Prefect

by Alastair Reynolds

  "What happened to the people who used to live here?" Sparver asked, in little more than a whisper.

  "Didn't they teach you anything in school?"

  "Cut me some slack. Even fifty years is ancient history from a pig's point of view."

  "They went insane," Dreyfus said. "They were brought here in the bellies of robots, as fertilised eggs. The robots gave birth to them, and raised them to be happy, well-adjusted human beings. What they got was happy, well-adjusted psychopaths."

  "Really?"

  "I'm simplifying. But children don't grow up right without other normal people around, so that they can imprint on reasonable social behaviour. By the time the second generation was being raised, some nasty pathologies were bubbling to the surface. It got messy."

  "How messy?"

  "Axes through doors messy."

  "But they couldn't all have been insane."

  "They weren't. But there weren't nearly enough stable cases to hold the society together."

  Another staircase brought them to the lowest level of the atrium, where the pathway ambled between dried pools and ashen flower beds. Dreyfus speculated that it might once have been an agreeable place to pass time, at least in comparison with the claustrophobic confinement of the rest of the facility. But now he felt like an intruder breaking the stillness of a crypt. He told himself that the Firebrand agents had violated the sanctity of the place before Sparver and he had arrived, but the sense of being unwelcome did not abate.

  Rooms, all of them larger than any they had seen on the upper levels, ringed the atrium space, cut back into the rock for many tens of metres. Corridors plunged even deeper, curving away to other parts of Ops Nine. At the far end of one, Dreyfus saw the daylit glow of what he presumed was another atrium space, perhaps at least as large as the one they were in. Several corridors ramped down into the ground, suggesting that there were further levels of habitation beneath. Dreyfus paused, unsure which route to take. He had expected to encounter someone in the central operations area, or at least find a clue as to where everyone had gone. But apart from the Panoply items they had already seen, there was no evidence of immediate human presence.

  He was about to debate their next move when Sparver made an odd clicking noise, as if he'd got something lodged in his throat. Dreyfus snapped around to look at his deputy.

  "Sparv?"

  "Check out the sculpture, Boss."

  Dreyfus had paid little attention to the metal object since arriving on the lowest level. He'd appraised it just enough to see that it was indeed what it had appeared to be from above: a spiky black structure fashioned from something like wrought iron, suggestive of a cactus, anemone or angular palm tree, but equally likely to be a purely abstract form. It towered three or four metres over his head, throwing jagged shadows across the flooring. It consisted of dozens of sharp bladelike leaves radiating out from a central core, most of which were angled towards the ceiling. What he hadn't noticed — but which had not escaped Sparver's attention — was that there was a human skeleton at the base of the sculpture.

  Despite all his years as a prefect, Dreyfus still flinched at the sight. He had seen corpses, but not many of those. He had seen even fewer skeletons. But the shock subsided as he realised that the skeleton could not have belonged to someone who had died recently. Most of the flesh had been consumed, leaving only a few grey-black scraps attached here and there. The bones, those that had not crumbled, were mottled and dark. Of clothes, and whatever else the corpse had been wearing, no visible trace remained.

  The hapless victim must have been tossed from the high balcony, or perhaps dropped from some makeshift bridge stretched across the atrium, to fall on one of the larger spikes. The skeleton lay at its very base, the spike having rammed apart its ribcage. The skull lolled to one side, empty eye sockets regarding Dreyfus, the lopsided tilt of the jaw conveying incongruous amusement, as if it was taking a ghastly posthumous delight in the horror it caused.

  But the real horror, Dreyfus decided, was not that someone had been murdered here. Dreyfus hardly approved of summary justice, but at this remove there was no telling what the victim might have done to deserve this brutal end. The horror was that the agents of Firebrand had not seen fit to do something with the bones. They had gone about their business, equipping this base for rehabitation, as if the skeleton was merely an unavoidable part of the decor.

  Dreyfus knew then that he was dealing with more than one kind of monster.

  "Put down your weapons," a voice said.

  Dreyfus and Sparver spun around, but it was already too late. The muzzle of another Breitenbach rifle was aimed down at them from the intermediate-level balcony. With the weapon on maximum beam dispersal, Dreyfus knew, it could take out both of them with a single pulse.

  "Hello, Paula," Dreyfus said.

  "Put down the weapons," Saavedra repeated. "Do it immediately, or I will kill you."

  Dreyfus worked the sling of the rifle over his shoulder and set the weapon down on the ground. With obvious reluctance, Sparver followed his lead.

  "Step away from the guns," Saavedra said. She began to walk around the balcony, keeping the muzzle of her rifle trained on them all the while. Reaching the staircase, she began to descend. She wore Panoply trousers, but her upper body was clothed only in a sleeveless black tunic. It made her look thinner, more doll-like, than when Dreyfus had confronted her in the refectory. Yet she cradled the rifle as if it weighed nothing. The muscles that moved under her skin looked as hard and sleek as tempered steel.

  "I haven't come to kill you," Dreyfus said, as her booted feet clattered down the stairs. "You'll have to answer for what you did to Chen, and Firebrand will have to explain its part in the death of the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. But I have no difficulty believing you acted out of a sense of duty; that you thought you were doing the right thing in sheltering the Clockmaker. A tribunal will see both sides, Paula. You have nothing to fear from justice."

  She reached the floor and started walking towards them. "You finished?"

  "I've said my piece. Let me walk out of here with the Clockmaker and I'll do all I can to make things easier for you."

  Saavedra kicked the rifles aside. "Why are you so interested in the Clockmaker, Dreyfus? What does it mean to you?"

  "I won't know until I've got it."

  "But you're interested in it."

  "I'm not the only one, am I?"

  "You mentioned Ruskin-Sartorious. Do you know why we had to move the Clockmaker?"

  "I presume someone was sniffing around."

  "And who would that someone have been, I wonder? Who was so concerned to locate it, after all the years it had been hidden? Who is still concerned?"

  "Gaffney was working for Aurora. She's the one who wanted to locate and destroy the Clockmaker, because she perceived it as a threat."

  "And you think it's safe?"

  "Aurora was afraid of it. That's good enough for me."

  "Thing is, Dreyfus, I don't have any proof that you're not lying to me."

  "How about this? If I wanted to destroy the Clockmaker, I could have dropped a missile on this whole facility thirteen hours ago. Instead, my partner and I have walked in with the intention of negotiating."

  "It's true," Sparver said. "We just want access to the Clockmaker. You've kept it all this time because you thought it might be useful one day. Well, guess what? This is the day."

  "I really don't know much about Aurora," Saavedra answered. "Yes, I'm aware of the crisis in orbit, the loss of the habitats, the evacuation effort. But I still don't have a clear picture of who's behind it. Can you enlighten me?"

  "Is anything we say going to make you point that gun elsewhere?" Dreyfus asked.

  "Let's see how you get on."

  Dreyfus took a deep breath, as much to calm his nerves as to prepare to speak. "We think we know what Aurora is. She's a rogue alpha-level; one of the original Eighty. Unlike the others, she didn't fade or loop. She just made it look that way. In realit
y, she'd moved on, become stronger and faster."

  Saavedra's lip twitched derisively. "So where's she been for the last fifty years, or however long it's been?"

  "Fifty-five. And we don't know where she's been all that time, except that she's been planning something for much of it. The takeover is just the start. She wants complete control of the Glitter Band. Humans won't be allowed to live in it any more. It'll just be one vast support infrastructure for an immortal mind."

  "Why the sudden megalomaniacal intentions if she's lived happily enough under our noses all this time?"

  "Because she thinks we're going to do something bad to the Glitter Band, something that will make it impossible for even an evolved alpha-level intelligence to remain safe."

  Again that lip-twitch. "Something bad?"

  "The point is, she's convinced herself that we can't be trusted with the safekeeping of the infrastructure she needs to stay alive, so we have to be removed from the equation. It isn't a takeover, since there isn't going to be anyone left alive under her regime — unless you count the handful of human slaves she'll need to fix the servitors when they break down. It's mass genocide, Paula."

  "And why does she fear the Clockmaker?"

  "I think it's because the Clockmaker's the only thing in the system with an intelligence even approaching her own. It may even be cleverer. That means it's a threat to her sovereignty. That means she has to remove it."

  "That's what she was trying to do when she took out Ruskin-Sartorious," Sparver put in. "Gaffney set that up, but it was Aurora pulling the strings all the time. Only problem was, she was too late. You'd sensed her interest and moved the Clockmaker here."

  "Which is a pity, given that nine hundred and sixty people died because of false data," Dreyfus said.

  "Those people — the inhabitants of the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble — were not meant to die," Saavedra said.

  "Then you regret their deaths?" Dreyfus asked.

  "Of course." She snarled her answer back at him. "Don't you think we'd rather it hadn't happened? We assumed that whoever had shown interest had backed away. The relocation was a precaution. We didn't think there'd be consequences."

  "I'm prepared to believe that," Dreyfus said.

  "Believe what you like."

  "I also believe that a portion of the blame must be placed on Anthony Theobald's doorstep. He must have known he was endangering the lives of his family, even if he didn't know exactly what he was giving houseroom to."

  "He didn't need to know. None of them needed to know. None of them did know, right until the end."

  "One of them came close, though."

  She looked at him with sharp eyes. "What do you mean?"

  "Delphine Ruskin-Sartorious. The daughter. The artist of the family. Or didn't you realise?"

  "Realise what?"

  "She was in contact with the Clockmaker. It was something of a one-way dialogue, but it was contact all the same."

  She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head in flat dismissal. "No, that wouldn't have been possible. Delphine was never allowed anywhere near it. Nor were any of the family members, including Anthony Theobald. It was kept inside an armoured cell, locked away unless we wanted to communicate with it. Not only could it not escape from the cell, it couldn't send a signal beyond it, either."

  "It still found a way to reach her."

  "Impossible."

  "Like it or not, it happened. My guess is that the cell wasn't as data-secure as you thought it was. Or maybe the Clockmaker slipped a signal through when you were talking to it, or whatever it was you did during your visits."

  "A signal needs a receiver," Saavedra pointed out.

  "Delphine had one. It was in her head. Like any good Demarchist citizen, she had a skull full of implants. She used them to direct the machines that helped her with her art. The Clockmaker found out how to manipulate one or more of those implants to place imagery in Delphine's mind and shape her artwork."

  Now Saavedra tilted her head sceptically. Dreyfus knew that he had some way to go before she was convinced, but he had certainly succeeded in intriguing her. "Imagery?"

  "The Clockmaker used her as medium, expressing itself through her work. She thought she'd tapped a seam of miraculous self-inspiration, but in truth she'd just become a conduit for the Clockmaker."

  "Ridiculous," she said, but not with quite enough conviction.

  "Maybe that's what attracted Aurora in the first place," Dreyfus said, the idea occurring to him more or less at that moment. "Of course, for the threat of the Clockmaker to have impinged on her consciousness, she must have a good idea of what the Clockmaker actually is."

  "And what is it? Seeing as you appear to have all the answers."

  Dreyfus couldn't help smiling. "You mean you really don't know? After all this time?"

  "And you, presumably, do?"

  "I've got an inkling."

  "Nice try, Dreyfus, but if you think you're going to bluff your way out of this one — "

  "A crime was committed," he said. "It all goes back to a single, simple deed: the murder of an innocent man. The Clockmaker is a direct consequence of that."

  "Who was murdered?"

  "Point that gun elsewhere and I might tell you. Better yet, why don't you show me the Clockmaker?"

  "Remove your suits," she said. "I want to check that you're not carrying any other weapons. If I even think you're about to trick me, I'll kill you."

  Dreyfus glanced at Sparver. "Better do as she says."

  They removed their armour and suits, laying them out in neat piles before them. Under the suits, they both wore standard-issue Panoply uniforms.

  "Turn around," Saavedra instructed.

  They turned their backs to her.

  "Now turn to face me. Remove your whiphounds. Do not activate them."

  Dreyfus and Sparver unclipped their whiphounds and tossed the handles to the ground.

  "Kick them to me."

  They did as they were told. Still training the rifle on them, Saavedra knelt down and clipped the whiphounds to her own belt. Then she single-handedly unclipped her own unit, a Model C, and deployed the filament. It hissed against the floor, its sharp edge a coiling scratch of bright silver. Deftly flipping the haft in her hand to turn the laser eye towards Dreyfus and Sparver, she marked them both then released the handle.

  "Confirm target acquisition," she said; the whiphound nodded its handle in reply. "Maintain target surveillance. If targets approach within five metres of me, or move more than ten metres from me, intercept and detain both subjects with maximum lethal force. Indicate compliance."

  The whiphound nodded.

  "I think we're clear on the ground rules," Dreyfus said.

  Saavedra moved to the rifles she had told them to discard, put down her own weapon and removed the ammo cells from the other two guns. She clipped the cells to her belt, next to the two captured whiphounds. Then she collected her own rifle and shrugged it back over her shoulder, the muzzle aimed at the ceiling.

  "This is called a gesture of trust. Don't abuse it."

  "We're cool with not abusing it," Sparver said.

  "Follow me, and remember what I just told the whiphound. I'll show you the Clockmaker, if you really want to see it."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 31

  * * *

  Saavedra led them deeper into Ops Nine, down one of the sloping ramps that Dreyfus had already noticed leading away from the atrium. Her whiphound slinked along behind the party, constantly triangulating the distance between Saavedra and her guests, waiting for one of them to transgress the parameters she had laid down. Dreyfus was relieved not to have a gun aimed at him, but the whiphound was only a marginal improvement. If he had been concerned about dying because of a twitch from Saavedra's finger, now he had to worry about the inflexible thought processes of a machine that really wasn't much brighter than a guard dog. Not that he had any intention of deliberately violating the rules, but what if he tripped, or acc
identally crossed the five-metre line?

  "I will show it to you," she said, "but you can forget any idea of negotiating with it. It is not a rational intellect."

  "It doesn't have to be rational to understand that Aurora wants it dead," Dreyfus replied.

  "You think that will give you leverage?"

  "It's all I've got. Better make the most of it."

  "How did you manage to install a containment facility down here at such short notice?" Sparver asked.

  "We didn't. There was only just time to clear out of Ruskin-Sartorious before it was destroyed. Fortunately, there was a kind of cage already here. It needed some alterations, but nothing beyond our resources."

  "You're talking about the tokamak," Dreyfus said, wonderingly.

  "The what?" Sparver asked.

  "He means the fusion reactor that would have powered this facility during the Amerikano era," Saavedra said loftily. "And he's right. That's exactly what we used. It's one large magnetic containment bottle. Hideously inefficient compared to the portable generators we brought with us, but it has its uses. It needed to be checked, and the field geometry adjusted, but none of that was particularly taxing. It was much easier than installing our own containment equipment: we'd have needed to hollow out another cavern for that."

  "I hope you trust Amerikano engineering," Dreyfus said. "Keeping a psychopathic machine prisoner wasn't exactly in the design specs."

  "I trust it not to fail. Do you think I'd have come here if I didn't?"

  "Where's everyone else?" Dreyfus asked.

  "The rest of Firebrand? Apart from Simon Veitch, I'm the only one down here."

  Dreyfus remembered that name from the list of Firebrand members Jane had given him. It had impressed itself on his memory for a reason.

  "Where are the others?"

  "Wherever their duties require them to be. Since Jane pulled the plug on us, we've all had to live dual lives. How do you imagine we managed to maintain Firebrand while we also had our regular duties to attend to?"