cutter was a Type B?”
“Correct,” Thyssen said.
“Most of the new vehicles are Type C or D. They don’t have the—”.
“Transatmospheric capability,” Dreyfus finished for him.
“That’s what I reckoned.”
“Since the segregation of security responsibilities between Chasm City and the Glitter Band—”.
“Prefects hardly ever need to take a ship into Yellowstone’s atmosphere. And all that aerodynamic bodywork makes for fuel-draining mass that we don’t need in normal duties. I know. But we still keep a small number of transat vehicles on readiness, in case we do need them.”
Something clicked behind Thyssen’s eyes.
“You think they’ve gone to Yellowstone.”
“It’s a possibility. I need you to look into your logs. I’m going to give you the names of some prefects and I want you to correlate those names against the vehicles they’ve signed out for routine duties. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes. Immediately.”
“Here are the names.” Dreyfus handed Thyssen his compad, allowing him access to the area where he had input the identities of the eight Firebrand operatives. Thyssen retired to an office space, Dreyfus shadowing him, and transferred the names into his own compad with a finger stroke. Thyssen chucked his bulb into the wall and conjured a console.
“I’m checking the logs right now. How far back do you want me to go?” Dreyfus thought of the likely activity that would have preceded the destruction of the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. Moving the Clockmaker and its associated relics—including any equipment required to study them—would have certainly required more than one trip.
“Two months should do it.”
“Conjure yourself a coffee, Prefect. This is going to take a couple of minutes.” Thalia woke with the worst headache she could remember, one that felt as if someone had driven an iron piton into the side of her skull. She was just beginning to speculate on the precise origin of that pain when she became aware of less intense discomfort afflicting almost her entire body. It was difficult to breathe, and her arms were tugged so far behind her back that she felt as if her shoulders had been dislocated. Something squeezed her chest. Something hard dug into her spine. She opened her eyes and looked around, wondering where she was and what had happened to her.
“Easy,” said Meriel Redon, who appeared to be bound in a similar position next to Thalia: sitting on the ground with her back against the railings that encircled the polling core, her arms crossed and bound behind one of the uprights.
“You’re okay now, Prefect Ng. You took a bad bump on the head, but there’s no bleeding. We’ll get you checked as soon as we’re out of this.” Through a curtain of pain, Thalia said, “I don’t remember. What happened?”
“You were down in the basement, getting ready to set the timer on your whiphound.”
“I was,” Thalia said foggily. She had a groggy recollection that there had been some kind of problem with the whiphound, but the details refused to sharpen.
“You banged your head on one of the struts, knocking yourself out.”
“I banged my head?”
“You were out cold. Citizen Parnasse carried you back up here on his own.” The events began to come back to her. She remembered the second timing dial jamming, how she had come to the decision that she would have to detonate the whiphound manually. She remembered that awesome calm she had experienced, as if every trifling detail in her life had just been swept aside, leaving a breathtaking clarity of mind, as empty and full of possibility as the clear dawn sky. And then she remembered nothing at all, except waking up here.
“Where is Parnasse?”
“He went back down to set the timer,” Redon said.
“He said you’d shown him what to do.”
“No—” Thalia began.
“We’re expecting him back any minute. He said he’d be able to tie himself down when he arrived.”
“He isn’t coming back. There was a problem with the whiphound, with setting the five-minute fuse. I didn’t bang my head. Parnasse must have knocked me out.” Redon looked puzzled.
“Why would he have done that?”
“Because I was going to set it off myself, while I was still down there. It was the only way. But he wouldn’t let me. He’s decided to do it himself.” Comprehension came to Redon in horrified degrees.
“You mean he’s going to die down there?”
“He isn’t coming back up. I showed him how to set the whiphound. He knows exactly what to do.”
“Someone has to go down there, tell him not to do it,” Redon said.
“He can’t kill himself to save us. He’s just a citizen, just one of us.”
“When did he go?”
“Quite a long time ago.”
“He can’t set the fuse for longer than a hundred seconds. There’s no reason why he needs to wait that long, if he’s in place.”
“You mean we could go any second?”
“If the whiphound works. If the machines haven’t already broken through and stopped him.” She knew she ought to feel gratitude, but instead she felt betrayed.
“Damn him! He shouldn’t have brought me back up here. It wasted too much time!”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if one of us—”. Redon never got to finish her sentence. Judging by the force of the blast, felt through Thalia’s spine as it transmitted itself through the fabric of the polling core sphere, the whiphound must have detonated at nearly its maximum theoretical yield. It had been a new unit, she remembered belatedly: she’d checked it out of the armoury only a couple of weeks ago. There would still have been a lot of energy left inside it, anxiously seeking release.
The sphere rocked appreciably: Thalia saw the landscape tilt and then settle again at its former angle. The blast had been very brief: a spike of intense sound followed by a few seconds of echoing repercussions. Now all was silent again. The sphere was still. The landscape outside was still.
“It didn’t work,” she said.
“We’re not moving. It didn’t fucking work.”
“Wait,” Caillebot said quietly.
“It didn’t work, Citizen. We’re not going anywhere. The blast wasn’t sufficient. I’ve failed you, used up our one chance.”
“Wait,” he said.
“Something’s happening,” Cuthbertson said.
“I can hear it. It sounds like metal straining. Can’t you?”
“We’re tilting,” Redon said.
“Look.” Thalia craned her neck in time to see the white ball of the model polling core sphere roll across the floor, towards the window facing them. From somewhere below there came a kind of twanging sound, as if the energy stored in a stretched spar had just been catastrophically released. The twanging sound was followed in quick succession by another, then a third, and then a volley of them too close together to count. The tilt of the floor increased. Thalia felt her weight beginning to tug on the upright to which she was bound. The sphere must have been at ten or fifteen degrees to the horizontal already. She heard another series of metallic sounds: shearing and buckling noises, less like the failure of structural components than the cries of animals in distress. The angle of the tilt reached twenty degrees and continued increasing.
“We’re going over,” she said.
“It’s happening.”
Loose clothes and debris skittered across the floor, coming to rest along the curve of the outer wall. The architectural model slid noisily, then shattered itself to pieces. Thirty degrees, easy. Thalia felt an unpleasant tingling in her stomach. The landscape was tilting alarmingly. Through the windows, she could see aspects of the surrounding campus that had been obscured before. Suddenly it looked much further down than she had been
