Elysium Fire

by Alastair Reynolds

“There is a shaft,” Sparver said, his hands and arms were bloodless now that he had been cleansed by the suitwall, but Sparver was still eyeing them with a certain lingering distaste. “I saw it. Went all the way down it, too. You’re right about the evidence, Thal. It can’t be lost when this place goes up.”

  “Good,” Thalia agreed. “Pipe your instructions through to me as soon as you’re on the cruiser.”

  “Better still, why don’t I come with you?”

  She looked at him, Dreyfus reading a mixture of gratitude and wariness in her expression. “You don’t have to, Sparver.”

  “I’d kick myself if I didn’t. One thing’s clear, though. Boss man knows too much for him to stay here any longer. I’d get down that rabbit hole, sir.”

  “We’ve got work to do,” Thalia said, planting an arm on his shoulders, ready to steer him back to the remains of the Shell House. “C’mon, Field Bancal. Let’s go and make Lady Jane proud of us.”

  Dreyfus watched them head away. She would be proud, he knew, regardless of the outcome of this particular piece of last-gasp heroism. But long before Jane Aumonier would have cause to hear about their actions, Dreyfus had already witnessed them.

  All things told, he was not displeased.

  Then someone patted him on the arm and nodded to the hole in the ground. It was time to go.

  23

  The air in the tactical room had been one of extreme weariness for so long that Dreyfus had difficulty remembering how it had been before the onset of the Wildfire crisis. Probably not too different, he decided phlegmatically. They had always felt as if they had the weight of all the worlds on their shoulders, even when—in cruel, capriciousness hindsight—they had actually been enjoying one of those rare intervals of routine operations between emergencies.

  But there was something different today, he noted. The analysts and seniors were just as worn out as they had been at the very height of the emergency. But now they could see the end to it all. A glimmer of hope—a thread to cling to. It was giving them all a sustaining spark, a last drop of fuel to get them through the night.

  Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the day after that, they might be able to sleep again.

  Some of them, at least.

  “There is still a great deal of uncertainty in the forecasts,” Aumonier told those present, her voice low with exhaustion. “But one thing seems clear. From the moment Tom witnessed the consolidation of Julius and Caleb … whatever the actual nature of that event … there has been a suspension in the Wildfire deaths. We’ve seen no new cases, either in the general populace, or among the citizens already moved into our care. Of course, we’ve learned from our earlier errors. We’re holding all the citizens within full reach of abstraction, so there’s no risk of the signals being blocked. And the witness—” Something tightened in the already drawn lines of her face. “We’ve taken the same precautions. Except we don’t know whether we’re dealing with a living person or not. The body looks alive, it’s breathing, there’s a heartbeat, but it’s unresponsive to external stimuli and Doctor Demikhov dare not go near it with any of his customary devices. We can’t guess what’s going on inside the head, and I’m strongly minded not to poke it.”

  “You’re right not to,” Dreyfus said, cradling a cup of lukewarm tea. “I don’t know if that’s Julius or Caleb, or both. But somewhere in there, someone is keeping those Wildfire cases from triggering. It’s buying us the time we need, to get the survivors into emergency surgery.”

  “A sudden blooming of remorse?” asked Baudry, doing nothing to mask her customary scepticism.

  “I don’t know,” Dreyfus said, puncturing her mood by not giving the flip answer she must have been expecting. “There might be altruism in it, but I’ll leave that to the specialists to work out. It could also be that there’s a desire to punish the survivors by means other than a painful death.”

  “With justice, you mean?” Clearmountain asked.

  Dreyfus nodded. “Thanks to the efforts of the Heavy Technical Squad—and Ng, and Bancal—we have the evidence we’d have lost if Lethe had been destroyed. It’ll take a while to comb through that little goldmine. But I’m confident we can recover the identities of those involved with Marlon Voi’s syndicate.”

  “And you think it’ll match the patient list extracted from Elysium Heights?” asked Ingvar Tench.

  “I’d be surprised if it didn’t,” Dreyfus said. He paused and reached below the table, coming up with the apple he had brought with him from the refectory.

  He pushed aside the unwanted tea and took a bite from the apple, to the visible disgust of the seniors facing him.

  Jane Aumonier, though, just smiled.

  The grey mist of early morning lay like a shroud over Necropolis, the city of the dead. Dreyfus walked slowly, his hands behind his back, silent save for the soft crunch of his shoes on the gravel pathway. The air reaching his lungs was the air in the immersion room, but had the illusion been better he liked to imagine he would have savoured the cool, still taste of this place. It was not a bad place for contemplation, as he was beginning to discover. Perhaps he ought to spend more time here, when he needed to clear his mind of the clutter and distractions of Panoply. Even his personal quarters could be too confining, when he needed real space for reflection. But then again, he thought, it might not be the healthiest of habits to develop, spending time with the dead.

  The woman he had arranged to meet was ahead, waiting on one of the benches next to the path, her composure relaxed, hands crossed in her lap, her gaze seemingly fixed on the rippled grey waters of the lake, and the faint upsweep of land beyond that was half lost in the fog.

  “Cassandra,” Dreyfus said gently, alerting her to his arrival.

  She turned to him with a surprising expression of warmth in her face, as if they were starting to fall into the role of distant friends. “Good morning, Prefect,” she said, making to rise from the bench. “It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I was starting to think you’d forgotten about all us poor dead souls here.”

  “I wasn’t likely to forget,” Dreyfus said as he approached, motioning for her to remain seated. What he had to say to her would not take terribly long, and in so far as it mattered at all, he felt the news would be better delivered to her sitting down. He had tended to form an instinct about such things.

  “They don’t allow us much in the way of news from the outside world,” Cassandra Leng said, turning her elfin face to regard him as he eased his bulk onto the seat, just close enough for easy conversation. “But word seeps in, especially when we get a new guest. You can’t do much about the information the new beta-levels bring with them, can you?”

  “Not much,” Dreyfus admitted, looking at his shoes.

  “So how is our little emergency? I presume it had you running around so much, you couldn’t spare much time for us ghosts?”

  “We had a breakthrough,” Dreyfus said. “A significant one. It’s early days, but we’re not really expecting any more Wildfire cases.”

  “That’s good,” she said, but with a questioning tone, undoubtedly picking up on his less than ebullient demeanour. “Isn’t it? I mean, good for those people who might have died, less good for those of us who already have. But we’ve talked about the condition of being dead often enough. I shouldn’t blame you for things that already happened, if you’ve really made a breakthrough.”

  Dreyfus fiddled with his fingers. “I’ll tell you something about the Wildfire cases who haven’t yet died. Pre-cases, I suppose we should call them. They’ve been identified from a master list, and we’re busy rushing them through emergency surgery, to remove any possibility of their implants going wrong. It’s still a logistical challenge. There are many hundreds of them, and at no point can we risk any of them being out of range of abstraction services.”

  “The rumours said the complete opposite—that you were trying to get people away from abstraction.”

  Dreyfus nodded heavily, the fabric of his collar
digging into his neck like a noose. “We got it wrong—got it completely the wrong way around. That cost lives. But eventually we understood the nature of the emergency, and how to proceed. Now we’re quietly confident that we can process those citizens, and free them from any risk of Wildfire.”

  “They’ll be very grateful,” Leng said.

  “For a little while,” Dreyfus said. “Until we issue the arrest orders. It’s a complicated charge, and it’s not quite clear where it fits into our jurisdictional envelope. But we’re liaising with Chasm City as well, so between our two agencies we’ll make sure we find the right legal framework for prosecution.”

  Her face pinched, as if she had bitten into something sour. “I don’t understand. You’re arresting those people? On what basis?”

  “Historical involvement in an illegal syndicate. All the names on our list have been tied to a clandestine organisation, with links to Marlon Voi. That’s why it’s complicated. But we’re pretty confident we can prove the connection. After that … well, there’s a range of penalties to be considered. Again, it’s an unusual case, so there aren’t any obvious precedents. Exactly what statute covers the raising of successive generations of children in an illegal experiment in retrospective social engineering, with each batch of children being doomed to euthanisation when they’ve served their purpose?” He looked at her with a sharp, quizzical intensity. “It’s a tough one, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Something of her usual coolness now returned. “Why are you asking me, Dreyfus?”

  “Because I have another headache,” he said. “I know what to do with the living cases. Process and arrest. But then there are the ones like you. The already dead. Who are just as culpable.”

  She shook her head, making to push herself up from the bench. But Dreyfus reached over and held her where she was seated, not without a certain force. “It’s coming, Cassandra. Justice. Whether you remember the crime or not, there will be an accounting for it. I just thought you’d like to know that. So you can prepare yourself for what may or may not happen. And spread the word among the others.”

  “You …” She regarded him, some fading hope still lingering in her eyes. “I liked you, Dreyfus. I confided in you. Felt that I’d found a friend. Someone who began to understand.”

  “So did I.”

  “And now?”

  “I’ve got a job to do.”

  Her coolness sharpened. “Bastard. I thought you’d come to talk to me, like an old—”

  “Policeman,” Dreyfus said, rising from the chair.

  He could have returned to the immersion room immediately, but the encounter with Cassandra Leng had rattled his nerves and Dreyfus needed time to settle them. He did not like being cruel, but there were occasions when it was demanded of him; when, on balance, a small portion of cruelty now offset a greater one later on.

  Walking along the path, mist on either side, glad to be alone with his thoughts, he became aware of a slow clapping.

  Then she was next to him, walking alongside. For once she had discarded the prop of her throne.

  “That was very good, Dreyfus. Very nicely handled. They will be a headache, won’t they? How do you punish the already dead? Turn them off?”

  “It’s not for me to make the law,” Dreyfus said, irritated by her arrival, but knowing nothing he said or did would persuade her to take her leave. “It’s not even a Panoply matter, I imagine. It was a serious crime, but it didn’t have any direct bearing on polling or Glitter Band security.”

  Aurora looked astonished. “How can you say that, when it led to so much trouble?”

  “The law concerns itself with first-order effects,” Dreyfus answered.

  She skipped along, picking up the hem of her dress. “So stoic. So noble-minded. I don’t suppose a word of gratitude’s out of the question, is it? You wouldn’t have had that list if it wasn’t for me.”

  “You obtained the passwords from me under false pretences.”

  “I did what needed to be done. No harm came of it, did it?”

  “You used the same trick to send Sparver into Lethe, against Aumonier’s direct orders. That cost the lives of three prefects.”

  She shrugged. “Then recruit some new ones.”

  “You know what, Aurora?” Dreyfus said sharply. “Just when I’m in danger of thinking there might be a trace of humanity in there, you go and remind me of what you really are. A cold-blooded monster, interested in one thing only.”

  “Dresses. Puppies. And ice cream. Mm. Is there more?”

  “Did you extract the intelligence you needed on the Clockmaker?” He chose not to wait for her reply. “If so, just get the hell out of the Search Turbines before you leave too many fingerprints.”

  “Scared someone will ask questions about how I breached Panoply’s innermost secrets?”

  “Not really. You’re always telling us you’re a superior intellect. I’ll just shrug and say you got around our best defences. Do you honestly think they won’t believe me?”

  She pondered this, finger to her lips. “Then again, we’ll always have it between us, won’t we? It will be our thing, won’t it? A shadow hanging over us. One of us, anyway. I can’t say it’s likely to be a problem for me, but you, on the other hand …”

  “You need me,” Dreyfus said. “You won’t admit it, but I’m useful to you. So you’d be very unwise to do anything that might damage my standing in Panoply.” He walked on, the fog curling around them thicker than it had been before, making it hard to see the way ahead. “That doesn’t mean I’m in any hurry to do business again, Aurora, just in case you got the wrong idea.”

  “And there was I looking forward to catching up on all the news, from the horse’s very own mouth. Do you have any plans for the survivor?”

  “You’ll need to be a little more specific than that.”

  “The son. Caleb or Julius, or both, whichever name you’ve decided is the best fit.”

  “We’re sticking with Devon Garlin for now,” Dreyfus said. “It’s the name under which the brothers came to our attention, and you can’t argue that there’s a certain circularity in going back to it. Not that Devon has much to say on the matter.”

  “Yes,” she said delicately. “I hear there had been … damage. But there’s obviously enough of an intellect still alive in there to understand what needs to be done with regard to the Wildfire cases.”

  For once Dreyfus felt no need to disagree with her. “More than an intellect. I think there’s a mind, a conscience, left inside Devon Garlin. But whether that mind owes more to Julius or Caleb, I can’t say.”

  “And did you get to the bottom of the confusion, in the end? The man we thought was Julius was Caleb, and vice versa?”

  “I doubt we’ll ever have a definitive account,” Dreyfus answered. “Some evidence really does get lost for good. But Doctor Stasov thought that Julius was always the favoured son. He offered me a theory, and it’s as good as any other.”

  “Pray tell.”

  “Caleb set up Julius to murder Aliya Voi. Julius shot his mother, thinking it was just part of the sporting games they liked to play. Until then, Caleb was the stronger brother—the one most adept at quickmatter and abstraction manipulation. And the one most feared by Aliya.”

  They walked on into the thickening mist.

  “Continue.”

  “I think it pushed Julius over an edge. He turned on Caleb—really turned on him. I think Julius almost killed Caleb. Then he fled—left the Shell House, disappeared into obscurity, using his skills to move without suspicion. Caleb stayed behind in the Shell House, with only Marlon to look after him. But Marlon had always been more fond of the other boy. I think that’s when Marlon administered Caleb with a second round of amnesia treatment—blotting out the memory that he’d ever had a sibling, and acting as if Caleb was really Julius. In that pliant state, Caleb accepted it. He started thinking of himself as Julius. Later, he left the Shell House and took on another name: Devon Garlin. But he always be
lieved he was Julius.”

  “Until you brought him home,” Aurora said. “I agree with you, Dreyfus. As a theory, it’s as good as any other. This Doctor Stasov interests me quite a bit. Perhaps I’ll find a way to drop in on him one day, see what he has to say.”

  “I’ll warn him to expect you.”

  “Oh, don’t do that. I do so like surprises.”

  Dreyfus stopped. “Then you’ll love this.”

  Aurora stopped as well, taking heed of the thing Dreyfus had already noticed. It had emerged from the mist, blocking their path ahead. It was a simple affair, a plain stone plinth about as high as Dreyfus’s chest, and had the circumstances been different, Dreyfus would have stepped around it with barely a glance, presuming it a part of the ordinary architecture of Necropolis.

  But the plinth did not belong here, and there was nothing ordinary about it at all.

  “If this is your doing …” Aurora said, her voice reduced to a warning sibilance.

  “It isn’t.”

  They walked up to the plinth. It was not the plinth that most troubled Aurora, but the small shining thing set upon it. It had a square case, resting on four little lion’s feet. She stood transfixed, her eyes level with the clock face. Behind bevelled glass panels spun a ticking complexity of gears and wheels.

  “I swear, if this—” she began.

  “It wasn’t here before,” Dreyfus answered, a prickle of cold tracing its way down his back. “I promise you that. It’s a symbol, a message. And I don’t think it’s meant for me.”

  She reached out as if to take the clock from the plinth, to examine its beautiful form. But at the last instant she scowled and gave a fierce hiss, swiping her hand, knocking the clock to the ground, where it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces of glass and brass.

  They greeted him in the long-hemmed black vestments of their order, with wimples over their heads and metal snowflakes chained around their necks. Dreyfus recognised the young man well enough from his last visit, giving Sebastien a nod before acknowledging Sister Catherine.