Poseidon's Wake

by Alastair Reynolds

  The spray of gas ceased. Nothing was coming out of her suit, nothing coming out of the pack.

  Eunice was still responsive – there was still air in the suit and her helmet space, and her communications channel functioned independently of primary suit power.

  ‘Good. You’re doing well – both of you. Now attach it to Ru’s suit. Quicker the better.’

  Swift made Kanu move towards the other suited form. But between one moment and the next, Swift’s control over him was gone.

  ‘You should do this, my friend.’

  ‘And if I try to put the pack back on Eunice?’

  ‘We’ll both fight you. Save Ru, Kanu. Her life’s in your hands now.’

  He knew, with a vast and crushing inevitability, that there was only one course of action open to him now. He locked the undamaged chest pack into place on Ru’s suit. Eunice knelt down next to him and between them they opened all the necessary connectors.

  For a few seconds there was no change in her suit. Then status lights flickered on her wrists and on the pack itself. The suit appeared to puff out slightly, stiffening her form.

  ‘She’s back on full pressure,’ Eunice said. ‘We’ll dial it up a little. Same with the power. Must be chilled to the bone in there.’ Eunice adjusted Ru’s life-support settings using both the chest-pack controls and the wrist functions, and then stood with a grunt of effort. ‘That’ll do. After thirty minutes, return to the default settings – use these controls.’

  Kanu studied Ru’s unconscious face through her visor. There was no change as yet, but a drastic alteration was unlikely. He had to trust that they had helped her in time.

  ‘How do you think she’ll do?’ Kanu asked.

  ‘Lap of the gods. Goma mentioned something to me – a condition Ru has, due to oxygen poisoning – which may or may not complicate things. But we’ve done what we can.’ Eunice, he noticed, was drawing a heavier than usual breath between her utterances. ‘She looked strong to me. I liked her.’

  ‘You’d have done this for any one of us.’

  ‘Perhaps. But at least with Ru I had an account to settle. You’ll take care of her until you reach the ship, Kanu? Soon you’re going to be the only one of us standing.’

  ‘There must be something I can do for you. The oxygen supplies – can’t we plumb them in directly?’

  ‘You find me a tool shop, I’ll make the necessary alterations.’

  ‘I wish . . .’

  She was still standing, but the effort – especially in Poseidon’s gravity – must have been taking its toll and her knees began to buckle. She allowed herself to rest a hand on Kanu’s shoulder. ‘You wish things were different from the way they are. That’s a refrain as old as time. I’ve lived a long and strange sort of life, Kanu, and I’ve known that feeling a few times. Generally it’s best to accept that things are exactly as bad as they look. At least that way you know it’s time to start digging your way out.’ She coughed, and when her voice returned it was weaker than before. ‘But no digging now. Not for me, anyway. And you know what? This hasn’t been too bad. I got to be human again. I got to be alive, with a head full of memories that felt as if they belonged to me.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘Once or twice. Enough to make the whole thing worthwhile.’ She staggered, caught herself. ‘Oh. I think I need to sit down now. Help me to the ledge. I’ll dangle my feet over the edge.’

  ‘I don’t want you falling.’

  ‘I’ve no plans to. I just want to see the sunrise.’

  It was still dark. At the rate her suit systems were failing, there would be no sunrise for Eunice Akinya. But he could not deny her last request. Kanu guided her to the ledge, took her arm as she sat down on the lip.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, after a silence. ‘They’ll want to take me back to Earth, back to Africa. They can have part of me, I suppose. But the rest belongs on Orison, with the Risen.’

  ‘I’ll make sure that happens.’

  Kanu became aware of a presence looming behind him. He glanced around, expecting it to be Swift. But it was Ru, bracing her hands against her knees but otherwise standing.

  ‘I blacked out,’ she said. ‘Something wrong with my suit after all, I guess. But I feel fine now. What’s up with her?’

  ‘Look at your chest pack,’ Kanu said quietly.

  Ru must not have noticed until that moment. She stroked a hand along the clean surface of the unbuckled, undamaged device. ‘Wait . . .’ she began. And then her gaze must have fallen upon the broken unit, still lying on the floor where they had left it.

  ‘Its hers, the one you’re wearing,’ Kanu said. ‘She wanted you to have it.’

  ‘What about Eunice?’

  ‘I think we should sit with her,’ he said. ‘Just for a while.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  The wheel turned. Mposi orbited. The hours passed like lazy summers. There had been some sort of breakdown in communications between the ship and the party in the groove. It went on for an hour, with no one answering the transmissions from the ship; Goma was certain it meant the worst. She had thought of asking Vasin to take the ship down immediately, she did not mind abasing herself by begging, not when other lives were at stake.

  But eventually there was a crackle, a voice she had no trouble recognising.

  ‘It’s Ru.’

  Goma took the call. ‘We were starting to worry about you. Is everything all right down there?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. I had a problem with my suit, but it’s fixed now and I didn’t suffer any harm.’

  She sounded defeated rather than ecstatic, but also alert and satisfactorily aware of her immediate situation.

  ‘What about Hector?’

  ‘Hector’s all right. No cause for alarm. We’ve been checking on his suit status periodically – he’s warm and breathing. I can’t say we’ve had any deep and meaningful conversations, but there’ll be time enough for that later. Are you ready for him?’

  ‘Gandhari says she can bring the primary lock into play for long enough to load him. What about Kanu and Eunice?’

  There was a silence before Ru answered.

  ‘Kanu’s good. Eunice is dead.’

  Goma’s first instict was to respond with a flat denial, as if this could not be possible under any set of circumstances.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s true. My suit went wrong, the damage was worse than we thought and I blacked out. When I came around, Kanu and Eunice had swapped the good part of her suit onto mine. She was already gone, Goma.’

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait for the wheel to turn. When the groove was approaching forty kilometres from the surface, Vasin once again summoned the nerve to take Mposi down, landing on the same level as Kanu and Ru but a few dozen metres to one side. It was still much too close for comfort, but the shorter the distance they had to move Hector, the better.

  Goma, somewhat rested by then – but still having to argue her case with Dr Andisa – was finally allowed to go out in one of the suits. Grave and Loring were dealing with Hector, coaxing him back to sufficient wakefulness to be able to assist with getting himself into the primary lock, access to which involved holding Mposi in an even more precarious position than before.

  Goma had expected Ru to be up on her feet, wanting to be the first aboard off that cold and narrow shelf. But she was sitting on the groove’s edge, her feet dangling over the side, next to Eunice. On the other side of Ru was Kanu. They were both still wearing their helmets, but Eunice’s had been removed and now sat behind her, her head fully exposed to the vacuum. Goma moved to her side, standing perilously close to the edge herself. Ru and Kanu were also the only ones wearing chest packs.

  Viewed from the side, Eunice’s posture was one of acceptance, even tranqu
illity. Her gloved hands rested in her lap, shoulders relaxed, head lolling only slightly down towards her chest within the open neck ring. From a distance, she might have been taking a snooze, or lost in reflective meditation. Goma sat down next to Ru.

  ‘Do they need help with Hector?’

  ‘No,’ Goma said, swallowing hard before continuing. ‘I think they’ve got that covered. But we can’t hold station here for very long. Vasin wants to be up and off the groove as quickly as possible. It’s not safe.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ But there was no malice in Ru’s remark, just a quiet exhaustion. ‘I hated her, you know.’

  ‘You had grounds to.’

  ‘And yet she did this. She could have lived, but she gave herself up for me instead. Was it on her mind all the time? Is that why she was so keen to stay down here with me?’

  ‘No one could have been that calculating.’

  ‘Except her.’

  ‘Not even Eunice,’ Goma said. She began to push herself up from the ledge, thinking how easy it would be to make a mistake, even now. ‘Ru, Kanu – we have to go.’

  ‘I’m staying with her.’ Before Goma could say a word, Ru went on, ‘Kanu should leave, definitely. He needs to get back to Nissa. But my suit is good. I only need to ride the rest of the way to the top of the wheel.’

  ‘We could move her now.’

  ‘She’s frozen. We’d break her like an ice sculpture.’

  ‘We can’t leave her here, Ru.’

  ‘I’m not saying we should. But there’ll be another sunrise before we reach the top of the wheel. I want her to see the sun one more time.’

  ‘You’re set on this.’

  ‘Yes, and if you know me as well as you should by now, you won’t try to argue me out of it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Goma stood up anyway. ‘Kanu – are you ready to go? Your suit doesn’t have anything like the life-support capacity of Ru’s.’

  ‘You’re leaving them here?’ he asked, rising carefully from the ledge.

  ‘No, I’m just going to explain the situation to the others. I think it’ll be easier face to face. Then I’ll be back. I’ll see out that sunrise, too. Vasin can damn well come and fetch us later.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Ru said.

  ‘Neither of us has to,’ Goma said, ‘but we’re doing it anyway. It’s the least I owe her. She’s brought you home to me.’

  On the way out from Poseidon, Mposi slid beyond the bracelet of moons and then through the drifting corpses of the Watchkeepers, the freshest of their cruelly transected bodies still glowing along the geometric planes where they had been severed, a testament to killing energies both invisible and incomprehensible. The older corpses, those that had been littering Poseidon space for millennia, were as dark as coal – mute and mindless witnesses to this latest bout of machine carnage. No part of that alien defence system touched little Mposi, with its cargo of humans – one comatose, another a frozen corpse – and one elephant. But as soon as it was clear of the rebuked and punished Watchkeepers, the moons fell out of their single orbit and reconstituted the daunting thresh of their original configuration.

  Something had been open to them; now – for the time being, anyway – it was closed again.

  At a safe distance, Mposi made rendezvous with the larger Travertine. The lander docked; all was chaos for at least thirty minutes as medical personnel and equipment moved between the two ships. Goma kept well clear of the lock, remaining aboard Mposi with Ru until the worst of the rush was over. Eventually they were under way again, making the return crossing to Orison. By then Ru and Goma were in their room, holding each other until sleep came to mend the edges of their tiredness. Goma kept seeing Eunice, her face to the warming sun – the ice crystals turning to water drops, her eyes wide and receptive, that golden light flowing along her optic nerves like molten metal, coursing through the cold runnels of her brain, lava flowing down an ever-dividing network of channels, bringing her back to life.

  ‘Bury me with the Risen,’ she had said. ‘But take my heart back to Earth.’

  When they woke, late the next morning by the ship’s onboard clock, there were two kinds of news. The first was that a Watchkeeper – one that had not tested itself against Poseidon – was following Travertine. The alien machine was maintaining its distance for now, neither approaching nor receding, and its intentions could not be guessed at.

  Vasin said they would hold their course. If the Watchkeeper had other plans for them, so be it.

  Meanwhile, Nissa Mbaye died.

  All credit to Dr Andisa’s small surgical staff – they had done everything they could, and at times had even appeared to be on the cusp of bringing Nissa back. Indeed, she seemed to be fighting for life with great vigour. Although she was in a medically induced coma, her neural activity was much more extensive that Andisa would have normally expected, and in areas of the brain that – given her clinical state and the damage she had sustained – ought not to have been active.

  ‘Something’s going on in there,’ she told Goma.

  It had given them temporary hope, but all efforts to expand that trace of borderline activity into something more coherent, more sustained, were soon undermined. Nissa was fading. Whatever they had seen was the last flowering, not a return to life.

  Captain Vasin gave the order for Nissa to be placed into immediate skipover.

  ‘Our medicine can’t save her, but we won’t give up on her this easily, Kanu. For better or for worse, a lot will have happened by the time we return home – wherever home might be. There may be a chance for her then.’

  ‘It won’t help,’ Kanu said.

  ‘Nor will defeatism. It costs us nothing to bring her back. Don’t fight me on this one, Mr Akinya – you won’t get very far.’

  A few hours later, Goma found Kanu alone. She had not spoken to him since Nissa’s death.

  ‘I’m sorry. I hoped we’d brought her up in time.’

  Kanu’s face was impassive, holding back a freight of emotions she could barely guess at. But then, they had both suffered losses on the wheel.

  ‘You did all you could, Goma. If anyone’s to blame, it was me. Nissa was only ever meant to help me to get to Europa. Everything after that . . . it was all an accident.’

  ‘Don’t cut yourself up about it too much. She met the Risen, Kanu. She walked in Zanzibar. None of the rest of us got to experience that. When I spoke to Nissa on Icebreaker, she didn’t sound like someone being tugged along against her will. She appeared to be magnificently in control. I liked her. I admired her. I wanted to spend more time in her company.’

  ‘She’d come to an accommodation with it all by then, accepted what had happened.’

  ‘Then you need to do the same. Blame anyone but yourself. Blame Swift, blame Eunice, blame the Watchkeepers. Blame me, if it helps. But you’re not at fault.’

  ‘I can’t blame Swift. Ours was a joint enterprise.’

  ‘Begun for the best of reasons.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s no excuse.’

  ‘It’s enough for me. I risked my neck to bring you up, Kanu – don’t punish me by taking all this on yourself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Anyway, we’ve both lost Eunice, although you knew her better than I did. You have my sympathies. How are you feeling?’

  ‘She wasn’t my mother, she wasn’t Mposi, she wasn’t Ru. We only spent a few days together, all told.’

  ‘But against those few days, you’re aware of the entire span of her life. You may not have known her personally until recently, but you’ve known about her for your entire existence. We all have.’

  ‘Eunice died,’ Goma said, firmly. ‘That’s what we’ve always been told. In deep space, on her own. Whatever she was . . . whoever she was . . . it’s not so simple as we’d wish. She wasn’t Eunice. She didn’t even cla
im to be – she knew exactly what she was, where she had come from. She even told us she’d been a robot! But the robot became flesh, and the flesh carried memories that felt real to her. Who are we to deny that? And now there’s a body to bury and a heart to take back to Africa.’

  ‘Then for the sake of argument – for the sake of decency – perhaps it would do no harm in the grand scheme of things if you continue to think of her as Eunice. A branch of her, a wing. Mansions have wings – why not people? Mposi and I were brothers, but we had different mothers. These aren’t simple times for any of us, Goma. But we muddle through. We make things up and hope those constructs serve us. Occasionally, we don’t fail as badly as we might have.’

  ‘That’s meant as encouragement?’

  ‘It’s the best I can manage.’

  They spoke of the Terror and of the wheel. Goma had not experienced the Terror and could only imagine the depths of insight Kanu had endured as his ship passed through the chasing moon. Equally, Kanu had not been privy to Eunice’s ruminations on the deeper meaning of the grooves, or how they constituted an instruction set for altering the base level of reality.

  Goma recounted Eunice’s ideas as best she could. Kanu listened with interest and the occasional wry smile, Goma hoping that the topic was sufficiently diverting to push his grief to one side, at least while they talked.

  ‘So we’re left with a question,’ she said. ‘Did they do it, or did they fail?’

  ‘Could we ever know?’

  ‘The universe hasn’t suffered a vacuum transition. If it had, we wouldn’t be around to debate it.’

  ‘On the other hand, it might be about to do so and we wouldn’t have so much as an inkling of it. Or it could soldier on for unguessable aeons, always on the verge of collapse but never quite getting there. There’s room for a little history, I think.’

  ‘The Watchkeepers were denied access to the wheel,’ Goma said, ‘but we were allowed to interact with it. On some level, the M-builders must trust us with the knowledge. Does that mean we should try reaching them?’