Elysium Fire

by Alastair Reynolds

  Sparver could hold himself back no longer. “Don’t mistake this for the soft touch, Garlin. Tell your rabble to go home.”

  Next to him, Thalia said: “You’ve made your point, Mister Garlin. But there’s nowhere further for you to go now. The core’s out of reach.” She nodded over her shoulder. “But there are still elements out there who could do you harm.”

  “Then do your jobs. Police them.”

  “We will,” she said. “Once you’ve told your gathering to disperse. They’ll listen, Mister Garlin. Just for once, do the right thing.”

  Garlin shook his head slowly. “If you weren’t concerned about the core, you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to break up this assembly.” He shifted his delivery to the mob. “Did you hear that? The core is the only hold they have over you. While it’s theirs to control, there’s nothing they can’t do to you.” By some clever projection of his voice he seemed to shift into a low, confiding register, even while his words still boomed out over the gathering. “But they’re worried now. The core is nearly ours. Do you think those constables would be looking so worried if they were sure we couldn’t get through those doors?” He twisted around, still grinning. “Truncheons and loud noises. That’s all they’ve got! They’d be doing well to stop twenty of us, let alone several hundred.”

  “Garlin,” Thalia said, anger breaking through the composure she had maintained so far. “I told you we hadn’t come to take you in. But that changes the moment you try and break through to the core. Don’t make us turn these whiphounds on you.”

  “I see it doesn’t take much to have you resorting to threats,” Garlin said.

  Up on the steps, the six constables crouched lower, holding their stun-truncheons and sonic-cannons double-gripped, swivelling to cover an inrush from any possible direction. Every now and then one of them let off a warning pulse from one of the cannons: a low, sickening bellow like a dinosaur’s death-moan.

  “I think it’s time,” Thalia said in a near-whisper, unclipping her second whiphound.

  Sparver did likewise. He agreed, flicking out his own reserve unit’s filament and setting its action threshold. “Discretionary force. Maintain at sub-lethal, but use second edge as required. Register all constabulary units as cooperative assets.”

  The whiphound locked its head onto Malkmus and her associates, nodding with each acquisition, then performed the same swift process with the six constables up on the steps.

  “All remaining citizens are to be considered potentially hostile. Identify and mark Julius Devon Garlin Voi.”

  The whiphound fixed its head onto Garlin and nodded once.

  “Log and retain for possible detention,” Sparver added.

  The whiphound confirmed its understanding. Up on the cleaning robot, Garlin’s face tightened slightly, perhaps in bruised recollection of the detention he had undergone in Hospice Idlewild in the coils of Dreyfus’s whiphound.

  Thalia had been issuing equivalent commands to her own second unit. When she was done she opened a channel back to Panoply and issued a terse but efficient status update.

  “Sparver,” she said. “Go and give those constables some moral support, will you? I’m going to establish a safety cordon around Garlin, then bring him in for his own protection. If we lose visual contact I’ll see you back at the ship, with Garlin.”

  “He won’t like it,” Sparver said.

  “Nor will I,” Thalia said, disgust flashing across her features.

  Sparver allowed the first two whiphounds to maintain their sweep, defining an open area just before the cleaning robot. His second whiphound moved ahead of him, establishing a moving pocket as he pushed back into the mob still loitering between Garlin and the steps of the polling core building. Perhaps the deployment of the second whiphound had sent the appropriate signal, for the citizens were in no hurry to remain in his way. In twenty seconds Sparver was up on the steps, nodding his solidarity at the constables, and taking a low, spread-footed stance before them, with his whiphound patrolling back and forth along the lowest step.

  Behind the constables stood the wide glass doors, sealed since the moment Malkmus had issued the local lockdown order. Other than a few artful mud-splats, they remained intact. The lobby beyond was dark, its details hard to make out from the outside. The glass doors looked fragile, but if any structure in a habitat was likely to be well defended it was going to be the place that housed the polling core. Such structures were usually designed to withstand vacuum blowouts and spacecraft collisions, allowing emergency measures to be coordinated even during the direst catastrophe.

  But Garlin must know that as well, Sparver thought.

  Thalia, meanwhile, was using her second whiphound to disperse Garlin’s security people, sending them scuttling back into the mob. If they resisted, the whiphound flicked itself around their legs and brought them down. There were cries and shouts, threats of retribution both legal and physical. The crowd, though, was pulling even further back from the edge of the cordon. They were getting a lesson in what a whiphound could do, even on its sub-lethal setting.

  Garlin teetered on the robot. He had his hands on his hips and was looking down.

  “You can call this whatever you like, Prefect. It’s still an infringement of my right to free speech.”

  “Climb down,” she said. “Climb down before I send the whiphound up to bring you down anyway.”

  “This is a violation of my—”

  “This is my final warning,” Thalia said. “You’ve five seconds to get off the robot. I’m counting. Five …”

  Behind Sparver, behind the constables, something made a low clunking sound, followed by a continuous whirr. Sparver risked a look back over his shoulders. He hardly needed to. It was obvious from the moment he heard that sound what was happening.

  The doors to the polling core were opening.

  Aumonier was jolted from sleep—such sleep as she was lately capable of taking—by a soft but insistent chime from her bedside. No anger or resentment stirred in her as she forced sufficient wakefulness to take the call. None of her operatives would have disturbed her without excellent reason.

  “Yes?”

  “Ma’am,” said the voice of Robert Tang. “I didn’t want to wake you, but under the circumstances …”

  “It’s quite all right, Robert.” She was still half under the sheets, leaning over to answer the call. “I presume it’s something more than just another death, or some more unreasonableness from our favourite man of the people?”

  “That’s just it, ma’am. It’s … well, you’d better see it for yourself, I think. It’s something the technicals found in Elysium Heights. I can send it straight through to your quarters, if you wish, but you might prefer to come to the tactical room.”

  “I’ll be there promptly. But send it through to me now as well. At least I’ll have some idea what it’s about.”

  “As you wish, ma’am. It’s ready for immediate replay—just say the word.”

  “Thank you, Robert.”

  She dismissed the call, took a cold but refreshing step through the washwall—banishing the last traces of sleepiness like a blast of sterilising radiation—and wrapped a scarlet gown around herself. Then she sat down on the edge of her bed and conjured at the facing wall. “Show me whatever it is.”

  A portion of the wall brightened into a rectangle. The Panoply symbol appeared, then a Pangolin security rating, then a unique serial number identifying a particular item of evidential significance.

  She read:

  Evidential docket: 665/3G37/1AA

  Acquisition timestamp: 29/9/29 15:04:23 YST

  Locale: GB/Addison-Lovelace/Outer rim/Chamber 2/Elysium Heights

  Description: data fragment

  Embellishment: vision-only recording, partial recovery, 35 second fragment

  Berryman-Langford Iterative Threshold: low

  Observations: none

  Steeling herself for whatever she was about to learn, however unpalatable it migh
t be, Aumonier voiced a barely audible instruction for the fragment to start playing.

  The rectangle crazed over with static before resolving into the view of an interior location shot from an elevated vantage point. It was a lobby or plaza, its clean, sweeping surfaces bathed in a soft, heaven-like glow. Figures were moving through the lobby—citizens in colourful clothing or plumage being met by white-uniformed staff whose outfits almost blended in to the brilliant backdrop of polished floors and walls, so that only their hands and faces were really distinct.

  The view drifted down, swooping over the heads of the visitors and staff. The staff had reassuring, friendly smiles. They stood talking with the visitors, going over treatment options on compads. Others were walking their guests over to clusters of lounge chairs and coffee tables, or for a more detailed interview behind the privacy of smoked glass partitions. The smiling staff had the clinic’s tree motif embroidered onto their sleeves, the only visible emblem save for small glowing nametags on their breasts.

  Now the point of view dived across the lobby, over an ornamental fishpond, then through glass doors—which swished open just in time—into a more functional area of the clinic. The view was still saturated in that soft, white radiance, but in addition to staff and patients there were now treatment rooms, with beds and medical equipment just visible through milky partitions.

  The view penetrated one of these partitions. A woman sat on the edge of a bed, much as Aumonier now did. There were flowers in a vase behind the woman. She wore a green gown and was looking up at a tall, authoritative-seeming man in the same white uniform as the rest of the staff. The man was holding a compad and talking, the woman nodding, something in her expression shifting from anxiety to reassurance as his silent words washed over her.

  The man turned from the woman, passing his compad to a waiting attendant. Now he was looking directly at the viewer, delivering a monologue—what was obviously a sales pitch for the services on offer.

  Aumonier stared at his face, caught between instant recognition and a sense of strange unfamiliarity. It was a handsome, boyish face, plump across the cheeks in a way that suggested vigour and humour rather than ugliness. His hair was a mass of golden curls, rakishly tamed. His eyes were an extremely piercing pale blue.

  Aumonier’s own eyes tracked down to the man’s nametag. She read: Doctor Julius Mazarin.

  The man kept speaking. Then the recording broke up into static again and the Panoply evidential summary reappeared.

  Aumonier watched the piece twice more, alert to anything she might have missed on the first playback. Then she instructed her clotheswall to provide her with her Panoply uniform, and met Tang and a gathering of Seniors in the tactical room.

  She sat in silence for several moments before speaking.

  “Is this the only such fragment?”

  “It is, ma’am,” Tang said. “That we know of.”

  “Why didn’t it come to our attention sooner?”

  Tang looked at Lillian Baudry before continuing. “We nearly overlooked it, ma’am. It was buried deep, and pretty badly scrambled. We’re lucky to have these thirty-five seconds. Whoever was running that clinic tried very hard to remove all trace of their identity, and for the most part they succeeded.”

  “Can we be certain of the fragment’s authenticity?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?” asked Baudry. “It’s as plain as day, Jane. The man in the recording is Julius Devon Garlin Voi.”

  “It’s a close likeness but not an exact one,” Aumonier said.

  “That’s because it would have been made decades ago, when the clinic was active,” Baudry replied. “Possibly before it was fully up and running.”

  “We know of at least one link between the clinic and the Shell House,” Clearmountain said. “We shouldn’t be too surprised to find another.”

  “It must be investigated,” said Mildred Dosso.

  “Dreyfus is already doing so,” Aumonier replied levelly.

  “I mean in a more direct manner. Bring Garlin in again.”

  “What do you think Ng and Bancal are attempting to do, Mildred? I already have two prefects with orders to locate and secure Garlin.”

  “That’s for his own protection,” Lillian Baudry answered. “Now the terms of interest have shifted. We can’t escape the inevitable, Jane. Garlin is both the architect and prime beneficiary of Wildfire.” She made a distasteful puckering of her lips. “I’m forced to admit it. Dreyfus was right all along, and we should have trusted his instincts.”

  He studied the other ship as it approached his own, just above the outer atmosphere of Yellowstone. It was larger than his cutter, somewhat sharper and sleeker in its lines. Whereas the cutter was almost entirely black, this new vehicle was white, except for areas of black chequering.

  It shone a hailing laser onto him. Dreyfus accepted the call and a face appeared on his console. It was a woman, age indeterminate but perhaps not far off his own. She had a tight bowl of curled hair and a wide freckled face, with prominent cheek and jaw bones, her mouth a level, unsmiling line.

  There was no trace of welcome in her eyes.

  “Identify yourself.”

  Dreyfus tried a smile. “I thought I was expected.”

  “Identify yourself. I won’t ask again.”

  “Prefect Tom Dreyfus of Panoply, requesting an inter-agency liaison and escort to Chasm City. I was given to understand that the Supreme Prefect had already made the necessary—”

  “You’re early.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate it if I came and went as quickly as possible.”

  “Then you thought wrongly. You’ve caused me considerable inconvenience, Prefect Dreyfus—forcing a change in my plans at very short notice. Believe it or not we do have work to be getting on with down here.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Dreyfus said, straining to keep a friendly and open demeanour. “And I apologise for upsetting your plans. I could turn around, I suppose …”

  “You’re here now,” the woman said, with a long-suffering sigh. “And my day is already ruined. We may as well make the most of it.”

  “I’m sorry I have to take up any of your time. It’s just that I’m investigating a matter which has urgent security implications.”

  She looked unimpressed. “Your breakaway crisis? No concern of mine.”

  “It might be about to become one.”

  She shook her head once. “Follow my ship. We’ll go in hard. Do let me know if you can’t keep up.”

  Her face vanished from the screen. The other ship pivoted around with a flicker of steering motors, then daggered itself back towards Yellowstone, its triad of main engines flaring. In a few seconds it had dwindled to a hard, flickering glint, sliding against Yellowstone’s marbled cloudscape. Dreyfus forced himself out of a sort of stunned paralysis, establishing a lock on the other ship as if he were in pursuit mode, and allowed the cutter to suspend its usual load ceilings. If she was determined to make a point, he would let her.

  “Your host’s name is Hestia Del Mar. I thought you might like to know that.”

  Dreyfus tried not to look ruffled or surprised.

  “I’d have found out for myself soon enough.”

  “But now you have one tiny edge on her. Aren’t you grateful for that? I could tell you more, if you liked. Her service history, her disciplinary record, what her colleagues think of her, her private life … mm, now that is interesting. We have that much in common, she and I.”

  “Just the name is fine.”

  “You’re not cross with me, are you?” Aurora’s face had superceded Hestia Del Mar’s, but it conveyed no more friendliness. Dreyfus rather preferred the stern-faced Del Mar; at least there was no doubting her feelings. “Or is it that a troubling matter for your scruples?”

  The cutter held its pursuit lock on the white ship. Gee loads rose, and a pinkish nimbus of ionised atmosphere began to curl around the hull, lapping and licking against its surfaces. The surfaces of Dreyfus’s accel
eration couch pushed through layers of skin and fat to find bones.

  He grunted away the discomfort like a man passing a stone.

  “Scruples … have nothing to do with it.”

  “No? Then why were you so careful not to explain your sudden interest in Nautilus Holdings to your colleagues?”

  “You provided a lead,” Dreyfus answered, feeling sweat prickle his brow. “I looked into it.”

  “And yet, no mention of where that lead came from—from whose lips it was shared.” Her smile was coquettish, teasing. “I’m guessing, at least. Oh, relax—I’m not privy to every single conversation you have, Prefect, much as I might like to be. It would mean I didn’t have to persuade those passwords from your lips.”

  The cutter began to shake as dynamic forces built up. Wings and control surfaces budded from the hull, grown using rapid-response quickmatter. And yet they were still accelerating. Hestia Del Mar was either suicidal, or very, very sadistic.

  Possibly both, Dreyfus decided.

  “It was a no then. It’s a no now. We’ll solve this the old-fashioned way, with police work.”

  “Yes. Good luck with that. Have you seen the latest death forecasts? Aumonier’s tracking another case as we speak. Your triggers are lighting up like fireworks. If only you had those patient names, though. How much easier that would make your task.”

  The gee loads were reversing; now at last even Hestia Del Mar was having to slow down as her course took her into the deeper layers of the atmosphere. Determined not to give in, Dreyfus closed the distance between the two ships. On the screens her white vehicle seemed almost close enough to touch as it rammed onward through thickening yellow and brown cloud layers. Engine backwash and re-entry turbulence made for a bone-shaking pursuit.

  “If there’s a shred of humanity left in you,” Dreyfus said, grimacing out the words, “give them to me now.”