Read Online The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds - Free Book Online
Authors: Alastair Reynolds
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eyes and peered closer. In some of the views, the weevils were accompanied by human figures to lend scale. The robots were smaller than heâd been expecting, until he remembered that one of their prime uses had been infiltration. By all accounts they were fast, with a high degree of tactical autonomy.
Not that anyone alive had clear memories of weevils. The datestamps on the annotations were all at least a century old.
Gaffneyâs hands moved again. Now the panes filled with scrolling lines of text and symbols in MAL, the human-readable Manufactory Assembler Language. The instructions became a whizzing blur. The blur began to dance and squirm in subtle rhythms, betraying large-scale structure in the sequencing code. Here were the commands that, if fed into a sufficiently equipped manufactory, would result in the production of a fully operational weevil.
Or more than one.
Having verified that the MAL script was complete and error-free, Gaffney encysted the code in a private partition of his own security management area. In the unlikely event of anyone stumbling on it, all they would see would be routine entry/exit schedules for pressure-tight passwalls inside Panoply.
He backed-up the top level of the query stack. His hands dithered over the keys. He switched to voice-only.
âRetrieve priors on search-term Firebrand.â
âRepeat search term, please.â
âFirebrand,â Gaffney said, with exaggerated slowness.
Heâd been expecting some hits, but nothing like the multitude of priors that filled the panes. He applied filters and whittled down the stack. Yet when he was finished it was still hopelessly large, and he wasnât seeing anything remotely connected with Panoply, or the thing that so interested Aurora.
Firebrand.
What the hell did it mean? Anthony Theobald had given him the word, and heâd allowed himself to believe it was something useful, enough to stop trawling the man before he became an unwilling recruit for the Persistent Vegetative State. But now that he had let the man go, now that he was alone with the Search Turbines, Gaffney wondered whether he should not have gone deeper.
âYou sold me a dud, Tony,â Gaffney said aloud. âYou naughty, naughty boy.â
But even as he spoke, he remembered something else Anthony Theobald had told him. The men whoâd let slip that codeword had once told him that their operations were superblack. Untraceable, unaccountable and officially deniable at all levels of Panoply command and control, right up to the Queen of the Scarab herself.
In other words, it was hardly surprising that he hadnât found anything significant in a two-minute search. Firebrand might still mean something. But it was going to take more than sitting at a console to get any closer to the truth.
Gaffney spent the next five minutes covering his tracks, erasing any trace of his rummaging from the query logs of the Search Turbines. Then another five minutes covering traces of that. By the time he was done, Gaffney was confident that even he wouldnât have been able to follow his own trail.
He stood from the console and conjured it back into the room, together with the seat he had been using. Then he wiped the sleeve of his tunic across his brow, ran fingers through his wiry red hair and headed for the passwall.
He knew that what he had just done was âwrongâ, just as it had been âwrongâ to intercept, trawl and discard the hapless Anthony Theobald. But everything, as Aurora liked to remind him, depended on viewpoint. There was nothing wrong with protecting the citizenry, even if what they most needed protection from was their own worst natures.
And Aurora was always right.
The beta-level regarded Dreyfus with cold indifference. Dreyfus stared at him obligingly, as if waiting for the punch line to a joke. It was an old interview technique that usually obtained a result.
The imaged figure was male, taller than
Not that anyone alive had clear memories of weevils. The datestamps on the annotations were all at least a century old.
Gaffneyâs hands moved again. Now the panes filled with scrolling lines of text and symbols in MAL, the human-readable Manufactory Assembler Language. The instructions became a whizzing blur. The blur began to dance and squirm in subtle rhythms, betraying large-scale structure in the sequencing code. Here were the commands that, if fed into a sufficiently equipped manufactory, would result in the production of a fully operational weevil.
Or more than one.
Having verified that the MAL script was complete and error-free, Gaffney encysted the code in a private partition of his own security management area. In the unlikely event of anyone stumbling on it, all they would see would be routine entry/exit schedules for pressure-tight passwalls inside Panoply.
He backed-up the top level of the query stack. His hands dithered over the keys. He switched to voice-only.
âRetrieve priors on search-term Firebrand.â
âRepeat search term, please.â
âFirebrand,â Gaffney said, with exaggerated slowness.
Heâd been expecting some hits, but nothing like the multitude of priors that filled the panes. He applied filters and whittled down the stack. Yet when he was finished it was still hopelessly large, and he wasnât seeing anything remotely connected with Panoply, or the thing that so interested Aurora.
Firebrand.
What the hell did it mean? Anthony Theobald had given him the word, and heâd allowed himself to believe it was something useful, enough to stop trawling the man before he became an unwilling recruit for the Persistent Vegetative State. But now that he had let the man go, now that he was alone with the Search Turbines, Gaffney wondered whether he should not have gone deeper.
âYou sold me a dud, Tony,â Gaffney said aloud. âYou naughty, naughty boy.â
But even as he spoke, he remembered something else Anthony Theobald had told him. The men whoâd let slip that codeword had once told him that their operations were superblack. Untraceable, unaccountable and officially deniable at all levels of Panoply command and control, right up to the Queen of the Scarab herself.
In other words, it was hardly surprising that he hadnât found anything significant in a two-minute search. Firebrand might still mean something. But it was going to take more than sitting at a console to get any closer to the truth.
Gaffney spent the next five minutes covering his tracks, erasing any trace of his rummaging from the query logs of the Search Turbines. Then another five minutes covering traces of that. By the time he was done, Gaffney was confident that even he wouldnât have been able to follow his own trail.
He stood from the console and conjured it back into the room, together with the seat he had been using. Then he wiped the sleeve of his tunic across his brow, ran fingers through his wiry red hair and headed for the passwall.
He knew that what he had just done was âwrongâ, just as it had been âwrongâ to intercept, trawl and discard the hapless Anthony Theobald. But everything, as Aurora liked to remind him, depended on viewpoint. There was nothing wrong with protecting the citizenry, even if what they most needed protection from was their own worst natures.
And Aurora was always right.
The beta-level regarded Dreyfus with cold indifference. Dreyfus stared at him obligingly, as if waiting for the punch line to a joke. It was an old interview technique that usually obtained a result.
The imaged figure was male, taller than
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