Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "If it doesn't build in time?"

  "The core will default to safe mode. It'll need more than a six-hundred-second pad to unlock it then. You could be down for days, with the way Panoply's tied up at the moment."

  "Losing abstraction for five minutes will cost us dearly."

  "I wish there was some other way. But I really need to start that build."

  "Then do whatever you must."

  "Do you wish to warn the citizens?" Thalia asked.

  "It wouldn't help them. Or me, for that matter." His voice turned stern. "Begin, Prefect. Get this over with."

  Thalia nodded and told the polling core to commence the build. "Abstraction will be interrupted in ten seconds," the pillar informed her. "Predicted resumption in three hundred and forty seconds."

  "Time on window."

  "Access window will close in three hundred and forty-four seconds."

  "You like to cut it fine," Newkirk said.

  Thalia made to respond, but even as she was opening her mouth she saw that there would be no point. The man's face had frozen into mask-like stiffness, his eyes no longer quivering in their sockets. He looked dead; or rather he had become the dead stone bust he had always resembled.

  They would all be like that, Thalia realised. All one million, two hundred and seventy four thousand, six hundred and eighteen people inside Carousel New Seattle-Tacoma would now be in a state of limbo, severed from the realm of abstract reality that for them was the entire meaningful world. Just from looking at Newkirk, she knew that there was no consciousness going on inside his skull. If his mind could be said to exist at all, it was somewhere else, locked out, knocking on a door that would remain resolutely shut for another five minutes.

  Thalia was utterly alone in a room containing more than a million other people.

  "Give me an update," she queried.

  "Rebuild is proceeding on schedule. Estimated time to resumption of abstraction is now two hundred and ninety seconds."

  Thalia clenched her fists. It was going to be the longest three minutes of her life.

  * * *

  "Sorry to bother you again," Dreyfus said as the beta-level copy of Delphine Ruskin-Sartorious resumed existence in the interview suite, "but I wondered if you wouldn't mind answering a few more questions."

  "I'm at your disposal, as you've already made abundantly clear."

  Dreyfus smiled briefly. "Let's not make this any harder than it has to be, Delphine. We may not agree on the sanctity of beta-level simulation, but we both agree a crime's been committed. I need your help to get to the bottom of it."

  She had her arms crossed before her, silver bracelets hanging from her wrists. "Which will inevitably lead us back to the vexed question of my art, I suppose."

  "Something made someone angry enough to destroy your habitat," Dreyfus went on. "Your art may have been a factor in that."

  "We're back to the jealousy thing."

  "I'm wondering if it was more than that. You may have strayed into a politically sensitive area when you picked Philip Lascaille as your subject matter."

  "I'm not sure I follow you."

  "Don't take this the wrong way, but I looked at your history as an artist and until recently you were keeping something of a low profile. Then suddenly — well, I won't say you became an overnight celebrity, but all of a sudden your work was being talked about, and your pieces were starting to sell for more than just small change."

  "These things happen. It's why we keep struggling."

  "All the same, it appears that your work started attracting attention from about the time you began work on the Lascaille series."

  Delphine shrugged, giving nothing away. "I've worked on many thematic sequences. This is just the most recent one."

  "But it's the one that got people looking at your work, Delphine. For one reason or another, something happened. Why did you settle on Lascaille for your subject matter?"

  "I'm not sure where you're going with this, Prefect. Lascaille and everything that happened to him is part of our shared history. There are already a million works of art inspired by his visit to the Shroud. Is it any great surprise that I have incorporated a tragic and familiar figurehead into my own?"

  Dreyfus made an equivocal face. "But it was a long time ago, Delphine. We're going back to the time of the Eighty. Those wounds healed years ago."

  "Doesn't mean there isn't still resonance in the theme," she countered.

  "I don't deny it. But has it occurred to you that you might have raked over some ground that was better left undisturbed?"

  "With Lascaille?"

  "Why not? The man came back a lunatic. He was barely capable of feeding himself. Word is he drowned himself in the Sylveste Institute for Shrouder Studies. That made some of the other organisations with an interest in the Shrouders very unhappy. They'd long wanted to get their own hands on Lascaille, so that they could look into his skull and see what the hell had happened to him. Then word got out that he'd drowned himself in an ornamental fish pond."

  "He was more than likely suicidal. You're not suggesting someone murdered him?"

  "Only that his dying didn't look good for House Sylveste."

  "So what you're saying is — let me get this right — someone killed me and my family, not to mention my entire habitat, because I had the temerity to refer to Philip Lascaille in my art?"

  "It's a theory. If someone connected to the Sylveste family perceived your art as a veiled critique of their actions, they might well have considered retaliation."

  "But why not just kill me, if I made them so angry?"

  "I don't know," Dreyfus admitted. "But it would help if I knew that you really hadn't intended that work to embarrass the Sylvestes."

  "Would that have been a crime, if I had?"

  "No, but if you'd intended the art to provoke a response, it wouldn't be too surprising that you got one."

  "I can't speculate on the motives of the Sylveste family."

  "But you can tell me why you picked Lascaille."

  She looked at him witheringly, as if she'd only just appreciated his true worth. "You think it's that easy? You think I can articulate my reasons for choosing that subject matter as if it was no more complicated or involved than picking the colour of a chair?"

  "I'm not saying — "

  "You've precious little insight into the artistic process, Prefect. It's a shame; I pity you. You must see the world in such drab, mechanistic terms. What a crushing, regimented, soullessly predictable universe you must inhabit. Art — anything that can't be described in strictly procedural terms — is utterly alien to you, isn't it?"

  "I knew my wife," Dreyfus said quietly.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "She was an artist."

  Delphine looked at him for long moments, her expression softening. "What happened to her?" she asked.

  "She died."

  "I'm sorry," Delphine said, Dreyfus hearing genuine remorse in her voice. "What I just said to you — that was cruel and unnecessary."

  "You were right, though. I've no artistic side. But I spent enough time with my wife to understand something of the creative process."

  "Do you want to tell me what happened to her?"

  Dreyfus shot her a steely smile. "Quid pro quo is the phrase, I believe."

  "I don't need to know about your wife. But you do need to know about my art."

  "You're curious, though. I can tell."

  She breathed out through her nose, looking down it at him. "Tell me what kind of an artist she was."

  "Valery wasn't exceptionally talented," Dreyfus said. "She discovered that early enough in her career for it not to cause her too much grief and disappointment when she brushed against real genius. But she still wanted to find a way to make art her vocation."

  "And?"

  "She succeeded. Valery became interested in art created by machine intelligences. Her mission was to prove that it was as valid as purely human art; that there wasn't some essential creative spa
rk that required the input of a flesh-and-blood mind."

  "That's reassuring, given that I'm no longer a flesh-and-blood intelligence myself."

  "Valery would have insisted that your art be taken just as seriously now as when you were alive. But she wasn't so much interested in what beta-level simulations could produce as she was in art created by intelligences that had no human antecedents. That was what took her to SIAM."

  "That rings a bell."

  "The Sylveste Institute for Artificial Mentation."

  "That family again."

  "Yes, they do tend to crop up."

  "What did they want with your wife, Prefect Dreyfus?"

  "In SIAM they were building experimental machine intelligences based on a raft of different neural architectures. Valery was assigned to the Laboratory for Cognitive Studies, a department within SIAM. Her function was to evaluate the creative potential of these new minds, with the goal of creating a generation of gamma-level intelligences with the ability to solve problems by intuitive breakthrough, rather than step-by-step analysis. In essence, they wanted to create gamma-levels that were not only capable of passing the standard Turing tests, but which had the potential for intuitive thinking." Dreyfus touched a finger to his upper lip. "Valery tried to coax these machines into making art. To one degree or another, she usually got something out of them. But it was more like children daubing paint with their fingers than true creative expression. Valery began to despair of finding anything with an artistic impulse. Then she was introduced to a new machine."

  "Wait a minute," Delphine said, uncrossing her arms. "I knew I'd heard of SIAM before. Wasn't that where the Clockmaker happened?"

  Dreyfus nodded. "That was the machine. Its origin was obscure: there was secrecy and interdepartmental rivalry within SIAM, as in any organisation of that nature. What was clear was this: someone had created an artificial mind unlike anything that had gone before. Not just a brain in a bottle, but an autonomous robotic entity with the ability to move and interact with its surroundings. By the time my wife got to see it, it was already making things. Toys. Puzzles. Little ornaments and objets d'art. Clocks and musical boxes. Soon it started making more clocks than anything else."

  "Did you know about it at the time?"

  "Only through what my wife told me. I expressed concern. The Clockmaker's ability to manipulate its surroundings and alter its own structure suggested a robot embodying advanced replicating technology, the kind of thing Panoply was supposed to police."

  "What did Valery say?"

  "She told me not to worry. As far as she was concerned, the Clockmaker was no more dangerous than a child eager to please. I told her I hoped it wouldn't throw a temper tantrum."

  "You sensed the possibilities."

  "No one knew where the thing had come from, or who was responsible for creating it."

  "You were right to be worried."

  "One day it made something evil. Clock number two hundred and fourteen looked no different from a dozen that had preceded it. Valery wasn't the one who found it. It was another SIAM researcher, a woman named Krafft. At twelve fifty-eight in the morning she picked up the clock, preparing to carry it back to the analysis area. She was still on her way when the clock struck thirteen. A spring-loaded barb rammed out of the dial, pushing its way into Krafft's chest. It penetrated her ribs and stabbed her in the heart. She died instantly."

  Delphine shuddered. "That was when it began."

  "We lost contact with SIAM at thirteen twenty-six, less than half an hour after the discovery of clock number two hundred and fourteen. The last clear message was that something was loose, killing or maiming people wherever it encountered them. Yet all the while it found time to stop and make clocks. It would absorb materials into itself, into the flickering wall of its body, and spew out ticking clocks a few seconds later."

  "I have to ask — what happened to your wife? Did the Clockmaker kill her?"

  "No," Dreyfus said. "That wasn't how she died. I know because a team of prefects entered SIAM within an hour of the start of the crisis. They established contact with a group of researchers holed up in a different section of the facility. They'd managed to contain the Clockmaker behind emergency decompression barriers, sealing it into one half of the habitat. My wife was one of the survivors, but the prefects couldn't reach them, or arrange for their evacuation. Instead they concentrated on neutralising the Clockmaker and gathering its artefacts for further study. Jane Aumonier was the only one of those prefects to make it out alive. She was also the only one to survive a direct encounter with the entity."

  "Jane Aumonier?"

  "My boss: the supreme prefect. She was still alive when we got to her, but the Clockmaker had attached something to her neck. It had told her that the device would kill her if anyone attempted to remove it. That wasn't all, though. The prefects had sixty minutes to get Jane back to Panoply and into a weightless sphere. When that sixty minutes was up, the device would execute her if anyone — and almost anything — came within seven and a half metres of her."

  "That's horrific."

  "That wasn't the end of it. The scarab — that's what we came to call the device — won't allow her to sleep. It's not that it's keeping her awake artificially. Her body's screaming for sleep. But if the scarab detects unconsciousness, it'll kill her. Drugs have kept Jane in a state of permanent consciousness for eleven years."

  "There must be something you can do for her. All the resources of this place, of the entire Glitter Band — "

  "Count for nothing against the ingenuity of the Clockmaker. Which isn't to say that there aren't good men and women spending every waking minute of their lives trying to find a way to relieve Jane of her torment." Dreyfus offered a pragmatic shrug. "We'll get it off her one way or another. But we'll have to be certain of success before we attempt it. The scarab won't give us a second chance."

  "I'm sorry about your boss. But you still haven't told me what happened to your wife. If she was isolated from the Clockmaker — "

  "After we got Jane out, we knew there was no point sending in more prefects. They'd have been butchered or worse. And the Clockmaker was beginning to break down the barricades. It was only a matter of time before it had free run of SIAM. From there, given its speed and cleverness, it might have been able to hop to another habitat, somewhere with millions of citizens."

  "You couldn't take that chance."

  "Albert Dusollier — supreme prefect at the time — took the decision to nuke SIAM. It was the only way to ensure that the Clockmaker didn't get loose."

  Delphine nodded slowly. "I remember they destroyed it. I didn't realise there were still people inside."

  "There was never any cover-up. It's just that most of the reports dwelled on what had been prevented, not on the costs of the action."

  "Were you there when it happened?"

  He shook his head automatically. "No. I was on the other side of the Glitter Band when the crisis broke. I started making my way there as quickly as possible, hoping that there'd be a way to get a message through to Valery. I didn't make it in time, though. I saw the flash when they destroyed SIAM."

  "That must have been very difficult for you."

  "At least the Clockmaker didn't have time to get to Valery."

  "I'm sorry about your wife, Prefect. I'd like to have met her. It sounds as if we'd have found a great deal to talk about."

  "I'm sure you would have."

  After a moment, Delphine said, "I remember the name Dusollier now. Didn't something happen to him after the crisis?"

  "Three days later he was found dead in his quarters. He'd used a whiphound on himself, set to sword mode."

  "He couldn't live with what he'd done?"

  "So it would appear."

  "But surely he'd had no choice. He would have needed to poll the citizenry to be able to use those nukes in the first place. He'd have had the will of the people behind him."

  "It obviously wasn't enough for him."

  "Th
ere was no explanation, no suicide note?"

  Dreyfus hesitated. There had been a note. He'd even read it himself, using Pangolin privilege.

  We made a mistake. We shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry for what we did to those people. God help them all.

  "There was no note," he told Delphine. There was no note, just as there was no anomalous six-hour timelag between the rescue of Jane Aumonier and the destruction of SIAM. There was no timelag, just as there was no inexplicable connection with the mothballed spacecraft Atalanta, moved from its prior orbit to a position very near SIAM at exactly the time of the crisis.

  There were no mysteries. Everything was accounted for.

  "I still don't understand why the man killed himself," Delphine said.

  Dreyfus shrugged. "He couldn't forgive himself for what he'd done."

  "Even though it was absolutely the only right thing to do?"

  "Even though."

  Delphine appeared to reflect on his words before speaking again. "Was there a beta-level copy of your wife?"

  "No," Dreyfus said.

  "Why not?"

  "Valery didn't believe in them. She refused to accept that a beta-level simulation could be anything other than a walking, talking shell. It might look and sound like her, it might mimic her responses to a high degree of accuracy, but it wouldn't be her on the inside. It wouldn't have an interior life."

  "And you believe the same thing, because it's what your wife believed."

  Dreyfus offered his palms in surrender. "I'm sorry. That's just the way it is."

  "Did your wife ever consider alpha-level simulation?"

  "She'd have had no philosophical objection to it. But my wife and I grew up in the shadow of the Eighty. I know the methods have improved since then, but there are still risks and uncertainties."

  "I understand now why you have a problem with the likes of me." Delphine blunted the harshness of the remark with a sympathetic smile. "And I'm not angry. You lost someone dear to you. To admit that I have some claim on consciousness would be to repudiate Valery's beliefs."

  Dreyfus made a self-deprecatory gesture. "Trust me, I'm not that complicated."