But again Aumonier resisted the urge to jump to conclusions. Although it looked suspicious, there would have been thousands of facilities running under similar conditions of confidentiality, and it did not necessarily imply dark motives. A commercial clinic, tending to a wealthy client-base (she speculated) would have been within its rights to run its affairs very stealthily.
Dreyfus, meanwhile, had extracted a valuable joint confession from the primary and beta-level instantiations of Ghiselin Bronner. The entire statement had been recorded, but Dreyfus had summarised the essentials to Aumonier in person.
Ghiselin Bronner admitted to her part in the scam to defraud the Ultras. But the principal architect had been her husband, Antal Bronner.
“She said he was drawn to risk,” Dreyfus said. “Always had been. Doing legal business with the Ultras wasn’t enough for him, even with a modest profit. He had to up the stakes, and drew his wife into the scheme. He knew there was a chance they’d be found out, but living like that was part of the thrill.”
“Then we’re back to your theory that a propensity for risk-taking links the Wildfire cases. All right. I’m inclined to give it more credence. But Ng sent that candelabra back to us for a reason, and you thought the widow might have something to say about it. Did she?”
“Antal was driven by something,” Dreyfus answered. “Haunted, more like. If the Bronner instantiations aren’t lying, then he never spoke about it in depth to either of them. But over the years Ghiselin pieced together a partial picture. Something had happened to Antal before she knew him—something he either barely remembered, or was barely capable of speaking about. He’d been involved in something. On the few occasions when it slipped out, all he’d say was that it was a kind of game. Whatever this game was, it took a dark turn. Something very bad happened. Antal got out, but it had left its mark.”
“And the candelabra?”
“Somehow related. That’s all she knew. Antal was troubled by flashes—night terrors, daydreams, half-forgotten imagery. A white tree, or something like a white tree, standing alone. It seems he commissioned the candelabra to confront his fears, or familiarise them to the point where they no longer had a hold over him.”
“Have you searched for a similar link in the backgrounds of the Necropolis betas?”
Something played across Dreyfus’s face then, some fleeting thing which she almost read as guilt or regret.
“I’ve made some enquiries. Some of the betas seem to be drawn to similar imagery. Cassandra Leng, for instance, had a pattern of interlocking trees on her clothing. Paulette Stang had a neck brooch with a tree-like form. Lucas Clay spends his time circling a bare white tree in one of the parks in Necropolis. There were others. But if you push them on it, there’s no overt recollection. I think it’s most likely that the betas are picking up on subconscious cues displayed by their primaries, without any deeper understanding of what that imagery signifies.”
“Perhaps we should ask them directly about Elysium Heights. A simple question, with no contextual explanation. There’ll be a risk of cross-contamination, but at this point I’m not sure I see an alternative.”
“I’ll ask,” Dreyfus said.
“Good. When you’re done, I’d like you to go to the building itself. Ng and Bancal are due a break anyway, and a fresh pair of eyes won’t hurt.”
“I agree.”
“I’m glad you do. It’ll keep you out of trouble with Devon Garlin, if nothing else. I may as well mention that he’s stirring up trouble again, after we released him.”
“I’m not terribly surprised. Would you like—”
“No, Tom—I think not. If I had a way of keeping you and Garlin several light-seconds apart, I’d take it. It’s become personal for both of you.”
“He made it personal. Maybe you don’t quite understand that—”
She cut him off before he said something he might come to regret. “My mind’s made up, Tom. I can’t afford to take my eyes off Wildfire. The latest forecasts are … troubling. I’ll say no more until we have a few more deaths under our belt, but even our worst projections may turn out to have been overly optimistic. It makes it all the more urgent to pursue the investigation into Elysium Heights.”
She thought of that conversation now, as she floated free in the middle of the spherical room where the scarab had held her for eleven years. A mosaic of displays wrapped the room from pole to pole, each facet representing a feed or status indication from one of the habitats under her care. All ten thousand were indicated, although most were too small to snag her immediate attention, appearing as little more than coloured, flickering swatches.
By deliberate command, Aumonier had lately arranged for more than two dozen habitats to be under permanent close scrutiny. Their facets were enlarged, their feed summaries comprehensive. Spotted around the room’s globe, there were always two or three in her immediate field of view. By long habit, she rotated her viewpoint, and the room occasionally cycled the displays if it detected something that it believed merited her interest.
Eight of these facets represented the habitats that had already declared their breakaway status, formally nullifying their ties with the wider Glitter Band. The remaining facets—around twenty, although the exact number went up and down from day to day—represented the habitats that were most at risk of following the initial eight. For one reason or another they were all associated with anti-Panoply sentiment, making them fertile ground for Devon Garlin’s separatist rhetoric. He had visited all of them in the last six months, and if his words could not have been said to have been met with universal approval, there was certainly a groundswell of sympathy among the citizens.
Now, one of those twenty habitats was becoming particularly problematic.
The name of the place was House Fuxin-Nymburk and had she placed a wager with herself as to which of the twenty was liable to tip the earliest, that would have been her choice. It appeared that Devon Garlin—an exceedingly shrewd man, for all his faults—had made exactly the same calculation, deciding that was where he next needed to apply his leverage.
A day or two after his release from Panoply, he had rejoined his loose organisation and travelled to House Fuxin-Nymburk on a private shuttle. That was his right, and Aumonier had made no effort to stop him. She had assumed that after his brush with Dreyfus, it would be back to business as usual. There would be public speeches, public rallies, a slow spreading of the rot, but nothing that demanded her immediate engagement. If she could hold it at the present level, manage and monitor its spread in a controlled fashion, it would give her time to resolve the melters …
Aumonier allowed herself a rueful private smile, thinking of the way she had chastised Sparver Bancal for using precisely that term. The “neural overloads,” she corrected herself—much more dignified.
But melters was a lot quicker off the tongue.
The smile evaporated; it would be quite a while before it returned. She studied the feeds, assembling a mental picture of the unfolding events. Garlin had broken from his usual script, she saw. It had started with a public rally—more vociferous than usual, more outraged—and it had drawn a larger, more boisterous crowd than the norm. But that had only been the start. Garlin had recounted his brush with Dreyfus in Hospice Idlewild, giving a self-serving account that made it seem as if he had been the victim rather than the provocateur.
Aumonier sifted through the captured recordings, isolating a fragment of audio-video. Garlin was up on an outdoor platform, grandstanding, shaking a clenched fist, rage boiling off his face.
“This was a direct infringement of my civil rights under the Common Articles. They say free speech is sacrosanct, until the moment it doesn’t suit them! I was made welcome by the good people of Hospice Idlewild—but that didn’t sit well with Panoply! Perhaps they’re afraid of the truth? Certainly they were fearful enough to use physical force against my innocent associates—excessive, painful, physical force—which I myself experienced!” He made a show of rubb
ing his wrist, as if it was bruised. “To add to this travesty, I was bundled off to a prison cell and subjected to interrogation and threats from the Supreme Prefect herself. I was told that if I continue saying my piece—merely speaking the truth, friends—then I’ll be silenced—and woe betide anyone who shares my convictions!” Then he bent down, leaning in with conspiratorial content, dropping his voice an octave. “They’re listening now, you can be sure of it. Using all the instruments at their disposal. They’re in our heads, eavesdropping through our eyes and ears. There’s a poison at the heart of the Glitter Band and they put it there. But it’s not too late to do something about it.”
Aumonier ground her teeth, sensing what was to come.
“They’ve humoured us until now,” Garlin was saying. “Allowed eight habitats to strike out for a better life, unfettered by Panoply’s dictatorial rules. But now they’ve decided enough is enough.” His eyes seemed to meet hers, as if they were staring at each other in real-time. “I got that message very clearly, thank you—and I understand that the game has changed. From now on, Panoply will use every tool in its arsenal to suppress free debate and deny the public will. I know—I’ve seen it for myself. Mark my words—they’ll soon be on their way. Prefects, ships, weapons. But that’s only because they’re scared—all too aware of how fragile their hold on us really is. How little it would take to snap the chains. Good citizens of House Fuxin-Nymburk, surely I don’t need to remind you of the sort of injustice Panoply is capable of inflicting on its own people? You’ve seen it for yourselves—you know what they’re capable of. The lockdown imposed on you, seventy-two years ago …”
There was a murmur of approval, the consensus broken only by a few sceptical voices. Garlin appeared not to hear them. Aumonier could imagine his bodyguards gently encouraging those dissenters to step further away.
She stopped the playback, needing no further reminder of the thorn still in her side.
Dreyfus was wrong about one thing. He thought he was the only one personally affronted by Devon Garlin. Perhaps he had cause to feel singled out, given what had happened in the hospice. But Aumonier had dedicated her life to the preservation of the Glitter Band. She knew its moods, its desires, its hopes and fears. For all its flaws, for all its imperfections, for all that it still contained little knots of darkness and cruelty, she believed there were infinitely worse ways to live. It was not such a bad thing, this endlessly circling river of light and lives. It had given itself over to her care, and she took that singular burden with the utmost seriousness.
No; there was no one alive who took Devon Garlin more personally than Jane Aumonier.
It was a relief to find only the ordinary ghosts in Necropolis, the walking dead of the sequestered beta-levels. Dreyfus walked the parks and lawns until he found Cassandra Leng strolling through an ornamental garden set with elaborate metal and stone sundials, all shadowless on this overcast day.
“Did one of us offend the other?” she asked. “It’s just that I remember we were talking about various things and then perhaps it got a little personal for you. But then I was somewhere else, and you weren’t there.”
“It wasn’t you,” Dreyfus said. “Or me, for that matter. Just a glitch in the system.”
“Given that I only exist because of this system, I can’t help but find that worrying.”
“I don’t think it’ll happen again,” Dreyfus said, injecting a warning tone into his voice in case Aurora was listening in. “Anyway, there’s no risk to you or any of the betas. We take very good care of our witnesses.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me, Dreyfus.” She turned her elfin face to him with a guarded expression. “I thought we were beyond that sort of thing by now—that we had some basis of trust.”
“I’ve always told you all I can. And I do trust you. It’s why I’m here today, as it happens. Can you help me gather up the others? There’s something I need to show you all.”
“A breakthrough?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But a lead, at least. Something we didn’t have until now.”
“And how many dead is it now?”
“Fifty-seven. But there’s a hint that we’re seeing a steepening in the death curve.”
She stroked one of the sundials, frowning at his answer. “That’s not good.”
“If it’s real, we’ll have a better idea after a few more cases have come in. It’s not that I’m wishing for more dead, but each new instance does help our projections.”
“And how bad does it look, exactly?”
“Right now? We’re due to hit a thousand cases in a little under three hundred days. I don’t like that, but it does give us time to conduct our investigation and put in place a response plan before the crisis becomes unmanageable. If it steepens appreciably, though …”
“Will it?”
“Someone’s pulling strings, Cassandra—that’s my feeling. Or tightening a noose. I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
“You said you’ve learned something.”
“I don’t know how much you remember of our conversation the last time. But I was about to show you an evidential item. We can come back to that later, but this thing I want you all to see is … related to that item. It would be good for everyone to see it, I think, then talk about it and see if it jogs any memories.”
“Couldn’t you just snap your fingers and have us all magically appear?”
“I could. But it would be better if you went and asked, I think. Like it or not, you’re always going to be the first victim. That gives you standing, a position of influence, whether you wanted it or not. I’ve seen how you talk to the newly arrived, helping them adjust to their new situation. You’re kind to them. You might not believe in the point of your own existence, but you believe in them.”
“If being your go-between gives me something to do in the afterlife, who am I to complain?”
“You’re more than that.”
“Do you really believe so? I thought all you hard-nosed prefects were supposed to treat us as bundles of evidence, with no more soul than a box of photographs.”
“That’s how we’re encouraged to think. How we should think, if we’re to do our jobs properly.” Dreyfus paused, uneasy with himself, knowing that his world would be a much simpler and more straightforward place if he held to the official line. “I believe it, too. Most of the time.”
“I would have thought it had to be one or the other.”
“That’s generally the idea.”
“Then you are a man of odd contradictions.”
“There was a witness once. A beta-level like yourself. She … left me with doubts. Her force of personality was very strong. When we spoke, I couldn’t shake the sense that I was addressing a living soul, a real person.”
“In which case you might be the last person in the universe who believes in souls.”
Dreyfus allowed himself a smile. “I don’t know if I believe. But I know I’d be a better policeman if I stopped having doubts.”
“Better,” she said. “But not necessarily kinder. Well, I’ll be sure to tell you when I start feeling something in myself.”
“You believed in life once,” he said forcefully. “That’s why you tested yourself to the limits. To give that life meaning, even if it meant taking dangerous risks with your own existence—those suicidal games in the Colfax Orb. That was your right, and I won’t judge you for it, especially as it wasn’t the games that killed you. All I ask now is that you accept there is still some meaning to what you are.”
“You have quite a philosophical streak.”
“There’s nothing deep about me,” Dreyfus said. “But I like to think I know life when I meet it.”
“And … speaking of life, in the real world … are you still in trouble for what you did to Devon Garlin?”
“A minor blot on my record, to go with all the other blots on it. I’ve made mistakes before; doubtless I’ll make a few more. No. That
little storm has blown itself out, for the time being.”
“Ah. Then you still feel there’s some unfinished business with that man?”
“That’s up to him.”
“Well, I told you I didn’t like him, so you won’t hear any argument from me. Have you ever taken an immediate dislike to someone, Dreyfus?”
“Not usually a good idea in my line of work.”
“Hard if you can’t help it, though. I’m afraid that’s how it was with Devon Garlin. As soon as I saw his face, I knew no good was going to come of him.”
“Almost as if your paths had crossed before?”
She seemed to consider the thought before dismissing it. “I think I’d remember if a Voi had ever had anything to do with me, Dreyfus. But I know his type, as well as his family background. That casual assumption of power, that easy way of making people see his point of view. Some men are born knowing they’re better than the rest of us. Frankly I’m not sorry you got to push him around a bit.”
“I’m afraid it did more harm than good. And I doubt very much it will have changed his personality.” He paused. “Do you know the terrace, on that outcropping at the end of the lake?”
“I’ll round them up, Dreyfus—don’t you worry.”
Half an hour later Dreyfus mounted a low platform to address the gathering. He surveyed their faces, all of them familiar by now, their names coming to mind with no great effort. In truth it was only a small achievement to remember them all. There might have been fifty-seven confirmed victims of Wildfire, but there were still only forty-eight sequestered beta-levels. Terzet Friller, for instance, had left no known beta-level, and Panoply’s legal apparatus was still working to issue the relevant sequestration orders for the two most recent deaths.
Long before they reached the present number of cases, though, Dreyfus had convinced himself that the solution to Wildfire lay among these walking, talking dead, and not in the over-cooked brains of the recently deceased. But Dreyfus was a man who set his stock in patterns and connections. Once the dead overwhelmed his capacity to hold them in his head as distinct individuals with names and faces and histories, he would have surrendered his usefulness to the Search Turbines.