Poseidon's Wake (50 page)

Now came the hard part. She dropped her head below the level of the medium, feeling it slither over her chin, nose, eyes and forehead. She blinked as she descended, but once submerged she forced her eyes open. She felt an odd slithering coldness around her eyeballs, then nothing. She could still see, albeit through the golden tint of the medium. Her ears made a gurgling rush. Then a roaring silence.

She opened her mouth.

It was in her, and for an instant she thought she could bear it. But two terrors hit simultaneously. The first was that she was drowning, and the reflex to fight against this was as strong as any she had known. The second was that Mposi was in her mouth, in her windpipe, in her lungs – and the horror of this, the need to gag away the traces of him, was as fierce as the need to breathe.

Goma convulsed. This was not the dignified twitch Eunice had given but a full-body spasm, and she had no conscious desire other than to be out of the medium, back into air. She knew she did not have the strength in her to overcome this, not now, not ever. She had made an awful mistake – banked on a courage she did not possess. She flailed, reaching for a solid surface, a means to push herself from the well.

Eunice took her arm. There was a vicelike strength in her grip. She was holding her down, preventing her from surfacing.

Until Goma could hold her breath no longer.

CHAPTER FORTY

By the time the women joined him, Kanu had fashioned the parameters of their meeting place. He had needed a lot of help from Swift for that. There was information in his memories and data in
Icebreaker
’s files, but stitching the two together, forging a place that was simultaneously familiar, neutral and aesthetically satisfying to all parties including the elephants, and doing it in much less than a lifetime, would have been quite beyond his abilities.

He drew on the Akinya household as his template. Swift had direct knowledge of the replica of the building on
Zanzibar
, and Kanu also carried his own experiences of the real structure, albeit in the faded decay of its later years. From these threads, Swift concocted a three-dimensional environment, programming it directly into
Icebreaker
with all the embellishments necessary for the time-honoured protocols of ching. He did all this right under Dakota’s nose, puppeteering Kanu – letting her think Kanu was the true architect.

The result was limited in its scope, spartan in its details, and its solid facades hinted at depths it did not contain. It had the shimmering, dreamlike quality of a fondly remembered place rather than an actual location, with dirt and dust and cracks.

It would have to suffice.

Kanu and Nissa both possessed legacy neuromachinery, which Swift was already using to speak to both of them. Dakota was slightly more problematic. The Tantor had no implants, but thankfully her external prosthetic communication aids were easily adapted to meet the needs of the exchange. Her human voice had always been machine-generated, so it was an easy matter to add earphones and goggles to allow her to participate in the environment.

Now Kanu, Nissa and Dakota awaited their guests. They were sitting within the enclosure of the household’s A-shaped geometry, in the triangular courtyard framed by the two main wings and the connecting bar between them. Within the courtyard lay a pond, some fountains, a series of layered terraces, a handful of marble statues. There were small trees and bushes, and the sky above them was the cloudless pink of late afternoon. The two humans sat on stone chairs positioned around a low stone table. The Tantor rested her haunches on a stone pedestal, tail draping the ground, a repose of perfect scholarly contentment.

‘They’re late,’ said the elephant.

‘They warned us there might be technical difficulties,’ Nissa said.

‘We shan’t wait much longer. I already warned you that I have no interest in negotiation.’

‘And I made sure to tell them,’ Kanu said. ‘But it’s also in your interests to convince them to leave us alone. You don’t want a confrontation if you can avoid it, do you?’

‘There would be no confrontation – only the nuisance value of them being close behind us.’ Dakota swivelled her huge tank-turret of a head. In this environment, she carried no prosthetic enhancements and her speaking voice appeared to emanate from her mouth rather than a piece of machinery fixed between her eyes. ‘You did well with this, Kanu – especially given the limited time you had at your disposal. I remember the household well enough to vouch for its accuracy.’

‘It’s a combination of the one aboard
Zanzibar
and my memories of the one on Earth.’

‘I’m still impressed that you were able to construct this environment as quickly as you did. Are you surprised, Nissa?’

‘It takes a lot to surprise me these days.’

Dakota signalled her agreement, head descending like the nodding counterweight of some huge steam-driven pump. ‘I never doubted your capabilities, Kanu, after all that you have done for me, but this is still a formidable achievement.’

‘Well, I’ve had practice. On Mars we often spent our downtime playing with virtual spaces. The ambassadors were all old enough to carry the requisite neural technology.’

Swift bent over to whisper in Kanu’s ear. ‘Incoming packets – clean and ching-compliant. Best not to answer me – it’s safe for me to talk to you, but this environment is so merrily slapdash I can’t swear that your subvocal intentions won’t be picked up.’

‘Here they are,’ Nissa said, shooting a glare at Swift, who did the decent thing and returned to being one of the statues.

The two women appeared out of thin air on the lowest part of the terrace. One was small, the other not much taller. For a second or two they looked thoroughly unsettled, like two fish that had fallen out of the sky. The smaller of the two was Eunice, Kanu decided instantly – he would have recognised her from Sunday’s emulation were her face not already known to him from a thousand historical records. The other woman he now knew to be Goma – Mposi’s niece. Mposi was his one-third-brother, so what did that make Goma? His one-third-niece-once-removed? Or did the common language of family ties simply collapse in the face of Akinya profligacy?

Both were thin, hair cut short, their clothing modest but casual – black or ash-grey trousers, loosely belted slash-necked tunics, low-heeled slip-on shoes. Neither wore conspicuous ornamentation or jewellery, although he noticed a ring on the younger woman’s fingers.

He raised a hand in greeting. ‘Welcome aboard
Icebreaker
. A few words of explanation before we go on – this environment will do its best to eliminate time lag by anticipating our responses and stalling our conscious processes while signals pass between our two vehicles. But the less strain we place on it, the easier it will be for Dakota – she’ll be experiencing everything in strict real-time. I suggest we consider our interruptions very carefully and try to speak as clearly and unambiguously as we can?’

‘We’ll do our best,’ Eunice said. She nodded at the other woman and they made their way up the terrace steps to the area where their hosts were already seated. Eunice and Goma took their places on the other side of the low stone table. Both of them sat with their backs straight, heads held high.

‘You have to stop what you’re doing,’ Goma said.

Kanu smiled, charmed by her bluntness. It cut across a life’s worth of diplomatic training to state her position so nakedly, so early in the process. He continued smiling, assuming there would be some elaboration.

But after a few moments’ silence, he concluded she had said all she meant to say.

‘Goma is correct,’ Eunice said, patting the other woman’s knee by way of mutual support. ‘You’re on the wrong course, Dakota – and you, Kanu, have been very unwise to get yourself tangled up in her plans. Who are
you
, by the way?’ She was looking at Nissa now. ‘I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.’

‘Nissa Mbaye. I was married to Kanu, once upon a time. Things happened to us and now we’re here. But you’re wrong about us. Or rather, if anyone’s to blame for this, it’s you. We came in response to your message – your summons. And if you’d warned us in time, we wouldn’t have run into trouble around Poseidon.’

‘Trouble you are about to repeat,’ Goma said.

‘We’re better equipped this time,’ Kanu answered. ‘It wasn’t Poseidon that damaged us, it was the remains of a Watchkeeper. All we have to do is steer clear of their corpses and it won’t happen again.’

‘I admire an optimist,’ Eunice said. ‘My guess, though, is that you haven’t been properly informed about the stakes. Dakota and I both know what’s involved, don’t we? We both experienced the Terror.’

‘A deterrent,’ Dakota said. ‘A keep-out sign, nothing more. But if we heeded all the keep-out signs, where would we be?’

‘Safe,’ Goma said.

‘Tell that to your ancestor. She never did a safe thing in her life. How are you, by the way, Eunice? You look well, rested. Orison has been kind to you. I knew I did the right thing by not killing you.’

‘I might be about to change your mind on that one.’

‘Well, we do have some bridges to build, do we not? I presume you supplied the technical expertise to gain control of my mirrors, for the little good it did you? But, Goma – I’m equally intrigued by what you said. You mentioned Tantors to Kanu. We call ourselves the Risen, but I shan’t split hairs over a matter of definition. Have you met my kind before?’

‘I met Sadalmelik, Achernar and the others on Orison. But none of them was like you.’

‘You find me distinct?’

‘You’re smarter. There’s no point in denying it. Or perhaps you’re more like us. Either way, you’re something new.’ Goma held up a hand before Dakota could interject – she was not done. ‘But not in a good way. My mother knew you on Crucible and you were not like this.’

‘You fear me because I am something outside your immediate experience? Because I have dared to escape from your control – to achieve true autonomy?’

‘That would be wonderful if you’d done it on your own. But whatever you’ve become, it’s because the Watchkeepers want you this way. You’re not their slave, you’re not even their puppet – even I can tell that you have some sort of free will. But they’ve seeded a very bad idea in you, and you’re so close to it you can’t see how bad it really is.’

‘You would frame mere curiosity as an unhealthy, even dangerous impulse?’

‘The point here isn’t for you to talk us out of anything,’ Kanu told the visitors. ‘Our mission is fixed – we cannot and will not abandon it. But you can spare yourselves pointless aggravation and risk by turning away from your interception course. You will not catch us – we both have a good grasp of our mutual capabilities – so why waste time going through the motions? There’s far too much at stake. Back off, continue your remote investigations, restore external power to
Zanzibar
and let us conduct our exploration of Poseidon. Later, we can discuss terms for cooperative exploration of the whole system – but only after we’ve returned from Poseidon.’

‘Something’s really put a bee in your bonnet, hasn’t it?’ said Eunice.

‘He’s being coerced,’ Goma said. ‘We guessed as much. Why don’t you just admit it, Kanu? And you, Nissa – what have you got to lose?’

‘There is no coercion,’ Kanu stated.

‘In your earlier message to us,’ Goma said, ‘you warned us that lives are at stake. You said you have “no choice” but to comply.’

‘Your lives will be at stake if you place yourselves at risk of collision, or stray too close to Poseidon without a proper understanding of the consequences,’ Kanu answered.

‘That’s not what you meant,’ Eunice said.

‘There is no point in debating this further,’ Dakota said. ‘Our objective is simple: scientific truth-gathering. If it takes a human
–
Risen cooperative expedition to unlock some of the secrets of the M-builders, so be it. We can’t spend the rest of history failing to understand the Mandalas and what they meant to their makers. We’ve both been through the Terror, Eunice and I – both of us sensed larger truths, almost glimpsed, leaking through into the prison of animal consciousnesses. The collapse of the vacuum? The fluctuation that ends everything, that negates every act, every thought? How can we bear
not
to know how the M-builders addressed that truth? Besides, we may also learn something of the Watchkeepers – and hopefully find out what they want of us.’

‘No one disputes any of that,’ Goma said. ‘We’re all here because of the quest for deeper understanding. But rushing into it is as bad as burying your head in the sand. We’ve barely begun to map this system, let alone poke our noses into it deepest secrets.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Dakota said. ‘Some of us have been here for centuries.’

‘So have I,’ Eunice said, ‘and I’m still inclined to be cautious. We could easily spend another century here, gathering information, before attempting close exploration of Poseidon.’

‘And be no more confident of success after all that time,’ the Tantor said.

Eunice leaned forward. ‘You sound very confident of your position, Dakota. I’m pleased. Confidence is a marker for intelligence – it shows that you have sufficient self-awareness to model the parameters of your environment. But it’s also a hazard. There’s far too much that we don’t know about our surroundings.’ Her eyes narrowed to a sharp, inquisitorial focus. ‘The variations in the second Mandala – have you been studying them?’

‘I could hardly be unaware of them, Eunice.’

‘Your interpretation, then?’

‘The changes were precipitated by the arrival of
Zanzibar
. Beyond that, we have no basis for further speculation.’

‘I do,’ Eunice said.

‘Anyone could make such a claim,’ Dakota answered.

Kanu nodded. ‘You’ll have to give us more than that, Eunice.’

‘I shall. The way I was left on Orison made it very difficult for me to conduct long-range studies of anything, let alone the Mandala on Paladin. But Goma’s ship –
Travertine
– has the sensor capability I lacked. They’ve been tracking the Mandala variations since their arrival. The exact meaning of the individual states isn’t clear to us – yet – but at least we understand the timing of the variations. Mandala is an eye, sweeping across the heavens. Once in a while, its gaze chances upon another star.’

‘Mandala is at a fixed latitude,’ Dakota said, ‘and Paladin’s angular tilt only changes on timescales of tens of thousands of years. At best, this eye can only ever sweep a narrow track.’

‘That’s true, to a point. But the state changes appear to be related to an alteration in the direction of the eye’s gaze. It’s like a radio telescope built into the bowl of a valley. You can’t move the primary mirror, but you can adjust the position of the antenna. We think that’s how the Mandala works. It can sweep a broader swathe of sky, direct its gaze onto objects that aren’t along its precise line of sight.’

‘That’s supposition,’ Dakota said.

‘I had two of
Travertine
’s technical experts take a close look at the timing of the state changes and their corresponding angular projection onto the sky. Within a fixed error margin, the focus is always another star of a broadly similar spectral type to Gliese 163, within a distance of a few hundred light-years.’

‘What does that prove?’ Nissa asked. ‘Look hard enough, you’ll find any alignment you want. It’s like drawing lines between pyramids.’