“I’m going to insert this into the core,” she said.
“It contains new software instructions to cover a minor security loophole identified by Panoply.”
She had the core present a data-entry slot for her use. She pushed the thick diskette into the pillar, then stood back while the machine digested its contents. Thalia was anxious, but not nervous. She had run into difficulties in Carousel New Seattle-Tacoma, but all her instincts assured her that nothing like that would happen here.
“The diskette contains a data fragment,” the core said.
“What do you wish me to do with this data fragment?”
Thalia started to answer, but at that moment her bracelet began chiming. She lifted her cuff and glared at it in irritation. What was Prefect Muang trying to reach her about, now of all times? Muang was not one of the bastards who gave her grief about her father, but he wasn’t Dreyfus or Sparver, or one of the senior prefects she was doing her best to impress. Whatever he was calling about, it could not possibly be that urgent. Certainly not urgent enough to interrupt a sensitive field upgrade, especially now that she’d actually opened the six-hundred- second access window.
She would call him back when she was done. The world wasn’t going to end because she kept Muang waiting for a few minutes.
“I’m sorry,” Thalia said, squeezing the suppress button.
The core repeated its enquiry.
“The diskette contains a data fragment. What do you wish me to do with this data fragment?”
Thalia pulled down her cuff.
“Use it to overwrite the contents of executable data segment alpha alpha five one six, please.”
“Just a moment.” Lights flashed while the pillar cogitated.
“I am ready to execute the overwrite order. I anticipate that the operation will entail a brief loss of abstraction, not exceeding three microseconds. Please confirm that the overwrite order is to be executed.”
“Confirm,” Thalia said.
“The executable data segment has now been overwritten. Abstraction was down for two point six eight microseconds. All affected transactions were buffered and have now been successfully reinstated. A level-one audit indicates no software conflicts have arisen as a result of this installation. Do you have further instructions for me?”
“No,” Thalia said.
“That will be all.”
“There are four hundred and eleven seconds remaining on your access window. Do you wish the window to remain open until its scheduled termination, or shall I invoke immediate closure?”
“You can close. We’re done here.”
“Access is now terminated. Thank you for your visit, Deputy Field Prefect Thalia Ng.”
“It’s been a pleasure.” After retrieving the upgrade diskette from the pillar, Thalia snapped it back into the cylinder and then sealed the cylinder itself. She tried to keep her composure, but now that she was done, she could not help but feel a giddy elation. It was a little like being drunk on an empty stomach. I did it! she thought. She had completed all four installations. All on her own, without Dreyfus looking over her shoulder, without even the benefit of another field agent to help her with the technical workload. If anyone had ever doubted her abilities, or wondered how well she would function outside a team context, this would silence them. I, Thalia Ng, not only designed the security plug, I field-installed it myself, by hand, with just a cutter for company.
Four habitats completed. The plan had been executed. And now that she had satisfied herself that the upgrade was robust by installing it in four worst-case examples, there was nothing to stop her going live across the entire Glitter Band, all ten thousand habitats.
Bring them on, Thalia thought, and then worked very hard to wipe the look of self-satisfaction from her face as she turned to her audience again, because it would be neither seemly nor dignified in a prefect.
“Is there a problem?” Jules Caillebot asked, still sitting in the blue armchair but no longer in the relaxed pose of a few minutes earlier.
“Not from my end,” Thalia said.
“It all went like a dream. Thanks for your cooperation.” Maybe Muang had been calling her to inform her of a temporary comms blackout, she thought. It happened sometimes. Nothing to worry about.
“You know what? Now that we’re done, maybe I will take a walk in some of the gardens after all.”
“Abstraction is down,” Caillebot said quietly.
Thalia felt the first itch of wrongness.
“I’m sorry?”
“We have no abstraction. You said it would be off-line for a few microseconds, too short to notice. But it’s still down.” His voice became firmer and louder.
“Abstraction is down, Prefect. Abstraction is down .”
Thalia shook her head.
“You’re mistaken. It can’t be down.”
“There is no abstraction,” Paula Thory said, standing up from her own chair.
“We’re out of contact, Prefect. Something appears to have gone wrong.”
“The system ran an audit on itself. It confirmed that abstraction had only been interrupted for an instant. The system doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Then why were you here in the first place, if it wasn’t to correct a failing in the apparatus?” asked Caillebot.
“Maybe it’s just us,” said Broderick Cuthbertson. His mechanical owl twitched its head in all directions, as if following the flight of an invisible wasp.
“Your bird’s confused,” Cyrus Parnasse said.
“I’m guessing it depends on abstraction to orient itself.”
Cuthbertson comforted his creation with a finger-stroke.
“Easy, boy.”
“Then it’s at least everyone—everything—in this building,” Thory said, colour draining from her cheeks.
“What if it’s not just the building? What if we’re looking at a major outage across the whole campus?”
“Let’s look out of the windows,” said Meriel Redon.
“We can see half of Aubusson from here.”
They were paying no attention to Thalia. She was just a detail in the room. For now. She walked behind them as they stood from their chairs and sofas and stools—those who weren’t already standing—and dashed to the row of portholes, two or three of them crowding behind each circular pane.
“I can see people down in the park,” said a clean-shaven young man whose name Thalia didn’t remember. He wore an electric-blue suit with frilled black cuffs.
“They’re behaving oddly. Clumping together all of a sudden, as if they want to talk. Some of them are starting to run for the exits. They’re looking up, at us.”
“They know there’s a problem,” Thory said.
“It’s no wonder they’re looking up at the polling core. They’re wondering what the hell’s happening.”
“There’s a train stopped on the line,” said a woman in a flame-red dress, standing at another porthole.
“It’s the other side of the nearest window band. Whatever this is, it isn’t local. It isn’t just happening to us, or to the museum.”
“There’s a volantor,” someone else said.
“It’s making an emergency landing on the roof of the Bailter Ziggurat. That’s two whole bands towards the leading cap. Nearly ten kilometres!”
“It’s the whole habitat,” Thory said, as if she’d just seen a fearful omen.
“The whole of House Aubusson, all sixty kilometres of it. Eight hundred thousand people have just lost abstraction for the first time in their lives.”
“This can’t be happening,” Thalia whispered.
The knife was still hard against Dreyfus’ throat. He cursed himself for not donning the helmet when he’d had the chance. He tried to reason that the woman would have killed him by now if that was her intention, but he could think of a multitude of reasons why she might want to keep him talking now and kill him later.
