Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "That bird of yours can still fly, even when it's twitching like that?" asked Thalia.

  "It'll manage. It's adapting already." The mechanical owl turned its dish-like face to look at Cuthbertson. "Aren't you, boy?"

  "I'm an excellent bird."

  "So that's three of us," Thalia said. "Not counting the owl. That's a good number. If we encounter trouble, we shouldn't be too conspicuous."

  "I'm coming, too," said Caillebot. "If there's anyone who knows the layout of the parks and gardens in this cylinder, it's me."

  "You can count me in as well," said Meriel Redon.

  "You sure?" Thalia asked. "You'll be safe and sound up here until the back-up squad arrives."

  "I've made my mind up. I've never been one for sitting around when I could be walking. Makes me nervous."

  Thalia nodded heavily. "I think five is the limit, folks. Any more and we'll be slower than we need to be. The rest of you can sit tight and wait until abstraction comes back up."

  "Are you issuing orders now?" Paula Thory asked.

  Thalia thought about it for an instant. "Yes," she said. "Looks like I am. So start dealing with it, lady."

  * * *

  Dreyfus absorbed the truth of the Conjoiner's revelations, convinced in his heart that she had no reason to lie. "I think I know who Aurora is," he said slowly. "But she shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be anywhere. She should have died — she should have ended — fifty-five years ago."

  "Who is she?"

  "Unless someone else is using the same name, we're dealing with a dead girl. One of the Eighty, the group of human volunteers who took part in Calvin Sylveste's immortality experiments. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

  "Of course. We learned of those experiments with horror and dismay. His methods were conceptually flawed. Failure was inevitable."

  "Except maybe it wasn't," Dreyfus said, "because Aurora Nerval-Lermontov appears to be very much with us. At least one of the Transmigrants must have persisted, despite what the records say."

  "You have no evidence of this."

  "I know that her family owned this rock." By way of an afterthought, he added, "Do you think you're ready to trust me yet?"

  "Turn around," she said after due consideration. "I have released my hold on your suit. Your communication functions are still disabled."

  He turned to look at her. She was wearing a suit herself, but of Conjoiner design. It had the glossy sheen of something moulded from luxury chocolate. For a moment he was looking at a featureless black oval instead of a head. Then her helmet melted back into the ruff-like collar of the neck ring.

  He saw her face.

  He'd seen stranger things in the Glitter Band. There was very little about her that wasn't baseline human, at first glance. She was a woman of uncertain age — he'd have said forty or so, except that he knew she was probably much older than that, because Conjoiners were as long-lived as any human splinter faction. Piercingly intelligent eyes, coloured a very pale green; wide, freckled cheekbones; a jaw that some might have considered too strong, but which was actually exactly in proportion with the rest of her face. She was bald, the top of her skull rising to a sharp mottled ridge that began halfway up her brow, betraying the enlarged cranial cavity she must have needed for her supercharged, machine-clotted brain.

  That was where her true strangeness lay: beneath the skin, beneath the bone. The people in the wilder habitats might employ Mixmasters to sculpt themselves into exotic forms, but they seldom did anything to the functional architecture of their minds. Even the people who were wired into extreme levels of abstraction were still human in the way they processed the data entering their brains. That couldn't be said for the Conjoiner woman. She might be able to emulate human consciousness when it suited her, but her natural state of mind was something Dreyfus would never be able to grasp, any more than a horse could grasp algebra.

  "Do you want to tell me your name?" Dreyfus asked.

  "For your purposes I will call myself Clepsydra. If this is problematic for you, you may call me Waterclock, or simply Clock."

  "You sound as if that isn't your real name."

  "My real name would split your mind open like wood under an axe."

  "Clepsydra it is, then. What exactly are you doing here, assuming you're ready to tell me?"

  "Surviving. That has been enough, lately."

  "Tell me about this ship. What's it doing here? What use is it to Aurora?"

  "Our ship returned to this system nearly fifty years ago. We were experiencing difficulties. We'd encountered something in deep interstellar space: a machine-like entity of hostile nature. The ship had survived by sloughing part of itself, in the manner of a lizard shedding its tail. On the long return journey it had reorganised itself as best as it could, but it was still damaged. We were attempting to make contact with the Mother Nest, but our communications systems were not functioning properly." Clepsydra swallowed, a gesture that all of a sudden made her look helplessly human. "Aurora found us first. She lured us in with promises of help and then swallowed us inside this place. We have been inside it ever since: unable to escape, unable to contact the Nest."

  "That still doesn't tell me what Aurora wanted of you."

  "That is more difficult to explain."

  "Try me."

  "Aurora wanted us to dream, Prefect. That is why she — why it — kept us here. Aurora made us dream the future. She desired our intelligence concerning future events. We prognosticated. And when we saw something in our prognostications that she didn't like, Aurora punished us."

  "No one can dream the future."

  "We can," Clepsydra said blithely. "We have a machine that lets us. We call it Exordium."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  Thalia's walking party made their way to the elevator shaft that pierced the middle of the sphere from pole to pole. The high-capacity car was still waiting for them, exactly as they had left it, down to the pale-yellow watercolour panels of scenes from Yellowstone.

  "It's powered up," Parnasse said. "That's good. Shouldn't be any problem getting down now."

  Thalia, the last of the five to enter, cleared the trelliswork doors. They scissored shut behind her.

  "It's not moving. I'm asking it and it isn't moving," Caillebot said.

  "That's because it isn't hearing you. Abstraction's two-way," Parnasse said, with the weary air of a man who shouldn't have to explain such things.

  "Then how do we get it to move? Are there manual controls?"

  "We don't need them just yet. Do we, Thalia?"

  "He's right," she said. "Panoply operatives need to be free to move wherever and whenever we want, even without abstraction. We distribute the voiceprint patterns of authorised personnel to all habitats as a matter of routine." She spoke up. "This is Deputy Field Prefect Thalia Ng. Recognise my voiceprint."

  "Voiceprint recognised, Deputy Field Prefect Ng."

  Thalia breathed a little easier. "Please descend to ground level."

  There was an uncomfortable moment when nothing happened, and then the elevator began to descend.

  "Glad that worked," Thalia said under her breath. Parnasse glanced at her with a sly smile as if he'd overheard.

  "That's good," Caillebot said. "I was beginning to wonder what would happen if we'd been stuck up there."

  "We'd have taken the stairs," Parnasse said witheringly. "You're familiar with the concept of stairs, right?"

  Caillebot shot him a warning look but didn't reply.

  The elevator continued its smooth descent, passing through the neck connecting the sphere to the stalk. They were in the hollow atrium now. Far below, visible through the trellised glass windows on the outside of the car, the lobby lay completely deserted. Thalia had half-expected that at least some citizens would be converging on the polling core, demanding to know what was wrong and exactly when it would be fixed, but there was no sign of them. She couldn't exactly say why, but something made her to
uch the whiphound again.

  The car completed its descent, coming to a smooth halt at the lobby level, and the trelliswork doors clattered open. Again, Thalia was struck by the emptiness of the lobby. It felt even more still than when they had first passed through it, their footsteps echoing loudly.

  "Okay, people," she said, "let's stick together. Like the man said, there could be some angry citizens out there, and we may be the ones they decide to take it out on."

  They walked into blue-hazed sunlight, shining down from the arc of the window band eight kilometres above. Around them stood ornamental ponds and lawns, crisscrossed by neatly tended gravel and marble pathways. Fountains were still burbling somewhere nearby. Everything looked utterly normal, exactly as Thalia had expected save for the absence of a rampaging mob. Perhaps she was doing the citizens of Aubusson a disservice. But then she recalled how quickly the reception committee had turned against her. If they were truly representative of the citizenry, then there was every reason to expect a similarly unpleasant reaction from the other eight hundred thousand of them.

  "I hear voices," Caillebot said suddenly. "I think they're coming from the other side of the stalk."

  "I hear them, too," Parnasse said, "but we're not going that way. Straightest path is right ahead, through those trees, directly towards the endcap."

  "Maybe I should speak to them," Thalia said. "Tell them what's happened, how it won't be long before things are sorted out."

  "We had a plan, girl," Parnasse said. "The idea was to walk and stay out of trouble. Those voices don't sound too happy, the way I'm hearing 'em."

  "I agree," said Meriel Redon.

  Thalia bit her lip. She could hear the voices as well, just above the burble of fountains. A lot of people, sounding agitated and angry. Shouts that were threatening to become screams.

  Her hand tightened on the whiphound again. Something was wrong, she knew. That wasn't the sound of a crowd high on its own fury and indignation, wanting the blood of whoever had taken down their precious abstraction.

  That was the sound of frightened people.

  "Listen to me," Thalia said, fighting to keep the fear out of her own voice. "I need to see what's happening. That's my duty as a prefect. You four keep going, heading towards the endcap. I'll catch you up."

  "That's not a pretty sound," Parnasse said.

  "I know. That's why I need to check it out."

  "It isn't your problem," Caillebot said. "Our constables will take care of any civil unrest. That's what they're for."

  "You have a standing police force?"

  The gardener shook his head. "No, but the system will have called up a constabulary from the citizenry, the same way we were called up to form the reception party."

  "There is no system," Parnasse said.

  "Then the people who were called up last time will resume their duties."

  "When exactly was last time?" Thalia asked. The agitated noise was growing louder. It sounded more like the whooping of excited wildfowl than any sound produced by people.

  "I don't remember. A couple of years ago."

  "It was more like ten," Meriel Redon said. "And even if the constables self-activate, how are they all going to get where they're needed if the trains are down?"

  "We don't have time to talk this over." Thalia unclipped her whiphound, tightening her hand around the heavy shaft of the handle. "I'm going to take a look."

  "On your own?" Redon asked.

  "I won't have to get too close. The whiphound can give me an advance pair of eyes. In the meantime you keep walking along this path, towards that row of trees. I'll find you."

  "Wait," Cuthbertson said urgently. "We have Miracle Bird. Let's use him."

  "How?" Thalia asked.

  "He can overfly the crowd and tell us what he sees when he returns. He doesn't need abstraction for that. Do you, boy?"

  Miracle Bird's beak clacked in return. "I can fly," said the mechanical owl. "I'm an excellent bird."

  "He doesn't sound as bright as when he met me at the hub," Thalia said.

  Cuthbertson raised his hand, Miracle Bird responding by unfolding and flexing his glittering alloy wings. "He knows what to do. Shall I release him?"

  Thalia glanced at the whiphound. She might need its close-up surveillance mode later, but for now an aerial snapshot would be at least as useful.

  "Do it," she said.

  Cuthbertson pushed his arm higher. Miracle Bird released its talons, its wings hauling it aloft with a whoosh of downthrust. Thalia watched it climb higher and recede, sun flaring off its foil-thin feathers with every wingbeat, until it vanished around the side of the stalk.

  "It'll know to come back to us?" Thalia asked.

  "Trust the bird," Cuthbertson said.

  It was an uncomfortably long time before the owl reappeared, emerging around the other side of the stalk. It loitered above them, then spiralled down for an awkwardly executed landing on Cuthbertson's sleeve. He whispered something to the bird; the bird whispered something back.

  "Did he get anything?" Caillebot asked.

  "He recorded what he saw. He says he saw people and machines below."

  Caillebot narrowed his eyes. "Machines?"

  "Servitors, probably. But that's all he can tell us himself. He's a smart bird, but he's still PreCalvinist."

  Caillebot looked disgusted. "Then we haven't achieved anything, other than wasted time."

  "Let's find some shade. Then we'll see what we achieved."

  "What in Voi's name do we need shade for?" Caillebot snapped.

  "Find me some and I'll show you." The automaton-maker tapped a finger against the owl's delicate jewelled eyes. Thalia understood — the eyes looked very much like laser projectors — and started looking around, hoping they would not have to go back into the lobby.

  "Will that do?" Meriel Redon asked, pointing to the shadow cast by an ornamental arch at the foot of one of the pond-spanning bridges.

  "Good work," Thalia said. They trooped over to the arch and made room for Cuthbertson to kneel down, bringing Miracle Bird's head to within thirty centimetres of the dark marbled floor.

  "Start playback, boy," Cuthbertson said. "Everything you shot, from the moment I let you go."

  The owl looked down. A square of bright colour appeared on the dark-grey marble. Thalia saw faces and clothes, a huddle of people diminishing as the bird took flight. Its point of view shifted as it looked away from them. Blue haze, textured by the faint roads, parks and communities of the farside wall. Then the ivory-white spire of the polling core's stalk filled the owl's field of view. The stalk widened, then veered to the right as the owl swept past it. Now Miracle Bird's point of view shifted smoothly downwards, tracking towards the ground beneath him. Geometric divisions of grass and water slid across the image square. One of the escalator ramps down to the train station. Then a larger green space dotted with the pale, foreshortened blobs of people, many dozens of them.

  "Hold it there," Cuthbertson said. "Freezeframe and zoom in picture centre, boy."

  The image enlarged. The blobs resolved into individuals. There were at least fifty or sixty people, Thalia judged; maybe more out of sight. They were not just standing around any more, nor had they assembled into the agitated clumps of a restless, bad-tempered crowd.

  No. They had formed a single, tight-packed group, jammed closer together than normal social etiquette would have allowed. A thought started to form in Thalia's mind, but Meriel Redon said it aloud.

  "They're being herded," she said, very softly. "They're being herded by machines."

  The furniture-maker was right, Thalia saw. The people had been shunted together by servitors, at least a dozen of them. Their squat forms were quite unmistakable, even from above. Some of them moved on wheels or tracks, some on slug-like pads, some on legs. She thought she recognised at least one of the bright blue gardening servitors that they had passed on the way to the polling core. She recalled the wicked gleam of its trimmer arms as it carved a
peacock out of the hedge.

  "This isn't good," Thalia said.

  "The constables must have tasked the servitors to assist them," Caillebot replied.

  Parnasse pointed a stubby finger at the image, indicating the shoulder of a man wearing a bright orange armband. "Sorry to dampen your enthusiasm, but I think that is a constable. The machines seem to be treating him the same way they're treating everyone else."

  "Then he must be an impostor wearing a constable's armband. The machines would only be acting under the supervision of the officially designated constables."

  "Then where are they?" Parnasse asked.

  Caillebot looked irritated. "I don't know. Sending instructions from somewhere else."

  Parnasse looked suitably unimpressed. "With no abstraction? What are they using, messenger pigeons?"

  "Maybe the machines are programmed to act this way when they sense a civil emergency," Redon said doubtfully. "They're only doing what the constables would do if they were here."

  "Has anything like this happened before?" Thalia asked.

  "Not in my memory," Redon said.

  "There have been disturbances," Parnasse said. "Storms in a teacup. But the machines have never started acting like constables."

  "Then I don't think that's what we're looking at," Thalia said.

  "What, then?" Parnasse asked.

  He was starting to rankle her, but she kept her composure. "I'm starting to worry that this is something more sinister. I'm beginning to think that what we're seeing here is some kind of takeover."

  "By whom?" asked Caillebot. "Another habitat?"

  "I don't know. That's why I need to see things with my own eyes. I want you four to stay here and keep quiet until I'm back. If you don't hear from me inside five minutes, start making your way to the endcap."

  "Are you insane?" Redon asked.

  "No," Thalia said. "Just on duty. There are people in distress here. Since the local law enforcement appears to be failing them, they've become a matter for Panoply."