The Prefect (47 page)

‘Would you give a damn if I did?'

‘I know we've had our differences, Tom, and I know you didn't like what we had to do to Jane. I respect that, truly I do. But I assure you that our actions were taken in the best interests of Panoply. And I'll be the first in line to swear allegiance to Jane when she's reinstated to full operational authority, as I believe she will be.' She studied him with quizzical eyes. ‘You don't believe me. You believe Jane's removal was motivated by self-interest. Or something else.'

‘I think Crissel was just too cowardly to stand up to the two of you.'

‘And me?'

‘You can't tell me self-interest didn't come into it.'

For the first time he saw the hard gold glint of real anger flash in her eyes. ‘See it from my position, Tom. I respect Jane. Always have. I was behind her every inch of the way when the Clockmaker made life difficult for us. But she should never have been allowed to stay in power all this time. There's no way that thing hasn't damaged her, mentally or physically.'

‘Some might say it's made her the best supreme prefect we could ever have asked for.'

‘But the point is, Tom, we've never had any way of knowing for sure. Crissel and I ... and Gaffney, yes, I'll admit it - we've given this organisation our best years, and all we've got to show for it is white hairs and wrinkles, while we wait in Jane's shadow. None of us is going to live for ever!'

‘Nor will Jane. You could always wait your damned turn.'

Baudry exhaled. Something in her had relented. ‘So I wanted her out of the way. But that doesn't mean it was right for her to stay in command. It doesn't mean we still didn't do the right thing by Panoply.'

‘Do you believe that, in your heart of hearts? Look at me when you answer.'

‘Yes,' she said, looking him straight in the eye after a long moment.

He nodded, giving nothing away. Let her stew, let her wonder whether he believed her or not. ‘You still have to stop Gaffney. He's out of control.'

‘Do you want to tell me about the name you mentioned earlier? Aurora, wasn't it?'

‘I think we're dealing with Aurora Nerval-Lermontov, who was one of the Eighty.'

‘She died, Tom. They all died.'

‘I don't think she did. She's out there somewhere, and she's been biding her time for fifty-five years.'

‘Just hiding?'

‘Until something forced her hand. She learned something from Clepsydra, something that scared her badly. Everything that's happened is Aurora's response to a perceived threat. I think she's taking control because she doesn't trust us to do the job.'

‘Clepsydra was her accomplice?'

‘Not exactly. Aurora was using the Conjoiners, squeezing them for intelligence.'

‘And now the only one of them left's gone missing.'

‘I didn't let her out of that room,' Dreyfus said. ‘I've made some questionable decisions in my career, but that wasn't one of them.'

‘Then who did?'

‘You know who.'

‘He wouldn't betray us, Tom. He's a good man, Panoply to the core. He's given his soul to this organisation. There's nothing he cares about more than the security of the Glitter Band.'

‘Maybe he believes that. But whatever he thinks, he's working for Aurora. Trajanova knew that whoever sabotaged the Turbines and corrupted my beta-level had to have high-level security access. She was only one step away from fingering Gaffney herself. That's why she had to go.'

Baudry shook her head once, as if she was trying to clear out a bad thought buzzing around between her ears. ‘I don't believe Gaffney would act against us. More pertinently, why would he ever want Clepsydra outside of that room?'

‘Because she knows things he doesn't want us to find out.' Dreyfus craned forward on the bunk. ‘Baudry, listen to me. I think Gaffney wants her dead. I think he's going to find her and kill her, if he hasn't done so already. You have to get to her first.'

‘We don't know where she is.'

‘So start looking. Gaffney controls internal security, but you control Panoply. There are still hundreds of prefects he doesn't have an armlock on.'

‘Sandra Voi, Tom. Are you seriously proposing all-out war inside Panoply?'

‘It doesn't have to be war. Move now and you can stamp down on Gaffney, erase his authority. Security owe him loyalty, but they're loyal to you as well.'

For a moment he had the impression that she was at least considering the idea, giving it house room. Then her face froze, and she offered him only blank denial.

‘I can't do that.'

‘At the very least, get to Clepsydra before he does.'

‘That may not be easy, especially if she doesn't want to be found.' Baudry's bracelet chose that moment to chime, emitting a shrill tone that had no place in the cloistered greyness of the cell. She glanced down, irritated, then lifted the display closer to her face. Dreyfus saw her eyelids grow heavy.

‘What is it?'

‘The
Universal Suffrage.'
Her voice sounded ghostly, distant. ‘We've lost contact with them, during their final approach phase to House Aubusson. Just when the habitat's defences would have fallen within range of their own weapons.'

Dreyfus nodded. He knew that the plan had been to pick off the anti-collision systems with the cruiser's long-range ordnance. ‘All comms, or just tactical telemetry?'

‘Everything. There's no signal.' She paused, as if she dared not state what was so obviously the case. ‘I think we've lost them. I think they're all dead. Crissel, all those young prefects.' Then she looked at Dreyfus with a kind of slow-burning dread. ‘What should we do next?'

‘Confirm that the ship's really lost,' Dreyfus said. ‘Then start pulling in every asset we have elsewhere in the system, no matter what duty it's on. Every cutter, every corvette, every deep-system cruiser.'

‘We can't ignore the state of crisis between the Ultras and the Glitter Band.'

‘You can,' Dreyfus said, ‘because it doesn't matter any more. That wasn't ever a crisis. A distraction, maybe, to take our eyes off the real business. Worked, too, didn't it? What fools we were.'

‘We were only ever doing our best,' Baudry said sadly.

‘It wasn't good enough. Now we have to up our game. The real crisis starts here.'

‘I'm frightened, Tom. They took out a fully armed deep-system cruiser.
That isn't supposed to happen.'

‘I'm frightened, too,' Dreyfus said, ‘but we're not finished yet. Find Clepsydra. And make sure you go back to the polls. You can lay it on the line this time. We need those guns. And right now I don't care who gets upset about it.'

Gaffney stared at the surreal spectacle with what he trusted was the appropriate combination of shock and disgust. He stood with his booted feet slightly apart, his back straight, his hands behind his back. His own reaction might be synthetic, but there was no doubting the authenticity of the expressions on the faces of the other internal prefects assembled in Dreyfus's private quarters. Nor was there any doubt concerning the feelings of Senior Prefect Lillian Baudry.

‘This can't be right,' she said, shaking her head as if that might clear her vision and reveal the scene to be a psychological mirage. ‘I know Dreyfus. We've crossed swords in the past, but he would never have done this. Not to one of his own witnesses.'

‘There's never any telling what people will do when they go off the rails,' Gaffney said, with a kind of lofty regret, as if this was a truth he had privately acknowledged many years ago. ‘Dreyfus always appeared stable to me as well. But recent events have obviously conspired to push him over the edge.'

‘But killing her ... Sandra Voi. It makes no sense, Sheridan.'

‘Perhaps the witness knew more than she was letting on,' Gaffney mused. 'None of us really knows exactly what went on inside that rock. It could be that she knew things that would be damaging to Dreyfus's reputation.'

‘Why in Voi's name did he bring her back, in that case?'

‘Formality, I assume. Perhaps Sparver's presence made it difficult for him not to?'

‘And all the while he planned to kill her?'

‘Look at the evidence,' Gaffney said, with a humble shrug. ‘Speaks for itself, doesn't it?'

Clepsydra had died by a shot to the head. That much at least was obvious to any observer, as was the probable point of entry of the ballistic device that had ended her life.

‘Some kind of slug-gun, not a beam weapon,' Gaffney said. ‘There's no scorching or cauterisation around the entry wound.'

‘Where do you think she was killed?'

Gaffney looked equivocal. ‘If he shot her in here, the quickmatter architecture will more than likely have soaked up and processed any traces of blood or larger remains splattered on the walls. There'll be nothing left of it now. If she died a few hours ago, the pieces of her that the room has already absorbed will also have been broken down into their component elements and recycled throughout Panoply by now.' He touched a finger to his lips. ‘Have you eaten lately?'

‘No,' Baudry said, with a puzzled expression. ‘What does that have to do with anything?'

‘You might want to avoid the dispensers for a little while. If the idea of eating recycled Conjoiner upsets you, that is. If it doesn't, tuck right in.'

Baudry paled. ‘You're not serious.'

‘That's the way the recycling system works. It's not programmed to distinguish between human residue and normal domestic waste. There aren't supposed to be murders
inside
Panoply.'

Baudry glanced down at what was left of the body. ‘Why wasn't she absorbed completely?'

‘Indigestion, I suppose. Quickmatter has a throughput capacity; it can't absorb too much in one go without blocking up.' He forced a pained expression. ‘This definitely counts as too much.'

Clepsydra's dead body had been half-absorbed into the floor before the quickmatter had choked and curtailed its efforts to process her. The effect was of a sculpture abandoned: a woman's body half-embedded in smooth black marble. Her crested head and upper torso, her shoulders and upper arms were exposed. Her lower arms, belly and hips gave the impression of being submerged beneath the floorline. The four fingers of her right hand pushed up through the surface like stone sentinels, stiff in death. Her left leg emerged from the floor, rose to the arch of her knee, then plunged back into the absorbing surface.

‘Is this ... all that's left?' Baudry asked.

‘I'm afraid so. Your mind insists that there must be an intact body under the floor, like a corpse smothered in quicksand. But really there's nothing there. The protruding parts are disconnected.' Gaffney pushed the toe of his boot against the arch formed by Clepsydra's visible leg, toppling it over. Baudry glanced sharply away, then allowed her gaze to return to the spectacle. Where the leg had been in contact with the floor, it had left two circular depressions. Stringy fibres of partially processed organic matter trailed from the leg to the floor.

‘She deserved better than this,' Baudry said. ‘There'll be hell to pay when the other Conjoiners find out that she died in custody.'

‘We didn't kill her,' Gaffney said gently. ‘This is on Dreyfus's shoulders, not ours.'

‘I still don't see why he would have done this, let alone how. To get a body from one part of the station to another, without any of us seeing a thing - how did Dreyfus manage that?'

‘It isn't any old body, Lillian. It's the body of Dreyfus's prisoner, held in Dreyfus's room. He's the last person known to have seen her alive. That's reason enough to close the vice, in my view.'

‘And what kind of vice would that be?'

Gaffney fingered the black shaft of his whiphound, still clipped to his belt. 'We need answers, and we need them fast. Dreyfus may not be inclined to give much away without a little encouragement.'

‘I'll talk to him, see what he has to say.'

‘No disrespect, but Dreyfus isn't going to just roll over and confess, even if you present him with a body. You saw how eager he was to implicate me.'

Baudry looked down at the atrocity on the floor. ‘I still can't see Dreyfus having any part in this. Everything I know about him says he isn't a murderer, or a traitor.'

‘It's always the quiet ones.' Gaffney sensed some agonised decision-making churning behind the smooth surface of her brow.

‘I don't like the way this is going. But this is a state of emergency. I'll consider issuing a trawl order, if you think it necessary. A minimally invasive scan only. I don't want him hurt or distressed in any way.'

‘Too many unknowns here, Lillian. Trawling wouldn't be the tool of choice in this instance.'

‘Then what do you recommend?'

‘There are other methods in our toolkit. Do you want me to be more specific?'

‘Please tell me you're not talking about torture.'

Gaffney winced. ‘Old term, not really applicable in a modern context. Torture is needles under the fingernails, electrodes to the genitals. Messy and imprecise. The new intelligence-extraction methods are a lot more refined. Really, it's like comparing trepanning to modern brain surgery. Of course, if you'd rather I went in with a deep-cortex trawl—'

Baudry turned away. ‘I don't want to hear any of this.'

‘You don't have to,' Gaffney said, offering her a reassuring smile. ‘You can just sit back and wait for the results.'