The Prefect

CHAPTER 13

Thalia found herself once again confronting a waiting polling core. She was somewhere in the sphere: most likely on a floor about halfway up its hundred-metre diameter, judging by the spacious dimensions of the room housing the machinery. Large porthole-shaped windows ringed the enormous space. The beige walls were covered in mazelike white patterns derived from the designs of early integrated circuits. A number of chairs and tables had been provided for the comfort of the visitors. The furniture was all safely inert; no quickmatter was permitted near a polling core, save that essential for the functioning of the core itself. The core was a pearl-coloured cylinder rising from the middle of the floor and piercing the ceiling, surrounded by a low metal railing. Resting on a heavy-looking plinth just outside the railinged area was a glass-cased architectural model of the Museum of Cybernetics, rendered with sterile precision.

Thalia had already explained what she would have to do; that if everything went to plan she would be on her way within less than twenty minutes; that at most her guests could expect a subliminal interruption in

their access to abstraction. She had already examined the core and satisfied herself that there would be no surprises once she had opened the access window.

“Really,” she said, in her best self-deprecating tone, “it’s not all that interesting. If it was serious, they wouldn’t entrust it to just one field prefect.”

“I’m sure you’re understating your abilities,” said Caillebot, lounging in a blocky blue chair, one leg hooked over the other.

“All I’m saying is, if you don’t want to hang around and see me mutter a few boring incantations, I won’t be offended. I know my way down now. If you want to wait by those goldfish ponds, I can find you when I’m done.”

“If it doesn’t inconvenience you, I think we’d all like to stay,” Paula Thory said, looking to the others for support.

“It’s not often we see the beating heart of the voting apparatus laid open for examination.”

Thalia scratched at her damp collar.

“If you want to stick around, I have no problem with that. I’m about ready to begin.”

“Do what you must, Prefect,” Thory said.

She opened the cylinder, conscious of the eyes on her, and retrieved the last of the four one-time pads.

“I’m going to read out three magic words here. They’ll give me access to the core for six hundred seconds. There’s no going back once I’ve initiated that window, so it’d be best if I’m not interrupted unless absolutely necessary. Of course, I’ll keep you informed about what’s happening.”

“We appreciate the gesture. Please, continue your work and don’t pay any heed to us,” Caillebot said.

Thalia stepped through a gap in the surrounding railing, placed her cylinder on the ground and faced the flickering pillar of the core. She cleared her throat.

“This is Deputy Field Prefect Thalia Ng. Acknowledge security access override Hickory Crepuscule Ivory.”

“Override confirmed,” answered the core.

“You now have six hundred seconds of clearance, Deputy Field Prefect Ng.”

Thalia removed the final upgrade diskette from her cylinder.

“I’m going to insert this into the core,” she said.

“It contains new software instructions to cover a minor security loophole identified by Panoply.”

She had the core present a data-entry slot for her use. She pushed the thick diskette into the pillar, then stood back while the machine digested its contents. Thalia was anxious, but not nervous. She had run into difficulties in Carousel New Seattle-Tacoma, but all her instincts assured her that nothing like that would happen here.

“The diskette contains a data fragment,” the core said.

“What do you wish me to do with this data fragment?”

Thalia started to answer, but at that moment her bracelet began chiming. She lifted her cuff and glared at it in irritation. What was Prefect Muang trying to reach her about, now of all times? Muang was not one of the bastards who gave her grief about her father, but he wasn’t Dreyfus or Sparver, or one of the senior prefects she was doing her best to impress. Whatever he was calling about, it could not possibly be that urgent. Certainly not urgent enough to interrupt a sensitive field upgrade, especially now that she’d actually opened the six-hundred-second access window.

She would call him back when she was done. The world wasn’t going to end because she kept Muang waiting for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry,” Thalia said, squeezing the suppress button.

The core repeated its enquiry.

“The diskette contains a data fragment. What do you wish me to do with this data fragment?”

Thalia pulled down her cuff.

“Use it to overwrite the contents of executable data segment alpha alpha five one six, please.”

“Just a moment.” Lights flashed while the pillar cogitated.

“I am ready to execute the overwrite order. I anticipate that the operation will entail a brief loss of abstraction, not exceeding three microseconds. Please confirm that the overwrite order is to be executed.”

“Confirm,” Thalia said.

“The executable data segment has now been overwritten. Abstraction was down for two point six eight microseconds. All affected transactions were buffered and have now been successfully reinstated. A level-one audit indicates no software conflicts have arisen as a result of this installation. Do you have further instructions for me?”

“No,” Thalia said.

“That will be all.”

“There are four hundred and eleven seconds remaining on your access window. Do you wish the window to remain open until its scheduled termination, or shall I invoke immediate closure?”

“You can close. We’re done here.”

“Access is now terminated. Thank you for your visit, Deputy Field Prefect Thalia Ng.”

“It’s been a pleasure.” After retrieving the upgrade diskette from the pillar, Thalia snapped it back into the cylinder and then sealed the cylinder itself. She tried to keep her composure, but now that she was done, she could not help but feel a giddy elation. It was a little like being drunk on an empty stomach. I did it! she thought. She had completed all four installations. All on her own, without Dreyfus looking over her shoulder, without even the benefit of another field agent to help her with the technical workload. If anyone had ever doubted her abilities, or wondered how well she would function outside a team context, this would silence them. I, Thalia Ng, not only designed the security plug, I field-installed it myself, by hand, with just a cutter for company.

Four habitats completed. The plan had been executed. And now that she had satisfied herself that the upgrade was robust by installing it in four worst-case examples, there was nothing to stop her going live across the entire Glitter Band, all ten thousand habitats.

Bring them on, Thalia thought, and then worked very hard to wipe the look of self-satisfaction from her face as she turned to her audience again, because it would be neither seemly nor dignified in a prefect.

“Is there a problem?” Jules Caillebot asked, still sitting in the blue armchair but no longer in the relaxed pose of a few minutes earlier.

“Not from my end,” Thalia said.

“It all went like a dream. Thanks for your cooperation.” Maybe Muang had been calling her to inform her of a temporary comms blackout, she thought. It happened sometimes. Nothing to worry about.

“You know what? Now that we’re done, maybe I will take a walk in some of the gardens after all.”

“Abstraction is down,” Caillebot said quietly.

Thalia felt the first itch of wrongness.

“I’m sorry?”

“We have no abstraction. You said it would be off-line for a few microseconds, too short to notice. But it’s still down.” His voice became firmer and louder.

“Abstraction is down, Prefect. Abstraction is down .”

Thalia shook her head.

“You’re mistaken. It can’t be down.”

“There is no abstraction,” Paula Thory said, standing up from her own chair.

“We’re out of contact, Prefect. Something appears to have gone wrong.”

“The system ran an audit on itself. It confirmed that abstraction had only been interrupted for an instant. The system doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Then why were you here in the first place, if it wasn’t to correct a failing in the apparatus?” asked Caillebot.

“Maybe it’s just us,” said Broderick Cuthbertson. His mechanical owl twitched its head in all directions, as if following the flight of an invisible wasp.

“Your bird’s confused,” Cyrus Parnasse said.

“I’m guessing it depends on abstraction to orient itself.”

Cuthbertson comforted his creation with a finger-stroke.

“Easy, boy.”

“Then it’s at least everyone—everything—in this building,” Thory said, colour draining from her cheeks.

“What if it’s not just the building? What if we’re looking at a major outage across the whole campus?”

“Let’s look out of the windows,” said Meriel Redon.

“We can see half of Aubusson from here.”

They were paying no attention to Thalia. She was just a detail in the room. For now. She walked behind them as they stood from their chairs and sofas and stools—those who weren’t already standing—and dashed to the row of portholes, two or three of them crowding behind each circular pane.

“I can see people down in the park,” said a clean-shaven young man whose name Thalia didn’t remember. He wore an electric-blue suit with frilled black cuffs.

“They’re behaving oddly. Clumping together all of a sudden, as if they want to talk. Some of them are starting to run for the exits. They’re looking up, at us.”

“They know there’s a problem,” Thory said.

“It’s no wonder they’re looking up at the polling core. They’re wondering what the hell’s happening.”

“There’s a train stopped on the line,” said a woman in a flame-red dress, standing at another porthole.

“It’s the other side of the nearest window band. Whatever this is, it isn’t local. It isn’t just happening to us, or to the museum.”

“There’s a volantor,” someone else said.

“It’s making an emergency landing on the roof of the Bailter Ziggurat. That’s two whole bands towards the leading cap. Nearly ten kilometres!”

“It’s the whole habitat,” Thory said, as if she’d just seen a fearful omen.

“The whole of House Aubusson, all sixty kilometres of it. Eight hundred thousand people have just lost abstraction for the first time in their lives.”

“This can’t be happening,” Thalia whispered.

The knife was still hard against Dreyfus’ throat. He cursed himself for not donning the helmet when he’d had the chance. He tried to reason that the woman would have killed him by now if that was her intention, but he could think of a multitude of reasons why she might want to keep him talking now and kill him later.

“What year is it?” she asked, as if the question had just popped into her head.

“What year?” The pressure of the knife increased.

“Is there a problem with my diction?”

“No,” Dreyfus said hastily.

“Not at all. The year is two thousand, four hundred and twenty-seven. Why do you ask?”

“Because I’ve been inside this place a very long time.”

“Long enough to lose track of the year?”

“Long enough to lose track of everything. I had my suspicions, though.” He caught a note of proud defiance in her voice.

“I wasn’t so very far off the mark.”

He’d still not seen her face, or any part of her save the gauntleted hand holding the knife.

“Are you a member of the Nerval-Lermontov family?” he asked.

“Is that who you are looking for?”

“I’m not looking for anyone in particular. I’m a policeman. I’m investigating a crime. My inquiries brought me to this asteroid.”

“Alone?”

“I came in a ship, with my deputy. We were attacked during our approach and the ship was damaged.

We could have limped back to Panoply, but we decided to see if we could use the rock to get a message to them quicker. That’s what my deputy’s doing now. I also wanted to see what was worth attacking us to protect.”

The knife scratched against his skin. It felt cold. He wondered if it had drawn blood yet.

“You’ve seen it now,” the woman said, obviously meaning the ship in which they were floating.

“Tell me what you make of it.”

“It’s a Conjoiner spacecraft. That’s as much as I was able to tell from outside. I came aboard and I’ve seen this.” He meant the room full of dismembered sleepers, the ones that the woman said she had been eating.

“That’s all. Now are you going to tell me what this means?”

“Try moving,” she said.

“Move an arm or a leg. I won’t stop you.” Dreyfus tried, but although he could move his limbs, they encountered stiff resistance against the interior of his suit. He was effectively paralysed.

“I can’t.”

“I’ve reached into your suit and disabled its motor and communication functions. I can turn them on and off as easily as I can blink. With the suit immobilised like that, you won’t be able to move or remove it. You’ll starve here and die. It would take a long time and it would not be pleasant.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“So that you understand, Prefect. So that you grasp that I have complete control over you.” The pressure from the knife eased.

“So that you understand that I don’t need this to kill you.” Her hand pulled away.

“You must be a Conjoiner,” he said.

“No one else could perform a trick like that.” When she offered neither confirmation nor denial, he said, “You must be from this ship. Am I right?”

“So you are not completely incapable of deductive reasoning. For one of the retarded, you must be quite bright.”

“I’m just a prefect trying to do my job. Are you being held captive here?”

“What do you think?” she asked, with acid sarcasm.

“Let’s establish some ground rules. I’m not your enemy. If someone is keeping you here against your will, I want to find out who they are and why they’re doing it. We’re on the same side. We should be able to trust each other.”

“Shall I tell you why I have difficulty trusting you, Prefect? A man like you came here already. He saw what was being done to us and did nothing.”

“What do you mean, a man like me?”

“He wore the same kind of suit.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I mean exactly the same kind. If a prefect is what you are, then this man was a prefect as well.”

“That’s not possible,” Dreyfus said. But even as he spoke he recalled the link that Sparver had found connecting this rock to Panoply. “Could someone else have come here, making independent inquiries?”

“Perhaps. But if so, how could Jane Aumonier not have known about it? I saw him myself. There was no mistake. I could not see into his head, and I can’t see into yours. Your kind never carry neural implants, do they?”

His own voice sounded distant and strangulated.

“This man… does he come on his own, or are there others?”

“Only the man comes in person. But there are other visitors.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“That is because they confuse me. I know when the man comes because I sense the electromagnetic noise from the opening and closing of airlocks. I sense his suit, although I can never get close enough to paralyse him. But the others don’t arrive like that. Suddenly they are simply here, like a change in the wind. One in particular makes her presence very clear to me. She likes to walk in our heads, as if she is taking a stroll through an ornamental garden. She toys with us. She takes pleasure in our confinement, in our distress.”

“You’re talking about an artificial intelligence, then. A beta-level simulation, something like that. A simulacrum that looks and acts like a real person, but has no interior life.”

“No,” the Conjoiner said carefully.

“I am talking about something vastly more than that. A mind like a thundercloud, brimming with terrible lightning, terrible darkness. It was never a beta-level simulation. It has the structure of human consciousness, but warped, magnified, perverted. Like a mansion gone wrong, a great house turned evil.”

“Does she have a name?”

“One,” the Conjoiner affirmed.

“She professes to hide her true identity from us, but I have seen through her concealments. She is too vain to hide herself perfectly. She desires to be known, I think.” Dreyfus hardly dared ask.

“Tell me the name.”

“She calls herself Aurora.”

“I made no mistake,” Thalia said.

“I swear I did everything by the book.” Thory’s eyes had shrunk to nasty little dots.

“Then maybe the book is wrong. Every second that we don’t have abstraction will cost our standing with the lobbyists. You have no idea of the financial hurt I’m talking about. Each and every one of us is a stakeholder in Aubusson society. Damage the habitat’s finances and you damage us. That means me, personally.” Thalia’s voice had become absurdly timid and small. She felt like a schoolgirl being required to explain late homework.

“I don’t know what the problem is.”

“Then perhaps you should start investigating!” Thory glared at her with venomous intent.

“You broke this, Prefect. It’s your responsibility to fix it. Why don’t you start, instead of just standing there like a petrified tree?”

“I… don’t have access,” Thalia said. Under her tunic she could feel a cold line of sweat trickling down her back.

“They gave me a six-hundred-second window. I used it. There’s no way back in again.”

“Then you’d better think of something else,” Caillebot said.

“And be fast about it.”

“There’s nothing else to do. I can run some superficial tests on the pillar… but without core access, I can’t see into its guts. And this has to be a fundamental problem, something really deep-rooted.” It was Parnasse’s turn to speak. His voice was a low rumble, yet everyone listened to him.

“They only gave you a single one-time pad, did they, girl?”

“Just the one,” Thalia said.

“Then she’s right,” he said, turning to the others.

“I may not be a prefect, but I know a thing or two about the way these things work. She won’t get in again without a new pad.”

“Then call home and get one,” Thory said, hissing out the words.

“Nice trick, without abstraction access,” Parnasse replied. He looked at Thalia.

“True, isn’t it? Your own comms piggyback abstraction services. You’d need it to be up and running before you can call Panoply.” Thalia swallowed hard as the truth sank home.

“That’s right. We depend on abstraction protocols as well. I’m out of contact with home.”

“Try it, just to be sure,” said Parnasse. Thalia tried it. She attempted to return the call from Muang, the one she had ignored during the upgrade.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when the bracelet failed to connect.

“I can’t see Panoply. I can’t even see my ship.”

“Oh, that’s clever!” Thory said.

“You gut us open and then you can’t even call for help! Whose clever bloody idea was that?”

“It’s never caused us a problem before. If we take abstraction down, it’s on our terms.”

“Until today,” Thory said.

The mood of the gathering was swerving somewhere unpleasant. They’d been all smiles until she took their sweets away.

“Look,” Thalia said, trying to strike the right conciliatory note, “this is unacceptable, and you have my sincere apology for any inconvenience I may have caused. But I promise you it won’t last long. If the abstraction blackout is as wide as it looks, then that means an entire habitat has just dropped off the network. Not just any old hermit colony, either, but House Aubusson. You’ve already told me that the lobbyists are in almost constant contact with you. How long do you think it will take before they notice your absence? Probably not more than a few minutes. Maybe a few minutes more before they act on that absence and start calling Panoply, to find out what’s gone wrong.” She took a deep breath.

“My bosses will take this very, very seriously, even given the current crisis. At high-burn, a Heavy Technical Squad could be knocking on the door inside forty-five minutes. They’ll have new pads, maybe even an emergency field core, everything necessary to get abstraction back up and running. Honestly, you could be back on-line inside an hour, ninety minutes at the max.”

“You talk as if ninety minutes is nothing,” Thory said.

“Maybe it isn’t for you. I know how it is for prefects. You’ve never experienced true abstraction. You have no idea what losing it means to us. Perhaps if your bosses had sent someone more experienced, someone who at least looked as if they knew what they were doing—”

Thalia felt something inside her snap, like a wishbone tearing in two.

“Maybe I don’t know what losing abstraction means to you. But I’ll tell you this. A few days ago I was part of a lockdown party. It turned nasty. We had to euthanise. So don’t you dare talk to me as if I’m some wet-behind-the-ears apprentice who’s never got her hands dirty.”

“If you think—” Paula Thory began.

“Wait,” Thalia said.

“I’m not done. I’m not remotely done. Since we got back from that lockdown—which was regarded as a successful operation, incidentally, despite the casualties—my boss has had to deal with the murder of more than nine hundred innocent people, not including the crew of a ship who were butchered and burnt for their perceived part in that crime, but who were in all likelihood innocent. My boss is still on that case. His boss is doing her best just to keep her head in one piece. The rest of Panoply’s trying to stop the whole Glitter Band sliding into war against the Ultras, while bracing itself for the civil war that’s probably going to follow when we find out who really torched Ruskin-Sartorious.” Thalia stiffened the set of her jaw, making sure she looked at each member of the party in turn.

“Maybe that isn’t a typical week in the life of Panoply, people, but it happens to be the week we’re dealing with right now. Perhaps you think the loss of ninety minutes of abstraction measures up to what’s already on our table. Fine if you do, that’s your call. But I’m here to tell you that, as far as I’m concerned, you are a bunch of self-pitying sonsofbitches who at this point in time are doing pretty fucking well just to be breathing.”

No one said anything. They were just looking at her, mouths open, as if she had frozen them all into silence.

Thalia smiled tightly.

“Nothing personal, though. I guess I’d be pretty upset if someone had taken my toys from the pram as well. I’m just saying that right now we could all use a degree of perspective. Because this is not the end of the world.”

She relaxed her stance just enough to let them know that the dressing down was over, for the moment.

“You,” she said, pointing at the woman in the flame-red dress.

“That train you saw earlier. Is it still stopped?”

“Yes,” the woman said, stammering out her answer.

“I can still see it. It’s not going anywhere.”

“I was hoping we could take the train back to the endcap. As I said, help’ll be on its way soon enough regardless, but if it would make any of you happier, I could use the transmitter on my ship to call Panoply.”

“Would that work?” asked a chastened Caillebot.

“Absolutely. Since it’s outside Aubusson, it won’t have been affected by the abstraction outage. Looks like we’re stuck here for the duration, though, unless any of you knows another way to get to the docking hub.”

“I’m not seeing any aerial traffic,” said a man with a strangely comedic face.

“All flights must have been grounded along with that volantor.”

“We could walk,” Parnasse said.

“It’s less than ten kilometres to the endcap.”

“Are you serious?” Paula Thory asked.

“No one’s saying you’d have to come with us.” He nodded in Thalia’s direction.

“I think the girl’s right: once word gets out, they’ll send help. But like she said, this is a sticky time for Panoply. We might be looking at a fair bit longer than an hour, or ninety minutes. Could be two hours, could be three, even longer.”

“So what does walking accomplish?” Thory asked.

Parnasse shrugged his broad farmer’s shoulders. He’d rolled up his sleeves, revealing hairy red arms knotted with muscle.

“Not much, except it means we’d stand a chance of meeting the specialists when they come through the door. At least Thalia could fill them in on exactly what she was doing before the system went tits-up.” He glanced at her.

“Right, girl?”

“It might save some time,” she said.

“If we can get to the hub, I can also talk to Panoply and give them some technical background before the squad arrives.” The hypothetical squad, she reminded herself. The one she could not say for sure would actually be on its way.

“Either way, it’s no worse than staying here. I can’t do a thing for the core now.”

“People out there,” Parnasse said, “are going to be just a tad upset if they see a Panoply uniform. You could be looking at an eight-hundred-thousand-strong lynch mob.”

“They can fume and rage all they want,” Thalia said, touching her whiphound for reassurance.

“I’m the prefect here, not them. And if they want to find out what happens when one of them even thinks of laying a finger on me, they’re more than welcome.”

“Fighting talk,” Parnasse said, in little more than a mutter.

“I like the sound of that.”

The gruff curator, Thalia realised, was the only one of them who was unequivocally on her side. Perhaps he had a grudging respect for her ability with cybernetic systems, in spite of all that had just befallen them, or maybe he was just prickly enough to defend her because everyone else wanted her hide.

“We can cover ten kilometres in less than two hours,” she said.

“Provided we don’t have to detour to cross those window bands, of course.”

“We won’t,” Parnasse said.

“Not much, anyway. We can use the pedestrian bridges under the rail line, and even if those are blocked for one reason or another, there are always the parkland connections. There’s a lot of greenery, a lot of cover.”

Thalia nodded: she’d seen where the window bands were bridged by tongues of parkland or tree-lined aqueducts and rail-line viaducts.

“Of course,” she said, “we’ll still have four kilometres to climb to the hub.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Cuthbertson, raising a tentative hand as he spoke.

“Volantors depend on abstraction for nav services, same as Miracle Bird does. But elevators don’t. There isn’t a reason in the world why they shouldn’t work.”

“And the trains?” asked Thory.

“Got an explanation for why they aren’t running?”

“Someone panicked, that’s all. Activated the emergency stop.”

“All over Aubusson?” asked the woman in the red dress.

“I’ve been looking out of this window for a long time now and can see far enough to make out six or seven lines. I’m damned if I’ve seen one moving train in all that time.” Cuthbertson’s certainty had slipped a notch.

“So a lot of people panicked. Or maybe Utility pulled the plug because they panicked.”

“Could affect the elevators, in that case,” the woman said.

“I don’t know. I think the elevators run on a different supply, independent of Utility. Point is, we won’t lose anything by finding out.” Cuthbertson turned to face Cyrus Parnasse.

“I’m coming with you, Curator. Miracle Bird can act as lookout, in case we run into any mobs.”

“That bird of yours can still fly, even when it’s twitching like that?” asked Thalia.

“It’ll manage. It’s adapting already.” The mechanical owl turned its dish-like face to look at Cuthbertson.

“Aren’t you, boy?”

“I’m an excellent bird.”

“So that’s three of us,” Thalia said.

“Not counting the owl. That’s a good number. If we encounter trouble, we shouldn’t be too conspicuous.”

“I’m coming, too,” said Caillebot.

“If there’s anyone who knows the layout of the parks and gardens in this cylinder, it’s me.”

“You can count me in as well,” said Meriel Redon.

“You sure?” Thalia asked.

“You’ll be safe and sound up here until the back-up squad arrives.”

“I’ve made my mind up. I’ve never been one for sitting around when I could be walking. Makes me nervous.”

Thalia nodded heavily.

“I think five is the limit, folks. Any more and we’ll be slower than we need to be. The rest of you can sit tight and wait until abstraction comes back up.”

“Are you issuing orders now?” Paula Thory asked.

Thalia thought about it for an instant.

“Yes,” she said.

“Looks like I am. So start dealing with it, lady.”

Dreyfus absorbed the truth of the Conjoiner’s revelations, convinced in his heart that she had no reason to lie.

“I think I know who Aurora is,” he said slowly.

“But she shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be anywhere. She should have died—she should have ended—fifty-five years ago.”

“Who is she?”

“Unless someone else is using the same name, we’re dealing with a dead girl. One of the Eighty, the group of human volunteers who took part in Calvin Sylveste’s immortality experiments. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Of course. We learned of those experiments with horror and dismay. His methods were conceptually flawed. Failure was inevitable.”

“Except maybe it wasn’t,” Dreyfus said, “because Aurora Nerval-Lermontov appears to be very much with us. At least one of the Transmigrants must have persisted, despite what the records say.”

“You have no evidence of this.”

“I know that her family owned this rock.” By way of an afterthought, he added, “Do you think you’re ready to trust me yet?”

“Turn around,” she said after due consideration.

“I have released my hold on your suit. Your communication functions are still disabled.”

He turned to look at her. She was wearing a suit herself, but of Conjoiner design. It had the glossy sheen of something moulded from luxury chocolate. For a moment he was looking at a featureless black oval instead of a head. Then her helmet melted back into the ruff-like collar of the neck ring.

He saw her face.

He’d seen stranger things in the Glitter Band. There was very little about her that wasn’t baseline human, at first glance. She was a woman of uncertain age—he’d have said forty or so, except that he knew she was probably much older than that, because Conjoiners were as long-lived as any human splinter faction. Piercingly intelligent eyes, coloured a very pale green; wide, freckled cheekbones; a jaw that some might have considered too strong, but which was actually exactly in proportion with the rest of her face. She was bald, the top of her skull rising to a sharp mottled ridge that began halfway up her brow, betraying the enlarged cranial cavity she must have needed for her supercharged, machine-clotted brain.

That was where her true strangeness lay: beneath the skin, beneath the bone. The people in the wilder habitats might employ Mixmasters to sculpt themselves into exotic forms, but they seldom did anything to the functional architecture of their minds. Even the people who were wired into extreme levels of abstraction were still human in the way they processed the data entering their brains. That couldn’t be said for the Conjoiner woman. She might be able to emulate human consciousness when it suited her, but her natural state of mind was something Dreyfus would never be able to grasp, any more than a horse could grasp algebra.

“Do you want to tell me your name?” Dreyfus asked.

“For your purposes I will call myself Clepsydra. If this is problematic for you, you may call me Waterclock, or simply Clock.”

“You sound as if that isn’t your real name.”

“My real name would split your mind open like wood under an axe.”

“Clepsydra it is, then. What exactly are you doing here, assuming you’re ready to tell me?”

“Surviving. That has been enough, lately.”

“Tell me about this ship. What’s it doing here? What use is it to Aurora?”

“Our ship returned to this system nearly fifty years ago. We were experiencing difficulties. We’d encountered something in deep interstellar space: a machine-like entity of hostile nature. The ship had survived by sloughing part of itself, in the manner of a lizard shedding its tail. On the long return journey it had reorganised itself as best as it could, but it was still damaged. We were attempting to make contact with the Mother Nest, but our communications systems were not functioning properly.” Clepsydra swallowed, a gesture that all of a sudden made her look helplessly human.

“Aurora found us first. She lured us in with promises of help and then swallowed us inside this place. We have been inside it ever since: unable to escape, unable to contact the Nest.”

“That still doesn’t tell me what Aurora wanted of you.”

“That is more difficult to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Aurora wanted us to dream, Prefect. That is why she—why it—kept us here. Aurora made us dream the future. She desired our intelligence concerning future events. We prognosticated. And when we saw something in our prognostications that she didn’t like, Aurora punished us.”

“No one can dream the future.”

“We can,” Clepsydra said blithely.

“We have a machine that lets us. We call it Exordium.”