But he knew he could not afford to stay long, if he did not wish to be pulled back into his old life. Not that the prospect was unattractive – far from it. But even though he could not quite articulate the reasons, Kanu felt a deep sense that he must be moving on, attending to business that was as yet unfinished. What that business was, what it entailed, he could not quite say. But nothing would be gained by submitting to the lure of the merfolk.
‘Would you like to swim with us?’ Gwanda asked. ‘We can take you to Vouga. Ve will be done soon, I think.’
‘I think I remember how to swim,’ Kanu said. And then smiled, because he realised it had sounded like sarcasm. ‘No, genuinely. I think I remember. But it has been a long time – please be gentle with me.’
He left his clothes in the airpod and joined the other swimming things in the water. For a moment he sensed their eyes on him. They had no particular interest in his nakedness – few of them were wearing anything to begin with beyond a few sigils of rank and authority, equipment harnesses and swimming aids – but they had surely heard about his injuries on Mars, if not the specifics.
‘The machines did a good job on me,’ he said, disarming their curiosity. ‘I suspect they could have avoided scarring altogether, but they left me a few as a reminder of what I’d survived – not as a cruel thing, but to help with my psychological adjustment. Given that they’ve had remarkably little experience with human bodies, I don’t think they did too badly, did they?’
‘We heard that you died,’ said Tiznit, all whiskers and oily white fur.
‘A spaceship fell on me. That’d take the shine off anyone’s day.’
Vouga was done with ver work by the time Kanu arrived. They met in a private swimming chamber, a bubble-shaped turret high in the topside seastead.
‘Judging from the evidence, they put you back together very well. No one on Earth has that sort of surgical capability any more, you realise? Not even us. If you’d suffered a similar injury here, we’d have fed you to the fish by now.’
‘I suppose that puts me in their debt.’
‘Is that how you feel – indebted?’
‘Mostly, I’m just grateful to be alive. In my more cynical moments I tell myself that the robots did rather well out of it, too. They got to handle a human subject – took me apart like a jigsaw, put me back together again. We were trying to stop them getting their hands on corpses, and I gave them one for free!’
Vouga appraised him carefully. ‘The problem, Kanu, is that you’re not a natural cynic. You don’t wear bitterness or distrust particularly well.’
‘Perhaps I’m changing.’
‘No one could blame you after what you experienced. For myself, I’m happy the robots did one good deed, regardless of their deeper motives. Have you kept up with the news since you left the embassy? Things have been stirring up on Mars – your former friends are behaving provocatively. The Consolidation’s hard-liners want a decisive response, and frankly I don’t blame them. It’s no good just shooting the machines down when they try to reach space.’
Kanu smiled, although he felt a sourness in his belly. ‘So we endorse Consolidation policy now, do we? More’s changed here than I realised.’
‘Our anti-robot stance is as old as the movement, Kanu – I shouldn’t need to remind you of that.’
After the warmth of his welcome, the last thing he wanted to do was argue with Vouga. ‘Lin Wei would have found them marvellous. She’d have wanted to embrace them, to share the future with them.’
‘It’s a little late for pipe dreams. We had our chance, we blew it. These are post-Mechanism times, Kanu – we make the best of what we have and wander sadly through the ruins of what might once have been.’ But after a moment, Vouga added, ‘I know – we should all try to be positive. There’s always a place here for you. Those modifications you had reversed – it’s a trivial matter to have them reinstated. You should rejoin us, embrace the ocean fully. Put all that Martian business behind you like a bad dream.’
‘I wish that’s all it had been,’ Kanu said.
‘Is there anything we can do for you in the meantime?’
‘I thought I might drop in on Leviathan, if it isn’t too much trouble.’
‘Trouble? No, not at all.’ But Vouga sounded hesitant.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. I’ll make the arrangements. He’ll be very pleased to see you again.’
The great kraken’s haunt lay in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean, about a thousand kilometres south of the seastead. They went out in a sickle-shaped Pan flier, a machine nearly as old as the airpod that had brought Kanu from Mirbat¸, but larger and faster.
Vouga and a dozen other high-echelon Pans came along for the ride and a grand old time was had by all. They spent so much of their lives in the ocean that it was a novelty to see it from above, from outside, and they rushed from window to window, goggling at some extremely subtle demarcation of colour and current. Once they passed a tight-wound whorl of fish, spiralling about some invisible gravitational focus like stars at the centre of the galaxy. It was hard not to see the shoal as a single living unit, purposeful and organised, cheating the local entropy gradients. Kanu felt a shiver of alien perception, as if he was also momentarily seeing organic life from outside itself, in all its miraculous strangeness.
Life was a very odd thing indeed, he reflected, when you really thought about it.
But then they were on the move again, over reefs and smaller seasteads, over clippers and schooners and schools of dolphin, and then there was a darkness just beneath the surface, an inky nebula against turquoise.
‘Leviathan,’ Vouga said.
They slowed and hovered above the kraken. It was as large as a submarine. In the years since Kanu had last spent time with Leviathan, the kraken had easily doubled in size.
‘Who works with him now?’
‘You were the last, Kanu,’ Vouga said, as if this was something he ought to have remembered. ‘The need for construction krakens has declined significantly compared to the old days. Most of them were put out to pasture, until they died of old age. Some live longer than others. We try to keep Leviathan suitably occupied.’
Kanu had discovered an aptitude with the construction krakens not long after he joined the merfolk. There were some who found the genetically and cybernetically augmented creatures daunting, but Kanu had quickly overcome his misgivings. In fact, the huge and powerful animals were gentle, obliging and fond of human companionship – elephants of the deep, in many regards.
The most adept partners worked with their krakens so closely that an almost empathic bond was established, the kraken responding to the tiniest gestural commands and the partner in turn utterly sympathetic to the kraken’s own postural and visual-display communication channels. Kanu and Leviathan had established one of the most productive and long-lasting bonds between any such pairing.
But the years had rolled by, and the escalator of power had taken him to the top of the Panspermian Initiative and then to Mars, and he had never quite found the time to ask after Leviathan. Not even the minute or two it would have taken to formulate the enquiry and transmit it back to Vouga.
It was much too late to put that right now. But he still had to make the best amends he could.
‘I’d like to swim.’
‘Of course. Do you need a swimming suit, accompaniment?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then we’ll hover until you need us. Good luck, Kanu.’
He dropped the short distance from the flier’s belly into the water. He hit the surface hard and was under before he had taken the shallowest of breaths. He fought back to the surface, coughing, the salt stinging his eyes.
When the coughing fit passed and he had gathered enough air into his lungs, he chanced another submersion. He fought for the depths. Leviathan was further below
the surface then he had appeared from the air. Kanu wondered what had drawn the kraken to this particular spot in the ocean. Given the chance, krakens were free-roaming and fond of the cool and lightless depths.
Kanu’s augmented eyes dragged information from the ebbing light. Leviathan was a pale presence below – much paler than he had looked from the air. The iridophores in his body shifted colour and brightness according to mood and concentration. Kanu watched a wave of amber slide along the main body, from eye to tail – a guarded acknowledgement of his presence. But Leviathan’s eye was looking obliquely past him, as if he did not care to meet Kanu’s gaze directly.
Kanu bottled up his qualms. The kraken was huge and he was small, but Vouga would never have allowed him to swim if there was the least chance of injury.
He noticed now that something was occupying Leviathan. The kraken had not chosen this spot randomly. There was a structure here, pushing up from the depths. Massive and ancient, its outlines were blurred by coral and corrosion. Kanu made out four supporting pillars, thick as skyscrapers, and a complicated metal platform like a tabletop. He could not tell how far down the legs went, but the entire thing was slightly lopsided.
It had become a kind of toy for Leviathan. The kraken used his arms to move things around on the upper deck of the platform like a child playing with building blocks. The kraken had a shipping container pincered between two arms, some maritime logo still faintly readable through layers of rust and living accretion. Another pair of arms moved a jagged and buckled crane through the air, then jammed it down on the platform. He placed the container next to it. Even through metres of water, Kanu felt a seismic thud as the objects hit the hard surface.
He swam into clear view of the nearest eye, wider than his body was tall, unblinking as a clock face. Still using the air he had drawn into his lungs, Kanu allowed himself to float passively. He wanted some show of recognition from Leviathan, but the eye appeared to look right through him. The kraken was still moving things around, picking the same things up, putting the same things down.
‘You know me,’ Kanu mouthed, as if that was going to make any difference.
The kraken hesitated in his labours. For a moment he was as still as Kanu, poised in the water, arms moving only with the gentlest persuasion of the ocean currents. Kanu would need to surface again shortly, but he forced himself to remain with Leviathan, certain that a connection – however fragile – had been re-established.
I was away too long, he wanted to say. I’m sorry.
He just hoped that the mere fact of his being there was enough to convey the same sentiment.
But Leviathan could not tear himself from the puzzle of the drilling platform. He picked up the container again, moved it like a chess piece to some new configuration. With a shudder of insight, Kanu grasped that the activity was as unending as it was purposeless. It satisfied the kraken’s need to be moving things, to find permutations of space and form.
At last his lungs reached their limit. He surfaced, conscious even as he ascended that he had slipped beyond the horizon of Leviathan’s attention. The kraken might have been dimly cognisant of his presence for a few moments, but no more than that.
He broke into daylight. The flier was over him, ready to take him back to the seastead. Vouga did not ask if he wished to dive again, and he was glad of that.
The following morning, Kanu was on his way north.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Goma had long held a notional understanding of the starship’s size, but it was quite another thing to be coming up in the shuttle, gaining her first true understanding of the scale of her new home. It was four kilometres long, about five hundred metres across, and resembled a thick-barred dumb-bell with equal-sized spheres at either end. The forward sphere was patterned with windows and access hatches – cargo bays, shuttle docks, sensor ports – while the rearward globe was contrastingly featureless. That was the drive sphere, containing the post-Chibesa engine. Its exhaust, hidden around the sphere’s curve, would eventually boost Travertine to half the speed of light.
Constructing a starship, or indeed a pair of such craft, was still beyond the economic reach of all but a few governments, in all but a handful of solar systems. Two hundred years after Travertine’s work on Zanzibar, the mechanics of a PCP engine still presented fiendish challenges. The new generation of engines were faster and more efficient than the old, but they were no less dangerous to work with, no less unforgiving of error.
But Crucible had committed itself to building two of these ships, banking its future on their construction. It had hoped to tap into the still-young extrasolar trade networks and do business with its stellar neighbours. These ships gave it legitimacy, proving that it had the financial and technical maturity to join the league of spacefaring worlds.
All that had made tremendous sense until the Watchkeepers returned.
The shuttle approached Travertine’s forward sphere where they docked and transferred inside. There was artificial gravity, provided by the rotation of the ring-shaped interior sections. Ru wanted to see the cabin, but before any of them were allowed to their rooms – or given access to the personal effects shuttled aboard days ago – there was the necessary formality of a meeting with the captain and her technical staff.
All of the crew and passengers – fifty-four souls – convened in the largest lounge, its windows shuttered against the glare of day.
‘Welcome aboard,’ said Gandhari Vasin, spreading her arms wide as if to embrace all of them, technical crew and passengers both. ‘This is a great day for all of us – a monumental day – and a privilege for those of us fortunate enough to be riding the ship. I would like to wish us all a safe voyage and a productive, bountiful expedition. I also extend our collective gratitude to the people of Crucible, for their kindness and generosity in making this expedition possible. It is nothing that we take lightly, any of us. Let us hope for good fortune, for ourselves and for our sister ship, and those who will travel aboard her.’
Goma had already met Gandhari Vasin. She was a good choice, extremely satisfactory to all parties. It helped, perhaps, that she had not been born on Crucible. Vasin had arrived on the planet via the same quarterlight vehicle that had brought Arethusa. A senior propulsion specialist, she had decided that she wished to remain behind on Crucible when the QV departed. She was regarded as non-partisan, and Goma believed that Mposi had favoured her candidature for exactly that reason, aside from her obvious competence.
She was also a cheerful-looking woman with a broad smile and a habit of wearing colourful wraps and headscarves, disdaining titles and the regalia of hierarchy at all times. ‘I am your captain,’ she said, as if it were a kind of confession. ‘This is the role they have given me, and I will do my utmost to be worthy of it. But I am also Gandhari, and I would much rather you call me that than Captain Vasin. We are all going to be aboard this ship for a very long time. Formalities will begin to fade sooner or later, so we might as well dispense with them immediately.’
All well and good, Goma thought, but Gandhari was also in charge of a starship, a massive and lethal piece of technology, and before long they would be on their own, independent of external support. She could be their friend up to a point, but Gandhari would also need nerves of steel and an iron will to go with it.
Gandhari said a few more words, then set about introducing the key members of the expedition, trusting that everyone else would get to know each other over the coming days.
‘I must first mention Goma Akinya, who did not have to join us, but chose to out of selfless consideration for her mother.’ Gandhari pointed both hands at Goma, palms nearly together, the gesture almost worshipful. ‘It is true that we have all made sacrifices, but many of us were long committed to the idea of an interstellar voyage – it is the ambition to which we have bent our professional lives. Not so with Goma. She had no desire to leave Crucible, no desire to abandon her fri
ends and work. Yet here she is. I do not think we can speak highly enough of her loyalty to Crucible.’
Then Gandhari pivoted slightly, shifting the focus of her attention to Ru.
‘While we are speaking of sacrifices, let us also remember our friend Ru Munyaneza, Goma’s wife, who has left behind her beloved elephants to come with us. Ru’s loss is our gain, however.’
Gandhari turned to introduce Dr Saturnin Nhamedjo. It was a formality: the physician was already known to most of the party since he had been involved in assessing their suitability for skipover.
‘Saturnin brings with him a small but highly capable medical team, all multispecialists and all – like the rest of us – volunteers. They are to be our doctors, our first line of defence against illness and injury, but above all else they are to be our friends, full members of the expedition.’
Next, Gandhari introduced Nasim Caspari, head of the eighteen-strong technical section and, like Gandhari herself, an expert in post-Chibesa theory. Caspari was a slight, unassuming man who clearly did not relish being in the limelight, visibly relieved when Gandhari moved on to her next introduction, who was sitting close to Caspari. Aiyana Loring was a multispecialist, heading the astrophysics and exoplanet group, which also included biologists and ecosystem experts. Loring would have little data to work with until they reached their destination, but Goma doubted that ve would have difficulty keeping verself occupied, especially given ver willingness to cross between disciplines.
‘Ve’s good,’ Ru whispered, as if there had been any doubt. ‘Came up with some of the algorithms we use for our own studies. Turns out that what works for galaxy clusters also works for elephant neurones.’
‘Thank you, Captain Vasin,’ said the willowy, graceful Loring, who moved like a cat and was by all accounts a fine dancer. ‘I mean Gandhari. My apologies. And please, everyone – I am Aiyana. My door is always open. I hope to get to know you all very well.’
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