Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "But you're human. It's not a crime, Prefect. I'm sorry I prejudged you."

  "You weren't to know."

  Delphine took a deep breath, as if she was preparing to submerge herself underwater. "I made a promise. You've told me something personal, and now you want to know about my reasons for working on the Lascaille series. I'll do my best to explain, but I think you're going to be disappointed. There was no blinding flash when I woke up one day and realised I had to devote myself to his story."

  "But something happened."

  "I just felt this thing building up inside me, like a kind of pressure trying to force its way out. It was like an itch I couldn't scratch, until I'd told Philip's side of events."

  "How familiar were you with the story?"

  Delphine looked equivocal, as if this was a question she'd never really asked herself. "As familiar as anyone, I suppose. I'd heard of him, I knew something of what had happened — "

  "But was there a defining moment when you realised you had to tackle him? Did you see a reference to him, hear something about the Sylveste family or the Shrouds?"

  "No, nothing like that." She paused and something flashed in her eyes. "But there was that day. I was working in the habitat, cutting rock in my vacuum atelier. I was suited, of course — the heat from the plasma torches would have killed me even if there'd been air to breathe. I was directing the cutting servitors, working on a completely unrelated composition. Imagine a conductor standing before an orchestra. Then think of the musicians shaping solid rock with plasma-fire and atomic-scale cutting tools instead of making music with traditional instruments. That was what it felt like: I only had to imagine a shape or texture and my implants would steer the machines to do my bidding. It became a near unconscious process, dreaming rock into art."

  "And then?"

  "I pulled back from the piece I was working on and realised that I'd been taking it in a direction I hadn't intended. The face wasn't supposed to be anyone in particular, but now it reminded me of someone. Once I'd made that connection, I knew my subconscious was pushing me towards Philip Lascaille as subject matter."

  "Beyond that, though, you can't explain why you focused on him?"

  Delphine looked apologetic. "I wish I could rationalise it. But as I'm sure your wife would have agreed, art doesn't work that way. Some days we just tap into something inexplicable."

  "I appreciate your honesty."

  "Does this invalidate your theory that someone took offence at my art?"

  "Not necessarily. You might have provoked something without meaning to. But I admit it's difficult to see how merely referencing Philip Lascaille would have been enough to push someone to mass murder." Dreyfus straightened — he'd been getting stiff in the back. "All the same, the crime happened. I think I have enough to be going on with for now, Delphine. Thank you for your time."

  "What's your next move?"

  "One of my deputies — you met her — is working on backtracking the incoming call to your habitat. When I have a result from her, I'll see where it leads."

  "I'm curious to know the outcome."

  "I'll make sure you hear about it."

  "Prefect, before you turn me off again — would you reconsider my earlier request? I'd like to be able to talk to Vernon."

  "I can't risk cross-contamination."

  "Neither of us has anything to hide from you. I've told you everything I know."

  "I'm sorry, but I just can't take the risk."

  "Prefect, there's something you need to understand about us. When you turn me off, I don't have any existence."

  "That's because your simulation undergoes no state changes between episodes of invocation."

  "I know — when you switch me back on again, I remember nothing except our last meeting. But I can tell you this: I still feel as if I've been somewhere else." She looked him hard in the eyes, daring him to look away. "And wherever it is, it's a cold and lonely place."

  * * *

  A message from Thalia awaited him when he turned his bracelet on again. He called her back.

  "I see you're en route. How are things going?"

  Her response returned with no detectable timelag. "Well enough, sir. I've finished the first installation."

  "All went smoothly?"

  "Couple of hiccups, but they're up and running now."

  "In other words, one hole closed, three to go. You're ahead of schedule, I see."

  "In all honesty, sir, I don't expect any of these upgrades to need all the time I allocated. But I thought it was better to be safe than sorry."

  "Very wise of you."

  After a pause, Thalia said, "I guess you're wondering about the network analysis, sir?"

  "I don't suppose you've made any progress?" he asked, his tone hopeful.

  "The snapshots you sent through were all I needed. I might even have a lead for you. Assuming that the stated time for the incoming transmission to the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble was correct to within twenty minutes, I see only one likely candidate for the network router that would have handled that data traffic."

  "Which would be?"

  "It's nowhere you're likely to have heard of, sir. Just a free-floating network router named Vanguard Six. Basically it's nothing more than a boulder floating in the Glitter Band, with an automated signal-forwarding station built into it."

  He made a mental note of the name. "And you think this router will have kept a record of traffic it handled?"

  "Enough to tell you where the message originated, sir. Even if that point of origin turns out to be another router, you should still be able to keep backtracking it until you reach the original sender. It would be unusual for a message to pass through more than two or three relay stages."

  "Sparver should be able to handle the technical issues. It can't be done remotely, can it?"

  "No, sir. Someone needs to be physically present. But you're right — Sparver will know exactly what to do."

  "I'm sure he will," Dreyfus said.

  Without another word he closed the connection and prepared to rouse his other deputy.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  They did not look like people at all, but rather luminous pink branching coral formations, vast, dendritic and mysteriously chambered. For many seconds, Gaffney stared in mesmerised fascination at the three-dimensional patterns, awed at what he was seeing. If human souls could be frozen and captured in light, they would look something like this. Now that the flesh-and-blood individuals were deceased, and since none of the three had subjected themselves to alpha-level scanning, these beta-levels represented the last link with the living as far as Vernon Tregent, Anthony Theobald and Delphine Ruskin-Sartorious were concerned.

  Panoply might not regard beta-levels as anything other than forensic information, akin to photographs or bloodstains, but Gaffney was more open-minded. He didn't hold with the orthodox view that only alpha-level simulations were to be accorded full human rights. The exterior effect was the only thing that mattered, not what was going on behind the mask. That was why it did not unduly concern him that he did not know exactly what Aurora was. So she might be a machine, rather than a living person. So what? What mattered was her compassion, her evident concern for the well-being of the hundred million souls orbiting Yellowstone.

  He'd had his doubts at first, of course.

  She had come to him five years earlier, four years after he'd been promoted to head of Panoply's Internal Security division. He'd been a senior for years before that, and an outstanding field for as long again. He'd given his life to Panoply, and asked for nothing in return except the assurance that his colleagues cared about their duties as much as he did. He had invested his own identity in the idea of service, eschewing marriage and social relationships in preference to a life of disciplinary self-control. He lived and breathed the ideals of Panoply, the martial life of a career prefect. He didn't just accept the sacrifices of his profession, he welcomed them.

  B
ut then something had happened that caused Gaffney to question the worth of Panoply, and by inference his own fitness as a human being. He had been sent to investigate possible voting anomalies in a habitat known as Hell-Five. It was a strange world, built around a perfect hemisphere of rock, as if a round asteroid had been sliced in two. Airtight structures rose up from both the flat face and the underlying pole, densely packed skyscrapers wrapped in coiling pressurised passageways. Once, Hell-Five had been a gambler's paradise, before the fashion for such things waned. It had moved through several social models after that, each less remunerative than the last, before settling on the one Gaffney had witnessed during his visit. Within months of assuming its new identity, Hell-Five had become a dazzling success, with other habitats paying handsomely to access its lucrative new export.

  That export was human misery.

  Once a month, one of the habitat's extremely wealthy citizens was selected at random. That unfortunate individual would be tortured, their excruciation prolonged via medical intervention until they eventually succumbed to death. Money flowed into Hell-Five's coffers via the sale of viewing rights and the fact that the citizens of other habitats could sponsor a particular mode of torture, often after a series of escalating auctions.

  The system sickened Gaffney to the marrow. He'd observed many extremes of human society in his tours of the Glitter Band, but nothing to compare with the depravities of Hell-Five. One glimpse of one of the victims-in-progress had sent him reeling. He had experienced a deep-seated conviction that Hell-Five was simply wrong; a social abomination that needed to be corrected, if not wiped out of existence.

  But Panoply — and therefore Gaffney himself — could do nothing to curtail it. Panoply was concerned only with matters of security and voting rights as they pertained to the Glitter Band as a whole. What went on inside a given habitat — provided those activities did not contravene technological or weapons moratoriums, or deny citizens free voting rights — was entirely outside Panoply's jurisdiction; a matter for local constabulary alone.

  By these criteria, Hell-Five had done nothing wrong.

  Gaffney found himself unable to accept this state of affairs. The phenomenon of the torture states, and the citizens' collective refusal to see them ended, showed that the people could not be trusted with absolute freedom. Nor could Panoply be trusted to step in when a moral cancer began to spread through the Glitter Band.

  Gaffney saw then that something had to be done. Too much power had been devolved to the habitats. For their own safety, central government needed to be reasserted. The citizens would never vote for that, of course; even the moderate states were wary of ceding too much authority to an organisation like Panoply. But needs must, no matter how unwilling the populace. Children were playing with some very sharp knives: it was a wonder more blood hadn't already been spilled.

  Gaffney had begun to express his thoughts in his personal journal. It was a way of clarifying and organising his precepts. He saw that Panoply had to change — perhaps even cease to exist — if the people were not to be abandoned to their own worst natures. He was aware that his ideas were heretical; that they cut against everything Sandra Voi's name had stood for these past two hundred years. But history was not made by reasonable or cautious individuals. Sandra Voi had hardy been cautious or reasonable herself.

  Aurora had revealed herself to him soon after.

  "You're a good man, Sheridan. Yet you feel beleaguered, as if all those around you have forgotten their true responsibilities."

  Gaffney had blinked at the sudden appearance of the face on his private security pane. "Who are you?"

  "A fellow sympathiser. A friend, if you wish."

  He was inside Panoply. If she was reaching him, then she had to be inside as well. But he knew even then that she was not, and that Aurora had powers of infiltration and stealth that made a mockery of walls and doors, whether real or virtual. If she was a beta- or gamma-level, she was cleverer and more agile than most.

  "Are you human?"

  The question had clearly amused her. "Does it really matter what I am, provided we share the same ideals?"

  "My ideals are my own business."

  "Not now they aren't. I've seen your words, shared your theories." She nodded in answer to the question he'd barely begun to frame. "Yes, I've looked into your private journals. Don't be shocked, Sheridan. There is nothing shaming about them. Quite the contrary. I found them courageous. You are that rarest of creatures: a man with the wisdom to see beyond his own time."

  "I'm a prefect. It's my job to think about the future."

  "But some people are better at it than others. You are a seer, Sheridan: much like myself. We just use different methods. Your policeman's instincts tell you that Hell-Five is a symptom, a diagnostic of a looming pathology that may tax even Panoply's resources. I see the future through a different lens, but I perceive the same ominous patterns, the same subtle indications of times of great crisis to come."

  "What do you see?"

  "The end of everything, Sheridan. Unless brave men take the right action now to avert that catastrophe." She had looked at him testingly, like a teacher judging a bright but wayward pupil. "The words in your journal show that you care. But caring is not enough. Words must become deeds."

  "I'm doing what I can. When my ideas are finalised, I can approach the other seniors — "

  "And have them drum you out of the organisation?"

  "If I could only express myself properly — "

  "It'll make no difference. You're advocating authoritarian control. You know it is the right thing to do, but to most people the very idea is poison."

  "It doesn't have to be like that."

  "Of course it doesn't. You see that, just as you feel it in your heart. Authoritarian control can also be a form of kindness, like a mother hugging an infant to her breast to stop it thrashing and wailing. But no amount of rational persuasion will convince the populace. They must simply be shown."

  "Then it'll never happen. Even if Panoply had the will, it'd never have the power to seize the Glitter Band. The citizenry won't even let us carry guns!"

  "There are other ways of asserting control, Sheridan. It doesn't have to involve prefects storming every habitat in the ten thousand and declaring a new regime."

  "How, then?"

  "It can happen between one moment and the next, if the right preparations are made."

  "I don't follow."

  "For a long time I've been thinking along similar lines to yourself. After much deliberation, I've concluded that the transition to central authority must happen instantly, before there is a possibility of panic and counter-reaction."

  "The means don't exist," he told her.

  "But what if we arranged things such that they do?"

  "They'd notice our preparations."

  "Not if we are better than them. That's no problem. Between the two of us, Sheridan, I think we can be very good indeed."

  Years after that first conversation with Aurora, Gaffney found himself thinking of all the preparations they had made, all the perils and impediments they had overcome. The thing that struck him, given all that he now knew, was how Aurora had never once uttered an actual untruth. She had not needed to tell him about her own visions of the future, but she had done so nonetheless. And as their relationship deepened, as the bonds of conspiracy grew thicker and more tangled, so she had allowed him to learn the true nature of that lens of which she had first spoken: the machine called Exordium, and the unwilling sleepers who on her behalf peered into its misty depths and reported what they saw. He had even walked amongst them, privy to a secret that would have ripped the system wide open had it become known. He felt sorry for those dreaming prisoners. But what they were doing was a beautiful, necessary thing.

  History would thank them.

  Hell-Five had shown Gaffney that the very nature of the Glitter Band embodied the seed of its own destruction. But Aurora had sucked information out of the future and seen
the end itself: not as some vague, ill-determined catastrophe, but a specific event that could almost be tied down to a specific date.

  A time of plague. A time of corruption and foulness.

  It was coming and there was nowhere to hide.

  But between them they had done something: perhaps not enough to avert the crisis, but at least to deflect some of its impact when it arrived. In a very short while, the Glitter Band would be relieved of the burden of self-determination.

  This, Gaffney knew, was the time of the most acute risk. He had taken care of almost everything. But the one thing that might create difficulties for Aurora had still not been neutralised. Now he was also confronted with the thorny issues of the beta-levels. Gaffney had hoped that none would survive the attack, and that any backed-up copies retrieved from other habitats would be too out-of-sync to point Dreyfus towards the truth.

  But Dreyfus was on to something.

  Gaffney had accessed the logs concerning the other prefect's usage of the Search Turbines. The man was showing an unhealthy interest in the details of Delphine's art, as if he instinctively knew that there was more to the habitat's demise than met the eye. Dreyfus might not be aware of the Clockmaker connection, but given the man's demonstrated resourcefulness, it might only be a matter of time before he found a link.

  So he had to be impeded.

  Gaffney's hands moved to initiate the command he had already composed. From elsewhere in the data troves laid open for his inspection, he retrieved a slow-acting, high-stealth cybervirus. The software weapon was ancient and wouldn't stand a chance against a properly shielded installation. But the beta-levels were a different matter.

  He threaded copies of the virus into their architectures at a level that would withstand superficial scrutiny. For now it did nothing. It was dormant, waiting until it was called into action.

  Waiting until the witnesses were resurrected from the dead again.

  * * *

  Sparver was blowing his upturned, flat-ended nose into his sleeve while Dreyfus poured tea. His hyperpig respiratory system liked the air on cutters even less than Dreyfus' did.