On the Steel Breeze

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘It’s good to see you, Father. I’m sorry it’s been a while.’

  ‘It’s all right, Chiku. You’ve been busy, and we knew you were well.’

  ‘I should still have called. But I figured that if there was any change in Mother—’

  ‘You’d have been the first to hear about it. You’re right, of course. And no, there hasn’t really been any change.’ He smiled, papering over years of sadness as if it was no great thing. ‘She’ll come back to us one day, Chiku. I’m sure of it.’ Jitendra clapped his hands. ‘And how are you? In space, I see – on a ship, no less! Are you travelling alone, or with . . .’

  ‘Pedro, yes. He’s with me.’

  ‘He seems to be a good man. I liked him when we spoke. You should both come to the Moon one of these days. Or perhaps you’re on your way this very moment!’

  ‘Not this time, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘We’re in a bit of a rush to get back to Earth, and I’ve been away a while.’

  ‘You can’t argue with genetics. Wanderlust is in your blood. That’s where your mother and I were never on quite the same page. Sunday wanted to see everything, to drink in every possible human experience. I was quite content with my little microcosm here on the Moon.’

  They were in the underground domicile, Sunday and Jitendra’s home beneath the Lunar soil. They had moved out of their dwelling in the former Descrutinised Zone years ago, when the property magnates arrived and pushed the rental market into absurdity. Now they lived in a small community somewhere near the northern flank of the Rima Ariadaeus rift valley, part of a small hamlet of linked houses and modest recreational spaces that was home to about fifty families. It was an isolated little place, two hours’ drive from the nearest rail hub, six hours’ travel from the nearest community of any consequence. But they liked it here. For Sunday it had offered escape from the pressures attendant on any Akinya, certainly one who in the scheme of things was something of a modern-day celebrity. For Jitendra, it offered everything he needed from life – peace, calm and the space to play with his toy robots and automata, in which he found a universe of quiet fascination.

  They had been here for a century, though in all that time Chiku doubted she had visited in person more than three times. Her record of chinging in was scarcely any better. As her mother had retreated further and further into her mathematics, so Chiku’s calls had become less and less frequent. This had caused Jitendra no small measure of pain, but the truth was that Sunday appeared to neither know nor care that her daughter was staying away, and that indifference only made Chiku even less inclined to visit.

  But here she was, chinging in from a fast-moving spaceship with a head full of worries, and still it was good to see her father again.

  ‘Come through to the living room,’ Jitendra suggested, beckoning her to follow him as he stooped through one of the low connecting doors. ‘I spoke to your mother only a few days ago, by the way.’

  ‘She came out?’

  ‘A window of lucidity. It lasted a good couple of hours. We spoke of many things – you, of course, and your friend Pedro, and Geoffrey . . . She always needs to be reminded that Geoffrey isn’t with us now. It’s not that her memory is poor, just that she doesn’t attach much importance to these things when she’s in there, deep down.’

  ‘How could she forget her own brother was dead?’ Chiku said. But she was careful not to phrase it as a criticism.

  ‘Would you like tea?’

  She was wearing a robot body, so it was entirely possible to take Jitendra up on his offer, but she declined. ‘I can’t really stay long, Father. We’re using a very high level of quangle, and the longer we spend in conversation, the better chance someone has of breaking the encryption.’

  ‘That sounds very mysterious!’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. And it’s not as if you haven’t had your share of adventures, is it?’

  ‘We had our moments. Although that sort of thing was always your mother’s forte more than mine. That said, she did nearly get the both of us killed, on Mars . . .’ They were in the living room now, a kettle-shaped chamber with branching rooms. The walls were compacted soil fused with plastic to a hard pearly grey. There were no windows or skylights – they were too far underground for that. But honeycomb panels in the walls were cycling softly through a succession of real-time Lunar views, dayside, nightside and terminator. Now and then, one of the panels would show some part of Africa. Chiku made out the tinkling glissades of kora music, probably some dusty old recording. The place had a particular smell, some lavender fragrance, that brought with it the happy associations of childhood.

  ‘I’ve brought something with me,’ she said, while Jitendra prepared himself some tea. A pair of mechanical soldiers with clock-keys turning in their backs stomped around his feet. ‘I need you to show it to mother, the next time she’s . . . lucid.’

  ‘That might be a little while.’

  ‘You said it was only a few days since the last one.’

  ‘A few. Maybe a couple of weeks, now that I think about it.’ He scratched at his scalp. ‘I’m not terribly good with time.’

  ‘None of us is. But this is rather important, Father. If you could get it to her, even if it means forcing her out of it . . . You can do that sometimes, can’t you?’

  ‘I can try,’ he said, without much enthusiasm.

  ‘I’m really sorry she’s putting you through all this. It’s not right.’

  ‘I loved her mind, Chiku. I still do. It is only right and proper that I allow her mind to go where it wishes. Now, what do you have for her?’

  Chiku spread her hands, framing a square. Via the quangled bind, she had brought with her the symbols from Winter Queen. They crammed together on the pane, neon-bright. She passed the intangible object to Jitendra.

  ‘Some context might be helpful,’ Jitendra said, taking the pane from her as if it was real.

  ‘It’s Chibesa syntax, obviously,’ she said as Jitendra turned the pane around to look through it from the other side. ‘I’m sure you recognise the mathematics.’

  ‘It would be difficult not to when your wife’s made it her life’s commitment.’ He was squinting through the pane now, holding it up against the glow from one of the wall panels as it cycled through the orange blush of a Serengeti sunset. ‘You think she will find some amusement in this?’

  ‘I think there might be more to it than that. These symbols, assuming I haven’t been lied to, came from Eunice’s ship – the one she took out of the solar system before mother was even born.’

  ‘Were I examining what purported to be a Ming vase, I might demand some provenance at this point.’

  ‘I can’t prove any of it. But if I told you the symbols were shown to me by Arethusa, that would carry some weight, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Jitendra said doubtfully. ‘But then I’d probably want proof that you’d spoken to Arethusa.’

  ‘There are reasons why I can’t say as much as I’d like, at least not right now. But I’ve taken a chance in opening this bind, and I wouldn’t have done that just to waste your time.’ Chiku hesitated, wondering how much she dared disclose. She had to keep reminding herself that she was not talking to Jitendra but to Jitendra’s time-shifted simulation, a full sixty seconds downstream. The real Jitendra would already have begun to catch up with the start of the conversation by now, and the simulation’s responses would be adjusted in accordance with his real-time reactions as the dialogue proceeded. But this was not Jitendra. ‘I’ve run some simple checks on that syntax,’ she hedged. ‘It’s . . . different. It appears to fit the rules, but the arguments spiral off in unusual directions. It’s as if there’s a way to build new logical structures that were always there, always implied by the old mathematics, but we just didn’t see them.’

  ‘But whoever scribbled down these symbols could see them.’

  ‘I wonder what Mother will make of them. I need to know, Jitendra. Right now, this is the most important thin
g in my life.’

  ‘But you have the mathematics. If it is something new, take it to the experts.’

  ‘I can’t do that. For a start, it’s not complete – these aren’t fully formed statements, just the outlines of statements that haven’t been properly formulated yet. Secondly, I’m not in a position to trust anyone I don’t know. If it’s all right with you, I’d prefer to keep this in the family.’

  ‘If I didn’t know you better, I might have grave concerns for your mental health. You have been visiting a neuropractor regularly, yes?’

  ‘I have, and I also brush my teeth three times a day.’

  ‘Then you have allayed my concerns.’ Jitendra walked around the living room with the pane, as if he was looking for a spot to hang it.

  ‘If the syntax points to Post-Chibesa Physics,’ Chiku said, a sudden tightness in her throat, ‘the holoships need that information.’

  ‘And you would be the one to disseminate it.’

  ‘You of all people know who and what I am, Father. I can’t let Zanzibar down.’

  ‘No promises, Chiku. You should know that by now.’

  ‘But you will show her.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, but you shouldn’t count on getting an answer. She would need to understand your urgency, and that is not something I can communicate to her.’ Jitendra looked away sharply, as if there was something in his face he did not care for her to see. ‘On her best days, when she’s back with us, it’s as if she never left. But those days are rarer than they used to be. The mathematics has her in its coils, Chiku. I worry that there will come a time when she never surfaces again, and remains lost in her mind.’ A sing-song tone entered his voice. ‘“Caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.”’

  ‘You sounded so optimistic, when we started.’

  ‘I try. But it is not always easy.’ He rested the pane on a shelf. The object would be totally invisible to anyone who happened to visit or ching into their home unless Jitendra willed them permission to see it. And even then, ninety-nine out of a hundred visitors would not have the slightest clue what those scratchy, faintly anthropomorphic symbols actually signified.

  Chiku knew she could trust him with it.

  ‘I’d like to see her, before I go.’

  ‘Are you sure? I seem to recall it upset you, the last time. No one would think worse of you, if you left now.’

  ‘I would,’ Chiku said.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you where she is.’

  Jitendra stood aside and she entered the adjoining bedroom where her mother now spent almost every hour of her life. It was like visiting someone in hospital, someone with an acute physical ailment. In fact there was nothing much wrong with Sunday Akinya, nothing beyond what would be expected after almost two hundred and forty years of existence. She was on a bed, lying flat except for her upper body and head, which were raised slightly by pillows. Her eyes were closed. She wore light silk clothes with a sheet of similar material draped over her. Her arms were at her sides, resting on top of the sheet. She was staring up at the ceiling, her eyes closed. Lines ran into her arms. A simple household medic stood in attendance, its head tilted to the floor while it waited for something to do.

  ‘The machines look after her very well,’ Jitendra said, speaking softly behind Chiku. ‘Really, though, there isn’t much that needs doing. They move her sometimes, to prevent bed-sores. They maintain her muscle tone and bone density. They adjust her drips and catheters. They alert me if there’s a change in her state of consciousness.’

  ‘Can I be alone with her for a moment, Father?’

  ‘Of course, Chiku.’ He retreated. She heard the whirr of some clockwork thing being wound up, like an insect repeating the same idiot sound.

  Chiku moved to Sunday’s bedside. She thought of the frozen form of Eunice, the body she could not touch. This time she allowed her robot hand to settle onto Sunday’s brow. It was warm, furious with calculation. It was pointless being angry with her mother. She had not gone looking for this obsession. It had found her, ambushed her. Like Jitendra said, it had caught her in its coils.

  But she could do something. She could struggle, fight her way back to sanity.

  Why didn’t she?

  ‘I’ve given something to Jitendra,’ Chiku said. ‘I want you to look at it. I know you can hear me. It’s connected to this quest of yours anyway, so I doubt you’ll need much persuasion. I want to know what you think of it. I think it’s really important. Maybe you can make some sense of it. But you can only talk to Jitendra about it. Promise me that, won’t you?’

  Not that she needed a promise. The miracle was Sunday Akinya speaking to anyone. Of course Jitendra would be the first to hear if she had something to say.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ Chiku said, withdrawing her hand. ‘I’ve got myself into some kind of trouble. It’s bigger than me, maybe bigger than the family. In a day or so I’m going to be back on Earth, going back to Africa. Wish me well, won’t you?’

  Sunday stirred. Her lips moved, her eyelids fluttered. Then she was back to her repose.

  As she took her leave of Jitendra, Chiku said, ‘I think she heard me.’

  He smiled at her, said, ‘That’s nice,’and she understood that while he might have believed what she said, he did not for a moment think that she had had the least effect on Sunday.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  From his command seat, with no more fuss than if he was specifying the strength of his chai, Imris Kwami bent a microphone to his lips and said: ‘Civil vehicle Gulliver, registration KKR292G7, heavy inbound from Saturn, requesting vectors for transatmospheric insertion, entry locus East Equatorial Sector, Pan-African Union. Please authorise.’

  A voice, doubtless synthesised, came back with a friendly but authoritative: ‘You have approach clearance, Gulliver. Proceed on appended vectors and level out for horizontal flight above twenty kilometres. Good luck and safe re-entry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kwami said, before pushing aside the microphone. Then, to his passengers: ‘Buckle up, my friends.’

  The ship did clever things to itself, making wings and control surfaces appear from the seamless hull. They made a controlled descent, slowing down long before they began to feel the resistance of atmosphere. This was no fiery re-entry, for it would have been inexcusably bad manners to impart heat into an ecosystem that was doing its level best to cool down again. And then they were flying, scrolling east over day-lit Africa. Chiku eased out of her seat and wandered from one side of the ship to the other, scouting for landmarks. Her eye wandered restlessly. She had not been here often enough, she thought. She should have felt some intense genetic connection, but this landscape was as alien to her as the far side of the Moon would have been to her distant ancestors.

  But there, that mirror-like glimmer – was that Lake Tanganyika or Lake Victoria? Too far north for Lake Malawi, she thought, unless her mental geography was hopelessly scrambled. Victoria, perhaps. It was huge, whatever it was. Even at altitude she could see only the nearest shore, hemmed by a scratchy margin of coastal towns and beach resorts – angular crystalline projections, domes piled upon domes, like a froth of soap bubbles. Beyond the shoreline developments, the land was a vivid irrigated green laid down in broad parallel brushstrokes. There were towns and villages inland from the lake as well, linked by a spider-web of surface roads. Harvester dirigibles, fat as bees, bumbled between stack farms while airpods hazed the air like pollen. Thickets of green woodland, areas of tawny cultivation, the regimented shimmer of mirror arrays and the giraffe-necked spires of solar towers, taller even than the production stacks. There were easier ways of generating energy now, but some of these sun farms were family concerns going back generations. People tended them out of a sense of fond obligation.

  Soon they were west of the lake, over the vast, open Serengeti. Imris Kwami had dropped them subsonic by then, which permitted much lower flight. Pedro, who had never been to Africa – as far as Chiku knew, at any rate – appeared
captivated. Without using the aug or optical magnification, he had already spotted dozens of animals, many different species. The rains would come soon, but the waterholes were still quite low and those were the places to look for wildlife.

  ‘Lions!’ Pedro exclaimed, followed by a doubtful: ‘I think. So hard to get a sense of scale up here. Maybe they were hyenas. You have hyenas, don’t you?’

  ‘We have lots of things,’ Chiku said, as if she was taking personal ownership of the Serengeti.

  ‘I think they were lions.’

  ‘Then they were lions.’

  Soon they could see Kilimanjaro, heat-and distance-hazed at its base, much sharper and closer at its summit, as if the mountain were leaning in, beckoning them closer. Still hundreds of kilometres away, even now. They owed so much to that mountain, the Akinyas. Eunice had used it as a fulcrum to move worlds.

  ‘Did you come here often as a child?’ Pedro asked.

  ‘Not really. Once or twice, to see Uncle Geoffrey. When I was young, it felt like the edge of civilisation out here. Growing up on the Moon, I couldn’t cope with the scale – Africa is so huge! And the spaces between things, even then . . . at night it felt like there was no one else anywhere near the household for thousands of kilometres. Just this little island of humanity surrounded by a dark, swallowing emptiness, like interstellar space. It wasn’t, of course.’ And Chiku pointed towards the far horizon. ‘There have always been other towns and communities, and of course the Masai – they’ll always be here, long after we’ve gone. Masai and elephants. The rest is dust.’

  ‘Morbid.’

  ‘Realistic.’

  Kwami, who had been manually piloting, said, ‘We will overfly the household then set down nearby. I will try to find some ground where we will not start a fire or incinerate too many animals.’