Elysium Fire

by Alastair Reynolds

  She went to see them now. They were in a wood-lined room which was smaller and brighter than the tactical room and furnished with a few minimalist ornaments to offset the austere claustrophobia of the windowless space.

  The citizens were not happy. They had been unhappy from the moment they were deputised and assembled, not least because Aumonier had—until now, at least—felt obliged to disclose only the essential facts of the crisis.

  “You’re frustrated, and I understand that,” she said, addressing them from the concave side of a crescent-shaped table, the twelve members of the quorum facing her in an almost semicircular arc. “But there have been aspects of this crisis which, for reasons of security and intelligence, I have felt it unwise to share with you. I hope you will accept that none of my decisions have been taken lightly. No one is more concerned with Panoply’s ethical transparency than I am. But we have also been dealing with a matter that impinges on some of the oldest and most trusted institutions of our entire circum-planetary society. Reputations don’t matter to me. If someone violates the law, no matter how elevated their standing, no matter how sacred their family name, I will act without compunction. But I do have a responsibility not to cause the wider citizenry unnecessary distress or anxiety.” She tapped a nail against the table. “That is also enshrined in our charter. The Common Articles require that Panoply conduct its business with the minimum intrusion into the ordinary lives of our hundred million citizens. Engendering fear and panic would be counter to my mandate—a reckless and irresponsible abdication of my duties.” She settled her hands together, blinking some focus into her eyes, grateful for the energy spike that had been provided by Ng’s coffee. “But now we are at a crux. I must be frank with you. We were dealing with an emergency, but we believed we had a strategy in place for resolving the situation with only a fractional loss of human life—a few citizens, compared to the one thousand seven hundred we expected to save.” She glanced down. “I was wrong. Our control is slipping. For reasons we don’t yet understand, something—someone—is circumventing our rescue operation. We are now seeing an active, escalating response.”

  “You have your suspect, Supreme Prefect,” said the woman sitting directly opposite her. “That’s what you’ve been assuring us, from the moment we were convened. That this prominent public figure, this man who has been openly critical of you and your organisation, is also behind an epidemic of unexplained deaths. Are you now telling us you might have the wrong individual?”

  “I still have grounds to suspect culpability,” Aumonier said. “The evidence trail is too clear to ignore. But the latest developments indicate that Devon Garlin cannot be acting alone.”

  “This evidence trail you’ll barely discuss,” said another citizen. “These deaths we’re barely allowed to ask about. And now this unprecedented interference in the freedoms of the entire population, justified by little more than rumour and half-truths.”

  “You’ll need to excuse us for drawing the obvious conclusion,” said a third speaker, softening his remarks with a sympathetic smile. “Panoply has every reason to feel threatened by Devon Garlin and his breakaway movement. Shallow populism it may be, but it’s hitting you where it hurts. Your job would be a lot more straightforward if Garlin and his ilk disappeared, would it not?”

  “I won’t lie,” Aumonier said.

  “You’d better not,” said the first woman.

  “I detest him. If I had the moral and legal means to make him go away for ever, I’d have done so long ago. But he’s also one of us—a free citizen of the Glitter Band, to whom I owe a duty of protection. That’s why Prefect Ng was prepared to lay down her life for him.”

  “Exaggeration,” someone muttered.

  Aumonier kept her voice level, refusing to be baited. “I wish it were so. Ng nearly died. She suffered a skull fracture and ought now to be recuperating under close medical observation. But she isn’t. She’s in the tactical room, barely able to stand, in obvious discomfort, and yet still trying to save some lives. Ng’s one of us as well, you see. She won’t rest while she knows that there’s an existential threat to the Glitter Band. And while she has no more love for Devon Garlin than I do, she’d have given her life to execute her duty of care to a fellow citizen.”

  “Fine words—” someone else began.

  “They’re more than words, Citizen,” Aumonier answered, still fighting back the tide of rage and self-justification which she felt rising inside herself. “They’re all that we live for. We’ve sacrificed our lives for the sake of a promise. Invest your trust in us, and you’ll sleep well in your beds. We’ll keep the monsters from your windows. We’ll let you have your easy dreams. And while a single one of us still breathes, you’ll know there’s still someone willing to make that final stand. Still someone guarding the gates of utopia.” She paused, gathered her breath, stared at her fingers before continuing, certain that if she had not already made her point, no further persuasion would make any difference. “I need to trawl Devon Garlin. I have my reasons. I need to establish the exact degree of his knowledge and involvement in our present crisis, and I need to establish it quickly.”

  “Then … let us see him,” said the sympathetic man. “Let us see him, and speak to him, reason with him if at all possible. Perhaps in the face of a citizen quorum he will see sense …”

  “He won’t,” Aumonier said wearily. “We’ve spoken to him at length. Studied his reactions. Body language, subliminal cues. These are expert analysts and prefects, trained in non-coercive intelligence-gathering. And they might as well have been speaking to a blank wall, for all they’ve got out of him. Besides, I can’t let you near him.”

  “For these vague reasons—” started the first woman.

  There was a knock at the door. Aumonier thanked her stars; the timing could not have been better. She craned round in time to see Doctor Demikhov coming through into the room, propelling a trolley before him. The trolley contained a number of bulky, upright items shrouded under a green cloth.

  “I’ve tried to spare you this,” Aumonier said, returning her attention to the quorum. “But in truth, you do deserve to know the full facts of our case. Devon Garlin has some impressive capabilities. We’re certain of that, and equally certain that these powers stem from his implants. He’s able to bypass the normal limits of data exchange, gathering knowledge far beyond his expected means. He’s been able to outflank us, anticipating our movements, our intentions. That in itself would make him a serious threat to public security. His powers undermine our confidence in everything from abstraction to the inviolability of the polling cores. If he was able to get into your heads—and that wouldn’t be a problem for him, if you were near enough to see and talk to him—he’d be able to access your Voi kernels, enabling him to corrupt or bias the voting process at any level, as well as—quite feasibly—manipulating your very perceptions of reality. He could adjust your reactions, your responses, to suit his immediate needs.” Aumonier looked around, satisfied that this disclosure, risky as it had been, had gone some way to making her case. But she was not done. “It wouldn’t stop there, though. Doctor Demikhov—would you oblige?”

  “Are they ready, ma’am?”

  “I doubt that they’d ever be ready, Doctor. Do it all the same.”

  He whisked aside the green cloth with a magicianly flourish, taking a brisk step backwards in the process. Aumonier had steeled herself—indeed, it had been her suggestion in the first place—but the sight of eight severed human heads could hardly fail to be upsetting, especially as those bottled heads were all facing in the same direction, with their eyes open, their mouths slightly parted, as if no less startled by the audience facing them.

  There was a shocked silence. Aumonier regarded the quorum, content to let one of them speak.

  “If this crude and provocative stunt—” began the woman facing her.

  “There was no call for this,” said another. “We were perfectly capable of listening to reasoned persuasion, without
this base appeal to tawdry emotion.”

  “Do you think about death very often?” Aumonier asked, sweeping her gaze from left to right, taking in all twelve members of the quorum. “I doubt that you do, any more than these eight people did. You’re all able and in full possession of your faculties, or you wouldn’t have been selected for this role. Provided you make some intelligent choices, most of you can expect at least another hundred years of life, perhaps more. And who knows what might come along in that interval? These eight people were no different. They were going about their daily lives, utterly unaware that something was about to go very wrong inside their heads. It would have begun without warning, almost innocuously. A breakdown of normal implant functionality, preventing their usual interaction with quickmatter, plumage, the polling cores. They’d have tried to report the breakdown, but the notification channels would have stopped working. Quickly, things would have worsened. The malfunctioning implants would have begun to exert a chaotic influence on their brain function. The victim would have fallen into a hysterical, panicked spiral of lessening self-control, even as they tried to seek help. Think of them stumbling into some public arena, seemingly drunk or confused—reaching out in desperation. Then begins the discomfort, as a growing thermal overload starts to damage tissue and turn water into steam, creating a pressure build-up, literally cooking the brain from within. Think of the worst headache you’ve experienced, then imagine it doubling in intensity from minute to minute, pressing against the backs of your eyes, squeezing the auditory nerves, causing terrible hallucinations. But by then you hardly care. You’re dying, and on some primal level you realise as much, and there’s nothing that anyone around you can do to help. Not even us. Even if by some miracle we’re able to get there while the victim’s still alive, there’s nothing we can do for them except preserve the evidence as best we can. That’s all we’ve ever managed. And this has happened over and over, more than sixty times before we initiated the rescue operation, and each of these victims has a direct link to the clinical facility operated at the convenience of the Voi family. Devon Garlin put time bombs into the heads of two thousand citizens, laying the groundwork for a crisis that he knew would put us to a severe test, exposing our limitations for all to see. He murdered these people, and there are still many, many more who are in immediate danger of the same fate. He can still reach them, even now—and if it isn’t him acting directly, then we need to locate and isolate his accomplice. Not in days, but in hours.”

  “Forgive me, Supreme Prefect,” said the reasonable man. “You make a persuasive case with these poor people. But none of us have ever visited this clinic of which you speak. I cannot therefore envisage any great risk in our contact with Devon Garlin.”

  “Nor can I,” Aumonier said, drawing a sharp surprised look from the man. “But equally, I can’t rule it out. Simply put, Devon Garlin’s capabilities are beyond our present understanding. For all we know, any close contact with him could expose you to danger. Until I know his exact relationship to this ongoing crisis, I can’t guarantee your safety—and that is paramount.”

  “My fellow citizens and I might be moved to grant reluctant consent to trawl,” said the first woman, glancing at the others for expressions of assent. “But only after the usual precautions have been taken. His implants must be removed or protected against—”

  “There isn’t time,” Aumonier said. “Not for him, not for the people already dying while supposedly in our care. I don’t have thirteen hours or twenty-six or however long it would take to satisfy you that Devon Garlin won’t be harmed by the trawl. It must be done now. All I can offer are my assurances that we’ll proceed as quickly and cleanly as possible.”

  “If I know anything about trawling,” said the reasonable man, “you’ll be exposing him to a milder case of the experience these people went through.”

  “It won’t be pleasant,” Aumonier replied. “I’d be lying if I said otherwise. But we’ll stop long before there’s any chance of permanent neurological damage. He won’t die, and he won’t have much to remember the experience by. But we’ll have gained intelligence we couldn’t have obtained by other means. I must have this assent, citizens. There are people dying now that we can’t help. This is our last and best chance to find a solution.”

  “Would you leave us for a moment, Supreme Prefect?” asked the first woman. “And please—take those heads with you.”

  Sparver was halfway back to Panoply when the re-routing order came in. He accepted it without question, assuming—as he had done on the four or five previous occasions—that there had been a recalculation in rescue priorities, his services suddenly needed in one place rather than another.

  “Complying,” he said, barely registering that the new destination was a Panoply ship, not Panoply itself or another civilian habitat. But even had he paid heed to that, he would have reasoned that the brains in the tactical room had a sound reason for the rendezvous; that the ship was urgently needed elsewhere, perhaps, and someone or something on board it needed to be ferried to another destination, and he was the designated courier.

  He had locked in his new course, and was debating whether to try to grab a few minutes’ sleep on the way, when the Supreme Prefect called through directly.

  “Prefect Bancal?”

  “Ma’am.”

  “I’m relieving you of the rescue operation. You’ve done very well so far, and I’ve no doubt of your continued dedication to the cause—even though I’ve asked far too much of you already.”

  Sparver pushed aside his half-formed fantasies of rest. “It’s all right, ma’am. I’ll sleep when we’re done. And we are going to be done, aren’t we? It’s just that I keep seeing reports of new victims …”

  “The picture is complex and changing, Bancal. Our initial assumption, that it would be sufficient to move these citizens into isolation … appears to be flawed. At the moment the only sure-fire remedy is complete removal of all implants, but we simply don’t have the means to process the citizens quickly enough. And our death toll is rising. We’ve had five confirmed cases in the last sixty minutes, and indications that the curve is steepening further still. Even with the optimum utilisation of our assets, we now expect to lose thirty-four … no, thirty-five per cent of those we were hoping to save.” He heard her mouth a near-silent and highly uncharacteristic oath. “The estimates are climbing almost as I speak, Bancal.”

  “Then the last thing you should be doing is pulling me from the operation.” Sparver reviewed his statement, decided it was somewhat lacking in the necessary formalities, and added: “With all due respect, ma’am.”

  “It’s all right, Bancal. You and I know each other well enough by now. The truth is we’re losing the race so badly that an asset here or an asset there isn’t going to make much difference. That’s why I’m taking perhaps the biggest risk of my career, and reassigning both you and an entire Deep System Vehicle to a parallel operation. You’ll take immediate command of its operations.”

  “That’s … begging your pardon, ma’am. Are we sure about this?”

  “Dreyfus requested that I re-task the ship. Does that go some way to sugaring the pill?”

  “I suppose it does, but … what would he want with a ship like that? We’re trying to move people around, not blow them out of the sky.”

  “Dreyfus is on his way back to Panoply. In the meantime he’s asked that I send a ship to investigate a long-standing Voi asset in the Glitter Band. It’s a lump of rock called Lethe. No, I doubt that it means very much to either of us. And frankly I ought not to be distracted, especially when Dreyfus has a proven grudge against the Voi family. But he has his hunches, and on the few occasions when he’s asked me to place my faith in them …”

  “What are we expecting to find in this rock, ma’am?”

  “I can’t say, just yet. I don’t doubt that Dreyfus will oblige us with an explanation when it suits him.”

  “It’ll cost lives. But then he knows that.”

&n
bsp; “He wouldn’t make such a request lightly. And this is a parallel operation, but we must presume it’s connected to our larger emergency. You’ll take the cruiser, investigate the rock at your own discretion, and report back. If there’s nothing of interest, we’ll consider this line of enquiry closed.”

  “If you think it worthwhile, ma’am.”

  “I do, Bancal. There’s one other thing—a minor technicality. No prefect below Field Three has ever been assigned control of a Deep System Cruiser before. I don’t propose to undo that tradition today.”

  “Then you have a difficulty, ma’am.”

  “I don’t think so, Bancal. We’ll complete the formalities when the dust has settled. But consider yourself promoted as of immediate and binding effect. Let’s not make this one temporary, shall we?”

  The Deep System Cruiser Democratic Circus was ninety metres long, sleekly finned and bladed, all sadistic edges and barbs, like some hard-forged instrument of war that was meant to do as much damage being yanked out of a victim as it was being shoved in. The design considerations were entirely deliberate: this was the physical expression of Panoply’s authority, a forceful reminder that—while rarely exercised—its powers could and did extend to the complete destruction of entire habitats.

  Sparver docked at its ventral lock, exited his cutter, then sent it away on autopilot, so it could be utilised by some other prefect as part of the rescue operation.

  Even a Field Three—however long in that rank—lacked the expertise to pilot such a complex and powerful craft as the Democratic Circus. All DSC/HEVs retained dedicated operational crews, Panoply operatives of supernumerary status. The normal complement was three: a captain-pilot, an auxiliary systems specialist and a weapons master, with some functional overlap between the roles. Accompanying this operational crew might be additional specialist staff, and depending on the mission requirements, anything up to fifty prefects and their enforcement equipment.