The Prefect (41 page)

‘I saw nothing concerning the current location of the Clockmaker.'

‘Tell me you didn't see a hint of the cell. Feints and mirrors in the architecture. Faultlines and schisms in the flow of data. Something that would have been nigh-on impossible for a baseline human to spot, even a high-grade Panoply operative. But not necessarily beyond the discernment of a Conjoiner.'

‘I saw nothing.'

‘Do you want to give that a bit more thought?' He injected a tone of conciliatory reasonableness into his voice. ‘We can come to an arrangement, if you like. I can leave you alive, with a modicum of neural functionality. If you help me.'

‘You had better not leave me alive, Gaffney. Not if you want to sleep at night.'

‘I'll take that as a no“, I suppose.' He smiled nicely. ‘No point asking again, is there?'

‘None at all.'

‘Then I guess we're done here.'

The whiphound felt heavy and solid in his hands, like a blunt instrument. He spooled the filament back into the handle and then clipped it to his belt, for now.

‘I thought — ‘ Clepsydra began.

‘I was never going to kill you with the whiphound. Too damned risky if you managed to sink your mental claws into it.' Gaffney reached into his pocket and retrieved the gun he had intended to use all along. It was an ancient thing, devoid of any components that could be influenced by Conjoiner mind-trickery. It relied on oiled steel mechanisms and simple pyrotechnic chemistry. Like a crossbow, or a bayonet, it was an outdated weapon for which there were still certain niche applications.

It only took one shot. He drilled Clepsydra through the forehead, just under the start of her cranial crest, leaving an exit wound in the back of her skull large enough to put three fingers through. Brain and bone splattered the rear wall of the interrogation bubble. He paddled closer to examine the residue. In addition to the expected smell of cordite, there was a vile stench of burnt electrical componentry. The pink and grey mess had the texture of porridge, intermingled with bits of broken earthenware and torn fabric. There was something else in there, too: tiny glinting things, silver-grey and bronze, some of them linked together by fine gold wires, some with little lights still blinking. He watched, fascinated, as the lights slowly stopped flashing, as if he was observing a neon-lit city fading into blackout. Some part of her, smeared against that wall, had still been thinking.

Clepsydra was dead now, no doubt about that. Conjoiners were superhuman but they weren't invulnerable. She was floating quite limply, her eyes still open, elevated and turned slightly together as if - as ludicrous as it might appear - she had been tracking the path of the bullet just before it entered her forehead. The look on her face was strangely serene, with the merest hint of a coquettish smile. Gaffney wasn't bothered by that. He'd had enough experience with corpses to know how deceptive their expressions could be. Freezeframe the onset of a scream and it could easily resemble laughter, or delight, or joyous anticipation.

He was nearly done. He returned the gun to his pocket and spoke aloud, very clearly and slowly. ‘Gallium, paper, basalt. Gallium, paper, basalt. Reveal. Reveal. Reveal.'

It took a moment, just long enough to stretch his nerves. But he needn't have worried. The nonvelope flickered into existence off to his right, revealing itself as a chromed sphere reflecting back the patterning of wall tiles in convex curves. Gaffney paddled over and cracked the nonvelope open along its hemispherical divide. He removed the forensic clean-up kit he had placed in the nonvelope earlier and for a couple of minutes busied himself removing the immediate evidence of Clepsydra's death from the walls. Had they been made of quickmatter, they would have absorbed the evidence themselves, but the interrogation bubble's cladding was resolutely dumb. Fortunately the clean-up did not need to be a thorough job, and the fact that there would still be microscopic traces of blood and tissue located away from the splatter point - let alone dispersed through the air - was of no concern to him.

He used the clean-up kit to remove forensic traces from both the weapon and his training glove, then packed the gun and the kit back into the nonvelope. He then turned his attention to Clepsydra. The weightless environment made it no simple matter to persuade her inert form into the restrictive volume of the nonvelope, but Gaffney accomplished the task without having to resort to the cutting capabilities of the whiphound. He resealed the nonvelope and ordered it to return to invisibility. In the moment after it had flicked into concealment mode, he fancied that he could just discern its outline, as a pencil-thin circle looming before him. But when he glanced away and then returned his gaze to the spot where the nonvelope had been, he could not see it at all.

He slipped on his glasses, keying in sonar mode. The nonvelope did its best to absorb the sound pulses he was sending it, but it had been optimised for invisibility in vacuum, not atmosphere. The glasses picked it out easily. He reached out a hand and touched the cold, smooth curve of the sphere, which drifted to one side under his finger pressure. He pushed it towards the wall. It was a squeeze getting it through the twin passwalls, but it had made the journey once so it could make it again. Gaffney's only concern was meeting someone coming the other way: Dreyfus, for instance. Two people could easily pass each other, but the nonvelope presented an obstruction too wide to wriggle around.

His luck - or what Gaffney preferred to think of as his calculated access window - continued to hold. He reached the much wider trunk corridor that accessed the interrogation chamber's outer airlock without incident, where there was sufficient room for the nonvelope to hide itself, moving out of the way of passers-by when necessary. He abandoned the sphere to its own detection-avoidance programming. Gaffney was snatching off his glasses when a nameless operative came around the bend in the corridor, pulling himself along by handholds. He was hauling a bundle of shrink-wrapped uniforms from one part of Panoply to another.

‘Senior Prefect,' the operative said, touching a deferential hand to the side of his head.

Gaffney nodded back, fumbling the glasses into his pocket. ‘Keep up the good work, son,' he said, sounding just a touch more flustered than he would have liked.

Dreyfus pinched the skin at the corners of his eyes until the gemmed lights of the Solid Orrery moved into sluggish focus. For a long while he had been fighting exhaustion, slipping into instants of treacherous microsleep where his thoughts spun off into daydreams and wish-fulfilment fantasy. Seniors, field prefects and supernumerary operatives were coming and going from the tactical room, murmuring intelligence and rumour, pausing to consult compads or run enlargements and simulations on the Solid Orrery itself. Occasionally Dreyfus was allowed to be party to what was discussed, even to add his thoughts, but the other seniors made it abundantly clear that he was there on their terms, not his. Exasperatedly, he'd listened while the next response was formulated. After much debate, the seniors had decided to send four cutters, one to each silent habitat, each of which would be carrying three Panoply operatives equipped at the same level as a lockdown party.

‘That's not enough,' Dreyfus said. ‘All you'll have to show for it is four wrecked ships and twelve dead prefects. We can't afford to lose the ships and we damned well can't afford to lose the prefects.'

‘It's the logical next step in an escalating response,' Crissel pointed out.

Dreyfus shook his head in dismay. ‘This isn't about logical next steps. They've already shown us that any approaching ships will be treated as hostile.'

‘So what do you propose?'

‘We need four deep-system cruisers, more if we can spare them. They can carry hundreds of prefects. They'll also stand a chance of fighting all the way into the four habitats and making a forced hard dock.'

‘To me,' Crissel said, looking pleased with himself, ‘that sounds very much like putting all our eggs in one basket.'

‘Whereas you'd prefer to keep throwing the eggs one a time, until we run out?'

‘That isn't it at all. I'm talking about an appropriate reaction, rather than a sledgehammer strike with all our resources—'

Dreyfus cut him off. ‘If you want to recover those habitats, the time to act is now. Whoever's inside them is probably struggling to control the citizenry, enough that they may still be vulnerable to an assault by a small but coordinated squad of prefects. We have a window here, one that's closing on us fast.'

Gaffney had returned to the room - he'd been off on some errand elsewhere. Dreyfus noticed an uncharacteristic sheen of sweat on his forehead, and the fact that he was wearing the heavy black glove and sleeve of whiphound training armour.

‘At the risk of endorsing melodrama,' Gaffney said, looking only at the other seniors, ‘Dreyfus may have a point. We can't commit four cruisers, or even two. But we do have one on launch standby. We can put fifty field prefects inside it within ten minutes, more if we move some shifts around.'

‘They'll need tactical armour and extreme-contingency weapons,' Crissel said.

‘The armour isn't a problem. But the weapons are still under wraps.' Gaffney looked apologetic. ‘This crisis has caught up with us so quickly that we haven't polled for permission to use them.'

‘Jane would have polled already,' Dreyfus said. ‘I'm sure she was planning it when I left.'

‘It's not too late,' Baudry said. ‘I'll force through an emergency poll using the statutory process. We can get a return on it inside twenty minutes. That'll still give us time to equip the cruiser.'

‘If they don't turn us down,' Dreyfus said.

‘They won't. I'll make it abundantly clear that we need those weapons.'

‘And spark off even more unrest into the bargain?' Gaffney asked, head tilted at a sceptical angle. ‘Be very careful how you play this one. If the citizenry get even a whiff that we're dealing with something worse than a squabble with the Ultras, we'll have our hands tied just containing the panic.'

‘I'll be sure to exercise due discretion,' Baudry said, speaking with fierce self-control.

‘I hope the vote goes our way,' Dreyfus said. ‘But even if it does, one cruiser won't be anywhere near enough.'

‘It's all we can spare at the moment,' Gaffney said. ‘You'll just have to take it or leave it.'

‘I'll take it,' Dreyfus said. ‘Provided I'm allowed to lead the assault team.'

For a moment no one said anything. Dreyfus sensed the conflicted impulses of the other prefects. None of them would have wanted to be on that ship when it got close to House Aubusson.

‘It'll be dangerous,' Gaffney said.

‘I know.'

Baudry studied Dreyfus with knowing concentration. ‘And I presume House Aubusson will be your first port of call?'

He didn't even blink. ‘It's the softest target. The one we have the best chance of taking.'

‘And if Thalia Ng were elsewhere?'

‘She isn't,' Dreyfus said.

Across the Glitter Band, a singular event was taking place, one that had not happened for eleven years, and for more than thirty before that. With the exception of the four that had already been lost, it was happening in all ten thousand habitats, irrespective of their status or social organisation. Where citizens were wired into a high degree of abstraction, whether it was inside the Bezile Solipsist State, Dreamhaven, Carousel New Jakarta or one of a hundred similar habitats, they simply found their local reality - however baroque, however impenetrably bizarre - being rudely interrupted to make way for an unscheduled announcement from the mundane depths of baseline reality. In the many mainstream Demarchist states, citizens felt the intrusion of a new presence into their minds, one that momentarily suppressed the usual nervous chatter of endless polling. In more moderate states, where abstraction was not adopted to the same degree, citizens received warning chimes from bracelets, or found windows appearing in the visual fields provided by optic implants, lenses, monocles or glasses. They paused to pay heed. In states where extreme biomodifications were in vogue, citizens were alerted by changes in their own physiology, or the physiologies of those around them. Skin patterns shifted to accommodate two-dimensional video displays. Entire bodily structures morphed to form living sculptures capable of delivering a message. In the Voluntary Tyrannies, citizens paused to look up at murals on the sides of the buildings that had suddenly flicked over to show the face of an unfamiliar woman rather than the locally designated tyrant.

‘This,' said the woman, ‘is Senior Prefect Baudry, speaking for Panoply. I am invoking statutory process to table an emergency poll. Please be assured that normal polling will resume after this interruption.' Baudry paused, cleared her throat and proceeded to speak with the slow and solemn gravity of the practised orator. ‘As is well known, it is the democratic wish of the peoples of the Glitter Band that Panoply operatives be denied the day-to-day right to carry weapons, beyond those specified in the operational mandate. Panoply has always respected this decision, even when it has meant placing its own prefects at risk. During the last year alone, eleven field prefects have died in the line of duty because they carried no weapon more effective than a simple autonomous whip. And yet each and every one of them walked into danger knowing only that they had a duty to perform.' Having made her point, Baudry paused again before continuing. ‘But it is part of the mandate that, when circumstances dictate, Panoply has the means to return to the citizenry and request the temporary right - a period specified as exactly one hundred and thirty hours, not a minute longer - to arm its agents with those weapons that remain in our arsenal, designated for use under extreme circumstances. I need hardly add that such a request is not issued lightly, nor in any expectation of automatic affirmation. It is, nonetheless, my unfortunate duty to issue such a request now. For matters of operational security, I regret that I cannot specify the exact nature of the crisis, other than to say that it is of a severity we have very rarely encountered, and that the future safety of the entire Glitter Band may depend on our actions. As you are doubtless aware, tensions between the Glitter Band and the Ultras have reached an unacceptable level in the last few days. Because of this situation, Panoply operatives are already facing heightened risks to their personal safety. In addition, Panoply's usual resources - people and machines both - are overworked and overstretched. I would therefore respectfully issue two requests at this point. The first is to urge calm, for - despite what some of you may have heard - all the information presently in Panoply's possession indicates that there has been no act of hostile intention from the Ultras. The second request is to grant my agents the right to carry those weapons that they now need to perform their duties. Polling on this issue will commence immediately. Please give this matter your utmost attention. This is Senior Prefect Baudry, speaking for Panoply, asking for your help.'