‘He didn’t need to know. None of them needed to know. None of them did know, right until the end.’
‘One of them came close, though.’
She looked at him with sharp eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Delphine Ruskin-Sartorious. The daughter. The artist of the family. Or didn’t you realise?’
‘Realise what?’
‘She was in contact with the Clockmaker. It was something of a one-way dialogue, but it was contact all the same.’
She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head in flat dismissal. ‘No, that wouldn’t have been possible. Delphine was never allowed anywhere near it. Nor were any of the family members, including Anthony Theobald. It was kept inside an armoured cell, locked away unless we wanted to communicate with it. Not only could it not escape from the cell, it couldn’t send a signal beyond it, either.’
‘It still found a way to reach her.’
‘Impossible.’
‘Like it or not, it happened. My guess is that the cell wasn’t as data-secure as you thought it was. Or maybe the Clockmaker slipped a signal through when you were talking to it, or whatever it was you did during your visits.’
‘A signal needs a receiver,’ Saavedra pointed out.
‘Delphine had one. It was in her head. Like any good Demarchist citizen, she had a skull full of implants. She used them to direct the machines that helped her with her art. The Clockmaker found out how to manipulate one or more of those implants to place imagery in Delphine’s mind and shape her artwork.’
Now Saavedra tilted her head sceptically. Dreyfus knew that he had some way to go before she was convinced, but he had certainly succeeded in intriguing her. ‘Imagery?’
‘The Clockmaker used her as medium, expressing itself through her work. She thought she’d tapped a seam of miraculous self-inspiration, but in truth she’d just become a conduit for the Clockmaker.’
‘Ridiculous,’ she said, but not with quite enough conviction.
‘Maybe that’s what attracted Aurora in the first place,’ Dreyfus said, the idea occurring to him more or less at that moment. ‘Of course, for the threat of the Clockmaker to have impinged on her consciousness, she must have a good idea of what the Clockmaker actually is.’
‘And what is it? Seeing as you appear to have all the answers.’
Dreyfus couldn’t help smiling. ‘You mean you really don’t know? After all this time?’
‘And you, presumably, do?’
‘I’ve got an inkling.’
‘Nice try, Dreyfus, but if you think you’re going to bluff your way out of this one—’
‘A crime was committed,’ he said. ‘It all goes back to a single, simple deed: the murder of an innocent man. The Clockmaker is a direct consequence of that.’
‘Who was murdered?’
‘Point that gun elsewhere and I might tell you. Better yet, why don’t you show me the Clockmaker?’
‘Remove your suits,’ she said. ‘I want to check that you’re not carrying any other weapons. If I even think you’re about to trick me, I’ll kill you.’
Dreyfus glanced at Sparver. ‘Better do as she says.’
They removed their armour and suits, laying them out in neat piles before them. Under the suits, they both wore standard-issue Panoply uniforms.
‘Turn around,’ Saavedra instructed.
They turned their backs to her.
‘Now turn to face me. Remove your whiphounds. Do not activate them.’
Dreyfus and Sparver unclipped their whiphounds and tossed the handles to the ground.
‘Kick them to me.’
They did as they were told. Still training the rifle on them, Saavedra knelt down and clipped the whiphounds to her own belt. Then she single-handedly unclipped her own unit, a Model C, and deployed the filament. It hissed against the floor, its sharp edge a coiling scratch of bright silver. Deftly flipping the haft in her hand to turn the laser eye towards Dreyfus and Sparver, she marked them both then released the handle.
‘Confirm target acquisition,’ she said; the whiphound nodded its handle in reply. ‘Maintain target surveillance. If targets approach within five metres of me, or move more than ten metres from me, intercept and detain both subjects with maximum lethal force. Indicate compliance.’
The whiphound nodded.
‘I think we’re clear on the ground rules,’ Dreyfus said.
Saavedra moved to the rifles she had told them to discard, put down her own weapon and removed the ammo cells from the other two guns. She clipped the cells to her belt, next to the two captured whiphounds. Then she collected her own rifle and shrugged it back over her shoulder, the muzzle aimed at the ceiling.
‘This is called a gesture of trust. Don’t abuse it.’
‘We’re cool with not abusing it,’ Sparver said.
‘Follow me, and remember what I just told the whiphound. I’ll show you the Clockmaker, if you really want to see it.’
CHAPTER 31
Saavedra led them deeper into Ops Nine, down one of the sloping ramps that Dreyfus had already noticed leading away from the atrium. Her whiphound slinked along behind the party, constantly triangulating the distance between Saavedra and her guests, waiting for one of them to transgress the parameters she had laid down. Dreyfus was relieved not to have a gun aimed at him, but the whiphound was only a marginal improvement. If he had been concerned about dying because of a twitch from Saavedra’s finger, now he had to worry about the inflexible thought processes of a machine that really wasn’t much brighter than a guard dog. Not that he had any intention of deliberately violating the rules, but what if he tripped, or accidentally crossed the five-metre line?
‘I will show it to you,’ she said, ‘but you can forget any idea of negotiating with it. It is not a rational intellect.’
‘It doesn’t have to be rational to understand that Aurora wants it dead,’ Dreyfus replied.
‘You think that will give you leverage?’
‘It’s all I’ve got. Better make the most of it.’
‘How did you manage to install a containment facility down here at such short notice?’ Sparver asked.
‘We didn’t. There was only just time to clear out of Ruskin-Sartorious before it was destroyed. Fortunately, there was a kind of cage already here. It needed some alterations, but nothing beyond our resources.’
‘You’re talking about the tokamak,’ Dreyfus said, wonderingly.
‘The what?’ Sparver asked.
‘He means the fusion reactor that would have powered this facility during the Amerikano era,’ Saavedra said loftily. ‘And he’s right. That’s exactly what we used. It’s one large magnetic containment bottle. Hideously inefficient compared to the portable generators we brought with us, but it has its uses. It needed to be checked, and the field geometry adjusted, but none of that was particularly taxing. It was much easier than installing our own containment equipment: we’d have needed to hollow out another cavern for that.’
‘I hope you trust Amerikano engineering,’ Dreyfus said. ‘Keeping a psychopathic machine prisoner wasn’t exactly in the design specs.’
‘I trust it not to fail. Do you think I’d have come here if I didn’t?’
‘Where’s everyone else?’ Dreyfus asked.
‘The rest of Firebrand? Apart from Simon Veitch, I’m the only one down here.’
Dreyfus remembered that name from the list of Firebrand members Jane had given him. It had impressed itself on his memory for a reason.
‘Where are the others?’
‘Wherever their duties require them to be. Since Jane pulled the plug on us, we’ve all had to live dual lives. How do you imagine we managed to maintain Firebrand while we also had our regular duties to attend to?’