Elysium Fire

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Get out of her.”

  “She doesn’t care, Dreyfus. She’s past all that. Past everything, come to think of it. Besides, I’ve come to see she gets justice. To do right by these poor dead people. I gave you Nautilus Holdings, didn’t I? A tangible link to the Voi estate, as you now know. That was a gesture of my good intent, just like that list of patient names.”

  “A fragmented list, useless to us.”

  “But enough to demonstrate that I possessed the relevant knowledge. Your little people never did manage to extract an intact set of patient records from Elysium Heights, did they?”

  “They’re still trying.”

  “You can spare them the bother. They won’t find it, ever. The question is, how much do you want that intact list?”

  Dreyfus sidestepped her question. “Two thousand is a scratch compared to the millions you were prepared to burn two years ago. So why is Wildfire still a concern to you?”

  She made the dead woman’s eyes twitch up in their sockets. “The dead don’t bother me, Dreyfus—I’m one of them. But I do depend on the continued stability of the Glitter Band—at least for the time being. Panoply’s mishandling of this whole affair is exactly the sort of thing that gives succour to Garlin and his ilk.”

  “Then give me the list.”

  “I shall. Gladly. Nothing would make me happier. But only when you’ve granted the exceedingly small thing I desire. Your archives.”

  “No,” Dreyfus stated flatly.

  “I’m here already. I’ve already broken all but the last of your defences. Given time, I’ll find my way through your final barricades. And yet, what harm have I done so far? I could have played merry havoc with Panoply, if that were my desire. It isn’t. All I wish is to know what you know about the Clockmaker, and there my limited interest in you ends.”

  “If you’re such a godlike machine intelligence, Aurora, why don’t you just find your own way into the archives?”

  “Because, in your tiresome way, you have the better of me. I’ve brushed against your security protocols—I know what’s entailed. Three little words will grant me access to the Search Turbines. Unfortunately, all the brute-force computation in the system can’t help me if I don’t get those words right on the first guess. But you know them. Tell me now, and you shall have your names. I’ll make them appear to the technicians you still have in Elysium Heights. They’ll think they were being very clever. There won’t be a shadow of suspicion in your direction.”

  “No,” he said again, but this time with a fraction less conviction than before. “Not unless it’s agreed by Aumonier and the seniors, as a necessary trade.”

  “So that your analysts have time to trap me, or in some way compromise the data I seek? No—this remains between the two of us. And do not be so foolish as to think I wouldn’t find out if you went behind my back. I could shred those names as easily as I can make them appear. It’s your one chance, Dreyfus. I’ve extended my trust to you with the information I’ve already provided. Now it’s time for some much-needed reciprocity.”

  “I’d be a fool to trust you.”

  “You’d be a fool not to.”

  “Dreyfus?” It was Demikhov, stepping through the adjoining door, snapping a pair of sterile gloves onto his fingers. “I thought I heard your voice.”

  “Talking to myself. It helps me work through the details of a case.” Dreyfus eyed the head that had spoken, watching the eyelids snap shut, the face regaining its earlier slack composure. The change had happened out of Demikhov’s line of sight, but only just. “I was about to ask if you’re an optimist or a pessimist?”

  Demikhov eyed him with a certain wariness.

  “An odd question, even for you.”

  “You have all these empty flasks lined up. You must be expecting a lot more heads. That suggests to me that you’re not hopeful of us resolving this crisis any time soon. On the other hand, you must think that one of these heads will offer an insight.”

  “That’s a little too philosophical even for me, Dreyfus.” Still the odd look lingered. “Were you going to wait here indefinitely until I returned?”

  “I got lost in my thoughts. I should have checked the sleep roster before coming here.”

  Demikhov strapped a set of magnifying lenses onto his forehead. “I’ll admit to a little greed when it comes to wanting more heads to open. Unless you’ve come to tell me that the emergency’s been resolved?”

  Dreyfus produced a weary smile. “Do I look like a man bearing good news?”

  “No, I didn’t think so. You’ll have heard about case sixty-one, I suppose?”

  “That’s the one Elspeth Auriault brought in?”

  “She did well. We’ve been refining the detection threshold triggers after each case, and it’s given us between sixty and ninety seconds additional lead time, compared to Antal Bronner. No use if the prefect isn’t nearby, of course, but Auriault was in the relevant habitat and close at hand and carrying the containment vessel. That’s been another change in the protocol. A difficult call for Jane, since the prefects have to be trusted to carry these things and not ask any questions ahead of time, even without Pangolin clearance.”

  “I’d have had confidence in Auriault. Still, even being quicker than Thalia Ng …”

  “I also made some improvements to the whiphound subroutine and the cryopreservation system. Minor alterations, but enough to make a difference if luck’s on our side—as it seems to have been this time.” He gestured for Dreyfus to come around to his side of the table, next to the last flask that had something in it.

  It was a man’s head, the top of the skull neatly excised, layers of brain tissue pulled gently aside, wires and probes sunk into the exposed neural matter.

  “If only they could speak to us,” Demikhov said.

  “If only,” Dreyfus agreed.

  The man had a thick black beard and moustache, with thick black angular eyebrows that seemed, even now, to be registering surprise and not a little affront at the supreme indignity of his fate. The line of a scar, long since healed, cut from the corner of one eye to the edge of his mouth.

  “It’s Wildfire,” Demikhov said. “All the patterns match the previous cases. The citizen’s name was Nicholas D’Arcy Moon. No Panoply priors, nothing of interest to the constables. But he had a history of involvement with duelling societies. You’d know more of such matters than me, I don’t doubt.”

  Dreyfus gave a noncommittal shrug. “Perhaps.”

  “Apparently there are societies and clubs which enable their members to challenge each other’s honour, to nurture grudges and feuds and so on, and then settle those disputes by various violent means. Just when I thought I couldn’t be surprised by the wilder extremes of human nature … but I suppose you like this, don’t you, because it fits with your theory about risk?”

  “I don’t get to choose the patterns, Demikhov. I just follow them. Did they tell you about the clinic?”

  “They rarely tell me anything.”

  Dreyfus doubted this but played along anyway. “A private surgical facility, active for a relatively short span of time. Large, well equipped, but operating in near total secrecy. A number of the Wildfire cases may have been clients. Maybe all of them. I think something was done to their heads while they were in there, and this is the consequence.”

  “Deliberate action, or medical negligence?”

  “Let’s say malpractice is looking less likely by the day.” Dreyfus paused, wanting to avert his eyes from the peeled-open skull but unable to resist its macabre attraction. “What have you got from his implants, that none of the other cases showed?”

  “They weren’t as badly cooked, and neither was the surrounding brain tissue. Don’t get me wrong: he was going the same way as the others. But Auriault got to him just a bit sooner, and that’s given us our first glimpse of the implants in a partially preserved state.”

  “And?”

  Demikhov rattled a little sample tray, laden with tiny gritt
y-grey specks. “Other than these neocortical devices, most of them are still in situ. I’m conducting some residual functionality tests while they’re still embedded. For the full report, you’ll need to wait until C section have got their hands on them.”

  “But you can tell me something now.”

  “Yes, but you won’t like it. These implants seem perfectly normal. There must be millions of citizens walking around with more or less the same combinations of neural devices—tens of millions, even.”

  “There’s something different. You just haven’t found it yet.”

  “If there is a difference, it’s rooted at the instruction-set level, rather than any change in the physical hardware. But creating such a change would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. There are layers and layers of logical structure inside these things, wrapped around the holy kernel of the Voi architecture, and they’re all designed to prevent malicious interference.”

  “Someone’s obviously breached it,” Dreyfus said.

  “A rash supposition, even coming from you.”

  “It’s been a theoretical concern from the moment we identified Wildfire. But until we got hold of a set of intact implants …”

  Demikhov rattled the tray again. “I wouldn’t say these are intact, exactly.”

  “It proves that there’s a way of turning good implants bad, without changing the hardware. An alteration to the instruction-set, as you said. There’s thermal regulation built into these things, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, and a thousand other safeguards. But you’re not really hearing me, Dreyfus. The Voi kernel has never been breached. There’s no way to get through those additional layers. They’ve withstood more than a century of human cleverness as well as idiocy, and they’re still doing the job they were intended for.”

  “Then there’s another way in,” Dreyfus said doggedly. “A way of interfering with the kernel, without needing to bypass those extra layers.”

  Demikhov’s expression had been growing steadily more sceptical for at least a minute, but now it found a new level of incredulousness. “You’d be talking about a latent vulnerability, then. A fault which has been there all along, since the time Voi herself put it all together. But which only manifests now, in these last four hundred days?”

  “I didn’t say I had all the answers,” Dreyfus said.

  Demikhov reached to adjust one of these lenses on his magnifying strap. “If I find anything that fits your theory, I’ll tell you. But I wouldn’t stake your reputation on it.”

  When he returned to his room there was a message waiting from Jane Aumonier, tagged at normal priority. Dreyfus made himself some tea then sat down to listen to it. He had brushed against his wind-chimes and they tinkled gently as she delivered her news.

  “I’ve called in a favour or two—and eaten several helpings of humble pie. A Chasm City liaison will meet you just above the atmosphere. You’ll be allowed to visit the Shell House, but only with your liaison. Your powers of investigation will be at their discretion. You’ll carry no weapon, not even a whiphound. They expect you to complete your enquiries within thirteen hours from the moment you arrive in the city. You’ll be nice to them, Dreyfus—it’s my neck on the line over this, not yours.”

  “When am I never not nice?” he mouthed to himself.

  Aumonier carried on. “There’s no great rush. They’ll detect your approach and send up a ship to meet you. You can sleep on it and go there fresh at the start of the next shift.”

  Dreyfus swigged half his tea, then poured the rest into the floor. He conjured a mirror and stared into his eyes, peeling down the lids, trying to blink away the redness.

  Five minutes later he was at the dock, completing authorisation for the use of an atmosphere-capable cutter.

  Sparver was nervous. As their little entourage moved further into the gathering, so the whiphounds had to defend their backs as well as their fronts. The skittering, whisking machines moved quickly, and their presence alone was intimidating. But as they walked on Sparver felt a prickle at the back of his neck, a sense that his options were restricting. The two whiphounds were having to tighten their boundary to maintain it effectively.

  “Move your hand away from the second whiphound,” he whispered to Thalia. “It looks like you’re only one twitch away from using it.”

  Thalia turned off her voice amplifier before answering.

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Me too,” he offered. “But Garlin’s mob don’t need to know it. If we act like we’ve already got everything under control, that’s half the battle already won.”

  “Not too long ago you sounded like you wanted to wring his neck.”

  “I wouldn’t turn down the chance if it came up. But you were right about our priorities here. Negotiating with Garlin is our best chance of regaining some order here—even it’s going to leave a very bad taste in my mouth.”

  Thalia eased her hand away from the second whiphound. It might not have been done with the best grace, but it was enough for him that she had taken his advice.

  “We don’t have to get into bed with him. I hate him as much as you do.”

  Sparver walked on, lowering his voice to the point that his words would have been lost to the constables: “I think we both have some catching up to do with Dreyfus, where Garlin is concerned. It hasn’t even started being personal with us.”

  “Give it time,” she said.

  The citizens were wise enough not to encroach on the moving front of the whiphounds, stumbling back into the crowd or squeezing past on either side. But that did not mean their mood was in any way subdued. The prefects and constables were faced with a constant barrage of shouts and insults, as well as the occasional projectile hurled from somewhere in the mob. Sparver took a direct hit from a lobbed stone, only just raising his arm in time to protect his face. His sleeve stiffened in time to absorb the impact, but the force of it still had him losing his footing. Next came an uprooted fence post, whirling just over Malkmus’s head. Mostly, though, it was clods of dirt, splatting on the ground and only rarely hitting one of the walkers.

  Thalia was speaking again on full amplification, telling everyone they were under Panoply observance, but it was hard enough for Sparver to make out her words, let alone most of the crowd.

  Garlin was just in front of the broad sweep of stairs leading to the main entrance of the polling core building. Six constables were holding the stairs, four of them nervously sweeping back and forth with stun-truncheons, the other two wearing backpack-mounted sonic-cannon. Behind the constables, a wide set of glass doors had sealed the entrance to the building’s lobby.

  Garlin had his back to the constables. He was raised up on some sort of platform—only the upper half of his body visible—and he was gesturing to his audience, grinning and making a gradual flapping movement with his arms.

  It was having a slow, spreading effect. Waves of uneasy calm emanated from Garlin’s focus. The din began to die away, the shouts and insults falling back into a low, expectant murmur. The volley of projectiles subdued, until a last clod of dirt came sailing in.

  Garlin made another gesture, this time like a man trying to part a sea, and the crowd pulled apart ahead of the whiphounds, offering clear passage to the raised platform. He was standing on the back of a municipal robot, a cleaning servitor about the size of the constables’ vehicle. A loose cordon still surrounded him, but from their vigilant expressions and over-muscled physiques, Sparver decided these were more likely to be part of his travelling retinue than the common citizens of Fuxin-Nymburk.

  Garlin flapped his arms again, encouraging the mob into something close to silence.

  “It’s all right, Prefects,” he said, raising his voice without artificial amplification. “You’ll have no trouble from these good people. This is a peaceful assembly of like-minded citizens. Or are such things now no longer permitted?”

  “I am Prefect Ng,” Thalia said, continuing to walk behind the whiphounds. “I ask you t
o disperse your supporters. This gathering is in contravention of the Common Articles.”

  Garlin looked mystified, but his grin remained. “How so, Prefect Ng?”

  “The constables have determined that your supporters are attempting to reach the polling core.”

  “There’s never been a law preventing citizens from visiting the core, Prefect. Unless you’ve just made one up.”

  “The core may be inspected by any citizen or citizen delegation under prior arrangement, Mister Garlin. That is not the same as an attempted siege by hundreds of angry people, with no objective beyond petty vandalism.”

  Garlin directed his attention from Thalia back to the mob. “Angry? I don’t see any anger. Just decent, concerned citizens, freely expressing their lack of confidence in Panoply.”

  “This is a war zone, Mister Garlin,” Thalia said, walking to a halt about twenty paces from Garlin, with the whiphounds still zig-zagging before them. “You’ve instigated a riot.”

  “Have I? I could have sworn my assembly was lawful and disciplined, until anti-democratic elements began to stir up trouble.”

  “We can discuss the right and wrong of it later, Mister Garlin. At the moment our primary concern is your safety.”

  “That’s very touching.” Hands on hips, he swivelled around to address as much of his audience as he could. “Did you hear that, everyone? She says my safety is their primary concern. And with a straight face, too! Only a few days ago I was beaten up, arrested and interrogated!” He shook his head scornfully. “My safety! Here I am, surrounded by friends, and she has the nerve to say that I’m the one in need of protecting?”

  “Ask your supporters to disperse, Mister Garlin. Provided they lay down their sticks and stones, they can go back to their homes without being processed.”

  Garlin made a show of listening, seeming to give her words consideration. “They’re not my people to order around, Prefect. But I’ll gladly relay your terms.” He shaped his hands around his mouth, his chest heaving as he drew breath. “Good people! The Prefect has given you a choice. She says you can all go back to your homes, and trust that there’ll be no further repercussions. Or you can exercise your rights and remain exactly where you are!”