“Provided we don’t have to detour to cross those window bands, of course.”
“We won’t,” Parnasse said.
“Not much, anyway. We can use the pedestrian bridges under the rail line, and even if those are blocked for one reason or another, there are always the parkland connections. There’s a lot of greenery, a lot of cover.”
Thalia nodded: she’d seen where the window bands were bridged by tongues of parkland or tree-lined aqueducts and rail-line viaducts.
“Of course,” she said, “we’ll still have four kilometres to climb to the hub.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Cuthbertson, raising a tentative hand as he spoke.
“Volantors depend on abstraction for nav services, same as Miracle Bird does. But elevators don’t. There isn’t a reason in the world why they shouldn’t work.”
“And the trains?” asked Thory.
“Got an explanation for why they aren’t running?”
“Someone panicked, that’s all. Activated the emergency stop.”
“All over Aubusson?” asked the woman in the red dress.
“I’ve been looking out of this window for a long time now and can see far enough to make out six or seven lines. I’m damned if I’ve seen one moving train in all that time.” Cuthbertson’s certainty had slipped a notch.
“So a lot of people panicked. Or maybe Utility pulled the plug because they panicked.”
“Could affect the elevators, in that case,” the woman said.
“I don’t know. I think the elevators run on a different supply, independent of Utility. Point is, we won’t lose anything by finding out.” Cuthbertson turned to face Cyrus Parnasse.
“I’m coming with you, Curator. Miracle Bird can act as lookout, in case we run into any mobs.”
“That bird of yours can still fly, even when it’s twitching like that?” asked Thalia.
“It’ll manage. It’s adapting already.” The mechanical owl turned its dish-like face to look at Cuthbertson.
“Aren’t you, boy?”
“I’m an excellent bird.”
“So that’s three of us,” Thalia said.
“Not counting the owl. That’s a good number. If we encounter trouble, we shouldn’t be too conspicuous.”
“I’m coming, too,” said Caillebot.
“If there’s anyone who knows the layout of the parks and gardens in this cylinder, it’s me.”
“You can count me in as well,” said Meriel Redon.
“You sure?” Thalia asked.
“You’ll be safe and sound up here until the back-up squad arrives.”
“I’ve made my mind up. I’ve never been one for sitting around when I could be walking. Makes me nervous.”
Thalia nodded heavily.
“I think five is the limit, folks. Any more and we’ll be slower than we need to be. The rest of you can sit tight and wait until abstraction comes back up.”
“Are you issuing orders now?” Paula Thory asked.
Thalia thought about it for an instant.
“Yes,” she said.
“Looks like I am. So start dealing with it, lady.”
Dreyfus absorbed the truth of the Conjoiner’s revelations, convinced in his heart that she had no reason to lie.
“I think I know who Aurora is,” he said slowly.
“But she shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be anywhere. She should have died—she should have ended—fifty- five years ago.”
“Who is she?”
“Unless someone else is using the same name, we’re dealing with a dead girl. One of the Eighty, the group of human volunteers who took part in Calvin Sylveste’s immortality experiments. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Of course. We learned of those experiments with horror and dismay. His methods were conceptually flawed. Failure was inevitable.”
“Except maybe it wasn’t,” Dreyfus said, “because Aurora Nerval-Lermontov appears to be very much with us. At least one of the Transmigrants must have persisted, despite what the records say.”
“You have no evidence of this.”
“I know that her family owned this rock.” By way of an afterthought, he added, “Do you think you’re ready to trust me yet?”
“Turn around,” she said after due consideration.
“I have released my hold on your suit. Your communication functions are still disabled.”
He turned to look at her. She was wearing a suit herself, but of Conjoiner design. It had the glossy sheen of something moulded from luxury chocolate. For a moment he was looking at a featureless black oval instead of a head. Then her helmet melted back into the ruff-like collar of the neck ring.
He saw her face.
He’d seen stranger things in the Glitter Band. There was very little about her that wasn’t baseline human, at first glance. She was a woman of uncertain age—he’d have said forty or so, except that he knew she was probably much older than that, because Conjoiners were as long-lived as any human splinter faction. Piercingly intelligent eyes, coloured a very pale green; wide, freckled cheekbones; a jaw that some might have considered too strong, but which was actually exactly in proportion with the rest of her face. She was bald, the top of her skull rising to a sharp mottled ridge that began halfway up her brow, betraying the enlarged cranial cavity she must have needed for her supercharged, machine-clotted brain.
That was where her true strangeness lay: beneath the skin, beneath the bone. The people in the wilder habitats might employ Mixmasters to sculpt themselves into exotic forms, but they seldom did anything to the functional architecture of their minds. Even the people who were wired into extreme levels of abstraction were still human in the way they processed the data entering their brains. That couldn’t be said for the Conjoiner woman. She might be able to emulate human consciousness when it suited her, but her natural state of mind was something Dreyfus would never be able to grasp, any more than a horse could grasp algebra.
“Do you want to tell me your name?” Dreyfus asked.
“For your purposes I will call myself Clepsydra. If this is problematic for you, you may call me Waterclock, or simply Clock.”
“You sound as if that isn’t your real name.”
“My real name would split your mind open like wood under an axe.”
“Clepsydra it is, then. What exactly are you doing here, assuming you’re ready to tell me?”
“Surviving. That has been enough, lately.”
“Tell me about this ship. What’s it doing here? What use is it to Aurora?”
“Our ship returned to this system nearly fifty years ago. We were experiencing difficulties. We’d encountered something in deep interstellar space: a machine-like entity of hostile nature. The ship had survived by sloughing part of itself, in the manner of a lizard shedding its tail. On the long return journey it had reorganised itself as best as it could, but it was still damaged. We were attempting to make contact with the Mother Nest, but our communications systems were not functioning properly.” Clepsydra swallowed, a gesture that all of a sudden made her look helplessly human.
“Aurora found us first. She lured us in with promises of help and then swallowed us inside this place. We have been inside it ever since: unable to escape, unable to contact the Nest.”
“That still doesn’t tell me what Aurora wanted of you.”
“That is more difficult to explain.”
“Try me.”
“Aurora wanted us to dream, Prefect. That is why she—why it—kept us here. Aurora made us dream the future. She desired our intelligence concerning future events. We prognosticated. And when we saw something in our prognostications that she didn’t like, Aurora punished us.”
