“Do it.”
The Solid Orrery reconfigured itself, allocating much of its quickmatter resources to providing scaled-up representations of the four silent communities. They swelled to the size of fruit, while the rest of the Glitter Band shrank down to a third of its former size. Tiny moving jewels signified the requisitioned drones, steered onto docking approaches. The prefects watched the spectacle wordlessly as the minutes oozed by.
Make me wrong, Dreyfus thought. Make all this turn out to be the deluded fabulation of a worn-out field prefect, resentful at the shabby treatment accorded his boss. Make Clepsydra’s testimony turn out to be the burblings of a mad woman, driven insane by years of isolation. Show us that Thalia Ng really did make mistakes, despite everything I know to the contrary. Show us that the first two attacks were accidents caused by hair-trigger defence systems twitching like headless snakes when abstraction went down.
But it wasn’t to be. Eleven minutes after the girl had spoken, the anti-collision systems of Szlumper Oneill opened fire on the approaching drone, destroying it utterly. If anything the fire was more concentrated, more purposeful, than on the previous two occasions. The jewel-like representation of the drone swelled to a thumb-sized smear of twinkling light, then reformed into the pulsing tetrahedral icon that symbolised an object of unknown status.
Three minutes later a second drone attempted to dock at House Aubusson, and met with precisely the
same fate. Five minutes after that, a third drone was annihilated as it braked to engage with Carousel New Seattle-Tacoma. Three minutes after that, twenty-two minutes since the girl had spoken, the guns of the Chevelure-Sambuke Hourglass directed savage fire on the final drone.
The Solid Orrery reformed itself into its usual configuration. A brittle silence ensued.
“So maybe it’s war after all,” Baudry said eventually.
CHAPTER 17
The isolation chamber was clad in a honeycomb of identical interlocking grey panels, one of which functioned as a passwall. A handful of the panels were illuminated at any one time, but the pattern changed slowly and randomly, robbing the weightless prisoner of any fixed frame of reference. Clepsydra was floating, knees raised to her chest, arms linked around her shins. The patterns of lights erased all shadow, lending her the two-dimensional appearance of a cut-out. She appeared to be unconscious, but it was common knowledge that Conjoiners did not partake of anything resembling normal mammalian sleep.
Since his emergence through the passwall didn’t appear to have alerted her to his presence, Dreyfus cleared his throat gently.
“Clepsydra,” he announced, “it’s me.”
She turned her crested skull in his direction, her eyes gleaming dully in the subdued light of the bubble.
“How long has it been?”
The question took Dreyfus aback.
“Since you were transferred from Mercier’s clinic? Only a few hours.”
“I’m losing track of time again. If you had said ’months’ I might have believed you.” She pulled a face.
“I don’t like this room. It feels haunted.”
“You must feel very cut off in here.”
“I just don’t like this room. It’s so dead that I’m starting to imagine phantom presences. I keep seeing something out of the corner of my eye, then when I look it isn’t there. Even the inside of the rock wasn’t like this.”
“I apologise,” Dreyfus said.
“I committed a procedural mistake in allowing you into Panoply without considering our operational secrets.”
Clepsydra unfolded herself with catlike slowness. In the sound-absorbing space, the acoustics of her voice had acquired a metallic timbre.
“Will you get into trouble for that?”
He smiled at her concern.
“Not likely. I’ve weathered worse storms than a procedural slip-up. Especially as no damage was done.” He cocked his head.
“No damage was done, I take it?”
“I saw many things.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Many things that were of no interest to me,” she added.
“It may reassure you to know that I’ve buried those secrets far below conscious recall. I can’t simply forget them: forgetting isn’t a capacity we possess. But you may consider them as good as forgotten.”
“Thank you, Clepsydra.”
“But that won’t be the end of it, will it? You might believe me. The others won’t.”
“I’ll see to it that they do. You’re a protected witness, not a prisoner.”
“Except I’m not free to leave.”
“We’re worried someone wants to kill you.”
“That would be my problem, wouldn’t it?”
“Not when we still think you can tell us something useful.” Dreyfus had come to a halt a couple of metres from Clepsydra’s floating form, oriented the same way up. Before entering the bubble, he’d divested himself of all weapons and communications devices, including his whiphound. It occurred to him, in a way it had not before, that he was alone in a surveillance blind spot with an agile humanoid-machine hybrid that could easily kill him. Autopsies of dead Conjoiners had revealed muscle fibres derived from chimpanzee physiology, giving them five or six times normal human strength. Clepsydra might have been weakened, but he doubted that she’d have much trouble overpowering him, if she wished.
Some flicker of that unease must have showed on his face.
“I still frighten you,” she said, very quietly.
“But you came unarmed, with not even a knife for protection.”
“I’ve still got my acid wit.”
“Now tell me exactly what it is I have to fear. Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something very, very bad.”
“It’s begun,” Dreyfus said.
“Aurora’s takeover. We’ve lost control of four habitats. Attempts to land ships on them have been met by hostile action.”
“I didn’t think it would be so soon.”
“When Sparver and I found you, she must have realised Panoply were closing in fast. She decided to go with just the four habitats that were already compromised rather than wait for the upgrade software to be installed across the entire ten thousand.” Clepsydra looked puzzled.
“What good will that do her? Even if you have lost control of those habitats now, you still have access to the resources of the rest of the Glitter Band, not to mention Panoply’s own capabilities. Aurora will not be able to hold out indefinitely.”
“I’m guessing she assumes she can.”
“All the times I sensed Aurora’s mind, I detected an intense strategic cunning; a constantly probing machinelike evaluation of shifting probabilities. This is not a mind capable of pointless gestures, or elementary lapses of judgement.” Clepsydra paused.
“Have you had any formal contact with her?”
“Not a squeak. Other than our theory about the Nerval-Lermontovs, we still don’t really know who she is.”
“You believe she was one of the Eighty?” Dreyfus nodded.
“But everything we know says that all of the Eighty failed. Aurora was one of the most famous cases. How can we have been wrong about that?”
