Alastair Reynolds: The Prefect

Dreyfus licked his lips. They felt as dry as clay. His heart was trying to tunnel its way out of his chest.

"I only wanted to show you the way things are."

"With Aurora? "

"Yes. She won't stop. You're the only thing that can touch her. Therefore she has to destroy you. And she will, sooner or later. Unless you destroy her first."

"Aurora will murder all of you."

"I know."

"What makes you think I'm any better?"

"Because you didn't kill everyone in SIAM."

The Clockmaker sounded amused.

"And that gives you hope? That makes you think I'm the lesser of two evils?"

"I don't think you're evil. Not really. I think you're furious and driven, like an avenging angel. You've been hurt and you want to give back some of that hurt. I think that makes you bad. But I don't think it makes you evil."

The Clockmaker contorted itself even more, bending at the middle to lower its upper chest and head to only a metre above Dreyfus. Still he could see only highlights, where the red light caught a sleek metal edge. The head, which had appeared hammer-like only a moment ago, now had the form of an anvil.

"You presume to know what I am?"

"I know who you are," Dreyfus said, each word feeling as if it might be his last.

"I know what they did to you, Philip."

The Clockmaker did not answer. But something sliced through the air, one of its arms moving so quickly that the motion became a scything blur of darkness and shadow. The whipping arm touched Dreyfus' forehead. His skin felt suddenly cold. Something trickled into his eye, warm and stinging.

"I know what they did to you," he repeated.

"They took you and burnt out your mind, trying to extract an alpha-level simulation. Then they dumped your body in a fish pond and made it look like suicide. They only wanted those alpha-level patterns for one thing, Philip. Not to give you immortality, but to help them program a machine that could travel into the Shroud without being ripped apart. You'd survived, where others hadn't. They made a robot and loaded your alpha-level simulation into it, in the hope that something in those brain patterns would make a difference."

The Clockmaker was listening. It hadn't killed him yet. Perhaps it was planning something worse than death, some ingenious new cruelty that would make even Jane Aumonier's eleven years of sleeplessness seem like a kindness.

"They must have sent you into a Shroud," Dreyfus continued.

"One within a few light-years of Yellowstone, so that you had time to go there and back before you showed up in SIAM. That's what happened, isn't it? You were sent into the Shroud as a machine running Philip Lascaille's alpha-level simulation, and you came back … changed, just the way Philip had all those years before. Something inside the Shroud had remade you. You were still a machine, but now you were a machine with alien components. And you were angry. You were worse than angry. You were a machine that knew its soul had been stolen from an innocent man, a man who'd already been driven half-mad by the things he'd seen inside the Shroud."

Still the Clockmaker loomed over him, the mantra-like rhythm of its humming beginning to fill his brain, squeezing out rational thought. Dreyfus swore he could feel its breath, a cold, metallic exhalation like a steel breeze. But machines didn't breathe, he told himself.

"I don't know how you ended up in SIAM," Dreyfus went on, "but I'd guess you were in a state of dormancy when you returned from the Shroud. The people who'd sent you there didn't really know what to make of you. They knew they'd got back something strange, but they couldn't begin to comprehend your true origin, your capabilities, what was driving you. So they transferred you to the people in the Sylveste organisation best suited to probe the nature of an artificial intelligence. More than likely, the scientists in SIAM had no inkling of where you'd come from. They were fed a story, led to think that you were the product of another research department in the institute itself. And at first you were very obliging, weren't you? You were like a newborn baby. You made them happy with the clever things you made. But all along you were recovering memories of your true nature. The fury was welling up inside you, looking for a release valve. You'd been birthed in pain and terror. You naturally assumed that pain and terror were what you were meant to give back to the world. So you did. You began your spree."

After a silence that stretched on for centuries, the Clockmaker spoke again.

"Philip Lascaille is dead."

"But you remember, don't you? You remember how it felt to be him. You remember what you saw in the Shroud, the first time.".

"How would you know?".

"Because I recognised your face in Delphine's sculpture. You were communicating through her art, finding a channel to the outside world even when you were a prisoner.".

"Did you know Delphine?".

"I knew her after she was murdered, via her beta-level simulation.".

"Why was she murdered?".

"Aurora did it. She was trying to destroy you. Delphine and her family got in the way.". The humming became slower, ruminative.

"And the beta-level simulation?".

"Aurora found a way to get to that as well.".

"Then she has murdered Delphine twice.".

"Yes," Dreyfus said, surprised that the truth of that had never really occurred to him before.

"Then another crime has been committed. Is that why you came here, to solve a crime?". Dreyfus thought about everything that happened to him since he first learned of the destruction of the Ruskin-Sartorious Bubble. With each step the case had opened wider, until he was embroiled in a full-blown emergency, a crisis upon which the future existence of the Glitter Band rested. It was difficult now to remember how parochial he'd expected the outcome of the inquiry to be. A simple case of revenge or spite. How laughably wrong he'd been.

But the Clockmaker was right. The path that had brought him here had begun with a simple murder investigation, albeit one that encompassed nine hundred and sixty victims.

"In a manner of speaking.".

"Aurora would have needed an accomplice. Who did her bidding?".

"A man called Gaffney. A prefect, like me. He's the one attacking this facility, trying to get to you."

"A bad man?".

"A man who believes bad things.".

"I should very much like to meet this Gaffney." The Clockmaker's tone was momentarily pensive, as if it was daydreaming.

"What will happen to you now, Prefect?". Dreyfus almost laughed.

"I don't think that's really in my hands, is it?".

"You're right, it isn't. I could kill you now, or do something to you that you would find infinitely worse than death. But I could also let you leave.". Dreyfus thought of the way cats toyed with birds before finishing them off.

"Why would you do that?".

"Murders have been committed, Prefect. Isn't it your duty to investigate those murders, to bring those responsible to justice?".

"That's part of it.".

"How far would you go to see justice served?".

"As far as it takes.".

"Do you believe that, in your heart of hearts? Be careful how you answer me. Your skull is a stained-glass window, an open book revealing the processes of your mind. I can tell a lie from the truth.".

"I believe it," Dreyfus said.

"I'll do whatever it takes.". He saw the great fist rise high and then descend, dropping towards his skull like a chrome-plated pile driver. Gaffney halted at the sight of the figure ahead of him. Her thin form stood silhouetted against the glowing wall to her rear. She had one hand on her hip, her head at an angle. There was something almost coquettish about that stance, as if she'd been waiting for him, like a lover keeping an assignation.

"As you can see," he said, his voice booming out beyond the suit, amplified to monstrous proportions, "I'm unarmed.".