On the Steel Breeze

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Keep it on,’ Chiku said. ‘You’ll thank me for it later. In a few days, with Doctor Aziba on hand, you might be able to take a few seconds of direct exposure. But don’t run before you can walk.’

  ‘I never thought we’d meet again,’ Ndege said.

  ‘Did you really understand, the day I left?’

  ‘In our own way,’ Mposi said. ‘Later, definitely, when we had some idea of what you’d really done for us.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about Noah. It was brave of you to risk as much as you did sending those transmissions. But when we stopped hearing from Zanzibar, I thought the worst as well.’

  ‘Zanzibar’s still a problem,’ Ndege said, as if this fact might somehow have slipped Chiku’s mind. ‘Every second takes her forty thousand kilometres further away from us – that’s the circumference of this planet!’

  ‘All’s not lost,’ Chiku said. ‘For Zanzibar, or Malabar, or Majuli, or any of the other holoships. We’ll find a way. Muddle through. But look: there’s a welcoming party down there, waiting to speak to you. I’m sure we’ve all got a thousand questions for each other, but there’ll be time for that later.’

  Ndege cast a sceptical glance at the array of towers. ‘Is that the city?’

  ‘It’s a start,’ Chiku said. ‘You’ll just have to make the best of it for now.’

  ‘You mean “we”,’ Mposi said. ‘We’re all in this together, aren’t we?’

  Chiku smiled through her breather mask. ‘Of course.’

  Four other people had accompanied them from Zanzibar, and Chiku greeted and hugged these courageous newcomers as they emerged from the shuttle. It was brave, what they had done: crossing space on such long odds. Brave what they had all done, truthfully. Feeling a surge of pride, she watched as they followed her children down the ramp to the waiting reception area. A gust of air, warm as a furnace, slapped the bare skin around the sides of her mask.

  The shuttle contained only two more passengers, and the first of these was waiting just inside the door. Like Arachne, she had no need of a mask, but her clothing, all pockets and pouches, did at least suggest someone preparing to test her wits against nature. She had not aged by a nanosecond since their last encounter.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Chiku said.

  ‘You know me – one little holoship was never going to be enough to keep me entertained. Especially when they took my Tantors away.’

  ‘You mean, when you allowed them to be released into Zanzibar, out of your immediate control. When you were finally forced to share your secret with other people. Did it make you jealous, not being their keeper any more?’

  ‘I was never their keeper, and anyway, what was there to be jealous about?’

  ‘Actually,’ Chiku said, ‘jealousy would mean you’d added another human tic to your repertoire.’

  ‘And we’re off to such a good start. For the record, though, I’m pleased that the Tantors have broken out of my control. That’s what I always wanted. And you’ve seen them, haven’t you? We owe them just about everything, Chiku. We may have saved the elephants, but the Tantors saved Zanzibar.’

  ‘I hope they’ll be able to live here.’

  ‘They’re adaptable. They’ll find a way, with or without our assistance.’

  ‘Whatever they become, I hope we can be part of it. Eunice, I have to ask you something. You offered yourself up to the people of Zanzibar. Ndege and Mposi told me how it happened. You must’ve known there was a chance they’d tear you limb from limb.’

  ‘Sooner or later they’d have found out about me. I’m good, but I’m not that good.’

  ‘Still, the risk you took . . . were you ready to die? Or whatever you want to call it?’

  ‘I think dying will serve very nicely. And no, I wasn’t ready. Not remotely. But when are we ever ready, Chiku? When do we ever feel that we’ve completed our plans? I had work to be getting on with. I’ve always had work to be getting on with. It’s what the universe was put there for: to give me things to do.’ The construct narrowed an eye. ‘Is there a point to this interrogation?’

  ‘You’re here. You’ve put yourself on the line again.’

  ‘This time there’s no mob.’

  ‘But there’s Arachne, and the Watchkeepers.’

  ‘She’s very interested in me, isn’t she? I’d almost be flattered if we didn’t have the history we do.’

  ‘A version of her tried to kill you once. I think she fears what you’re capable of now. At the same time, she’s fascinated to see what you’ve become. She knows about the neural patterns you incorporated into yourself.’

  ‘Been talking about me behind my back again, have you?’

  ‘We needed leverage,’ Chiku said. ‘I felt that my knowledge about you might extend my usefulness to Arachne, and thereby help the five of us being held hostage. Or four, after Guochang died. There was another motivation, too. The Watchkeepers say that organic and machine intelligences can’t coexist: that the organic will always attempt to destroy the machines. But you’re proof that it doesn’t have to be that way. You revealed your nature to the citizens of Zanzibar and they didn’t rip you apart. That has to count for something, doesn’t it? And then there are the Tantors. You worked to help a living intelligence become something more than it was. A machine showed kindness to animals, and the people showed forgiveness to a machine. This is proof that we don’t have to fall into the same old patterns of behaviour. We have a chance to prove the Watchkeepers wrong, and finally convince Arachne that we can all share this planet: people, Providers, Tantors. This is the only way forward.’

  ‘We have a few bridges to cross before we get there. I’m also sensing a complicating factor that you still haven’t mentioned.’

  ‘You coming here has probably saved us. It gave Arachne a reason to keep talking and the Watchkeepers a reason not to wipe us all off the face of Crucible. They were very close to doing that, I think. We’d been beneath their threshold of annoyance, and then quite suddenly we were above it. We’d become an irritation, a damaging factor. When that impactor nearly struck Mandala—’

  ‘They say you had an encounter with one of the Watchkeepers.’

  ‘Yes, Arachne and me. Machine and person. Or robot and politician, as Travertine had it. Eunice, I have almost no memory of what happened to either of us inside the Watchkeeper. I think it quite likely that I was dismantled, taken apart and examined the way Arachne dismantled our ship. I remember a blue radiance, and floating in the utmost serenity, a kind of neon womb. But then I was put back together, like a repaired watch. My identity returned to me – all my memories, my sense of self, but almost no clear knowledge of what had just happened. All I knew for sure was that there’d been a kind of negotiation, and between us, Arachne and I made a deal with the Watchkeepers.’

  ‘A deal,’ Eunice repeated.

  ‘They’ve been here for a very long time, but the important phase of their observations is now over. I suppose they’ve been marking time . . . waiting for some spur to push them on. Well, turns out we’re that spur. We’ve arrived – Provider and human. And they’ve decided to allow us to begin examining Mandala. I think we represent a test case: a puzzling, possibly anomalous example of human-machine cooperation. But they’re prepared to let this experiment play itself out for a little while. Say, a few thousand years. And soon we can get on with what we came here to do in the first place – examine Mandala. And we can build our cities and harbours and start to feel like this is a home, not a destination. They won’t stop us. They won’t interfere in our daily actions on any level.’

  ‘You have their word on that, do you?’

  ‘I don’t really need it. They’ll be gone. The twenty-two will be leaving Crucible soon.’ Chiku cocked her head towards the door, out to the open sky and the reception committee at the base of the ramp. ‘They don’t know that yet. No one knows, except Arachne and me. And now you, of course. That was the deal.’

  ‘With deals,’ Eunice said carefully, ‘there
’s generally small print.’

  ‘The catch is that I have to travel with the Watchkeepers. Call me an ambassador, or a hostage, or a biological sample reserved for further study. I don’t suppose it really matters. The point is I’m going somewhere, and I don’t think it can fail to be interesting.’

  ‘When you say “no one knows”—’

  ‘No one, not even Ndege and Mposi. I’ll tell them, of course. But not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. There’s no immediate rush. I have days, yet, possibly weeks or months. When the time comes, one of the Watchkeepers will penetrate the atmosphere again. There’s no point hiding – they always know where I am. I could drown myself in the sea and I suspect they’d still find me.’

  ‘You’ve earned this world, Chiku. You shouldn’t have to give it up so soon.’

  ‘Don’t feel too bad for me. I’ve been here for months. Besides, I’m hoping I won’t be travelling alone.’

  Eunice understood immediately. ‘Ah.’

  ‘I couldn’t speak for you, but I hope you’ll come. It’s just the way it has to be. The price we have to pay.’

  ‘Then it’s a good thing the crowd didn’t pull me apart, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ve always been the explorer, the novelty seeker. I wondered if that part of you had made it into the construct. I had some doubts, until you accepted the neural patterns. When you crashed that aircraft . . . You’re not angry with me, are you?’

  ‘You did what needed to be done to save a world. Besides, I can’t say it was a total surprise. I always expected the Watchkeepers to have some interest in me. I’d have been disappointed if they didn’t. I suppose that’s a kind of vanity, isn’t it?’

  ‘A very human failing, if it is,’ Chiku said. ‘We’ll allow you that.’

  ‘Thank you. Very decent of you.’

  ‘There’s something else you need to know. It won’t just be the two of us. The Watchkeepers have requested . . . actually, demanded would be closer to the truth . . . a third representative. A third type specimen of the new order. They have their human, and they have their machine-substrate consciousness. That’s you, by the way.’

  ‘And the third?’

  ‘An emergent intelligence, the product of mutual human and machine developmental assistance.’

  ‘You’re speaking about Dakota, of course.’

  ‘Did she make it here safely?’

  ‘I expected her to die years ago, but she’s old and stubborn. Plus each generation of Tantors seems to live a bit longer than the last. She’ll be with us for a little while.’

  ‘A proper wrinkly old matriarch, you called her.’

  ‘Older and wrinklier, by now. But still very canny. I assumed she’d be in the vanguard when the Tantors come to settle Crucible.’

  ‘They’ll come,’ Chiku said. ‘One way or another. We might have to build big domes first – I can’t see them adapting to breather masks. But in a decade, we might be ready for them.’

  ‘It’ll take that long to figure out how to bring them off the holoships.’

  ‘I know. A world of problems, and we’ve only just started. We still have some delicate negotiations with Arachne ahead of us. Troubled waters. She’s defended herself once by destroying holoships, and she can do it again.’ Chiku felt a sudden wave of tremendous weariness crash over her. ‘Look at us! There aren’t even two dozen people on Crucible yet, and we’re already worrying about Arachne’s reaction! How’s she going to feel when we start moving in by the millions?’

  ‘Great diplomacy will be needed. Continual reinforcement of trust and mutual goodwill. Constant practical demonstrations of benign intentions. Forgiveness and tolerance on both sides. There are going to be some setbacks, Chiku. Some fuck-ups.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘For the most part, though, it sounds as if they’re going to be someone else’s problem.’ The construct’s expression brightened. ‘You’ve got things off to a tolerable start, at least. Could be worse, as they say.’

  ‘That’s the sum story of human history, isn’t it? Could be worse. As if that’s the very best that we can manage.’

  ‘Your people are waiting,’ Eunice said. ‘I don’t think we should delay our descent too much longer.’

  ‘I’d like to see Dakota first.’

  ‘Tantors aren’t very good at keeping secrets, so you might want to keep your plans for her just a little vague for now.’

  ‘We owe her an explanation, at some point.’

  ‘At some point, yes. Maybe not now.’

  Chiku nodded. In the moment, at least, this made perfect sense to her. She would be careful not to lie to the Tantor, though. In fact, if she could get through the rest of the day without lying to anyone or anything, she would be very pleased with herself.

  But she had to be realistic.

  Sixty-One Virginis f, their new star, the star they would eventually come to call their sun, was boiling its way down towards the horizon. It was always warm on Crucible, especially at these equatorial latitudes. But the heat had moderated itself, offering the tiniest morsel of respite to the humans gathered on the overlook. In a little while, when the breathing creatures had wearied of masks and filters, they would retire to their new living quarters. The robots, of course, had no such difficulties. But they would indulge the humans for the sake of etiquette.

  ‘The sky is beautiful,’ Ndege was saying. ‘So many colours . . . I’ve never even imagined a sunset like that.’

  Chiku wanted to tell her daughter that the show of pinks and crimsons and salmons and lambent golds was only a consequence of the dust grains still circling in the high atmosphere. Week by week, after the cessation of the impactors, in rains and downdraughts, the atmosphere had begun to repair itself. The Watchkeepers, Chiku was certain, had played some role in that restoration – their machines had dipped in and out of the air for weeks, stirring and clearing it like whisks.

  Whatever the case, much of the dust had now returned to the surface. In the high canopies it formed a talcum film that slowly worked its way back into the green furnace of the world. Over the coming months, these fire-stoked sunsets would abate.

  But there were things Ndege did not need to know tonight.

  Or, for that matter, tomorrow.

  EPILOGUE

  When the glass broke, and the mote shattered, the world did not at first shift on its axis. In fact, there was a moment, longer than I cared for, when I began to think that the thing had not had any effect at all. I imagined how we must look, my sister and I.

  There must be something almost farcical about it, these two similar-looking women wrestling each other for control of an eye-sized purple marble, one of them squeezing the other’s left hand as if she meant to break every bone in her sibling’s fingers. And then a sort of hiatus, after the mote had been destroyed but before its effects became manifest, the world continuing, the seagulls redoubling their squabbling, the fishing and pleasure boats tilting on the gentle swell beyond Belem and the Monument to the Discoveries.

  And then my sister Chiku Yellow became limp. She slumped to the ground, her exo suddenly giving up its duty of support. The rigour had also gone from her limbs. They were no longer stiff or quivering, for Arachne had absented herself.

  Bruised and breathless, I knelt next to my sister.

  ‘Something happened,’ I said. By which I meant that Mecufi’s gift had evidently had some effect. Enough to knock Arachne out of direct control, at the very least.

  At first my sister could not say anything. ‘Yes,’ she said, after a worrying interval. ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Mechanism?’

  My sister swallowed and took a series of ragged breaths. Several times she looked on the verge of saying something. I supported her head and stroked the side of her face, this version of myself who now appeared to be both older and more childlike than only a few moments earlier. I felt an oceanic wave of love and despair crash over me. She had turned herself from her two other siblings, and that had hurt us. When Mecufi
told her that I would probably die in the process of surrendering my Quorum Binding implant, she had deemed that a price worth paying. As unquestionably callous as that act had been, though, I had never blamed her for it. Mecufi would never have had the nerve to attempt bringing me back to life, if she had not compelled him to act. I would still be in their seastead, still frozen, a puzzle that no one was in any rush to solve. So Chiku Yellow had given me life as well as death. Her reasons, too, had not been entirely selfish. Under similar circumstances, I would probably have come to the same conclusion.

  Afterwards, she had taken me in and made me whole again. I had never thought of any of us as having patience, but Chiku Yellow’s had turned out to be inexhaustible. I suppose for her it was like raising a second child. She had helped me speak, helped me rebuild my sense of who I was. She had redeemed herself a hundred times over.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said, finally. ‘The aug. It’s not there any more.’

  We were speaking Portuguese, with nothing between us but air and muscle and the slow machinery of our own brains. It was easy for me, but much harder for my sister.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think I am.’ But my sister still found the strength to smile. ‘She did something. Just before the end. She was in my head. Too far inside.’

  I confess that I had no idea what to do. It may seem strange, but we had not really given much thought to what would happen after we ended the Mechanism. When people were hurt or injured, the Surveilled World knew what needed to be done. If the people could not summon help themselves, it sent help. A doctor would come, or a scrambulance. If my sister could not issue her own call for assistance, then someone else would invoke the necessary aug functions. The Mech would provide.

  But the Mech was not providing. There were no doctors or scrambu-lances coming. No one knew that my sister was hurt except me, and I was powerless.

  I tore myself from my sister’s side. I had to know. There had been people down below, with their long shadows like sundials. I moved to the other wall and surveyed the stone and marble compass of the Wind Rose. It was not so very long since we had last looked at it. There were still people down there, and their shadows had not varied to any obvious degree.