Poseidon's Wake

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Dakota?’ Swift asked.

  ‘No,’ Kanu answered. ‘Our new friends.’

  It was a woman this time. She was an odd mixture of casual and formal, dressed in colourful clothes and a vibrantly patterned silk scarf, plus a great assortment of jangling, rattling jewellery. Her face struck him as open and friendly – there was something in it that reminded him of Garudi Dalal’s mother, from that day in Madras. But she addressed him from behind a desk, her hands clasped solemnly together, a grey wall behind her. And when she spoke, while there was no intimidation or posturing in her voice, she nonetheless conveyed a tremendous impression of authority.

  A woman to be reckoned with, he thought.

  ‘Thank you for your response, Kanu. I am Gandhari Vasin, captain of the Travertine. Nasim was acting as my second-in-command while I was on Orison. We were alerted to your possible presence around Zanzibar and began beaming a message to you in the hope of making contact, but I confess our expectations were not great. Permit me to speak plainly. There are many things about this system we don’t yet know, and I am willing to assume the same is true for you. But we do know about Dakota, and we think you do, too. You may even have made direct contact with the Tantors. So have we – but with a different faction from Dakota’s. We have also made contact with Eunice Akinya. Eunice had a lot to tell us, and I think her account of events is likely to be different from Dakota’s. You may have been told that Eunice is dead, and if so, I would like you to consider a few other things that may not have been true.’

  Kanu smiled at this. If only she knew. He had been doing little else but consider the degrees of truthfulness of things. She might as well have advised him there were benefits to breathing.

  But for the time being, he was content to hear her out.

  ‘We have no reason to presume that your objectives conflict with ours, Kanu, but you may have been misled – gravely misled. There are dangers on Poseidon greater than anything you have already encountered. We are not speaking simply of the risk to your own life, although that would be considerable, but of wider implications – for all of us. You appeared free to answer Nasim’s transmission. Might I suggest that you do nothing, that you take no further action, until we are close enough for proper dialogue? There is one among us whom I think Dakota may wish to speak to. If you have the capability to pass on a message, please inform Dakota that we have an Akinya with us. Her name is Goma, and she is the daughter of Ndege.’

  Now it was all he could do not to laugh. An Akinya! How impressed she must think he would be. The movers and shakers of history – the lineage that had dragged people to the stars.

  How could an Akinya possibly fail to sort things out?

  Shaking his head ruefully, he composed a response.

  ‘I will offer you the courtesy of a reply, Gandhari, but it may not be quite what you are hoping for. Firstly, I have no choice but to comply with Dakota’s wishes. I am fully aware of the risks posed by Poseidon, and also of the potential consequences of approaching that planet. I also know that many thousands of lives depend on my not failing Dakota, so your attempt at persuasion is wasted, I am afraid. Secondly, you speak of someone called Goma Akinya as if that name might carry weight. I am sorry to inform you – and indeed Goma – that you should be under no such illusions. I am also an Akinya, you see. My full name is Kanu Akinya, and my mother was Chiku Yellow. And my family name has not made the slightest difference to Dakota.’

  When he was done and the message winging its way back to Captain Vasin, Swift moved a rook and offered his sage assessment of things.

  ‘You would be unwise to totally discount the value of this second Akinya, Kanu. The message specifically summoned one of your esteemed clan. There must have been a reason for that.’

  ‘She said Goma, not Ndege.’

  ‘But she mentioned Ndege, which I would suggest is not likely to be coincidence.’ Swift removed his pince-nez glasses and began polishing the lenses against his sleeve. ‘Are you going to make your move or just stare at the board until it suffers a minor quantum fluctuation?’

  Kanu pushed a piece from square to square, but with no more care than if he had been blindfolded.

  ‘A win appears inevitable,’ Swift observed.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me. My heart’s not really in the game.’

  ‘No, I mean that you have placed me in a highly disadvantageous position. There is hope for you yet, Kanu.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  He contacted Dakota and told her he was ready to activate the drive.

  ‘A short test,’ he explained to her. ‘Just enough to validate the repairs. Wouldn’t want you thinking I’m trying to make a run for it, would we?’

  ‘You would not, Kanu, in any case.’

  ‘Still, we don’t want any misunderstandings.’

  ‘No, we most certainly do not. Are you ready?’

  ‘Opening the priming flows as we speak.’ He waited a moment, studying the columns of numbers and shifting diagrams on his console. ‘Flows look good. Levelling out at injection pressure. Tokamaks building field strength. A little slow on three, but it’s correcting. I’m going ahead with plasma injection.’

  ‘By all means. Proceed with caution, Kanu.’

  ‘Plasma in and bottled. Approaching ignition in three . . . two . . . one. Good. We have fusion. Burn looking clean and stable. Tokamaks holding. Clear to initial Chibesa excitation.’

  This was a technological commonplace – in the days before the moratorium, ignition would have been initiated hundreds of thousands of times a day with the utmost dreary reliability. But it was worth remembering that it had taken decades to perfect Chibesa’s discovery into a single workable prototype engine, and decades more before the engines achieved sufficient reliability for widespread use.

  But the thrust came in, gently pressing his back into the chair.

  ‘I see you moving,’ Dakota said.

  ‘Yes, we have thrust. But I’m stepping things up – I’m going to take us into post-Chibesa energies.’

  ‘Are you sure you are not being hasty?’

  But another voice said, ‘What are you doing? It was never our intention to take things this quickly.’

  He told Swift, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘You may – but I certainly do not. We have barely satisfied ourselves that the initial process is stable, let alone achieved the confidence to push beyond that—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  He must have spoken aloud, for Dakota asked, ‘Who are you addressing?’

  ‘Voices in my head,’ he explained. ‘I hear them sometimes. Nothing you need worry about. Commencing post-Chibesa transition.’

  Now there was a bump rather than a nudge, and the console lit up with a quilt of red and amber status warnings. Icebreaker was achieving post-Chibesa energies, but in an uncontrolled, chaotic fashion.

  ‘Kanu – is all well?’

  ‘All is well, Dakota. Nothing could be better.’

  The console was now a blaze of red and audible warnings had begun to sound from the walls. Under normal conditions, the ship would have intervened to shut down the unstable Chibesa process, but in this test mode the usual safety measures were suspended.

  Kanu knew this – indeed, he had made sure it was so.

  ‘Kanu,’ Dakota said, ‘I have a suspicion – which may be unwarranted – but if you are attempting to destroy or damage the ship to escape your obligation—’

  ‘Put Nissa on again.’

  ‘She’s right here. Whatever you have to say to her, you can say to me, too.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry. I can’t see any other way. This is not Nissa’s fault. You must believe that, Dakota. Nor is it the fault of the Friends. You’ll gain nothing by punishing them now.’

  ‘Kanu!’ Nissa called out to him, her voice breaking on his name.

 
‘I must do this,’ he answered. ‘I love you – I’ll always love you – but there is no other way.’

  And then – independent of his own volition – his hands moved to the console. He resisted the action but his efforts were useless: Swift now had total control of his nervous system. He might as well have been outside his own body, watching it dance to another’s will.

  A vibration found its way through the fabric of the ship. It built in strength, the evidence of wildly varying drive stresses, too haphazard to be neutralised. And then there was a single violent shudder, as if Icebreaker had been struck by some larger object, and the vibrations died away to stillness. The alarms continued to sound, the console still a blaze of emergency notifications.

  But the Chibesa engine had shut itself down.

  The hold on him lingered, and then it was absent.

  He gasped a powerful involuntary breath, as if he had just surfaced from deep, cold waters.

  ‘You traitor, Swift.’

  ‘I saved your life – again. Is it too much to expect a little gratitude?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Travertine maintained its orbit around Orison. Next to it, tracing the same orbit and very nearly ready for independent flight, the lander remained the focus of intense human and machine activity.

  In the forward sphere of the larger ship, the part spun to simulate gravity, a woman and a man sat opposite each other at table in the main public galley. The woman drank chai; the man cradled a mug of scented coffee. Around them, the spaces of the ship hummed with news and rumour.

  ‘Something went wrong,’ Goma said. ‘That’s what Gandhari says. Or nearly went wrong – as if the ship came very close to blowing up, and then the malfunction was damped down just in time.’

  ‘I’m no physicist,’ Peter Grave said, ‘but I would imagine there are a great many things that can go wrong with a Chibesa drive. The captain made contact with the other ship?’

  ‘Momentarily. There was a reply to Nasim’s automated transmission and then a direct response to Gandhari’s. She played it back for me – he claims to be another Akinya!’

  ‘This is either startling news, or almost inevitable.’ Grave looked up from his drink, smiled at her to disarm her natural defensiveness. ‘Another Akinya. Do you believe him?’

  ‘He says he’s Kanu. There is a Kanu in my lineage, so it’s possible, but it’s . . . complicated.’

  ‘Nothing about your family would be considered uncomplicated, Goma. Still – is this good or bad? Does his being an Akinya improve our situation or worsen it?’

  ‘You mean, can he be expected to do the right thing?’

  Grave scratched at his almost hairless scalp. Goma could not help but notice the crescent-sized impressions where her fingernails had gouged his skin, still preserved despite decades of skipover.

  ‘I suppose,’ Grave said.

  ‘That presupposes there is a “right thing” to be done. Kanu didn’t threaten us; he didn’t tell us to back off or say he’d do terrible things to us if we didn’t comply. He just urged us not to get involved and advised us to be cautious.’

  ‘And yet he is still acting in a way Eunice deems hazardous – conspiring with Dakota in this expedition.’

  ‘If he knew what was at stake, he wouldn’t go along with it.’

  ‘Unless he felt he had no choice,’ Grave said. ‘Have you looked into his history?’

  ‘As much as I can find. Kanu was a significant figure in the United Aquatic Nations – a Panspermian, an advocate of the philosophy of the Green Efflorescence.’

  ‘I’ve studied that movement. They were regarded as cranks and cultists for a while, weren’t they?’ There was a playful, gently mocking tone in his voice. ‘True believers.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s quite the same thing as the Second Chancers,’ Goma answered, meeting his answer with a smile of her own. ‘They wanted to turn the galaxy green. You’d be content if we crawled back under a rock and forgot about the stars completely.’

  ‘A very slight mischaracterisation, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘All right, I’ll allow you that one.’ Goma could not help but smile back at Grave, seeing that no offence had been taken. ‘Anyway, that’s only part of Kanu’s story. Eventually he ended up being an ambassador to the robots on Mars – the Evolvarium.’

  ‘I’ve studied my early space age history. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Eunice have something to do with all that?’

  ‘Do you mean the real Eunice, as opposed to the one aboard with us now?’

  Grave shrugged. ‘If we’re going to insist on a distinction.’

  ‘Wait a minute, Peter. If either of us was going to insist they’re not the same, I’d expect it to be you.’

  ‘Because of my belief system?’

  ‘Why else? One’s a human being who lived and died, the other’s a cybernetic simulation that began as a conceptual art project long after the real woman was dead and gone.’

  ‘And yet – she is flesh and blood. And she has the real woman’s memories.’

  ‘Gathered from public records.’

  ‘Not all of them – some of those memories are directly attributable to the neural traces she inherited from her own frozen corpse.’ A touch of mischief softened his features. ‘Or have you not been keeping up?’

  ‘She’s my fake robot ancestor, not yours!’

  ‘But she is human now, and mortal – probably – and she lives and breathes the world much as the original Eunice would were she here instead. At this point, do we have the right to make any distinction between them? Whatever Eunice’s essence was – her soul, if you will – surely it has been conserved, reconstituted, in this iteration?’

  Goma shook her head. ‘No. We don’t speak of souls. Not now, not ever. Souls aren’t real.’

  ‘Patterns, then. Abstract structures of experience and reaction, making up a consistent, continuous human identity. She thinks of herself as Eunice Akinya. Have we the right to deny her that belief?’

  ‘We can deny her whatever we like.’

  ‘But if we deny her humanity,’ Grave said, ‘we may as well deny our own. She has as much claim on her self as the rest of us, Goma. And if I can see it – me, a Second Chancer – then surely it can’t be too great a leap for anyone else?’

  Goma wished to argue. But the truth was, she had nothing to offer in return beyond a sullen: ‘We were talking about Kanu, I think.’

  ‘We were,’ he agreed. ‘But the digression was worthwhile.’

  Eunice was allowed her liberty, within limits. She was assigned a bangle and told to explore the ship as she pleased, and to mingle without hesitation among the other members of the expedition. But Goma knew the bangle would only get Eunice so far – the security protocols had been redoubled – and that there would be certain members of the crew who wanted nothing to do with this quixotic and fiery enigma from the past, this thing shaped like a woman that had not even come close to earning their trust yet.

  Goma understood the concerns, voiced or otherwise. So what if Eunice was biological, if she needed air to breathe and food to stuff in her mouth? That did not mean she was in any way harmless or indeed on their side. Ru had learned that lesson and felt the alien strength in Eunice’s bones and muscles.

  Ru would not allow Eunice anywhere near their quarters, and Goma lacked the strength to argue with her. She had her point of view and it was justifiable. But if Ru disapproved of Goma speaking to Eunice at all, then that was just too bad.

  They gave Eunice a cabin, and Eunice and Goma were free to meet there whenever they chose. For her part Ru was sensible enough not to ask too much regarding Goma’s whereabouts when they were not together.

  ‘Gandhari says it won’t be long now.’

  ‘This captain of yours – do you have confidence in her?’


  ‘Of course I do – why wouldn’t I? Oh, wait – because she had the misfortune not to carve out her exploits in the daring days of the early space age, and therefore can’t be relied upon to manage a starship?’

  ‘You need not take that tone with me, Goma Akinya.’

  ‘Then don’t presume to doubt Vasin’s capabilities. She agreed to let you use the communications array, didn’t she?’

  ‘But only with one of you breathing down my neck, questioning my every move – and thereby making everything take twenty times as long as it needs to.’

  ‘Don’t blame her for showing due caution. Her style may not be your style, but she’s more than up to the job.’

  ‘We’ll see about that when we discover what the job really entails.’

  ‘You’re just jealous. You’re a passenger and you don’t like it. Well, get used to enjoying your lowly new status.’

  ‘I can see we’ll get along famously. Did you bring the books?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would like to see them. You say Ndege entrusted these to you? That was extraordinarily insightful of her. She had no guarantee they would eventually find me.’

  ‘She intended me to have them, not you. You’re only getting a look at them, not a permanent loan.’

  ‘Then I take it you’ve made sterling progress in understanding your mother’s work?’

  Goma passed Eunice the first of the three notebooks. It was chronologically the earliest, going by the date at the start. By the same token, though, it was quite clear that Ndege had continued working on all the notebooks throughout her life, revisiting her earlier ideas and filling in those areas that had not at first yielded to her research. A complete picture of Ndege’s work required all of the notebooks.

  Goma knew this.

  ‘Let’s see what you make of it.’

  Eunice started at the beginning, gently creaking open its black spine and turning the pages with great care. She stared at the first two pages of notes, the columns of symbols with their meticulous and bewildering connections.