was a hollow, sheltered space near the top, reached most easily by shinning up inside the trunk, with room enough for Caleb and Julius to sit in relative comfort and still have a commanding view of their surroundings. Julius saw Caleb’s feet and legs dangling down into the trunk before he saw the rest of him.
“Do you ever think of the other place?” Julius asked, heaving himself up by his elbows and squeezing onto the natural shelf that formed a kind of seat. “I had a dream about it last night.”
“I keep telling you, no one’s interested in your stupid dreams.”
“I was looking out of a window, and it was all stormy and yellow outside. Another boy was trying to tell me something important. It was something to do with the Ursas and why they were there. I didn’t really understand what he meant, but I knew I had to tell you as well.”
“I’ve come up with a new game for us,” Caleb said, affecting bored indifference.
“Don’t you ever have dreams like that?”
“Shut up and listen. I’ve made some animals for us to hunt.”
“I don’t want to hunt animals.”
“They aren’t real.” Caleb pinched Julius’s arm, a little too hard for it to be brotherly teasing. “They’re just illusions, like plumage. I can see them wandering around, moving through the trees and gardens. Lions, tigers, some deer and rhino. Maybe an elephant if I can be bothered.”
Julius sniffed uninterestedly. “I can’t see them, and I’ve just walked through the gardens.” He had a certain intuition about where Caleb’s ideas and games tended to lead, and it was usually some form of unpleasantness.
“You can’t see them yet because you haven’t given me permission. It’s more serious than plumage. Everyone knows what plumage is, and where you expect to find it. These are different. Now, do you remember Father talking to us about symbolic consent?” Caleb nodded encouragingly. “Yes?”
“I suppose,” Julius said again. Idly he traced his fingers over the area of the tree’s dead interior where they had taken turns to assert their names, over and over again, using knives stolen from the household.
I AM JULIUS
I AM CALEB
I AM JULIUS
I AM CALEB
“It works like this,” Caleb said. “I shape an image with my plumage, something simple but definite. Look at my hand, brother, not those stupid scratches.”
Julius looked. Caleb had his hand open, his palm to the sky—to the dome, rather—above the tree. Floating just over his palm was a yellow star, one of the jester-faced ones that Caleb liked to make when he juggled.
“Now what?” Julius asked.
“You reach out and take the symbol. I’ll permit it. The act itself gives me authority to modify your perceptual field, within agreed constraints. In simple terms, it just means you’ll see and hear the same animals I do. Smell them too, if they’re close enough.”
“Can’t we just look at the animals, instead of hunting them?”
“If that’s what you want, of course. But you have to see them first, don’t you?”
Tentatively Julius reached out for the yellow star. His fist closed around its insubstantiality. But his skin prickled at something, almost as if he had squeezed an electrically charged soap bubble, and when he moved the star from Caleb’s open palm to his own, it was hard to shake the sense that a physical transaction had taken place.
Symbols appeared in Julius’s vision. The exact pattern of them was unfamiliar, but he had already learned how to navigate and select options. Now he was being given a range of time variables, which determined how long the symbolic consent would remain in play. One hour, thirteen hours, twenty-six hours, a week, and so on—with the option to specify his own time limit or set it according to flexible conditions.
Julius knew that Caleb would expect him to be timid at this point, to choose the weakest setting.
“Twenty-six hours,” he said.
“Very good,” Caleb said, sounding more impressed than Julius had expected. “I didn’t think—”
“Just show me the animals, all right? Because I bet I can shape better ones than you.”
Caleb grinned. “I’d be happy to see you try. But it’ll take you longer than you think.”
“I don’t know. I think I’m getting better at visual shaping than you. You’re better with quickmatter, but then you never let me get enough practise with the malleable staff. Is it because you’re worried I might turn out to be better with that as well?”
“Let’s go hunt,” Caleb said.
Even Julius had to admit the animals were something of a triumph on Caleb’s part. Whatever crudities he had been expecting, the actuality was much more lifelike and detailed than he would have been prepared to give his brother credit for.
Caleb stayed coy about exactly how many animals he had set loose in the grounds of the Shell House, but it had to be twenty or more. Each animal was a ghost, imprinted on their vision by neural interfaces tapping into the visual processing system of their brains. But the ghosts all had goals and routines of their own, carefully matched to the likely characteristics of the real animals, and as far as Julius could tell the hunter-prey relationships were convincingly replicated. The tigers stalked alone; the indolent lions hunted in packs; the deer moved in ever-nervous herds, responsive to the tiniest gesture or shift in their environment. What the animals did not do was predate on each other, but their mock interactions were sufficient to create a complex, dynamic system of movements, an emergent whole that was undoubtedly richer than any of Caleb’s base-level algorithms.
It helped that the Shell House grounds were easily large enough for such games. The enclosing dome—the limit of Julius and Caleb’s world—was three kilometres across, with a circumference of more than nine kilometres. The Shell House only took up a small area under the middle of the dome, with the rest of the space given over to the gardens and woods. Paths radiated out from the forecourt of the house, connected by circular crosswalks, but the formality of the grounds only extended a kilometre out from the house, with the remaining parts becoming increasingly wild and rambling, incl
uding pockets of dense woodland. Twenty or more ghost animals were easily lost in that expanse, so there was no danger of Caleb’s game being over too soon.
“They won’t go near the house, that’s all I know,” Caleb said. “And even if they did, Mother and Father wouldn’t be able to see them, nor would Doctor Stasov, if he was dropping by.”
“You haven’t given them permission, but how do you know they can’t see them anyway?”
“I set the rules, not them,” Caleb said.
They came across a tiger first of all, creeping its way through foliage with complete obliviousness to their presence. Julius pointed and whispered, mesmerised by the huge and beautiful form. Caleb said there was no need for stealth: he had set up the animals’ algorithms so they had no awareness of their human watchers. “I could make them respond to us,” he mused aloud, as if the idea was new. “Hunt us, even, or flee from us. It wouldn’t need much of a change in their routines.”
Julius’s heart sank. Caleb already had something laid out in his head, some grand plan stretching weeks or months into the future, for which Julius would be no more than a component, willing or otherwise.
“Isn’t it just enough to make the animals?” he asked, knowing the reaction his question was likely to provoke.
“That’s your problem—always satisfied with what you’ve got. Here. See if you can shoot the tiger.”
Caleb had passed Julius the malleable staff. He had shaped it into the form of a hunting rifle, with a stock, a pair of long barrels and a stub of a trigger. Julius took it dubiously, knowing it would be forced on him one way or another. Deciding it was better to go along with his brother than argue about it, he settled the stock against his shoulder and sighted along the barrel. The tiger was still passing behind the foliage, its form broken into a near-abstract pattern of moving stripes, hard to correlate into a single creature. Julius aimed the rifle at what he thought was the tiger’s middle, and squeezed the trigger stub.
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