number of endangered habitats grows geometrically, the refugee burden will soon become the predominant limiting factor.” Clearmountain offered his palms in a gesture of well-intentioned surrender.
“Some tough calls may have to be made when that happens, Prefect Dreyfus.”
“Today we nuked two occupied habitats. We’ve already made tough calls.”
“What I mean,” Clearmountain said, with a strained smile, “is that we may have to focus our activities where they can do the most good.”
“Isn’t that exactly what we’re already doing?”
“Not to the degree that may shortly become necessary. In the interests of maximising the number of citizens we can evacuate away from Aurora’s takeover front, we may have to prioritise assistance to those citizens least likely to hinder our efforts.”
“I see where you’re going. You think we should leave the coma cases to die.”
“It’s not as if they’ll know what hit them.”
“All those citizens went into voluntary coma on the understanding that the PVS would be looking after them, and that Panoply would be standing by if the PVS failed in its care. That was a promise we made to those people.”
Clearmountain looked exasperated.
“You’re worried about breaking a promise to a citizen with the brain functions of a cabbage?”
“I’m just wondering where this ends. So the coma cases are inconvenient to us. Fine, we lose them. Who’s next? Citizens who can’t move as fast as the rest? Citizens we just don’t like the look of? Citizens who maybe didn’t vote the right way the last time there was a poll on Panoply’s right to arms?”
“I think you’re being needlessly melodramatic,” Clearmountain said.
“There was a reason for this visit, wasn’t there, other than to cast doubts on an already complicated evacuation programme?”
“Clearmountain’s right,” Jane Aumonier said, her image speaking from her usual position at the table.
“The coma cases are a blessed nuisance, and we’d have a much easier time of it if we just pulled life-support on the lot of them. They’re going to retard our evacuation programme and therefore increase the danger to the rest of the citizenry. But Tom’s even more right. If we cross this line just once—if we say these citizens matter less than those citizens—we may as well hand Aurora the keys to the kingdom. But we’re not going to do that. This is Panoply. Everything we stand for says we’re better than that.”
“Thank you,” Dreyfus said, his voice a hushed whisper.
“But we can’t let the coma cases impose too heavy a drag on the evacuation programme,” Aumonier continued.
“That’s why I want them dealt with now, so we won’t have to worry about them in the future. I want them leapfrogged well ahead of the front—out of the Glitter Band, even, if we can identify a suitable holding point.”
“That’ll tie up ships and manpower,” Baudry said.
“I know. But it has to be done. Do you have any suggestions, Lillian?”
“We might consider an approach to Hospice Idlewild. They’re used to dealing with sudden influxes of incapacitated sleepers, so they should be able to handle the coma cases.”
“Excellent proposal. Can you sort that out?”
“I’ll get right on it.” After a lengthy pause she said, “Supreme Prefect Aumonier…”
“Yes?”
“It’s been nearly six hours now. Since Aurora’s transmission.”
“I’m well aware of that, thank you very much.”
“I’m just saying… given what we now know of her capabilities… and the difficulties we’re having with the evacuation effort, and the finite number of nuclear devices in our arsenal—”
“Yes, Lillian?”
“I think it would be prudent at least to consider Aurora’s proposal.” Her words came out awkwardly, the strain written in her face.
“If her success is guaranteed, then we have an onus to do everything we can to protect the citizenry during the transition phase. Aurora has threatened to start euthanising citizens in the habitats she already holds. I believe she will follow through on that threat unless we broadcast the takeover code to the rest of the ten thousand. If we wish to save as many lives as possible, we may have no choice but to comply with her demand.”
“I don’t think we’re quite ready to hand her the keys to the castle,” Dreyfus said, before anyone else had time to respond to Baudry’s words.
“With all due respect, Field Prefect Dreyfus—” she began exasperatedly.
“With all due respect, Senior Prefect Baudry, shut up.” Dreyfus looked pointedly away from Baudry, to Clearmountain.
“I dropped by for a reason, and it wasn’t to rubber-stamp our surrender. You have any objections if I commandeer the Orrery for a moment?”
“If you need to run the Orrery, you have authorisation to conjure a duplicate in your quarters,”. Clearmountain said.
“Let him run it,” Aumonier said warningly.
“What have you got for us, Tom?”
“It may be nothing. On the other hand, it may be a clue to the present location of the Clockmaker.”
Aumonier lifted an eyebrow. He hadn’t briefed her in advance, so she was as much in the dark as everyone else in the room.
“Then I think you should continue, with all haste.”
“I’ll need to wind back a few hours. Everyone happy with that?”
“Do what you need to do,” Aumonier said.
Dreyfus began to spin back the Solid Orrery to the point when he had begun tracking Saavedra’s cutter.
“Let’s remind ourselves what we’re looking at here,” he said, as the timetag digits reversed themselves.
“The Orrery’s more than just a real-time record of the disposition of the Glitter Band and its habitats. It also shows Yellowstone. That isn’t just some static representation of what the planet looks like from space. It’s a constantly changing three-dimensional image, pieced together from countless orbital viewpoints.”
“We’re well aware of this,” Clearmountain said.
“Hear him out,” purred Aumonier.
“Everything that happens on Yellowstone, the Orrery keeps a record of it. Changes in the weather, the cloud colouration… it all goes into the memory. Even those rare occasions when the clouds clear to reveal the surface. But there’s more to it than that.” The digits froze: the Orrery had wound back to the time of Saavedra’s flight. Dreyfus dabbed a finger into the jewelled disc of the Band.
“Here’s Panoply.” He moved his finger a few centimetres to the right.
“Here’s the last known position of Saavedra’s vehicle before she dropped beyond our sensor horizon. In clear space we’d have been able to track her at a range of several light-seconds, even with her hull stealthing. But it’s hopeless in the thick of the Band, even more so with the present crisis, and Saavedra knew it.”
“You said we lost her,” Aumonier said.
“Has something changed?”
“Saavedra told me I had no hope of chasing her since there were no other ships ready to go. She was bluffing—maybe there were no other ships fast enough to catch her, but there were certainly other vehicles that had more fuel and heavier weapons loads.” Dreyfus looked up from the Orrery.
“So I did some nosing around. Turns out the Firebrand operatives—I presume you’ve all been briefed concerning Firebrand?—have been using a lot of transat vehicles lately, even signing them out for duties that wouldn’t require that capability. Now, why would they do that?”
“You think they’ve moved the Clockmaker to Yellowstone,” Aumonier said.
Dreyfus nodded.
“That’s the way it’s looking. Of course, that’s not particularly useful data in and of itself. It’s a big planet with a lot of hiding places.”
“So why didn’t they take the Clockmaker there first, instead of using the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble?” Baudry asked. “Because it would have been much more risky,” Dreyfus said.
“Visiting the Clockmaker in the Bubble was so easy that they kept it up for nine years without any of us
