Open and Shut Read online

  ‘No, I doubt that they would have. And in twenty years we’ll have the great pleasure of deciding what to do with that corpse.’ Aumonier’s expression turned rueful. ‘Although I rather suspect that will be my successor’s problem, not mine.’

  ‘I hope we can count on your leadership for just a little longer.’

  ‘That will depend on … many factors.’ The quilt of mirrors fluttered, as if Aumonier were trying to stare down the length of her own body. ‘We’ll see. Perhaps it will be your little headache in twenty years, who knows. I take it you’re ready to put this behind you now?’ She did not wait for his answer. ‘You won’t stop remembering that ragged man, nor the hope in his eyes. And you being you, you won’t stop questioning your own judgement in that regard. I’d expect nothing less. But you’ll draw a line under it now, take at least two days immediate rest, and consider your conduct to have been judged fully satisfactory.’

  Dreyfus sighed, some portion of the recent days’ tension leaving him at last. He still carried his share of it, and that would leave him slowly if at all, but he realised it had been an error not to share this experience sooner. He had been impaired, his work had been impaired, and by extension so had the work of his immediate colleagues Thalia and Sparver. Panoply was a small but very tightly-knit mechanism, and it only functioned properly when all its components were operating smoothly.

  He ought to have seen that sooner, instead of waiting for this pep-talk …

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, beginning to reach for his whiphound.

  ‘Two more things. The first is that you’re not the only one to have served a lockdown and then followed through with the open-and-shut. I have, too, and I had just as much trouble dealing with the consequences.’

  Dreyfus cocked his head, surprised that his old friend still had the capacity to surprise him. ‘You’ve never mentioned this, and I thought I had a reasonably good idea of your service history.’

  ‘Back in the day, my reports were as terse and to the point as your own. If not more so. It was a similar set-up. I was green when I served the lockdown, and about twenty years less green when I revisited. What I found was … similarly challenging.’ A tightness crept into her face. ‘It was the Carter-Suff Spindle habitat. Three thousand citizens at the time of lockdown, and every expectation that most of them would still be alive when I went back in again.’

  ‘And?’ Dreyfus asked.

  ‘They took a grave exception to my decision. Things had turned a little harder than anticipated, as well. It got very bad, very quickly. Famine had set in, then cannibalism, and they ate themselves into oblivion – first the newly dead, then the old and the weak, then the less old, the less weak. By the time I got there, all that remained were a few gangs of feral children.’

  Dreyfus shook his head in wonder and horror. ‘It must have crossed our thresholds.’

  ‘Of course. Immediate revocation of the lockdown, followed by rapid humanitarian intervention. But by then it was much too late. The few living children were beyond conventional rehabilitation. We sent the best of them to the Mendicants. There was very little we could do for the others, except keep them from sharp objects and other human beings. Can I tell you the worst of it, though?’

  ‘You may as well.’

  ‘They made a bone pile for me. A sort of statue, in my honour. A figure of me, made from corpses, or what was left of them. It must have been one of their last acts before the final generation, before they forgot language, writing, or any sense of why they were there. And I still remember it. There isn’t a day when it doesn’t push itself into my thoughts. Even those eleven years when I couldn’t sleep … it was always there. And it was a blessing, in a way, because it was a part of me that the Clockmaker couldn’t touch. Something worse.’

  After a silence Dreyfus said: ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there’s always something worse.’

  ‘Yes. Odd that that should be what keeps us going, but there it is. We take our comforts where we may.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘There were two things. Demikhov will be back shortly, but I’d rather you were the first to know.’

  Dreyfus smiled through his misgivings. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Touch my fingers.’

  He reached down and placed his hand in contact with her own. ‘Can you feel anything?’

  ‘Yes – it’s faint, but not so faint as it was a week ago. A little better all the time, I think. This harness is starting to bother me below the neck, too, and that must be a good thing, because at least I can feel it. There’s something else, though. I did it for the first time this morning, but I want to be sure it isn’t my mind playing tricks. The mirrors can’t give me a good enough view to be certain.’

  ‘Certain of what?’

  ‘This, Tom.’ She drew a breath, relaxed her fingers, then closed them slowly around his own. ‘Open and shut.’