Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "How close are you to success?"

  "A hundred days, a thousand days." Then quietly she added, "Perhaps longer. Nothing is certain."

  "How long could you last?"

  "In a few years, I would reach the limit of what could be harvested without causing death. Then difficult decisions would need to be made. I would have made them, without flinching. That is our way. But then something changed."

  "Which was?"

  "You arrived, Prefect. And now things can start happening."

  * * *

  Meriel Redon was waiting for Thalia as soon as she returned to the other four members of the escape party. "What did you see?" she asked.

  Thalia raised a hand until she caught her breath. Her back was aching from all the crouching she'd had to do.

  "It's pretty much what I expected, based on what we saw from the bird." She kept her voice low, breaking off to take deep breaths. "But it's not as bad as it looked at first. The servitors have been activated under an emergency protocol. I heard the voice of a constable explaining why everyone needs to stay calm."

  "I thought there were no constables," said Caillebot. "Except for the one we saw in the crowd, being treated like all the other people."

  "I don't think he had the right to wear a constable's armband," Thalia said, her mind racing ahead as she tried to anticipate the questions her party might ask. "The voice was coming from a servitor, anyway. It was broadcasting a looped statement from someone called Lucas Thesiger. Does the name mean anything to any of you?"

  "Thesiger was assigned to the constabulary during the Blow-Out Crisis," said Redon. "I remember seeing his face on the reports. He was commended for bravery after he saved some people who were stranded outside near the breach. A lot of us said he should be made a permanent constable, to be activated again the next time there was a crisis."

  "Well, it looks like you got your wish. Thesiger's calling the shots now, from somewhere else."

  Cuthbertson looked sceptical. "Why are the machines doing the work of the constables if the constables are still in charge?"

  "Constables can't get everywhere at once," Thalia told the bird man. "And there are problems with communication. That's why the machines have been tasked in some areas, like this one. The people are being told to sit tight and wait for the crisis to blow over."

  "What crisis?" Parnasse asked, so quietly that Thalia almost didn't hear him.

  "It's not clear. Thesiger says there are indications the habitat was attacked. The attack may even be ongoing. Something nasty might have been released into the air."

  The curator studied her with a look on his face that said Thalia might fool the others, but she wasn't fooling him. "Then it was just coincidence that abstraction went down the moment you completed that upgrade?"

  "Difficult as it may be to believe, that's what it looks like."

  "That's quite some coincidence."

  Thalia nodded earnestly. "I agree, but right now we don't have time to dwell on that. What we have to focus on is surviving. Thesiger — whoever he is — is right to enforce martial rule to keep the citizenry from panicking too much. In his shoes, it's exactly what I'd do — even if that meant tasking servitors to fill in for constables."

  "But those machines weren't just directing the people to safety," Cuthbertson said, a strained edge in his voice. "They were herding them. There was something wrong there."

  "It's okay. The servitors must have been tasked before Thesiger was able to get his recorded message out. Given what had already happened — abstraction going down, the loss of utilities — I can imagine that the people were pretty spooked when the robots started pushing them around. But the machines were just doing what they were instructed to do. Constables would have done it with a smile and a wave of encouragement, but it's no different in the end. The crowd was a lot calmer once Thesiger explained what was happening."

  "I think she's right," Redon said. "I can't hear the voices as much now."

  "So what are you proposing?" Caillebot asked. "That we go and join those people?"

  Thalia took her biggest gamble. "You can if you want. I won't stop you. But unlike those people, you happen to be under Panoply care already. That overrides any local security arrangements, including a habitat-wide curfew."

  "But you mentioned something in the air," Redon said.

  Thalia nodded. "Thesiger talked about a toxic agent. I'm guessing he has intelligence that says something like that was at least planned. But I think he may be overstating the danger, just to be on the safe side."

  "You can't know that," the furniture-maker said, her eyes widening with concern.

  "No," Thalia admitted. "I can't. But I can tell you this. Thesiger wants to round people up to prevent panic, and for now that means holding them in the open air."

  "The larger buildings are all airtight," Caillebot said, as if just realising it himself. "They're designed to tolerate another blow-out. Why doesn't he move them to the larger buildings?"

  "He's probably going to as soon as he has large enough groups under sufficient control. Once one group of people seal themselves into a building, they're not going to open the door to anyone else. And that will be bad news if the agent is real, and not everyone gets inside in time."

  "But staying with you doesn't help us," Redon said.

  "It does," Thalia said. "Our best strategy is to move, and keep moving. The whiphound has a chemosensor. It'll detect harmful elements in the air long before they reach sufficient concentration to do harm."

  "And then what?" the woman asked.

  "We'll seek shelter if we have to. But our main objective is to reach my ship. You'll be safe there."

  "What about the others, the people we left behind in the polling core?"

  Thalia glanced up at the spherical structure high above them. "I can't help them now. The sphere's airtight, so they'll be safe from any toxins. They'll just have to sit it out up there until help arrives."

  Parnasse inhaled through his nose and nodded. "Then we keep walking, the way we were going before."

  "At least we won't have any mobs to worry about," Cuthbertson said, "if the machines are putting everyone else under protection — "

  "No, we won't have to worry about mobs," Thalia told him. "But I don't want to run into any tasked servitors either."

  "Won't they let us through when you explain that you're Panoply?" Caillebot asked.

  "One would hope so, but I don't want to have to put that to the test. Those machines aren't reporting back to Thesiger every time they need to make a decision. They're running a one-size-fits-all enforcement program designed to safeguard the mass populace."

  "Then we'll need to avoid machines," the gardener said. "That isn't going to be easy, Prefect. Have you any idea how many servitors there are in this place?"

  "In the order of millions, I'd guess," Thalia said. "But we'll just have to make do as best we can. The whiphound can move ahead of us, securing an area before we enter it." She unclipped the handle and allowed the whiphound to deploy its filament. "Beginning now. Forward scout mode. Twenty-metre secure zone. Proceed."

  The whiphound raced ahead, a squiggle moving almost too fast to be tracked by the eye.

  "We're moving?" Caillebot asked.

  Thalia waited until the whiphound had turned back to her and nodded its laser-eye handle, indicating that it was safe to proceed. "We're moving," she said. "Keep low and keep quiet. Do that, and we'll be fine. One way or the other, we're getting out of here."

  They proceeded along gravel- and marble-lined paths, all stooping to stay below the level of the hedges. Now and then the hedges widened out to enclose a small courtyard or ornamental pond. It was less than ten kilometres to the endcap, but ten kilometres like this was going to feel more like fifty. She just hoped they would be able to move more freely once they had cleared the manicured gardens around the museum campus and entered the denser foliage of wooded parklands. Ahead lay the line of trees they had been making for since lea
ving the stalk.

  Parnasse sidled next to her. Short and stocky, he had the easiest time of all of them when it came to stooping down. "Very good work, girl," he said quietly.

  "Thank you," she replied through gritted teeth.

  "But what aren't you telling us?"

  "Nothing."

  "You came back from the other side of the stalk with a look on your face I haven't seen in a long time. You saw something bad there, didn't you? Something you're frightened to tell us in case we lose it."

  "Just keep moving, Cyrus."

  "Was it true, about that speech from Thesiger?"

  "I told you what I heard."

  "But you don't believe a word of it."

  "This is not the time for discussion. The priority now is to keep moving and keep quiet." She looked at him sharply. "Or did you miss that part?"

  "What's happening to those people?" Parnasse persisted. "Are the machines doing something bad to them?"

  Ahead, the whiphound shook its handle from side to side. An instant later it flattened itself on the ground, looking just like a coil of discarded cable with a thickening at one end. Thalia raised a warning hand to her party.

  "Hold it," she breathed. "The whiphound can't secure the area ahead of us. Something's there."

  The four froze behind her. The whiphound remained deathly still on the ground. It had been securing the area around a circular pond crossed by a red-painted wooden Chinese bridge. Two other hedge-lined paths converged on the same pond.

  "I think we should retreat," Thalia whispered.

  "You think?" Caillebot asked.

  The whiphound offered no guidance. It was adopting a maximum stealth posture, which could only mean it sensed purposeful movement. Thalia breathed in deeply, forcing herself to make the right decision. If the area could not be secured, it could not be entered. They would be right to retreat, to return to the last junction, where they could explore an alternative route. "We go back," she said.

  Two servitors emerged into the area around the pond, one from either side. To the left, a gold-carapaced machine moved on three pairs of articulated legs, with a mass of segmented tentacles emerging from its cowled front end. Some kind of general-utility servitor, Thalia decided. To the right, bouncing along on mechanized ostrich-legs, was a multi-limbed household model, its black and white cladding suggestive of a butler's uniform.

  Thalia held out her hand and barked a command. "Abandon stealth posture. Immediate return."

  The whiphound lashed into action, scattering gravel as it uncoiled and propelled itself, almost flying into the air. Thalia splayed her fingers. The whiphound raced across the twenty metres separating the party from the servitors. The handle flew into Thalia's grasp, the filament retracting at the last instant. Her palm stung from the impact.

  She knelt down, aiming the projected red laser spot at the two machines in turn, thumbing a stud each time. "Mark as hostile," she said twice. "Intercept and detain. Maximum necessary force."

  She flung the handle into the air as if throwing a grenade. The filament lashed out, coiling behind the handle as the whiphound oriented itself. The filament contacted the ground, formed a tractive coil and sped the handle in the direction of the bipedal robot, which the whiphound must have identified as the softer target. Gravel hissed and spat.

  "Now we run," Thalia told her four companions.

  She looked back over her shoulder as, still crouching, they worked back the way they had come. Both servitors were now circumnavigating the pond, converging at the foot of the bridge nearest Thalia. The whiphound flung itself into the air at the last moment, then wrapped its filament around the legs of the bipedal robot. Momentum on its own was not enough to topple the machine, but the whiphound constricted its filament, drawing tight the coils it had placed around the robot's legs.

  The servitor took a juddering step, then lost its balance. It crashed to the dirt and immediately started trying to right itself. The whiphound resettled itself, then flexed its filament through one hundred and eighty degrees to bring the cutting edge into contact with the servitor's legs. As it cut into the machine, blue fluid sprayed out at arterial pressure. The servitor's upper limbs thrashed the ground, but the whiphound had the better of it. Sensing that the target was immobilised, it slithered free and focused its attention on the larger machine, the six-legged utility robot that was now increasing speed towards Thalia's party. The segmented tentacles at the front were flailing the air, giving a convincing impression of a machine driven into a berserker-like rage. The whiphound flung itself into combat again, wrapping metres of sharp-edged filament around the roots of the flailing arms. Thalia kept up her running crouch, glancing back all the while. "Stay this side of the hedge," she shouted ahead.

  The battle between whiphound and servitor had become a blur of furious metal. Thumb-sized pieces of severed machine parts sprayed in all directions. The whiphound must have impaired the servitor's guidance system, for it was moving erratically now, swerving from side to side. A larger length of severed tentacle came spinning out of the maelstrom. The sound of the battle was like a hundred lashes being administered in unison against rusted steel. The servitor slowed, one of its legs severed. Blue-grey smoke belched from under the gold carapace.

  Perhaps it was going to work, Thalia dared to think.

  Then something dark came winging out of the chaos, flung aside by the tentacles. It was the handle of the whiphound, trailing a line of limp filament. It thudded at Thalia's heels, a buzzing sound coming from the handle, the tail twitching spasmodically.

  The servitor was still approaching.

  Thalia slowed as a cold, clear thought shaped itself. The whiphound was damaged, useless as a weapon now except in one very terminal sense. Thalia stopped, spun on her heels and grabbed at the handle. There was a gash in the casing, exposing obscene layers of internal componentry, things she had never been meant to see. The handle was warm, and every time it buzzed she felt it tremor in her hands. The tail drooped in a plumb line.

  Thalia twisted the knurled dials at the end of the handle, bringing two tiny red dots into alignment. The dots lit up and started pulsing.

  Grenade mode. Minimum yield. Five-second fuse on release.

  The tail sped back into the housing. The black handle was still buzzing in her hand, but the training slammed home with the icy clarity of something that had been burnt into muscle memory by agonising repetition.

  She flung the whiphound. It left her hand, following a smooth arc towards the still-approaching servitor. She had aimed it to land just ahead of the machine, directly in its path. Too close and the manipulators would have time to pick it up and fling it aside. Too early, and it wouldn't do enough damage. She'd have liked the luxury of requesting maximum yield, but while that would have taken care of the advancing machine, it wouldn't have done wonders for Thalia or her party.

  One second.

  "Get down!" she shouted, preparing to fling herself against the ground.

  Two seconds.

  Suddenly the servitor wasn't moving. The smoke was billowing out in greater intensity. It was fatally damaged, Thalia thought. The whiphound had done its job, and now she was going to waste it by having it blow up unnecessarily, when the servitor was already immobilised.

  Three seconds.

  "Rescind!" Thalia shouted. "Rescind!"

  Four seconds. Then five. The whiphound lay still on the ground. Six seconds oozed into seven. The grenade order had been cancelled, but she could still not shake the sense that she had created a bomb, one that was now compelled to detonate, much as a sword must draw blood before it could be returned to its scabbard.

  She crept back towards the whiphound, knees wobbling underneath her. The damaged servitor was still twitching its manipulator tentacles, brushing the gravel only a few centimetres from where the handle had fallen. The citizens were looking back, no doubt wondering what she was doing. Thalia knelt and reached out, fingers advancing gingerly towards the damaged whiphound. The se
rvitor's tentacles stirred and made one last-ditch effort to trap her, but Thalia was faster. Her hand closed around the warm handle of the whiphound and snatched it back. She almost fell on her haunches, before pushing herself to her feet. She quickly turned the arming dials back to their neutral settings.

  "What now?" Caillebot asked, his hands on his hips. The party had stopped; they were all looking at her, not so much expecting guidance as demanding it.

  Thalia clipped the damaged handle to her belt. It continued to buzz and tremble. "We can't go on. It'll be too risky with the whiphound the way it is."

  "I say we just surrender ourselves to Thesiger's constables," Caillebot said. "What do we care if they're machines or people? They'll look after us."

  "Tell them," Parnasse said, nodding in Thalia's direction.

  Her mouth was dry. She wanted to be anywhere other than here, in this situation, with nothing to protect her or her party but one damaged whiphound.

  "Tell us what?" Meriel Redon asked, fear staining her voice.

  Thalia wiped gravel dust from her hands onto the hem of her tunic. It left grey finger smears. "We're in trouble," she said. "Worse trouble than I wanted you to know. But Citizen Parnasse is right — I can't keep it from you any longer."

  "Keep what?" Redon asked.

  "I don't think Thesiger is in control. I think that's just a ruse to get the citizens to accept the machines. My guess is Thesiger is either dead, already rounded up or fighting for his life. I don't think there are any human constables active inside Aubusson."

  "Meaning what?" the woman persisted.

  "The machines are running things now. The servitors are the new authority. And they've started killing."

  "You can't know that."

  "I can," Thalia said. She pushed sweat-damp hair back from her forehead. "I've seen where they bury the bodies. I saw a man ... he was dead. He'd been killed by one of those things. Butchered by a machine. And he was being hidden somewhere we wouldn't see him."