hours, we’d be looking at total casualties in the range of two to three million citizens.”
“Just over a thirtieth of the entire citizenry,” Clearmountain said.
“It’s a catastrophe, no doubt about it. But we have to thank our stars we’re talking about millions, not tens of millions. And if we get out of this and we’ve lost forty-five habitats… it’s nothing against the ten thousand, Dreyfus.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s nothing, but I take your point.”
“The citizenry will get over it,” Baudry said.
“They’ll move on with their lives, choosing to forget how close we came to disaster. For some of them, the forgetting will be quite literal. At the moment we’re in the middle of an emergency. In a few days, if all goes well, it’ll have been reduced to the status of a crisis. This time next year, we’ll look back on it as an incident. Ten years from now, it’ll be something no one outside of Panoply remembers, something our new recruits learn about with bored indifference.”
“Not if I get my way,” said Dreyfus.
“What about Aurora’s prognostication? The time of plagues?”
“We’ll keep a weather eye open,” Clearmountain said.
Baudry looked at Dreyfus with interest.
“Do you have plans, Senior?”
“We haven’t won,” he told her.
“We’ve just postponed the day of reckoning. If it isn’t Aurora, we’ll be facing the Clockmaker.”
“There is such a thing as the lesser of two evils,” Clearmountain observed.
“I’ll remind you of that when it crawls out of the woodwork again.”
“Where do you think they are?” asked Baudry.
“Dispersed,” Dreyfus said.
“Spread out over the network, two alpha-level intelligences smeared as thin as they can go before they stop being conscious entities at all.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because it’s the only way for them to survive. If Aurora concentrates herself in one habitat, the Clockmaker will find a way to engage and destroy her in a single attack. The same applies to the Clockmaker. But distributed, spread out across the entire Glitter Band, they’re almost invulnerable.”
“Why didn’t Aurora adopt such a strategy already?”
“Because there’s a cost. The speed of her thought processes depends on the distance between processing nodes. The Clockmaker’s forced her to spread out just to survive. The downside for her is that she can’t think quickly enough to defeat us.”
“But we can’t kill her either,” Clearmountain said.
“No. Finding her would be almost impossible now. Maybe if we listen to network traffic long enough, we’ll see the tiny slow-down caused by Aurora’s presence. But that still wouldn’t help us destroy her. We’d have to take out thousands of nodes, thousands of habitats, before we began to hurt her.”
“And by then we’d have hurt ourselves even more,” Baudry said, nodding as she understood what Dreyfus was driving at.
“So what you’re saying, if I get you rightly, is that there’s nothing we can do. We just have to sit back while these two monsters slug it out in slow motion, parasiting our network infrastructure.”
“That’s right,” Dreyfus said.
“But I wouldn’t worry unduly. If they’ve been slowed down as much as I think they have, it’s going to be a long time before one of them emerges as victor. You’re talking about a chess match between two opponents of almost limitless intelligence and guile. The only problem is they only get to make one move a year.”
“I hope you’re right,” Clearmountain said.
Dreyfus smiled.
“So do I. In the meantime, we still have jobs to do. We can’t dwell on the gods fighting over our heads.”
“Gods will be gods,” Baudry said.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m finished with this case,” Dreyfus continued.
“With the permission of the acting supreme prefect, I’d like authorisation to dig into the murder of Philip Lascaille. If there’s still a body, I want it exhumed for analysis. I want to see if there’s any evidence that his brain was subjected to alpha-level scanning.”
“You have my permission, of course,” Clearmountain said.
“I don’t doubt that Jane would give it to you. But you should realise what you’re getting yourself into, digging into ancient history like that. You’ll be going up against the legal apparatus of House Sylveste. That’s an organisation that protects its secrets even more zealously than we do. It isn’t to be trifled with.”
“With respect,” Dreyfus said, standing up, “neither is Panoply.”
A little while later he called upon Demikhov. The man resembled a spectral shadow of his former self, spent beyond exhaustion.
“I heard that there were complications,” Dreyfus said.
“Nothing medical, you’ll be glad to hear. The cut was as clean as a guillotine. Nerve reconnection could not have been less problematic. The only difficulty was occasioned by the intervention of your former colleague.” Demikhov shrugged philosophically, bony shoulders moving under the green fabric of his surgical gown.
“It was undignified, what he did to her. But at least she was unconscious throughout the whole sorry escapade.”
Dreyfus had no idea what he was talking about. He assumed he would learn all about it later.
“And now?”
“I completed partial re-attachment, then brought her round to talk to the Ultras. She was lucid and comfortable. I then put her under again to complete the procedure.”
“How did it go?”
“She’s whole again. It would take a better doctor than me to tell that Zulu ever happened.”
“Then she’ll be fine?”
“Yes, but it’s not going to happen overnight. At the moment she can breathe for herself and make some limited body movements, but it’ll be a while before she can walk. Having the wiring back in place doesn’t mean her brain’s ready to use it again.”
“I’d like to see her,” Dreyfus said.
“She’s sleeping. I’d like to keep her that way until there’s another emergency.”
“I’d still like to see her.”
“Then you’d better follow me,” Demikhov answered with a heavy sigh, standing up to lead the way. He brought Dreyfus to the quiet green room where the supreme prefect was recuperating. Jane Aumonier lay under bedsheets, sleeping normally. Aside from her thinness, the baldness of her skull and the grey pallor of her skin, there was nothing to hint at what she had endured, either in the last day or the last eleven years. She looked peaceful, serenely restful. Dreyfus moved to her bedside.
“I won’t wake her,” he whispered.
“You wouldn’t be able to. I’ve put her under for her own good. It’s quite safe to talk normally.” Dreyfus touched the back of his hand against the side of Jane Aumonier’s face. Despite all the time they had known each other, this was the first moment of physical contact between them.
“I’m going now,” Dreyfus said.
“There’s something I need to attend to, before I put it off any longer. I have to go to Hospice Idlewild. There’s someone there I need to see, someone I haven’t seen in a very long while. I probably won’t be in Panoply when you come around, but I want you to know that I’m going to be with you every step you take. If you need a hand to hold, you can count on mine.”
“I’ll tell her what you said,” Demikhov said.
“I mean it. I don’t break my promises.” Demikhov was about to usher Dreyfus from the room when he paused.
“Prefect… there’s something I should show you. I think it’s rather wonderful.” Dreyfus nodded at the sleeping figure.
“This is enough for me, Doctor.”
