Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "Break," Thalia whispered. "Please break. And please let us be airtight when it happens."

  * * *

  Dreyfus knocked on the door to the tactical room before stepping through. A certain deference was advisable. Dreyfus knew that his Pangolin clearance put him on a level footing with the seniors in some respects, but he saw no point in rubbing salt into that particular wound.

  "Dreyfus," Baudry said, breaking off from whatever discussion she'd been having with the other seniors. "I'm afraid you're too late. You've just missed the demise of the Persistent Vegetative State."

  Without sitting down, Dreyfus moved to a position close to the Solid Orrery. The number of red lights hadn't changed since last time he'd seen it, but he could draw no consolation from that, knowing what it had cost just to slow Aurora's advance. "How many'd we get out?"

  "One hundred and seventeen thousand, out of a total population of one hundred and thirty. Not bad, all things considered, especially as we were basically dealing with corpses."

  "We've now concentrated our evacuation efforts on the targets we think Aurora will go for next," Clearmountain said. "Our monitors show that the weevil flows are already changing direction, now they know the Spindle and the PVS are out of the picture."

  "You mean 'nuked'," Dreyfus said.

  "Whatever. So far, though, we can't say where the flows are most likely to hit next. There are a number of possible candidates. Unfortunately, none of them are habitats where we've already started evacuating. We're starting from scratch."

  "Where are the evacuees going?"

  He could tell from their reactions that his question wasn't a popular one. "In an ideal world, we'd ship them far across the Glitter Band, well beyond Aurora's expansion front," Clearmountain said. "But even with the high-burn liners, that would involve an unacceptable round-trip delay. Our only practical strategy has been to move the citizens to relatively close habitats, so that the turnaround time can be minimised."

  "Go on."

  Clearmountain cast a glance at the other seniors. "Unfortunately, Aurora's projected front is now beginning to impinge on some of the habs where we've been moving people."

  "I see."

  "Which means that when we start evacuating those habs, we're also going to have to shift the recent refugees. With our current resources the situation is borderline containable, but as the front expands, and the number of endangered habitats grows geometrically, the refugee burden will soon become the predominant limiting factor." Clearmountain offered his palms in a gesture of well-intentioned surrender. "Some tough calls may have to be made when that happens, Prefect Dreyfus."

  "Today we nuked two occupied habitats. We've already made tough calls."

  "What I mean," Clearmountain said, with a strained smile, "is that we may have to focus our activities where they can do the most good."

  "Isn't that exactly what we're already doing?"

  "Not to the degree that may shortly become necessary. In the interests of maximising the number of citizens we can evacuate away from Aurora's takeover front, we may have to prioritise assistance to those citizens least likely to hinder our efforts."

  "I see where you're going. You think we should leave the coma cases to die."

  "It's not as if they'll know what hit them."

  "All those citizens went into voluntary coma on the understanding that the PVS would be looking after them, and that Panoply would be standing by if the PVS failed in its care. That was a promise we made to those people."

  Clearmountain looked exasperated. "You're worried about breaking a promise to a citizen with the brain functions of a cabbage?"

  "I'm just wondering where this ends. So the coma cases are inconvenient to us. Fine, we lose them. Who's next? Citizens who can't move as fast as the rest? Citizens we just don't like the look of? Citizens who maybe didn't vote the right way the last time there was a poll on Panoply's right to arms?"

  "I think you're being needlessly melodramatic," Clearmountain said. "There was a reason for this visit, wasn't there, other than to cast doubts on an already complicated evacuation programme?"

  "Clearmountain's right," Jane Aumonier said, her image speaking from her usual position at the table. "The coma cases are a blessed nuisance, and we'd have a much easier time of it if we just pulled life-support on the lot of them. They're going to retard our evacuation programme and therefore increase the danger to the rest of the citizenry. But Tom's even more right. If we cross this line just once — if we say these citizens matter less than those citizens — we may as well hand Aurora the keys to the kingdom. But we're not going to do that. This is Panoply. Everything we stand for says we're better than that."

  "Thank you," Dreyfus said, his voice a hushed whisper.

  "But we can't let the coma cases impose too heavy a drag on the evacuation programme," Aumonier continued. "That's why I want them dealt with now, so we won't have to worry about them in the future. I want them leapfrogged well ahead of the front — out of the Glitter Band, even, if we can identify a suitable holding point."

  "That'll tie up ships and manpower," Baudry said.

  "I know. But it has to be done. Do you have any suggestions, Lillian?"

  "We might consider an approach to Hospice Idlewild. They're used to dealing with sudden influxes of incapacitated sleepers, so they should be able to handle the coma cases."

  "Excellent proposal. Can you sort that out?"

  "I'll get right on it." After a lengthy pause she said, "Supreme Prefect Aumonier ... "

  "Yes?"

  "It's been nearly six hours now. Since Aurora's transmission."

  "I'm well aware of that, thank you very much."

  "I'm just saying ... given what we now know of her capabilities ... and the difficulties we're having with the evacuation effort, and the finite number of nuclear devices in our arsenal — "

  "Yes, Lillian?"

  "I think it would be prudent at least to consider Aurora's proposal." Her words came out awkwardly, the strain written in her face. "If her success is guaranteed, then we have an onus to do everything we can to protect the citizenry during the transition phase. Aurora has threatened to start euthanising citizens in the habitats she already holds. I believe she will follow through on that threat unless we broadcast the takeover code to the rest of the ten thousand. If we wish to save as many lives as possible, we may have no choice but to comply with her demand."

  "I don't think we're quite ready to hand her the keys to the castle," Dreyfus said, before anyone else had time to respond to Baudry's words.

  "With all due respect, Field Prefect Dreyfus — " she began exasperatedly.

  "With all due respect, Senior Prefect Baudry, shut up." Dreyfus looked pointedly away from Baudry, to Clearmountain. "I dropped by for a reason, and it wasn't to rubber-stamp our surrender. You have any objections if I commandeer the Orrery for a moment?"

  "If you need to run the Orrery, you have authorisation to conjure a duplicate in your quarters," Clearmountain said.

  "Let him run it," Aumonier said warningly. "What have you got for us, Tom?"

  "It may be nothing. On the other hand, it may be a clue to the present location of the Clockmaker."

  Aumonier lifted an eyebrow. He hadn't briefed her in advance, so she was as much in the dark as everyone else in the room. "Then I think you should continue, with all haste."

  "I'll need to wind back a few hours. Everyone happy with that?"

  "Do what you need to do," Aumonier said.

  Dreyfus began to spin back the Solid Orrery to the point when he had begun tracking Saavedra's cutter. "Let's remind ourselves what we're looking at here," he said, as the timetag digits reversed themselves. "The Orrery's more than just a real-time record of the disposition of the Glitter Band and its habitats. It also shows Yellowstone. That isn't just some static representation of what the planet looks like from space. It's a constantly changing three-dimensional image, pieced together from countless orbital viewpoints."

&
nbsp; "We're well aware of this," Clearmountain said.

  "Hear him out," purred Aumonier.

  "Everything that happens on Yellowstone, the Orrery keeps a record of it. Changes in the weather, the cloud colouration ... it all goes into the memory. Even those rare occasions when the clouds clear to reveal the surface. But there's more to it than that." The digits froze: the Orrery had wound back to the time of Saavedra's flight. Dreyfus dabbed a finger into the jewelled disc of the Band. "Here's Panoply." He moved his finger a few centimetres to the right. "Here's the last known position of Saavedra's vehicle before she dropped beyond our sensor horizon. In clear space we'd have been able to track her at a range of several light-seconds, even with her hull stealthing. But it's hopeless in the thick of the Band, even more so with the present crisis, and Saavedra knew it."

  "You said we lost her," Aumonier said. "Has something changed?"

  "Saavedra told me I had no hope of chasing her since there were no other ships ready to go. She was bluffing — maybe there were no other ships fast enough to catch her, but there were certainly other vehicles that had more fuel and heavier weapons loads." Dreyfus looked up from the Orrery. "So I did some nosing around. Turns out the Firebrand operatives — I presume you've all been briefed concerning Firebrand? — have been using a lot of transat vehicles lately, even signing them out for duties that wouldn't require that capability. Now, why would they do that?"

  "You think they've moved the Clockmaker to Yellowstone," Aumonier said.

  Dreyfus nodded. "That's the way it's looking. Of course, that's not particularly useful data in and of itself. It's a big planet with a lot of hiding places."

  "So why didn't they take the Clockmaker there first, instead of using the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble?" Baudry asked.

  "Because it would have been much more risky," Dreyfus said. "Visiting the Clockmaker in the Bubble was so easy that they kept it up for nine years without any of us suspecting. But it's a lot more difficult to conceal flights in and out of Yellowstone. They must have looked on it as a temporary holding point until they could prepare somewhere else in the Band. But then Aurora made her move."

  "This is good work, Tom," Aumonier said. "But the point still holds. Neither Panoply nor the local enforcement agencies have the resources to comb the whole planet looking for a secret hideaway, especially not now."

  "We don't have to comb. I think I know exactly where they are." Dreyfus indicated the night-time face of Yellowstone in the Solid Orrery. It was almost entirely black, except for a cold blue flicker of frozen lightning at the southern pole. "Saavedra's ship was stealthed, but nothing's truly invisible, not even a nonvelope. To avoid being pinned down, Saavedra had to move quickly and exploit gaps in CTC's tracking, just like any prefect on sensitive business."

  "How does that help us?"

  "It means her options were limited when she hit atmosphere. I'm sure she'd have preferred to come in slowly, but that would have meant spending too much time in near-Yellowstone space. So she came in hard and fast, using the atmosphere itself as a brake."

  "And we got a hit," Aumonier said.

  Dreyfus smiled. Jane was one step ahead of him, but he liked it that way. He felt as if the two of them were a double act, feeding each other lines so that they both looked better before the other prefects. The others must have thought that the whole performance had been rehearsed.

  "The cams detected this flash," Dreyfus said, letting the Orrery scroll forward to the point he had tagged. A tiny pink spot of light waxed and waned near Yellowstone's equator. "It matches the expected entry signature for a cutter-sized vehicle moving at about the same speed Saavedra had just before she dropped out of range. It's her, Seniors."

  "Ships are coming and going from Yellowstone all the time," Clearmountain said.

  "But not that fast. Most ships come in slow, settling down into the atmosphere on controlled thrust. And there's hardly been any routine traffic since the supreme prefect polled for the use of emergency powers. People are keeping their heads down, hoping this will all blow over."

  "But an entry point is just an entry point," Baudry said.

  "Agreed. I can't rule out the possibility that Saavedra travelled a lot further within the atmosphere. But if she did, planetary traffic control didn't pick her up. I think she came in hard and fast close to her destination."

  "But there's nothing there," Baudry said. She craned her head slightly. "I can see the weather pattern over Chasm City, on the sunward face. Unless my knowledge of Stoner geography's seriously flawed, Saavedra came in thousands of kilometres from any other settlements."

  Dreyfus sent another command to the Orrery. "You're right, Lillian. The nearest surface community would have been Loreanville, eight thousand kilometres to the west. But Firebrand wouldn't have been interested in Loreanville, or any of the domed settlements: there'd have been too much local security for them to continue their activities."

  "So where was she headed?"

  "Clear to surface," Dreyfus told the Orrery. The quickmatter envelope of the planet's atmosphere dissipated in a puff, revealing the wrinkled terrain of Yellowstone's crust. It was an icy landscape riven with fissures and ridges, spotted here and there with simmering cold lakes, lifeless save for the hardiest of organisms capable of enduring the toxic chemistry of the methane-ammonia atmosphere.

  "There's still nothing there," Baudry said.

  "Not now. But there used to be." Dreyfus gave another command and the surface became dotted with a dozen or so vermilion symbols, each accompanied by a small textual annotation.

  "What are we looking at, Tom?" Aumonier asked.

  "The sites of former Amerikano colonies or bases, predating the Demarchist era. Most of these structures and digs go back three hundred years. They've been ruins for more than two hundred." There was no need for him to labour the point: Saavedra's entry trajectory had positioned her directly above one of the abandoned colonies. "Now, this could be coincidence, but I'm inclined to think otherwise."

  "What is that place?" Aumonier asked.

  "The Amerikanos called it Surface Operations Facility Nine, or Ops Nine. If they had another name for it, we have no record of it." Dreyfus shrugged. "It's been a long time."

  "But not so long that there isn't still something there."

  "Firebrand wouldn't have needed a fully operational base, just somewhere to hide the Clockmaker and keep an eye on it. An abandoned facility would have served them adequately."

  "But is there anything there at all, after all this time?"

  "Not much on the surface according to the terrain maps, but the old records say Ops Nine went down several levels. This is quite a stable area, geologically speaking. The subsurface areas may still be relatively intact: even to the extent that they'll still be airtight."

  Clearmountain blew out slowly. "Then we'd better get a task force down there immediately. There may be nothing in this, but we can't take that risk. Our top priority is to secure the Clockmaker."

  "All due respect, Senior," Dreyfus said, "but I wouldn't recommend any kind of visible response to this intelligence. Since nothing's happened so far, we can be reasonably sure that Aurora hasn't made the same deductions we have. But if we start retasking assets — sending deep-system vehicles into the atmosphere — Aurora's going to see that and wonder what's got us so interested in an abandoned Amerikano base."

  "And I wouldn't expect her to take long to put two and two together," Aumonier said. "No: Tom's correct. We need to respond, but it has to be a covert approach. We need to secure and protect the Clockmaker before Aurora even has a hint as to what we're up to. That rules out any mass concentration of assets or personnel." She paused heavily. "But someone will still have to go in. I'd volunteer to do it — I've already survived direct contact with the Clockmaker — but for obvious reasons my participation isn't an option."

  "We wouldn't risk you anyway," Dreyfus said. "You were a field when you encountered the Clockmaker back then. It's still a field's job to g
o in now."

  "But it doesn't have to be you."

  "This has been my case from the moment I spoke to that Ultra captain. I propose talking with it."

  "It doesn't talk. It kills."

  "Then I'll just have to find some common ground. A negotiating position."

  Clearmountain looked appalled. "Even if that means giving it something in return?"

  "Even if."

  "I won't permit it."

  "Then I suggest you start looking into alternative career options. I don't think Aurora's going to have a lot of use for senior prefects when she takes over."

  Someone knocked at the door. Dreyfus recognised the girl — she was the operative who'd informed the tactical room of the hostile action taken by the first four habitats claimed by Aurora.

  "Bad news for us again?" he asked.

  "Sirs, I'm not sure," she said, looking nervously at the strained faces of the seniors. "I was asked to bring this to your immediate attention. There's been a development in the House Aubusson situation."

  "What kind of development?" Dreyfus asked, secretly dreading her answer.

  "Sirs, I have imagery obtained by the deep-system cruiser we have on monitoring standby near Aubusson." With shaking hands, she placed a compad on the table. "There's been a pressure breach, a major one. Air's blasting out through a hundred-metre-wide hole in one of the window bands."

  Dreyfus snatched the compad across the table, flipping it around to face him. He made out the sausage-shaped habitat, a jet of cold, grey air geysering out from its side.

  "The cause of this breach?"

  She was facing Dreyfus now, answering him to the exclusion of everyone else present, even the supreme prefect herself. "Sir, it appears something crashed through the window band. The cruiser's tracking a metal object, a sphere, moving on a slow free-fall trajectory away from the habitat."