The Prefect (48 page)

‘He's one of us,' she said.

Gaffney tapped the whiphound. ‘And I'll see that he's treated with the appropriate respect.'

Though she had been scrupulous in concealing her suspicions from the others, Thalia had come to the private conclusion that there would be no rescue, at least not at the hands of Senior Prefect Crissel. Five hours had now passed since they had spoken, and there had been no sign of his promised boarding party. Crissel had warned her that it would take time to reach her, but she knew that she should have seen some evidence of his arrival by now. She had been looking through the windows of the polling core, down the darkened tube of House Aubusson towards the equally dark endcap where she had arrived a lifetime ago. She had detected no trace of human activity, not even the moving lights of the endcap elevators. Nor had there been any further communication from Crissel or any of his deputies. For a little while she had allowed herself to believe that they had met with unexpected resistance, and had pulled back to wait for reinforcements from Panoply. But over the course of those five hours her hopes had steadily eroded. She did not think it likely that Crissel or any of his prefects had survived long after their conversation. More than likely the rogue machines had taken them as soon as they entered Aubusson.

Throughout those five hours, she had watched the external activity continue apace, with no evidence that Crissel's arrival had affected the schedule to any meaningful degree. Construction servitors had worked tirelessly, tearing down the buildings, roads and bridges that had once served the habitat's human population. As Aubusson's night began to give way to a cool, grey dawn, Thalia surveyed a landscape of utter desolation. The stalk of the polling core was the only large structure still standing for kilometres in any direction. The surrounding buildings had been reduced to powdered rubble, sifted of anything that might prove useful for the manufactories. Grey dust had settled on the grass and trees and water. It was difficult to reconcile the scoured, lifeless wasteland with her memories of Aubusson as it had appeared less than a day earlier. A landscape this desolate should only be the product of years of warfare, not hours of mechanised industry.

Crissel's absence was not the only thing sharpening her anxieties. After she had finished cutting up the granite plinth to provide more barricade material, she had resumed her watch by the window. Not long after Crissel's call, she had seen one of the construction servitors pass close to the base of the stalk. It had been one of the open-topped carriers, but instead of rubble it had been carrying a different, infinitely more disturbing cargo. The machine had been full to the brim with human bodies, piled ten or twenty deep. There must have been thousands of them in just that one load, tossed into the container like so much recovered scrap. And that was just what they were, Thalia realised. The machine carrying the bodies was heading in the same direction as all the others, carrying raw material to the manufactories. The dead people would be processed, stripped down, reutilised. Even if their meat bodies yielded nothing of value, there were useful metals, semiconductors, superconductors and organic compounds inside their skulls, courtesy of their Demarchist implants.

Until that moment she had believed that the machines were only imposing totalitarian rule. She had seen bodies being dumped into the ornamental fountain, but had convinced herself that these had been people who'd disobeyed in some fashion. Now she knew that the servitors were engaged in systematic mass murder. The people she had seen outside, being rounded up and lectured to, were not being herded together to make them easier to police, easier to subdue. They were being rounded up so that they could be euthanised and fed to the manufactories.

Thalia had no way of knowing how many of the eight hundred thousand citizens inside House Aubusson had met a similar fate. But she did not think it likely that there were many exceptions. The servitors had assumed control with startling speed, and the constables had unwittingly abetted them by advising the people to remain calm and follow the directives of Lucas Thesiger. But Thesiger could quite easily have been one of those carelessly stacked bodies.

Thalia knew then that she did not have much time left. The only reason the machines had not torn the stalk down already was that the servitors could not risk damaging the polling core. But they would find a way eventually. Whatever intelligence was guiding them, it was cleverer than any individual servitor. And that intelligence, Thalia was certain, knew all about her and her little party of survivors. Even now, it would be working out a way to kill them. If the machines didn't get through the barricade (and she wasn't optimistic about it keeping them out for much longer) then they would explore alternative approaches. Thalia had one deterrent, which was that she could destroy or at least incapacitate the core. But if she played that hand and the machines somehow kept coming, she had nothing else to offer.

‘They're getting louder,' Parnasse said quietly, joining her by the little round window.

‘What are, Cyrus?'

‘The machines on the other side of the barricade. They're working their way through it piece by piece, getting closer and closer to the top. I doubt there's more than ten or fifteen metres of obstruction between us and them. I've tried to play it down, but the others are starting to notice.'

Thalia was mindful to keep her expression fixed, betraying nothing that would upset the nervous disposition of the other citizens. ‘How long?'

‘It's coming up close to dawn now. We've still got some junk we can throw down the stairs, but most of the heavy stuff's already gone. The barricade may hold until noon, but I'd say we'll be doing extraordinarily well if it's still up by sundown.'

‘Cyrus, I need to tell you something. I've seen something very bad out there.' When he said nothing, she continued softly, ‘I didn't mention it earlier because you had enough to be thinking about. But now you need to know.'

‘The bodies? Being carried away?'

She looked at him sharply. ‘You knew already?'

‘I saw several loads move through while you were cutting up the plinth. I didn't think you needed anything else to worry about. But you're right. It isn't good news.'

‘When the machines break through, they'll kill us all.'

He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I reckon you're right. But we're doing everything we can to buy enough time until rescue arrives.'

‘I don't think we can count on Panoply to help us,' Thalia said hesitantly. 'I've been putting a brave face on it, but ever since Crissel failed to show ... I don't know what's going on, Cyrus. Crissel said we weren't the only habitat to go silent. But even so, I can't see why it should have taken Panoply so long to reinstate control. I think we have to assume we're on our own in here.'

‘Then it's up to us to find a way to survive. I agree, girl. But short of holding out up here, I don't really see what our options are.'

‘We have to find a way out,' she said.

‘There isn't one. Even if there was another way out of the stalk, do you think any of us would last long out there, with all those machines crawling around? That whiphound of yours might have one more fight in it, if we're lucky. It'll take more than that to get us to the endcap, even if there's a ship to take us away when we get there.'

‘But we have to do something. I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want to die in here.'

He looked at her sadly. ‘Wish I could wave a magic wand and get us all somewhere safe. But all we've got is that barricade, and we're running out of stuff to reinforce it.'

Thalia looked across the floor, to the place where the plinth had been. The architectural model rested to one side of it, minus the sphere that had broken off the top of the stalk. Unaccountably, she flashed back to the way it had rolled across the floor when they'd dropped the model. She had paid it no heed at the time, intent only on exposing the granite plinth so that she could hack it into pieces.

‘Cyrus,' she said, ‘if there was a way to get us out of here, even if it was dangerous, even if it was borderline suicidal, would you risk it, if the only alternative was waiting for those machines to get us?'

‘Is that a hypothetical question, girl?'

‘I don't know,' she answered. ‘It depends. But answer my question first.'

‘I'd risk it. Wouldn't you?'

‘In a flash,' Thalia said.

Dreyfus looked up as Senior Prefect Gaffney stepped through the passwall. He sat upright on the bed, unable to judge how much time had passed since his last visitor. Through a fog of tiredness and apprehension, a sour taste in his mouth, he nonetheless produced a laconic smile. ‘Nice of you to drop by. I was wondering when you'd favour me with a visit.'

Behind Gaffney the passwall sealed itself into impermeability.

‘You're very talkative all of a sudden. Let's see how long you can keep it up.'

Dreyfus rubbed a finger along the furred line of his unbrushed teeth. ‘I guess the cat's come to torment the mouse while everyone else is looking the other way?'

‘On the contrary. I've come to interview you, with full Panoply sanction. Baudry gave me her personal blessing.'

Dreyfus looked down to see if Gaffney was carrying anything. ‘No field trawl,' he observed. ‘What's wrong: worried that it might reveal some truths you'd rather remained hidden?'

‘On the contrary. Worried that it wouldn't give us the hard data we need fast enough. There's a crisis going on out there, Dreyfus. The question is: are you a part of whatever's happening, or did you just kill the prisoner because she looked at you the wrong way?'

‘I hear we lost the
Universal Suffrage.'

‘Too bad. There were some good rookies on that ship.'

‘Not to mention Senior Prefect Crissel.'

‘Worse ways to go than fighting for a cause.'

‘This is all about a cause, isn't it? For you, anyway. I've followed your career, Sheridan. I know what makes you tick. You're the most selflessly driven prefect I've ever known. You eat, sleep and breathe security. Nothing matters more to you than guaranteeing the safety of the Glitter Band.'

Gaffney appeared surprised by this outburst of praise. ‘If the cap fits.'

‘Oh, it does. It fits too well. You're a machine, Sheridan. You're like a wind-up toy, an automaton consumed by a single idea. You've let that cause swallow you whole. It's all you know, all you're capable of thinking about.'

‘You think security doesn't matter?'

‘Oh, it matters all right. The problem is, in your personal universe it trumps all other concerns. You'll consider any action, contemplate crossing any line, if you feel your precious security is in danger of being compromised. Let's tick the boxes, shall we? Murder of a witness. Betrayal of fellow Panoply operatives. You're about to add torture to the list. And you haven't even really got going yet. What's next on the menu, Sheridan: full-scale genocide?'

‘What I do - what we all do - is about the preservation of life, not the destruction of it.'

‘That may be the way it looks in your warped worldview.'

‘There's nothing warped about it, Tom.' Gaffney tapped a finger against the side of his head. ‘I'm sorry - are we on first-name terms now? It's just that you took offence the last time I used yours. Sonofabitch“ was the phrase, I think.'

‘Whatever makes you happy, Sheridan.'

‘You've got me all wrong. You're the loose cannon in this organisation, Tom. I didn't bring the Spider bitch inside Panoply and let her riffle through our operational secrets. I didn't kill her when I realised my mistake.'

‘They'll find out I didn't kill her.'

‘There's half a body in your quarters, Tom. It didn't teleport there.'

‘Maybe she walked there, with you telling her everything was going to be fine.'

‘No, she didn't walk. Forensics found tissue traces in the bubble. That's where she was shot. Whoever killed her didn't hang around to clean up too well. But you'd know that, wouldn't you?'

‘How would I have got her from the interrogation bubble to my room without you knowing about it?'

‘That's a damned good question. One I'm hoping you can answer.'

‘If I wanted to move a body, if I wanted to tamper with access records to hide my own entry into the bubble, being head of Internal Security would certainly make life easier. But even then, I'm not sure how you did it.'

‘Why would I have killed a key witness?'

‘Because she knew you were working for Aurora. Because there was a chance she could have discovered Aurora's vulnerabilities, given us a clue as to how to take her down.'

Gaffney pointed his finger at Dreyfus. ‘Right. That name again.'

‘What's she got on you, Sheridan?'

Gaffney looked bored. ‘I think we've pretty much covered the preliminaries.'

‘And now you're going to kill me,' Dreyfus surmised.

‘I'm going to use intelligence-extraction methods on you, Tom, that's all. Nothing you won't get over given time and rest.'

‘You know that there isn't a truth to extract. I'm not going to start confessing to crimes I never committed.'

‘We'll just have to see what pops out, shan't we?'

‘I understand now,' Dreyfus said. ‘This is the only way out for you, isn't it? I must die under interrogation. You'll have some explaining to do, but I'm sure you've thought that through already. How's it going to happen? Whiphound malfunction? I hear there've been some quality-assurance issues with those Model Cs.'