“They can’t be datavising warnings to each other this fast,” Neville murmured, half to himself.
“Chief,” Manby was waving urgently. “SD control reports that house lights are coming on all over town.”
“What?”
“Hundred and twelve datavises, sir,” Walsh said.
“Did we mess up the universal order?” Neville asked. At the back of his mind was the awful notion that the electronic warfare capability Landon McCullock warned him about had glitched the order.
“It was straight out of the file,” Feroze protested.
“Sir, we’re going to run out of net access channels at this rate,” Walsh said. “Over three hundred datavises coming in now. Do you want to reprioritize the net management routines? You have the authority. We’d be able to re-establish our principle command channels if we shut down civilian data traffic.”
“I can’t—”
The door of the situation management room slid open.
Neville twisted around at the unexpected motion (the damn door was supposed to be codelocked!), only to gasp in surprise at the sight of a young woman pushing her way past a red-faced Thorpe Hartshorn. A characteristics recognition program in his neural nanonics supplied her name: Finnuala O’Meara, one of the news agency reporters.
Neville caught sight of a slender, suspicious-looking processor block which she was shoving back into her bag. A codebuster? he wondered. And if she has the nerve to use one inside a police station, what else has she got?
“Ms O’Meara, you are intruding on a very important official operation. If you leave now, I won’t file charges.”
“Recording and relaying, Chief,” Finnuala said with a hint of triumph. Her eyes with their retinal implants were unblinking as they tracked him. “And I don’t need to tell you this is a public building. Knowing what happens here is a public right under the fourth coronation proclamation.”
“Actually, Miss O’Meara, if you bothered to fully access your legal file, you’d know that under martial law all proclamations are suspended. Leave now, please, and stop relaying at once.”
“Does that same suspension give you the right to warn your friends about the danger of xenoc sequestration technology before the general public, Chief Inspector?”
Latham blushed. How the hell did the little bitch know that? Then he realized what someone with that kind of command access to the net could do. His finger lined up accusingly on her. “Have you datavised personal warnings to people in this town?”
“Are you denying you warned your friends first, Chief Inspector?”
“Shut up, you stupid cow, and answer me. Did you send out those personal alarm calls?”
Finnuala smirked indolently. “I might have done. Want to answer my question now?”
“God in Heaven! Sergeant Walsh, how many calls now?”
“One thousand recorded, sir, but that’s all our channels blocked. It may be a lot more. I can’t tell.”
“How many did you send, O’Meara?” Neville demanded furiously.
She paled slightly, but stood her ground. “I’m just doing my job, Chief Inspector. What about you?”
She arched an eyebrow, aspiring to hauteur. “Everybody.”
“You stupid—The curfew is supposed to be averting a panic; and it would have done just that if you hadn’t interfered. The only way we’re going to get out of this with our minds still our own is if people stay calm and follow orders.”
“Which people?” she spat back. “Yours? The mayor’s family?”
“Officer Hartshorn, get her out of here. Use whatever force is necessary, and some which isn’t if you want. Then book her.”
“Sir.” A grinning Hartshorn caught Finnuala’s arm. “Come along, miss.” He held up a small nervejam stick in his free hand. “You wouldn’t want me to use this.”
Finnuala let Hartshorn tug her out of the situation management room. The door slid shut behind them.
“Walsh,” Neville said. “Shut down the town’s communications net. Do it now. Leave the police architecture functional, but all civil data traffic is to cease immediately. They mustn’t be allowed to spread this damn panic any further.”
“Yes, sir!”
The police hypersonic carrying Ralph had already started to descend over the town of Rainton when Landon McCullock datavised him.
“Some bloody journalist woman started a panic in Exnall, Ralph. The chief inspector is doing his best to damp it down, but I’m not expecting miracles at this point.”
Ralph abandoned the hypersonic’s sensor suite. The image he’d received of Rainton was all in the infrared spectrum, rectangles of luminous pink glass laid out over the black land. Glowing dots converged in the air above it, marine troop flyers and police hypersonics ready to implement the isolation. Given they were the forces of salvation, their approach formation looked strangely like the circling of giant carrion birds.
“I suggest you or the Prime Minister broadcasts to them directly, sir. Appeal to them to follow the curfew order. Your word should carry more weight than some local dignitary. Tell them about the marines arriving; that way they’ll also see that you’re acting positively to help them.”
“Good theory, Ralph. Unfortunately Exnall’s chief inspector has shut down the town’s net. Only the police architecture is functional right now. The only people we can broadcast to are the ones sitting in the patrol cars.”
“You have to get the net back on-line.”
“I know. But now it seems there’s a problem with some of the local management processors.”
Ralph squeezed his fists, not wanting to hear. “Glitches?”
“Looks like it. Diana is redirecting the AIs to interrogate Exnall’s electronics. But there aren’t nearly enough channels open for them to be as effective as they were in Pasto.”
“Hellfire! Okay, sir, we’re on our way.” He datavised a quick instruction to the pilot, and the hypersonic rose above its spiralling siblings before streaking away to the south.
Two hundred and fifty kilometres above Mortonridge, the SD sensor satellite made its fourth pass over Exnall since the network had been raised to a code three alert status. Deborah Unwin directed its high-resolution sensors to scan the town. Several specialist teams of security council analysts and tactical advisors were desperate for information about the town’s on-the-ground situation.
But they weren’t getting the full picture. In several places the satellite images were fuzzy, edges poorly defined. Switching to infrared didn’t help; red ripples swayed to and fro, never still.
“Just like the Quallheim Counties,” Ralph concluded morosely when he accessed the data. “They’re down there, all right. And in force.”
“It gets worse,” Deborah datavised. “Even in the areas relatively unaffected we still can’t get a clear picture of what’s going on below those damn harandrid trees. Not at night. All I can tell you is that there are a lot of people out on the streets.”
“On foot?” Ralph queried.
“Yes. The AIs loaded travel proscription orders into all the processor controlled vehicles in the town. Some people will be able to break the order’s code, of course. But basically the only mechanical transport left in Exnall right now are the bicycles.”
“So where are all the pedestrians going?”
“Some are taking the main link road to the M6, but it looks like the majority are heading for the town centre. I’d say they’re probably converging on the police station.”
“Damn it, that’s all we need. If they congregate in a crowd there’s no way we’ll be able to stop the possession from spreading. It’ll be like a plague.”
