Something strode towards them, following a dry path that wound between the bathing pools. A pair of shapely, stockinged female legs rose to support a flat tray arrayed with drinks. High heels clicked as the legs approached, placing one foot before the other with neurotic precision. The fluid in the glasses remained rock steady.
Thalia’s hand moved to her belt.
‘Steady,’ Dreyfus breathed.
The servitor halted before them. ‘Welcome to House Perigal, Prefects,’ it said in a squeaky voice. ‘Would you care for a drink?’
‘Thanks,’ Thalia said, ‘but we should—’
Dreyfus put down the coffee bulb and dithered his hand over the tray. ‘What do you recommend?’
‘The red’s acceptable.’
‘Red it is, then.’ He took a glass and lifted it towards his lips, just close enough to sniff the aroma. Thalia took a glass for herself. Only Sparver abstained: his metabolism couldn’t cope with alcohol.
‘Follow me, please. I’ll take you to the matriarch.’
They followed the legs through the cavern, winding between the pools. If their arrival had gone apparently unnoticed, that luxury had passed. Thalia could feel the back of her neck prickling from the uneasy attention they were now warranting.
They climbed to one of the highest pools, where four ornamental iron fish vomited water from their gaping mouths. Three adults were floating in the water, up to their chests in perfumed froth. Two were men. The third was Caitlin Perigal, her face recognisable from the summary file. Her muscular shoulders and arms tapered to elegant webbed hands with acid-green fingernails. A peacock’s feather adorned her hair. Green nymphs and satyrs buzzed around her head.
‘Prefects,’ she said, with all the warmth of superfluid helium.
‘Matriarch Perigal,’ Dreyfus said, standing with his feet a few centimetres from the edge of the pool. ‘My companions are Deputy Field Prefects Sparver Bancal and Thalia Ng. We’ve met, of course.’
Perigal turned languidly to her two companions. ‘The sleepy-looking fat one is Tom Dreyfus,’ she explained.
One of them — an aristocratic man with long, white hair — examined Dreyfus through clinical grey eyes. His plumage rendered him in impressionist brushstrokes. ‘Your paths have crossed before, Caitlin?’
Perigal stirred, breaking the water with the muscular fluked tail that had been grafted on in place of her legs. Thalia touched the stud on the side of her shades to verify that the tail was real, not a hallucination.
‘Dreyfus’s function in life seems to be finding obscure legal channels through which to harass me,’ Perigal said.
Dreyfus looked unimpressed. ‘I just do my job. It’s not my fault that you keep being a part of it.’
‘And I do, don’t I?’
‘So it seems. Nice tail, by the way. What happened to the legs?’
Perigal nodded at the walking tray. ‘I keep them around as a conversation piece.’
‘Each to their own.’
‘Yes, that’s the general principle.’ Perigal leaned forward in the pool, her voice hardening. ‘Well, pleasantries over with. Make your inspection, do whatever you have to do, then get the hell off my habitat.’
‘I haven’t come to inspect the habitat,’ Dreyfus said.
Thalia tensed despite herself. This was the moment she had been both dreading and quietly anticipating.
‘What, then?’ Perigal asked.
Dreyfus removed a card from his tunic pocket and held it up to his face, squinting slightly. He glanced briefly at Thalia and Sparver before reading, ‘Caitlin Perigal, as matriarch of this habitat, you are hereby charged with a category-five infringement of the democratic process. It is alleged that you tampered with the polling apparatus, to the intended benefit of your house.’
Perigal stuttered something, her cheeks flushing with indignation, but Dreyfus held up a silencing hand and continued with his statement.
‘While the investigative process is in operation, your habitat is to be placed under lockdown. All physical traffic between House Perigal and the rest of the system, including Chasm City, is now suspended. No incoming or outgoing transmissions will be permitted. Any attempts to break these sanctions will be countered with destructive force. This is final and binding.’ Dreyfus paused, then lowered the card. ‘The state of lockdown is now in effect.’
There was an uneasy silence, broken only by the gentle lapping of water against the side of the pool.
‘This is a joke, isn’t it?’ the grey-eyed man said eventually, looking encouragingly at Perigal. ‘Please tell me it’s a joke.’
‘So it’s come to this,’ the matriarch said. ‘I always knew you were dirty, Dreyfus, but I never thought you’d stoop quite this low.’
Dreyfus placed the card beside the pool. ‘This is a summary of the case against you. Looks watertight to me, but then I’m only a lowly field prefect.’ He touched a finger to his chin, as if he’d just remembered an errand. ‘Now I need a small favour.’
‘You’re insane.’
‘Kindly issue a priority interrupt to all your citizens and guests. Tell them that a lockdown is in force, and that they’re about to lose contact with the external universe. Remind them that this state of affairs could last for anything up to one century. Tell them that if they have thoughts or messages to convey to loved ones beyond House Perigal, they have six hundred seconds in which to do so.’
He turned to Thalia and Sparver and lowered his voice, but not so low that Perigal wouldn’t have been able to hear him. ‘You know what to do, Deputies. If anyone obstructs you, or refuses to cooperate, you have clearance to euthanise.’
The rim transit moved quickly, its motion counteracting the centrifugal gravity of the slow-turning wheel. Thalia sat next to Sparver, brooding.
‘It isn’t fair,’ she said.
‘What isn’t?’
‘All those people stuck here by accident, the people who just happened to be visiting.’
‘Sometimes the only workable solution isn’t a fair one.’
‘But cut off from the Glitter Band, from Yellowstone, from friends and family, from abstraction, from their medical programmes… some of them could actually die in here before the lockdown’s over.’
‘Then they should have thought about that before. If you don’t like the idea of being caught in a lockdown, do the homework on your habitat.’
‘That’s a very callous outlook.’
‘They screwed with democracy. I’m not going to lose much sleep when democracy screws them back.’
Thalia felt her weight returning as they neared their destination and the transit slowed. The two prefects disembarked into another cavern, smaller and brighter than the first. This time the floor was an expanse of interlocking black and white tiles, polished to a luxurious gleam. A cylindrical structure rose from a hole in the centre of the floor, wide as a tree trunk, its spired tip almost touching the ceiling. The cylinder’s black surface flickered with schematic representations of data flows: rapidly changing red and blue traceries. A railingless spiral staircase wrapped around the pillar, offering access to the stump-like branches of interface ports.
A man in beige uniform — some kind of technician or functionary, Thalia decided — stood by the base of the trunk, his face a study in suspicion.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ he said.
Sparver answered him. ‘Didn’t Perigal make it clear we were on our way, and that we weren’t to be hindered?’
‘It’s a trick. You’re agents of House Cantarini.’
Sparver looked at him sceptically. ‘Do I look like an agent of House Cantarini?’
‘An agent could look like anyone.’
‘I’m a pig. How likely is it that they’d send an ugly specimen like me when there was an alternative?’
