‘I think you’d better listen to the girl,’ Parnasse said.
Thalia stepped back and resumed her earlier position. ‘Thank you, Cyrus. Yes, we’re going to roll across the window band. The band’s pretty tough, I admit - it’salready holding back air at atmospheric pressure, and it’s designed to tolerate occasional stresses above and beyond its normal loading. It could withstand collision by a small ship, a volantor or a train coming off one the bridges. But it isn’t designed to cope with something as substantial as the sphere. Parnasse and I both agree that the band will collapse under our weight, allowing us to drop into open space.’
‘Where we’ll suffocate and die,’ Caillebot said. ‘Followed quickly by everyone else still inside House Aubusson as the air rushes out through the hundred-metre-wide hole we’ll have just dropped through.’
‘There’s no one else to worry about,’ Thalia said. ‘We’ve kept it from you until now, but all the evidence at our disposal says that the machines have embarked on the systematic murder of all the other citizens. They’ve been rounded up, euthanised and shipped off to the manufactory to be stripped down and scavenged for useful elements.’
‘You can’t be certain that there are no other survivors,’ said the woman in the red dress, her face pale.
Thalia nodded. ‘No, we can’t. Some other groups may have held out for a while. But we’re the only party able to protect ourselves by virtue of being near the polling core. No one else will have had that security. There’ll have been nothing to stop the machines storming everyone else en masse.’
‘But what about us?’ asked Cuthbertson, his mechanical owl still perched on his shoulder. ‘We’ll still need air, even if everyone else is already dead!’
‘We’ve got it,’ Thalia said. ‘There’s enough air inside here to keep us alive until we’re rescued. It won’t be going anywhere because the sphere’s already airtight. Provided the portholes hold, we’ll be fine. Internal doors will stop the air leaking out of the bottom of the sphere, where it used to meet the stalk. If there’s a slow leak, we can live with it. Rescue should be on us within a few minutes of break-out, if my guess is right.’
‘You’re confident of that?’ Caillebot asked.
‘I’m even more confident that we won’t have a chance against those machines when they break through.’ Thalia planted a hand on her hip. ‘That good enough for you, or do you want it in writing?’
Meriel Redon coughed. ‘I know it sounds like madness, at first. That’s what I thought initially when they told me about this plan. But now that I’ve had time to think things through, I see that this is the only way we’re going to survive. It’s roll or die, people.’
‘How soon?’ Cuthbertson asked.
‘Very,’ Thalia said.
‘We need to think about it. We need time to talk it over, see if we can’t come up with another plan.’
‘You’ve got five seconds,’ Thalia said, looking at him belligerently. ‘Thought of anything? No, didn’t think so. Sorry, but this is the plan, and there’s no opt-out clause. I want you all to start securing yourselves. Anything you can’t do, I’ll help you with. But we haven’t got time for a debate on the matter.’
‘It’s going to work,’ Redon said, raising her arms to silence the party. ‘But we have to do it fast, or those machines are going to be through to us before we know it. Thalia’s given us a way out when we had nothing. Don’t think for one second that I’m thrilled about what we’re going to attempt, but I see that we have no choice.’
‘What about the polling core?’ Caillebot asked. ‘Have you forgotten about sabotaging it?’
Thalia produced the whiphound, gripping it in a glove-wrapped hand. ‘I’m going to take it down now. Then I’ll head downstairs to see if I can hear any activity behind the barricade. If I don’t, and there’s no sign of the machines trying to break in elsewhere, then I may reconsider our escape plan. But if I decide to go ahead, I won’t have time to come back up and tell you until we’re almost ready to roll. You’d better assume that’s what’s going to happen.’
She stepped through the gap in the railinged enclosure, extending and stiffening the whiphound’s filament. Without ceremony, she swung it into the polling core’s pillar at chest height, straining to push it deeper until the resistance was too much. The core flickered in protest at the damage she was inflicting, fingers of sharp-edged black radiating away from the wound. She withdrew the filament and came in again, slicing at a different angle. The whiphound buzzed fiercely, the handle throbbing in her hand. Thalia sweated. If she failed to disable the core and somehow incapacitated the whiphound’s grenade mode, it would all have been for nothing.
She removed the whiphound. Now most of the pillar was consumed by geometric black shapes. At some level it was still functioning - her glasses confirmed that there was still some low-level abstraction traffic - but she had certainly impaired it, perhaps to a degree where it would not be able to send coherent packets to the servitors. That would have to suffice. The marrow of quickmatter at the heart of the core would prove resilient against the whiphound, healing as the filament passed through it, and she could not risk overtaxing the weapon.
Thalia let the filament go limp and spool back into the handle. She had done all that she could.
‘Let’s see if we did any damage,’ she said to Parnasse.
She left the polling core level, glancing back to make sure the citizens were all engaged in securing themselves to the railings. She was pleased to see that they were, despite the ramshackle nature of some of their bindings. There was some grumbling going on, some indignation, but Meriel Redon was doing her best to make them understand that there was no other way.
Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary, she thought. Maybe taking down the polling core would be the end of it.
But when Thalia and Parnasse reached the top of the barricade, she knew that the machines were still alive. If anything they sounded louder and closer than ever. Thalia had the palpable impression that they were about to break through the obstruction at any second. The machines sounded enraged, their dim mechanical fury only doubled by what she had just attempted.
‘Roll it is,’ Parnasse said.
‘Looks like it.’
They started jogging away from the barricade, towards the next set of stairs.
‘Any idea why those things are still moving if we just took down the core?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Cyrus. Could be they were uploaded with enough autonomy to keep functioning even without direct supervision. Could be I didn’t damage the core enough. Could be they made another one, somewhere else. It isn’t that difficult if you know the protocols.’
They reached the next level down and arrived at the trap door in the floor, still open as they had left it. Parnasse rolled up his sleeves, moving to lower himself into the gap ahead of Thalia.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I memorised the way pretty well the last time we came down here. You showed me where to place the whiphound. I’m sure I can find my way without you.’
‘All the same, girl, I’m coming with you.’
‘I’d rather you were back up with the others, Cyrus, making sure they do what they’re told.’
‘Redon’s got them under control. I think you convinced them there was no other choice.’
Thalia had been striving to maintain a façade of certainty, but all of a sudden doubts magnified inside her. ‘There isn’t, is there?’
‘Of course there isn’t.’
‘But what if I’m wrong?’
‘Nothing could be worse than waiting for those bastards to break through. Even if this doesn’t work, it’ll be a hell of an improvement on being ripped apart by killer robots. At least we’ll go out with style.’
‘Even though there’ll be no one to applaud our efforts?’
‘We’ll know, girl. That’s all that matters.’ He gave her an encouraging pinch on the arm. ‘Now let’s get that whiphound in place.’
/> They clambered through the tangle of intervening supports until they reached the area where the struts had already been weakened or cut through entirely.
‘Thank our lucky stars this isn’t quickmatter,’ Parnasse said, ‘or those cuts would have healed over by now. But the rules say you can’t have quickmatter anywhere near a polling core.’
‘I like rules,’ Thalia said. ‘Rules are good.’
‘Let’s unwrap the baby.’
Thalia removed the whiphound from its protective bundle. It was trembling, with parts of the casing beginning to melt from the heat. The smell of burning components hit her nose. ‘Okay,’ she said, twisting the first of the dials. ‘Setting yield to maximum. Looks as if it’s accepted the input. So far so good.’ She paused to let her fingers cool down.
‘Now the timer,’ Parnasse said.
She nodded. She twisted the first of the two dials necessary to input the setting. It was stiff, but eventually the dial moved under her fingers until it reached the limit of its rotation. The double-dial fail-safe existed to stop the whiphound being set to grenade mode accidentally. ‘Five minutes,’ she said.
‘It’ll start counting as soon as you twist the other dial?’
Thalia nodded. ‘It should give us enough time to get back upstairs and lashed down. If you want to go ahead now, to make sure—’
‘I’m not going anywhere without you. Set the timer.’
Thalia took hold of the end of the whiphound and began to twist the other dial. It moved easily compared to the other one, clicking around through its settings. Then it stopped, long before it had reached the correct limit. Thalia tried again, but the dial would not pass beyond the point where it had jammed.
‘Something’s the matter,’ she said. ‘I can’t get the second setting locked in. Both dials have to be reading three hundred seconds or it won’t start the countdown.’
‘Can I try?’
She passed him the whiphound. ‘Maybe you can force that dial past the blockage.’
He tried. He couldn’t.
‘It’s jammed pretty good, girl.’ Parnasse squinted at the tiny white digits marked next to the dial. ‘Looks like we’re stuck at one hundred seconds, or less.’
‘It isn’t enough,’ Thalia said. ‘We’d never get back up and lashed down in one hundred seconds.’
‘There’s no other way of setting that counter?’
‘None.’
Then something came over her, a kind of awesome calm, like the placidity of the sea after a great storm. She had never felt more serene, more purposeful, in her life. This was it, she knew. It was the point she had waited for, with guarded expectation, knowing it would arrive at some time in her career, but that she might not notice it unless she was both alert and open-minded. This was her opportunity to redeem whatever it was her father had done wrong.
‘Girl?’ Parnasse asked, for Thalia had fallen into a momentary trance.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘We can still do this. I want you to leave now, Cyrus. Get back to the others and strap yourself down. Make sure you close all airtight doors on the way.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m going to wait a whole three hundred seconds. Then I’m going to complete what I came here to do.’
‘Which is?’
Her voice trembled. ‘Uphold the public good.’
‘Is that right?’ Parnasse said.
‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘I don’t think so, girl.’
She started to protest, started to raise her arm in defence, but Parnasse was faster and stronger. Whatever it was he did to her, she never saw it coming.
CHAPTER 27
Thyssen’s face was slit-eyed and puffy when it appeared on Dreyfus’s compad.
‘I know you’re meant to be sleeping now, and I apologise for disturbing your rest. But something’s been nagging at me and I need to talk to you about it.’ He neglected to tell Thyssen that the thing that had been bothering him had only revealed itself fully when he woke from his snooze.
‘Is this urgent, Prefect?’
‘Very.’
‘Then I’ll see you in the bay in five minutes.’
Thyssen looked surprisingly alert when Dreyfus arrived, feeling less than clearheaded himself. Thyssen was talking with his shift replacement Tezuka, the two of them peering through a window at the ongoing ship operations. Technicians were performing vacuum welds on the damaged hull of a cutter. Both men were sipping something from drinking bulbs.
‘Prefect Dreyfus,’ Thyssen said, breaking away from his conversation. ‘You look like you could use some of this.’ He offered Dreyfus the drinking bulb. Dreyfus declined.
‘The ship Saavedra took,’ Dreyfus said.
‘You mean Saavedra and Chen.’
Dreyfus nodded: he’d forgotten that Thyssen hadn’t been informed of Chen’s murder. ‘I’m just wondering why they took that one, out of all the choices they had. Am I correct in thinking that cutter was a Type B?’
‘Correct,’ Thyssen said. ‘Most of the new vehicles are Type C or D. They don’t have the—’
‘Transatmospheric capability,’ Dreyfus finished for him. ‘That’s what I reckoned.’
‘Since the segregation of security responsibilities between Chasm City and the Glitter Band—’
‘Prefects hardly ever need to take a ship into Yellowstone’s atmosphere. And all that aerodynamic bodywork makes for fuel-draining mass that we don’t need in normal duties. I know. But we still keep a small number of transat vehicles on readiness, in case we do need them.’
Something clicked behind Thyssen’s eyes. ‘You think they’ve gone to Yellowstone.’
‘It’s a possibility. I need you to look into your logs. I’m going to give you the names of some prefects and I want you to correlate those names against the vehicles they’ve signed out for routine duties. Can you do that for me?’
‘Yes. Immediately.’
‘Here are the names.’ Dreyfus handed Thyssen his compad, allowing him access to the area where he had input the identities of the eight Firebrand operatives. Thyssen retired to an office space, Dreyfus shadowing him, and transferred the names into his own compad with a finger stroke.
Thyssen chucked his bulb into the wall and conjured a console. ‘I’m checking the logs right now. How far back do you want me to go?’
Dreyfus thought of the likely activity that would have preceded the destruction of the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. Moving the Clockmaker and its associated relics - including any equipment required to study them - would have certainly required more than one trip.
‘Two months should do it.’
‘Conjure yourself a coffee, Prefect. This is going to take a couple of minutes.’
Thalia woke with the worst headache she could remember, one that felt as if someone had driven an iron piton into the side of her skull. She was just beginning to speculate on the precise origin of that pain when she became aware of less intense discomfort afflicting almost her entire body. It was difficult to breathe, and her arms were tugged so far behind her back that she felt as if her shoulders had been dislocated. Something squeezed her chest. Something hard dug into her spine. She opened her eyes and looked around, wondering where she was and what had happened to her.
‘Easy,’ said Meriel Redon, who appeared to be bound in a similar position next to Thalia: sitting on the ground with her back against the railings that encircled the polling core, her arms crossed and bound behind one of the uprights. ‘You’re okay now, Prefect Ng. You took a bad bump on the head, but there’s no bleeding. We’ll get you checked as soon as we’re out of this.’
Through a curtain of pain, Thalia said, ‘I don’t remember. What happened?’
‘You were down in the basement, getting ready to set the timer on your whiphound.’
‘I was,’ Thalia said foggily. She had a groggy recollection that there had been some kind of problem with the whiphound, but the details refused to sharpen.
?
??You banged your head on one of the struts, knocking yourself out.’
‘I banged my head?’
‘You were out cold. Citizen Parnasse carried you back up here on his own.’
The events began to come back to her. She remembered the second timing dial jamming, how she had come to the decision that she would have to detonate the whiphound manually. She remembered that awesome calm she had experienced, as if every trifling detail in her life had just been swept aside, leaving a breathtaking clarity of mind, as empty and full of possibility as the clear dawn sky. And then she remembered nothing at all, except waking up here.
‘Where is Parnasse?’
‘He went back down to set the timer,’ Redon said. ‘He said you’d shown him what to do.’
‘No—’ Thalia began.
‘We’re expecting him back any minute. He said he’d be able to tie himself down when he arrived.’
‘He isn’t coming back. There was a problem with the whiphound, with setting the five-minute fuse. I didn’t bang my head. Parnasse must have knocked me out.’
Redon looked puzzled. ‘Why would he have done that?’
‘Because I was going to set it off myself, while I was still down there. It was the only way. But he wouldn’t let me. He’s decided to do it himself.’
Comprehension came to Redon in horrified degrees. ‘You mean he’s going to die down there?’
‘He isn’t coming back up. I showed him how to set the whiphound. He knows exactly what to do.’
‘Someone has to go down there, tell him not to do it,’ Redon said. ‘He can’t kill himself to save us. He’s just a citizen, just one of us.’
‘When did he go?’
‘Quite a long time ago.’
‘He can’t set the fuse for longer than a hundred seconds. There’s no reason why he needs to wait that long, if he’s in place.’