Cassandra gave a girlish little shrug, accompanied by a half-pout. “I thought debate was supposed to be healthy,” she countered.
“It is,” Auger replied, “so long as you don’t disagree with me.”
Tanglewood wrapped the Earth in light, like a glimmering funeral wreath. The dropship moved cautiously, veering this way and that as it navigated between moving threads, each of which was an enormous chain of interconnected habitats. In every direction there were more and more loops, threads and knots of light receding into a faint, luminous scribble of headache-inducing complexity, each centre of mass following its own private orbit around Earth.
Hundreds of thousands of habitats, each a small city in its own right; hundreds of millions of people, Auger knew, all with lives as complex and problematic and hope-filled as her own. Traffic was constantly coming and going from different parts of Tanglewood, sparks of light slipping from one thread to another in all directions. The concatenated threads of linked habitats were in a constant process of severance and reunion, like DNA strands in some thriving Petri dish.
Her mood brightened when she felt the dropship braking for its final approach. Immediately ahead, strung together hub to hub, were the six counter-rotating wheels of the Antiquities Board. Already, she was certain, the news of her discovery would be filtering through the usual academic channels, and the pressure would soon be mounting for her to publish a preliminary summary of the newspaper’s contents. She would be very lucky if she got any sleep in the next twenty-four hours. It would, however, be the kind of work she enjoyed—tiring but simultaneously exhilarating, leaving her in a state of exhausted euphoria at the end of it. And that would only be the beginning of the much longer process of detailed study, when she would see whether her initial hunches and guesses stood the test of time.
The squadron of dropships docked with the first wheel, coming to rest in a large low-gravity reception bay filled with ships and equipment. With a prickle of disquiet, Auger noticed that one of the parked spacecraft was a Slasher vessel. It was ostentatiously sleek: long and lean like a fast-swimming squid, with something of the same translucent elegance. Mechanisms and markings twinkled through the cobalt-blue lustre of its outer hull. Surrounded by the robust but clumsy artefacts of her own government, the Slasher craft looked insultingly futuristic. Which, in a way, it was.
Auger couldn’t quite pinpoint the reason for her unease. It was unusual to see a Slasher ship in Tanglewood, especially with the heightened tension of recent months. But it did still happen now and then, and whenever there were diplomatic exchanges it was generally more efficient to use Slasher transport.
But in Antiquities? That, she had to admit, was a little unusual.
She pushed the unease from her mind, concentrating on the matter at hand. While various aggressive sterilisation procedures took place—the ships scrubbed for any latent traces of Parisian contamination—Auger scoured the rescue crawler until she found a pen and a pad of standard-issue Antiquities reporting paper and set about writing her statement regarding what had happened underground. As always, it was necessary to strike a balance between a cavalier disregard for the rules and a professional understanding that some rules were more flexible than others.
She had pretty much finished the report by the time the sterilisation procedures were completed. An airlock bridge was attached to the rescue craft and the lights around the outer door flicked to green, signalling that it was safe to disembark. The recovery crew were the first out, anxious to get off-shift to trade drinks and tall tales with their comrades.
“Come on,” she said, gesturing for Cassandra to exit ahead of her.
“After you,” the girl replied.
Something in her tone was still off, but Auger continued to put it down to her own nerves, amplified by the sighting of the Slasher vessel. She pulled herself to the airlock and, with well-rehearsed movements, drifted along the connecting umbilical.
At the far end, she was met by a pair of officials, both of whom wore pinstriped grey suits. She recognised one of the men as a high-level manager called August Da Silva. He was a small individual with a smooth, cherubic face and hair that was always impeccably combed and held in place with perfumed oils. Their paths had crossed before, over research budgets and minor procedural transgressions.
Da Silva made a show of separating Auger from the girl. “This way for you,” he said.
“I need to look after Cassandra,” Auger said.
With a gentle push, Da Silva coaxed her into a small, windowless waiting room. The door was immediately closed and locked behind her, leaving her alone with only the padded walls for company. Auger thumped on the door, but no one came back or gave any explanation as to what was going on. Half an hour passed, then an hour. Auger began to stew in her own indignation, rehearsing the things she would say and the people she would lash out at when she was finally allowed to leave. Nothing like this had ever happened before; there were sometimes delays due to glitches in the sterilisation procedure, but the authorities were always careful to keep her informed in such circumstances.
After another half-hour, the door opened and Da Silva poked his perfumed head through the gap. “Time to move, Auger. They’re waiting for you.”
She managed a defiant sneer. “Who the hell are they? Don’t you realise I’ve got work to do?”
“Your work will have to wait a while.”
Grumpily, she followed Da Silva out of the waiting room. He smelled of lavender and cinnamon. “I need to collect the newspaper and the film reels so that I can begin documenting the discovery. This is major—there are thousands of people waiting to hear what that newspaper will tell us. They’ll already be wondering why I haven’t made a preliminary statement.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you have the film reels,” Da Silva said. “They’ve already been sent away for secure processing.”
“What are you talking about? That’s my damned data!”
“It isn’t data anymore,” the man said. “It’s evidence in a criminal investigation. The boy died.”
The force of it hit her like a stomach punch. “No!” she breathed, as if denying it might make any difference.
“I’m afraid it’s true.”
Her voice sounded ghostly and distant. “What happened?”
“There was a rip in his suit. Furies got to him.”
Auger remembered Sebastian complaining of a headache. That would have been the tiny machines storming through his brain, replicating and demolishing as they went.
The thought made her sick.
“But we checked the fury count,” she said. “It was zero.”
“Your detectors weren’t sensitive to the latest microscopic strain. You’d have known that if you bothered to keep up with the technical bulletins. You should have allowed for that factor in deciding whether to go outside.”
“But he can’t be dead.”
“He died during the ascent.” Da Silva looked back at her, perhaps wondering how much he was allowed to say. “Complete brainstem death.”
“Oh, God.” She took a deep breath, trying not to lose it. “Has anyone told—”
“His family? They’ve been informed that an incident took place. They’re on their way over as we speak. The hope is that the boy can be brought back to some state of consciousness by the time they arrive.”
Da Silva was playing with her. “You told me he died.”
“He did. Thankfully, they were able to bring him back.”
“With a head full of furies?”
“They pumped him full of UR, flushed out the furies with some of that magic Slasher medicine. Right now, the boy’s still in a coma. He may have irreversible damage to major brain structures, but we won’t know for a few days.”