Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "I can't imagine who or what," she said defiantly. "We were just minding our own business. Anthony Theobald was trying to marry me into a rich industrial combine. He had his friends, people who came to visit him, but they weren't acquaintances of mine. Vernon just wanted to be with me, even if that meant being spurned by his family. I had my art ... "

  The second time he had invoked her, she had mentioned visitors to Anthony Theobald. When he'd pressed her for more information, she'd become reticent. A family secret, something she'd sworn not to talk about? Perhaps. He'd gone easy on her since then, earning her trust, but he knew that the matter could not be put off indefinitely.

  He would have to come at it sideways.

  "Let's talk about the art. Maybe there's a clue there that we're missing."

  "But we've already been over that: the art was just a pretext, an excuse to disguise the true reason we were murdered."

  "I wish I could convince myself of that, but there's a connection that won't stop surfacing. The family that did this to you had close ties with House Sylveste because of what happened to their daughter. And your breakthrough art — the pieces that started getting you attention — were inspired by Philip Lascaille's journey into the Shroud. Lascaille was a 'guest' of House Sylveste when he drowned in that fish pond."

  "Is there an aspect of life in this system that those bloody people haven't dug their claws into?"

  "Maybe not. But I'm still convinced there's a link."

  She took so long to answer that for a while he thought she was ignoring the question, treating it with contempt. As if a policeman could have the slightest insight into the artistic process ...

  "I told you how it happened. How one day I stepped back from a work in progress and felt that something had been guiding my hand, shaping the face to look like Lascaille."

  "And?"

  "Well, there was a bit more to it than that. When I made that mental connection, it was as if a bolt of lightning had hit my brain. It wasn't just a question of tackling Lascaille because I felt it was potentially interesting. It was about having no choice in the matter. The subject was demanding that I treat it, pulling me in like a magnetic field. From that moment on I could not ignore Philip Lascaille. I had to do his death justice, or die creatively."

  "Almost as if Philip Lascaille was speaking through you, using you as a medium to communicate what he endured?"

  She looked at him scornfully. "I don't believe in the afterlife, Prefect."

  "But figuratively, that's how it felt to you. Right?"

  "I felt a compulsion," she said, as if this admission was the hardest thing she had ever had to do. "A need to see this through."

  "As if you were speaking for Philip?"

  "No one had done that before," she said. "Not properly. If you want to call it speaking for the dead, so be it."

  "I'll call it whatever you call it. You were the artist."

  "I am the artist, Prefect. No matter what you might think of me, I still feel the same creative impulse."

  "Then if I gave you the means, a big piece of rock and a cutting torch, you'd still want to make art?"

  "Isn't that what I just said?"

  "I'm sorry, Delphine. I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. It's just that you're the most assertive beta-level I've ever encountered."

  "Almost as if there's a person behind these eyes?"

  "Sometimes," Dreyfus admitted.

  "If your wife hadn't died the way she did, you'd feel differently about me, wouldn't you? You'd have no reason to disavow the right of a beta-level to call itself alive."

  "Valery's death changed nothing."

  "You think that, but I'm not so sure. Look at yourself in a mirror one of these days. You're a man with a wound. Whatever happened back then, there was more to it than what you told me."

  "Why would I keep anything from you?"

  "Perhaps because there's something you don't want to face up to?"

  "I've faced up to everything. I loved Valery but now she's gone. That was eleven years ago."

  "The man who gave the order to kill those people, so that the Clockmaker would be stopped," Delphine prompted.

  "Supreme Prefect Dusollier."

  "What was so abhorrent about that decision that he felt compelled to kill himself afterwards? Didn't he do a brave and necessary thing? Didn't he at least give those citizens a quick and painless death, as opposed to what would have happened if the Clockmaker had reached them?"

  Dreyfus had lied to her before. Now he felt compelled to speak the truth, as if that was the only decent thing to do. He spoke slowly, his throat dry, as if he was the one under interrogation.

  "Dusollier left a suicide note. He said: 'We made a mistake. We shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry for what we did to those people. God help them all'."

  "I still don't understand. What was there to be sorry about? He had no other choice."

  "That's what I've been telling myself for eleven years."

  "You think something else happened."

  "There's an anomaly. The official record says that the nukes were used almost immediately after Jane Aumonier was extracted. By then, Dusollier and his prefects knew there was no hope of rescuing the trapped citizens, and that it would only be a matter of time before the Clockmaker escaped to another habitat."

  "And the nature of this anomaly?"

  "Six hours," Dreyfus said. "That was how long they actually waited before using the nukes. They tried to cover it up, but in an environment like the Glitter Band, wired to the teeth with monitors, you can't hide a thing like that."

  "But shouldn't a prefect, of all people, be able to find out what happened during those missing hours?"

  "Pangolin privilege will only get you so far."

  "Have you thought to ask anyone? Like Jane Aumonier, for instance?"

  Dreyfus smiled at his own weakness. "Have you ever put your hand into a box when you don't know what's inside it? That's how I feel about asking that question."

  "Because you fear the answer."

  "Yes."

  "What is it that you fear? That something might have killed Valery before SIAM was destroyed?"

  "Partly, I suppose. There's another thing, though. There was a ship called the Atalanta. It had been floating in the Glitter Band for decades, mothballed. Then Panoply moved it, at the same time as the crisis, to a holding position very close to SIAM."

  "Why had the ship been mothballed?"

  "It was a white elephant, financed by a consortium of Demarchist states with a view to freeing themselves from any dependence on the Conjoiners. Problem was, its drive system didn't work as well as it was meant to. It only ever made one interstellar flight, and then they abandoned any plans to make more of them."

  "But you think it would have made an excellent lifeboat."

  "It's crossed my mind."

  "You think Panoply tried to get those people off during those missing six hours. They brought in this abandoned ship, docked it with SIAM and evacuated the trapped citizens."

  "Or they tried to," Dreyfus said.

  "But something must have gone wrong. Or else why would Dusollier have shown such remorse?"

  "All I know is that the Atalanta is part of the key. But that's as much as I've been able to find out. Part of me doesn't want to find out anything else."

  "I can see why this is so hard for you," Delphine said. "To lose your wife is one thing. But to have this mystery hanging over her death ... I'm truly sorry for you."

  "I have another part of the key. I have this vivid picture of Valery in my head. She's turning towards me, kneeling on soil, with flowers in her hand. She's smiling at me. I think she recognises me. But there's something wrong with the smile. It's the mindless smile of a baby seeing the sun."

  "Where does that memory come from?"

  "I don't know," Dreyfus answered honestly. "It's not as if Valery even liked gardening."

  "Sometimes the mind plays tricks on us. It might be the memory of another woman."


  "It's Valery. I can see her so clearly."

  After an uncomfortably long pause, Delphine said, "I believe you. But I don't think I can help you."

  "It's enough to talk about it."

  "You haven't discussed these things with your colleagues?"

  "They think I got over her death years ago. It would undermine their confidence in me to know otherwise. I can't have that."

  There was a longer pause before she answered, "You think it might."

  Then her image seemed to twitch back a couple of seconds and she answered his question again with exactly the same words and inflection: "You think it might."

  "Is something the matter?" Dreyfus asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Delphine. Look at me. Are you all right?"

  Her image twitched back again. Rather than answering the question, she fixed Dreyfus with fearful eyes. "I feel strange."

  "Something's wrong with you."

  Her voice came through too quickly, speeded up as if on helium. "I feel strange. Something's wrong with me."

  "I think you're corrupted," Dreyfus said. "It could be related to the problems we've had with the Search Turbines. I'm going to freeze your invocation and run a consistency check."

  "I feel strange. I feel strange." Her voice accelerated, the words piling up on top of each other. "I feel strange I feel strange IfeelstrangeIfeelstrange ... " Then she found a moment of lucidity, her voice and the speed of her speech returning to normal. "Help me. I don't think this is ... normal."

  Dreyfus raised his sleeve, tugging down his cuff. His lips shaped the beginning of the word 'freeze'.

  "No," Delphine said. "Don't freeze me. I'm frightened."

  "I'll retrieve you as soon as I've run a consistency check."

  "I think I'm dying. I think something's eating me. Help me, Prefect!"

  "Delphine, what's happening?"

  Her image simplified, losing detail. Her voice came through slow, sexless and bass-heavy. "Diagnostic traceback indicates that this beta-level is self-erasing. Progressive block overwipe is now in progress in partitions one through fifty."

  "Delphine!" he shouted.

  Her voice was treacle-slow, almost subsonically deep. "Help me, Tom Dreyfus."

  "Delphine, listen to me. The only way I can help you is by bringing your murderer to justice. But for that to happen you have to answer one last question."

  "Help me, Tom."

  "You mentioned people who came to visit Anthony Theobald. Who were these people?"

  "Help me, Tom."

  "Who were the people? Why did they come to visit?"

  "Anthony Theobald said ... "

  She stalled.

  "Talk to me, Delphine."

  "Anthony Theobald said ... we had a guest. A guest that lived downstairs. And that I wasn't to ask questions."

  He spoke into his bracelet. "Freeze invocation."

  "Help, Tom."

  What was left of her became motionless and silent.

  * * *

  Dreyfus called Trajanova. She was flustered, not happy to be distracted from the work at hand. She appeared to be squeezed into the shaft of one of her Turbines, suspended in a weightless sling with her back against the curved glass tube that encased the machinery.

  "It's important," Dreyfus said. "I just invoked one of my beta-levels. She crashed on me halfway through the interview."

  Trajanova transferred a tool from one hand to the other, via her mouth. "Did you re-invoke?"

  "I tried, but nothing happened. The system said the beta-level image was irrevocably corrupted."

  Trajanova grunted and eased sideways to find a more comfortable position. "That isn't possible. You got a stable invocation until halfway through your interview?"

  "Yes."

  "Then the base image can't have been damaged."

  "My subject appeared to be aware that something was corrupting her. She said she felt as if she was being eaten. It was as if she could feel her core personality being erased segment by segment."

  "That isn't possible either." Then a troubling thought made her frown. "Unless, of course — "

  "Unless what?"

  "Could someone have introduced some kind of data weapon into your beta-level?"

  "Hypothetically, I suppose so. But when we pulled those recoverables out of Ruskin-Sartorious, they were subjected to all the usual tests and filters we normally run before invocation. They were badly damaged as well. I had Thalia working overtime just to stitch the pieces back together. If there'd been a data weapon — or any kind of self-destruct function — Thalia would've seen it."

  "And she reported nothing unusual to you?"

  "She told me she'd only been able to get three clean recoveries. That was all."

  "And we can trust Thalia not to have missed anything?"

  "I'd swear on it."

  "Then there's only one answer: someone must have got to the beta-level after it entered Panoply. From a technical standpoint, it wouldn't have been all that difficult. All they'd have needed to do was find some data weapon in the archives and embed it in the beta-level. It could have been programmed to start eating the recoverable as soon as you invoked, or maybe it was keyed to a phrase or gesture."

  "My God," Dreyfus said. "Then the others ... I want to talk to them as well."

  "It could be too dangerous if the same code has been embedded. You'll lose your other two witnesses."

  "What do you mean, lose? Don't I get a back-up?"

  "There is no back-up, Tom. We lost all duplicate images when the Turb blew."

  "This was all engineered."

  "Listen," Trajanova said, with sudden intensity, "I'm going to be stuck in here for a few more hours. I have to get this Turb back up to speed before I do anything else. But as soon as I'm done I'll look at the recoverables. I'll see if I can salvage anything from the one that crashed, and look for a data weapon embedded in the other two. Until then, whatever you do, don't invoke them."

  "I won't," Dreyfus said.

  "I'll call you when I'm done."

  It was only when he had finished speaking with Trajanova that Dreyfus paused to examine his state of mind. What he found was both unexpected and shocking. Only a few days ago, he would have regarded the loss of a beta-level witness as akin to the destruction of some potentially incriminating forensic evidence. He would have been irritated, even angered, but his feelings would have arisen solely because an investigation had been hampered. He would have felt no emotional sentimentality concerning the loss of the artefact itself, because an artefact was all that it was.

  That wasn't how he felt now. He kept seeing Delphine's face in those final moments, when she had still retained enough sentience to recognise the inevitability of her own death.

  But if beta-levels were never alive, how could they ever die?

  * * *

  Gaffney's first thought was that Clepsydra was dead, or at least comatose. He experienced a moment of relief, thinking that he would be spared the burden of another death, before the truth revealed itself. The Conjoiner woman was still breathing; her deathlike composure was merely her natural state of repose when no one was in attendance. Her sharp-boned face was already turning towards him, moving with the smoothness of a missile launcher locking on to a target, her eyes widening from drowsy slits.

  "I was not expecting you to come back so quickly," she said, "but perhaps the timing is fortuitous. I've been thinking about our previous conversation — "

  "Good," Gaffney said.

  There was a measurable pause before she spoke again. "I was expecting Dreyfus."

  "Dreyfus couldn't make it. Otherwise detained." Gaffney came to rest in the bubble, having judged his momentum with expert precision. "That's not a problem, is it?"

  He felt Clepsydra's attention pierce the skin of his face, mapping the bones under the skin. His skull itched. He had never felt so intensely looked at in all his life.

  "I can guess why you are here," she said. "Before you
kill me, though, you should be aware that I know who you are."

  The statement unnerved him. Perhaps it was bluff, perhaps not. If she had truly looked into Panoply's archives, then she might have seen employee records. It didn't matter. She could scream out his name and the world wouldn't hear her.

  "Who said anything about killing?" he asked mildly.

  "Dreyfus came unarmed."

  "More fool him. I wouldn't enter a room with a Conjoiner inside unless I was carrying a weapon. Or would you have me believe that you couldn't kill me in an eyeblink?"

  "I had no intention of killing you, Prefect. Until now."

  Gaffney spread his arms. "Go ahead, then. Or rather, tell me what you were going to tell Dreyfus. Then kill me."

  "Why do I need to tell you? You know everything."

  "Well, maybe not everything." Gaffney unclipped his whiphound and thumbed it to readiness. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to let you leave this place alive and be reunited with your people. Voi knows you deserve it. Voi knows you've earned the right to some reward for the service you've provided. But it just can't happen. Because if I let you out of here, you'd endanger the state of affairs that must now come into being. And if you did that, you'd be indirectly responsible for the terrible things your people dreamed were coming, the terrible things I'm striving to avert." He thumbed another stud, causing the whiphound to spool out its filament and move to full attack posture. In the weightless sphere of the bubble, the filament swayed back and forth like a tendril stirred by languid sea currents.

  "You have no idea what we saw in Exordium," Clepsydra said.

  "I don't need to. That's Aurora's business."

  "Do you know what Aurora is, Gaffney?"

  He hoped that she did not catch the subliminal hesitation in his response.

  More than likely she did. Very little was subliminal to Conjoiners. "I know everything I need to know."

  "Aurora is not a human being."

  "She looked pretty human to me when we met."

  "In person?"

  "Not exactly," he admitted.

  "Aurora was a person once upon a time. But that was a long time ago. Now Aurora is something else. She is a life form that has never truly existed before, except fleetingly. Being human is something she remembers the same way you remember sucking your thumb. It's a part of her, a necessary phase in her development, but one now so remote that she can barely comprehend that she was ever that small, that vulnerable, that ineffective. She is the closest thing to a goddess that has ever existed, and she will only get stronger." Clepsydra flashed him a smile that did not quite belong on her face. "And you feel comfortable entrusting the future fate of the Glitter Band to this creature?"