“Let’s keep this brief, Thalia,” said Senior Prefect Gaffney.
“We all have work to be getting back to. Can we conclude that you’ve closed the leak in the polling apparatus?”
“Sir,” Thalia said, almost stammering, “I’ve completed work on the update. As I said before, it only amounted to a couple of thousand lines of changes.”
“And you’re confident this will plug the security hole Caitlin Perigal was able to abuse?”
“As confident as we can ever be, sir. I’ve subjected the new code to the formal testing process, and the validation system found no errors after simulating fifty years’ worth of polling transactions. That’s a better error rate than we accepted before the last upgrade, sir. I can see no reason not to go live.”
Gaffney looked at her distractedly, as if his mind had already strolled out of the room, into another more urgent meeting.
“Across the entire ten thousand?”
“No, sir,” Thalia said patiently. She’d already explained her plans the last time she’d been sitting in that room, but obviously she’d have to go through it one more time.
“The changes to the code are relatively simple, but the upgrade will involve high-level access to all ten thousand polling cores. It’ll go smoothly with most of the newer cores, but there are some issues with older installations that I’d like to resolve in the field. By that I mean physical visits, sir.”
“On-site installation?” asked Michael Crissel.
Thalia nodded keenly.
“But only for the following habitats.” She raised a hand to the Solid Orrery, a gesture she had primed it to wait for. On command, the invisibly fine ceiling threads retracted five orbiting bodies from the frozen swirl of the Glitter Band. Quickmatter oozed down the threads and swelled the representations a hundredfold. One of the five bodies was Panoply itself, instantly recognisable to all present in the room. Thalia pointed instead to the other four, naming each in turn.
“Carousel New Seattle-Tacoma. The Chevelure-Sambuke Hourglass. Szlumper Oneill. House Aubusson.” Scattered red laser-light flicked between the four habitats and Panoply, revealing Thalia’s intended route.
“In all cases, I think we can be in and out well inside thirteen hours per habitat. Abstraction downtime will be in the order of milliseconds: not long enough for anyone to actually notice.”
“We can’t spare four ships in the current emergency,” Gaffney said.
“I’m not expecting you to, sir. I’d like to be on-site for all the installations myself, which means doing them sequentially. But even allowing for sleep and travel time between the four habs, I can have all four upgrades complete inside sixty hours.”
“And then you’ll go live across the whole Band?”
“Provided no issues come to light during the four test installations, I don’t see any reason to delay.”
“I think we should hold off until the Ruskin-Sartorious mess has blown over,” said Senior Prefect Baudry, holding her usual electrified posture.
“Any non-essential activity at this time is a stretch on our resources we can do without. I don’t doubt that Thalia’s counting on a full support team. Frankly, we can’t afford to reallocate key personnel at such a sensitive time, with the citizenry straining at the leash to punish the Ultras.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Gaffney said.
“I know Jane wants closure on the polling anomaly as quickly as possible, but she’ll also understand that we have to contain the aggressors until something else comes along to occupy their time.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Thalia said, “but I’m not counting on anything other than myself and a cutter to get me between habitats. I can handle the upgrades single-handedly.”
Gaffney looked unconvinced.
“Quite a responsibility, Ng.”
“It makes sense, sir. I’m intimately familiarly with the software changes and the procedure for installing them. It’s been my speciality since I joined the organisation. It’s what I live and breathe. I don’t think there’s anyone else in Panoply who understands the polling mechanism as thoroughly as I do.”
“All the same, it’s still a heavy burden for one person.”
“I can do it, sir. In sixty hours, less if things go smoothly, this whole business could be behind us.”
Crissel and Gaffney exchanged glances.
“It would be good to get it off the table,” Crissel said quietly.
“And if Ng thinks she can handle this on her own… it won’t impact on our existing activities.”
“I still say she should wait,” Baudry put in.
“We have no idea how long the crisis with the Ultras is going to last,” Crissel said.
“We could still be putting out fires a month from now. We can’t leave the security hole unplugged until then—there are critical polls coming up and we need the apparatus in a fit state to handle them.”
“If she runs into trouble,” Baudry said, “we won’t be able to spare a Heavy Technical Squad to help her out.”
“I won’t run into trouble,” Thalia replied.
Baudry looked unimpressed.
“You sound spectacularly sure of yourself. No update to a polling core is routine, Ng. You take the local abstraction down and then can’t get it back up, you’ll have a rioting mob on your hands. One whiphound isn’t going to make much difference in that situation.”
“I promise there’ll be no technical difficulties. Aside from a few habitat seniors, no one else need even know that I’m on the premises.”
“She talks a good talk,” Gaffney said, with the tone of a man who had no great stomach for argument.
“Part of me says hold off this until we can give it our full attention. Another part says, hell, if she thinks she can do it unassisted—”
“I can, sir,” Thalia said.
“Maybe we should bounce this one off Jane,” Crissel said.
“The supreme prefect expressly requested not to be troubled with matters of minor procedure,” said Baudry.
“As she’s made abundantly clear, she can only be expected to concentrate on so many matters at once.”
Gaffney pulled a face, racked by indecision.
“Sixty hours, you say?”
“Starting from now, sir. I can leave immediately for New Seattle-Tacoma.” Thalia nodded towards the red laser-line trajectory.
“The conjunction’s favourable. Assign me a cutter and I can be on-site inside Sea-Tac within two hours.”
“All right,” Gaffney said.
“We’ll spare you a cutter. No weps or heavy armour, though.”
“I won’t let you down,” Thalia said.
“You’ll need one-time pads for core access, I take it?”
“Just the four, sir. Most of the work shouldn’t require deep-level changes, so I ought to be able to manage with six-hundred-second access windows.”
“I’ll have Vantrollier issue them.” Gaffney looked at her warningly.
“You’re good, Ng. None of us needs convincing about that. But that doesn’t mean we’ll cut you an easy ride if things go wrong. This is in your hands now. Don’t fuck it up.”
“I won’t, sir.”
“Good. Then get out there and update those cores.”
CHAPTER 8
The gallery of clocks covered two long walls, with each timepiece resting in a glass-sealed alcove next to a small black plaque denoting the date and precise location of the object’s construction, together with any other salient observations. As usual, Dreyfus had no intention of stopping on his way to the inner sanctum of Dr Demikhov’s Sleep Lab. But something always caused him to halt, select one of the clocks and use his Pangolin privilege to open the alcove, remove the evil thing and hold it in his hands. This time he chose a clock he did not believe he had examined before, one that was dark and unornamented enough to have escaped his curiosity on previous occasions.
He could hear it ticking behind the glass. It would have been wound by one of Demikhov’s technicians.
He read the plaque: