‘You’re confident of that?’ Caillebot asked.
‘I’m even more confident that we won’t have a chance against those machines when they break through.’ Thalia planted a hand on her hip. ‘That good enough for you, or do you want it in writing?’
Meriel Redon coughed. ‘I know it sounds like madness, at first. That’s what I thought initially when they told me about this plan. But now that I’ve had time to think things through, I see that this is the only way we’re going to survive. It’s roll or die, people.’
‘How soon?’ Cuthbertson asked.
‘Very,’ Thalia said.
‘We need to think about it. We need time to talk it over, see if we can’t come up with another plan.’
‘You’ve got five seconds,’ Thalia said, looking at him belligerently. ‘Thought of anything? No, didn’t think so. Sorry, but this is the plan, and there’s no opt-out clause. I want you all to start securing yourselves. Anything you can’t do, I’ll help you with. But we haven’t got time for a debate on the matter.’
‘It’s going to work,’ Redon said, raising her arms to silence the party. ‘But we have to do it fast, or those machines are going to be through to us before we know it. Thalia’s given us a way out when we had nothing. Don’t think for one second that I’m thrilled about what we’re going to attempt, but I see that we have no choice.’
‘What about the polling core?’ Caillebot asked. ‘Have you forgotten about sabotaging it?’
Thalia produced the whiphound, gripping it in a glove-wrapped hand. ‘I’m going to take it down now. Then I’ll head downstairs to see if I can hear any activity behind the barricade. If I don’t, and there’s no sign of the machines trying to break in elsewhere, then I may reconsider our escape plan. But if I decide to go ahead, I won’t have time to come back up and tell you until we’re almost ready to roll. You’d better assume that’s what’s going to happen.’
She stepped through the gap in the railinged enclosure, extending and stiffening the whiphound’s filament. Without ceremony, she swung it into the polling core’s pillar at chest height, straining to push it deeper until the resistance was too much. The core flickered in protest at the damage she was inflicting, fingers of sharp-edged black radiating away from the wound. She withdrew the filament and came in again, slicing at a different angle. The whiphound buzzed fiercely, the handle throbbing in her hand. Thalia sweated. If she failed to disable the core and somehow incapacitated the whiphound’s grenade mode, it would all have been for nothing.
She removed the whiphound. Now most of the pillar was consumed by geometric black shapes. At some level it was still functioning — her glasses confirmed that there was still some low-level abstraction traffic — but she had certainly impaired it, perhaps to a degree where it would not be able to send coherent packets to the servitors. That would have to suffice. The marrow of quickmatter at the heart of the core would prove resilient against the whiphound, healing as the filament passed through it, and she could not risk overtaxing the weapon.
Thalia let the filament go limp and spool back into the handle. She had done all that she could.
‘Let’s see if we did any damage,’ she said to Parnasse.
She left the polling core level, glancing back to make sure the citizens were all engaged in securing themselves to the railings. She was pleased to see that they were, despite the ramshackle nature of some of their bindings. There was some grumbling going on, some indignation, but Meriel Redon was doing her best to make them understand that there was no other way.
Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary, she thought. Maybe taking down the polling core would be the end of it.
But when Thalia and Parnasse reached the top of the barricade, she knew that the machines were still alive. If anything they sounded louder and closer than ever. Thalia had the palpable impression that they were about to break through the obstruction at any second. The machines sounded enraged, their dim mechanical fury only doubled by what she had just attempted.
‘Roll it is,’ Parnasse said.
‘Looks like it.’
They started jogging away from the barricade, towards the next set of stairs.
‘Any idea why those things are still moving if we just took down the core?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Cyrus. Could be they were uploaded with enough autonomy to keep functioning even without direct supervision. Could be I didn’t damage the core enough. Could be they made another one, somewhere else. It isn’t that difficult if you know the protocols.’
They reached the next level down and arrived at the trap door in the floor, still open as they had left it. Parnasse rolled up his sleeves, moving to lower himself into the gap ahead of Thalia.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I memorised the way pretty well the last time we came down here. You showed me where to place the whiphound. I’m sure I can find my way without you.’
‘All the same, girl, I’m coming with you.’
‘I’d rather you were back up with the others, Cyrus, making sure they do what they’re told.’
‘Redon’s got them under control. I think you convinced them there was no other choice.’
Thalia had been striving to maintain a façade of certainty, but all of a sudden doubts magnified inside her. ‘There isn’t, is there?’
‘Of course there isn’t.’
‘But what if I’m wrong?’
‘Nothing could be worse than waiting for those bastards to break through. Even if this doesn’t work, it’ll be a hell of an improvement on being ripped apart by killer robots. At least we’ll go out with style.’
‘Even though there’ll be no one to applaud our efforts?’
‘We’ll know, girl. That’s all that matters.’ He gave her an encouraging pinch on the arm. ‘Now let’s get that whiphound in place.’
They clambered through the tangle of intervening supports until they reached the area where the struts had already been weakened or cut through entirely.
‘Thank our lucky stars this isn’t quickmatter,’ Parnasse said, ‘or those cuts would have healed over by now. But the rules say you can’t have quickmatter anywhere near a polling core.’
‘I like rules,’ Thalia said. ‘Rules are good.’
‘Let’s unwrap the baby.’
Thalia removed the whiphound from its protective bundle. It was trembling, with parts of the casing beginning to melt from the heat. The smell of burning components hit her nose. ‘Okay,’ she said, twisting the first of the dials. ‘Setting yield to maximum. Looks as if it’s accepted the input. So far so good.’ She paused to let her fingers cool down.
‘Now the timer,’ Parnasse said.
She nodded. She twisted the first of the two dials necessary to input the setting. It was stiff, but eventually the dial moved under her fingers until it reached the limit of its rotation. The double-dial fail-safe existed to stop the whiphound being set to grenade mode accidentally. ‘Five minutes,’ she said.
‘It’ll start counting as soon as you twist the other dial?’
Thalia nodded. ‘It should give us enough time to get back upstairs and lashed down. If you want to go ahead now, to make sure—’
‘I’m not going anywhere without you. Set the timer.’
Thalia took hold of the end of the whiphound and began to twist the other dial. It moved easily compared to the other one, clicking around through its settings. Then it stopped, long before it had reached the correct limit. Thalia tried again, but the dial would not pass beyond the point where it had jammed.