“Aurora was afraid of it. That’s good enough for me.”
“Thing is, Dreyfus, I don’t have any proof that you’re not lying to me.”
“How about this? If I wanted to destroy the Clockmaker, I could have dropped a missile on this whole facility thirteen hours ago. Instead, my partner and I have walked in with the intention of negotiating.”
“It’s true,” Sparver said.
“We just want access to the Clockmaker. You’ve kept it all this time because you thought it might be useful one day. Well, guess what? This is the day.”
“I really don’t know much about Aurora,” Saavedra answered.
“Yes, I’m aware of the crisis in orbit, the loss of the habitats, the evacuation effort. But I still don’t have a clear picture of who’s behind it. Can you enlighten me?”
“Is anything we say going to make you point that gun elsewhere?” Dreyfus asked.
“Let’s see how you get on.” Dreyfus took a deep breath, as much to calm his nerves as to prepare to speak.
“We think we know what Aurora is. She’s a rogue alpha-level; one of the original Eighty. Unlike the others, she didn’t fade or loop. She just made it look that way. In reality, she’d moved on, become stronger and faster.”
Saavedra’s lip twitched derisively.
“So where’s she been for the last fifty years, or however long it’s been?” “Fifty-five. And we don’t know where she’s been all that time, except that she’s been planning something for much of it. The takeover is just the start. She wants complete control of the Glitter Band. Humans won’t be allowed to live in it any more. It’ll just be one vast support infrastructure for an immortal mind.”
“Why the sudden megalomaniacal intentions if she’s lived happily enough under our noses all this time?”
“Because she thinks we’re going to do something bad to the Glitter Band, something that will make it impossible for even an evolved alpha-level intelligence to remain safe.” Again that lip-twitch.
“Something bad?”
“The point is, she’s convinced herself that we can’t be trusted with the safekeeping of the infrastructure she needs to stay alive, so we have to be removed from the equation. It isn’t a takeover, since there isn’t going to be anyone left alive under her regime—unless you count the handful of human slaves she’ll need to fix the servitors when they break down. It’s mass genocide, Paula.”
“And why does she fear the Clockmaker?”
“I think it’s because the Clockmaker’s the only thing in the system with an intelligence even approaching her own. It may even be cleverer. That means it’s a threat to her sovereignty. That means she has to remove it.”
“That’s what she was trying to do when she took out Ruskin-Sartorious,” Sparver put in.
“Gaffney set that up, but it was Aurora pulling the strings all the time. Only problem was, she was too late. You’d sensed her interest and moved the Clockmaker here.”
“Which is a pity, given that nine hundred and sixty people died because of false data,” Dreyfus said.
“Those people—the inhabitants of the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble—were not meant to die,” Saavedra said.
“Then you regret their deaths?” Dreyfus asked.
“Of course.” She snarled her answer back at him.
“Don’t you think we’d rather it hadn’t happened? We assumed that whoever had shown interest had backed away. The relocation was a precaution. We didn’t think there’d be consequences.”
“I’m prepared to believe that,” Dreyfus said.
“Believe what you like.”
“I also believe that a portion of the blame must be placed on Anthony Theobald’s doorstep. He must have known he was endangering the lives of his family, even if he didn’t know exactly what he was giving houseroom to.”
“He didn’t need to know. None of them needed to know. None of them did know, right until the end.”
“One of them came close, though.” She looked at him with sharp eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Delphine Ruskin-Sartorious. The daughter. The artist of the family. Or didn’t you realise?”
“Realise what?”
“She was in contact with the Clockmaker. It was something of a one-way dialogue, but it was contact all
the same.” She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head in flat dismissal.
“No, that wouldn’t have been possible. Delphine was never allowed anywhere near it. Nor were any of the family members, including Anthony Theobald. It was kept inside an armoured cell, locked away unless we wanted to communicate with it. Not only could it not escape from the cell, it couldn’t send a signal beyond it, either.”
“It still found a way to reach her.”
“Impossible.”
“Like it or not, it happened. My guess is that the cell wasn’t as data-secure as you thought it was. Or maybe the Clockmaker slipped a signal through when you were talking to it, or whatever it was you did during your visits.”
“A signal needs a receiver,” Saavedra pointed out.
“Delphine had one. It was in her head. Like any good Demarchist citizen, she had a skull full of implants. She used them to direct the machines that helped her with her art. The Clockmaker found out how to manipulate one or more of those implants to place imagery in Delphine’s mind and shape her artwork.”
Now Saavedra tilted her head sceptically. Dreyfus knew that he had some way to go before she was convinced, but he had certainly succeeded in intriguing her.
“Imagery?”
“The Clockmaker used her as medium, expressing itself through her work. She thought she’d tapped a seam of miraculous self-inspiration, but in truth she’d just become a conduit for the Clockmaker.”
“Ridiculous,” she said, but not with quite enough conviction.
“Maybe that’s what attracted Aurora in the first place,” Dreyfus said, the idea occurring to him more or less at that moment.
“Of course, for the threat of the Clockmaker to have impinged on her consciousness, she must have a good idea of what the Clockmaker actually is.”
“And what is it? Seeing as you appear to have all the answers.” Dreyfus couldn’t help smiling.
“You mean you really don’t know? After all this time?”
“And you, presumably, do?”
“I’ve got an inkling.”
“Nice try, Dreyfus, but if you think you’re going to bluff your way out of this one—”.
“A crime was committed,” he said.
“It all goes back to a single, simple deed: the murder of an innocent man. The Clockmaker is a direct consequence of that.”
“Who was murdered?”
“Point that gun elsewhere and I might tell you. Better yet, why don’t you show me the Clockmaker?”
“Remove your suits,” she said.
“I want to check that you’re not carrying any other weapons. If I even think you’re about to trick me, I’ll kill you.” Dreyfus glanced at Sparver.
“Better do as she says.”
They removed their armour and suits, laying them out in neat piles before them. Under the suits, they both wore standard-issue Panoply uniforms.
“Turn around,” Saavedra instructed.
They turned their backs to her.
“Now turn to face me. Remove your whiphounds. Do not activate them.”
Dreyfus and Sparver unclipped their whiphounds and tossed the handles to the ground.
“Kick them to me.”
They did as they were told. Still training the rifle on them, Saavedra knelt down and clipped the whiphounds
