Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "That's what I have to cut?" she asked.

  "Not just this one," he whispered back. "There are eighteen of these, and you're going to have to take care of at least nine if we're to have a hope of toppling."

  "Nine!" she hissed back.

  He raised a shushing finger to his lips. "I didn't say you had to cut through 'em all. You cut through four or five, say two on either side of this fellow, and you cut partway through another two on either side, and that should be enough. We want to make damned sure the sphere topples in the right direction."

  "I know," Thalia said, resenting the fact that he felt she needed reminding.

  "You want that magic sword of yours?"

  "No time like the present."

  Parnasse passed her the thick bundle he'd made of the whiphound. Between them, they unwrapped the insulating layers, then re-wrapped the cool outer part around the scorching-hot shaft of the handle. Her hands trembling as they had done before, Thalia took the damaged weapon and prayed that the filament would extend for her one more time.

  Then she started cutting.

  * * *

  Not for the first time, Jane Aumonier found herself both awed and frightened by the submarine processes of her own mind. She had scarcely given the names of the Firebrand operatives more than a second's thought in nine years, but the process of recall was as automatic and swift as some well-engineered dispensing machine. She dictated the names to Dreyfus while he scratched them into a compad, floating at the end of the safe-distance tether. He always looked awkward when writing, as if it was a skill his hands had not quite evolved for.

  When he was done he left her alone, the past amok in her head, while the weevil-class war robots rampaged through the gilded plazas of Carousel New Brazilia.

  Many public data feeds had been severed, but the habitat would not be completely isolated until the weevils reached the polling core. The cams would maintain their dispassionate vigilance until that final moment of transmission, even as the streets turned slippery with citizens' blood, congealing too thickly to be absorbed by the municipal quickmatter. The war robots moved very fast once they were inside the airtight environment of the wheel-shaped structure. They tumbled out of doorways and ramps in a slurry of dark armour, their traction legs a furious grey-black blur. They whisked through plazas and atria in a rampaging column of thrashing metal, as if lumpy black tar was being poured along the alleys and boulevards of the habitat's great public spaces, a tar that ate and dissolved people as it swept over them. It looked disorganised, almost random, until Aumonier slowed down the time rate and studied the invasion in the accelerated frame of machine perception. Then she saw how fiercely systematic the invaders were, how efficient and regimented. They cut down the citizens with brutal precision, but only when they were directly opposed. Bystanders, or those running in panic, were left quite alone provided they offered no immediate obstruction to the weevils. Local constables, recognisable by their armbands and activated from amongst the citizenry under the usual emergency measures, were taking the brunt of the casualties. The constables' non-lethal weapons were hopelessly ineffective against the war machines, but still they tried to slow down the invading force, spraying the weevils with immobilising foam or sticky netting. Using their special constabulory authority, they tried to conjure barricades out of the ambient quickmatter, but their efforts were panicked and ineffective. The weevils barged through the obstacles as if they were no more substantial than cobwebs. Most of the constables ran for cover as soon as they'd used their weapons or conjured obstacles, but a few stood their ground and paid a predictable price. Death, when it came, was always mercifully quick — Aumonier remembered what Baudry had told them about the weevils carrying anatomical knowledge — but while there appeared to be no specific cruelty in the machines' actions, that did not make the process of invasion any less horrific.

  The polling core in Carousel New Brazilia lay at the heart of a dizzying multi-tiered atrium crisscrossed by railingless pedestrian bridges. Here the constables had converged from all over the wheel, ready for a courageous last stand. They'd taken up defensive positions around the core, covering the endpoints of all the bridges. In addition to their usual non-lethal weapons, some of them now carried heavier armaments dispensed under the emergency provisions. Aumonier watched as a trio of constables tried to assemble some kind of tripod-mounted cannon, two of them arguing over the right way to attach the angled blast screen. By the time they had the cannon operational, the weevils were already crossing the bridges from the surrounding galleries. The constables opened fire, their gun chugging silently as it spewed out low-velocity munitions, trailing banners of pink smoke. It made no practical difference. Weevils were constructed for the rigours of vacuum warfare, hardened to withstand direct hits from high-energy pulses or penetrating slugs. The constables managed to dislodge a couple of the robots, sending them plummeting from the bridges, but it was as nothing compared to the numbers still crossing. Belatedly, some of the constables realised that they had the authority to conjure gaps in the bridges, and a couple of them ran bravely out into the middle to issue the necessary close-proximity commands. The bridges puckered apart, like strands of toffee being pulled too hard.

  But by then it was much too late. The weevils bridged the openings with their own bodies, locking together while other machines flowed over them. They flung the retreating constables aside, into the open space of the atrium. The constables fell with silent screams.

  Then the weevils were at the polling core. Aumonier watched until the last bitter instant, until the cam feeds greyed out, filling with static and cascading error messages.

  Panoply had just lost Carousel New Brazilia. Aurora now held five habitats.

  Aumonier switched her attention to House Flammarion, where the weevils were only just beginning to reach the interior. Something compelled her to watch, as if the futile but dignified resistance of the constables demanded a witness, even though she could do nothing to affect the outcome.

  Before very long Aurora held her sixth prize.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  It was the first time Dreyfus had returned to his quarters since his release from detention. He knew that the forensics team had worked the place over with their customary thoroughness, removing every atom of Clepsydra that had not already been digested by the quickmatter. And yet he could not shake the sense that this temporarily allocated space — it was now functioning as his living room — remained unclean, materially despoiled by the act of her murder. Death had visited in his absence, stroked his furniture, made himself at home and left a sour mortuary smell that mostly lingered just below conscious detection.

  Dreyfus conjured thick, hot coffee and enveloped himself in a cloud of bitter aroma. He sat back in his usual chair and brought the compad to life. He had not looked at the names until this moment since Jane had dictated them to him, and even now he angled the compad steeply to his chest, as if someone might be looking over his shoulder. It was a pointless gesture — it made no more sense than the smell — but he was equally incapable of suppressing it. Even though he was engaged on Panoply business, even though the names had been divulged by the supreme prefect herself, he felt a furtive sense of wrongness.

  He sipped the coffee. It rushed down his throat, acrid and black, and for a moment he forgot Clepsydra.

  There were eight names. He had no doubt that these were the eight original members of Firebrand, assuming that Aumonier herself was not to be counted amongst them. He recognised all of the names, too, and could even put faces to some of them. Panoply's compartmentalised structure, with each field prefect being assigned a tightly knit team of deputies, ensured that there was only limited communication between field units. Units with very different field assignments might go years before their members met.

  And yet he knew these eight names and could put faces — blurred, admittedly — to five of them.

  He read them again, just to make sur
e he wasn't missing something obvious:

  Lansing Chen (FPIII)

  Xavier Valloton (DFPIII)

  Eloise Dassault (DFPIII)

  Riyoko Chadwick (FPI)

  Murray Vos (FPII)

  Simon Veitch (FPII)

  Paula Saavedra (FPIII)

  Gilbert Knerr (DFPII)

  But there'd been no mistake, and the more he thought about the names the more he convinced himself he could put at least sketchy faces to all of them, not just the five he'd thought of first. Veitch in particular — that name loomed larger in his memory than the others for some reason. But he couldn't think of a case or training exercise where he'd worked with any of them. The faces, such as they were, hung in contextless limbo, like portraits where the background had only been roughed-in.

  What now? he wondered. Save the flicker of recognition he'd felt upon seeing Veitch's name, there was no single prefect who jumped out at him as an obvious starting point. But it would definitely help his cause if at least some of them were actually inside Panoply at the moment.

  Using Pangolin clearance, Dreyfus pinged the locations of all eight names. Bracelets tracked prefects inside Panoply, and duty schedules and flight plans dictated what they were up to when they were outside. It wasn't foolproof — Gaffney had proved that — but it was the only tool available, and Dreyfus had to trust that Gaffney's replacement was working for the organisation, not against it.

  The pings came back almost instantly, together with recent images and bio snapshots.

  Six of the eight, including Veitch, were indeed outside Panoply, on what appeared to be plausible errands. Nothing too fishy about that: they were field prefects, after all. The other two — Lansing Chen and Paula Saavedra — were supposedly somewhere inside the rock, on normal downtime between duties. Dreyfus used additional Pangolin clearance to dig through Chen and Saavedra's duty schedules for the last few days. No surprises there: like most prefects who weren't already tied to high-priority assignments, they'd been outside fighting fires between the Glitter Band and the Parking Swarm. Pulling triple shifts, too. Dreyfus couldn't speak for these two in particular, but most of the prefects who'd returned to Panoply were in need of that downtime.

  Pangolin clearance gave him sleep schedules. Chen and Saavedra were both meant to be awake by now. Again using Pangolin, but this time running an appreciably greater risk of detection, Dreyfus had the system locate the two prefects. He'd been hoping to catch them alone, but that wasn't to be. The two were apparently sitting together in the main refectory. It was as good a place to start as any.

  Dreyfus finished his coffee and slugged the cup back into the floor.

  * * *

  Dreyfus paused at the entrance to the refectory, casting his gaze over the assembled prefects gathered there to eat, drink, exchange professional gossip and simply pass the time of day between shifts. The tables, mostly unoccupied, bent upwards in long, low lines, following the gentle curvature of the floor. As was the case in the refectory during certain shift cycles, the lights had been dimmed to a drowsy, candlelit level of illumination. Prefects, all of whom were wearing their uniforms, were gathered in clots of blackness, most of them sitting in groups at the tables. Some were returning from the serving hatches with trays and cups. Others were standing in ones and twos at the display panes that smothered the refectory's walls. At any other time they'd have been reading case summaries and ongoing investigation reports, getting a feel for the work their colleagues were engaged in, but now the panes had been given over to a running analysis of the Aurora crisis. They were filled with multiple images of the six habitats she had now taken, all external views since there were no longer any active internal feeds. Other panes showed images and diagrams of weevils, coupled with views of the spaceborne containment effort. Few of the prefects in this room knew more than the basic details of the crisis — Aurora's identity was still a Pangolin-only operational secret — but all of them were aware of the severity of the situation.

  Including Chen and Saavedra. He found them sitting together in the far corner of the room, at the very end of a row of tables, a long way from any other prefects. They were facing each other, leaning together in a worried, conspiratorial manner that left Dreyfus in no doubt that he was looking at two elements of Firebrand. The other prefects were concerned, no doubt about it, but they were also animated and enthused by the exigencies of the crisis. It was giving them a chance to prove themselves, to compete for promotional favours. But Chen and Saavedra just looked scared, like a pair of illicit lovers convinced they were about to be found out.

  Dreyfus moved through the room to the nearest vacant serving slot. The aproned human orderly behind the slot was a deliberate touch. People came to the refectory because they had some profound psychological need not to eat alone or be served by a machine. The food might have been created using the same quickmatter processes utilised elsewhere, but at least it was handed over on a warm china plate, by a living person.

  But Dreyfus just asked for an apple and a glass of water. As he strolled away from the slot, he polished the apple against the fabric of his trousers. He ambled between the tables, acknowledging those prefects who looked up or spoke to him, but offering nothing more than a distracted nod in return.

  Chen and Saavedra still hadn't noticed his approach. What had looked like a lovers' tiff from a distance revealed itself to be a full-blown, heated argument as he neared. They were conducting the argument in whispers, but their expressions and the tension in their gestures gave them away. At first he wondered why they'd chosen to meet in the refectory rather than in the seclusion of their rooms. But if they'd been called upon to explain their meeting, at least the refectory allowed the possibility of an accidental encounter.

  He rounded the end of one of the tables. Now he was closer to the two than anyone else in the room. He raised his apple and took a crunching bite through the emerald-green skin of the perfectly spherical fruit. Chen looked up, registering less surprise than mild affront that Dreyfus should dare to invade their privacy. Lansing Chen was still a youthful man with a broad, high-cheekboned face and thick black hair that he wore carefully parted.

  "Prefect," he said, friendly enough, but not in such a way as to sound as if he was inviting Dreyfus to sit down with them.

  "Lansing," Dreyfus said, taking another bite from the apple. "Mind if I join you?"

  The woman, Paula Saavedra, flashed unmasked animosity in Dreyfus' direction. She was thin and bony, like the articulated wooden dolls artists used instead of human models. Everything about her was pale, washed out, as if she'd spent too long under very bright lights. Even her eyes were colourless, as if the ink in them had faded from whatever colour it had once been.

  "Actually, Prefect — " she began.

  That was when Dreyfus heard footsteps behind him and felt a hand land on his shoulder. "Tom," he heard a voice say. "I'm glad I found you. Had to invoke Pangolin. I almost didn't believe it when it said you were in the refectory. This was about the last place I expected you to be."

  Dreyfus snapped around, prepared to be angered until he saw that the man who had spoken was the lantern-jawed Demikhov. "Doctor," he said quietly. "Actually, would you mind ... I'm in the middle of something right now."

  Demikhov nodded understandingly. "So are we all, Tom. But you and I need to talk right now. Trust me on this, okay?"

  Dreyfus studied the doctor's fatigue-mapped face. He'd never once known Demikhov overstate the seriousness of an issue. Whatever the man wanted to discuss, it was clearly urgent.

  "What's it about?" Dreyfus asked, still keeping his voice low.

  "Have a guess, Tom."

  "Jane?"

  "There's been a development. Not a good one. We have to make a very difficult decision and I need your input. Immediately, Tom. Can you come down to the Sleep Lab?"

  "It's okay, Prefect," Lansing Chen said, standing up from the table with a scrape of chair against floor. "Paula and I were just leaving anyway."


  "I'd like to see you back here in an hour," Dreyfus said, tapping his bracelet.

  "Is something the matter, Field Prefect Dreyfus?" Chen asked innocently, but obviously reminding Dreyfus that they shared exactly the same rank.

  "Yeah. Something's the matter. And in sixty minutes we're going to have a chat about it." He turned his attention to the woman. "You too, Field Prefect Saavedra." He watched them flounce out of the refectory, leaving their trays and food on the table.

  "I'm sorry to have interrupted you," Demikhov said, while Dreyfus swigged down the water and threw the remains of the apple onto Chen's dinner tray. "But please believe me — I wouldn't have disturbed you were it not regarding an issue of the utmost concern."

  * * *

  In the Sleep Lab Demikhov said, "How was Jane the last time you spoke to her?"

  Dreyfus rubbed at the back of his neck. "Compared to what?"

  "The time before. Or how she was last week."

  "She wasn't too happy. Understandably, since she'd been removed from power." He raised a reassuring hand. "Don't worry, Doctor. I don't hold you responsible for that. You were just doing your job, looking after Jane's ultimate health. I can guess how manipulative Gaffney must have been."

  "It wasn't just Gaffney. It was Crissel and Baudry, too."

  "Well, Crissel got to make amends. And while I might not approve of the decisions Baudry says we have to make, I can see that she's just trying to discharge her obligations."