"No sign of that rescue of yours, I take it," Paula Thory said, for about the twentieth time.
"We've only been cut off for half a day," Thalia replied, pausing to lean against the transparent casing covering the architectural model of the Museum of Cybernetics. "I didn't promise they'd arrive bang on schedule."
"You said we might be isolated for a few hours. It's been considerably longer than that."
"Yes," Thalia said. "But thanks to the good citizens of the Glitter Band, a civil emergency was in force when I left. My organisation was doing everything it could to prevent all-out war between the habitats and the Ultras."
"You think they're still dealing with that, is that it?" asked Caillebot, reasonably enough.
She nodded at the landscape gardener, glad that he had given up some of his earlier outrage. "That's my best guess. I'm long overdue by now, and they'll be able to see that my ship's still docked with Aubusson. If they could spare the resources to get here, they would." She swallowed hard, striving to find some of that confidence Parnasse had told her she needed to assert. "But you can bet we're getting near the top of their list. They'll be here before sunrise."
"Sunrise is still a long way off," Thory observed. "And those machines aren't slowing down."
"But they're not touching the main stalk," Thalia replied. "Whoever's operating them needs to send instructions through this structure, which means they can't risk damaging it just to get rid of us."
By now it was clear that the construction servitors were engaged in nothing less than the systematic dismantling of the habitat's human buildings and infrastructure. Throughout the night, Thalia had watched — sometimes alone, sometimes with Parnasse, Redon or one of the other citizens — as the robots bulldozed and ripped their way through the outlying structures of the Museum of Cybernetics. They had already torn down the ring of secondary stalks, shovelling the pulverised remains onto the backs of massive debris-carriers. Kilometres away, in illuminated clusters of huddled activity, other groups of machines were engaged in similar demolition work. The machines tackling the museum must already have gathered tens of thousands of tonnes of rubble. Across the entire interior of House Aubusson, they must have gathered dozens or hundreds of times as much. And all that raw material — millions of tonnes of it, in Thalia's estimation — was being conveyed in one direction, toward the great manufactory complex at the habitat's far end. It was feedstock, so that those mighty mills could turn again.
In fact, they were already turning. Though no sound reached Thalia and her cadre of citizens through the airtight windows of the polling core, they had all felt the tremor of distant industrial processes starting up. Near the endcap that rumble must have been thunderous. The manufactories were making something. Whatever it was, they were being cranked up to full capacity.
"Thalia," called Parnasse, poking his head above the top of the spiral staircase that led to the lower level. "I need your help with something, when you've got a moment."
Thalia tensed. That was Parnasse's way of telling her they had a problem without alarming the others unduly. She crossed to the staircase and followed him down to the administrative level, with its unlit offices and storage rooms. Three of the citizens were still working on the barricade detail, collecting equipment and junk from wherever they could find it and then toppling it down the stairs and lift shaft.
"What is it, Cyrus?" she asked quietly, the two of them standing far enough away from the work gang that their conversation would not be overhead.
"They're getting tired, and they've only been on this shift for forty-five minutes. They may be able to last until the end of it, but I'm not sure if they're going to be much use to us by the time they're up for duty again. We're getting worn out down here."
"Maybe it's time Thory weighed in."
"She'd be more hindrance than help, with all her moaning. The team getting tired isn't the main problem, though. We're going to start running out of barricade material pretty soon. If not before the end of this shift, then definitely before the end of the next one. Things ain't looking too good. Just thought you should know."
"Maybe the existing barricade will hold."
"Maybe."
"You don't think so."
"When it's quiet up here, I can hear activity below. The machines are working at the far end of it, clearing it as fast as we can pour new stuff down from our end. That's why the barricade keeps settling down. They're removing the debris at the base."
"And if we don't keep topping it up — "
"They'll be breaking through before you know it."
"We need options," Thalia said. "I've told the other citizens that we're working on a contingency plan. It's about time we had one, before someone calls me on it."
"I wish I had an idea."
"Let's focus on the barricade, since that's all we have right now. If we're running out of material, we'll need to find another supply."
"We've already cleaned out all the rooms along this corridor. Anything that we can move, and that isn't too large to fit down the holes, we've already thrown."
"But we've still got the building itself," Thalia said. "The walls, the partitions between the rooms ... it's all ours, if we want it."
"Unfortunately, none of us thought to bring demolition tools to the civic reception," Parnasse said.
Thalia unclipped the buzzing handle of her whiphound. "Then it's a good job I did. This thing might be damaged, but it can still just about function in sword mode. If I can start cutting away material — "
Parnasse looked at the whiphound dubiously. "What will that thing cut through?"
It was almost too hot to hold now. "Just about any material that isn't actively reinforced, like hyperdiamond."
"There's nothing like that in this building. I know, I saw the blueprints before she went up. But you'd better not cut the first thing you see. There are structural spars running right through this thing."
"Then we'll start with something that clearly isn't structural," Thalia said, remembering the item she had been resting against before Parnasse summoned her below.
"Like what?"
"Right above me, on the next level. That architectural model."
"We'll need more than that for barricade material, girl. That model's about as substantial as a soap bubble."
"I was thinking of the plinth — it looked like granite to me. If we could cut that into manageable chunks ... there's got to be three or four tonnes of rock there. That would make a difference, surely?"
"Maybe not enough to save us," he said, scratching his chin, "but beggars can't be choosers, can they? Let's see if that little toy of yours will hold up for us."
Thalia clipped the whiphound back to her belt, then rubbed her sore palm against her trousers. Leaving the work gang to their duty, she ascended the staircase to the main level, Parnasse following immediately behind her.
"People," she called, "I need some help here. It'll only take a couple of minutes, then you can go back and rest."
"What do you want?" asked the young man in the electric-blue suit, rubbing a stiff forearm.
Thalia strode to the side of the architectural model and patted the transparent casing. "We need to remove this thing so I can get at the plinth. I could use my whiphound to cut it up, but I'd rather save it for stuff we can't break apart with our hands."
The transparent casing was a boxlike shell resting in place by virtue of its weight alone. Thalia squeezed her fingers under one end of it, wincing as she caught a broken nail. The young man worked his fingers under the far end, and between them they heaved the casing into the air, exposing the delicate model underneath. They shuffled sideways until they'd reached a clear spot of floor and were able to lower the casing. They would work out what to do with it later.
"Now this part," Thalia said, getting a grip under the heavy, flat sheet on which the model had been constructed. This time it took three of them before the model even budged, with Caillebot taking one of the corners. The d
elicately formed representation of the museum might have been insubstantial, but that could not be said for its foundations. "Harder," Thalia grunted, as Parnasse added to the effort.
The sheet budged again, tilting upwards from the underlying plinth. "Steady," Thalia said, gritting her teeth with the effort. "Let's put it down over there, on top of the casing."
She had already participated in the destruction of several tonnes of museum property, including items that might well have been priceless relics from the history of computing. But there was something about the model that made her unwilling to see it damaged. Perhaps it was because of her suspicion that it had been made by hand, laboriously, over many hundreds of hours. "Easy," she said as they reached the casing.
They'd almost made it when the young man yelped and let go as some nerve or muscle in his already strained forearm gave way. The remaining three of them might have been able to take the weight, but they were in the wrong positions. The model crashed to one side, one corner smashing its way through the casing. The impact was enough to dislodge the sphere of the polling core, sending it toppling from the tip of the stalk. The silver-white ball bounced off the tilted landscape and went trundling across the room, until it was lost in the darkness.
Thalia fell to the floor, landing hard on her knees.
"Sorry," the young man said.
She bit back tears of pain. "It's just a model. The plinth is what matters."
"Let's see how that granite holds up," Parnasse said, helping Thalia to her feet.
Hobbling back towards the plinth, Thalia touched her whiphound and almost flinched from the contact. It felt white-hot now, as if it had just been spat out of a furnace.
"If anyone has one," she said, "I could use a glove."
* * *
Sparver knew he had been lucky not to find himself in a detention cell, but that did not mean he was going to avoid confrontation with Gaffney just to stay out of trouble. The last thing Dreyfus had told him to do was to find Clepsydra, and like Dreyfus he believed that she must still be somewhere inside Panoply. He reasoned that the place to begin his search was the interrogation bubble where Dreyfus had last spoken to the Conjoiner. No matter how cunning or stealthy she might have been, he did not think it likely that she could have travelled a very great distance from the bubble; certainly not as far as one of the centrifuge rings. It might have been in Clepsydra's gift to blind and confuse surveillance systems, but classes were in session now and Sparver doubted that she would find it easy to pass through a bottleneck of prefects and cadets waiting to transition between the weightless and standard-gee sections. In his mind's eye he could see several possible places she might have hidden; his intention was to search them before Internal Security and attempt to reassure Clepsydra so that he could protect her from any rogue elements within the organisation.
But when he reached the passwall into the now empty interrogation bubble, his way was blocked by a couple of Gaffney's goons. Sparver tried to reason with them, without effect. He was certain that the Internal Security operatives were acting sincerely, in the genuine belief that Gaffney was to be trusted, but that did not make them any easier to persuade. He was still trying when Gaffney himself showed up.
"I thought we came to an agreement, Prefect Bancal. You keep your snout out of my business, I'll keep my nose out of yours, and we'll get along famously."
"When your business becomes mine, I stick my snout wherever I like. It's a nice snout, too, don't you think?"
Gaffney lowered his voice to a dangerous purr. "Don't push your luck, Bancal. You're only here on sufferance. Dreyfus may like to keep a pet pig around for show, but Dreyfus isn't going to be part of this organisation for much longer. If you want to find a role for yourself, I'd start making new friends."
"Friends like you, you mean?"
"Just saying, times are changing. We've all got to adapt. Even those of us not exactly equipped for mental agility. How's that frontal cortex working out for you, anyway?"
"Dreyfus didn't have anything to do with Clepsydra disappearing," Sparver said levelly. "Either you made her disappear, or she's hiding because she knows you'd rather she was dead."
"Beginning to flail around a bit there, son. Are you accusing me of something or not?"
"If you did something to her, you'll pay for it."
"I'm looking for her. Do you think I'd go to all this trouble if I had anything to hide? Come on. It's not that much of a conundrum, even for the likes of you."
"We're not done, Gaffney, you and me. Not by a long stretch."
"Go and count your fingers," Gaffney said. "Call me when you reach double figures."
* * *
CHAPTER 19
* * *
Michael Crissel scrutinised himself in the mirrored surface of the cubicle, anxious that no trace of his true state of mind should be apparent when he emerged. His skin was as pale as a reptile's belly, his bloodshot eyes verging on the albinotic. He told himself that his pallor was just as likely to be a function of the cruiser's dehumidified atmospheric mix as his bout of retching, but that was scant consolation. The sickness had come on him hard and fast, with barely enough warning to let him scuttle to the cubicle.
"Get a grip," he told himself.
He exited the cubicle and moved up through the ship, past the weapons bays and crew quarters, into the main assembly area where the other prefects were waiting, suited and armoured, buckled into deceleration webbing, jammed together like gloss-black toy soldiers, weapons secured between their knees. Not just whiphounds, but the big guns that, technically speaking, the democratic vote had forbidden them. When all this was over, when the people had full access to the information, they'd see that Panoply had done the right thing in disregarding that vote. They'd even applaud when they knew what was really at stake.
The fields watched him as he propelled himself along the gangway, hand over hand in the weightless fall of the Universal Suffrage's cruise phase. None of them had yet snapped down their visors. He could see their faces, feel their eyes tracking him as he passed. He didn't recognise any of them. Even their names, stencilled onto the inert-matter armour of their suits, triggered only glimmers of recognition.
The pressure of their attention demanded a response from him, some rousing, rallying speech. His mouth was raw, filled with the aftertaste of his retching session. Dreyfus would surely have said something, Crissel thought. It didn't need to be much. Just a word or two of encouragement. He brought himself to a halt and turned around slowly, nodding at the young men and women filling those black lobster-like suits.
"None of us are under the illusion that this is going to be easy," Crissel said, instantly dismayed at how quavery and ineffectual his own voice sounded.
"They'll have the hub airlocks well guarded and we'll more than likely be meeting opposition as soon as we reach the interior. It's quite probable that we'll be outnumbered. But we do have the advantage of training and equipment. Remember, you are Panoply operatives. You have right on your side."
The reaction was not what he had been expecting, or hoping for. The prefects just looked bewildered and fearful, as if his words had robbed them of the exact measure of morale he had hoped to bolster. "When I say it won't be easy," he continued, "I don't mean we won't succeed. Of course not. I just mean — "
A girl with almond-coloured eyes and a heart-shaped face asked, "How will we distinguish hostiles from locals, sir?"
He tapped the crown of his own helmet. "Tactical drop-down will overlay all citizens known to the polling apparatus. Anyone you see who isn't recognised by the overlay must be assumed a non-indigent hostile." He flashed her an overconfident smile. "Naturally, you have authorisation to euthanise."
"Pardon me, sir," said a young man with a day's growth of chin stubble, "but we were informed that we'd probably be operating in an environment without local abstraction."
"That's correct," Crissel said, nodding. If Aubusson had dropped off the external abstraction, there was every r
eason to believe its internal systems had gone into blackout as well.
"Then how will the tactical overlays know who is who?" the girl asked, with the tone of someone who genuinely expected a reasonable answer.
Crissel opened his mouth to respond, then felt ominous mental trap doors opening. He'd made a mistake. There could be no guarantee that the overlays would work at all.
"The hostiles will be the ones ... being hostile," he said.
The prefects just stared at him. If they'd mocked him, or even fired back another question, it would have been preferable to that dumb, expectant staring, as if what he had told them made perfect operational sense.
Something stirred in the dry embers of his gut again. "Excuse me," he said, preparing to turn and make his way back to the cubicle. But just as he spoke, the pilot emerged from the flight deck into the assembly area, holding headphones against his skull. "Visual on Aubusson, sir. Thought you'd like to see it."
"Thank you," Crissel said.
He entered the cruiser's spacious flight deck with a shaming sense of relief. House Aubusson looked frighteningly close on the allocated display panes, but that was deceptive; they were still thousands of kilometres away, and the habitat's anti-collision systems would not yet have picked out the approaching cruiser from the confusion of general Glitter Band traffic moving on similar vectors.
"Looks normal enough," Crissel commented as the end-on view zoomed to reveal the small-scale details of the docking hub, where a handful of spacecraft were still attached. "I take it there hasn't been any significant change since we left Panoply?"
"Nothing that will affect our approach," the pilot said. "But there's something you should know about." He opened windows over the main view, illustrating side-on views of the habitat captured by some other distant vehicle or camera platform. "Visible light," he said. "Six hours apart. The view on the right is the most recent."
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