On the Steel Breeze

by Alastair Reynolds

  But Chiku at least had detected no obvious signs of error. The memories went back to Chiku Green’s meeting with Representative Endozo aboard the holoship Malabar the day Kappa exploded, and not much further. When she packaged the memories for transmission back to Earth, she had only sent Chiku Yellow a sliver of her life. The rest, everything that had happened since Pemba, was merely implicit. A good wife, a good husband, two good children and a position of responsibility in the Legislative Assembly. What more could she have wanted?

  Odd now to think of herself for a moment not as Chiku but as Chiku Yellow, as if in some sense she was standing outside her own body, observing. It had been like this during the early years of their triplication, but she had forgotten that peculiar sense of non-localisation – as if her sense of self belonged not in any one particular body but in the shifting, unstable centre of gravity located between them.

  Yet there was a quality, the most delicate chromatic tinting, the most subtle modulation of timbre or microscopically altered angle of reflection, which denoted that these memories of Zanzibar were new experiences, things that had happened to this other version of her. This was some clever thing done to her hippocampus, to enable her to organise and orientate the two experience streams. Without that, it would have been too confusing for words.

  So she knew who she was, and what had happened to her, in both streams. Holding the shifted timeframes in her mind was more difficult. These were not fresh memories. They felt new, but they had been on their way back from Zanzibar for seventeen years.

  Here, now, on Earth, the year was 2365. The memory package had been on its way since 2348 – time enough for it to hopscotch back home and then circle the world for months, waiting to be opened. These events, these things that had happened to Chiku Green, lay just as far back in Chiku Yellow’s past. Ndege and Mposi were older now, and would be older still by the time any response made its way to Zanzibar. It would be more like forty years before her counterpart received a reply.

  How was a person supposed to deal with this?

  Chiku wondered what her counterpart could possibly have expected of her. Was she really out there, prepared to wait forty years for an answer? Could anything matter that much?

  A shaft leading underground. The brilliance of a blue sky, etched away in geometric patches. The stomp and snort of Tantors, the subsonic throb of a musth rumble. The voice of Dreadnought, booming out like a biblical proclamation. A woman who looked like her great-grandmother, sitting on the wheel of an aircraft. A name – Arachne – that might mean nothing at all.

  Another, June Wing, which certainly meant something.

  And the merfolk, here and now, expecting her to do them a favour in return for these memories. It had not slipped her attention that they also had an interest in the elusive June Wing.

  Popular woman, Chiku thought.

  She said to Mecufi, ‘You want me to make contact with this person, hoping she might put you in touch with Arethusa.’

  ‘I’m very encouraged that you remember that as clearly as you do. Very occasionally the new memories will cause some confusion with those laid down just before the start of the mnemonic scripting. In your case things seem to have proceeded without complication.’

  ‘I feel fine. You said something about June Wing being on Venus.’

  ‘Indeed, but June moves around a lot, gathering pieces for her collection, and she won’t stay there long. You should be on your way sooner rather than later, while she’s still in the inner system.’

  ‘I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘But you’ll do your best. The memories appear to be stable, but we can continue monitoring them all the way to Venus. Do you own a spaceship?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ But she had owned several in her youth, including a sleek little number that she had been very fond of. ‘Not lately, no. I had to sell them – that’s what it’s come to, being an Akinya.’

  ‘Poor little you,’ Mecufi said.

  He was all for her leaving immediately, riding the great glass chimney to orbit and then a commercial loop-liner to Venus. Chiku, against the merman’s wishes, insisted on returning to Lisbon first. They argued the point until Chiku won.

  When she returned to Pedro’s studio, he came to the door with the neck of a guitar in his hands, neatly slotted for frets. He appraised her carefully, as if she might be an impostor. ‘It’s been a day longer than you said. I wondered if I ought to worry. Then I thought, what can possibly go wrong?’

  ‘Almost nothing.’

  ‘That’s what I figured. They’d have told me if there was a problem. I mean, what’s so unusual about having thousands of new memories stuffed into your head by tiny machines?’

  Before they kissed, before she sat down, even, she got the worst news out of the way. ‘I need to go to Venus.’

  ‘It’s a lovely place. When the tides are low, some of the old buildings are visible.’

  ‘Venus. I said Venus, not Venice.’

  Pedro smiled. ‘I know.’

  ‘According to Mecufi, the conjunction’s especially favourable right now, and it shouldn’t take me long to do what I have to do.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Catch up with June, this woman who used to know my mother and father. All the Pans want me to do is tell her they’d like to get back in touch with Arethusa. She can help them do that, if she wants. If she doesn’t, it’s really not my problem.’

  ‘And then – what – your obligations are over?’

  ‘More or less.’

  Pedro put down the guitar neck. ‘I don’t like the sound of this. Fine, they’ve done you a favour. That doesn’t mean they own you for life. It’s not like you ever had any interest in June before all this started.’

  ‘Actually I always meant to talk to her at some point, if I could make it happen – for the biography, if nothing else.’

  ‘But there’s more to it than that now, isn’t there?’

  She did not want to be having this conversation right now, or in fact at any point between now and the end of the universe. But better out than in, as the saying went.

  ‘There’s another reason I’d like to meet June.’

  ‘Then it’s something to do with the ghost, the memories from the other Chiku.’ Pedro did that endearing thing he did when puzzled, which was to scratch beneath his fringe, squinting out at her under an overhang of curls. ‘Which you haven’t mentioned yet.’

  ‘Can we eat? I’m starving.’

  ‘And then talk?’

  ‘Let’s eat. And you can open a bottle of wine – at least one of us is going to need it.’

  ‘We’re all out. I meant to go shopping, but I got tied up with this commission. It’s not too late, is it?’

  They went out to buy wine, Chiku light-headed with Tantors and artilects, bobbing through the streets of Lisbon like a balloon on a string, barely anchored to the world. They bought a nice bottle of Patagonian merlot, then changed their plans and stopped at a restaurant on their way back to the apartment. The establishment had mustard-coloured walls, crumbling plaster that must have been overpainted a thousand times and could still have used another coat. It was already dusk. Musicians and their instruments were tucked into a red-lit corner, like statues in a shrine.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Chiku said, when they were halfway through their meal.

  ‘Please,’ Pedro said, pausing between bites. ‘When is anything with you not complicated?’

  ‘I have Chiku Green’s memories now, and I know why she was trying to reach me.’ She was glad of the musicians, the fado singer, the illmannered diners who refused to lower their voices while they performed. The hubbub created a background that made their conversation much more intimate than if they had been in the studio, with its silent audience of unfinished guitars.

  ‘What she’s relayed to me is important, and there are things I probably can’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Not even me?’

  ‘Chiku Green trusted me with
something significant.’ She closed her eyes. She desperately wanted to tell him. But it would have to wait, the full truth of it, her doubts about Arachne and Crucible, until she had spoken to June Wing. She could barely trust herself with this knowledge. It felt like a fire on her tongue, burning for release.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I made a discovery, on Zanzibar. I mean, Chiku Green did. I . . . she wants me to talk to June.’

  ‘Wait. I’m totally confused now. The Pans want you to talk to June, and so does your counterpart?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s not that straightforward. The Pans want June for one thing, and Chiku Green wants her for another. And right now I don’t think I want to tell the Pans about the second thing.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure they’ll be fine with that.’

  ‘I just have to reach her. I don’t give a damn about Arethusa, she can tell me to go to hell as far as that’s concerned. But the other thing . . . I’ve got to speak to her about that, and it has to be somewhere safe. There’s a ship leaving for Venus tomorrow. The Pans will get me aboard. I have to be on that ship, Pedro. Right now there’s nothing more important in the world.’

  ‘That message took years to get to you – what could possibly be this important?’

  ‘Everything. Nothing. I don’t know, and I won’t until I’ve spoken to June. She’ll know, I think.’

  ‘And she’ll talk?’

  ‘She knew my mother. My father was a friend of hers before he ever met Sunday.’

  ‘Perhaps you should speak to your parents instead.’ He corrected himself. ‘I mean, to Jitendra. I’m sorry.’

  Her mother and father were both still alive. Jitendra was in his two hundred and thirtieth year, hitting the long-delayed consequences of the prolongation therapies he had undergone late in his first century. Sunday was . . . somewhere over a cognitive horizon, her mind altered and re-altered as she chased a deeper understanding of Chibesa physics.

  ‘Even if they could help, it’s not their problem. Or yours. This is between me and June.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why you have to go to Venus.’ He said this as if interplanetary travel was some risky new fad, like hot-air ballooning.

  ‘Even if June was the other side of Lisbon, I’d still need to visit her in person. She won’t want to speak to me, so if there’s the slightest chance of avoiding contact, she’ll take it. She could always decline a ching, or ignore a proxy. She’ll find it tougher if I’m there in the flesh, having come all the way from Earth.’ Chiku dabbed at her lips with the napkin. ‘Look, it’s only Venus – we’re not talking about the Oort cloud.’

  ‘I could come with you.’

  ‘Or you could stay here and try to keep your business afloat.’

  ‘I am several months behind on commissions,’ Pedro admitted.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So a week or two more won’t make any difference, will it?’

  ‘No, categorically not.’

  ‘Talk to this fish-faced friend of yours. Tell him it’s very simple. If he can move the world to make you go to Venus at the drop of a hat, he can certainly find room for another passenger. I’m very inexpensive. I’ll even pay for my own drinks.’

  ‘Mecufi won’t go for it.’

  ‘And you won’t know that for sure unless you ask, will you?’ He smiled at her, lifted his glass and sipped.

  A couple of days later they took a maglev from Lisbon, then a black and yellow passenger airship from the maglev terminal flew them out to sea, to the base of one of the atmosphere chimneys. They boarded the shuttle at sea level, through a pressurised connecting dock. The ship was already in vacuum, ready to depart. Its engine was totally silent and smooth – Chiku strained to detect even a rumour of a rumble as they gathered speed, but there was only the white noise of air conditioning, the murmur of a low conversation from two Tamil businessmen a little way down the cabin.

  From the chimney’s trumpet-shaped maw, the shuttle rose and kept rising. Then it transitioned into true spaceflight and there was an hour or two to be killed until they made rendezvous with the passing loop-liner. It was like a fatter, gaudier version of the liner that had once carried Chiku out to the birthing orbits. It was white with gold and platinum trim. Huge millwheel parts of it were counter-rotating, simulating various planetary gravities. Other components – central spheres and cylinders – remained static. It reminded Chiku of an over-elaborate wedding cake.

  Three days to Venus barely gave them time to unpack their bags. The loop-liner was so huge that it would have taken weeks or even months to explore all its promenades and galleries, its curving rows of boutiques and restaurants. Chiku and Pedro contented themselves with the areas of the ship outfitted for terrestrial gravity, and even then there was far too much to investigate. Wandering the halls, Chiku came upon a reproduction of Watteau’s The Embarkation for Cythera. There was a quality of melancholia about the painting despite – or perhaps because of – its oddly contradictory subject matter: the frolicking nymphs and cupids, its groups of wistful, trysting lovers seemingly preparing to board the boat to leave this breezy island arcadia rather than arrive there. Not an embarkation, then, but a farewell.

  Chiku’s mother had always been opinionated about art. She wondered what Sunday would have said about this painting.

  The hours gobbled each other. Periodically, Mecufi checked in to make sure Chiku’s memories were behaving themselves. Pedro chinged back to Earth to complete some business until the time lag made it difficult. When they were together, there was only so much they could talk about. Chiku would not be drawn on the matter of June Wing, not until she had spoken to the woman. Pedro accepted this, to a point. He had secrets of his own, after all.

  ‘Let’s be honest,’ he said on the third evening of their crossing. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know about each other.’

  ‘A lot we don’t want to know,’ Chiku said.

  ‘Speak for yourself. But I hope we can be more open when this is all over and done.’

  ‘When I’m ready to talk about June, you’ll be the first to know. But it cuts both ways. Who are you, really? How did you end up with that studio, all those connections? You’re not from Lisbon – or if you are, you’ve travelled widely. You speak Swahili and Zulu and who knows what, with or without the aug. You make a big song and dance about me going to Venus, but it turns out that you’re not in the least bit bothered by space travel or weightlessness.’

  ‘I’ve been around. Done some stuff.’

  ‘I’d like to know about it.’

  ‘You could query the aug and find out most of it before I’ve had time to finish this drink.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t be the same as having you share it with me.’

  Pedro smiled and looked away for a moment. ‘I’ve done . . . things.’

  ‘Well, that narrows it down.’

  ‘Quite interesting things, which we’ll speak of eventually, but not here and definitely not now. You will tell me about June, though, won’t you?’

  ‘Assuming there’s anything to tell.’

  And so they circled around what could or would not be said, and as the Earth and Moon receded, so Earth’s sweltering, cloud-garbed sister grew larger.

  First a pale dot, crescented by shadow, then a milky marble, like an eyeball with major cataracts.

  From the loop-liner a shuttle took them to one of the orbiting stations necklacing Venus. They would not be staying long. Subtle enquiries had already established that June Wing was still down in the clouds. Not on Venus, exactly, but in one of the many floating gondolas tethered against the endless cycling winds. Chiku and Pedro were offered the option of chinging into receptacle bodies, organic or mechanical, but Mecufi had cautioned them against visiting June in anything other than full fleshly embodiment. She was particular about that. So they went down by Maersk Intersolar shuttle, an arrowheaded transatmospheric vehicle built like a bathyscaphe.

  The shuttle slid into the dayside atmosphere like a syrin
ge, then flicked its hull to transparency. Gradually their angle of flight levelled out. It was all sleighride smooth. Chiku got up and walked around, leaving Pedro snoozing. They were still a long way up from the surface – forty hellish kilometres – but the pressure outside was already a frankly absurd two atmospheres. It was stormy, too, although the shuttle was smoothing out the turbulence long before it had a chance to upset the passengers. Venus was a machine for making bad weather. It took eight months to rotate on its axis, a planet with a day longer than its own year, but these wind-whipped clouds chased their tails around the planet in mere dozens of hours.

  The gondola – the place where June was supposed to be – was called Tekarohi High. They saw very little of it until the last few moments of the approach, the clouds thinning rather than parting, Tekarohi High looming like some gothic castle in a thunderstorm. It was a chubby cylinder the size of several skyscrapers lumped together. This habitable volume was only part of the structure. From the base, beneath a fringe of docking ledges and platforms, extended a tremendously strong guyline that vanished into the underlying clouds, forty kilometres of cable anchoring the station to Venus’s crust. Above, just as invisibly distant, were the monstrous balloons that held the platform aloft. Bracketed out from the main body of the platform were numerous turbines drawing power from the unending blast of the winds. Clearly they had more than enough for their purposes. Tekarohi High’s hundreds of floors of windows were great flickering acres of neon.

  They docked near the base, clamps securing the hovering shuttle, and then there was the usual tedium and delay before they could actually exit the shuttle and walk into the gondola. Beneath Chiku’s feet, the floor felt as solid as if there was a planet right underneath, rather than forty kilometres of scalding, crushing carbon dioxide, delicately laced with sulphuric acid.

  At odd intervals, wherever the internal architecture of the platform made it practical, the builders had set glass plates into the floor. Elsewhere, along corridors and viewing decks, stupendous armoured windows curved to horizontal near their bases, offering a view straight down. Outside was a shifting grey migraine. Views of the surface were occasionally possible at this altitude, apparently, but Chiku never saw anything she could definitively identify as something other than a figment of her own imagination. She kept thinking about that old caution against staring into the abyss.