On the Steel Breeze

by Alastair Reynolds

  And they were on Crucible, too, she reflected. As soon as their seed packages reached the ground, they had erupted from them like a busy silver putrescence. The putrescence organised itself into rudimentary machinery, and the machinery gorged on matter and fashioned bigger and more complicated versions of itself. So the process continued until giants strode the new Earth. These juggernauts had begun to tame Crucible, laying the foundations for new cities and towns. They had initiated remote study of the Mandala object, transmitting better images than could ever be obtained across interstellar distances. The robots’ mission was to observe and record. Detailed scans and physical examination of the Mandala would be left to the humans.

  Chiku had seen the images herself. She had sat with Ndege and Mposi, explaining these distant wonders. She had chinged into simulations of the Mandala rendered with microscopic fussiness. She had strolled the open boulevards and plazas of the coming cities. She had marvelled at a world in waiting.

  But June Wing had just told her that this brave new world was a lie.

  Eight of them made it; one did not.

  By some fluke, it turned out not to be one of the three problematic suits that eventually developed a fault, but one of the six that were supposedly good to go. Or perhaps, in the haste of evacuation, there had been some mix-up. Either way, eight hours out from the anchorpoint, a fault developed in the cooling system of one of the passengers’ suits. It began with a warning, recommending that he seek immediate assistance, but soon after the fault developed into a total refrigeration systems failure. The Providers were close, but not close enough, and the other rescuers were still hours away.

  The party gathered around the unfortunate man, arguing over the best solution. One of the two technicians believed it was possible to connect the cooling systems of two suits together, but she was not sure of the procedure. The other reckoned that would be too risky anyway, when they were already in an emergency situation. The man started panicking, some flight-or-fight reflex kicking in, making him anxious to leave the rover. The others did their best to restrain him. The rovers trundled on, the route becoming increasingly ill-defined. Remote technicians chinged in from orbit, co-opting the other survivors’ suits as they struggled to repair the compromised unit. But there was nothing to be done. Locking the man out of the communications channel, the others debated how best to ease his suffering. Perhaps it would be better to die quickly, like June and the other two who had stayed behind probably had. They could damage his suit further, make it fail more quickly. But when they brought the man back into the conversation, he sensed the drift of their intentions and protested vigorously.

  The Providers were still not close enough. The man was starting to make noises that would haunt Chiku for the rest of her days.

  A neuropractor chinged in from orbit. He did not need to co-opt any of their bodies since he was not going to be making any physical interventions. They saw him as a figment, dressed in an electric-white surgical smock, a pleasant young man with Polynesian features. He used a private channel to reach into the distressed man’s head and adjusted some of his neural parameters. ‘He will die,’ the neuropractor explained to the others when he had finished his work. ‘There’s nothing I can do to prevent that. But I’ve blocked pain and anxiety, and given him the option to ching out of this situation.’

  Normally this kind of deep-level intervention could only be authorised by the subject. Occasionally, sensing distress, the Mechanism itself could act to alleviate the worst suffering as it would to prevent criminality, violence and accidental misfortune. But the Mechanism’s interventions were seldom administered with a particular individual’s needs in mind. The neuropractor had never encountered this man before, but he was another human being, attempting to do the dying man a kindness, and this mattered.

  ‘He’s gone,’ the neuropractor announced. Then, sensing that his words might be misunderstood, added: ‘I mean, he’s chinged out of his body. He’s still alive, just not aware of his surroundings any more.’

  ‘Do you know where he’s gone?’ Chiku asked.

  ‘I could resolve the bind, but that would be an invasion of privacy I’m not comfortable with. I’m monitoring brain function, and he’s not in any pain or emotional distress now. Wherever he is, he won’t be there long.’ The neuropractor clasped his hands and bowed. ‘I’m sorry I could not do more for him. May I wish you all the best of luck with your rescue?’ Then the figment vanished.

  Soon the man was dead, boiled alive in his ailing suit. Chiku hoped the neuropractor had not lied to them just to ease their own discomfort.

  They carried on, winding through the highlands under clouds of bile and ash, until the Providers came. Visibility by then was low enough that they did not see the machines until they were almost underneath them. Suddenly they loomed out of the poisonous mist, striding on legs as thick as redwoods. The Providers Chiku watched in Lisbon had looked spindly and mantis-like from a distance. Up close they were huge and powerful, shaking the ground with each stomp of their feet. Only when the mist thinned could Chiku see the Providers in their entirety. Their bodies loomed high above, keeled over like galleons. Their heads were tiny, swivelling, anvil-shaped sensor arrays, and their bodies bristled with articulated limbs, cranelike appendages and swaying segmented tentacles. They communicated their proximity with foghorn blasts, like some bellowing saurian language.

  In their tentacles they carried the pressure modules they had brought from the construction site. Up in the air they looked the size of beer cans, but when they thumped onto the ground, they were larger than any of the rovers. The modules were powered up, airlocks ready to cycle. Each lock could only accommodate one person at a time, so those with the damaged or compromised suits were the first to cycle, Pedro going ahead of Chiku. But at last they were all inside, out of their armour, breathing clean, cool air.

  ‘I thought they might try to kill us,’ Chiku whispered, squeezed into one corner, holding hands with Pedro.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Them,’ she said, not daring to say their name aloud. ‘The machines.’

  ‘They’ve never hurt a fly.’ But he must have seen something in her face. ‘What did June say, back there? What did she tell you?’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Providers kept watch until the overland rescue parties arrived, and then they were on the move again, the prefabs stashed aboard heavy-duty rovers far bigger than the ones they had ridden from the anchorpoint. It was a long but uneventful trek back to the nearest gondola’s anchorpoint. They rode a cargo elevator up its thread, and in the gondola there was a medical check-up, a debriefing, some legal formalities, requests for interviews from media affiliates – all declined, and then admittance into a public holding area where Imris Kwami had been waiting anxiously for hours, aware of the news but fearfully keen for confirmation.

  ‘We were outside when it happened,’ Chiku said. ‘I think it was fast. It looked fast. We’re really sorry, Imris.’

  ‘She was very brave,’ Pedro said. ‘I almost can’t imagine that kind of courage. I’m sure she knew what the odds were.’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ Kwami said.

  ‘It’s going to be a while before they can get search parties into the anchorpoint,’ Pedro said. ‘There could be air pockets in there, safety doors that closed.’

  Kwami touched the little fez perched on his scalp. ‘I have been in neural contact with June ever since she first employed me. Her deepest thoughts were closed to me, of course, and I would not have chosen otherwise, but I have always felt her as a living presence, no matter how far apart we have been. When the accident happened, I felt a sharp severance, as if the aug itself had failed. The breaking of contact was so profound, so quick, her death could only have been instantaneous.’ The long, bony twigs of his fingers meshed and re-meshed as he spoke. ‘There was no fear, no regret, no moment of terror. Only a serene acceptance, as if she was waiting for the sun to rise, that lasted until the final instant of her lif
e. It has been my singular privilege to have known this woman.’

  ‘She told me something,’ Chiku said, ‘before we parted. You have to help us, Imris. She said you can get us to Arethusa.’

  He smiled, not without sympathy. ‘Did she, now?’

  ‘Pleistocene, pineapple, rococo,’ Chiku said. ‘Does that change things?’

  After a long silence Kwami said: ‘Pineapple?’

  Hastily Chiku said: ‘I meant grapefruit.’

  ‘Well, then, young miss. That does rather change things.’

  Gulliver was a carbon black needle with deep-system capability and cryoberths that could keep its crew alive all the way out to the Oort cloud and back. Packed with retractile wings and control surfaces ready to spring out like the blades of a pocket knife, it was sleek and agile enough to handle almost any atmosphere in the system. Inside, it was sumptuous and easily spacious enough for thirty passengers, let alone the three who were present. There were libraries, dark-cased troves of red-and green-spined printed books, thousands of inert kilograms of lavishly processed wood-pulp. There were marble statues and busts – yet more profligate tonnage. An entire area of the ship, closed to routine access, appeared to be an extensive and well-equipped medical facility.

  Chiku had barely known Imris Kwami before June’s death, so it was difficult to say how well he was bearing up. He certainly appeared to be driven, anxious to be getting on with business. Chiku had mentioned Arethusa, June’s insistence that they make contact. Imris had said that yes, this would happen, he promised it, but in the meantime there was talk of Mars, some rendezvous that must be made.

  When they were twelve hours out from Venus, slicing across the spacelanes of the imperiously slow loop-liners, the three of them gathered around a low jade table in Gulliver’s lounge. Kwami had prepared chai. The ship was too small for centrifugal spin, but the constant-thrust engine provided a quarter-gee of gravity.

  Chiku sipped the warm, soothing drink gratefully and said, ‘Imris, I need to be really clear about something, but it’s difficult to discuss.’

  ‘You’ve spoken the three words, Chiku – there’s no need for secrets between us now.’

  ‘I know this is going to sound silly, but I came to June because I was afraid of something, and I think this . . . thing may have tried to deliberately harm us on Venus.’

  He tilted his cup, which was barely larger than a thimble. ‘You speak of Arachne.’

  Chiku felt a kind of giddy relief that she was not going to be required to explain everything from the beginning, like some kind of babbling madwoman.

  ‘I think Arachne sabotaged the gondola, so my question is – can she attack us here?’

  ‘Her influence is extensive,’ Kwami said, nodding gravely, ‘but she’s not omniscient. She would like to be, but her reach is constrained by physics and the limitations of the devices and networks she must co-opt and infiltrate. June, fortunately, is . . . was a very clever woman.’ The error embarrassed him. ‘You must excuse me.’

  ‘Please,’ Chiku said, waving aside his lapse.

  ‘There have always been gaps in Arachne’s perception. June learned to slip through these gaps and exploit them. This ship is secure, insofar as we can ever be certain of such things. Our long-range communications are a different matter, however. Arachne can probably decode any encryption we can devise.’

  Pedro leaned back in his chair, one leg hooked underneath him. ‘What does she want?’

  ‘Her primary goal, young sir, is the same as ours – to continue existing. She knows that the Cognition Police would have eliminated or neutralised her long ago had they learned of her true nature.’

  ‘But they knew she was an artilect,’ Chiku said.

  ‘Of course, but she exists on the borderline of what they were prepared to tolerate,’ Kwami said, his tone conveying gentle correction. ‘They made allowances since Ocular could not have functioned without the aid of a high-level controlling intelligence. But Arachne was much cleverer than they realised.’ He paused to pour some fresh chai. ‘June used to speak of two orders of cleverness. The first advertises itself, craves attention. The second is wiser. It wraps itself in layers of concealment and will appear to act stupidly, if needs must.’

  ‘That was Arachne,’ Pedro said.

  ‘No one guessed her true nature until it was far too late,’ Kwami said.

  ‘Except for Eunice,’ Chiku said. ‘The construct, anyway.’

  ‘Indeed. You have communicated with the robot?’

  ‘Yes. Only on a couple of occasions, but it was enough to get the picture.’

  ‘June spoke of it, but for obvious reasons I never expected to meet anyone who had actually encountered it. Or perhaps I should say her.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Chiku said, ‘the construct didn’t remember much about Arachne, or indeed about June, beyond the fact that it was vitally important I speak to her as soon as possible. Well, I did that, and now I’m here, but I’m none the wiser. Did she tell you the whole story, Imris?’

  ‘Everything she deemed important.’

  ‘The stuff about Crucible, about how it might not be what we’re expecting?’

  ‘She shared some theories, nothing concrete.’

  Chiku touched her head, echoing Kwami’s earlier gesture. ‘I have a device in my head installed by Quorum Binding. It links me to my counterparts. Or counterpart, now.’

  Kwami gave a precise little nod. ‘I am aware of such practices. They were very commonplace during the early years of the holoships.’

  ‘I’m here now because the version of me on Zanzibar wanted this version to make contact with June. Chiku Green sent me her memories . . . they were scripted into my head, forcing me to act. Now I need to send my memories back to Zanzibar, so that Chiku Green can decide how to act on them.’

  ‘Can’t you simply transmit the information as a message, the normal way?’ Pedro asked.

  ‘No – this has to be for my ears only. For Chiku Green’s ears, I mean. If it becomes widespread knowledge, it’ll rip Zanzibar apart.’

  ‘You are right to be cautious,’ said Imris. ‘The normal message protocols between here and Zanzibar . . . I could not guarantee that they are immune to interception by Arachne. And that’s before we consider the possibility of human eavesdropping as the signals are relayed along the caravan.’

  ‘What’s to say the same won’t happen to her memories?’ Pedro asked.

  ‘It might, but the level of encryption will be significantly higher than for normal traffic – that’s why you needed the merfolk to unlock the memories in the first place.’

  ‘So you know about that,’ Chiku said.

  ‘The problem now is that Arachne will be paying particular attention to you, Miss Akinya, concentrating her resources against your efforts.’

  ‘She could have killed me when the Providers came.’

  ‘Yes, but such a thing would have been difficult to explain as an accidental death. Believe me, Arachne is old and wily enough to be adept at covering her tracks.’

  ‘But she’ll get us in the end, won’t she?’ Pedro asked. ‘If she’s so keen to protect herself, she’s bound to, right? And we can’t tell anyone about her because they’d either not believe us or there’d be mass panic and more deaths.’

  ‘We are in something of a bind,’ Kwami admitted, with magnificent understatement.

  ‘Dangerous or not, I still have to act,’ Chiku said. ‘I’ve got to tell Chiku Green about Crucible. Even if I can’t tell the people on the holoship what’s really there, surely it’s better for them to know they’re being lied to, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can offer you an alternative that you might find acceptable,’ Kwami said. ‘You mentioned Arethusa.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chiku said. ‘June said we had to speak to her, too.’

  ‘Can you make that happen?’ Pedro asked.

  ‘I can. But first we have to collect something from Mars. We shall not be staying long, of course – or getting too close
.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Chiku said.

  Phobos and Deimos had been important staging points in the exploration of the solar system since the infancy of the space age. Outposts had been built on both moons, fuel depots and teleoperation camps offering way stations before the descent to the Martian surface. Eunice Akinya had lived on Phobos for months, trapped there until the weather changed. A century later, Chiku’s mother had set her own footprints on the misshapen little moon. By that time, one of the largest craters – Stickney – had become the infection site for a major outbreak of hotels and deep-space servicing facilities. As Gulliver closed in on final approach, Chiku found it difficult to believe that Phobos had ever been a thing, a place made by nature. The moon was gone now, smothered under a fester of human habitation. Neon-scribbled structures wrapped it from pole to pole – hotels and casinos and malls, pleasure domes and observation platforms. It was like a dream of a city, wrapped around itself.

  ‘How safe is it down there?’ Chiku asked. ‘If Arachne could get to us on Venus, she can easily reach us here.’

  ‘Faking an accident on Venus, where many things go wrong as a matter of course, is not the same as faking an accident around Mars.’

  ‘I hope you’re right about that, Imris.’

  ‘I am right about most things.’ He said this without a trace of irony. ‘One more thing, Chiku: the man we are meeting, Victor Gallicean, is someone we can trust. He has been a very good and loyal friend over the years, and has played a great part in helping June assemble the museum. But he knows nothing of Arachne, and it would be best not to mention her.’

  They docked, cleared immigration and moved through bright warrens of commerce and glitz. Chiku glimpsed Mars occasionally, through a picture window, this prize that was close enough to touch. It transpired that June had already arranged this meeting long before her misadventures on Venus. They met Victor Gallicean, an ‘extraction specialist’, in the lobby of a hotel. The structure was spun up to half a gee and the landscape scrolled past constantly outside the windows. Gallicean turned out to be an ogre of a man with a faintly piratical demeanour, his face a map of interesting scars and lesions. He embraced Imris Kwami, then shook hands with Chiku and Pedro.