Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

They were not civilian servitors, she realised. They were some kind of war machine, and they were working their way inexorably towards the polling core.

  Terror nestled tighter in her stomach, as if it was making itself even more at home.

  "Tell me, girl."

  "Military-grade servitors," she said. "I'm pretty sure, anyway."

  "Must be some mistake. There was nothing like that here before."

  "I know. It would have been a lockdown offence even to own the construction files."

  "So where have they come from?"

  "I think we already know," she said. "They've been made overnight. There are probably bits of people in them."

  "The manufactories?"

  "I think so. I can't believe these are the only thing they're spewing out — there'd have been enough material to make millions of them, which is obviously absurd. But at least we know what part of the production flow was meant for."

  "And the rest?"

  "I'm too scared to think about it."

  Thalia turned back to the polling core. Perhaps Parnasse was right, that the time had now come to destroy it. The option had been at the back of her mind all along, after all. She believed that the core was playing a vital part in coordinating the activities of the machines via the low-level signals she had already detected. That was why the servitors had not already demolished the stalk, something that she knew would have been well within their capabilities. But she would not risk putting that theory to the test until she took the core out of action. If the machines were somehow able to keep running afterwards, it would all have been for nothing. She had not been prepared to take that risk until now, but the spectacle of the advancing war machines had changed everything.

  She walked to the nearest chair and picked up her whiphound. It had become too hot to wear clipped to her belt and she could only tolerate holding it if she had a scarf wrapped around her palm. She let the filament extend and stiffen itself in sword mode, ignoring the buzzing protestation from the handle.

  "Are you going to do it?" Parnasse asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's time."

  He steadied her trembling hand. "And maybe it isn't. Like you said, girl — if chopping at this thing doesn't do the job, we'd better have a pretty good backup plan in place. Put the sword away for now. I'm going to test the water with Redon."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  A portion of the Solid Orrery had been reassigned to emulate the three-dimensional form of a weevil-class war robot. The one-tenth-scale representation rotated slowly, the light of the room appearing to gleam off its angled black surfaces. In its space-travel/atmospheric-entry configuration, the machine's multiple legs and manipulators were tucked hard against its shell, as if it had died and shrivelled up. Its binocular sensor packages were contained in two grilled domes that bore an uncanny resemblance to the compound eyes of an insect.

  "They're as nasty as they look," Baudry commented to the assembled prefects. "Banned under seven or eight conventions of war, last seen in action more than a hundred and twenty years ago. Most war robots are designed to kill other war robots. Weevils were engineered to do that and kill humans. They carry detailed files on human anatomy. They know our weak points, what makes us hurt, what makes us break." As she spoke, reams of dense technical data scrolled down the walls. "In and of themselves, weevils are containable. We have techniques and weapons that would be effective against them in both vacuum stand-off situations and in close-quarters combat in and around habitats. The problem is the number, not the machines themselves. According to the Democratic Circus, House Aubusson has already manufactured and launched two hundred and sixty thousand units, and the flow isn't showing any signs of stopping. A weevil only weighs five hundred kilograms, and most of the materials required to make one would be commonplace inside a habitat like Aubusson. If the servitors inside the habitat work efficiently, they can easily supply all the feed materials necessary to build more just by dismantling and recycling existing structures inside the cylinder. We could be looking at an output of millions of weevils before the manufactories need to start eating into the structural fabric of the habitat. Then the numbers become unthinkable."

  "Do we know for a fact that we're dealing with weevils?" Dreyfus asked.

  Baudry nodded. "The Circus hasn't secured a sample yet, but the scans are all on the nose. These are weevils, just as Gaffney told us. There's no reason to doubt that they're carrying the Thalia code."

  "What about the rest of what Gaffney revealed?" asked the projected head of Jane Aumonier, imaged on a curving pane of glass supported above an empty chair. "Do we believe that weevils are capable of hijacking a second habitat?"

  Baudry faced her superior. "If Aurora has embarked on this strategy, chances are she has a high expectation of success. She already has intimate knowledge of security holes in the polling apparatus. There's every reason to think she has the ability to seize another habitat if she can get weevils into it." All of a sudden Baudry looked shattered, as if the crisis had notched past some personal threshold of endurance. "I think we must assume the worst."

  The wall displays froze abruptly. Bracelets chorused in unison. The Solid Orrery consumed the weevil and sprang up an enlarged representation of one of the two threatened habitats, a hubless wheel. "That's Carousel New Brazilia," Baudry said. "Anti-collision systems have begun to engage the incoming flow of weevils. We can expect House Flammarion to begin similar engagements within the next fifteen minutes."

  "How are our assets coping?" Aumonier asked.

  "We only had time to place three corvette-class vehicles close enough to Brazilia to make a difference," Baudry said. "Frankly, their pinpoint weapons are next to useless against the scale of the flow. Even if we dropped a nuke into the middle of it, it would only take out a few thousand units. It's like trying to stop a tsunami with a spoon."

  Aumonier answered calmly: "Then we need an alternative strategy."

  "Our corvettes are standing by to concentrate their fire on the weevils once they make groundfall on the habitat. The war robots will need time to cut through or force their way in via docking apertures."

  "Let's assume we don't stop them all. What happens if we lose Brazilia and Flammarion?"

  "Both habitats have manufacturies of their own," Dreyfus said, looking up from his compad. "If Aurora takes them, she'll have two new sites of weevil production. From there she can start leapfrogging to new habitats."

  "I've prepared a simulation on the Orrery," Baudry said. "There's a lot of guesswork fed into it, obviously, but I can show you how things might progress under some reasonable assumptions."

  "Go ahead," Aumonier said.

  Baudry shrank the image of Carousel New Brazilia back down to its former size, so that it became simply one gemlike point moving in the stately swirl of the Glitter Band. With another gesture she turned all the points of light to the same emerald green, save for four scattered points of ruby.

  "These are the habitats Aurora now controls," Baudry said, before two more red points lit up, each located close to one of the other four points. "These are Brazilia and Flammarion, under the assumption that Aurora attains control. I now assume that both these new habitats become weevil-production centres with an output flow similar to what we've already seen. I assume also that each habitat concentrates its weevil output on one other habitat not yet in Aurora's control, in accordance with what we've seen so far. I further assume that in twenty-six hours, a habitat can be attacked by weevils, brought under Aurora's control and direct its own weevil flow against a designated target, crossing space until they make contact."

  "Continue," Aumonier said.

  "In one day, we'll have already gone from two compromised habitats to four. Those four habitats will each infect another neighbouring state, giving us eight infection sites by the end of the second day." As she spoke, the number of red lights increased in geometric fashion. "At the end of the third day, sixt
een habitats. Thirty-two by the end of the fourth day. Sixty-four by the fifth. One hundred and twenty-eight by the end of the sixth: that's more than one per cent of the entire Glitter Band."

  There were now too many red lights to count. They were still overwhelmed by the green lights, but the inevitability of the process was now painfully apparent.

  "How long ... ?" Aumonier asked, voicing the question none of them wanted answering.

  "Fewer than half the states in the Glitter Band retain any kind of manufacturing capacity," Baudry said, "but that's still over four thousand habitats. Aurora will have taken them all a few hours into the twelfth day. Even if we still hold the remainder by then, we'll lose them very quickly. Aurora will have over four thousand weevil-production sites to turn against us. I doubt that we'd retain a single habitat by the end of the thirteenth day." She swallowed heavily. "That includes Panoply."

  "And that assumption of twenty-six hours — " Dreyfus began.

  "It's guesswork, a number I pulled out of the air. Perhaps it'll take longer than that. But even if it takes four days to leapfrog from one habitat to the next, she'll still have beaten us within two months. It's anyone's guess how long Chasm City will be able to hold out, but I wouldn't put odds on it lasting much longer than the Glitter Band."

  "We can do something, though, surely," Aumonier said.

  Baudry's expression was that of someone burdened with terrible news. She reminded Dreyfus of a doctor about to deliver the most devastating of verdicts. "We can do something, yes. Now, while Aurora is still gaining a foothold, and before her efforts touch us. Let's rewind the simulation back to day zero, today."

  Now there were just four habitats highlighted in red. "The weevil flows have reached Brazilia, and will make contact with Flammarion any minute now." Baudry glanced uneasily at her bracelet. "But for the next few hours — maybe even as long as a day — we're only looking at four points of potential spread, if we assume the new habitats can be geared up to weevil production." Baudry tightened her fingers against each other. "Aurora is at her most vulnerable now. She has revealed herself, and therefore already played the element of surprise. But she has not yet consolidated enough territory to truly overwhelm us."

  "I thought you said we were already overwhelmed by the weevils," said Senior Prefect Clearmountain.

  "I'm not talking about dealing with the weevils," Baudry answered. "I'm talking about taking out the production centres."

  Clearmountain looked unimpressed. "This isn't surgery," he said, looking around the table at the others. "You can't just take out a manufactory and somehow leave the rest of the habitat intact."

  "I'm aware of that," Baudry said, with icy control.

  He blinked. "Then you're talking about — "

  "Mass euthanisation, yes. We nuke the infected habitats. If this was the easy option, do you honestly think I'd have waited until now before raising it?"

  "It's murder."

  "We'd be sacrificing a certain number of lives to ensure the survival of vastly more. You saw that simulation I just ran, Senior. Within two months we'll have lost everything. She could be all over us in as little as thirteen days if my earlier assessment was correct. Maybe we don't even have that long. That's one hundred million lives. If we target both Brazilia and Flammarion now, we'll only be losing six hundred and fifty thousand people. Include Szlumper Oneill and House Aubusson and we're still talking about less than two per cent of the total number of citizens in our care."

  "You're talking as if two per cent is a blip," said Clearmountain incredulously.

  "With all due respect," Baudry answered, "this is war. There isn't a general in history who wouldn't snatch at the possibility of victory if it could be guaranteed with less than one casualty for every fifty combatants."

  "But they're not combatants," Dreyfus said testily. "They're citizens, and they didn't sign up to be part of anyone's war."

  "The balance of numbers still holds," Baudry said. "Strike now and we'll be saving many tens of millions of lives. We have to consider this, ladies and gentlemen. We're in dereliction of duty if we don't."

  "It's monstrous," Clearmountain said.

  "So is the prospect of losing the ten thousand," Baudry replied.

  "But would we necessarily be losing one hundred million lives?" asked Aumonier. "Gaffney told Dreyfus that Aurora was interested in a benign takeover. The life-support systems in Aubusson and the three other habitats are still running: we'd have seen the evidence otherwise. That suggests to me that Aurora has at least the intention of keeping her subjects alive and healthy."

  "Human shields aren't much use unless they're alive," Baudry said.

  "But we still have to consider the possibility that she intends to keep her subjects alive for ever. If her stated goal is to ensure the long-term survival of the Glitter Band, she's not going to start murdering people." Aumonier's eyes became glazed, as if she was looking at something far beyond the room. "Oh, wait," said her floating head. "Something's coming in from Flammarion. They've made contact."

  Bracelets started chiming. The prefects silenced them and studied the Solid Orrery as it enlarged a thimble-shaped representation of House Flammarion.

  "Status on Brazilia?" Dreyfus asked.

  Aumonier glanced away, then back at him. "The anti-collision guns have been picking off one weevil in ten. The rest are getting through more or less undamaged. They've established six bridgeheads on the outer skin of the wheel. Our assets have been concentrating fire, but some weevils appear to be making it through into the underlying structure."

  "Pressure containment?"

  "Still holding. It looks as if the machines are at least programmed to break inside without compromising biosphere integrity."

  It would go the same way with Flammarion, Dreyfus knew. The concentration of weevils might not be exactly the same, the anti-collision systems might prove more or less successful at intercepting the arriving forces, but it would make no practical difference in the long run. It would only take a handful of those war robots to storm their way through the citizenry, scything a bloody path to the polling core. And then they would open a door and Aurora, or some facet of Aurora, could pass through.

  "How many did we get off Brazilia?"

  "Eleven thousand on the commercial shuttles that were already docked. Three from Flammarion."

  "Aurora's reliant on data networks to hop into those habitats," Dreyfus said. "Before we start nuking our own citizens, can we block her progress by taking down part of the network?"

  Baudry grimaced. "It's all or nothing, Tom."

  "Then we take the whole damned thing down."

  "We don't know for sure that that would stop Aurora, but it would definitely hurt us. We need the apparatus to track Aurora's spread, to coordinate evacuation operations and the deployment of our own assets."

  "Nonetheless," Aumonier said, "Tom is right. Taking down Bandwide abstraction is something we have to consider. In fact, I've been considering it ever since I became aware of the crisis. We shouldn't underestimate the risks, though. We may slow Aurora, but we'll more than likely blind ourselves in the process."

  "Use the nukes and we end this now," Baudry said. "Aurora may not be intending to kill people, but she definitely intends to take their freedom from them."

  Dreyfus clutched his stylus so tightly that the nib pushed into his palm and drew blood. "There's another option, while we still have the apparatus. A given habitat may not be able to fight off the weevils, but at the moment we still have the resources of the entire Glitter Band to call upon."

  "I'm not with you, Tom," Baudry said.

  "I say we table an emergency poll with the people. We request permission to draft and mobilise a temporary militia from across the entire Glitter Band."

  "Define 'militia'."

  "I mean millions of citizens, armed and equipped with whatever weapons their manufactories can produce in the next thirteen hours. They already have the ships, so moving them around won't be a probl
em. If we can supply them with weapons blueprints, then place enough of them into the compromised habitats, and into the habitats we think Aurora will go for next, together with military-grade servitors under our control, we may be able to break her back without using nukes."

  Baudry looked regretful. "You're talking about citizens, Tom, not soldiers."

  "You were the one calling them combatants, not me."

  "They have no training, no equipment — "

  "The manufactories'll give them equipment. Eidetics will give them training. Prefects can lead small units of drafted citizens."

  "There are a hundred million citizens out there, Tom, ninety-eight per cent of whom face no immediate threat from Aurora. Do you honestly think many of them are going to race to throw themselves against those weevils?"

  "I think we should at least give them the choice. We won't be proposing to draft the entire citizenry. Ten million would give us an overwhelming advantage, especially if they're backed up by servitors. That's only one citizen in ten, Lillian. The majority can agree to our draft safe in the knowledge that they're not likely to be called up."

  "Do you want to put some numbers on casualty estimates?" Baudry asked. "One in ten, two in ten? Worse than that?"

  Dreyfus tapped his stylus against the table. "I don't know."

  "Lose two million and you'll have killed more people than if we go in now with nukes."

  "But it would be two million people who chose to put themselves on the line, for the greater good of the Glitter Band, rather than two million we press the button on just because some simulation says so."

  "Maybe we can come to some kind of compromise," Aumonier said, her crystal-clear voice cutting through the tension between Dreyfus and Baudry. "We all find the idea of nuking habitats abhorrent, even if we differ on the necessity of doing so."

  "Agreed," Baudry said cautiously.

  "Which criteria did you use to identify Aurora's next targets?" Aumonier asked.

  "Proximity and usefulness, with allowance for varying distances due to differential orbital velocities. I reasoned that Aurora would concentrate her efforts on the nearest habitats with manufacturing capability."