On the Steel Breeze

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Would ve do that?’

  ‘Travertine’s dying, slowly, and we did that to ver. If ve could prove I was compromised at the time of the trial, that might be enough to have the sentence rescinded.’

  ‘It’s such a shame Travertine didn’t have the common courtesy to die while you were asleep,’ Eunice reflected. ‘I mean, some people.’

  ‘Please don’t be flippant. If this was just about my career, it’d be bad enough. But now that I know about Crucible, about Arachne and the Providers, I can’t let Travertine ruin things.’

  ‘I can offer you a variety of odourless toxins, and suggest how you might administer them without being detected. Except you’re not totally convinced about the murder thing, are you? ?’

  ‘Please, Eunice, I’m really not in the mood for jokes.’

  ‘I’m being totally serious, considering the options. If you won’t do it, I’ll ching a robot on the other side. They’d never be able to link the crime to you.’

  ‘No one’s killing Travertine – we need ver too much. Collectively, anyway. Travertine thinks there’s some kind of research programmeme going on behind the scenes, trying to build on vis work.’

  ‘Sanctioned or clandestine, there’s been no progress in the research.’

  ‘I have something that might get things moving again. In the right hands, there’s a chance it could unlock the breakthrough we need – give us slowdown and the means to send an advance expedition.’

  ‘So take it to the authorities. Or don’t you trust Sou-Chun Lo to act the way you want?’

  ‘I don’t know how she’d act. Or any of them, for that matter. I’ve been under too long to have a reliable feel for the political landscape. Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more than to wash my hands of this whole mess. But even if Sou-Chun took me seriously, there’d be questions I’d rather not have to answer.’

  ‘Then you have a problem.’

  ‘I couldn’t even tell my husband the whole truth, and he knows about you. Noah wouldn’t have agreed to me waking early, so I didn’t tell him.’

  ‘Noah’s sensible.’

  ‘Thank you, but that won’t help me with this, will it?’

  ‘Travertine’s your biggest threat,’ Eunice declared grandly, as if the notion had never occurred to Chiku. ‘Ve could undo you with a word, ruin decades of good work. It’s a shame you can’t find a way to bring ver around to your cause.’

  ‘Travertine’s a person, not a chess-piece.’

  ‘Everyone has their fulcrum, Chiku. You can bend anyone to any cause with the right timing.’ She clapped her hands decisively, a meaty, human sound that belied her true nature. ‘I promised you Dakota. She’s approaching. Would you like to meet her?’

  ‘As long as she doesn’t mind this,’ Chiku said, gesticulating at the open chassis of her body.

  ‘It won’t bother her in the slightest. In her own sensorium she’ll see a human woman. Dakota! Come forward, please. The person you must meet is here.’

  The trees parted. A medium-sized Tantor emerged into the clearing and moved quickly in the direction of the camp. It was not a stampede charge, but closer to that than a walk. Despite Chiku’s effective invulnerability, she had to fight the urge to step back.

  Eunice offered a reassuring hand. ‘She’s bold,’ she whispered, ‘but there’s no malice in her. She won’t harm you. Say hello to Dakota, Chiku.’

  Standing her ground, Chiku looked into the eyes of the enormous creature now confronting her. Like the other Tantors, Dakota wore equipment strapped to her body and head with heavy flexible webbing. She had two tusks of equal size, curving gently to the sky. Her ears flapped gently. Through the ching bind Chiku detected both her smell and the deep, seismic report of her rumbled greeting.

  She curled her trunk near the tip and scratched a furrow in the ground, like a line of treaty.

  ‘Hello,’ Chiku offered. ‘I am Chiku. I’m a friend of Eunice.’

  WELCOME CHIKU

  WE ARE BOTH FRIENDS

  ‘She’s sounds more fluent,’ Chiku whispered.

  ‘Dakota’s been unusually bright since the moment she was born. Her facility with language and abstract reasoning outstrips all her peers.’

  ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve never tried. My stewardship of these creatures extends to keeping them alive and healthy. I wouldn’t know where to begin to make them smarter. What you’re seeing here . . . it’s merely the chance outcome of shuffling genetic factors that were introduced into their breeding stock generations ago. Her parents were bright, maybe brighter than average. Dakota, though, she’s an outlier. Completely off the scale.’

  ‘She’s amazing.’

  ‘Yes. Something marvellous: a genuine cognitive leap. I wish I had the means to scan her mind, probe its fine structure. The other Tantors can use language, but it doesn’t come easily to them. Dakota swims in it. Her fluency exceeds a human five year old’s developmental markers, and she’s still learning. She has a vocabulary of two hundred and fifty words, and it’s growing steadily.’

  Chiku decided not to take this on trust. ‘Where are we, Dakota?’

  WE ARE IN LOBE TWO

  LOBE TWO IS IN THE CHAMBER

  THE CHAMBER IS IN THE HOLOSHIP

  THE HOLOSHIP IS ZANZIBAR

  The other Tantors had known nothing of the wider world beyond the chamber, and had no notion of their place in it. Chiku wondered how deep Dakota’s cosmology ran. ‘And what is Zanzibar?’

  A STONE IN DARKNESS

  A STONE MADE BY PEOPLE

  Chiku looked at Eunice. ‘She really understands all this, not just parroting what you’ve told her?’

  ‘Go and ask a philosopher.’

  ‘If I had one, I would.’

  ‘All the Tantors have a sense of self – they all know that when they look into a mirror, the thing looking back is them. Elephants have a theory of mind – they can think into the head of another elephant and infer their knowledge of the world, including errors and omissions of knowledge. That puts them above all but a handful of species – a few primates, some very smart birds and cetaceans. Tantors build on that – they have a sense of the past, present and future, perhaps some glimmerings of their own mortality. Dakota’s abilities go far beyond that. She’s not as smart as an adult human – yet – but her categorisational framework is at least as sophisticated as a ten-year-old child’s. She can reason in abstract terms. She can plan a complex series of actions and then execute them days later. Her capacity for tool use is exceptional. She can improvise and experiment in ways I’ve never imagined – and she can teach the other Tantors what she’s learned. She’s something new, Chiku. Something new and wonderful and just a little terrifying.’

  ‘Terrifying? Why?’

  ‘Because if the random shuffling of some genes can produce this, what else might they conjure up?’

  ‘Do you think she’s . . .’ Chiku struggled for words, not wishing to offend either the elephant or her steward. ‘A one-off? A lucky roll of the dice? Or will the next wave of Tantors all be like her?’

  ‘Maybe not all of them, and maybe not in a single generation. But she’s the herald of something new heading our way. Dakota’s just the first hint of what’s to come.’

  ‘If she’s nearly as smart as us . . . what happens if her children are brighter still?’

  ‘The same thing that always happens when the universe catches us napping,’ Eunice said, with a kind of apocalyptic glee. ‘Life gets interesting.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The next day, Chiku found herself taking morning chai with Sou-Chun Lo. They were in Anticipation Park, in an area of the administrative chamber. The park was a relatively recent development. Before Chiku entered skipover this whole section had been groved with trees, a place where she often lost herself between legislative sessions. Now the trees had been stripped back and the area re-landscaped. They were seated in a tea-house pagoda, just the two of them, with
a couple of constables outside to keep the curious away.

  ‘Of course, we’re very pleased to have you back with us,’ Sou-Chun said, Chiku detecting an undercurrent of unease she could not quite conceal. ‘Your voice has always been valued in the Assembly, Chiku. Greatly valued. But we’d never expect you to put politics before family.’

  ‘I don’t intend to.’

  ‘Truth to tell, we were all a little surprised you chose to wake early.’

  Chiku smiled neutrally. ‘I suppose I was afraid of letting go altogether, of being out of it for so long that I became totally disconnected from Zanzibar affairs.’

  ‘Whereas at the moment you still feel connected enough to play a role?’

  ‘If my services are required.’

  ‘But you’ll be returning to skipover, surely – you’re still entitled to the remainder of your sleep slot. We’ll all understand if you decide to rejoin your husband and children.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Best to conserve your energy until the time when it’ll be most useful, don’t you think?’

  ‘When we reach Crucible, you mean?’

  ‘Of course Crucible. Where else?’ Sou-Chun’s smile was the merest crease of her lips. While Chiku had been asleep, the Assemblywoman’s face had toughened into something barely capable of expression, while her body had stiffened into a marionette of her younger self, with only a limited repertoire of human gestures still available to her. Her posture was upright and rigid as she took her chai, as if her limbs were operated by wires and pulleys. Her lips barely touched the china.

  ‘Still a few bridges to cross before we get there, though,’ Chiku said. ‘I’ve been reading up on forty years’ worth of developments, and there doesn’t seem to have been much progress.’

  ‘Depends how you measure it. The political situation was really quite volatile when you entered skipover. Travertine’s business caused us all a great deal of trouble. But that was then. We’ve reached an accommodation with the other holoships in the caravan, accepted that in – some regards – we were going about things the wrong way. I’m pleased to say that matters are a great deal more stable than when you left us.’

  Left us. As if entry into skipover had been an abdication of responsibility rather than the rightful reward for years of diligent public service.

  ‘Well, if we all pull together, I suppose there’s still a faint chance we might solve the slowdown problem.’

  ‘Times have changed, Chiku. We prefer not to encourage that kind of scaremongering any more.’

  ‘Scaremongering, Sou-Chun? We’re way past scaremongering. God help you when the populace realise we’ve slammed past Crucible in the night, and that we’re stuck aboard these ships forever.’

  ‘You see those constables?’ She nodded beyond the pavilion, where the law enforcers looked bored and petulant. They carried weapons, black cruciform devices of some dark pacifying function. ‘I could have you detained purely on the strength of that outburst.’

  ‘It was a statement of fact.’

  ‘But you’re a friend, and you’ve just come out of skipover, so we have to expect a period of transition to our new way of doing things. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time – a friendly warning, if you like.’

  Chiku accepted this with the last dregs of her dignity. ‘My purpose isn’t to cause trouble, and I can understand some of your reasons for not wanting to talk about this in public.’ She placed deliberate emphasis on that ‘some’. ‘But let’s be frank with each other here. You’re no fool, Sou-Chun. You know, deep down, that we can’t just ignore slowdown, no matter how much it appeases the hard-liners. Look at the sky clock! When I went under, it still had four-tenths of the chamber to cross. Now it’s down to half that distance!’

  ‘We’re fully aware of our situation,’ Sou-Chun said, with steely insistence.

  ‘It’s all right for Teslenko and the Panspermians in New Tiamaat,’ Chiku pushed on. ‘They’ve decided they don’t need to live on a planet. But the rest of us signed up for a destination, not an endless journey into the void.’

  ‘We shouldn’t be bickering,’ Sou-Chun said producing a glimmer of her old warmth. ‘I don’t want to be arguing with an old friend, not when we still have so very much in common. It’s good to have you back among us. Shall we walk? You’ll have to put up with the constables following us, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Not because they think I’m a menace to public safety, I hope.’

  ‘Actually, they’re for my benefit. There was an assassination attempt a couple of years ago. It never stood a chance of succeeding, but you can’t dismiss these things.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you can,’ Chiku said as they left the tea-house. She had always considered assassination a relic of the past, and had never expected to hear that such a thing had been considered, let alone attempted. ‘Look, I know we’ve had our differences, but the idea of someone deliberately trying to hurt you—’

  ‘You wouldn’t approve?’

  ‘Of course I damned well wouldn’t!’

  They walked in silence for a while. ‘What’s become of us?’ Sou-Chun mused. ‘We started off with the best of intentions, and now look where we are. Old friends squabbling. Worlds that barely talk to each other. I miss the old days before Travertine’s accident. Things felt complicated then, but they weren’t really, were they? I like Noah, and your children. It’ll be good to see them again.’

  Chiku reached out to touch an alien flower. The park’s flora, although derived from terrestrial stock, had been genetically modified to simulate many of the species they expected to encounter on the new planet. Sou-Chun explained some of the tricks involved, the clever manipulation of a tool-kit of homeobox genes to produce macroscopic structural variations. It was mimicry, but to Chiku’s untutored eyes the effect was thoroughly convincing. Trees, shrubs and grasses had all been shaped according to the biological data sent by the Providers.

  Sou-Chun was beaming proudly as she pointed to this or that feature of the park – her friend clearly took a proprietorial interest in this place.

  Chiku in turn suppressed a shiver of horror at what actually awaited them, not wanting even to hint at her dejected and fatalistic mood.

  ‘It’s impressive,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad you like it. Do feel free to come here while you’re awake. The constables will see you’re not disturbed.’

  Tall black rectangles stood sentinel, flanking the paths in rows and rings. Images of Crucible flickered on their sheer faces, captured from space and the surface. The orbital views showed hemispheres of the globe under different illuminations, or close-ups of land masses, oceans and ice caps under various magnifications and wavelengths. It was a mesmerising display, bounteous and beautiful beyond words: another world, close enough to touch. Not some abstract dot of light in the night sky but a tangible place – or rather a bewildering compendium of places – where a person could roam for the generous measure of a modern lifetime and never cross their own tracks.

  A little further on they came to an area of the park set aside for mock-ups and impressions of Mandala. None of it was remotely to scale, of course – a representation of the minutest part of that immense structure would have swallowed Zanzibar whole – but it served its purpose well enough, reminding the citizens that this, ultimately, was what had called them across interstellar space. The chance to interact with something irrefutably alien, and irrefutably the handiwork of directed, tool-using intelligence. There were large images, projected onto house-sized facets. There were rockeries and water-channels and flower borders laid out according to Mandala’s nested geometries. There was a maze, chiselled with laserlike angles from dense green bushes.

  ‘Sometimes I wish the machines would just damn their programming and get on with it,’ Sou-Chun said. ‘The endless waiting, the need to know more – I can barely stand it!’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel.’

  ‘Our day’s coming, though. The citizenry
understand that they’ll have to make sacrifices in the short term, that there will be rules and hardships in service of a higher purpose.’ She swept her hand around the miniature versions of Mandala. ‘They know that, eventually, this will be their reward.’

  ‘Followed by eternal life in the hereafter, as long as they say their prayers and keep to the path of righteousness?’

  ‘It’s not obligatory to take that tone, Chiku. Must you always be so contrarian?’

  Chiku checked the time. ‘It’s almost noon. Do you mind if we look at the sky clock?’

  ‘By all means,’ Sou-Chun said, ‘but I wouldn’t waste your time. We stopped the mechanism a couple of years ago. It was bad for morale.’

  A month passed before Chiku felt willing to risk another ching into Chamber Thirty-Seven.

  ‘She’s going to be trouble, that one,’ Eunice said as she pottered around her equipment, glancing back over her shoulder at Chiku as she spoke. ‘You never realised how much better off you were under Utomi. He might have been a fat, limping old fool but at least he had our best interests at heart.’

  ‘Sou-Chun is the card we’ve been dealt,’ Chiku said. She was sitting at the camp’s table. ‘We have to make the best of her. And before you even mention it, assassination isn’t an option in her case, either.’

  ‘You’re fond of her, then?’

  ‘She’s not a bad person. Politically ambitious, maybe. Definitely misguided in her willingness to bend to the will of the hard-liners. But in her own way she also wants the best for us.’

  ‘Fat lot of good that’ll do when we zip past Crucible into the great void beyond.’

  ‘I’m just trying to see the good in her.’

  Eunice hefted a piece of machinery the size of an anvil from one corner of the camp to another. Chiku reflected that Eunice would never have done that when she first visited, but now there was no need for her to hide her true nature.

  ‘Do you think entering skipover was a mistake, knowing what you do now?’

  ‘The point is that I didn’t know then what I know now. I had absolutely no idea what was at stake.’