Poseidon's Wake

by Alastair Reynolds

  Kanu acknowledged that with a thin smile.

  It came in closer still, slowly adjusting the angle of its course until its body was both parallel to Icebreaker and moving in the same direction. They were halfway along its length, with hundreds of kilometres of it to bow and stern. The nearest point was two hundred kilometres away, but in the airlessness of space where cues of distance and perspective were elusive, the Watchkeeper appeared to be dismayingly near. They had been closer to the corpse, but this one was very much alive. Blue radiance fought its way out between the close-layered scales of the Watchkeeper’s pine-cone armour.

  Now something changed. The scales were angling apart, allowing more of that light to escape. It fanned out in hard blue arcs, sweeping across Icebreaker. They saw it on screens and sensors – had there been windows, the glare would have been too bright to tolerate.

  ‘Have we seen this before?’ Nissa asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kanu said, offering a shrug by way of incomprehension.

  ‘They will speak to me,’ Dakota said, with sudden decisiveness. ‘Reduce our thrust to zero. I will go out to them.’

  ‘In Noah?’

  ‘On my own. I will make dung, then you will assist me with the suit and the airlock. I will not be outside for long.’

  They put Icebreaker into a free-fall cruise and followed Dakota to the main airlock, where she had first come aboard. Her suit was waiting there, partially dismantled – its hard, curving sections looked more like the pieces of a small white spacecraft than something meant to be worn. The parts clamped around her and locked together with airtight precision, first the two Easter-egg halves of the body, then the four limb sections, complexly jointed and accordioned, and finally the monstrous trunked helmet with its two blank circular portholes for eyes. There was something horrible about the lifelessness of that helmet, as if a second, exterior skull now enclosed the first. She flexed the trunk, experimenting with its dexterity, while the suit’s life-support system puffed and wheezed and ticked.

  Her voice, amplified and resonant, boomed through the suit’s speaking system. ‘The others remain here, Kanu, and they have their orders with regard to Zanzibar. You would not be so unwise as to forget that, would you?’

  ‘No, I think we understand the situation perfectly.’

  ‘That is good, because our conversation with Goma gave me some small grounds for concern. It will be good to know that I may put them to rest.’

  ‘How will you move outside?’ Nissa asked.

  ‘Let me worry about that. If you wish to witness, no harm will come of it.’

  She moved easily into the lock and the cycle was soon complete. Kanu had stopped the engines by then – it would make a small difference to their arrival at Poseidon, but nothing that would seriously complicate their plans – and Dakota was able to drift free of the ship without being left behind.

  It turned out that her suit, which they had not been able to inspect in detail, was fitted with a set of steering thrusters arranged for three axes of control. She looked perfectly at ease with this technology, directing it with a tap of her trunk against a control plate fixed between her shoulders. Kanu reminded himself that this extra-vehicular equipment must have been developed during that brief and hopeful period when humans and Tantors had coexisted within Zanzibar. The sense of squandered possibility, of better paths now lost to them all, filled him with a sudden rising sadness. He wondered if it was too late to make something better of their world.

  Dakota picked up speed. It was an exceedingly odd thing to see an elephant in a spacesuit. But to an elephant, a monkey in a suit must have looked no stranger, no more of an affront to the expected order of things. They were both mammals, both creatures who needed air in their lungs.

  She diminished, becoming a small white sphere with appendages, then a dot soon lost against the scale of the Watchkeeper. They tracked the electronic signature of her suit with Icebreaker’s instruments, and then quite suddenly she was moving in a way that could not be explained by the capabilities of her suit alone. She began to accelerate along the narrowing length of the alien machine, gathered in some net of invisible force, until at last her signature vanished into the tiny circular aperture at the Watchkeeper’s tip. Tiny only in the most relative of senses, of course – the proportions of things, even at the machine’s extremity, remained mountainous, and Dakota would have been swallowed into the Watchkeeper like a speck of plankton.

  As they carried on watching, the platelets – each of which was easily the size of a small land mass – began to close again, eventually shuttering the blue radiation.

  The better part of an hour passed.

  ‘Do you think she’d give the order?’ Nissa asked.

  ‘To murder the Friends?’ Kanu said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t want to find out the hard way what her limits are. It could be a bluff, but in Zanzibar I had the feeling she might go through with it. If they’ve already committed murder, which we as good as know they have, there’s no reason for them not to do it again.’

  She gave him a sidelong, questioning look. ‘Is that you speaking or Swift?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be me?’

  ‘Because you have every incentive to find a way to back out of this. I’m not sure Swift feels quite the same way.’

  ‘Swift won’t agree to anything that puts the Friends’ lives at risk.’

  ‘No – but if there was a chance to turn around, without risking the Friends, would Swift accept that?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Because Swift’s agenda and ours aren’t quite the same thing.’

  Swift had been silent until then, but this statement was enough to draw him to speak. ‘I do not believe our concerns are all that different, Nissa. Aren’t we all here to gather knowledge – to learn more than we already know?’

  ‘Some of us didn’t have a lot of choice about being here.’

  ‘There is truth in that, but you would not have gone to Europa were you not also in the business of seeking knowledge. Curiosity motivates us in different ways, I agree. Kanu has spent his life searching for answers to the oldest of questions: how may I live peacefully with my neighbour? On Earth, he worked to foster good relations between the distinct and troubled factions of modern humanity – between the folk of the land, the folk of the water, the folk of the air. On Mars, he quite literally gave his life for the betterment of human–machine affairs. But Kanu knew that a deeper solution to our differences required answers he could not hope to find within the old solar system. They drove him to travel here.’

  ‘Did they, Swift? Or did you drive Kanu because you needed a head to travel in?’

  ‘Please,’ Kanu said. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by this. I know why I’m here, and Swift is part of it but not the only reason. And this discussion changes nothing because we still have to think of the Friends. We can’t forget about them, and we can’t abandon Dakota inside the Watchkeeper and hope there’ll be no consequences. I’m sorry, but going through with her expedition is the only course open to us.’

  ‘Even if it kills us?’ Nissa asked.

  ‘Yes. Even if. Because what is the alternative? To take a gamble with thousands of human lives? I’m not suicidal – not any more. But I’d rather die than have their deaths on my conscience. Nothing’s worth that.’

  ‘She’s coming back,’ Swift said.

  They had a lock on her suit signature again and observed as it emerged from the narrowing waterspout-like proboscis at the very limit of the Watchkeeper’s shell, a seed spat out into vacuum. At first she moved with the same implausible speed and agility they had witnessed before, until the Watchkeeper surrendered her to the steering and propulsion of her own suit and she closed the distance back to Icebreaker. As she did so, the Watchkeeper turned on its axis and fell away at an unnerving acceleration.

 
Whatever business it had with them, it was clearly concluded – for now, at least.

  Kanu readied the lock and watched as Dakota slowed her approach before tucking herself back inside the ship. When the lock had begun to cycle, he returned the drive to power and resumed their earlier acceleration. Kanu and Nissa were at the lock when she emerged back into Icebreaker, and – with the aid of the other Risen – set about divesting herself of the suit. As they were removed from her, the pieces gave off a rank pungency. Kanu suspected that the inside of a human spacesuit would not smell all that appealing to an elephant.

  ‘Are we back on course?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘We didn’t lose too much time – certainly not enough to help Goma. What happened to you inside the Watchkeeper?’

  ‘The continuation of a process. The continued revelation of that which demands to be revealed. Beyond that, I do not think any answer would satisfy you.’

  ‘You could try,’ Nissa said.

  ‘Then I shall. Such doubts as I had have now been set aside. I feel emboldened – confident that this is the right course. The machines have eased my misgivings and reaffirmed my absolute conviction to the cause of knowledge-gathering. Has there been contact from the other ship?’

  ‘Not since we spoke to them,’ Kanu said.

  ‘Then you will prepare a transmission. I have no wish to stir up trouble with these people, but they must be made to understand the utter inflexibility of our position. Tell them to turn around. If they go back to Orison, there will be no more difficulties between us and we may yet find common ground. But they must come no closer to Poseidon.’

  ‘We’ve tried persuading them already,’ Nissa said. ‘Look where it got us.’

  ‘Words alone will not change their minds.’

  Kanu hardly dared ask. ‘So what now?’

  ‘Tell them about the Friends. If Eunice is who she claims to be, she will validate the fact of the Friends’ existence. She will also convince the others that I am fully capable of destroying each and every human life in the skipover vaults. Tell them that, Kanu. Tell them and make them turn around. We will be watching and waiting.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Aboard Mposi they had seen the pause in the other ship’s progress and the temporary quenching of its Chibesa signature. At first they drew some encouragement from that, hoping that it might signal a change of heart on Dakota’s behalf – perhaps even a technical fault that would force her to abandon the mission. But closer examination showed the presence of a Watchkeeper, a dark-shuttered lantern a thousand times larger than Kanu’s tiny spacecraft. They watched it shark in close and stop with an insolent suddenness. It held station for an hour or two, then veered off at high acceleration. Not long after the Watchkeeper departed, the Chibesa signature resumed.

  They had lost a little time, but nothing that made any difference in the larger scheme.

  ‘Eunice?’ Vasin asked, as if she had all the answers.

  But Eunice had nothing to offer. ‘You know as much as I do. If the Watchkeepers didn’t think that expedition of hers was a good idea, they’d have stomped down on it.’

  Soon there was an incoming transmission from Kanu.

  They crowded around to watch it, letting it play without interruption. Now that she had spent time in the man’s presence, Goma felt she had some measure of Kanu as an individual – some sense of when he was speaking frankly, and when he was being held back from absolute candour.

  Now she had no doubt that he was speaking freely.

  They were to turn around, Kanu said. They were to turn around and restore full power to Zanzibar, and if they did not do so there would be immediate and irrevocable consequences.

  ‘She has no weapon that can touch you,’ Kanu explained, ‘just as you have no real weapon that can hurt her – and no, the mirrors don’t count. But ask Eunice about the Friends, about the survivors in the skipover vaults. Dakota has already convinced us that she’ll harm the Friends if we don’t cooperate with her, and that’s argument enough for me. Now she’s extending the same terms of engagement to you. If you don’t turn around, the Friends will die.’

  The distance between Mposi and Icebreaker – they now knew the name of Kanu’s ship – had closed to less than one light-minute now. On that basis, Kanu demanded a response to his request within three clock minutes. Both ships were fully capable of tracking the other’s movements and exhaust energies – there was no possibility of subterfuge.

  ‘Sounds like brinkmanship to me,’ Vasin said.

  ‘Whatever it sounds like,’ Eunice replied, ‘he’s telling the truth about the sleepers in the skipover vaults. They exist.’

  ‘You mean,’ Ru said, ‘they existed the last time you had any hard evidence.’

  Eunice gave a gracious nod. ‘That’s true, and I can’t prove that the Friends are still on Zanzibar. But they were always a potentially useful resource to her, even if only as a human shield. Provided she had the power to keep them viable, I think she’d have done so. Besides, there is another reason to believe they’re still alive.’

  Ru folded her arms. ‘Which would be?’

  ‘Atonement. A great crime took place aboard Zanzibar. Don’t think that hasn’t left its mark on Dakota – there’s a part of her that still feels, still suffers remorse.’

  ‘You’re that good a judge of her character, after all this time?’ Vasin asked.

  ‘I know elephants. The past isn’t the past to them.’

  ‘Then she’s kept the Friends alive out of a sense of guilt, is that what you’re saying?’ asked Goma.

  ‘Not guilt, precisely, more out of a deep desire to undo what was already done – to balance out a wrongness with a greater good. But that doesn’t mean she won’t harm the Friends if she feels there’s no other alternative.’

  ‘How might she do it?’ Vasin asked.

  ‘A hundred ways. The simplest? Turn off their power. Left to warm too quickly, they’ll come back to us as so much neural porridge. Trust me. I’ve had some experience with this.’

  ‘You were warmed too quickly,’ Goma said, remembering one thread of Eunice’s ancient history. ‘But they found your body in time to recover some patterns from your head.’

  ‘They may as well have read chai-leaves. I don’t think Chiku brought back anywhere near as much of me as she imagined. But she meant well by it. It encouraged me to be more than I was.’

  ‘So where does this leave us?’ asked Vasin.

  ‘Your choice, Captain,’ Eunice said. ‘Take Kanu at his word and turn around or press ahead if you think this really is brinkmanship.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever been one for turning.’

  If there was an argument to be mustered against Vasin, Goma was not going to be the one who took a stand. She could see the case for turning around – that to press on further was to risk retaliatory action against the Friends. But equally they had come this far with the intention of dissuading Dakota, not of giving in at the first setback.

  She felt uneasy about it – as if she was allowing herself to be swept along by a rising tide of belligerence. But abandoning the pursuit felt no more desirable.

  ‘I meant to salute your courage,’ Grave said, during a quiet moment while they were waiting to see how Dakota would respond to their refusal to turn back. ‘After what happened to Mposi, it was not an easy thing to submit to the nanomachinery.’

  Goma thought back to the horror of that moment, the imminent terror of drowning, the cool, calm force of Eunice restraining her under the surface of that lung-filling fluid.

  Goma dredged up some false bravado. ‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’

  ‘It’s what you feared beforehand that matters. I can’t say I knew him as well as you did, but I believe he would have been suitably proud. I just wish your negot
iations had brought us to a more positive state of affairs.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Our captain appears to be moving towards an acceptance of force as the only solution.’

  Goma answered wearily, ‘If you have a better idea, please raise it. We’ve argued with them and reasoned with them. It’s made no difference.’

  ‘Mposi would not have been so defeatist.’

  ‘You’re right – you didn’t know him as well as I did.’

  ‘I just think we’re rushing into something we will not be able to undo. Gandhari will try to use the mirrors in an offensive capacity; Dakota will deliver on her promise to harm the Friends. And what will have been gained by either party except a deepening of our estrangement?’

  ‘I get all that, Peter. I just don’t see an alternative.’

  ‘We could have demonstrated our good intentions by backing off.’

  ‘And allowed Dakota a free run at Poseidon?’

  ‘An even freer run,’ Grave corrected, without any censure. ‘In one sense, our chase is completely futile. She will get there ahead of us no matter what we do, so what is to be gained by pursuing this course of action?’

  ‘We can’t just let her do what she wants.’

  ‘But since we cannot prevent her, what are we hoping to achieve? A show of defiance?’

  ‘Anything could happen once they approach those moons. They’ll need to slow down drastically. If they run into trouble or have a malfunction, the tables might be turned.’

  He smiled. ‘Might.’

  ‘It’s all we’ve got, Peter. You have your faith, and this is mine – that a long shot is better than no shot at all. And you forget, Dakota is a Tantor – no matter what she thinks of herself, what she’s become, that makes her something marvellous to me. I want to know her mind. I want to protect it like a jewel. Nothing so precious should ever fade from the universe again.’

  ‘From what I’ve seen, she looks like a monster to me.’

  ‘Even monsters are beautiful,’ Goma said.