Poseidon's Wake

by Alastair Reynolds

  Kanu settled into the chair, which automatically slithered a restraint across his lap, then tightened it. The horseshoe controls moved obligingly closer to his fingertips. He stared at the sweep of displays and keypads with a sort of numbed recognition, as if seeing it in the first moments of waking.

  ‘Kanu Akinya,’ he stated, as if following a silent prompt. ‘Assuming control. Request departure readiness.’

  The ship answered in the tongue with which he had addressed it. It spoke Swahili with a soothing tone, as if there could be no problem, no contingency, for which it were not magnificently equipped.

  ‘Welcome, Kanu. Systems are transitioning to operational condition. Final fault checks and calibration procedures are now in progress. Chibesa core is initialising. Estimated time to departure readiness: six hours, thirteen minutes.’

  ‘Give me an option for departure within two to three hours. In fact, present me with a range of options and associated risk factors.’

  ‘A moment please, Kanu.’

  The console presented him with his choices. They ranged from an immediate departure, which brought with it a fifteen per cent chance of losing the ship completely, to the more reasonable alternative of waiting the full six hours, by which point the likelihood of losing the ship would be negligible – at least to a fault of its own making.

  If he insisted on leaving in three hours, the likelihood was down to a tolerable two per cent.

  Odds he could live with, given the stakes.

  The console chimed and a voice spoke from it. ‘Kanu, this is the Margrave. I’m afraid I had to leave you for a moment. Matters have taken another turn and I think you need to be aware of it.’

  Kanu pressed himself back into his seat, bracing for the worst. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The Consolidation are through. Their ships are still on the ice, but they must have brought high-speed tunnelling devices and submarine combat equipment with them. My agents report three or four separate points of entry into the ocean, as well as an increase in their orbital presence. They are bringing in forces from across Jovian space and further afield.’

  Kanu nodded, the news exactly as bad as he had feared. ‘So there are enemy – I mean Consolidation – forces in the ocean? In addition to the other Regals trying to batter their way into Underthrace?’

  ‘Things have indeed come to a pretty pass.’

  ‘If this is in any way our doing . . . my doing . . . you have my sincere apologies.’

  ‘We will endure, Kanu – have no doubt of that. In the meantime, though, you might wish to leave sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Things are that bad?’

  ‘I cannot guarantee the security of Underthrace. If – when – it falls, it will happen quickly. You should be aware of that.’

  ‘My safety is secondary – it’s Nissa who matters. She hates me now, and frankly I don’t blame her. I’ve treated her badly, Margrave – inexcusably – but I couldn’t see any other way to get here. I don’t want her coming to any harm on my account.’

  ‘Let me worry about Nissa. I have taken a personal interest in her welfare, and will continue to do so.’

  Kanu allowed himself the meagre consolation of knowing she would be well looked after, at least to the limits of the Margrave’s power. It did nothing to lessen his remorse, or his sorrow at the terms of their farewell, but if he could trust that her safety was taken care of, it would be one less thing on his mind.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I wish you had parted on better terms, Kanu.’

  ‘What’s done is done,’ he said, returning his attention to the console. The options it had given were still there, and the numbers had scarcely changed. What had been a fourteen per cent chance of disaster if he left immediately had now dropped to twelve point six. Even as he watched, the digits shifted again. The ship was doing everything it could to better his chances. Was a risk factor of one in ten tolerable? He had cheated death once – did that allow him a different perspective on such matters? He did not think so. He might be old, but these last few weeks with Nissa had given him every incentive to keep living.

  Equally, he could not wait too long.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  No one dared speak of murder, at least not to begin with. But it was the only thing any of them was thinking.

  Two things quickly became apparent. Dr Nhamedjo conducted an examination of his body – what remained of it – and arrived at a clear medical conclusion. Mposi had almost certainly not been conscious when he entered the well. Despite the gash on his forehead, there were no traces of blood anywhere in the Knowledge Room, and no sign that he had struggled or suffered obvious distress in there. The presumption was that he had been hurt somewhere else – knocked out or killed – and then transported to the Knowledge Room, with a view to having the nanomachines break down and dispose of his body.

  That was the second thing: the nanomachines in the well had been reprogrammed to enable them to process and absorb human tissue.

  It was not supposed to be possible, Vasin told them. Granted, nanotechnology was, by its nature, almost infinitely protean. The difference between a medicinal form and a military version lay only in the expressed instruction mode – the deep-programming architecture. But Vasin had been assured that it was all but impossible to change one to the other, especially given the limited resources available on her ship.

  Someone had managed it, though.

  ‘It wasn’t a perfect solution,’ Vasin said, when Goma and Ru were in her cabin two hours after Mposi’s body was found. ‘So I’m told. The nanotech’s returned to a safe configuration, but it’s still contaminated by the presence of many kilos of organic matter – enough to affect its efficiency.’ She looked up sharply. ‘I am sorry, Goma, but I see no gentle way to speak of these things.’ Goma held her composure with a force of will – there was nothing to be gained from going to pieces now.

  ‘Whoever did this,’ Ru said, ‘they’d have known their way around the working of the well pretty thoroughly, wouldn’t they?’ Goma was grateful to Ru for speaking so bluntly. It was more than she could have done.

  ‘They’d have needed more than basic familiarity with the systems,’ Vasin said.

  ‘Then they weren’t expecting a perfect solution, just a means of buying time. If they could hide the body this way rather than keeping it in a cabin – somewhere easily searched – they might have bought themselves a few days.’

  ‘For what?’ Goma asked. She was drained, shocked, numbed – so overcome with grief that she could not begin to feel it as a distinct mental state. She was swimming in it, breathing it into her lungs. The only emotion she felt was a sense that the universe had been wrenched rudely off course, carrying her along with it. She had to speak to Mposi about this. He would have something sensible and calming to say, a way to lessen her problems.

  Uncle. Uncle. Uncle.

  ‘This wasn’t planned,’ Ru offered. ‘That’s my take on it, anyway. Someone killed him, and it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Why would anyone ever think killing someone on a ship was a good idea?’

  ‘Because they were insane,’ Goma said.

  ‘They killed him,’ Ru went on, ‘but there wasn’t time to make it look like an accident or find a better way of disposing of the body. This was the best alternative they could come up with. They knew it would be discovered sooner or later – you can’t just lock the Knowledge Room and expect no one to notice – so all they needed was a little time to . . . hide their tracks, maybe.’ She looked up sharply. ‘Gandhari – whoever did this?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They had a means of locking that door. A bangle like yours – or the capability to alter one. It can’t be someone like Goma or me – we knew next to nothing about this ship until we were aboard it.’

  ‘So technical staff – one of my own people? Is that your suspicion?�
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  Ru hesitated then nodded. ‘I’m sorry, but who else could it be? A scientist, maybe – but I’m one of them, and my expertise doesn’t begin to extend to this kind of thing. Nor does Goma’s. Mposi himself couldn’t have done this, even if he had a reason to.’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing any clothes,’ Goma said. ‘How did he get from his room to the well without someone noticing?’

  ‘I suspect he was dressed, whether he was moving on his own or being carried,’ Vasin said. ‘Whoever did this probably feared the nanotechnology wouldn’t treat his clothes and his body in the same fashion. They must have undressed him in the Knowledge Room, then taken the clothes somewhere else. Easier to hide clothes than a body – easier to dispose of them later, too.’

  ‘Why?’ Vasin asked. ‘What did he do, that someone had to kill him for?’

  ‘I have a good idea,’ Goma said. ‘Mposi told me something not long ago. You can check with Crucible, if you like, Gandhari. He was in contact with them.’

  ‘About what?’ Vasin asked.

  ‘Sabotage,’ Goma said, with a sort of flat resignation. ‘They warned him there was a possibility of it. Something on this ship – a weapon, maybe, that you don’t know about, put aboard by people who don’t want this expedition to succeed.’

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘He was trying to gather more information. I don’t think he wanted to come to you with something half-baked, especially if it was a false alarm.’

  ‘Dear god,’ Vasin said. ‘What kind of weapon was he thinking of? What was he looking for – how much did he tell you?’

  ‘You had better speak to Maslin Karayan.’

  ‘He’s the suspect? Is that what Mposi told you?’

  Goma closed her eyes. This was all too much, a surfeit of troubles over and above those she had already accepted.

  ‘Maybe. There’s someone else you should look at. Karayan was asking what Mposi knew about Peter Grave.’ She swallowed. ‘We see him as a Second Chancer, but he’s different from the others. There’s something about him. Even they don’t trust him.’

  ‘You think he killed Mposi?’ Vasin asked.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ Goma answered.

  Before the news of Mposi’s death reached the entire ship – which it was bound to do, with or without official disclosure – Vasin declared a state of emergency, a condition-yellow situation. This was wisely chosen, being only one level above the routine condition green: not serious enough to suggest that the ship or its occupants were in immediate peril, but sufficient to limit the movements of crew and passengers, and oblige everyone who was already in their cabins to remain there. It was the kind of alert that might attend a problem with the air supply, such as the presence of a mild toxin or a breakdown of the proper equilibrium of component gases. There had been a couple of condition-yellow situations since they left Crucible, and the encounter with the Watchkeeper had elevated the emergency status a whole two levels above yellow, so this development was neither unprecedented nor liable to cause panic.

  ‘Do you want us to return to our room?’ Goma asked Vasin.

  ‘No – you’re here now so you might as well stay. I can’t completely eliminate you as suspects – or anyone else, for that matter, including myself, until we have more evidence – but the fact that you were actively searching for Mposi and directed our attention to the Knowledge Room . . . Well, if you had murdered him – and again I am sorry that we must speak so bluntly, Goma – but if you had done it, you would not be in such a rush to bring the body to my attention.’

  ‘I appreciate your compassion, Gandhari,’ Goma said, ‘but he was murdered, and the only way to find out who did it is to talk about it. I might as well get used to it.’

  While they waited in her quarters, Vasin’s immediate subordinates had sealed the Knowledge Room and were now sweeping the rest of the ship, with a particular view to apprehending Maslin Karayan and Peter Grave.

  ‘In theory,’ Vasin said, ‘the bangles’ localising function should enable us to identify the killer just by backtracking everyone’s movements and finding out who was with Mposi since you last saw him. But whoever did this clearly knew their way around both the bangles and the nanomachines in the Knowledge Room. If they could tamper with one, they could just as easily tamper with the other – concealing their movements, if necessary. Still, it looks like they were in a rush – perhaps they were not as thorough as they might have wished.’

  It took under thirty minutes to find the two men and bring them both to Vasin’s quarters. Neither showed any signs of having offered resistance, but of the two, only Maslin Karayan looked like a man who had just been dragged out of bed. He had a puffy, dishevelled appearance – even his beard was unruly.

  Peter Grave by contrast was fully dressed, clean-shaven and had been apprehended en route to his cabin, apparently on his way back from the connecting spine.

  They were in the formal stateroom adjoining Vasin’s private quarters. Vasin was seated behind her desk, Aiyana Loring and Nasim Caspari to either side of their captain and Ru and Goma at one end of the desk. Maslin Karayan and Peter Grave were seated opposite Vasin, and Dr Nhamedjo stood off to one side with his arms folded.

  ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ Vasin asked the two Second Chancers.

  ‘I’m waiting for you to explain why we’re under a yellow emergency when there is clearly nothing wrong with the ship,’ said the older man, bristling with righteous indignation.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Grave, his tone milder but still demanding of answers.

  ‘Mposi Akinya is dead,’ Vasin said. ‘He was found a few hours ago, in the Knowledge Room. The nanomachinery was in the process of digesting his body. Aiyana – can you confirm what happened?’

  ‘Machines had been reprogrammed – their core architecture altered? Very difficult thing. Process of disposal would have been complete.’

  ‘Would anything have alerted us about what had happened to him?’ Vasin asked.

  Loring shook vis head, but the gesture was equivocal. ‘Not immediately? Nanotech was programmed to revert to a safe mode once the body was broken down. Conceal obvious evidence of its earlier reprogramming? Safe enough in the well – wouldn’t have started trying to dissolve you. All that absorbed biomass? Affected it in subtle ways, but take an expert to spot the signs.’

  Both men remained silent. Eventually Maslin Karayan said, ‘I do not know what to say. We had our differences, but my respect for Mposi was total.’

  ‘I heard you arguing,’ Goma said before anyone else had a chance to respond. ‘I came to see Mposi and you were shouting at each other.’

  ‘That was months ago,’ Karayan said. ‘Besides, I had no grudge against him – it was just differences of opinion. Heartfelt differences, true, but I don’t go around killing the people I disagree with. And even if I did, I’d be a fool to hurt Mposi, knowing what you’d think.’

  ‘I’m aware of your background, Maslin,’ Vasin said, tapping one of several printed papers laid out on her desk. ‘On the face of it, there’s nothing in it to suggest any expertise with nanomachinery. If you had such skills, would you tell me?’

  ‘And incriminate myself?’

  ‘No, but the sooner our relevant technical experience is out in the open, the quicker this will be over. The same goes for you, Peter – if there’s anything in your history that isn’t in your biographical file, I want to know about it now.’

  ‘What about Aiyana?’ Karayan said, looking at the other scientist. ‘Haven’t you as good as admitted your own expertise with nanomachinery?’

  ‘Know enough to understand how difficult this was, Maslin,’ Loring answered. ‘Well beyond my capabilities. Basic expertise, different thing. General grasp of shipboard communications and security functions? Circumvent the security protocol on the bangles? Could if I wanted to.’

/>   ‘So could many of us,’ Caspari said, ‘but Aiyana hasn’t stated any sort of open opposition to this expedition, and the two of you have.’

  ‘That’s a gross mischaracterisation,’ Karayan said, flinching back as if he had been pricked with a needle.

  ‘You in particular,’ Caspari went on. ‘When you saw you could not prevent the expedition from happening, you used your political leverage to join the crew. Fundamentally, though, you’re still opposed to it. You are here to observe, to influence critical decision-making, but given the opportunity – as the Watchkeeper proved – you wouldn’t hesitate to send us back to Crucible. If sabotage was one of the tools at your disposal—’

  ‘Nasim,’ said Dr Nhamedjo gently, ‘we are all aggrieved by what has happened. Many of us share a basic scepticism where the activities of the Second Chancers are concerned. But we must not allow that scepticism to colour our judgement.’

  ‘So much for your neutrality, Doctor,’ Karayan said.

  ‘Medicine is science, Maslin, and to me your tenets are fundamentally regressive and anti-scientific. I do not think my personal views are a surprise to anyone.’

  The doctor’s wide, boyish face appeared, to Goma, to contain a steeliness of character she not detected before. But he was still smiling, and his manner was as peaceable as it had ever been.

  ‘You are here by democratic means, though,’ Nhamedjo continued, ‘and you are human beings, with spouses and children. I presume some of them may be able to vouch for your whereabouts when Mposi was missing. Frankly, though, I don’t need their testimony to convince me that you played no part in this. Why would anyone hurt Mposi Akinya?’