Which made the reference to Silver Rain all the more anomalous. Someone planned to use it: that was clear. But they couldn’t make it within E2 and they couldn’t smuggle it through the censor.
So they must have found another way of delivering it. If you couldn’t enter the house by the front door, she mused, you found another way in.
You broke a window.
Another portal? Perhaps such a thing existed, but there was a high probability that it would also come with its own censor.
Which left the one possibility so horrifically obvious that she’d overlooked it completely. If they could find their way to the outside of the ALS, and if they had a means of cracking that shell, then they could simply deliver the Silver Rain directly, spraying it into the atmosphere from space.
But that couldn’t be possible, surely. No one knew where the ALS was situated. The duration of the hyperweb transits was only weakly correlated with distance in actual light-years… and there was no indicator of direction at all. Auger’s thoughts returned to the house analogy. The hyperweb was like a vast, meandering underground tunnel system that emerged here and there in the basements of isolated old mansions. But there were many, many mansions strewn across the landscape and no way of telling from the inside which one a particular tunnel had emerged in. The windows were bricked up, the doors barred and the skylights boarded over. If only you could rip away some of those barriers, then perhaps you might get a glimpse of the surrounding landscape, and have some chance of identifying the house into which the tunnel led.
Could the shell be cracked from the inside somehow?
“Verity,” Floyd said gently. “Is there something you’d like to share with me?”
“I’ve shared more than enough.”
“Not from where I’m sitting.” He leaned back into the plush upholstery of his seat, studying her in a way that made her feel both uncomfortable and perhaps a little flattered. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, really: a bit crumpled around the edges, perhaps, and in need of a wash and a comb, but she’d known worse.
“I’m sorry, Wendell, but I’ve told you all I can.”
“You don’t even have all the answers yet, do you?”
“No,” she said, glad to be able to say something in complete honesty for once. “All I have are the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle Susan White left me, which may or may not be sufficient to reconstruct the answer. If they are, I’m just too stupid to see it.”
“Or maybe the answer isn’t that obvious.”
“That’s what I keep wondering. All I know is that she must have been closer to the truth than I am right now.”
“And look what good it did her,” Floyd said.
“Yes,” Auger replied, saluting Susan’s memory with a lift of her glass. “But at least she died trying.”
Auger found herself alone on the Champs-Elysées, moving along one broad, tree-lined pavement amidst the surging flow of the crowd. She remembered being on the train with Floyd, but that particular investigation had led nowhere. When they had arrived in Berlin, they had found it covered with ice, inhabited only by bickering tribes of feral machines. The trip had been a waste of time: how could she ever have forgotten that crucial detail? Now she was back in Paris, alone and a little sad despite the vivacious mood of the other pedestrians. It was the middle of the morning and everyone was already overloaded with shopping and groceries and bright bouquets of flowers. Everywhere she looked there was riotous colour, from the clothes and belongings of the Parisians to the over-flowing shop-window displays and the trees, which were hung with gemlike fruits. Cars and buses sped by in blurs of gleaming chrome and gold. Even the horses shone, as if suffused with some soft inner light. Above the bobbing heads of the pedestrians, the Arc de Triomphe rose over everything, pennanted in a thousand pastel colours. Auger had no idea why she was walking towards it, or what she would do when she arrived. It was simply enough to be swept along by the other walkers, carried on their tide. All around her, couples and gatherings of friends laughed and made plans for later in the day. She felt their gaiety begin to elevate her mood.
Behind her, she heard a steady rhythmic sound. She looked over her shoulder, through gaps between the people immediately behind her, and saw a child, a small boy, walking a dozen or so paces to her rear. The boy was the only other solitary person on the street, and as he walked—with a methodical, clockwork slowness—the other people made room for him, moving aside as if by some kind of magnetic repulsion. The little boy was wearing a red T-shirt and shorts, with white socks and buckled black shoes, and she knew that she had seen him somewhere before, not long ago. He had carried a yo-yo then, she remembered, but now a toy drum hung around his neck, upon which he was rapping out the insistent rhythm that had first drawn her attention. The tattoo he beat out was like a complicated heartbeat. It never varied, never slowed or quickened.
The little boy unnerved her, so she pushed forward with the flow of pedestrians. Gradually the drumming sound faded away. When she could hear it no more, she risked a glance behind her and saw only a thick mass of shoppers and promenaders, with no sign of the little drummer boy. She kept walking briskly, and when she looked back again a little later, there was still no sign of him.
But the mood of the avenue had changed. It wasn’t the boy—she was certain that none of the other Parisians were properly aware of him—but the weather. The colours on the street were suddenly muted and drab and the flags on the Arc de Triomphe fluttered like old grey rags. The sky, an untrammelled blue a moment earlier, now seethed with coal-black rainclouds. Sensing the imminent downpour, people dashed for the shelter of shop awnings and Métro entrances. Up and down the Champs-Elysées, umbrellas formed a choppy sea of bobbing black.
It started raining, in dribs and drabs at first, darkening the pavement with a mottled pattern, but quickening until it was sluicing down in hard lines like drawn glass, spraying off the umbrellas, gushing from drainpipes. People who were still outside renewed their efforts to find shelter. But there were too many of them and not enough places to run to. Cars and buses threw showers of water on to the scurrying crowds. People dropped their belongings, abandoning them to the elements as they continued their frantic search for cover. The wind picked up and flipped their umbrellas over, lifting them into the sky. Auger, who had stopped, looked around at their expressions, watching the rain chisel fury into their faces. But she felt none of it. The rain was warm and sweet and it had the fragrance of expensive perfume. She lifted her face to the sky and let it anoint her, drinking it in. It was delicious: warm where it touched her skin, exquisitely cool as it slid down her throat. Around her, the people kept running, slipping and sliding on the wet paving stones. Why couldn’t they just stop and savour the rain? she wondered. What was wrong with them?
Then the texture of the rain changed. It began to prickle her skin and eyes. It began to sting her throat. She closed her mouth, still holding her face to the sky but no longer gulping it down. The prickling intensified. The rain, gin-clear a moment ago, was now steely and opaque, coming down in chromed lines. Rivers of mercury poured from the drains and flooded the gutters, turning the pavements into mirrors. No one could stand up now, only Auger. Everyone else was flailing around, thrashing on the ground as they tried to struggle to their feet again. The rain flowed across their faces, puddling in their eyes and mouths as if trying to find its way inside. A horse, separated from its delivery cart, thrashed ineffectually in the street, struggling to stand until its legs snapped like sticks. At last even Auger turned her face from the sky. She held out a hand and watched the reflective shafts ram through the gaps between her fingers.