Elysium Fire

by Alastair Reynolds

  “I demand to speak to my legal representatives.”

  “They’ll be informed of your detention. That’s the extent of my obligations. As of an hour ago I have sixty-six unexplained deaths on my conscience, and I’d be very surprised if there isn’t a sixty-seventh case before I go off-watch. I have you in the frame for mass murder, Mister Garlin, and I have tools at my disposal to ensure I get to the truth.”

  He looked at her with widening eyes. “Are you threatening me with torture?”

  “We wouldn’t need it. We’ve much better methods than that.”

  She turned from him, content to leave him floating until the clean-up crew arrived.

  14

  Below them was the nearest thing to open countryside Dreyfus would ever see in Chasm City. Some small portion of the city had been given over to a series of green estates, each bounded from the other by walls or moats of water. A number of these densely wooded estates had hamlet-like clusters of buildings rising up from them, but most were occupied by only one or two modest structures, usually close to the middle. Modest was a relative term, though. These were still sprawling, mansion-like properties; it was just that they had twenty or thirty floors, rather than two or three thousand.

  “Old money?” Dreyfus asked.

  “Not far off the mark. The Vois, the Sylvestes, the Swifts, the Nervals … a dozen other families you very likely won’t have heard of. The oldest of them go back nearly two hundred years. It takes money to develop a city district, but it takes even more to stop someone else developing one. Very few families could afford to retain these pastoral estates, especially with the population pressure we’ve had in recent years.”

  “And even the best of them go bankrupt in the end.”

  “All things have their natural cycle—even great dynasties like the Vois.” Del Mar pointed ahead with a free hand. “There. You can see the Shell House now.”

  Dreyfus spied one of the more heavily wooded areas with a low, grubby, green-stained dome blistering its middle. “That’s not how I visualised it.”

  “The house is inside the dome. The Vois were very private people, as well as having a morbid fear of a failure of the main dome.” Her voice lowered, taking on a confiding, almost trusting tone. “That’s what happens when you’ve had great success in life—when you’ve achieved the one goal you always desired. You lose a sense of purpose. Your smallest anxieties fester and magnify. Your fears turn inward, and attach themselves to irrational concerns.”

  They had crossed the walled and moated border surrounding the Voi estate. The volantor dropped altitude and sculled low over the trees hemming in the dome. They formed a wild, dense wood, lapping over the outer wall and pressing hard against the green dome’s lower flanks. The dome was about a kilometre across, Dreyfus judged, and perhaps a fifth as high as it was wide. There was a hole in part of it, punched as if by a great fist. Hestia aimed the volantor for this ragged aperture.

  “Do you really think the Vois succeeded?” Dreyfus asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she said sharply. “Chasm City and the Glitter Band might differ in many respects, but our underlying principles stem from the same template. Two hundred years of peace and stability—two hundred years of not going to war with each other, two hundred years of prosperity and guarded tolerance, two hundred years of benign, controlled experimentation—freedom within boundaries, anarchy within sensible limits. A steadily rising lifespan, a society free from poverty and sickness, and absent of all but the most rare and ingenious forms of crime … why should we not consider that a shining success, Prefect Dreyfus?”

  “Because freedom demands the giving of voice and liberty to men like Devon Garlin. Because an absolute democracy admits the possibility of deciding to dismantle itself.”

  The volantor eased over the dome’s boundary and edged through the hole in its side. As they slipped inside, the golden daylight was supplanted by an oppressive, green-stained radiance. The inner surface of the dome was caked in some kind of mould or slime, thick in places but never quite dense enough to entirely block the light.

  “That sounds like the start of an argument for doing away with democracy once and for all, Prefect Dreyfus. Is that what you believe?”

  “I wouldn’t go quite that far.”

  Below was the strange, curving architecture of the Shell House, its coiled, chambered form supposedly modelled on the mathematical geometry of shells, but to Dreyfus’s eyes more suggestive of a pale turd or some hungry muscular snake, lying in ambush. The house, too, had succumbed to the mouldering infestation, its lower levels furred over in green, and with probing, strangling vines reaching nearly all the way to its sagging, wimpled summit.

  The dense woodland persisted this side of the dome, fringing the house and making its exact footprint hard to determine. Del Mar picked out an area of flattened or burned ground near the house and brought the volantor down.

  She killed the engines and flipped back the canopy.

  “Nobody ever thinks they’ll go that far until their convictions are tested.”

  “Garlin will fail. He’s already lost complete control of his own mob. It’s a sign of fracture, of forces spinning out of his hands.”

  “And you have complete confidence that those forces won’t end up tearing the Glitter Band to pieces?”

  “It’ll end one day,” Dreyfus answered. “But not this time, and not on my watch.”

  “Fine words,” Del Mar said, stepping out of the vehicle and jumping the last metre to the ground.

  Dreyfus was following her, taking care not to lose his footing, when his bracelet chimed. Dreyfus made to take the call, then coughed gently as he met his companion’s eyes. “Detective-Marshal?”

  “Yes, Prefect?”

  “I accept that you had a right to listen in when I was inside your offices. But I’d very much appreciate taking this call in privacy.”

  She looked at him, went through some effort of judgement, then nodded. “Of course. I … hope for the best, concerning your colleague. I’m going to fight my way closer to the house. Catch up when you’re done.”

  “I shall.”

  Dreyfus eyed her, waiting until she was a decent distance away, then answered the call. He was disturbed to hear back from Panoply so soon after his last conversation, troubled by the sense that there could be only one reason for interrupting him now.

  “Yes. Is there an update on Thalia?”

  “There is.” Aumonier’s voice was scratchy, dropping in and out. “I just wish it were better news.”

  His qualms turned to sharp apprehension.

  “Whatever it is, I’d like to know. She’s … still alive, isn’t she?”

  “Yes …” she answered, but without the flat assurance he might have wished for. “But the crush was worse than we thought at the time. There’s head trauma, a possible bleed on the brain. The medicals have brought her back twice now. Demikhov’s expressed concerns that there may have been long-term neural damage. I’m sorry to have to drop this on you now …”

  “You had no choice,” Dreyfus said, walking around in an attempt to improve the signal. “I know you’ll do all that you can …”

  “Demikhov’s assigned half the medical team to Thalia’s case. She couldn’t be in better hands.”

  “Please keep me informed about her condition, no matter what else is happening.”

  “Of course—take it as read. I’m having difficulty localising you, by the way—are you still in the able hands of Detective-Marshal Del Mar?”

  “Yes,” Dreyfus said, still distracted and troubled by the news concerning Thalia. “We’re inside the Voi estate—what’s left of it. It’s a jungle. I’m afraid you were right to be sceptical about this lead. I’m not sure what we’re going to find here.”

  “You have your thirteen God-given hours, Tom, you might as well make the most of them. One other thing—not that you need more worries—but we have confirmation on that latest case, and a possible new incidence breaki
ng even as I speak.”

  “Has Garlin broken?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I suggest you keep working on him. Men like him always have their limits.”

  Dreyfus signed off. He stood silently for a few moments, his mind reeling, balanced between equally momentous decisions. He tried to ignore the fury burning in his blood, forcing himself to think rationally, to consider only whether it was wiser to act or refrain from acting, knowing that two thousand living souls were still his to save, if he acted decisively. Nothing had changed, he told himself: they had Garlin in custody and Thalia Ng was alive. But she had been hurt in the line of duty, quite unnecessarily, and even if she survived the next few hours—which was not certain, judging by the diffident tone of Aumonier’s voice—then she might still be left with neurological impairments which would end her career in Panoply. Even if she had not been his friend, even if he had not monitored and mentored her through the difficult years in which she proved her worth to the doubters and naysayers, those who could never accept Jason Ng’s innocence—even then, Thalia’s fate would have cut him close to the bone. She was one of the best they had, a trusted colleague in whose hands the future of Panoply was safe. There were a hundred ways in which prefects might be wounded or killed in the execution of their duties, and for the most part Dreyfus would have felt no sense of unfairness at the loss of a colleague, knowing the operational risks. But what had happened to Thalia was the consequence of one man’s delusions of grandeur, an act born of narrow-minded vindictiveness, and if one thing was now fuelling Devon Garlin’s crusade—leading directly to Thalia’s injury—it was Wildfire, and Panoply’s inability to stamp it out.

  His thoughts flashed back to two faces, both of them instilling a flood of emotions. One was Thalia, green as they came on her first full day as a cadet, yet already learning to wear the mask that would protect her against the jibes and whispers—the mask hardening to a kind of scar tissue that was with her even now. He had seen the promise in her instantly, and despite all the misgivings from his colleagues, he had pushed to steer Thalia into his own training stream, and then—when she became a Deputy Field—into his own operational unit. She had tested his patience on numerous occasions, drawn reprimands and re-education sessions, but never once had he had cause to regret that initial judgement.

  The other face was Devon Garlin, branded into Dreyfus’s brain like a kind of poison-filled lesion, gathering mass and toxicity, making connections from itself, slowly infiltrating every good thought, taking over his consciousness. It could not continue. He saw it now, what had always been there, always explicit, but which he only now forced himself to acknowledge in all its truth and simplicity. To destroy Devon Garlin—to destroy the enemy of everything he held precious—it was first necessary to destroy Wildfire.

  And so he would.

  While Hestia Del Mar continued fighting her way through the weeds, safely out of earshot, he tapped his collar microphone, but did not open a specific channel to Panoply.

  His throat turned dry. His spine was cold, his belly churning. He knew he was on the edge of something irrevocable, either the gravest error of his career or the hardest right decision he had ever been forced to make.

  “If you’re as good as you like to boast, you’ll be hearing me now. Are we being eavesdropped on by city officials?”

  Her voice was as scratchy and distant as the last.

  “No. They recorded your earlier exchange, but this one is untraceable. I’m seeing to that.”

  “Then you know where I am and you know how things are progressing with Wildfire. I’ve thought it over. It makes me sick to my marrow, but I’m going to give you what you want. You’ll honour your pledge. Those names appear. No ifs, no buts. No sly complications. You’ll communicate them to the technical squad working the clinic, and you’ll make sure they recognise the names for what they are. Do this one thing for me, extract the information you want on the Clockmaker, and never remind me of your existence again. Then we’ll be square. Is that understood?”

  “I knew we’d find common ground eventually. And yes, you have my word. Such things do matter to me, difficult as it might be for you to credit. You can have principles without a conscience.”

  “You’ll get in, find what you need, and leave no trace of your presence.”

  “Believe me, I have no intention of lingering. The Clockmaker knows of my interest in your records. I would be very surprised indeed if it didn’t try and spring a trap or two on me. But I’ll be discreet, and fast, and true to my word.”

  “If there’s any ambiguity about those names, even—”

  “Just do it, Prefect. You’ve seen how steeply that curve is rising now. An hour wasted could be another life lost. I want to help those people—but I must also consider my own needs.”

  “Your needs?” he said, almost laughing.

  “I’ve made mistakes—I don’t deny it. But I’m something new, something unique, and I value my existence. I think I can do better than I’ve managed until now. Besides: ask yourself one simple question. When all this is over, would you rather be dealing with me, or the Clockmaker?”

  Dreyfus breathed in. Beyond the dome, filtered through facets of dirty glass, the lights of Chasm City spoke of life and potential, of love and death, of the simple teeming business of ordinary people, forcefully reminding him of what was at stake.

  As if he needed it.

  “The words are Solstice, Mandrake, Plainsong. I don’t suppose I need to repeat them.”

  “You do not. You’ve chosen wisely, Prefect—made the correct decision. I’m releasing those names as we speak. I’ll make sure your operatives stumble on them in an entirely plausible fashion.”

  “Good. I’ll be waiting for confirmation from Jane Aumonier.”

  “Of course, doubting Thomas that you are. But then I shouldn’t expect anything less from a policeman, should I?”

  “Are we finished?”

  “Such as we ever are.”

  Dreyfus closed the communication link, standing still and silent while he ruminated on the magnitude of what he had done. It was impossible not to feel that he had violated something sacred, undoing in a single spasm of weakness the good work of a lifetime. A moment’s lapse, and all was lost. But he wondered how much worse he would have felt when another ten lives were lost, much less another two thousand.

  “What’s keeping you?” Del Mar called.

  “Business, Detective-Marshal,” Dreyfus called back. “But I’m done now.”

  The panther was a puzzle in black fragments, a series of disconnected forms moving behind tall blades of grass. Caleb had seen it first, tapping Julius on the shoulder and mouthing him to silence. The boys had crouched low, advancing with the utmost care, Caleb unslinging the crossbow and passing it to his brother in one slow fluid movement, a bolt already loaded.

  “Kill it,” Caleb said, pushing the words directly into Julius’s head without needing to say them aloud. “It’s near enough, and you’ll never get a better shot.”

  “It’s not interested in us,” Julius pushed back. “It just wants to get on with hunting.”

  “No reason not to kill it.”

  By now Julius knew better than to resist. The panther wasn’t real, anyway. It did have a sort of will, but only because it was obeying the algorithms Caleb had set up, giving it a form of independence. In this matter at least Julius trusted Caleb not to cheat, not to privilege himself with inside information on the animals’ whereabouts. They had been looking for the panther for three hours, anyway, long past the point when they should have been back at the Shell House. Caleb would never have had the patience to string Julius along for so long unless the hunt was genuine.

  Julius sighted along the crossbow, tracking the panther’s progress. The head was too small a target, so he shifted until he was aimed at the area just behind the animal’s shoulders. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger-nub. The crossbow released with a twitch of recoil. The dart flew no
iselessly, seeming to disappear into the panther. The panther arched its back, let out a bellow of pain, and slumped over on its side.

  Caleb patted him on the back. “You’re getting better.”

  Julius handed back the crossbow, feeling he had done enough to placate Caleb for now. Without much enthusiasm he followed his brother to the fallen animal, grass whisking against their knees as they approached.

  “Do you think you could do it to a person?” Caleb asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Shoot them, like you did the panther.”

  “It wasn’t a panther. It was a figment.”

  “But could you, if your life depended on it?”

  Julius pushed through the fringe of grass hemming the panther. It was lying with its legs stretched towards him, its eyes still open, making a slow, pained purring. There was a red wound where the dart had hit it. The tableau was so realistic that Julius felt some need of reassurance. He knelt by the animal and scythed a hand through it, his fingers vanishing into the panther without resistance. He could feel the real grass that was being edited out of his visual field.

  The panther’s laboured breathing grew slower. One eye regarded him with a soft, dwindling focus.

  “Why can’t it just die?” he asked Caleb. “Why does it have to have this drawn-out death?”

  “Do you want it realistic or not?” Caleb asked, shrugging.

  “I don’t know why we have to keep hunting things anyway.”

  “I’ve been thinking of something better than this,” Caleb said brightly, as if Julius had made no remark. “All we’ve got is this little bit of quickmatter, enough to make a crossbow and a few darts. But there’s a lot more out there in the real world. Chasm City’s practically made of the stuff. Think what we could do, if everything around us was quickmatter.”

  “Maybe you should have listened to what Mother and Father told us. You can’t do anything you like with quickmatter.”

  “I could,” Caleb said. “One day I will. I’ll make a place like this, and conjure up animals. But they won’t be figments. They’ll be just as solid as you and I.”