Aurora Rising

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Take the head,” Sparver said, “and put it in the containment vessel. Seal the lid. Then get yourself back to Panoply.”

  A large quantity of blood stained the gravel. It turned the stones shades of rust and pink, as if they were an expensive import. That said, there was less blood than she would have expected. The whiphound must have been doing something clever at the level of arteries and veins—a sort of surgery, rather than a quick, mindless decapitation. When the head rolled loose, she watched her own fingers scoop it up by the hair and place it neck down in the silver vessel. A head was a strange thing to hold, heavier than she had thought, and yet somehow not heavy enough.

  Then she put the lid back on the container and felt a faint scuttling going on inside as some sort of process was initiated.

  “Tell them to secure the body and freeze it,” Sparver said. “A Heavy Medical Squad will be here shortly. Tell them the emergency is over and they need have no fears for their own safety. Tell them Panoply thanks them for their cooperation.”

  Thalia did these things. It was her speaking, she knew it. But it might as well have been Sparver, pushing his words out through her mouth. The whiphound was cleaning itself, drawing its filament back in at a slower than usual rate.

  She was about to fix it back in the holster when she had second thoughts. It was a long way back to the cutter, and she would need to get there with a man’s head still in her possession.

  “Forward scout mode,” she said. “Ten-metre secure zone. Lethal force authorised. Proceed.”

  She said it loudly, as much for the crowd’s benefit as the whiphounds’.

  The second unit scooted ahead of her. It knew the way they had come, and it would make sure there were no surprises along the way. The first whiphound broke away from its circling cordon and established a moving barricade around Thalia, daring anyone to cross it. She marched forward, the vessel clunking against her thigh, now much heavier than before.

  No one stopped her.

  In another habitat, elsewhere in the Glitter Band, a hooded man watched from the edge of a gathering.

  He was glad of the rain misting down from the distant curved ceiling of the wheel-shaped world: it had given him licence to slip the hood over his head without appearing to seek anonymity. There were other hooded onlookers, as well as people under hats, ponchos or umbrellas. Their clothes were as drab as his own, dyed in natural shades of grey and brown.

  Modest, stone-built homes dotted a gentle hillside, with smoke curling up from their chimneys. A waterwheel turned next to a mill, and off in the distance two woodcutters were at work with manual saws, lopping the branches off a fallen tree trunk. Further away, farm labourers and harnessed animals were working terraced fields.

  The gathering was taking place in a gardened commons, on an area of land that jutted out into the millpond next to the waterwheel. There were footpaths and well-tended flowerbeds arranged around a collection of statues relating to significant historical events and figures from the birth of the Glitter Band. The speaker was leaning on one of these statues, standing on its plinth to gain some height over his audience. The statue was a kneeling figure, a young woman in an old-fashioned spacesuit, helmet at her feet, digging her fist into fruitless soil. Her face conveyed a mixture of desperation and determination, despair vying with strength.

  The speaker leaned against her with laconic disregard, one arm resting on her head. He was tall and thin of frame, his dark purple clothes of a simple but formal cut. A collarless jacket hung from his slender shoulders. He had not bothered with an umbrella, poncho or hood, but the rain glistened off his hair, upsetting the lavish wave of his blond curls. He was nearly sixty years old, but his features were smooth and unlined, with an unsettlingly boyish quality. His eyes were a very pale blue, touched with coldness. The only distinguishing mark was a pale vertical scar under the right eye, a blemish so easily removed that it could only have been a deliberate decision to retain it.

  Dreyfus studied the face with particular attentiveness. He had seen all the images of it he could ask for, but it was something else to commit it to memory with his own eyes. If it held even the tiniest clue as to the inner workings of the mind behind it, he was determined not to miss a detail.

  What the man had to say was almost incidental to the recordings of similar gatherings Dreyfus had consulted, and the flow of words varied little from one performance to the next.

  “Good people,” the man was saying—as he had done hundreds of times before, in hundreds of habitats. “Good citizens, people of Stonehollow. Two years ago you were all witness to the actions of Panoply, in response to the so-called Aurora crisis. You’ll have heard the official line: that an artificial intelligence exploited a subtle weakness in the security provisions of the Glitter Band, enabling it to gain control of the mass-manufacturing infrastructure, spewing out an infestation of self-replicating war machines. They’ll have led you to believe that the cost of our survival—the disarming of that threat—was the surgical destruction of forty-one habitats and the loss of more than two million human lives. They’ll tell you that as if it somehow excuses their actions, or even paints them in a flattering light. ‘Look at us, taking such momentous decisions in your interests! Look at the hard things we had to do.’ What they won’t tell you is those actions were only needed because of the lapses they made over many years and years, after all the trust we vested in them.” He was smiling as he spoke, beaming down at his audience, the tone of his address at odds with the indictment he’d made. “Make no mistake, though. You still haven’t been trusted with the truth. What was Aurora, exactly? They won’t say, despite the rumours. Nor will they offer any sort of explanation as to what became of that so-called artificial intelligence after the crisis was concluded. There’s a reason for their evasiveness, just as there’s a reason you won’t hear about the catalogue of blunders that caused the whole tragic affair. It suits them to have you think the whole terrible business was somehow sprung upon us without warning, and not something that could have been avoided, had their eyes been on the task given to them.”

  The words ought to have lost their sting by now. Panoply had been criticised before; this was nothing new. But Dreyfus knew the crisis had sprung out of a confluence of factors that could never have been anticipated. The shocking thing was not that the emergency had happened in the first place, but that it been contained with only a modest loss of life. And—although their numbers were small, compared to the civilian deaths—Panoply’s own operatives had been lost, including Dreyfus’s close colleagues.

  But all he could do now was listen.

  “Their failing cost millions of lives,” the man was saying. “And in their betrayal of that public trust, we see now that the entire institutional framework of the Glitter Band was never anything more than a confidence trick. The security we counted on was never there in the first place. We surrendered our sovereignty to the wisdom of Panoply and in return they left us bereft. Our shining democratic apparatus was a hall of mirrors, designed to blind us to the truth of our own powerlessness. But it needn’t be that way.” He allowed himself a significant pause, beaming out at the onlookers, adjusting his leaning posture against the statue of the Amerikano pioneer. Now his voice lowered, becoming confiding, inviting the nearest onlookers to pull closer. “Across the Glitter Band, a new consensus is dawning. Habitats don’t need Panoply. Panoply wouldn’t be there for them if they did! And so they choose autonomy. They are taking back control. Control to manage the affairs of their citizens in a way that suits their needs, not those of some distant, disconnected network of overseers. Nothing can stop them. Provided the citizens vote to secede, Panoply cannot deny them their wish. And so it has proven. In the last six months, eight habitats have already declared their independent status. The prefects can’t touch them. They can’t even step inside without an invitation! And has the sky fallen? Has the world ended? Not in the slightest. These habitats continue to thrive. They continue to trade—with the Glitter
Band, with Yellowstone and between themselves. Free movement of citizens and materials has not been endangered. Far from it, my friends—far from it.”

  Dreyfus felt his neck hairs bristle against the fabric of the hood collar. He had heard enough. The point had not been to listen to the words, but to get a clearer impression of the man speaking them.

  Devon Garlin was not the only figure associated with the breakaway movement, but he was by far the most influential and outspoken. Where Garlin went, dissent followed. His ideas took a toxic, ineradicable hold. Dreyfus had been tracking him throughout the whole breakaway crisis and he was in no doubt that Garlin’s presence and prominence was critical to the momentum of the whole affair. Something about this easy-going, affable figure pushed the citizenry to act against their own interests. It was Garlin who had taken the lead in turning public opinion against Panoply; Garlin who had publicised the legal and institutional loopholes that permitted habitats to secede from the Glitter Band without penalty.

  So far only eight had jumped. A manageable number, in Jane Aumonier’s view. Small habitats, for the most part, with low population loads. But Garlin was still moving from world to world, disseminating his views. Panoply, meanwhile, was keeping a close eye on the mood across the entire Glitter Band. About twenty more habitats—some of them quite large—were in open debate about whether or not to secede, and almost all of the others were at least aware of the possibility. Aumonier’s response was to wait and see what happened. Dreyfus was not so willing to stand back and let events take their course.

  Satisfied, if not exactly reassured, he was turning to make his way back to the shuttle dock when a change in Garlin’s tone snagged his attention.

  “Wait, friend—I’m not done yet. You wouldn’t want to miss the best bit, would you?”

  Dreyfus ought to have kept walking. Others had already begun to drift away from the gathering, so it was not as if he had called attention to himself just by leaving. He should have kept walking. Not slowly turned around to face Garlin, knowing he was the subject of the statement.

  Dreyfus said nothing. He looked over the heads of those before him to the man leaning on the statue.

  “The rain’s easing, friend. You can drop the hood.” The friendly tone of the words only brought out the steel beneath them. “Go on. There’s no need to be coy about your identity. I knew who you were from the moment you arrived.”

  Dreyfus left his hood up. He had hoped not to speak, because to do so would draw exactly the scrutiny he had meant to avoid. But Garlin had rendered his efforts futile.

  “I just came to hear you speak, like everyone else.”

  “Are you going to introduce yourself, friend?” There was a beat, no more than that, before Garlin continued. “I’ll do it for you. Good people, good citizens! This is Tom Dreyfus. Or should I say Prefect Dreyfus? He walks among us—Senior Prefect Tom Dreyfus of Panoply. One of the very men who brought us to the brink of disaster two years ago. I wonder why he’s so keen to preserve his anonymity?” Garlin let out a snigger. “You couldn’t have expected to pass unnoticed, Tom?”

  “I’m here as a civilian,” Dreyfus said, doing his best not to raise his voice, not to sound in any way perturbed. “I wanted to hear what you had to say.”

  “And what did you make of it, before some other business called you away?”

  “You make a very persuasive case.”

  There was a murmur of conversation from the onlookers, but only Garlin and Dreyfus were speaking at a normal volume. Dreyfus prickled under the attention, feeling cast in a role he had never asked for.

  “You see how it works now,” Garlin said, nodding out at his audience. “We’ve got them rattled. Rattled enough that they send out people like Dreyfus to mingle with us and attempt to undermine our efforts. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Tom?”

  “I told you why I was here. You call yourself the voice of the people, the spokesperson for the common citizen. Why shouldn’t I be interested?”

  “Is that all it is, just innocent interest?”

  Dreyfus looked around at his unwelcome audience. “Don’t allow yourselves to be taken in by him,” he said, addressing no one in particular but making eye contact with as many as possible. “He’s not the common man he makes out. His birth name was Julius Devon Garlin Voi—the wealthy son of Marlon and Aliya Voi. Ask him about the Shell House. He was raised in a private estate in Chasm City, not in the Glitter Band. He’s been pampered from the moment he was born. And now he wants to tear apart the very society that welcomed him with open arms, like a spoilt brat breaking his playthings.”

  Someone flicked down his hood and the last traces of the rain drizzled down against his scalp. Dreyfus turned again, showing no haste or anger, not even seeking eye contact with the person who had dropped his hood.

  “Let him leave,” Garlin said, pushing a false magnanimity into his words. “He’s within his rights. We won’t stop him doing as he chooses. We’re not the ones who fall back on force and intimidation in the face of our enemies. Nor are we the ones who say that a man must be defined by his origins.”

  Dreyfus began to walk away from the gathering. He had been near the back of the audience but there were still a few stragglers to push past. They moved out of his way, grudgingly. But he had only taken a few steps when something tripped him. It was sudden, and he hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. For a moment—probably no more than a second, although it felt longer—wet grass pushed into his face, prickling into his nose and eyes. He forced himself up. The ground here was scuffed and muddy, and his hands came away smeared with grass and soil. He had probably been tripped deliberately, but there was an outside chance it was just an accident.

  Dreyfus was pushing himself to his feet when Garlin bounded over, kneeling slightly to bring their faces level.

  “Let me help you up, Tom.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “You should watch your step. No one wants to see a prefect face-down in the grass like that.” Garlin braced a hand under Dreyfus’s elbow and made a theatrical show of grunting as he helped him up. “My, you’re heavy. I didn’t know they let prefects carry around so much weight.”

  Dreyfus wiped his hands on his knees, the fabric absorbing the stain into itself.

  “You and I aren’t done.”

  Cold blue eyes regarded Dreyfus carefully. Finally Garlin gave a nod. “I doubt very much that we are.”

  By Alastair Reynolds

  THE INHIBITOR TRILOGY

  Revelation Space

  Redemption Ark

  Absolution Gap

  Chasm City

  Century Rain

  Pushing Ice

  House of Suns

  THE PREFECT DREYFUS EMERGENCIES

  Aurora Rising (formerly The Prefect)

  Elysium Fire

  THE REVENGER SERIES

  Revenger

  Shadow Captain

  Bone Silence

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days

  Galactic North

  Praise for Alastair Reynolds

  “This is solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carré and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Aurora Rising

  “[A] magnificently imagined world.”

  —Booklist on Aurora Rising

  “A thrilling, mind-boggling adventure.”

  —The Times (UK) on House of Suns

  “Spectacular.… [Reynolds] has a genius for big-concept SF and fans of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and Larry Niven’s Ringworld will love this novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Pushing Ice

  “A darkly brilliant love story set in worlds we think we know but don’t.”

  —The Guardian (UK) on Century Rain

  “A tightly written story that spirals inevitably inwards toward its powerful conclusion. [Chasm City] confirms Reynolds as the most exciting space opera
writer working today.”

  —Locus on Chasm City

  “Clearly one of the year’s major science fiction novels.… The book Reynolds’s readers have been waiting for.”

  —Locus on Redemption Ark

  “[A] tour de force.… Ravishingly inventive.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Revelation Space

  “An adroit and fast-paced blend of space opera and police procedural, original and exciting, teeming with cool stfnal concepts. A real page turner. The prefect of the title is sort of a space cop, Sipowicz in a space suit, or maybe Dirty Harry with a whiphound.”

  —George R. R. Martin on The Prefect

  “[Reynolds is] one of the most gifted hard SF writers working today.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Beyond the Aquila Rift

  “[Reynolds is] a mastersinger of the space opera.”

  —The Times on Blue Remembered Earth

  “A swashbuckling thriller—Pirates of the Caribbean meets Firefly—that nevertheless combines the author’s trademark hard SF with effective, coming-of-age characterization.”

  —Guardian on Revenger

  “Revenger is classic Reynolds—that is to say, top-of-the-line science fiction, where characters are matched beautifully with ideas and have to find their place in a complex future. More!”

  —Greg Bear

  “A leading light of the New Space Opera movement in science fiction.”

  —Los Angeles Review of Books

  “A fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural, and character study.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Prefect

  “One of the giants of the new British space opera.”

  —io9

  “It’s grand, involving and full of light and wonder. Poseidon’s Wake is one of the best sci-fi novels of the year.”

  —SciFiNow