The Prefect (39 page)

‘Who?' she asked.

Feeling as if he was treading across a minefield, he said, ‘The Nerval-Lermontovs. Do you know of them?'

Beneath the workstained white smock, her slight shoulders moved in an easy shrug. ‘I know of them. Who doesn't? They were one of the big families, fifty or sixty years ago.'

‘What about a specific connection with your family?'

‘If there is one, I can't think of it. We didn't move in the same social orbits.'

‘Then there's no specific reason you can think of why the Nerval-Lermontovs would want to hurt your family?'

‘None whatsoever. If you have a theory, I'd love to hear it.'

‘I don't,' Dreyfus said. ‘But I was hoping you might.'

‘It can't be the answer,' she said. ‘The trail you followed must have led you up a blind alley. The Nerval-Lermontovs would never have done something to my family. They've had their share of tragedy, but that doesn't make them murderers.'

‘You mean Aurora?'

‘She was just a girl when it happened to her, Prefect. Calvin Sylveste's machines ate her mind and spat out a clockwork zombie.'

‘So I heard.'

‘What are you not telling me?'

‘Suppose a member of the Nerval-Lermontov family was planning something.'

‘Such as?'

‘Like, say, a forced takeover of part of the Glitter Band.'

She nodded shrewdly. ‘Hypothetically, of course. If something like that was actually happening, you'd have told me, wouldn't you?'

Dreyfus smiled tightly. ‘If it was, can you think of a reason why your family might have posed an obstacle to those plans?'

‘What kind of obstacle?'

‘All the evidence at my disposal says that someone connected with the Nerval-Lermontov family arranged for the torching of your habitat. Dravidian had nothing to do with it: he was set up, his ship and crew infiltrated by people who knew how to trigger a Conjoiner drive.'

‘Why?'

‘Wish I knew, Delphine. But here's a guess: someone or something connected with the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble was considered a threat to those plans.'

‘I can't imagine who or what,' she said defiantly. ‘We were just minding our own business. Anthony Theobald was trying to marry me into a rich industrial combine. He had his friends, people who came to visit him, but they weren't acquaintances of mine. Vernon just wanted to be with me, even if that meant being spurned by his family. I had my art...'

The second time he had invoked her, she had mentioned visitors to Anthony Theobald. When he'd pressed her for more information, she'd become reticent. A family secret, something she'd sworn not to talk about? Perhaps. He'd gone easy on her since then, earning her trust, but he knew that the matter could not be put off indefinitely.

He would have to come at it sideways.

‘Let's talk about the art. Maybe there's a clue there that we're missing.'

‘But we've already been over that: the art was just a pretext, an excuse to disguise the true reason we were murdered.'

‘I wish I could convince myself of that, but there's a connection that won't stop surfacing. The family that did this to you had close ties with House Sylveste because of what happened to their daughter. And your breakthrough art - the pieces that started getting you attention - were inspired by Philip Lascaille's journey into the Shroud. Lascaille was a guest“ of House Sylveste when he drowned in that fish pond.'

‘Is there an aspect of life in this system that those bloody people haven't dug their claws into?'

‘Maybe not. But I'm still convinced there's a link.'

She took so long to answer that for a while he thought she was ignoring the question, treating it with contempt. As if a policeman could have the slightest insight into the artistic process...

‘I told you how it happened. How one day I stepped back from a work in progress and felt that something had been guiding my hand, shaping the face to look like Lascaille.'

‘And?'

‘Well, there was a bit more to it than that. When I made that mental connection, it was as if a bolt of lightning had hit my brain. It wasn't just a question of tackling Lascaille because I felt it was potentially interesting. It was about having no choice in the matter. The subject was
demanding
that I treat it, pulling me in like a magnetic field. From that moment on I could not ignore Philip Lascaille. I had to do his death justice, or die creatively.'

‘Almost as if Philip Lascaille was speaking through you, using you as a medium to communicate what he endured?'

She looked at him scornfully. ‘I don't believe in the afterlife, Prefect.'

‘But figuratively, that's how it felt to you. Right?'

‘I felt a compulsion,' she said, as if this admission was the hardest thing she had ever had to do. ‘A need to see this through.'

‘As if you were speaking for Philip?'

‘No one had done that before,' she said. ‘Not properly. If you want to call it speaking for the dead, so be it.'

‘I'll call it whatever you call it. You were the artist.'

‘I am the artist, Prefect. No matter what you might think of me, I still feel the same creative impulse.'

‘Then if I gave you the means, a big piece of rock and a cutting torch, you'd still want to make art?'

‘Isn't that what I just said?'

‘I'm sorry, Delphine. I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. It's just that you're the most assertive beta-level I've ever encountered.'

‘Almost as if there's a person behind these eyes?'

‘Sometimes,' Dreyfus admitted.

‘If your wife hadn't died the way she did, you'd feel differently about me, wouldn't you? You'd have no reason to disavow the right of a beta-level to call itself alive.'

‘Valery's death changed nothing.'

‘You think that, but I'm not so sure. Look at yourself in a mirror one of these days. You're a man with a wound. Whatever happened back then, there was more to it than what you told me.'

‘Why would I keep anything from you?'

‘Perhaps because there's something you don't want to face up to?'

‘I've faced up to everything. I loved Valery but now she's gone. That was eleven years ago.'

‘The man who gave the order to kill those people, so that the Clockmaker would be stopped,' Delphine prompted.

‘Supreme Prefect Dusollier.'

‘What was so abhorrent about that decision that he felt compelled to kill himself afterwards? Didn't he do a brave and necessary thing? Didn't he at least give those citizens a quick and painless death, as opposed to what would have happened if the Clockmaker had reached them?'

Dreyfus had lied to her before. Now he felt compelled to speak the truth, as if that was the only decent thing to do. He spoke slowly, his throat dry, as if he was the one under interrogation.

‘Dusollier left a suicide note. He said: We made a mistake. We shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry for what we did to those people. God help them all.“'

‘I still don't understand. What was there to be sorry about? He had no other choice.'

‘That's what I've been telling myself for eleven years.'

‘You think something else happened.'

‘There's an anomaly. The official record says that the nukes were used almost immediately after Jane Aumonier was extracted. By then, Dusollier and his prefects knew there was no hope of rescuing the trapped citizens, and that it would only be a matter of time before the Clockmaker escaped to another habitat.'

‘And the nature of this anomaly?'

‘Six hours,' Dreyfus said. ‘That was how long they actually waited before using the nukes. They tried to cover it up, but in an environment like the Glitter Band, wired to the teeth with monitors, you can't hide a thing like that.'

‘But shouldn't a prefect, of all people, be able to find out what happened during those missing hours?'

‘Pangolin privilege will only get you so far.'

‘Have you thought to ask anyone? Like Jane Aumonier, for instance?'

Dreyfus smiled at his own weakness. ‘Have you ever put your hand into a box when you don't know what's inside it? That's how I feel about asking that question.'

‘Because you fear the answer.'

‘Yes.'

‘What is it that you fear? That something might have killed Valery before SIAM was destroyed?'

‘Partly, I suppose. There's another thing, though. There was a ship called the
Atalanta.
It had been floating in the Glitter Band for decades, mothballed. Then Panoply moved it, at the same time as the crisis, to a holding position very close to SIAM.'

‘Why had the ship been mothballed?'

‘It was a white elephant, financed by a consortium of Demarchist states with a view to freeing themselves from any dependence on the Conjoiners. Problem was, its drive system didn't work as well as it was meant to. It only ever made one interstellar flight, and then they abandoned any plans to make more of them.'

‘But you think it would have made an excellent lifeboat.'

‘It's crossed my mind.'

‘You think Panoply tried to get those people off during those missing six hours. They brought in this abandoned ship, docked it with SIAM and evacuated the trapped citizens.'

‘Or they tried to,' Dreyfus said.

‘But something must have gone wrong. Or else why would Dusollier have shown such remorse?'

‘All I know is that the
Atalanta
is part of the key. But that's as much as I've been able to find out. Part of me doesn't want to find out anything else.'

‘I can see why this is so hard for you,' Delphine said. ‘To lose your wife is one thing. But to have this mystery hanging over her death... I'm truly sorry for you.'

‘I have another part of the key. I have this vivid picture of Valery in my head. She's turning towards me, kneeling on soil, with flowers in her hand. She's smiling at me. I think she recognises me. But there's something wrong with the smile. It's the mindless smile of a baby seeing the sun.'

‘Where does that memory come from?'

‘I don't know,' Dreyfus answered honestly. ‘It's not as if Valery even liked gardening.'

‘Sometimes the mind plays tricks on us. It might be the memory of another woman.'

‘It's Valery. I can see her so clearly.'

After an uncomfortably long pause, Delphine said, ‘I believe you. But I don't think I can help you.'

‘It's enough to talk about it.'

‘You haven't discussed these things with your colleagues?'

‘They think I got over her death years ago. It would undermine their confidence in me to know otherwise. I can't have that.'

There was a longer pause before she answered, ‘You
think
it might.'

Then her image seemed to twitch back a couple of seconds and she answered his question again with exactly the same words and inflection: ‘You think it might.'

‘Is something the matter?' Dreyfus asked.

‘I don't know.'

‘Delphine. Look at me. Are you all right?'

Her image twitched back again. Rather than answering the question, she fixed Dreyfus with fearful eyes. ‘I feel strange.'

‘Something's wrong with you.'

Her voice came through too quickly, speeded up as if on helium. ‘I feel strange. Something's wrong with me.'

‘I think you're corrupted,' Dreyfus said. ‘It could be related to the problems we've had with the Search Turbines. I'm going to freeze your invocation and run a consistency check.'

‘I feel strange. I feel strange.' Her voice accelerated, the words piling up on top of each other. ‘I feel strange I feel strange
Ifeelstrangelfeelstrange
...' Then she found a moment of lucidity, her voice and the speed of her speech returning to normal. ‘Help me. I don't think this is... normal.'

Dreyfus raised his sleeve, tugging down his cuff. His lips shaped the beginning of the word ‘freeze'.

‘No,' Delphine said. ‘Don't freeze me. I'm frightened.'

‘I'll retrieve you as soon as I've run a consistency check.'

‘I think I'm dying. I think something's eating me. Help me, Prefect!'

‘Delphine, what's happening?'

Her image simplified, losing detail. Her voice came through slow, sexless and bass-heavy. ‘Diagnostic traceback indicates that this beta-level is self-erasing. Progressive block overwipe is now in progress in partitions one through fifty.'

‘Delphine!' he shouted.

Her voice was treacle-slow, almost subsonically deep. ‘Help me, Tom Dreyfus.'

‘Delphine, listen to me. The only way I can help you is by bringing your murderer to justice. But for that to happen you have to answer one last question.'

‘Help me, Tom.'

‘You mentioned people who came to visit Anthony Theobald. Who were these people?'

‘Help me, Tom.'

‘Who were the people? Why did they come to visit?'

‘Anthony Theobald said...'

She stalled.

‘Talk to me, Delphine.'

‘Anthony Theobald said... we had a guest. A guest that lived downstairs. And that I wasn't to ask questions.'

He spoke into his bracelet. ‘Freeze invocation.'

‘Help, Tom.'

What was left of her became motionless and silent.