“Actually, Prefect—” she began.
That was when Dreyfus heard footsteps behind him and felt a hand land on his shoulder.
“Tom,” he heard a voice say.
“I’m glad I found you. Had to invoke Pangolin. I almost didn’t believe it when it said you were in the refectory. This was about the last place I expected you to be.”
Dreyfus snapped around, prepared to be angered until he saw that the man who had spoken was the lantern-jawed Demikhov.
“Doctor,” he said quietly.
“Actually, would you mind… I’m in the middle of something right now.”
Demikhov nodded understandingly.
“So are we all, Tom. But you and I need to talk right now. Trust me on this, okay?”
Dreyfus studied the doctor’s fatigue-mapped face. He’d never once known Demikhov overstate the seriousness of an issue. Whatever the man wanted to discuss, it was clearly urgent.
“What’s it about?” Dreyfus asked, still keeping his voice low.
“Have a guess, Tom.”
“Jane?”
“There’s been a development. Not a good one. We have to make a very difficult decision and I need your input. Immediately, Tom. Can you come down to the Sleep Lab?”
“It’s okay, Prefect,” Lansing Chen said, standing up from the table with a scrape of chair against floor.
“Paula and I were just leaving anyway.”
“I’d like to see you back here in an hour,” Dreyfus said, tapping his bracelet.
“Is something the matter, Field Prefect Dreyfus?” Chen asked innocently, but obviously reminding Dreyfus that they shared exactly the same rank.
“Yeah. Something’s the matter. And in sixty minutes we’re going to have a chat about it.” He turned his attention to the woman.
“You too, Field Prefect Saavedra.” He watched them flounce out of the refectory, leaving their trays and food on the table.
“I’m sorry to have interrupted you,” Demikhov said, while Dreyfus swigged down the water and threw the remains of the apple onto Chen’s dinner tray.
“But please believe me—I wouldn’t have disturbed you were it not regarding an issue of the utmost concern.”
In the Sleep Lab Demikhov said, “How was Jane the last time you spoke to her?”
Dreyfus rubbed at the back of his neck.
“Compared to what?”
“The time before. Or how she was last week.”
“She wasn’t too happy. Understandably, since she’d been removed from power.” He raised a reassuring hand.
“Don’t worry, Doctor. I don’t hold you responsible for that. You were just doing your job, looking after Jane’s ultimate health. I can guess how manipulative Gaffney must have been.”
“It wasn’t just Gaffney. It was Crissel and Baudry, too.”
“Well, Crissel got to make amends. And while I might not approve of the decisions Baudry says we have to make, I can see that she’s just trying to discharge her obligations.”
“Back to Jane—did you notice anything else? Did she appear to be under a higher degree of stress than usual?”
“Well, let’s review the situation. We’ve now lost control of six habitats, four of which have weevil- manufacturing capacity. The agency that now has control of them is poised to grab another four habitats inside the next twenty-six hours, maybe sooner. We’ll soon be in double figures, and then it won’t be long before we hit triple figures. We’re running a mass-evacuation programme to clear a fire break around the infected habitats so that we can nuke the very structures we’re supposed to protect. There are probably still going to be people inside those structures when we push the button. Meanwhile, we’re losing agents and machines faster than we can think. So— all told—yeah, I’d say Jane’s under a bit more stress than usual.”
Demikhov batted aside Dreyfus’ sarcasm like a man shooing a fly.
“I think the time has come to intervene.”
“Not now. Not until we’re done with Aurora.”
“There’s been another change in the scarab. Did Jane tell you?”
“No,” Dreyfus said warily.
“It’s pushed one of its prongs deeper into her neck. It’s applying pressure to her spinal cord. She can feel it.”
Dreyfus thought back to his last conversation with Aumonier.
“She didn’t appear to be in pain.”
“Then she was doing a good job of hiding it from you. It’s not agony—yet. But the scarab’s been changing faster and faster lately. It’s sending us a warning, Tom. We don’t have much time.”
“But it’s only been a few days since the last time we talked. You didn’t have a strategy then; nothing that would get it off her in under four-tenths of a second. Are you telling me you’ve come up with something new since then?”
Demikhov could not quite meet his eyes.
“I’ve not been entirely truthful with you, Tom. There’s always been a strategy, one that we’re confident can remove the scarab before it has time to retaliate. It’s just that we wanted to make sure all other options were exhausted first.”
Dreyfus shook his head.
“Tango was your best option. Yet it still wasn’t down to four-tenths or less.”
“There’s always been something faster than Tango. We’ve held it in reserve, barely discussed it since the groundwork was put in place. We always hoped we’d come up with something better in the meantime. But we haven’t. And now there isn’t any more time. Which leaves us three choices, Tom.”
“Which are?”
“Option one is we do nothing and hope that the scarab never triggers. Option two is we go with Tango. All the sims—incorporating the work we’ve put in during the last week—say that Tango will achieve scarab extraction in point four nine six seconds. The sims also estimate that that isn’t quite enough time for the scarab to do anything.”
“But there’s not much of a margin of error.” They’d agreed long ago that no action would be taken until the extraction could be achieved in under point four seconds. Warily, Dreyfus asked, “What’s the third option?”
“We call it Zulu. It’s the last resort.”
“Which is?”
“Decapitation,” Demikhov said.
“You’re not serious.”
“It’s been analysed into the ground. We have a plan, and we think it will work.”
“You think?”
“Nothing’s guaranteed here, Tom. We’re talking about operating on a patient we haven’t been able to get within seven and half metres of for eleven years.”
Dreyfus realised that he was taking out his exasperation on the hapless Demikhov, a man who had selflessly dedicated the last eleven years of his life to finding a way to help Jane Aumonier.
“All right. Tell me what’s involved. How does cutting her head off score over just shooting the scarab right now? And how are you going to get a surgical team in there to decapitate her, anyway?”
Demikhov steered Dreyfus towards one of the partitions that divided the central area of the Sleep Lab, bright with diagrams and images of both the patient and the thing clamped to her neck.
“Let’s deal with one thing at a time. We’ve considered forced removal of the scarab—shooting it off, if you like—since day one. But we’ve always been concerned that there might be something in it that can still hurt Jane even
if it isn’t physically connected to her.”
