‘I think we already know,’ she said. ‘They’ve been made overnight. There are probably bits of people in them.’
‘The manufactories?’
‘I think so. I can’t believe these are the only thing they’re spewing out — there’d have been enough material to make millions of them, which is obviously absurd. But at least we know what part of the production flow was meant for.’
‘And the rest?’
‘I’m too scared to think about it.’
Thalia turned back to the polling core. Perhaps Parnasse was right, that the time had now come to destroy it. The option had been at the back of her mind all along, after all. She believed that the core was playing a vital part in coordinating the activities of the machines via the low-level signals she had already detected. That was why the servitors had not already demolished the stalk, something that she knew would have been well within their capabilities. But she would not risk putting that theory to the test until she took the core out of action. If the machines were somehow able to keep running afterwards, it would all have been for nothing. She had not been prepared to take that risk until now, but the spectacle of the advancing war machines had changed everything.
She walked to the nearest chair and picked up her whiphound. It had become too hot to wear clipped to her belt and she could only tolerate holding it if she had a scarf wrapped around her palm. She let the filament extend and stiffen itself in sword mode, ignoring the buzzing protestation from the handle.
‘Are you going to do it?’ Parnasse asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time.’
He steadied her trembling hand. ‘And maybe it isn’t. Like you said, girl — if chopping at this thing doesn’t do the job, we’d better have a pretty good back-up plan in place. Put the sword away for now. I’m going to test the water with Redon.’
CHAPTER 23
A portion of the Solid Orrery had been reassigned to emulate the three-dimensional form of a weevil-class war robot. The one-tenth-scale representation rotated slowly, the light of the room appearing to gleam off its angled black surfaces. In its space-travel/ atmospheric-entry configuration, the machine’s multiple legs and manipulators were tucked hard against its shell, as if it had died and shrivelled up. Its binocular sensor packages were contained in two grilled domes that bore an uncanny resemblance to the compound eyes of an insect.
‘They’re as nasty as they look,’ Baudry commented to the assembled prefects. ‘Banned under seven or eight conventions of war, last seen in action more than a hundred and twenty years ago. Most war robots are designed to kill other war robots. Weevils were engineered to do that
‘Do we know for a fact that we’re dealing with weevils?’ Dreyfus asked.
Baudry nodded. ‘The
‘What about the rest of what Gaffney revealed?’ asked the projected head of Jane Aumonier, imaged on a curving pane of glass supported above an empty chair. ‘Do we believe that weevils are capable of hijacking a second habitat?’
Baudry faced her superior. ‘If Aurora has embarked on this strategy, chances are she has a high expectation of success. She already has intimate knowledge of security holes in the polling apparatus. There’s every reason to think she has the ability to seize another habitat if she can get weevils into it.’ All of a sudden Baudry looked shattered, as if the crisis had notched past some personal threshold of endurance. ‘I think we must assume the worst.’
The wall displays froze abruptly. Bracelets chorused in unison. The Solid Orrery consumed the weevil and sprang up an enlarged representation of one of the two threatened habitats, a hubless wheel. ‘That’s Carousel New Brazilia,’ Baudry said. ‘Anti-collision systems have begun to engage the incoming flow of weevils. We can expect House Flammarion to begin similar engagements within the next fifteen minutes.’
‘How are our assets coping?’ Aumonier asked.
‘We only had time to place three corvette-class vehicles close enough to Brazilia to make a difference,’ Baudry said. ‘Frankly, their pinpoint weapons are next to useless against the scale of the flow. Even if we dropped a nuke into the middle of it, it would only take out a few thousand units. It’s like trying to stop a tsunami with a spoon.’
Aumonier answered calmly: ‘Then we need an alternative strategy.’
‘Our corvettes are standing by to concentrate their fire on the weevils once they make groundfall on the habitat. The war robots will need time to cut through or force their way in via docking apertures.’
‘Let’s assume we don’t stop them all. What happens if we lose Brazilia and Flammarion?’
‘Both habitats have manufacturies of their own,’ Dreyfus said, looking up from his compad. ‘If Aurora takes them, she’ll have two new sites of weevil production. From there she can start leapfrogging to new habitats.’
‘I’ve prepared a simulation on the Orrery,’ Baudry said. ‘There’s a lot of guesswork fed into it, obviously, but I can show you how things might progress under some reasonable assumptions.’
‘Go ahead,’ Aumonier said.
Baudry shrank the image of Carousel New Brazilia back down to its former size, so that it became simply one gemlike point moving in the stately swirl of the Glitter Band. With another gesture she turned all the points of light to the same emerald green, save for four scattered points of ruby.
‘These are the habitats Aurora now controls,’ Baudry said, before two more red points lit up, each located close to one of the other four points. ‘These are Brazilia and Flammarion, under the assumption that Aurora attains control. I now assume that both these new habitats become weevil-production centres with an output flow similar to what we’ve already seen. I assume also that each habitat concentrates its weevil output on one other habitat not yet in Aurora’s control, in accordance with what we’ve seen so far. I further assume that in twenty-six hours, a habitat can be attacked by weevils, brought under Aurora’s control and direct its own weevil flow against a designated target, crossing space until they make contact.’
‘Continue,’ Aumonier said.
‘In one day, we’ll have already gone from two compromised habitats to four. Those four habitats will each infect another neighbouring state, giving us eight infection sites by the end of the second day.’ As she spoke, the number of red lights increased in geometric fashion. ‘At the end of the third day, sixteen habitats. Thirty-two by the end of the fourth day. Sixty-four by the fifth. One hundred and twenty-eight by the end of the sixth: that’s more than one per cent of the entire Glitter Band.’
There were now too many red lights to count. They were still overwhelmed by the green lights, but the inevitability of the process was now painfully apparent.
‘How long…?’ Aumonier asked, voicing the question none of them wanted answering.
‘Fewer than half the states in the Glitter Band retain any kind of manufacturing capacity,’ Baudry said, ‘but that’s still over four thousand habitats. Aurora will have taken them all a few hours into the twelfth day. Even if we still hold the remainder by then, we’ll lose them very quickly. Aurora will have over four thousand weevil-production
