again, ready to throw the broken weapon as a grenade. But as her heels touched the stairs, something made her change her mind. Nothing would be gained from attacking these machines now; more would always follow.
Thalia clipped the whiphound back onto her belt and started climbing the stairs behind the others.
CHAPTER 15
Gaffney experienced a moment’s hesitation as he clipped the safe-distance line to his belt. How easy it would be to fail to secure the latch, so that the line snapped off just when he reached its maximum extension. Then he would sail on through the boundary of the exclusion volume, into the sphere of space around Jane Aumonier into which the scarab forbade the intrusion of all but the smallest of objects. Aumonier would have a second or two to register both the failure of the line and the Euclidean inevitability of Gaffney’s onward progress. No force in the universe could stop him from colliding with her.
How fast would it be? he wondered. How clean, how merciful? He’d pondered the literature concerning sudden, non-medical decapitation. It was confusing and contradictory. Very few subjects had survived to testify to their experiences. There’d be blood, certainly. Litres of it, at arterial pressure.
Blood did interesting, artistic things in weightlessness.
‘Prefects,’ Aumonier said as she became aware of the delegation’s presence. ‘I wasn’t expecting a visit. Is something the matter?’
‘You know what this is about, Jane,’ Gaffney said, beginning his drift into the chamber. Next to him, Crissel and Baudry fastened their own safe-distance tethers and kicked off from the wall. ‘Please don’t make it any more difficult than it already is.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘We’ve come to announce our decision,’ Crissel said, in a regretful tone of voice. ‘You must stand down for the duration, Jane. Until the present crisis is averted, and the nature of the change in the scarab has become clear to us.’
‘I can still do my job.’
Baudry spoke next. ‘No one’s doubting that,’ she said. ‘Whatever else this is about, it has absolutely nothing to do with your professional competence, now or at any time in the past.’
‘Then what the hell is it about?’ Aumonier snapped back.
‘Your continued well-being,’ Gaffney said. ‘I’m sorry, Jane, but you’re simply too valuable an asset to risk in this way. That may sound mercenary, but that’s just the way it is. Panoply wants to have you around next week, not just today.’
‘I’m managing fine, aren’t I?’
‘Demikhov and the other specialists feel that the scarab’s recent state-changes may have been triggered by alterations in your body’s biochemical equilibrium,’ Crissel said. ‘You could cope when all we had to deal with was the occasional lockdown, but with the possibility of all-out war between the Ultras and the Glitter Band—’
‘I’m coping, damn you.’ She looked Crissel hard in the eyes, doubtless trying to connect with the sympathetic ally she had always been able to count on in the past. ‘Michael, listen to me. The crisis is past its point of maximum severity.’
‘You can’t know that for sure.’
Aumonier nodded firmly. ‘I can. Dreyfus has a firm lead. He’s zeroing in on whoever murdered Ruskin- Sartorious and I expect to hear a name from him any time now. Once we have hard evidence, we’ll broadcast a statement to the entire Band, ordering calm. The Ultras will be exonerated.’
‘
‘I think Tom can be relied upon, don’t you?’ Then a subtle shift in mood revealed itself on her face. ‘Wait a minute. The fact that Tom isn’t here — the fact that he’s outside on field duty — isn’t in any way accidental, is it? You’ve timed this exquisitely.’
‘Dreyfus’s presence or absence is irrelevant,’ Gaffney said. ‘And so, it must be said, is your compliance. We have a majority vote, Jane. That means you must stand down, irrespective of your wishes. Must and will. You have no further say in the matter.’
‘Take a look around you,’ Jane Aumonier said. ‘A good, long look. This is my world. It’s all I’ve known for eleven years of uninterrupted consciousness. None of you can even begin to imagine what that means.’
‘It means you could use a good rest,’ Gaffney said. Then he raised his arm and spoke into his cuff. ‘Commence shutdown, please.’
One by one, habitat by habitat, the displays blanked out, leaving only the black interior surface of Aumonier’s office sphere. The blackness was soon absolute, with the entry door the only source of illumination in the space.
Jane Aumonier made a small clicking noise, as if she’d touched her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘This is an outrage,’ she said, her voice hardly raised above a whisper.
‘It’s necessary and you’ll thank us for it later,’ Gaffney replied. ‘As of now, your authority is suspended on medical grounds. As we’ve stressed, this action isn’t being taken on disciplinary grounds. You may not like us right now, but you still have our utmost respect and loyalty.’
‘Like hell I do.’
‘Get it out of your system now, Jane. We understand your rage. We’d be surprised if you weren’t angry with us.’
‘You didn’t have to take the habitats away from me.’ She was speaking slowly, with a kind of iron calm. ‘If you wanted to take me out of the command loop, all you had to do was remove my ability to give orders or offer guidance.
‘We’ve discussed the matter with Demikhov,’ Baudry said. ‘He agrees that the present crisis poses an unacceptable risk to your mental well-being. He consented to this action.’
‘You’d have found a way to twist his advice to suit your purpose no matter what he said.’
‘That isn’t fair,’ Crissel said indignantly. ‘And we’re not going to leave you in the dark, so to speak. We can assign other inputs to the sphere. Historical feeds. Fictions. Puzzles. Enough to keep you occupied.’
‘Don’t even think of lecturing me about keeping occupied,’ Aumonier said to him, with genuine menace.
‘We’re just trying to help,’ Baudry said. ‘That’s all we’ve ever wanted to do.’
‘I wish you’d acknowledge the reasonableness of our actions,’ Gaffney said, ‘but your refusal to do so in no way alters what must be done. We’ll leave you now. Your usual medical care regime will of course continue unaffected. You may request any data feed, within reason. Access to the usual habitat-monitoring channels will of course be embargoed… and for the time being, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be able to tap into any of the news networks. Contact with Panoply personnel will also have to restricted—’
‘When Tom gets back—’ she began.
‘He’ll bow to our authority,’ Gaffney said.
Dreyfus and the Conjoiner woman exited the sleeping chamber and made their way out of the sinuous labyrinth of her ship. Dreyfus kept looking over his shoulder, wary that some restless and vengeful spirit might be following them from that house of abominations.
‘My trust in you is provisional,’ Clepsydra said, before reminding him that she still had control over the musculature of his suit. ‘If you can help me reach other Conjoiners, and bring help to save the rest, you shall have my gratitude. If I suspect that you are like the other man, the one who wears the same kind of suit, you shall discover the consequences of betraying me.’
Dreyfus decided not to dwell on her threat. He was simply glad to be out of the butcher’s theatre of the dismembered dreamers. ‘Can I call my deputy?’
