‘Would he follow through on an order to commit mass murder?’
‘I don’t know, but we can’t risk the slightest chance that he might.’ He offered his hands in defeat. ‘That’s all there is, Nissa. Square one, and we’re stuck on it.’
‘Swift should help us.’
‘If Swift knew a way, he would. But even he can’t change the facts.’
An undercurrent of scepticism entered Nissa’s voice. ‘That, and Swift might not think this expedition is such a bad idea?’
‘We’re on the same side,’ Kanu asserted, with more confidence than he felt.
Nissa waited a moment before answering.
‘You hope.’
They were stationed at a porthole in a part of the ship that still looked back in the direction of Paladin. After hours of acceleration they were at last free of Paladin’s gravitational environment, pushing deeper into interplanetary space. Kanu could easily block out the planet with his upraised fist, and Zanzibar itself was now much too small to make out with his unaided eye. But the Mandala was still visible when it swung into view, and something of its uncanny regularity demanded attention, snaring the brain’s innate capacity for pattern recognition. It had changed again since his last viewing, the interlocking, intersecting circles and radials shifting to some new configuration. The movement of matter on the scale of continental mountain ranges, as effortless and efficient as the rearranging of cutlery between servings.
‘It’s trying to tell us something,’ he said.
‘Or it’s waiting for us to answer,’ Nissa replied.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
It was not the first time that Gandhari Vasin had gathered her crew together since their departure from Travertine, but there was something different in her mood on this occasion – a lightness, or at least an elevation of her spirits, which had not been there before. Her demonstration of the mirrors had not achieved the intended effect, but perhaps, Goma reflected, she was pleased it had worked at all.
‘The ship needs a name,’ Vasin said.
‘Do you have one in mind?’ Goma asked.
They were stationed in the lander’s common area, a space barely larger than one of the bedrooms aboard Travertine. They had been on full power almost since detaching from the main ship and the acceleration provided the effect of gravity, allowing the crew to sit or stand as they pleased.
‘Well, possibly,’ Vasin said. ‘I hoped that one particular good and wise man would be with us today. Since fate has taken him from us, we can at least carry his name as our inspiration. I trust it will encourage us to be the best we can – and let us have faith that this little ship, Mposi, does all that we ask of it.’
‘It is a good name,’ said Karayan.
‘Peter?’
‘Mposi was an honourable man. You could not have picked a better name, Gandhari.’
‘Goma – any objections?’
‘None whatsoever, and thank you for thinking of him. I just wish he were here to share in all this.’
‘We don’t have Mposi,’ Vasin said, ‘but we have his example. Let’s do our utmost to live up to his memory. We owe it to him, but we also owe it to those we left behind on Travertine, and the millions more on Crucible. I have confidence in us.’
‘Thank you, Gandhari,’ said Loring.
‘Thank me when we’re back home. Until then, it may be tempting fate.’
The lander’s interior configuration had changed slightly since Goma’s trip to Orison, its walls and partitions repositioned to accommodate the extended mission requirement. This was no hardship – there had been no time to get used to the old arrangement – but it puzzled her that one locked room would not open to her bangle. She wondered what could be in that room that she was not meant to see.
‘I meant to tell you about it,’ Vasin said when Goma put the question to her captain. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you going in there, but I felt you ought to hear about it from me before you do.’
‘Hear about what, exactly?’
‘We have a mass restriction even with our Chibesa drive – we don’t want to be carrying things we won’t use. But we are an expedition, and we should have all the necessary tools at our disposal. I’m reluctant to limit our ability to visualise any new findings as they are gathered by our sensors.’ Vasin elevated her bangle and the door unlocked itself. ‘So I’ve brought the well of nanomachines from the Knowledge Room. For the moment, they are more useful to us than to our colleagues on Travertine.’
Goma understood, although she did not wish to. ‘You mean you brought a subset of the machines?’
‘No, the entire well. Aiyana rendered them dormant, which allowed us to transplant the whole thing. The mass burden is slight, and we now have a viable population of nanomachines.’
‘They destroyed Mposi,’ Goma said, shivering as images of his half-digested form played back in her mind’s eye.
Vasin opened the door. It was a smaller space than the original Knowledge Room and the well nearly filled it, leaving only a narrow aisle around its sides. Vasin entered, Goma lingering outside until Vasin urged her to cross the threshold.
‘No,’ she said, closing the door behind them. ‘Saturnin Nhamedjo killed your uncle. The machines were simply how he hoped to dispose of the body. They can’t be blamed any more than we’d blame earth or fire or water.’
‘I saw what they did to him.’
‘As did we all. Believe me, if I did not think the well could be useful to us, I’d have left it behind. But we need it, Goma – we need every speck of advantage we can get.’ She pulled rings from her fingers and passed them to Goma. ‘Hold these for me, please.’
‘You’re worried it’ll eat them?’
‘No, I just don’t want to have to fish them out from the bottom if they slide off.’ Vasin pushed back her sleeve, flicked her scarf over her shoulder, leaned over the side of the well and dipped her hand into the yielding liquid substrate.
Goma flinched – it was an unavoidable reaction after what she had seen happening to Mposi. Vasin closed her fingers around the floating figment of Paladin and hauled it from the well.
‘You should have told me sooner.’
‘I’m telling you now. I’m also telling you that there’s nothing to fear. The programming has been corrected – the machines are safe. Do you think I’d trust my hand to them if I doubted that?’
‘You might if you had a point to make.’
‘If there’s a point, it’s that we can’t afford not to have them. Let me show you something – maybe it’ll soften your opinion.’ She was holding Paladin above the surface of the well, red as an apple, the Mandala a bruise on its skin. The simulation of the shard – what they now knew to be Zanzibar – was a microscopic grain of dust so small that it was easily capable of holding itself aloft without any physical connection to the planet or the well.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’
‘The second Mandala keeps changing. They tell me that on Crucible, the first Mandala underwent a sudden state change when your mother attempted to communicate with it. But that Mandala hasn’t done anything since then, has it?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘This one is cycling through distinct state changes. Each shift looks about as dramatic as the original event on Crucible – the literal movement of mountains’ worth of matter. Here.’ Vasin raised her voice slightly. ‘Well: iterate the Mandala variations, one hundred thousand times observed speed.’
And she offered the apple’s face to Goma, allowing her to observe the alterations the Mandala was forcing upon itself. They arrived about once a second, a rhythmic, hypnotic disclosing of new geometries like the tumbling of kaleidoscope shards. There was always symmetry, a balance of features at all scales, a recognisable quality in the circles and radials that Goma could only think of as Mandala-ness, bu
t she did not think the patterns ever repeated.
‘We don’t know what it means. But Eunice tells us the Mandala was static until Zanzibar arrived, just as the Mandala on Crucible was static until the colonists arrived. But the Zanzibar translation was achieved at almost the speed of light, so the arrival event must have been nearly coincident with the arrival of information about your mother’s experiment.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Ndege started something, Goma. She initiated an event on Crucible which, as we know, led to the partial destruction of Zanzibar. But most significantly she appears to have woken this Mandala, too. We don’t know how or why, but something has been triggered – a process that is still ongoing. Would you like to hear my theory?’
‘One’s as good as another.’
‘Something huge is waking up. Rebooting itself – bringing its elements back online after a long period of dormancy. I also think we’re dealing with a machine bigger than Crucible, bigger than Paladin – bigger even than the space between solar systems. And I think your mother found the “on” switch.’
Goma and Eunice faced each other in a quiet corner of the lander. They had been under way for about twelve hours and some of the other crew were trying to get some rest. The interior lights had been turned down to a dull red, just sufficient to enable navigation of Mposi’s cluttered spaces. The windows had been shuttered, the displays and readouts muted, and the constant background roar of the Chibesa motor was in itself lulling. Goma felt the pull of it – sleep sounded like a very good idea. She had not rested well the night before departure. But at the same time she was far too anxious to think about crawling into her hammock.
‘It’s a small ship, so options are limited,’ Eunice said, ‘but I see Ru is doing a very good job of avoiding me.’
‘Can you blame her?’
‘What’s blame got to do with it? I would simply be much happier were she to forgive me for what happened on Orison.’
‘There’s a lot to forgive. I think we can agree that Ru was one of the more innocent parties in all this unpleasantness.’
‘I’m not the one you need to convince. I admit that my actions were not as thoroughly considered as they might have been, but lives were at stake. If I’ve learned one thing in my long existence, it’s that hesitation gets you nowhere. On Mars—’
‘Yes, we’ve heard all about Mars. What matters is how easily you could have killed her in that moment.’
‘In that moment, I was watching one of my closest friends suffer an agonising death. The blood pointed to Ru as the most likely perpetrator, so I acted on the facts available to me. I am sorry that I hurt and frightened her, but nothing matters more to me than the Tantors. Will you talk to her, Goma? She won’t hear a word from me, and if I’m honest with myself I really don’t blame her. But she might come round if you explain why I acted as I did.’
‘What do you want – her friendship?’
‘Yours, mainly. But if I’ve hurt Ru, that hurts you as well.’
They sipped their chai. The sounds of the ship surrounded them, noises that must have been as soothing and familiar to Eunice as the snap of rigging to the mariners of an earlier age. She had been aboard a lot of ships, and done her share of spacefaring.
‘Why would my friendship matter to you? You lived alone with the Tantors for two hundred years. Haven’t you reached the point where you don’t need to be around people any more?’
‘Most I can do without, but not all.’
Despite herself – knowing it would be unwise to take any of Eunice’s pronouncements at face value – Goma could not help but feel a flush of pride. It was a good feeling to be needed by another being, even a robot made human. ‘So I’m the lucky exception?’ she dared ask.
‘I’ve become something strange, Goma. Even I can see that. There’s no precedent for what I am. Do I even have the right to call myself Eunice Akinya? I look like her, I have a head full of her memories . . . Except they’re not quite her memories, and I know that the real woman died centuries ago. So what does that make me? A very good likeness – walking photograph? But I live and I breathe, I sleep and I dream. There’s blood in my veins and your physician said I have the capability to give birth. So what the hell does that make me?’
‘I don’t know. Something old. Something new.’
‘Something borrowed. Something blue.’ After a silence, Eunice added, ‘You are the real thing, Goma. You can trace your lineage all the way back to the true Eunice – through Ndege, Chiku, Sunday, Mirriam . . . How does that feel? What’s it like to have that story threaded through your mitochondria?’
‘It feels like being me.’
‘I wish I knew what that was like.’
‘I can’t help you,’ Goma said, not without regret. ‘I never knew Eunice. I never even knew anyone who knew her. It’s just too long ago. If you want me to say that you’re her—’
‘I am not expecting that.’
‘But you want affirmation of some kind – you want to feel you have some claim on her.’
‘Do you blame me for that?’
‘Knowing what you are, what you’ve become? No, not in the slightest. But you don’t need my validation, Eunice. You’ve earned the right to simply be yourself, whoever that may be. What you did for the Tantors, across all those years – on the holoship, on Crucible, here in this system – and the choice you made to go with the Watchkeepers – any one of those deeds measures up to anything she did.’
‘She would not thank you for saying that.’
‘She can go and screw herself. You’re here and she isn’t.’ Goma reached into her pocket. ‘I have the other two notebooks. Would you like them?’
‘I would. More than anything.’
Goma passed them over. ‘I hope they make more sense to you than they did to me.’
‘It was the work of years for Ndege to make these connections,’ Eunice said, opening the second book so carefully it was as if she expected insects to come fluttering out of its pages. ‘You can’t judge yourself if you’ve found it hard to follow in her footsteps. But you would, given time.’
‘You think so?’
‘Oh yes. I have faith in you, Goma Akinya.’
In the morning, Vasin gathered her crew in the commons around a circular table that also doubled as their largest display.
‘It’s time to consider our next move. We’re still tracking Kanu’s ship – the Chibesa signature is clean and steady, and we have radar and optical returns from the body of the vehicle. He could be throwing us some intentional misdirection, but I don’t think there can be much doubt as to his destination.’ She turned to look at Goma. ‘Do you agree?’
‘I have no special insight into this man just because we share a name.’
‘Nonetheless, if you were him—’
‘She’s not,’ Eunice said, ‘and on the basis of those transmissions, we’d be wise to assume that Kanu is acting under duress. Show me his course so far.’
It was a bright filament curling away from Zanzibar, like a hair trapped in the display. Vasin was correct – there was not nearly enough of it to allow an accurate extrapolation but the goal appeared to be Poseidon, and nothing contradicted that yet. ‘We don’t know enough about his ship to make any really detailed predictions,’ Vasin said. ‘Aiyana is coordinating with Nasim on an analysis of the exhaust signature, which may give us a little more insight. In the meantime, the best we can do is make some educated guesses. He’s maintaining one gee at the moment, but he’ll need to slow down when he approaches Poseidon, whether to assume orbit or plot a path through those moons and down into the atmosphere. I’d estimate forty to fifty hours, if his present acceleration is sustained.’
‘And if we alter our own course and try to get there ahead of him?’ Goma asked.
‘There’s no way to beat him based on our present knowledg
e. We’ll be six to twelve hours behind him under the best possible circumstances, and we’re still in a better position than Travertine. Unless something goes seriously wrong with his plans, we can’t stop him reaching Poseidon. But that doesn’t mean we’ve exhausted our options.’
‘The solar collectors didn’t get us very far,’ Ru said.
‘We’re not done with them yet. Clearly, cutting power didn’t hurt Dakota as much as we’d hoped, but there are other possibilities – and Eunice still has a direct channel to the mirrors.’
‘For the moment,’ Eunice said. ‘But there’s data traffic to and from the other ship. Someone is having a good go at locking me out.’
‘Will they succeed?’ Vasin asked.
‘Not if I stay one step ahead of them.’
‘Make it two steps. We need all the advantages we can get. I’m not yet ready to use the mirrors in an offensive capacity, but I want that card in my hand when it’s needed.’
‘And when do we abandon negotiation and start hitting each other with increasingly large sticks?’ Ru said.
‘Only when we’ve exhausted all the other options,’ Vasin said. ‘But we’re not there yet. For now, I’d like to concentrate our efforts on a maximum appeal to Kanu’s better judgement. He may well be acting under duress, but that doesn’t mean he can’t resist Dakota if we give him sufficient encouragement.’
Ru looked sceptical. ‘Good luck with that.’
Vasin smiled tightly. ‘Goma – I propose that you be our main spokesperson from now on given the family connection, distant as it may prove to be. Eunice – do you have anything to contribute? You know Dakota better than any of us, presuming she’s still alive.’
‘After all the history between us, I’m the last person she’ll listen to. But Goma stands a chance of getting through to her. Make her remember Ndege – play on her conscience.’
‘You think she has one left?’ Vasin asked.
‘We all had a conscience when we arrived,’ Eunice said. ‘Even me.’
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