‘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.
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
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
‘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.’
‘He’s one of us,’ she said.
Gaffney tapped the whiphound. ‘And I’ll see that he’s treated with the appropriate respect.’
Though she had been scrupulous in concealing her suspicions from the others, Thalia had come to the private conclusion that there would be no rescue, at least not at the hands of Senior Prefect Crissel. Five hours had
