Elysium Fire

by Alastair Reynolds

  “To someone else, maybe.”

  “You say that now,” Aurora answered. “But everyone has their breaking point.” She rolled her eyes in quiet exasperation. “Oh, let me throw the dog another bone—perhaps he’ll behave himself then. Your little people are trying to find an ownership trail for this place. They’ll struggle.”

  “Because of your meddling?”

  “Because whoever set this place up went to a lot of trouble to hide their tracks. Shadow companies, double-blinds, that sort of thing. All very clever, all very cunning—for an ordinary mind.”

  “And you’re not an ordinary mind.”

  “We agree on something, at least. Go far enough into that hall of mirrors and you’ll find a corporate entity known as Nautilus Holdings. Keep that name in mind—I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Nautilus, Dreyfus. Nautilus as in shell. Do I have to spell it out to you?”

  She regarded him for a few moments longer, then her face dissolved back into scrolling lines of data.

  11

  Thalia looked up as Dreyfus approached from the elevator, plodding across the slick, filth-smeared floor of the concourse. There was a slump to his shoulders, a troubled set to his face.

  “Are you still here?”

  “You said I could finish off, sir. It’s barely been an hour.” She wondered why he took such an interest in her welfare when he never looked far from the ragged edge of exhaustion himself. “Did you find anything out, sir?”

  Dreyfus stepped over a power line. “Nothing that upsets the picture we already have, that this place was some sort of clinic.”

  “The technicians are cataloguing and removing a lot of medical equipment,” Thalia said, nodding at one of the trolleys awaiting collection. “They say it’s state-of-the-art, for thirty years ago. Beyond that, I’m not sure it’s going to teach us very much.”

  “Which makes it all the more important to get what we can from the clinic’s own archives,” Dreyfus said.

  “There’ll be external records, won’t there? Patient files logged with central repositories?”

  “Someone obviously wanted to hinder your investigation of the clinic—we can’t assume they won’t have taken other steps.” He glanced down at the compad she was still holding. “That’s why I’m very interested in what you can get from the local archives.”

  “Not much is the answer,” Thalia said, flipping the compad around for his benefit. “I think I’ve located the area where we might expect them to have kept the patient files, but if there’s anything intelligible left in it, it’s well hidden.”

  Dreyfus nodded slowly. “We wouldn’t need intact records. Just a fragment, a partial list.”

  “I’ll see what we can get, sir. Sparver’s trying to get something out of the ownership chain, too, but I gather it’s not proving very easy. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to put up smokescreens.”

  “All we need is one name—one figure or organisation behind this clinic. Then I can start pulling on that string and see where it leads us.”

  “What are you thinking, sir?”

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t like it. But when I’m confronted with a mystery, I often find it helps to ask one simple question: who is this benefitting?”

  “Wildfire, sir?” He watched as a dangerous thought crossed her mind. “You think …” Her eyes widened as the full implication of this line of reasoning became clear to her. “I mean, I can see how it helps him, but …”

  “Boss?” asked Sparver, walking over with a compad wedged under his elbow. “Report in from the Heavies. Reckon they’ve isolated a gamma-level monitoring intelligence. It seems to have been put there to keep an eye on things until Panoply showed up.”

  “Good. Have they sequestered it?”

  “That’s the thing, boss. There’s not much left to sequester. The thing’s been corrupted pretty thoroughly. ‘Torn apart by dogs’ is the phrase I heard.”

  “When I want colourful metaphors I’ll ask for them.” Dreyfus touched his chin. “If they haven’t already done so, tell the specialists to instigate a control and containment sweep for any other active intelligences in the habitat. And I want to know about all communications traffic in and out of this place in the hours before and after your and Thalia’s arrival, down to the last binary digit.”

  “They’re going through it as we speak,” Sparver said. “I’ve seen the preliminary breakdowns. Doesn’t look as if there’s anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Losing a witness and nearly drowning’s out of the ordinary,” Dreyfus said testily. “Have you got anywhere with the ownership trail?”

  Sparver showed him the compad. “Must be about nine layers deep by now. But somewhere there’s got to be a way through it. It took money to run a place like this, and that money had to come from somewhere.”

  Dreyfus reached for the compad. He squinted, tracing a finger along one path of the branching structure. “These firms—have you verified them all?”

  “We’re just starting with them,” Sparver said. “We can run a shallow audit without invoking special measures, but anything more than that needs a one-time mandate, and that has to be signed off by a citizen quorum. It’ll take a day or two to work through all these companies.”

  Dreyfus hesitated his finger over one of the annotated structures, tapping his nail thoughtfully. “Nautilus Holdings. Move them up the schedule, would you?”

  “Something caught your eye?” Sparver asked, flicking a glance in Thalia’s direction.

  “Move them up the schedule,” Dreyfus repeated.

  For the second time in four days, Thalia and Sparver detached from the Addison-Lovelace wheel and began their return journey to Panoply. Thalia was at the corvette’s controls, applying hard thrust as they broke away from the wheel’s airspace.

  “Maybe it’s just me,” Thalia said, when they were safely under way. “But wasn’t that a little odd?”

  “What part of this isn’t odd?” Sparver had his arms folded across his chest. “We’re on a blind quest to stop heads from exploding, and so far almost all we have to go on is a mysterious and scary white building.”

  “I meant Dreyfus, going all tight-lipped like that.”

  “Boss’s prerogative, Thalia. You’d better start getting used to it, the speed you’re going up the ladder.”

  She gave him a pointed look, but decided against a direct response. “You were with him when he arrived at the habitat, weren’t you?”

  “Some of the way.”

  “I saw him too. He was his usual self, more or less. Not exactly bursting with joy and vitality, but … then something happened between him arriving and his coming down from the upper levels. He looked like a changed man, Sparver—like he’d just got some very bad news.”

  “Perhaps he did.”

  “From Panoply, you mean?”

  “Lady Jane might have dropped something on him while he was upstairs—you know, some cheerful new development. More deaths, a steepening of the curve, some delightful update on Devon Garlin, who knows?”

  “I don’t see how things could be much worse than they already are. Anyway, shouldn’t he be happier, now we’re zeroing in on some kind of common link?”

  “We’re a long way from that.”

  “But closer than we were twenty-six hours ago. That clinic is the key, and we both know it. Dreyfus wouldn’t be throwing himself at it if he didn’t believe the same thing.”

  “So what’s your personal theory?” Sparver still had his arms folded, directing a look of expectant interest her way, somewhat in the manner of a tutor unconvinced that she had a thorough grasp of the subject under instruction. “Enlighten the lowly hyperpig. Let him watch and learn from the higher-ranking prefect.”

  “You want to play that game, be my guest.” She seethed for a few moments, before finding a brittle sort of calm. “Hypothetically … what if all the Wildfire cases were clients of this clinic?�
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  “It would have shown up already.”

  “Not if the people involved went to a lot of trouble to hide their involvement. We already know the clinic operated under a smokescreen—that’s why you’re finding it so hard to trace the ownership. Given that, couldn’t the clients have benefitted from the same level of secrecy?”

  “Dreyfus has interviewed more than forty beta-level instantiations of the dead,” Sparver said. “Each and every one of those betas has a vested interest in solving the murder of their living instantiation. Yet not one of them has mentioned any sort of dealings with a super-secret clinic.”

  “Maybe the betas don’t know what their living versions were up to.”

  “Many living witnesses have also been interviewed. Again, no one’s brought up any sort of clinic.”

  “But Ghiselin Bronner’s husband was fixated on those white shapes, and they match the clinic. Memories can be suppressed, Sparver. The people could have had some dealings with Elysium Heights, something that might well have been traumatic, and then had it burned out of their conscious recall. No danger of remembering it themselves, and even less danger of blurting it out to a loved one.”

  “And for what reason, exactly?”

  Thalia was thinking on the hoof now, but she was not going to let that stand in her way. “Two reasons, at least. What happened in Elysium Heights was illegal. Or shameful. Or both. Very possibly both. They came here for something, some procedure, and when it was done they didn’t want any lasting memory of it. That’s why the living witnesses say nothing.”

  “And the small matter of the deaths?”

  “I don’t know. Someone wants to hush it up once and for all, so they’re killing off anyone who had a link to the clinic.”

  Sparver nodded encouragingly, but there was unmistakable sarcasm in his gesture. “And in doing so, they’re in no way making us even more interested in the clinic, are they?”

  “I didn’t say I had all the answers. There’s something odd going on here, anyway. If that flood hadn’t happened, I might have decided the clinic was a dead end, but it’s only made me more certain that someone didn’t want us to poke around in there. Maybe they were hoping the flood was going to do more damage to the place than it did, destroying what’s left of the evidence, but then again that clinic’s been sitting there for decades, as far as we can tell, so why wait until now? Something’s not fitting together here, Sparver—and I could really use some insights instead of you sitting there with that smug look on your face, looking for holes to poke in my theory.”

  “Only doing what a good deputy ought to do,” Sparver said reasonably, before unfolding his arms and polishing his glasses against his sleeve. “Of course, if you want to suggest—”

  The console chimed with an incoming transmission. Gritting her teeth, Thalia reached to respond. “Ng here.”

  “Status, Ng?” asked the familiar but still slightly unnerving voice of Jane Aumonier.

  “En route for Panoply, ma’am. Prefect Bancal and I should be docked in just under ninety minutes.”

  “Good. You acquitted yourself well, Ng, from the reports I’ve gathered. Useful leads, and we’ll follow them as far as they take us. But I’m afraid I have further need of you.”

  “Whatever you want, ma’am—we’re at your disposal.”

  Next to her, as soon as she had finished, Sparver mimed her saying the same words.

  “You may not sound quite so keen when you hear what I have in mind, Ng. We’ve been monitoring an outbreak of civil unrest in House Fuxin-Nymburk. The local constables are just barely holding the line, and there’s a real risk of the mob overrunning the polling core.”

  “Civil unrest, ma’am?” she asked, ignoring Sparver.

  “Fuxin-Nymburk is one of the habitats most likely to follow the breakaway states. Devon Garlin has chosen this moment to apply more leverage. He’s there, playing to the gallery, stirring up emotions. If I had grounds for arrest I’d use them, but he’s keeping just the right side of legality. The mob is a different matter, though. They must be contained, pacified and dispersed. Normally I’d commit a small enforcement squad, say twenty prefects with dual whiphounds, and a fully armed Deep System Vehicle just to underscore our point. But the present situation requires a more delicate intervention.”

  “How might Prefect Bancal and I be of assistance, ma’am?”

  “Constable Malkmus has now issued three formal requests for Panoply assistance, and I’m afraid I can no longer ignore her petitions. You and Bancal will detour to Fuxin-Nymburk. Dock, liaise with Malkmus’s constables, use your authority, and report back when you have a satisfactory resolution.”

  “And if we run into trouble, ma’am?”

  “You won’t. Your presence alone will send a sufficient message. But should the need arise, additional prefects will not be far away.”

  “That’s clear, ma’am. Redirecting to Fuxin-Nymburk.”

  “Very well, Ng. Just one more thing. Tread lightly around Devon Garlin. He’s in the spotlight now.”

  One day, only a few weeks after Julius and Caleb had been shown how to shape the flow of information around their world, an odd thing happened with Doctor Stasov.

  The boys had been up to their games, playing tricks on Lurcher and hiding from the robot when it went out into the grounds to find them. During one of these bouts, the boys circled back around the Shell House and sneaked inside with the robot still thinking they were somewhere near the dome’s perimeter.

  That was when they heard the arguing. It was their mother and father, and that was not so unusual lately, but there was a third voice joining the heated conversation and Julius recognised it instantly as belonging to Doctor Stasov.

  Caleb and Julius halted in the main entrance hall, not daring to venture into the corridor where the arguing was coming from. The voices had that strained quality of people struggling not to shout, and only just keeping their emotions in check.

  Caleb started to say something. Julius, for once the more forceful one, jammed a finger onto his brother’s lips. Their own voices would carry from the hall. Even their breathing, fast and ragged from the run-around they had been giving Lurcher, seemed to bounce and amplify off the marbled flooring, the grand metal staircase, the tall, pastel-plastered walls.

  They heard snatches of the argument.

  Doctor Stasov: “… this charade …”

  Their mother: “… treated you very well. Don’t take that for granted …”

  Their father: “… undo what has already started …”

  Stasov: “… take a risk every time you bring me here … the boys … sleeping …”

  Mother: “… ought to be grateful for what we’ve done …”

  Father: “… know a good thing when you have it. Your reputation …”

  Stasov: “… nothing wrong with my reputation until you took an interest in me …”

  Mother: “Don’t call it that.”

  Stasov: “… why not, if blackmail’s what it is?”

  Then the argument shifted its focus, like the eye of a storm wandering over a landscape. Mother seemed to be making vague conciliatory moves in the direction of Doctor Stasov. “… has a small point, perhaps …”

  To which Father said, turning his venom onto her: “… knew what he was getting into. Handsomely rewarded, too … if you don’t like the arrangement, Aliya, you should have spoken up years ago.”

  Doctor Stasov made a scoffing sound. “Call this a reward?”

  Mother: “Perhaps we should slow down. We’re pushing the boys too hard, too fast.”

  Stasov: “Aliya is right. Glad one of you sees sense.”

  Father: “… have to grow up sooner or later.”

  Mother: “They aren’t ready, Marlon. We both know it. Julius still isn’t confident of his abilities. Caleb’s strong but he’s got your temper. We’re putting fire in their minds.”

  Father: “Someone has to.”

  Doctor Stasov said “… this chara
de …” again, followed by: “… a lie built on a lie. I won’t be part of it. You’re making monsters from monsters.”

  Mother’s sympathies might have been drifting towards the doctor, but this was enough to push her back onto her husband’s side. “Don’t call them monsters, Doctor. They’re our sons.”

  “They’re not even that,” Stasov said. “The games you played with those boys … the terrible things you did to them … damaged beyond repair.”

  “It wasn’t my choice,” Mother said pleadingly.

  Father’s voice grew louder and sharper. “They’ll be back with Lurcher shortly. We’ll hear no more of this. You’re part of this now, Doctor Stasov. You’d be very unwise to cross us.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Doctor Stasov answered, his low, dry voice barely carrying to the hall. “I know what happens to people who cross the Vois.”

  A door slammed. Julius and Caleb glanced at each other, then backed out of the hall as quietly as they could. They went out onto the terrace, crouching behind a line of large terracotta pots until they saw Lurcher walking back along one of the paths. The robot had a dome for a head, blank except for a single cyclopean eye. It was swivelling rapidly, scanning for the boys.

  “We’re here, you silly machine,” Caleb called out, pushing over a vase for the spite of it.

  While Lurcher cleaned up the mess left by the spilt vase, Mother and Father met the boys in the hall. They were standing apart, tension still showing in their faces.

  “Good,” Father said. “You’re here. Doctor Stasov will be with us shortly. He’ll run some more tests. Nothing very involved, just to make sure things are moving in the right direction.”

  “When we can we go into the city?” Caleb asked.

  “When you’re ready,” Father answered, before Mother had a chance to say anything. “Which won’t be too long now.”

  Doctor Stasov emerged sooner after, carrying his bag. Julius thought back to the night he had seen Lurcher carrying the doctor’s sleeping form through the darkened gardens, and guessed—presuming he had not been dreaming—that something similar would happen later, and that perhaps, in the early hours, the robot had brought Doctor Stasov to the household as well, laying him on the bed fully dressed, where he would eventually come around from what must have been a deep and dreamless sleep.