The Prefect

CHAPTER 30

Gaffney held the stiffened filament of the whiphound against Mercier’s throat in much the same way that Dreyfus had held the whiphound against his own. They were standing outside the operating theatre where the Zulu team were still at work.

“I can’t let you in there, Sheridan.”

Gaffney let the sharp edge of the filament draw a dab of blood.

“It’s not a question of ’can’t’, I’m afraid. You’re going to do it, or they’re going to have another head to re-attach when they’re done with Jane.”

“I can’t allow you to hurt the Supreme Prefect.”

Gaffney’s thumb caressed the handle of the whiphound.

“Open the door. I won’t ask again.”

Mercier palmed the door, ignoring the signs warning him against entry. The door slid open, revealing the gowned backs of Demikhov’s crash team standing at their pedestals with the medical servitors beyond them. For a moment all was deceptively normal. Mercier heard the urgent but calm voices of the surgeons discussing the progress so far; he saw gloved fingers reach out towards data panes, switching between display options. Then one of the gowned figures became aware that the door had opened. She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widening as she took in the spectacle of Gaffney holding Mercier hostage.

“Is there a problem?” Demikhov asked.

“What does it look like, shit-for-brains?”

“We’re in the middle of a delicate procedure here,” Demikhov said, still keeping admirably cool.

“If you’ve got a problem, if there’s something you want, I suggest you take it up with Senior Prefect Clearmountain.”

“Tell your staff to suspend the machines and step away from their pedestals.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“I’ll kill Mercier if you don’t.”

“We’re trying to save the life of the supreme prefect. In case you haven’t been informed, her head and body were separated when we removed the scarab.”

“I don’t like repeating myself. Tell your staff to do what I just said.”

“Whatever you want, whatever demands you might have, we can’t give it to you.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Gaffney let the whiphound bite deeper, until blood began to trickle down Mercier’s throat in a continuous flow.

“I won’t ask again. Do what I say and I promise that neither Mercier nor the supreme prefect will come to harm. Fuck with me and you’re going to be mopping up into the middle of next week.”

“Please,” Mercier said.

Demikhov breathed in deeply and nodded to his staff. Gloved fingers touched panes. The surgical robots halted.

“Now step away from the pedestals,” Gaffney said.

“As far as you can go.”

The staff shuffled back until they had all taken at least ten paces. Gaffney pushed Mercier forward, keeping the whiphound in place. They walked between the pedestals, then eased past the poised medical servitors to stand by the patient. Since Mercier had last viewed the scene, the two tables had been brought closer so that the gap between head and neck was only ten centimetres. The complexity of the operation was even more humbling in close-up. Aumonier’s head rested in a padded cradle, with constantly swivelling trawl probes arranged around her shaven scalp in a barbed halo. Oxygenation of the

head was being maintained by a tangle of arterial shunts inserted into the skin of the neck or up through the stump itself. A handful of nerves had already been rejoined across the divide, using jumper cables to bridge the gap between the quickmatter cylinders that tipped the end of each nerve.

“You’re a doctor,” Gaffney told Mercier.

“How long do you think she can last without those lines running into her head?”

“Without blood? Not very long.”

“Put some numbers on that for me. How many minutes are we talking about? Three? Five? Six?”

“Four at the most. Why?”

“Four it is, then. Snap off your bracelet and hold it up to my mouth.” Mercier did as he was told, fumbling as he released his bracelet.

“Put me through to Clearmountain,” Gaffney said. The acting supreme prefect answered almost immediately.

“This is Clearmountain. Is something the matter, Doctor—”

“This isn’t Mercier. It’s Gaffney.” Clearmountain comprehended the implications quickly enough.

“This is unexpected, Sheridan.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not staying around.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m down with Demikhov, in the theatre. I’m standing right next to Jane. Nice work he’s done so far.”

“Don’t lay a finger on Aumonier,” Clearmountain said.

“Jane’s going to be just dandy. That is, provided you don’t do anything to annoy me.”

“I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Actually, I’m sure we can’t. I’m finished here. I’ve burnt my bridges. It might surprise you, but I’m a rational man. I did everything I did because I believed it was the right thing for the citizenry. I still believe that. I love this goddamn organisation, or at least what it used to stand for. But I know I have no future unless Aurora wins against Panoply.”

“She’s a machine, Sheridan. You’ve been working for an alpha-level intelligence, the ghost of a girl who should have died fifty-five years ago.”

“Aurora’s nature is irrelevant. It’s her intentions that count.”

“She’s a mass murderer. We’ve received direct confirmation that all the citizens inside House Aubusson were murdered shortly after the takeover.”

“Nice try,” Gaffney said.

“It’s the truth.” Mercier thought he caught a twitch of hesitation before Gaffney answered.

“She wants to protect people.

She’d hardly start murdering them if that was her objective.”

“Listen to me, I’m begging you. Aurora is not what you think she is. Her only goal is her own survival.”

“You know,” Gaffney said, “I really think you could have tried a bit harder than that. I mean, honestly.

Do you think I’m going to drop everything and roll over like a puppy just because you tell me some people have been murdered?”

“I’ll show you,” Clearmountain said.

“I’ll let you interview Prefect Ng as soon as she returns to Panoply.”

“Sorry, but I’m not planning on staying that long.” Without warning, he released his hold on Mercier, pushing him away with such force that the doctor tripped over his own feet and fell backwards against one of the servitors, toppling it noisily.

“Join the others,” he said.

“Sheridan?” Clearmountain said.

“Still here.” Gaffney had snatched Mercier’s bracelet as he pushed him away. He snapped it around his own wrist and continued speaking.

“I’m leaving, but not before you’ve done a couple of things for me. You can begin by telling me where Dreyfus is.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I’m standing less than a metre from the supreme prefect, with a whiphound. Do you want to rethink your response?”

Clearmountain answered after a pause.

“Dreyfus is somewhere else in the Glitter Band. I can give you the coordinates in a moment—”. Mercier pulled himself to his feet, bruised but otherwise unhurt. He touched a hand to the drying scab on his throat, judging that the wound was superficial.

“Oh, nice try,” Gaffney said.

“Let’s have a little look here, shall we?” He reached down and tugged at one of the lines running into Aumonier’s neck until it popped out.

“I’ve just pulled something free. I don’t know if it was important or not.”

“Sheridan—”.

“I’ll ask again. Where is Dreyfus? Don’t lie to me, Clearmountain. I’ve spent my entire professional life spotting liars.”

“A secure holding facility on Marco’s Eye—”.

“Oh, please. I wonder what this one does? A bit of blood squirting out there. Okay, you get one more try. I’d give this one a lot of thought, if I were you.”

“He’s gone to Yellowstone.” Gaffney cocked his head and nodded.

“Like it so far, Prefect. Where on Yellowstone? Don’t tell me they moved it to Chasm City?”

“It’s in Ops Nine.”

“Mm. Going to have to jog my memory on that one.” Clearmountain’s voice was flat with defeat.

“A disused Amerikano research station.” “Good, now we’re getting somewhere. That sounds plausible. Do you think you can spare a ship, Gaston? I’m thinking something like a corvette, one with transat capability. I’ll want a full fuel and weps load, and the coordinates of Ops Nine programmed into the autopilot.”

“I can’t give you that,” Clearmountain said.

“Oh dear, there goes another tube. The liquid’s kind of watery this time. What does cerebrospinal fluid look like, anyone?”

“We don’t have a corvette on the rack. They’re all out.”

“I’ll settle for a cutter, then, but I’m not budging on the fuel and weps. Throw in a surface suit while you’re at it.”

“I’ll… talk to Thyssen.”

“Better make it quick. I’m on my way up to the cutter bay. And I’m bringing some insurance with me.”

Gaffney started tugging out the rest of the wires and nerve shunts.

“I’d say you’ve got about four minutes.” He tugged Jane Aumonier’s severed head free of its support cradle.

Dreyfus and Sparver walked across an undulating landscape of frozen methane-ammonia ice. Their shadows lengthened ahead of them as the orange smear of Epsilon Eridani lowered towards the horizon to their rear, burning through ochre-brown clouds that had been tugged into weird anatomical shapes by high-altitude winds. The sky ahead of them was an ominous purple, palpitating with distant electrical storms. Above, it was coloured and knotted like old wood, curdled like bad milk.

“Do you want to talk about what was in that document now?” Sparver asked.

“Not really.” Dreyfus altered his course to exploit the shadowing effect of a natural boulder formation. They had covered seven kilometres from the touchdown point; approximately the same distance remained to be traversed. With the power-assisted suits, the physical effort was minimal. But the continuous chore of choosing a safe route, one that would avoid unstable ground and keep them low enough to avoid being detected by Firebrand, was itself taxing.

“Boss, you’ve hardly said a word since we left Pell. Aren’t you happy that Thalia got out okay?”

“Of course I’m happy. I’m just not really in the mood for banter. I didn’t ask for company, remember.”

“But now you’ve got it. Was that document something to do with the Clockmaker?”

“Have a guess.”

“Okay, so what was so earth-shattering about it? What did you read that you find so personally difficult to deal with?”

“That’s between me and the document.”

“And I’m your deputy. We share things.”

“Do you have Manticore clearance?”

“No. But I’ve never had Pangolin, either, and that hasn’t stopped you from feeding me the occasional crumb of restricted information.”

“This is different.”

“Because it concerns the Clockmaker? Or because it concerns Tom Dreyfus?”

“We should talk less.”

“They’re not going to hear our conversation.”

“I mean we should concentrate on walking. If you fall though ice, I’m not stopping to haul you out.”

“Nice to know you care.” They trudged on, zigzagging around a labyrinth of crevasses and deadfalls. After at least a kilometre, Dreyfus said, “I found out something about myself I didn’t know. I’ve always believed that I played no part in that day’s events, but now I know I was there. I was in SIAM, directly involved in the unfolding of the Clockmaker crisis. I must have been nearby when it broke loose. I was probably visiting Valery, or on my way from visiting her.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I had the memories blocked. They’re becoming clearer now that I’ve seen the document, but I still feel as if I’m looking at them through thick glass.”

“Why would you have had the memories blocked? Was that a security thing?”

“Not exactly. I wouldn’t have been allowed to function as a field with the knowledge I gained that day, but that wouldn’t have been an issue if they’d promoted me to senior, which is what they wanted to do. That’s not why I had the memories blocked, though. I made a decision that day, Sparver. It fell to me. But I couldn’t live with what I’d done afterwards.”

“What kind of decision?”

“I worked out a way to save the people in SIAM, the ones that the Clockmaker hadn’t got to already.

That’s why there was a delay. I’ve always wondered about the six hours between Jane’s release and us going in with the nukes. Now I know what happened.”

“Did you succeed?” Sparver asked. Dreyfus walked on. After a dozen paces he turned and said, “Yes, I succeeded. I saved them all.

Including Valery.”

There was a coldness beyond cold, and then a light. Aumonier felt weightless and the thought formed itself in her mind that after everything they had failed, that she was back in the room with the scarab. For an instant the prospect was intolerable and she sought to crawl back into the unconsciousness from which she had just emerged. But then she became aware that she could no longer feel the scarab. Its absence was so profound that it almost felt like a negative image of the thing itself.

“Open your eyes,” Doctor Demikhov said softly.

“Everything’s all right. You’re going to be fine.”

“I was sleeping, wasn’t I?”

“Yes. You were asleep, after all these years. I’m sorry it was necessary to wake you.”

Demikhov was leaning over her, green gown and mask against a tiled backdrop of sterile green walling. She tried speaking, but the words wouldn’t form. Instead she heard a harsh-sounding imitation of her own voice, as if someone standing next to her had anticipated exactly what she wished to say.

“Where am I?”

“In post-operative. Do you remember anything?”

“I remember calling you. I remember that we were discussing your plans for me.”

“And afterwards?”

“Nothing. What’s wrong with my voice?”

“We’re reading your intentions with a trawl. Don’t be alarmed; it’s only a temporary measure.” By degrees, Aumonier became aware that she had scant sensation below the neck. She could move her eyes, but little else. Her head was fixed in place, unable to tilt from side to side.

“Show me what you’ve done, Doctor.”

“I’ve done something quite drastic, but there’s no cause for alarm. You’re going to be up on your feet in no time at all.”

“Show me,” she said, the simulated voice picking up her insistence. Demikhov motioned to one side. A gloved hand passed him a mirror. He held it before Aumonier so that she could see her face, pinched tight in a padded restraint.

“I haven’t seen my face in eleven years. No one could get a mirror close to me, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t want to see the scarab, even accidentally. Now I look so old and thin.”

“It’s nothing time won’t put right.”

“Tilt the mirror.” Her neck came into view. It appeared to have been stapled to her body, the wound still raw. Cables and wires plunged into her skin, or into the gap between the two edges of skin.

“You understand what we had to do?” Demikhov said.

“How did you… ?” she began.

“It took a lot of planning but the process itself was very quick. You had a few seconds of consciousness before the crash team reached you, but I doubt you remember much of that.” She realised, in an instant of comprehension, that it was very important to her that she not remember. But she did. She remembered bright lights and a concerned, lantern-jawed face looking at her with clinical intensity, and the face had belonged to Demikhov. She remembered a cold beyond cold, as if the interstellar vacuum itself was groping its way up her neck, reaching freezing fingers into the empty cavity of her skull. Demikhov didn’t need nightmares for the rest of his life.

“You’re right,” she said.

“I don’t.” “The damage to your body was severe but treatable. We neutralised the remains of the scarab and my intention was to keep you under until your head and body were fully reunited. There was a minor complication, however.”

“With me?”

“Not exactly. I’ll explain things later, but all you need to know right now is that Gaffney managed to escape from Panoply. He took a cutter and went after Dreyfus.” She had a thousand questions, but most of them would have to wait.

“How did he know where to go? Surely nobody told him about Ops Nine.”

“Gaffney was… persuasive,” Demikhov said.

“Clearmountain had no option but to reveal the suspected location of the Clockmaker. In his shoes, I’d have done exactly the same thing.”

“Is there any word from Dreyfus?”

“Nothing. But given the anticipated timing, we can assume he’s making his way by foot from the drop-off point.” Demikhov returned the mirror to his aide.

“That’s not why I had you brought to consciousness, though. As you can see, the process of reuniting your head and body is only partially complete, but we were making good progress. Once you’ve dealt with the matter at hand, I have every confidence of being able to reinstate full control.”

“The matter at hand, Doctor?”

“Perhaps it would be better if Acting Supreme Prefect Clearmountain explained.” Demikhov gestured at the wall, turning part of it into a display pane. From her inclined position, Aumonier could see it without difficulty. Clearmountain was looking at her from the tactical room, the edge of the Solid Orrery peeping into view behind him.

“Can I talk to her?” he asked.

“She’s perfectly lucid,” Demikhov replied.

“Supreme Prefect Aumonier,” Clearmountain said, trepidation in his voice, “I am sorry that this was necessary. I assured them that you had delegated authority to me, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“Who wouldn’t listen?” Aumonier asked.

“They’re still waiting to talk to you. They won’t take orders from anyone else.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“I can put them through, if you wish.”

“If this is why you woke me up, that would be a very good idea.” Clearmountain vanished. He was replaced by the visage of a monster, a man who had once been human but who now faced the world through a mask of leathery, radiation-hardened skin and articulated metal plating embossed with florid bronze patterning. His eyes were two telescopic cameras, emerging from skull sockets like a pair of cannon. Glue-stiffened dreadlocks spiked back from his scalp.

“This is Captain Tengiz, of the lighthugger Wrath Ascending. We stand ready to assist you.”

“Thank you,” Aumonier said.

The image switched. Now she was looking at the vastly magnified head of a praying mantis, or something very like one, emerging from the ring-shaped neck of an ancient spacesuit. The mantis’ mouthparts opened, revealing teeth and tongue of human semblance.

“This is Captain Rethimnon, of the lighthugger Frost Wind. We stand ready to assist you.”

“Thank you.” The image changed again. Another face, more recognisably human this time, despite the absence of a nose.

“This is Captain Grong, of the lighthugger Stasis in Darkness. We stand ready to assist you.” She started to answer, but the image had already changed.

“This is Captain Katsuura of the lighthugger Pharaoh’s Daughter. We stand ready to assist you.”

“This is Captain Nkhata, of the lighthugger Black Narcissus. We stand ready to assist you.”

“This is Captain Vanderlin, of the lighthugger Dawnrazor. We stand ready to assist you.”

“This is Captain Teague…”.

“Captain Voightlander…”. The roll-call continued; a dozen ships, then a dozen more, until she had lost count.

“Thank you, Captains,” she said, when the last Ultra had spoken.

“I am grateful that you have responded to my request for help. You can, I think, provide a decisive contribution. I must warn you—though I am sure you already appreciate as much—that you will be placing your ships and crew in grave danger.” The face of Tengiz, the first Ultra to speak, reappeared on the pane.

“I have been tasked to speak for the other ships, Supreme Prefect Aumonier. Rest assured that we are fully aware of the risks. It is still our intention to help.”

“I’m grateful.”

“Tell us what you want us to do.”

“You can be of benefit to me in two ways,” Aumonier said.

“Your ships have a capacity exceeding anything in the Glitter Band, even the largest in-system liners. If you can start taking aboard evacuees, that will be incalculably helpful to us.”

“We will do what we can. How else may we help?”

“Doubtless you’ve witnessed our efforts to contain Aurora’s expansion by destroying those habitats contaminated by her war machines. Unfortunately, we’re running out of nuclear weapons. If there was any other way—”

“You wish us to intervene.”

“Yes.”

“In a military sense.”

“I don’t doubt that you have the means, Captain. At the risk of opening an old wound, we all saw what Captain Dravidian’s ship was capable of doing. And his vessel wasn’t even armed.”

“Tell us where and when,” Tengiz said.

“I’d dearly like to. Unfortunately—as you’re probably aware—I’m somewhat indisposed right now and need further surgery. I appreciate your insistence on speaking only to me, but it would simplify matters enormously if you would allow me to designate Prefect Clearmountain to speak for me.”

Tengiz looked at her with his blank telescopic eyes. She couldn’t read a single human emotion in the mongrel collision of machine and flesh that was his face.

“Do you have confidence in Clearmountain?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Absolute confidence. You have my word, Captain. Allow Clearmountain to speak for me.”

Tengiz paused, then nodded.

“So be it.”

“I’m going to sleep again now, if that’s all right with you. Good luck, Captain. To you and all the others.”

“We’ll do what we can. As for you…” Tengiz halted. For the first time she sensed indecision.

“We have long been aware of your predicament, Supreme Prefect Aumonier.”

“I never imagined I was of the slightest interest to Ultras.”

“You were wrong. We knew of you. We knew of you and… you’ve long had our respect. You would have made an excellent captain.”

Dreyfus and Sparver surmounted the last rise and found themselves looking out across a shallow depression in the terrain, like an old crater that had been gradually eroded and filled in by slow and mindless processes of weather and geochemistry. Yet there was something out of place at the base of the depression, even though Dreyfus nearly missed it on his first glancing survey. It was a ramp, sloping down into the ground, its walls and sides fashioned from some kind of fused construction material with the ebony lustre of burnt sugar. It had cracked and distorted in places, evidence of shifts in the underlying landscape, but it was still remarkably intact for something that had been out there for more than two hundred years. The ramp angled down into the ground and vanished into a flat-roofed tunnel, the lip of which had formed a portcullis of dagger-like ammonia-ice stalactites or icicles. Dreyfus pointed to the middle part of the opening, where a number of the spikes had been broken off at head height.

“Someone’s been here recently,” he said. But without knowing how long it had taken for the stalactites to form, he knew he could have been talking about a visitation that had happened days, years or even decades ago.

“Let’s take a look-see inside,” Sparver said.

“There’s nothing I like better than unwelcoming tunnels leading underground.”

If a surveillance system had detected their arrival, there was no sign of it. They crunched across the last few metres of surface ice until they were standing at the top of the ramp, and then began a cautious descent towards the portcullis. The ground was slippery under their feet. Dreyfus stooped to avoid dislodging any more stalactites; Sparver only needed to nod his head slightly. Beyond the opening, the ramp continued to slope down into unseen depths. The suit’s acoustic pick-up conveyed the sounds of trickling, dripping liquids to Dreyfus’ ears. As the gloom deepened, he angled his helmet lamp down, mindful of treacherous cracks in the flooring. He supposed that this must once have been an entry point for vehicles, though it was clear that nothing large had come down here in a long time.

After fifty or sixty metres, the ramp terminated in a black wall set with a single wide door. The door consisted of a set of hinged panels that would have rolled down from a mechanism in the ceiling. It had stopped half a metre short of the floor, above an airtight slot into which the lowest part of the door must have been intended to lock.

“Someone was careless,” Sparver said.

“Or in a hurry. You think we can squeeze under that?”

Sparver was already on his knees. He undid some of his equipment and weaponry and slid it through ahead of him. Then he lowered onto all fours and scraped through the gap.

“It’s clear,” he told Dreyfus, grunting as he stood up.

“Send me though what you can.”

Dreyfus unclipped the bulkier pieces of his kit and passed them to his deputy. Then he lowered himself to the cracked black floor and squeezed under the door, scraping his backpack in the process. Something jammed, and for a horrible instant he thought he was trapped, pinned in place with vicelike pressure. Then whatever it was worked loose and he was through, standing up next to Sparver. His suit reported no damage, but had the door been a couple more centimetres lower, he wouldn’t have been able to get through wearing it.

Dreyfus re-attached his equipment and hoped silently that he wouldn’t be sliding under any more doors. They had arrived in what was clearly a cargo airlock, designed to allow vehicles and heavy equipment to pass between Ops Nine and the outside world. A similar door to the one they’d just crawled under faced them on the opposite wall, but this one was sealed down tight.

“We can cut through,” Sparver said, tapping a glove against the torch on his belt.

“Or we can try opening it. Either way, if there’s a single soul alive in this place they’ll know about it. Your call, Boss.”

“See if you can get it to open. I’ll try to close the other one. I’d rather not flood the place with Yellowstone air if we can avoid it.”

“Because you’re feeling charitable towards Saavedra and her friends?” Sparver asked sceptically.

“They committed crimes against Panoply. I’d like them alive to answer for that.”

Dreyfus brushed icy yellow caulk off a raised panel next to the door they had just crawled under. The panel contained a simple arrangement of manual controls labelled with Amerikano script. He pushed the stud with a downward-pointing arrow and heard a laboured whine of buried machinery. The door began to inch its way towards the floor, spitting chunks of yellow ice out of its tracks as it descended.

“Looks like someone’s been paying their power bills,” Sparver said.

Dreyfus nodded. If he’d harboured lingering doubts that Ops Nine was truly where Firebrand had gone to ground, they had just been thoroughly dispelled. The facility was powered and functional, at least on a spartan basis. Amerikano technology was robust, but not robust enough to open doors after two hundred years.

Dreyfus flinched as slats rattled open in the walls without warning. Red lights stammered on behind ceiling grilles and he heard the roar of powerful fans. The environment sensor on his suit began to record the change of gas mixture and pressure as the air in the room was swapped for breathable atmosphere. The process took less than three minutes. The fans died down and the slats clattered shut again.

“I think I can open the door now,” Sparver said.

Nothing would be gained by waiting, Dreyfus knew.

“Do it,” he said, mentally preparing himself for whatever was on the other side. Sparver hit the control, then moved to stand next to Dreyfus, his Breitenbach rifle held doubled-handed. But as the door rose, it became clear that there was no one waiting for them on the other side. Dreyfus allowed the muzzle of his own weapon to dip slightly, but remained alert. The two prefects stepped over the threshold.

A curving corridor, triangular in cross section, walled and floored with metallic grille, stretched away to either side. An illuminated red strip ran the length of the corridor at the apex of the two angled walls. Behind the grilles snaked corroded and mould-caked piping and machinery, much of it eaten away, probably by rats. Steam jetted from ruptured lines, hot enough to scald if they hadn’t been wearing suits. But Dreyfus noticed that some of the plumbing was shiny and new. Firebrand must have done just enough to make this facility habitable again. They hadn’t been intending to make it comfortable, or homely.

“You want me to toss a coin?” Sparver asked.

“Clockwise,” Dreyfus said, leading the way.

The grilled flooring clattered heavily under their boots, the din echoing around the curve of the corridor. Dreyfus had no good idea of the dimensions of the facility, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine that noise reaching far enough to alert someone of their arrival, if that hypothetical person hadn’t already been notified by the airlock activity. Since his suit assured him that the ambient air was now breathable, Dreyfus reached up and risked removing his helmet. He attached it to his belt, just as he’d had cause to regret doing in the Nerval-Lermontov rock when Clepsydra touched her knife against his throat. But he didn’t think knives were going to be the problem now.

“Yeah, getting kind of stuffy in here,” Sparver said, undoing his own helmet. He took a deep breath, sucking in the same cold, metallic air Dreyfus had just tasted.

“Feels better already.”

“Watch out for those steam jets,” Dreyfus said.

“And be ready to jam your lid on again.”

They continued walking, following the slow curve of the corridor until they arrived at a junction. They paused to decide which way to go, while pink-tinged steam snorted in dragon-like exhalations from a severed pipeline. Dreyfus shone his light on a burnished metal panel stencilled with Amerikano text.

“Central operations is this way,” he said, raising his voice above the angry snort of the steam jet.

“Sounds like the right place to start, doesn’t it?”

“Or the right place to stay a long way away from.”

“Nothing I’d like better. But we came here to do a job, Field.”

After a moment Sparver said, “Don’t you mean ’deputy’, Boss?”

“I mean field. Jane just promoted me to senior, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t elevate my deputy to full field status. How does it feel, Field Prefect Bancal?”

“It feels great. Though I imagined it might happen under different circumstances.”

Dreyfus smiled to himself.

“You mean slightly less suicidal ones?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“That’s exactly the same way I felt when I got my promotion, so that makes two of us.”

“But it’s still a promotion. I mean, that’s what it’ll say in my obituary, right?”

“It would,” Dreyfus affirmed.

“Only problem is, I’m the only one who knows about it. Apart from you, obviously.”

“So it would really help if one of us survives, is what you’re saying.”

“Yes. Me, preferably.”

“Why you, Boss, and not me?”

“Because if you survived, you wouldn’t be needing an obituary, would you?”

“That makes sense,” Sparver said, sounding only the tiniest bit puzzled.

Dreyfus tightened his grip on the Breitenbach rifle.

“There’s something ahead,” he said, lowering his voice.

Pale-blue light was leaking around the curve of the corridor, highlighting the hexagonal meshwork of the grilles. Dreyfus judged that they were approaching the central operations section. Conscious that there was little they could do to quieten their approach, he nonetheless slowed his walk and edged closer to the angled wall on the inside of the curve, hoping to use it for cover until the last moment. As he crept forward, he saw that the corridor terminated in a hollowed-out cavern that extended several storeys below their present level. The blue illumination originated from a grid of lights suspended from the bare rock ceiling that arched ten or twelve metres above them. The corridor brought them out onto a railinged balcony that encircled the entire cavern. Doors were set into the smooth-panelled wall at regular intervals, marked with spray-painted numbers and cryptic symbols that must have once referred to different administrative and functional departments of the facility. Dreyfus looked over the railing, down to the floor of the chamber. It was a kind of atrium, he realised. Tiled walkways encircled what might once have been flower beds or small ponds. The flower beds now contained only grey-black ash, the ponds nothing but dust. There were even a couple of benches, cut from solid rock. Rising from the ground in the middle of the atrium was a complicated-looking metal sculpture whose design he couldn’t easily fathom from this angle, but which almost resembled an iron cactus.

Dreyfus realised that he’d had preconceptions about the people who’d lived here originally. The Amerikano culture might have felt distant from his own, its values foreign, but the inhabitants of this place had still needed a place to relax and mingle, away from the pressures of their duties. In its way, this place would not have felt very different from his own place of work. He wondered what kinds of ghosts would haunt Panoply, two hundred years after he was gone.

He pulled back from the railing with a tingle of disquiet. Sparver was already a quarter of the way around the balcony, testing each door as he passed. So far they had all been locked, but as Dreyfus watched, Sparver reached a door that was ajar. He nudged it with the muzzle of his rifle, then beckoned Dreyfus forward. Glancing occasionally down at the atrium, Dreyfus approached the newly promoted field and examined what Sparver had discovered.

“I guess you were right about Firebrand, Boss.”

The room would once have been the personal quarters of one of the Amerikano staff. Now it had been converted into makeshift accommodation for one of Saavedra’s people. A sleeping hammock had been strung between two walls. On an equipment crate, Dreyfus saw part of a Panoply uniform, a belt and whip-hound clip, minus the whiphound itself. He found a coffee bulb that still had coffee in it, albeit cold. There was no dust on any of the items.

They continued their inspection of the upper level, pausing to investigate those rooms that were not locked. They found more personal effects and equipment, even a pair of compads. The compads were still operational, but when Dreyfus activated one he could not decipher the contents, even with Manticore. The Firebrand unit must have had its own security protocol.

Sparver and Dreyfus descended to the next level via a staircase, negotiating it slowly in their suits and armour. They found another ring of rooms, but most of these were larger and appeared to have served an administrative or laboratory function. There was even a medical complex, a series of glass-partitioned rooms still illuminated by pale-green secondary lighting. Old-fashioned equipment formed abstract, vaguely threatening shapes under a drapery of plastic dust sheets. The sheets had brittled and yellowed with age, but the machines under them showed little sign of decay.

“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 reality, 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.”