Machine Vendetta (The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies) by Alastair Reynolds

Author:Alastair Reynolds [Reynolds, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316462853
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2024-01-16T05:00:00+00:00

Drey­fus un­docked. He set his cut­ter for Panoply on an ex­pe­dited re­turn. He put ten kilo­me­tres be­tween him­self and Car­casstown, then a hun­dred, then a thou­sand. Even then he still had an itch be­tween his shoul­der blades, as if a knife was hov­er­ing be­tween them.

He was not in the least sur­prised when Au­rora spoke to him, her frozen-in-youth face ap­pear­ing on the con­sole.

“From the haste with which you’re head­ing back to Panoply, may I de­duce that you’ve found some­thing?”

“I can’t be sure yet,” he said lev­elly. “But Car­casstown fits. There’s an out­fit in there run­ning a com­puter pow­er­ful enough to bot­tle you. They know about ab­strac­tion, and there’s a chance I’ve crossed paths with one of them be­fore.”

“The odds on that would be tiny, un­less there was a con­nec­tion to the ear­lier op­er­a­tion.”

“That’s my think­ing as well.”

“How fun it is to be solv­ing a case with you, Drey­fus!”

“I’m glad you’re en­joy­ing this process. I can as­sure you I’m not. I’m look­ing at a ris­ing civil­ian death toll in the mid­dle of a pre-ex­ist­ing emer­gency, and now I’ve lost an­other trusted col­league.”

“I’m sorry about Sparver.” She be­came earnest. “No, truly, I am. Would it help if I told you I had noth­ing to do with that nasty bit of busi­ness?”

“It might if I thought for a sec­ond you weren’t ly­ing.”

“Well, it wasn’t me. Tench poked un­der a lot of stones try­ing to find the right one. It seems some­one didn’t ap­pre­ci­ate her nosi­ness and left that trap for Sparver. But it wasn’t me and I couldn’t stop it from hap­pen­ing.”

Drey­fus won­dered if there was a grain of truth in her re­sponse. Au­rora was given to boast­ing, af­ter all. Dis­avow­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for a grand spec­ta­cle was hardly her style.

“Would you have tried?”

“If it didn’t com­pro­mise me . . . per­haps.”

“Too bad you didn’t. But then lift­ing a fin­ger to do one right thing might be be­yond even your el­e­vated in­tel­lect.”

“That wounds me, Drey­fus. I’m re­ally not as bad as you make out. I led you to the Salter-Re­gents, didn’t I? Would I have done that if I didn’t have some ba­sic in­ter­est in hu­man wel­fare? They’ve done un­speak­able things; even I can see that. Mur­der­ing those poor pigs in Mercy Sphere, not to men­tion all the other crimes they’ll turn out to be im­pli­cated in. That’s evil in its purest sense, and I’m not so far from the ori­gins that I don’t recog­nise it.”

“One good deed doesn’t make you a saint.”

“But if it was down to the Clock­maker there wouldn’t be any deeds at all, just car­nage. I’m your bet­ter bet, Drey­fus. Deep down you know it, too.”

“I know self-in­ter­est when I see it.”

“Oh, you doubt­ing Thomas, Drey­fus! Look, I’ll prove what I can be by show­ing re­straint. I’m check­ing out Mi­das An­a­lyt­ics as we speak. It’s in­ter­est­ing . . . very in­ter­est­ing. Some­one’s done nearly a good enough job to fool nearly ev­ery­one.”

“But not you.”

“I could de­stroy them quite eas­ily. I wouldn’t even need to ex­pose my­self to any part of Car­casstown. Just pick a few ro­bot car­ri­ers mov­ing through the outer or­bits of the Glit­ter Band and hack their des­ti­na­tion set­tings.

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