“Here’s what I don’t get, Sheridan. You’re a solid Panoply man, as good a prefect as any of us. What exactly did Aurora have on you that made you turn traitor?”
At last the mask fashioned a grimace-like smile.
“You’re the traitor, Tom, not me. You and all the other cowards who turn a blind eye to what’s really going on in the Glitter Band. It’s been clear to me since we walked away from Hell-Five. The people voted us the power to protect them. Problem is we abdicated that responsibility years ago. We let the people down.”
“That’s not quite the way it looks from where I’m sitting,” Dreyfus said.
“If only you saw the bigger picture, you’d understand.”
“Enlighten me, Sheridan. Tell me what I’m not seeing. Would Aurora’s glimpse into the future have anything to do with it?”
After a while Gaffney said, “You know about Exordium, then.”
“Enough to know where to start trawling if you don’t tell me about it now.”
“Aurora saw the end of everything we hold precious, Tom. We’ve created something wonderful around Yellowstone, something glorious, something unheralded in all the human history that’s come before us. Something fit to last a thousand years, or ten thousand. And yet it ends. Less than a hundred years from now, all this is over. Humanity opened a window into paradise, and in eighty or ninety years it closes. The Garden of Eden isn’t some ancient Biblical story about the fall of paradise thousands of years ago. It’s a premonition.”
“How does it end?”
“Everything goes, in a matter of hours and days. Aurora walked amongst their dreams. She saw habitats burning, she saw people screaming in agony, she saw Chasm City turning against its own inhabitants, becoming something monstrous.”
“A time of plague,” Dreyfus said.
“No one sees it coming. There’s no time to prepare. It hits us when we feel at our least vulnerable, in our highest, brightest hour.” Gaffney halted and caught his breath, the air rasping in and out of his lungs.
“Aurora couldn’t let that happen, Tom. She believes the Glitter Band deserves better than to crash and burn.”
“But we’re still talking about something eighty or ninety years in the future. Why is she taking action now?”
“Prudence,” Gaffney said.
“Aurora believes the content of the Exordium prognostications, but not necessarily the detail. She’s worried that the Conjoiners were wrong about the timeline, that perhaps it might happen sooner than they predicted. There’s no time to wait for warning signals. If action is to be taken to ensure the future survival of the Glitter Band, we must move now, not in twenty years, or fifty years. Only then can she be certain of success.”
“And this action?” Dreyfus ventured, wondering how much Gaffney was going to give up without coercion.
But Gaffney looked disappointed.
“Isn’t it obvious? A benign takeover. The installation of a new authority that will ensure the Glitter Band’s security for time immemorial.”
“She could have just come to us, if she had reasonable concerns.”
“And how do you think Panoply would have reacted?” Gaffney asked.
“Not by taking the necessary measures, that’s for certain. We’ve already let the people take our guns away. Do you think that kind of ready submission implies an organisation with the necessary spine to take difficult, unpopular action, just because it happens to be in the public good?”
“I think you answered that question for yourself.”
“I love this organisation,” Gaffney said.
“I’ve given it my life. But little by little I’ve watched it allow the citizenry to erode its power. We were complicit in that, no question about it. We rolled over and handed the people back the very tools they’d given us to do our work. We’ve reached the point now where we have to beg for the right to arm our agents. And what happens when we finally issue that request? The people spit it back in our faces. They love the idea of a police force, Tom. Just not one with the teeth to actually do anything.”
“Maybe taking guns off us wasn’t such a bad idea.”
“It’s not just the guns. When we perform a lockdown, we spend the next year defending our actions. They’ll take lockdown authority from us next. Before you know it, we won’t even be allowed near our own polling cores. Aurora saw this coming. She knew that Panoply’s usefulness was always going to be limited, and that if the people were really to be protected, someone else was going to have to do it for them.”
“This someone else being Aurora, and whoever’s with her,” Dreyfus said quietly.
“She’s no tyrant, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“A takeover sounds more than a little tyrannical, frankly.”
“It won’t be like that. Aurora merely envisages a state of affairs in which the people are protected from the consequences of their own worst actions. Under Aurora’s regime, life in the habitats will continue exactly as it does now. The citizenry will still have access to the same technologies they’ve grown to depend upon. No one will be denied longevity treatments, or any other medicines they need. The people will continue to enjoy the same luxuries as they do now, and on a day-to-day level their societies will look much the same. The artists will still work.”
Dreyfus cocked his head.
“Then I’m missing something. What will have changed?”
“Only those things strictly essential for our future security. Needless to say, the Glitter Band will have to be isolated from the rest of human society. That’ll mean an end to commerce with the Ultras, and Chasm City. We can’t run the risk that some outside agent introduced to the Glitter Band causes its ultimate downfall.”
“You think it will be something internal, something we do to ourselves?”
“We can’t know that for certain, so we have to take reasonable precautions against other possibilities. That’s only right and proper, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Likewise, travel between habitats will have to be curtailed. If the destabilising factor arises within the Glitter Band, we can at least stop it spreading.”
“So no one ever gets to leave home.”
Gaffney appeared genuinely perplexed by Dreyfus’ point.
“But why would they ever want to, Tom? They’ll have everything handed to them on a plate: every amenity, every luxury.”
“Except personal freedom.”
“It’s overrated. How often do people exercise it, anyway? It’s only ever the minority that test the real limits of a society. Reasonable men don’t make history, Dreyfus. Most people are content with their lot,
content to do today what they did yesterday. They’ll still have almost every old freedom within a given habitat.”
“But they won’t be able to leave. They won’t be able to visit loved ones or friends in other habitats.”
“It won’t come to that. Once Aurora has control of the ten thousand, she’ll allow a grace period before the strictures come into force. People will be permitted to move around as they wish until they’ve settled on their permanent place of residence. Only then will the gates be closed.”
“There’ll always be some people who regret the choice they made,” Dreyfus said.
“But I suppose you’re about to tell me they can always use abstraction to simulate physical travel.”
Gaffney looked almost apologetic.
“Well, actually… abstraction will need to be policed as well.”
“By which you mean…”
“A downgrading of the current provisions. For the sake of security, of course. It could be that the destabilising agent gains a foothold as a consequence of the data networks, you see. Aurora can’t take that risk. The habitats will need to be isolated from each other.”
“The cure’s beginning to sound worse than the disease,” Dreyfus said.
“Oh, don’t make it sound worse than it really is. The habitats will still be running internal abstraction services. For many citizens, that’s already enough. And the data infrastructure will remain in place, so that Aurora can continue to supervise and assist the ten thousand.”