Elysium Fire

by Alastair Reynolds

  Dreyfus climbed in after Del Mar, then extended a hand to help Doctor Stasov.

  “I’m guessing you tried to find out.”

  “Yes—my ultimate undoing. I concealed a small inertial tracking device about my person, disguised as one of my ordinary medical instruments.”

  They were all aboard. Del Mar closed the door and took the volantor into the air, aiming it for the gap in the dome by which they had entered.

  “And did it tell you where you’d been taken?” Dreyfus asked.

  “It provided a set of orbital coordinates, with a margin of error. I would have needed to make several trips to obtain a definite fix. What I had, though, was convincing enough for my purposes. Tell him, Detective-Marshal. I think it would be far better coming from your lips.”

  “Lethe,” she answered, not without a moment’s reticence. “The last significant piece of orbital real estate still tied to the Voi family.”

  Dreyfus stared at the doctor, astonished at what he was hearing. “You checked his story, didn’t you? He gave you a place, a name.”

  “Not our jurisdiction,” Del Mar said, turning around sharply in her seat now that the volantor was in open air.

  “So you asked. You went through the usual channels. Tell me you did that much.”

  “We … felt that discretion ought to be exercised. Our request was framed as part of a larger investigation into minor tax irregularities concerning a number of orbital holdings.”

  “And I can bet that was top of Jane Aumonier’s list of priorities,” Dreyfus said.

  “Even if Stasov’s story is true, what they did is weird, not illegal. There’s no law that says you have to tell the truth to children.”

  “She’s never really believed me,” Stasov said.

  “It would have helped if you’d been able to show me some physical evidence to back up your account. But you couldn’t even produce the tracking device.”

  “They confiscated it as soon as it was discovered. I was dismissed shortly afterwards.”

  “You’re lucky they stopped at dismissal,” Dreyfus said. “Those big families can be ruthless.”

  “Better to keep me on a long leash with blackmail and threats. For all they knew they might have had some need of my services again.”

  “Did they?” Dreyfus asked.

  “No. There were tensions growing. Aliya felt that the boys were being given too much power, too soon. She didn’t trust them with it, and as time passed her doubts grew and grew. I was party to some of the disagreements between her and Marlon.”

  Dreyfus wanted to ask about the powers granted to the boys, willing for the moment to indulge Doctor Stasov’s conviction that there was another son besides Julius. But he had a more pressing question. “Then Marlon might have had a motive to murder Aliya, if the two of them were arguing over the boys?”

  “I have no love for either Marlon or Aliya,” Doctor Stasov answered. “What they did was indefensible. But neither was capable of killing the other. If suspicion should fall on anyone, it would be one of the boys. I studied them carefully, before my dismissal. Both showed rapid development, a keen ability to wield their new gifts. But Caleb was generally the quicker, stronger one. There was a meanness in him, as well. Perhaps it would have flowered in Julius, given time, but Caleb was the one who most concerned me. And the one about whom Aliya had the most doubts, as well.”

  “Could Caleb have done it?” Del Mar asked, addressing Doctor Stasov.

  “Most certainly,” he said. “Especially if she tried to take away his toys. He wouldn’t have cared for that at all.”

  Sparver docked the cutter at the first of his pick-up points. He had come in fast, ramming the habitat so hard that they must have felt the bump all the way to the far endcap. A little rude, a little discourteous, but he had dispensation, and the local constables were expecting him to exercise all haste. He just hoped they were playing their own parts with the same sense of urgency.

  He need not have worried. They were waiting on the other side of the airlock, constables and medical functionaries, his jolting arrival not only forgiven, but entirely excused given the nature of the emergency. They barely seemed to notice that he was a pig, so novel was the situation. The constables and functionaries seemed glad to have finally been let in on the secret, even if it was only in the bare details. They had their citizen with them, the one Sparver had been sent to collect, a worried-looking man of apparent middle age with a tall, flat-topped bristle of grey hair rising back from a high, agitated brow.

  “The Supreme Prefect’s still determined to avoid unnecessary citizen distress,” Sparver said, as he checked off the pick-up details on his compad. “So you’ll understand that the details of the emergency must be disclosed on a need-to-know basis only. That said, I’m authorised to inform you that we have a clear idea of the total number of citizens who need protecting, and it’s well within our combined response capability. One or two more fatalities are probably unavoidable over the next couple of days, but the risk to any individual citizen on our target list is much less than one per cent.” He nodded at the man they had brought to the dock, hoping to strike a note of professional reassurance. “You’re one of the fortunate ones, Citizen. We’ll have you back at Panoply very shortly, and there’s no safer place for you in the whole Glitter Band. You’ll be looked after, and when the emergency has passed—which should only be a few days—you’ll be returned home.”

  “I don’t know why I’ve been brought here,” the man said, looking around with widening eyes. “No one’s telling me anything.”

  “Citizen …” Sparver glanced down at the name, the first of the ten individuals he was required to ferry around. “Mister Deverer. This is upsetting for you, I appreciate, but it’s all for your own good. The Supreme Prefect has determined that you may be at risk of a sudden and serious illness. Luckily, the cause of this illness is understood and we have the means to both protect you and remove any possibility of danger in the future. But to do so we have to act quickly and efficiently, and that means you need to come with me.”

  “Have I done something wrong?”

  “No—you’ve done nothing wrong. But we have a duty to protect you, whether you wish it or not. Come with me, Mister Deverer. I’ve a busy day ahead of me, and you’re just my first pick-up.”

  The handover was completed. Sparver thanked the constables and medical functionaries for their assistance, promising them that they had the gratitude of Panoply and the Supreme Prefect in particular, and that they would be kept fully informed of ongoing developments. He could feel their excitement starting to sag by the second, as they realised their moment of intense usefulness was already drawing to a close. He felt for them, too. This was one of the many thousands of decent, unexceptional habitats that just got on with being a part of the Glitter Band, abiding by the Common Articles, seldom making the news and almost never testing the patience of Panoply. Its citizens lived contented if uneventful lives, generally happy with their lot. Being a constable in such a place was not exactly the most demanding of callings. He imagined the conversations that might go on later, as the constables and functionaries relayed developments to spouses and loved ones. Today we had to collect a man and take him to the dock. A prefect came all the way from Panoply for him. Can you imagine? A prefect—and a pig, as well!

  Sparver made sure his charge was buckled in, then undocked with the same haste that he had come in.

  “Bancal, inbound to Panoply,” he said, calling ahead. “One down.”

  16

  Caleb was the first to notice the change. The boys were out in the grounds, entertaining themselves with contests of quickmatter shaping and manipulation of the consensual visual field. Julius lacked his brother’s competitive streak, but he was happy to go along with any sort of game that did not involve hunting and death, no matter how illusory the sport.

  They were standing close to each other in an area of cleared ground, struggling to assert their individual wills on t
he quickmatter staff, each brother trying to force a certain shape onto the staff and trying to deny the other the means to distort that form. The staff lay on an upturned bucket between them, safely out of arm’s reach. As the quickmatter responded to the more dominant will, so the staff squirmed and shifted from one mercurial form to the next. Adding complexity to the challenge was the fact that each brother was using every means at their disposal to bias the other’s visual environment, such that the apparent shape of the quickmatter staff was no guarantee of its absolute state.

  Time was when Caleb would have easily bested Julius, but the contest was not so uneven now. Caleb still had the edge in terms of brute force, his shaping will being stronger in overall terms. But Julius had learned to wait for the slips in Caleb’s concentration, the predictable moves, the moments of over-confidence. He had become very good at slipping his own shaping commands into those narrow opportunities, wasting no effort until there was a likelihood of success. Then his interventions were quick and dagger-like.

  Something was off today, though, and at first Julius thought it was his own inadequacy reasserting itself. He felt slow and clumsy, his shaping commands coming out ill-formed and imprecise, the quickmatter resisting his will just as if he had unlearned all the lessons of recent months. When he tried to distort the consensual visual field, dropping an illusion over Caleb, his efforts were lacklustre and easily dismissed.

  It would have meant defeat for Julius but for one thing: Caleb was similarly afflicted.

  They played on in increasingly desultory terms, Julius unwilling to voice his suspicions, until with a snarl Caleb made the quickmatter staff spasm and twitch so violently that it flung itself off the bucket.

  “What’s wrong?” Julius asked, not too sorry that the contest had come to a conclusion.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it. Something’s holding us back.” Caleb tapped the side of his own head. “Control filters, brother. Blockades. They’ve dropped them in overnight. Or rather, she has.”

  “We can still shape,” Julius said, puzzled.

  “Oh, she wouldn’t be so silly as to remove everything, not after all the work they’ve put into us. That wouldn’t go down well with Father, for one thing. But she’s frightened we’ve come too far, so she’s put the brakes on us.”

  Julius went to collect the quickmatter staff, frozen in the buckled form in which Caleb had left it. “I don’t understand. Shouldn’t it be all or nothing?”

  “No, not the way they’ve arranged it. They both still want us to go out there and be good citizens, and it would be a bit strange if we couldn’t shape at all. I think she’s put a restriction on the speed we can generate shaping commands, or some sort of sense-feedback time-lag. Don’t tell you don’t feel it as well. It’s like we’re trying to think through treacle.”

  “I thought it was just me,” Julius admitted. “To begin with.”

  “No,” Caleb said, looking at his brother with grave intent. “It’s both of us. And having gone this far, she might go further.”

  “If that’s what they want for us …” Julius started saying.

  Caleb narrowed his eyes in pity and disgust. “Do you know what your problem is? You give in too easily.” He stepped forward and snatched the quickmatter staff from Julius. “Why should we accept this, after all the hard work we’ve put in?”

  “It’s just a setback,” Julius said, gazing down at his empty palm. “She just wants time for us to develop a bit more, I think.”

  “You think,” Caleb said, the corner of his lip curling in contempt. “Well, I’m not going to stand for it. Father’s on our side. He’ll see this is wrong.”

  “She won’t have done this without his agreement.”

  “You mean, she’ll have bullied him into accepting it. But we don’t have to.” Caleb nodded at the ground. “Grab that bucket. We’re going back to the Shell House.”

  Their parents were in the parlour room, caught in some tense exchange when the boys burst in, Caleb flinging down the quickmatter staff like a challenge. It clanged against the marbled flooring.

  “What have you done?” he demanded, his voice harsh with rage, jutting out his jaw and straining his neck so hard that the tendons stood out. “We can’t shape, can’t conjure, can’t project images …”

  Father raised a calming hand, making to say something. But Mother was already rising from her chair, locking her eyes on Caleb.

  “Do not dare speak to me that way. You were given a gift, one that you were not ready for. And if I had any doubts about my decision, you’ve silenced them with this outburst. You aren’t ready—not now, and maybe not ever. That temper of yours …”

  “Why me?” Julius asked, his own voice sounding timorous. “I was doing all right, wasn’t I?”

  “Go ahead,” Caleb said. “Betray me, you little Judas.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Julius began.

  Father closed his eyes, making a slow fanning action with his hands. “Please. Some calm. Your mother is correct. We pushed you too hard, too fast, and now we need to slow down, take stock, and review the progress you’ve made. Nothing has been taken from you—merely a modest curtailment of some of your recent capabilities.”

  “We worked hard for this,” Caleb said, in no way placated. “Sweated blood to become the sons you wanted, the heirs to this stupid throne. We were ready to go out and do our bit for Chasm City—become good little public servants, upholding the family tradition—meddling when needed. But that wasn’t good enough, was it?”

  “Don’t over-dramatise,” Mother said, still angered. “You still retain most of your new faculties. You haven’t been impoverished. You haven’t been turned out into the streets and forced to find a living, like all the other little people.”

  Caleb grimaced, gesturing at the quickmatter staff. “I can barely make it move! Don’t you realise what you’ve done?”

  “Nothing has been blocked that can’t be unblocked,” Father said. “In time. When you’ve proved yourselves. And when you”—he was pointing at Caleb—“learn a little self-control, son. Because if you can’t demonstrate it now, you aren’t fit to take the reins of this city. Do you understand?” He waited an instant, repeated, louder this time: “Do you understand?”

  Caleb worked his fingers, then slowly adopted a more relaxed posture, softening his expression. He nodded slowly, shooting a complicit glance at Julius. “Yes … I understand. If this is what it takes.”

  “Credit to you, Caleb,” Mother said, giving him an admiring nod. “I didn’t think you’d see sense so readily.”

  “I didn’t mean to be angry. It was just a shock, after all the hard work we’ve put in.” Caleb’s chest heaved up and down as if he were on the verge of tears. “But I mis-reacted. It has been quick, I agree. Maybe Julius and I do need a little more time before we’re ready to accept this responsibility.” He offered Julius a conciliatory smile. “I didn’t mean to be nasty just then. I shouldn’t have called you Judas.”

  Julius accepted this apology with a nod. “It’s all right.”

  “Your mother and I may differ on some of the details of your development,” Father said, relieved that the heated exchange had blown itself out. “But whenever we arrive at a decision like this, it’s one we agree on. And no matter what you may think at the time, it is always in your best interests.”

  “Yes,” Caleb said, a little too earnestly for Julius’s liking. “We realise that. And we’re sorry. I mean, I am, in particular.”

  “Then you’ll take this as adults—as the grown men you’re soon to become. Consider it a test, not a setback.”

  “We will, Father,” Julius said.

  “And in case it wasn’t clear, this decision was unanimous. You’ll attach no blame to your mother.”

  “We wouldn’t dream of it,” Caleb said. He stooped down and collected the malleable staff. “I’m sorry about throwing it down the way I did. But is it all right if Julius and I keep practising, even with the blockade i
n place? There can’t be any harm in that, can there?”

  “I don’t—” Mother began.

  But Father smiled tightly. “We can’t deprive them of everything, Aliya. Working with these restrictions will help them learn resourcefulness—and maybe a touch of humility. It will be for the best in the long run.”

  “Thank you,” Caleb said. Still holding the staff, he adopted a mask of avid concentration, pressing his will into the quickmatter. Julius felt the turbulence of his shaping commands, like a cold wind blasting out from his temple. The staff quivered and took on the look of some knotty, gristled piece of meat, far from the smooth functionality of the crossbow. “I’d forgotten how hard it used to be,” Caleb said, with an abashed look.

  “It won’t hurt to have this reminder,” Mother said. Then, with a flick of her hand: “Take it. Do with it as you will. In a month or two, we’ll review matters.”

  Julius nodded, accepting this state of affairs. But there was something in Caleb’s own nod that put a chill through him. Too accepting, too submissive by far. It was not like his brother at all. Caleb’s rage was like a sleeping fever, only just contained beneath his skin.

  He waited until they were alone again.

  “That was good,” he said. “Very convincing.”

  “I’m sorry?” Caleb said, as bad at feigning innocence as he was at meek acceptance. “Very convincing in what sense?”