“But staying with you doesn’t help us,” Redon said.
“It does,” Thalia said. “Our best strategy is to move, and keep moving. The whiphound has a chemosensor. It’ll detect harmful elements in the air long before they reach sufficient concentration to do harm.”
“And then what?” the woman asked.
“We’ll seek shelter if we have to. But our main objective is to reach my ship. You’ll be safe there.”
“What about the others, the people we left behind in the polling core?”
Thalia glanced up at the spherical structure high above them. “I can’t help them now. The sphere’s airtight, so they’ll be safe from any toxins. They’ll just have to sit it out up there until help arrives.”
Parnasse inhaled through his nose and nodded. “Then we keep walking, the way we were going before.”
“At least we won’t have any mobs to worry about,” Cuthbertson said, “if the machines are putting everyone else under protection—”
“No, we won’t have to worry about mobs,” Thalia told him. “But I don’t want to run into any tasked servitors either.”
“Won’t they let us through when you explain that you’re Panoply?” Caillebot asked.
“One would hope so, but I don’t want to have to put that to the test. Those machines aren’t reporting back to Thesiger every time they need to make a decision. They’re running a one-size-fits-all enforcement program designed to safeguard the mass populace.”
“Then we’ll need to avoid machines,” the gardener said. “That isn’t going to be easy, Prefect. Have you any idea how many servitors there are in this place?”
“In the order of millions, I’d guess,” Thalia said. “But we’ll just have to make do as best we can. The whiphound can move ahead of us, securing an area before we enter it.” She unclipped the handle and allowed the whiphound to deploy its filament. “Beginning now. Forward scout mode. Twenty-metre secure zone. Proceed.”
The whiphound raced ahead, a squiggle moving almost too fast to be tracked by the eye.
“We’re moving?” Caillebot asked.
Thalia waited until the whiphound had turned back to her and nodded its laser-eye handle, indicating that it was safe to proceed. “We’re moving,” she said. “Keep low and keep quiet. Do that, and we’ll be fine. One way or the other, we’re getting out of here.”
They proceeded along gravel-and marble-lined paths, all stooping to stay below the level of the hedges. Now and then the hedges widened out to enclose a small courtyard or ornamental pond. It was less than ten kilometres to the endcap, but ten kilometres like this was going to feel more like fifty. She just hoped they would be able to move more freely once they had cleared the manicured gardens around the museum campus and entered the denser foliage of wooded parklands. Ahead lay the line of trees they had been making for since leaving the stalk.
Parnasse sidled next to her. Short and stocky, he had the easiest time of all of them when it came to stooping down. “Very good work, girl,” he said quietly.
“Thank you,” she replied through gritted teeth.
“But what aren’t you telling us?”
“Nothing.”
“You came back from the other side of the stalk with a look on your face I haven’t seen in a long time. You saw something bad there, didn’t you? Something you’re frightened to tell us in case we lose it.”
“Just keep moving, Cyrus.”
“Was it true, about that speech from Thesiger?”
“I told you what I heard.”
“But you don’t believe a word of it.”
“This is not the time for discussion. The priority now is to keep moving and keep quiet.” She looked at him sharply. “Or did you miss that part?”
“What’s happening to those people?” Parnasse persisted. “Are the machines doing something bad to them?”
Ahead, the whiphound shook its handle from side to side. An instant later it flattened itself on the ground, looking just like a coil of discarded cable with a thickening at one end. Thalia raised a warning hand to her party.
“Hold it,” she breathed. “The whiphound can’t secure the area ahead of us. Something’s there.”
The four froze behind her. The whiphound remained deathly still on the ground. It had been securing the area around a circular pond crossed by a red-painted wooden Chinese bridge. Two other hedge-lined paths converged on the same pond.
“I think we should retreat,” Thalia whispered.
“You think?” Caillebot asked.
The whiphound offered no guidance. It was adopting a maximum stealth posture, which could only mean it sensed purposeful movement. Thalia breathed in deeply, forcing herself to make the right decision. If the area could not be secured, it could not be entered. They would be right to retreat, to return to the last junction, where they could explore an alternative route. “We go back,” she said.
Two servitors emerged into the area around the pond, one from either side. To the left, a gold-carapaced machine moved on three pairs of articulated legs, with a mass of segmented tentacles emerging from its cowled front end. Some kind of general-utility servitor, Thalia decided. To the right, bouncing along on mechanized ostrich-legs, was a multi-limbed household model, its black and white cladding suggestive of a butler’s uniform.
Thalia held out her hand and barked a command. “Abandon stealth posture. Immediate return.”
The whiphound lashed into action, scattering gravel as it uncoiled and propelled itself, almost flying into the air. Thalia splayed her fingers. The whiphound raced across the twenty metres separating the party from the servitors. The handle flew into Thalia’s grasp, the filament retracting at the last instant. Her palm stung from the impact.
She knelt down, aiming the projected red laser spot at the two machines in turn, thumbing a stud each time. “Mark as hostile,” she said twice. “Intercept and detain. Maximum necessary force.”
She flung the handle into the air as if throwing a grenade. The filament lashed out, coiling behind the handle as the whiphound oriented itself. The filament contacted the ground, formed a tractive coil and sped the handle in the direction of the bipedal robot, which the whiphound must have identified as the softer target. Gravel hissed and spat.
“Now we run,” Thalia told her four companions.
She looked back over her shoulder as, still crouching, they worked back the way they had come. Both servitors were now circumnavigating the pond, converging at the foot of the bridge nearest Thalia. The whiphound flung itself into the air at the last moment, then wrapped its filament around the legs of the bipedal robot. Momentum on its own was not enough to topple the machine, but the whiphound constricted its filament, drawing tight the coils it had placed around the robot’s legs.
The servitor took a juddering step, then lost its balance. It crashed to the dirt and immediately started trying to right itself. The whiphound resettled itself, then flexed its filament through one hundred and eighty degrees to bring the cutting edge into contact with the servitor’s legs. As it cut into the machine, blue fluid sprayed out at arterial pressure. The servitor’s upper limbs thrashed the ground, but the whiphound had the better of it. Sensing that the target was immobilised, it slithered free and focused its attention on the larger machine, the six-legged utility robot that was now increasing speed towards Thalia’s party. The segmented tentacles at the front were flailing the air, giving a convincing impression of a machine driven into a berserker-like rage. The whiphound flung itself into combat again, wrapping metres of sharp-edged filament around the roots of the flailing arms. Thalia kept up her running crouch, glancing back all the while. “Stay this side of the hedge,” she shouted ahead.
The battle between whiphound and servitor had become a blur of furious metal. Thumb-sized pieces of severed machine parts sprayed in all directions. The whiphound must have impaired the servitor’s guidance system, for it was moving erratically now, swerving from side to side. A larger length of seve
red tentacle came spinning out of the maelstrom. The sound of the battle was like a hundred lashes being administered in unison against rusted steel. The servitor slowed, one of its legs severed. Blue-grey smoke belched from under the gold carapace.
Perhaps it was going to work, Thalia dared to think.
Then something dark came winging out of the chaos, flung aside by the tentacles. It was the handle of the whiphound, trailing a line of limp filament. It thudded at Thalia’s heels, a buzzing sound coming from the handle, the tail twitching spasmodically.
The servitor was still approaching.
Thalia slowed as a cold, clear thought shaped itself. The whiphound was damaged, useless as a weapon now except in one very terminal sense. Thalia stopped, spun on her heels and grabbed at the handle. There was a gash in the casing, exposing obscene layers of internal componentry, things she had never been meant to see. The handle was warm, and every time it buzzed she felt it tremor in her hands. The tail drooped in a plumb line.
Thalia twisted the knurled dials at the end of the handle, bringing two tiny red dots into alignment. The dots lit up and started pulsing.
Grenade mode. Minimum yield. Five-second fuse on release.
The tail sped back into the housing. The black handle was still buzzing in her hand, but the training slammed home with the icy clarity of something that had been burnt into muscle memory by agonising repetition.
She flung the whiphound. It left her hand, following a smooth arc towards the still-approaching servitor. She had aimed it to land just ahead of the machine, directly in its path. Too close and the manipulators would have time to pick it up and fling it aside. Too early, and it wouldn’t do enough damage. She’d have liked the luxury of requesting maximum yield, but while that would have taken care of the advancing machine, it wouldn’t have done wonders for Thalia or her party.
One second.
“Get down!” she shouted, preparing to fling herself against the ground.
Two seconds.
Suddenly the servitor wasn’t moving. The smoke was billowing out in greater intensity. It was fatally damaged, Thalia thought. The whiphound had done its job, and now she was going to waste it by having it blow up unnecessarily, when the servitor was already immobilised.
Three seconds.
“Rescind!” Thalia shouted. “Rescind!”
Four seconds. Then five. The whiphound lay still on the ground. Six seconds oozed into seven. The grenade order had been cancelled, but she could still not shake the sense that she had created a bomb, one that was now compelled to detonate, much as a sword must draw blood before it could be returned to its scabbard.
She crept back towards the whiphound, knees wobbling underneath her. The damaged servitor was still twitching its manipulator tentacles, brushing the gravel only a few centimetres from where the handle had fallen. The citizens were looking back, no doubt wondering what she was doing. Thalia knelt and reached out, fingers advancing gingerly towards the damaged whiphound. The servitor’s tentacles stirred and made one last-ditch effort to trap her, but Thalia was faster. Her hand closed around the warm handle of the whiphound and snatched it back. She almost fell on her haunches, before pushing herself to her feet. She quickly turned the arming dials back to their neutral settings.
“What now?” Caillebot asked, his hands on his hips. The party had stopped; they were all looking at her, not so much expecting guidance as demanding it.
Thalia clipped the damaged handle to her belt. It continued to buzz and tremble. “We can’t go on. It’ll be too risky with the whiphound the way it is.”
“I say we just surrender ourselves to Thesiger’s constables,” Caillebot said. “What do we care if they’re machines or people? They’ll look after us.”
“Tell them,” Parnasse said, nodding in Thalia’s direction.
Her mouth was dry. She wanted to be anywhere other than here, in this situation, with nothing to protect her or her party but one damaged whiphound.
“Tell us what?” Meriel Redon asked, fear staining her voice.
Thalia wiped gravel dust from her hands onto the hem of her tunic. It left grey finger smears. “We’re in trouble,” she said. “Worse trouble than I wanted you to know. But Citizen Parnasse is right—I can’t keep it from you any longer.”
“Keep what?” Redon asked.
“I don’t think Thesiger is in control. I think that’s just a ruse to get the citizens to accept the machines. My guess is Thesiger is either dead, already rounded up or fighting for his life. I don’t think there are any human constables active inside Aubusson.”
“Meaning what?” the woman persisted.
“The machines are running things now. The servitors are the new authority. And they’ve started killing.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can,” Thalia said. She pushed sweat-damp hair back from her forehead. “I’ve seen where they bury the bodies. I saw a man… he was dead. He’d been killed by one of those things. Butchered by a machine. And he was being hidden somewhere we wouldn’t see him.”
Cuthbertson took a deep breath. “Then what we were doing… trying to get out of here… that was the right thing to try. Wasn’t it?
“It was,” Thalia said. “But now I see I was wrong. We’d never have made it with just one whiphound to protect us. It was a mistake. My mistake, and I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have left the stalk.”
They all looked back at the slender tower, with the windowed sphere of the polling core still gleaming against the blue-hazed pseudo-sky of the habitat’s opposite wall.
“So what do we do now?” Caillebot asked.
“We get back up there,” Thalia said, “as fast as we can, before more machines arrive. Then we secure it.”
If luck had been against them in their attempt to leave the museum campus, it held until they were back inside the cool, shadowed silence of the stalk’s lobby. No machines had arrived to block their way, or shepherd them to be detained with the prisoners on the lawn. On one level, it felt as if many hours had passed since the loss of abstraction and the first hints that this was more than just a technical failure. But when Thalia checked the time she was dismayed to see that less than forty minutes had passed since she had completed her upgrade. As far as Panoply was concerned, she wouldn’t even be overdue yet, let alone a matter for concern. Help might arrive eventually, but for now—and quite possibly for hours to come—Thalia was on her own.
As if to emphasize how little time had passed, the elevator car was still waiting in the lobby. Thalia beckoned the others inside, the doors snicking closed behind them. Her voice sounded ragged, on the slurred edge of exhaustion and burn-out.
“This is Deputy Field Prefect Thalia Ng. Recognise my voiceprint.”
After an agonising wait—which could only have been a fraction of a second—the door answered her.
“Voiceprint recognised, Deputy Field Prefect Ng.”
“Take us up.”
Nothing happened. Thalia held her breath and waited for movement, that welcome surge as the floor pushed against her feet. Still nothing happened.
“Is there a problem?” Caillebot asked.
Thalia whirled on him with vicious speed, all her tiredness wiped away in an instant. “What does it look like? We’re not moving.”
“Try again,” Parnasse said calmly. “Could be it didn’t understand you the first time.”
“This is Thalia Ng. Please ascend.” But still the elevator refused to move. “This is Deputy Field Prefect Thalia Ng,” she said again. “Recognise my voiceprint!”
This time the elevator stayed mute.
“Something’s broken,” Parnasse said, still keeping his voice low and disengaged, as if he was commenting on the action rather than participating in it. “I suggest we consider using the stairs instead.”
“Good idea,” Meriel Redon said. “I’m starting to feel locked in here—”
“Try the doors,” Parnasse said.
Thalia pressed her hand
against the manual-control panel. Her palm was cut and bruised from her battle with the servitors, tiny chips of stone still embedded in her skin.
“No dice. They aren’t opening.”
“Try again.”
Thalia already had. “Nothing doing. I don’t suppose asking nicely’s going to help either.”
“You could try.”
With a sense of futility, she said, “This is Thalia Ng. Open the doors.” She hammered the panel again. “Open the doors. Open the fucking doors!”
“Machines,” Cuthbertson said.
They all followed his gaze, through the trelliswork doors, across the shadowed emptiness of the lobby to the daylight beyond, where a squad of servitors glinted and shone as they made a slow but deliberate approach towards the stalk. There were eight or nine of them, all of different designs, wheeling, perambulating or sliding, with manipulators and cutting tools raised high.
“They’ve trapped us,” Caillebot said, marvelling. “They let us get back here because they knew we’d take the elevator. That was another of your ideas, Prefect.”
“Do you want to shut up now, or after I’ve rammed this down your throat?” Thalia asked, unclipping the buzzing warm handle of her whiphound.
The leading machines had reached the shadow of the overhang sheltering the wide doorway leading into the lobby. Three marbled steps led up to the level of the main floor, where the lift was situated. The walking machines began ascending the steps with slow but deliberate intent.
Thalia felt the whiphound tremble in her grip, as if its heart was racing.
“You already said it was damaged,” Caillebot said. “How much use is it going to be against all those if it could barely hold back two?”
Thalia thumbed the heavy control that invoked sword mode and hoped that there was still enough functionality left in the whiphound to spool out and stiffen its filament. The handle buzzed like a trapped wasp; nothing happened. She thumbed the control again, willing the whiphound to respond.
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