On the Steel Breeze

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘And none of us has the luxury of splitting hairs. If it wasn’t cold-blooded murder, it was certainly cold-blooded flaunting of our laws.’

  ‘We need Travertine’s mind. No matter what ve did, that intellect is still too valuable to waste.’

  ‘It’s not in our hands.’ Under his gold-patterned formal skirt, Utomi’s shoes squeaked on the waxed floor. He had a heavy, solemn stride, with a slight limp from an injury sustained in a vacuum accident many years ago, and which he’d never bothered to correct. ‘This will go to the Council of Worlds. If they want the death penalty badly enough, they’ll get it.’

  ‘They’ll need to demonstrate malintent.’

  ‘That won’t be terribly difficult. You can’t say that the provisions of the Pemba Accord aren’t widely known.’

  ‘We need to hear Travertine’s side of things.’

  ‘Of course. You spoke to Travertine yesterday, when ve came to your house. How would you describe vis state of mind?’

  Chiku deliberated. ‘Troubled.’

  ‘For verself, or for what ve’s done to us?’

  ‘A bit of both, I think. Look, I’m not going to pretend that Travertine is an angel, or that ve feels much beyond disdain for most of the rest of us. But ve was shocked by what happened.’

  ‘That’s odd. Knowing Travertine, I’d have expected cocky disregard.’ They were nearing the heavy black doors of the Assembly chamber. ‘That’s the thing, though – we all know Travertine on some level. That’s unavoidable in a closed community. But if you feel your relationship will affect your impartiality, you shouldn’t hesitate to recuse yourself. The Assembly will accept a temporary leave of absence while this matter is settled. Get some rest, or something. You like gardening, don’t you?’

  ‘You can count on my impartiality, Chair.’

  ‘Very good, Chiku.’ Utomi hesitated in his stride, as if the limp had worsened. ‘Oh – one more thing.’

  ‘Yes, Chair?’

  ‘Good work on Malabar, and in the Kappa situation. It’s not gone unnoticed. I’m aware of your recent request for full-term skipover.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Obviously, nothing will be decided until we resolve this crisis. But beyond that, you might want to start making the necessary legal and educational arrangements.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s very good of you—’

  ‘Off the record, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And your children – Ndege and . . . what’s the other one?’

  ‘Mposi, Chair.’

  ‘How old are they now?’

  He meant their physiological ages. ‘Ndege’s twelve and Mposi’s eleven.’

  ‘How do they feel about skipover?’

  ‘They’ve been through it twice during our last couple of terms. I don’t suppose they remember all that much.’

  ‘Those were only twenty-year skips, though. Plus they’re older, now – they’ll have friends. They won’t like the thought of being torn away from them for sixty years.’

  ‘They’ll be happy, Chair. And we’ll all be happy when we get to Crucible.’

  Constables opened the double doors and admitted them into the chamber. It was a large dark room with a stepped floor and a fan of seats set in concentric rows. Here at least the Assembly building parted company with its counterpart back in Africa. There had been no room this grand in the original household.

  There were thirty-six seats in the concentric rows, one for each of Zanzibar’s chambers. The rows formed a horseshoe, with a smaller arrangement of seats pincered between the extremities. Chair Utomi’s throne-like elevated position faced the elected representatives and was flanked by the chairs and desks of two record-keeping constables. Immediately in front of Utomi and the record keepers was a slablike black table. Above it floated a ghostly schematic of Zanzibar, as if made from many layers of coloured glass. It was an aug-generated figment, the only thing in the room not physically present.

  Chiku took her seat in the front row. Only twenty-five representatives were in session, but that was not unusual, especially during a state of emergency. Once preliminaries had been attended to, Travertine was brought into the room under the supervision of a pair of constables. They sat ver down in a chair immediately in front of the image of Zanzibar, so that Travertine faced Utomi. Chiku could only see the side of Travertine’s face.

  That suited her very well. She did not want to be making eye contact today.

  ‘What are the latest casualty figures?’ Utomi asked of his record keepers, once Travertine was settled.

  ‘Total loss of life, at the latest estimate, stands at two hundred and twelve,’ reported the constable to Utomi’s right. She was a pale, Nordic-looking woman with a bowl of peppery hair. ‘Search-and-rescue efforts are continuing, along with preparations to stabilise the damage. There’s an outside chance that there may still be one or two survivors, trapped in isolated air pockets. We may also expect to find more casualties. Accounting for all the dead – including those caught in the immediate vicinity of the explosion – may take days, possibly weeks.’

  Utomi nodded gravely. This uncertainty was the price they paid for their mode of living in Zanzibar. On Malabar – in fact aboard almost any other holoship – the identities and locations of the dead would have been a matter of instantaneous public record. But here, even constables did not have the routine means to track individuals via their implants. On Malabar, Travertine would have found it quite impossible to hide, even for a few hours.

  But we do things differently here, Chiku thought. That’s the point of the caravan. We travel in multiple holoships for mutual support and insurance against a disaster like Pemba, but also because it allows us to rehearse different modes of living, new permutations, before we reach Crucible. What worked back home might not work on a new world, under strange and disfigured constellations.

  ‘We were very lucky, in most respects,’ the constable continued. ‘Fewer people work in Kappa now than before. We lost some air and water, but not enough to cause us immediate difficulties. Our breach-containment systems proved their worth, and there were no critical systems routed through the part of the skin we lost. But the damage is still catastrophic, and if the energy release had been an order of magnitude greater, we could easily be looking at a second Pemba.’

  No one needed to voice the silent corollary to that ominous declaration. Had this been a ‘second Pemba’, no one in or near Zanzibar would be in a position to look at anything at all.

  Zanzibar would no longer exist.

  ‘Our good fortune notwithstanding,’ Utomi said, ‘what matters is that our most serious laws – laws enacted to protect the integrity of the holoship – were ignored, treated with disdain, as if they applied to everyone else but Travertine. Do you deny this?’

  There was silence in the chamber as they waited for the scientist to respond. Knowing Travertine’s wilful character, Chiku would not have been remotely surprised if ve simply stared them all down in wordless defiance.

  But after several seconds of silence, Travertine twisted in vis seat to look around the gathering.

  ‘What’s the point of all this?’

  ‘A demonstration of your respect for the authority of this Assembly,’ said Utomi.

  ‘I’ll respect it when you stop deluding yourselves. This isn’t about me. It’s not even about the Kappa accident. It’s about you and your double standards – enforcing laws while hoping someone breaks them!’

  ‘You’ve stated these opinions on many occasions,’ Utomi said, visibly weary. ‘You clearly haven’t changed your mind.’

  ‘Our situation hasn’t changed, either. We’re still hurtling through space at twelve-point-seven per cent of the speed of light with no means of slowing down. In fewer than ninety years, we’ll sail right past our destination. That won’t change until you pull your heads out of the sand and start facing reality.’

  ‘We do not need to be reminded of our predicament,’ Utomi said, �
�any more than you need to be reminded that we still have many decades of flight ahead of us.’

  ‘And when will you finally lift the Pemba Accord? Twenty years from now? Fifty? What if that doesn’t give us enough time?’

  ‘When the terms of the Pemba Accord are relaxed,’ Utomi said, ‘a caravan-wide research programmeme into the slowdown problem will be initiated. Hundreds, thousands of minds, with all the resources and equipment they need. A massive cooperative effort. But that’s never sat very well with you, has it? You could never be part of a collective enterprise. It has to be Travertine, the lone genius.’

  Travertine turned around in vis seat again and addressed the Assembly. ‘I was using more energy in my lab than could ever be explained by the experiments I claimed to be doing. But did one of you ever have the courage to question me about it?’

  ‘That sounds like a confession to me,’ Utomi said. ‘Before my constables commit it to the record for posterity, would you like to amend your statement?’

  ‘What I did was an obligation, not a crime. My statement stands.’

  ‘Then why did you run?’ Utomi asked.

  ‘Because I’m human. Because I know what this will mean for me.’

  ‘Nothing is . . . settled,’ Utomi said, as if he sought to offer this beleaguered, belligerent individual some glimmer of hope. ‘The legislation is very precisely worded – it had to be, after you tested our existing laws to destruction last time. We require proof that you knowingly brought this risk upon us, that you deliberately invoked Post-Chibesa Physics rather than stumbling into it by accident, while engaged in some other line of research.’

  Travertine rewarded this statement with a look of blazing contempt. ‘I’ve never stumbled into anything in my life.’

  None of the representatives had spoken so far, but Chung, the representative from Mu Chamber who was sitting a few spaces to Chiku’s right, could restrain himself no longer. ‘The Pemba Accord wasn’t instigated to stifle scientific enquiry, Travertine. It was to ensure it didn’t accelerate out of our control. If we wished to abandon experimentation altogether, we could easily have done so after Pemba. Yet we still allow it, even encourage it – but always under the assumption that those conducting the research will do so responsibly.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Firdausi, the representative from Sigma Chamber and who was sitting behind Chiku, ‘that we know Travertine’s history. There’s never been anyone less likely to accidentally transgress the Accord.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Travertine said, with blithe disregard for the consequences of this admission. ‘Why would I ever deny it? We don’t understand Post-Chibesa Physics, so how can we draw a fence around it and say never cross that line?’

  ‘In time,’ said Utomi, ‘we will develop a much fuller understanding.’

  ‘Yes,’ Travertine replied levelly. ‘And to the best of my recollection, you were saying exactly the same thing fifty years ago – everything will be all right, little children. Go to bed and stop worrying. And don’t mention slowdown in polite company.’

  There was truth in this, Chiku knew. Slowdown had gone from being an awkward, emotionally sensitive topic to something that was barely ever mentioned. As if, by not talking about it, the problem would somehow magic itself away.

  The simple fact of it was this: the holoships were travelling too quickly. Early in their voyages, in the flush of optimism that accompanied a time of rapid technological and scientific progress, their governments had wagered against the future. Rather than take three hundred years to cross space to Crucible – the original, achievable intention – the journey could be compressed to a mere two hundred and twenty. The trick was to keep burning fuel, eating into the mountainous stocks that were supposed to be held in reserve until the holoships needed to slow down. Instead of using that fuel to slow down, they would use something else – some more efficient process, or an entirely new propulsion system.

  Something – in other words – yet to be invented.

  But that ‘something else’ had shown a stubborn reluctance to arrive. Many promising avenues had led to dead ends. Glimpses had revealed themselves to be mirages, hoaxes. Still the researchers forged on: theory buttressing experiment, experiment buttressing theory. The intellectual effort encompassed many holoships and stretched as far back as the solar system. The enterprise swallowed lives and dreams and spat out bitterness and dejection.

  No one minded that, at least not to begin with. But gradually the will had faltered. Research lines began to be abandoned, facilities mothballed or dismantled.

  Yet there were always a few mavericks, bright minds like Travertine, who were convinced that there was a solution, and that it lay close at hand. Just one more push, and the kingdom would be theirs. They forged bigger and grander experiments, and did increasingly perverse things to matter and energy and spacetime.

  Finally they made a breakthrough that could not be disputed.

  The energy liberated in the destruction of the holoship Pemba, it was calculated, demanded an explanation outside the framework of orthodox Chibesa physics. It was an ‘existence proof’ of PCP – the Post-Chibesa Physics. If that unwieldy power could be tamed, harnessed for propulsion, all their worries would be over. They could even move a little faster now, if they wished.

  But Pemba had been a step too far. Ten million lives had been extinguished in an instant, the result of an experiment whose parameters were sufficiently unclear that it could never be adequately reconstructed, even if the will were there. And the risk of such a disaster happening again, taking out a second holoship, could not be sanctioned. The Pemba Accord had dropped like a guillotine.

  So Travertine had set verself on this path, constantly testing Assembly authority, chafing against restrictions, pushing vis luck. After the last censure, ve had done well to avoid imprisonment. But Travertine always rebuilt and pushed further. And Chiku had to agree with ver here – the Assembly always knew what Travertine was up to and chose not to intervene. Because on some unspoken level they wanted ver to succeed.

  If there was one positive thing to be drawn from yesterday’s tragedy, Chiku thought, it was that Travertine must have been on to something.

  ‘Your experiment in Kappa was totally destroyed,’ Chiku said, seizing the opportunity to speak. ‘Along with, I’m guessing, all the records relating to it. But you’ll still be required to give an account of what was involved.’

  ‘So someone else can reproduce my work?’

  ‘So we can make sure no one comes anywhere near it,’ Utomi said.

  ‘Clearly, I made progress.’ Travertine’s chin was elevated now, with that familiar cocksure defiance of vis. ‘And if I had the chance, I’d do it again. I ran an experiment and I got a result. That’s more useful to us than fifty years of theorising.’

  ‘If you intend to show contrition,’ Utomi said, ‘now would be an excellent place to start.’

  ‘For what? Two hundred lives?’

  ‘Two hundred and twelve,’ a constable corrected, before glancing down. ‘Make that two hundred and fourteen. They’ve recovered two more bodies since we went into session.’

  ‘Make it three hundred. A thousand. You think it matters?’ Travertine surveyed the appalled faces that followed this statement. ‘I grieve for them, believe me. But the survival of this entire holoship depends on slowdown. That’s ten million lives. Hundreds of millions in the local caravan, a billion people spread throughout all the other holoships, and not just those en route for Crucible, but also the other extrasolar worlds in other systems. If my death would guarantee the breakthrough we need, I’d kill myself now.’

  ‘You truly believe this?’ Utomi said, consternation written in his features.

  Travertine’s gaze was unblinking, resolute.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Chiku studied the dismayed reactions of her fellows. She could not be sure what disturbed them the most: the fact that Travertine could make such an assertion in the one place where ve ought t
o be pleading for clemency; or the fact that Travertine was utterly and irrevocably sincere in vis convictions.

  Perhaps a little of both.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Chiku returned to Kappa later that day. Putting on her suit, she deliberately found fault with as many components as she could without arousing suspicion. Fortunately, this was hardly a challenge since many of the suits were coming back with all sorts of minor ailments. By the time she cycled through into Kappa, Chiku’s assigned search party was far ahead and not making any effort to slow down. That suited her perfectly. She told them she would rendezvous with them after they had completed a sweep of one grid, at a junction a couple of blocks astern of the breach. They agreed; it was clear from their indifferent tones that Representative Chiku Akinya could do whatever the hell she liked as far as they were concerned.

  Her ruse allowed her perhaps thirty minutes to make the rendezvous, which was just enough time to return to the laboratory and the collapsed basement. If she was late meeting up with the other search party, her actions might start to attract attention.

  She found her way back into the damaged structure. From its ruined heart, Chiku looked up at the chamber’s distant ceiling, defined now by random constellations – the lights of repair teams lashed high above, trying to prevent more cladding from breaking loose. She turned her attention to the improvised ramp, the shard of fallen sky, which was still in place. Chiku vaulted the gap with more confidence than on her first attempt.

  She started descending.

  Chiku had been trepidatious before, but there was no time for that now, even with the knowledge that the floor might not be as secure as it looked. She reached the basement and moved through the rubble until she found the sheet of walling material she had placed over the hole in an effort to disguise it. It had not been disturbed. Chiku heaved the piece aside, taking care not to shatter it.

  Then she stood on the edge of the hole and directed her helmet light downwards. It was just as she remembered, except that it appeared to plunge deeper than she had originally thought. At the very limit of the lamp’s reach, the shaft began to curve around to a less steep angle, perhaps even to the horizontal. The recessed hand- and footholds looked intact. She could climb down them, no problem, but the real difficulty was getting to them in the first place – the aperture was only half as wide as the shaft under it.