The Prefect (69 page)

‘That's the idea.'

‘What does she want you to know, Boss?'

‘How should I know if I can't read this yet?' Dreyfus snapped.

‘She must have given you an idea.'

‘She did.'

‘It's about the Clockmaker, I assume.'

‘Yes,' Dreyfus said tersely. ‘It's about the Clockmaker. Now would you mind leaving me alone with it so I at least have a chance of making some sense of this before we land?'

‘It's all right,' Sparver said, with more sympathy than Dreyfus felt he deserved. 'I understand, Boss. If it's about the Clockmaker, then it's also about Valery, isn't it?'

‘Valery died,' Dreyfus said. ‘I'm over her death. Nothing in this is going to change that.'

Sparver had the good sense to leave him alone after that.

The braking phase commenced shortly, entailing several minutes at high burn. When it had subsided, Dreyfus was experiencing nearly full gravity and the cutter had already begun to ease its way into the upper atmosphere of Yellowstone. This was no fiery insertion, nothing like Paula Saavedra's high-speed re-entry, but rather a progressive submergence into thicker and thicker air, with the cutter using its engines to avoid excessive aerodynamic friction. To a casual observer, they would look like one more passenger ship returning to Chasm City from the glitz and glamour of the orbital communities.

Dreyfus found himself dozing. It was something to do with Manticore making him sleepy while it worked on his mind. He did not feel markedly different when he woke, but when he resumed his perusal of the compad, he knew that he had taken another step closer to comprehension. Now whole phrases kept slipping in and out of clarity, like animals prowling behind tall grass. He saw:

And then he felt something open in his mind, like a heavy trap door, one that had been shut and forgotten for eleven years. He saw Valery's face, lit up with childlike delight, kneeling in soil, turning to him from the bed where she had been arranging flowers.

And he knew that he had done a very bad thing to his wife.

Mercier watched the proceedings from the elevated observation room overlooking Demikhov's dedicated operating theatre. Though the theatre had been fully equipped since its inception, it had seen few occupants in all that time. Demikhov's team had occasionally employed it to rehearse a surgical procedure, but they had usually done so under the assumption that the scarab would be removed by more conventional means, leaving Aumonier with only superficial injuries. It was only lately that the theatre had been staffed around the clock, with the crash team preparing for the increasingly likely eventuality that Zulu would have to be implemented.

When he wasn't busy with his own patients, Mercier had sometimes watched the crash team working on eerily accurate medical dummies, using microsurgical techniques to reknit head and body. Sometimes the body had been intact below the neck, but they'd also worked under the assumption of varying severities of injury occasioned by the removal of the scarab. Now they were dealing with a real case that fell somewhere in the middle of their simulated outcomes. The head had been severed with superhuman precision, but the scarab had inflicted major damage to the three cervical vertebrae below the bisection point. Nothing that couldn't be fixed - it wasn't going to be necessary to grow the supreme prefect a new body - but there was a lot of restorative work to be done.

Little of the surgical activity was visible to Mercier. Pale-green medical servitors crowded over and around the body and head, which were currently situated on separate tables a metre apart. The hulking machines appeared clumsy until one focused on the speed with which their manipulators were knitting tissue back together. Secrets of the flesh lay obscured behind a flickering blur of antiseptic metal. Now and then one of the swan-necked servitors would whip around to swap one manipulator extremity for another, lending the whole scene the faintly comedic look of a recording on fast-forward. Demikhov's human staff were situated several metres away from the whipping machines, gowned and masked but having no direct contact with their patient. They stood before pedestals, studying panes filled with anatomical images, not so much controlling the machines as offering advice and guidance when it was merited. They did not need to be in the same room, but they were all ready to intervene in the unlikely event of some catastrophic machine failure.

Mercier had a shrewd idea of what was happening. The machines were identifying severed nerve fibres, cross-matching them between the two detached body parts. Reverse-field trawls were being used to stimulate areas of Jane Aumonier's brain, with particular focus on the sensorimotor cortex. When the machines identified the function of a particular nerve, they capped it with a microscopic cylinder primed with regenerative quickmatter. Myoelectric stimulation was being used to map the nerve bundles emerging from Aumonier's body. When head and neck were rejoined, the two cylinders corresponding to a single nerve would identify each other and promote flawless tissue reconnection. Much would remain to be done - Aumonier could expect partial or complete paralysis for some time after the procedure - but Demikhov had been confident that basic life-support processes could be restored during the first phase of surgery.

Mercier watched until he was satisfied that everything was under control. Demikhov's team were working urgently, but there was nothing about their movements that suggested anything untoward. They had prepared for this and did not appear to be encountering anything they had not anticipated.

Reluctantly Mercier turned from the spectacle. He wanted to see the moment of reunion, but he had his own matters to attend to. He'd learned about Thalia Ng's escape from House Aubusson, accompanied by a party of local citizenry. There were no reports of serious injuries amongst that group, but they would all benefit from medical attention when the deep-system vehicle redocked at Panoply, even if the worst Mercier had to deal with was a few cuts and bruises.

He returned to his section of the infirmary. Through the windowed partition he made out the recumbent form of his only current patient, asleep on a bed. Mercier opened the partition. He stepped through and moved to the side of Gaffney's bed, cradling a compad in the crook of his arm. He tapped a stylus and brought up a summary of Gaffney's progress since the removal of the whiphound and his subsequent interrogation by trawl.

Mercier did not approve of the way Dreyfus had insisted upon his patient being scanned so soon after the fraught process of removing the object lodged in his throat. Gaffney had been medically fit, traumatised yet otherwise free of serious injury, but the principle of it still galled Mercier. Now, however, he was forced to admit that Gaffney had no need of further medical supervision. He could be transferred to a normal holding facility somewhere else in Panoply, freeing up space that could be used when Thalia's party arrived.

‘Sheridan,' he said softly. ‘Can you hear me? It's time to wake up now.'

At first Gaffney didn't stir. Mercier repeated his instruction. Gaffney mumbled something and opened his eyes with resentful slowness.

‘I was sound asleep, Doctor Mercier,' he said, his voice still a painful croak.

‘I apologise. You still need rest.' Mercier tapped the stylus again, bringing up a different set of diagnostic summaries. ‘Unfortunately, I've got a ship coming in with an unspecified number of injured citizens aboard. I can't afford to tie up this bed for much longer.'

‘Are you discharging me?' Gaffney croaked.

‘Not exactly. I'm still ordered to keep you under lock and key, but there's no reason why you can't be transferred to a normal detention cell.'

‘I'm surprised Dreyfus isn't here to give you a helping hand.'

‘Dreyfus is outside,' Mercier said.

‘That's a shame. Can't say I really miss his bedside manner, though. You didn't hear where he was headed, by any chance?'

‘No,' Mercier said, after a trace of hesitation.

‘Well, let's hope he doesn't come to grief, wherever it is. I think we still need to clear the air between us. Are you sure he didn't put you up to this, Doctor?'

‘This has nothing to do with Dreyfus. I don't approve of what you did, Sheridan, but that doesn't mean I approve of the way you were treated, either.'

‘Aumonier, then? Did she issue the order?'

‘Jane's in no fit state to issue any kind of order,' Mercier said, and then regretted it instantly, for Gaffney had no need to know of the operation in progress.

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘I mean... I've said enough.'

‘Where is she?' Gaffney cocked his head. ‘Has something happened, Doctor? Are they
doing
something to her? Come to think of it, this place has been a little quiet lately.'

‘Never mind Jane. I assure you that you won't be any less comfortable in a holding cell than you are here, and you'll be under constant machine observation. If you do experience any complications, someone can attend to you almost immediately.'

‘You put it like that,' Gaffney said sarcastically, ‘how can I possibly refuse?'

‘I wish there was another way, Sheridan.'

‘Yeah. So do I, son.' Gaffney set his face in a look of resigned determination. 'But needs must when the devil calls. Can you help me out of this bed? I seem to have become a little stiff in my spine.'

Mercier put down the compad and stylus and leaned over to assist Gaffney to his feet. In a flash Gaffney was standing by his side, twisting Mercier's right arm behind his back, pushing the stylus hard against the side of his throat. The stylus was blunt, but Gaffney was applying so much pressure that the pain was unpleasantly sharp.

‘Got to admit, I was feeling a bit stronger than I looked,' Gaffney said. ‘Sorry about that, Doctor, but there's no way you're moving me to a holding cell.'

The pressure on his throat made it difficult for Mercier to answer. ‘You can't get out of here.'

‘Let's take a stroll to your office.'

With Gaffney still pressing the stylus into his neck, Mercier shuffle-walked sideways, his heart hammering and his breathing beginning to rocket. ‘My arm,' Mercier protested.

‘Fuck your arm. Open the door.'

Mercier admitted the two of them into his administrative annexe. He held out a forlorn hope that there'd be someone in there who could pacify Gaffney or raise the alarm. But with all the other medical staff either participating in Demikhov's operation or up in the bay awaiting the arrival of the deep-system cruiser, the medical centre was deserted.

‘Don't even think about calling out,' Gaffney warned. ‘Now move to your desk. Pull out the chair and sit down.'

Mercier's office was all inert matter. The furniture was studiedly old-fashioned, the way he liked it. But even if he'd had the means to conjure one, he wouldn't have had the necessary control or presence of mind to fashion a weapon or restraining device.

‘What do you want with me?' he asked as he sat down in the chair, with Gaffney still jamming the stylus into his neck. ‘You're going to dislocate my arm!'

‘That's what happens to arms. Now open the desk drawer on your right.'

‘My drawer?'

Gaffney intensified the pressure on both the stylus and the arm. ‘I'm not really in the mood to say things twice, son.'

With his left arm, Mercier opened the drawer. ‘There's nothing in here except papers,' he said, tugging it open enough to demonstrate that this was the case.

‘You do like your paperwork,' Gaffney commented. ‘Now reach all the way to the back of the drawer.'

‘There's nothing at the back.'

‘Do it.'

Mercier started as his fingers brushed against something unfamiliar, lodged at the back of the drawer where it would not interfere with his beloved paperwork.

‘Pull it out,' Gaffney said.

Mercier tugged and the item snapped loose. It felt heavy in his hand, like a bar of cold iron. Something about its shape was familiar, though he had never handled anything remotely like it. ‘This isn't possible,' he said. ‘There shouldn't be—'

‘How many times have you had this office swept by Internal Security?' Gaffney asked.

Mercier's hand emerged from the drawer. He was clutching the black shaft of a whiphound. ‘How did—'

‘I put it there. I put them in a lot of places, wherever I felt I might need one. The possibility of my being exposed and arrested was not something I could ignore. Matter of fact, there's one in that holding cell you were probably intending to take me to. Impossible, you say. Security would never have allowed it! Getting the picture now?' Gaffney croaked out a guttural laugh. ‘Put the whiphound down on the table.'

Mercier dropped the whiphound. It clunked heavily on the table, denting the polished wood surface beneath his writing lamp. In a single fluid movement, Gaffney released Mercier's arm, alleviated the pressure from the stylus and snatched up the whiphound.

He spooled out the filament.