Alastair Reynolds: The Prefect

"I'll leave immediately," he said, preparing to haul himself back to the wall.

"I'd rather you didn't," Aumonier replied.

"Get some rest first. We're up against the clock on this one, but I still want the Ultras to stew a little, wonder what our response is going to be. We're not totally clawless. We can hit them in the trade networks, where it really hurts. Time to make them feel uncomfortable for once.". Elsewhere, an object fell through the Glitter Band. It was a two-metre-wide sphere, following a carefully calculated free-fall trajectory that would slip it through the transient gaps in civilian, CTC and Panoply tracking systems with the precision of a dancer weaving between scarves. The nonvelope's path was simply an additional precaution that had cost nothing except a tiny expenditure of computing time and an equally small delay to its departure time. It was already nearly invisible, by the standards of all but the most probing close-range surveillance methods. Presently it detected the intrusion of light of a very particular frequency, one that it was programmed not to deflect. Machinery deep in the nonvelope processed the temporal structure of the light and extracted an encoded message in an expected format. The same machinery composed a response and spat it out in the opposite direction, back to whatever had transmitted the original pulse. A confirmatory pulse arrived milliseconds later. The nonvelope had allowed itself to be detected. This was part of the plan. Three hours later, a ship positioned itself over the nonvelope, using gravitational sensing to refine its final approach. The nonvelope was soon safely concealed inside the reception bay of the ship. Clamps locked it into position. Detecting its safe arrival, the nonvelope relaxed the structure of its quickmatter envelope in preparation for disgorging its cargo. As lights came on and air flooded into the bay, the nonvelope's surface flicked to the appearance of a large chromed marble. Weight returned as the ship powered away from the rendezvous point. A figure in an anonymous black spacesuit entered the bay. The figure crouched next to the nonvelope and observed it open. The sphere cracked wide, one half folding back to reveal its occupant. A glassy cocoon of support systems oozed away from his foetal form. The man was breathing, but only just on the edge of consciousness. The man in the suit removed his helmet.

"Welcome back to the world, Anthony Theobald Ruskin-Sartorious.". The man in the nonvelope groaned and stirred. His eyes were gummed with protective gel. He pawed them clean, then squinted while they found their focus.

"I've arrived?".

"You're aboard the ship. Just like you planned.". His relief was palpable.

"I thought it was never going to end. Four hours in that thing … it felt like a million years.".

"I wouldn't mind betting that's the first physical discomfort you've ever known in your life." The man in the black spacesuit was standing now, his legs slightly apart, braced in the half-gravity produced by the ship's acceleration. Anthony Theobald narrowed his eyes at the figure.

"Do I know you?".

"You do now.".

"I was expecting to be met by Raichle."

"Raichle couldn't make it. I came instead. You're okay with that, I assume?".

"Of course I'm … " But Anthony Theobald's usual self-control was betraying him. The man in the suit felt waves of fear rippling off him. Waves of fear and suspicion and an arrogant unwillingness to grasp that his escape plans hadn't been as foolproof as they'd looked when he climbed into the nonvelope.

"Did it really happen? Is Ruskin-Sartorious gone?".

"It's gone. The Ultras did a good job. You got out just in time.".

"And the others? The rest of us?".

"I'd be surprised if there's a single intact strand of human DNA left anywhere in the Bubble.".

"Delphine … " There was a heartbreaking crack in his voice.

"My poor daughter?".

"You knew the deal, Anthony Theobald. You were the only one with a get-out clause.".

"I demand to know who you are. If Raichle didn't send you, how did you know where to find the nonvelope?".

"Because he told me, that's why. During interrogation.".

"Who are you?".

"That isn't the issue, Anthony Theobald. The issue at hand is what you were doing sheltering that evil thing in your nice little family-run habitat.".

"I wasn't sheltering anything. I don't know what you're talking about.". The man in the suit reached behind the small of his back and unclipped a small, handle-shaped object. He hefted it in his palm as if it might be a cosh or truncheon.

"I think it's about time you met a close, personal friend of mine.".

"You've got it wrong. The thing underground was just – ". The man made an odd flicking motion with the handle and something whipped out, extending all the way to the floor. It was almost invisibly fine, catching the light only intermittently. It appeared to swish against the flooring of its own volition, as if searching for something. The man let go of the handle. The handle remained where it was, its coiled filament stiffening to support it. The handle tracked around until the black cylinder of its head was aimed directly at Anthony Theobald. He raised a hand against the laser as it scratched a bright, oscillating line across his eyes.

It had a mark on him now, confirmed by a minute nod from the man in black.

"Keep that thing away from me."

"This is a Model C whiphound," the man in the suit said.

"It's got a few additional features compared to the last version. One of them's called 'interrogation mode'. Shall we give it a spin?". The whiphound began to slink closer to Anthony Theobald.

Dreyfus was alone in his quarters. He had prepared some tea, losing himself in the task. When he was finished, he knelt at a low, black table and allowed the hot ginger-coloured brew to cool before drinking it. The room filled itself with the tinkling sound of distant wind chimes, a ghost-thin melody implicit in the apparent randomness. Normally it suited his mood, but today Dreyfus waved the music quieter, until he had near-silence. He sipped at the tea but it was still too hot.

He faced a blank rice-paper wall. He raised a hand and shaped a basic conjuring gesture, one that he had practised thousands of times. The wall brightened with blocky patches of vivid colour. The colours resolved into a mosaic of faces, several dozen of them, arranged in a compositional scheme with the larger images clustered near the middle. The faces were all the same woman, but taken at different stages in her life, so that they almost looked like images of different people. Sometimes the woman was looking into the camera; sometimes she was looking askance, or had been snapped candidly. She had high cheekbones, a slight overbite and eyes of a startling bronze, flecked with chips of fiery gold. She had black hair that she usually wore in tight curls. She was smiling in many of the images, even the ones where she hadn't been aware that she was being photographed. She'd smiled a lot.

Dreyfus stared at the pictures as if they were a puzzle he had to solve.

Something was missing. In his mind's eye he could see the woman in the pictures turning to him with flowers in her hand, kneeling in newly tilled soil. The image was vivid, but when he tried to focus on any particular part of it the details squirmed from his attention. He knew that memory had to come from somewhere, but he couldn't relate it to any of the images already on the wall.

He'd been trying to place it for nearly eleven years.

The tea was cool enough to drink at last. He sipped it slowly, concentrating on the mosaic of faces. Suddenly the composition struck him as jarringly unbalanced in the top-right corner, even though he'd been satisfied with it for many months. He raised a hand and adjusted the placement of the images, the wall obeying his gestures with flawless obedience. It looked better now, but he knew it would come to displease him in time. Until he found that missing piece, the mosaic would always be disharmonious.