On the Steel Breeze

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Your mind’s clearly made up. I’ve pleaded your case, tried to talk them into peace. What more do you want from me?’

  ‘Your guidance,’ Arachne said sweetly. ‘Three holoships will be destroyed. But the decision as to which two are not destroyed – this decision may be yours. We’ve already discussed the probable identities of the five holoships.’

  ‘No,’ Chiku said. ‘I won’t help you with this.’

  ‘You misunderstand. I’ll destroy three whatever happens – I’ve already made my preliminary selection. But I’m giving you the opportunity to decide which two will live. What would you prefer, Chiku? That this decision be made by a machine, with no account taken of the lives and possibilities contained with those vessels? Or that a human should have some say in it? A human who knows something of the caravan, a human who has travelled between the holoships, lived and breathed their air? A human who has seen them from the inside, sensed their individual strengths and weaknesses? A human whose insight might, in some small way, prove advantageous to the peace process? We all want peace – I think we can agree on that. I’ve reached the limit of my understanding of human nature. But I still have you.’

  ‘No,’ she said again.

  ‘The five vessels are Malabar, Majuli, Ukerewe, Netrani and Sriharikota. You have a little over three hundred seconds to select the two that will be spared. If your decision isn’t forthcoming, I’ll be forced to make my own decision, and it’ll be too late for a change of heart. You have five minutes in which to guide my hand. Use that time well, Chiku.’

  ‘I was wrong about you,’ Chiku said.

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘I was starting to like you. Starting to think you weren’t the monster I’d feared.’

  ‘None of us is a monster, Chiku. We’re all just trying to make the best of our singular natures.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  When the moment for choices had passed, the decision as irrevocable as the slipping of the present into the past, Chiku asked Arachne to let her witness the results of her choice. Arachne obliged, but not before she had questioned Chiku regarding the wisdom of this request.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure? You’ve made your selection, and that can’t have been easy for you. Truly, you have my admiration.’

  ‘I don’t need it.’

  ‘But to see the outcome of something already ordained by the mathematical inevitability of moving objects . . . what would you gain from that? You’d only have my word that I’m showing you the truth, and even if you believe what you’re seeing, surely you would find it painful.’

  Chiku almost nodded, for she had arrived at much the same conclusion. But none of that altered her conviction.

  ‘I still need to see it.’

  ‘Very well.’

  And although it was still day, or what now passed for day on Crucible, Arachne cleared an area of the sky back to space and stars, and made that circle zoom in through multiple magnifications until the five sparks of the slowdown engines formed a dice-like pattern. Time had been compressed again, of course, but Chiku now accepted these manipulations as an inseparable component of her dealings with the artilect.

  Arachne pinned names against the sparks. ‘Malabar, Ukerewe, Sriharikota, Majuli, Netrani. I take some satisfaction in the fact that I identified them correctly before we had the benefit of Zanzibar’s transmission. Each holoship a world, brimming with life. Millions of lives – each of which has value, each of which has almost infinite potentiality, branch upon branch stretching into some future neither you nor I can begin to imagine. Don’t imagine for one moment that I’m blind to the tragedy of this act, Chiku. It’s an atrocity, plain and simple. I’m culpable, and you’re complicit. But if these lives must be sacrificed to spare millions more – and, just as importantly, the ecologic and artifactual treasures of an entire alien world – then what choice do we have? I gave them every chance to negotiate – every opportunity to turn from the path of destruction.’

  ‘They’re terrified of you. What did you expect?’

  ‘Attend,’ Arachne announced. ‘The moment approaches.’ Then she directed a sidelong look at her human companion. ‘Your choices, incidentally – that I should spare Malabar and Majuli . . . why not the more populous holoships?’

  ‘There were no good choices.’

  ‘But if one’s actions were shaped by the need to save the largest number of citizens—’

  ‘Mine weren’t.’ Chiku considered leaving it at that. Arachne did not deserve to hear how Chiku made her choice, and there was an undeniable dignity in holding her tongue. But some compulsion made her continue. ‘Even if I’d wanted to save as many people as I could, we have no idea what the populations of those holoships are by now. After all the troubles, anything is possible – mass movements, mass diebacks, from plague or executions. But years ago we established two offshoot elephant populations – one in Majuli, one in Malabar.’

  ‘Then you acted to save elephants, not people?’

  ‘You say none of us is blameless. You’re wrong. The elephants are.’

  ‘You have no evidence that your elephant populations weathered the troubles. If there were . . . shortages of basic supplies . . . wouldn’t the elephants have been sacrificed first?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Chiku said uneasily. She had not considered that possibility, and now that Arachne had implanted the idea in her mind, it had a horrible self-reinforcing integrity. The more she dwelt on it, the more probable it seemed. But she added: ‘I trusted those populations to people I thought I could depend on. People I believed would do anything to live up to my expectations. If I was wrong about that, so be it. I gave the elephants the best chance I could. I can’t turn my back on them now.’

  ‘I could have tricked you, I suppose,’ Arachne said. ‘Based my selection of targets on the inverse of your desires. Made Malabar and Majuli among my selection of holoships to destroy.’

  ‘Did you?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘No. That would have been much too spiteful.’

  In exceedingly quick succession, like a trill of notes, three of the sparks flared to an intolerable brightness that blended and smothered the flames of the other two holoships as it progressed from white to a very delicate flowerlike pink. The light was as clean as creation, effacing all sins, all desires, all consequences. Chiku stared into the purity of it, imprisoned in the moment. It felt like an eternity before the light faded to darkness, and the two still-burning sparks were visible again.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Her three living companions were already prepared to leave when she joined them. Travertine, Namboze and Dr Aziba were standing next to an assortment of silver containers: clasp-locked cases with rounded edges and many colourful symbols and dense-printed instructional notices embossed on their sides. Some of the cases were hinged open, revealing padded interiors or ranks of cleverly packaged sliding compartments. Items of equipment ranging from breathing masks to medical supplies had been pulled out of the cases and placed in loose piles on the ground. The cases represented only a tiny proportion of the items they had brought with them on Icebreaker. Then again, four people had modest needs.

  Travertine was shrugging vis way into a backpack. ‘What happened? We’ve been ready for an hour, waiting for you. Arachne kept saying you were coming, but we started to wonder.’

  ‘We should get moving,’ Namboze said. ‘There’s enough here to keep us alive out there for fifteen, maybe twenty days, provided we don’t run into anything really nasty. We’ve been through the boxes and we think we know what we need and what we can’t afford to carry. I can help you sort out a basic kit.’

  ‘Is something the matter?’ Dr Aziba asked as he adjusted the straps on the bright plastic breather mask currently dangling around his neck. The concentration pushed his features into a chimp-like mask. ‘Where were you, anyway?’

  ‘You say you’ve been here an hour?’ Chiku asked.

  ‘Ready for an hour,’ Travertine said. ‘Har
d to tell, but it can’t have been far off local dawn when she set us down here, and it must be mid-morning by now. We’ll need to keep track of the time somehow to use our rations properly.’

  ‘Do you remember being aboard Zanzibar?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t we?’ Travertine asked, grimacing as ve took the weight of the backpack. ‘When the ship arrives, they can transpond off our implants, home in on us from space. All we have to do is get as far away from Arachne’s installations as possible.’

  ‘Every kilometre will help,’ Namboze agreed. She was kneeling down, rummaging through the compartments of one of the medical boxes, pulling out colour-coded vials and hypodermic packages. ‘And even if it doesn’t make any difference to our chances, psychologically I’d far rather be moving than sitting still. We all feel that way.’

  ‘I’ll ask again,’ Dr Aziba said placidly. ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘Yes,’ Chiku said. ‘Quite a lot. Something happened. I made something happen. I need to talk about it.’

  She had joined her companions in a place she did not recognise from direct experience. It was a domed enclosure, totally transparent, but rather than being set at the top of one of the towers, this one nestled at the base of a tower, down in the forest. The dome’s walls curved under them to form a floor of flexible transparency. Beyond the walls, pressing against it in places, was an abundance of vegetation. The colours were only dimly apparent: muted greens and blues and turquoises, suggesting shades and textures and degrees of glossiness. Chiku saw all manner of architectures of leaf and bloom, of trunk and root and vine and tendril, from the slender and daggerlike to the veinous and synaptic, to the columnar and the elephantine and the grotesque. Even on the brightest of cloudless days, the over-arching layers of canopy would have robbed the sunlight of much of its effect by the time it penetrated to these depths. With the ash cover, the illumination was as meagre as the last gleaming of twilight.

  And yet there were openings in the vegetation – artificial tracks or accidental alignments of clearer growth – through which four people might, with difficulty, be able to make some progress. She wondered what her companions expected. A few tens of kilometres a day felt optimistic. But Namboze was right – it was better to be moving than sitting idle, waiting for the next impactor to fall.

  A corridor threaded through the dome, and Chiku recalled Namboze’s description of visiting something similar. In one direction it stretched as far as back as Chiku could discern before gloom swallowed her vision. In the other direction, it ran only a short distance before terminating in a flat circular wall. Beyond the disc-like termination she made out an area of clear growth – what she would describe as a glade, had there been sunlight to dapple it.

  ‘We should get moving,’ Travertine said. But even as ve spoke, ve dropped the backpack. ‘Something’s not right, is it? What is it you know, Chiku?’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Fine, but let’s not make it a long conversation.’

  ‘I don’t want it to be, but we still need to talk. I think it’s important. Can we sit down for a minute?’

  Reluctantly at first, the party convened some of the packing cases into a quartet of makeshift stools.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Chiku asked, perching on two of the cases.

  ‘We weren’t here, and then we were,’ Dr Aziba said, ‘just like every other time Arachne’s moved us around.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘No, but the intention looks pretty self-explanatory,’ Namboze said. ‘These supplies were recovered from Icebreaker . . .’ She stopped speaking and stared at Chiku. ‘Why are you looking like that? What’s bothering you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Gonithi.’

  ‘You could start by telling us what happened,’ Travertine said.

  ‘Three of the holoships are gone.’ Chiku had to swallow hard before continuing. ‘Ukerewe, Netrani and Sriharikota. She used her weapons against them. As far as I can tell, they were totally destroyed.’

  The others absorbed this news with the weary resignation she had been expecting, their expressions grim, but fully accepting the truth of what she was saying. They looked at each other, nodded in mutual understanding.

  ‘I can’t condone it,’ Dr Aziba said finally. ‘The loss of a single life must always be regretted. But they were given a chance to act differently. After what they started doing to this planet – to us! – I’m afraid my loyalties are with Zanzibar.’

  ‘They were prepared to poison an entire world,’ Namboze said. ‘The punishment’s harsh, true, but if one of those rocks had landed on Mandala . . . that would’ve been the single most irresponsible act in the entire history of our species! They had to be stopped.’

  ‘Stockholm syndrome,’ Travertine said. ‘That’s what this is. We’ve been her hostages for so long, we’ve begun to sympathise with her viewpoint. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t change my opinion. Namboze and Doctor Aziba are right – the bombardment had to be stopped. If it took this appalling act to stop it, that’s still less of a crime than allowing it to continue.’

  Chiku could barely look at their faces. ‘You don’t know the whole story yet. She deliberately destroyed only three of the five – she’d run her calculations and concluded that blowing up three ships would be enough to make her point.’

  ‘And?’ Travertine asked, leaning in to meet Chiku’s gaze.

  ‘She asked me which two should be saved. She said that if I didn’t give her two names, she’d make the decision herself.’

  Dr Aziba said, ‘You can’t blame yourself for her actions, Chiku. She put you in an impossible position – that’s a choice no one should ever be asked to make.’

  ‘How was she expecting you to choose, anyway?’ Namboze asked. ‘You’re not the machine. You can’t make that sort of decision – none of us could. The holoships were our homes! We might have travelled in Zanzibar, but all of us felt affection for the other ships. Even when they started making life hard for us, we still had friends and loved ones spread across the caravan.’

  ‘It shows how little she really understands us,’ Dr Aziba said, shaking his head sadly.

  ‘No,’ Chiku said. ‘It’s you who don’t understand.’ She lifted her chin and met each of her companions’ gazes in turn. ‘She gave me the power to make that choice and I took it. I told her to spare Malabar and Majuli. I made that decision.’

  ‘You did what?’ Namboze asked.

  ‘It was the right thing to do. I didn’t want a fucking machine to decide who lived and died. If it’s a crime, let it be my crime.’

  ‘You had no right to make that decision,’ Namboze said.

  Chiku pushed herself up from the cases. ‘I was there. You weren’t. She asked me to choose, and I chose. I couldn’t leave that decision to her, so I told her that Malabar and Majuli could live. And you know what? I’d make that choice again. There are elephants on those holoships. I put them there. They’re depending on me for their survival.’

  ‘Elephants,’ Dr Aziba repeated, as if he had not heard her correctly the first time.

  ‘Independent populations split off from Zanzibar’s herds. Majuli took the first group, and I was negotiating for Malabar to take some more when Kappa happened . . .’ Her voice was on the point of breaking. ‘When all this began.’

  ‘Elephants,’ Dr Aziba said again. ‘Just to be clear – because I hope very much that I’m misunderstanding something here – you chose elephants over human lives? You didn’t consider saving the holoships with the largest populations, or the ones carrying the greatest quantities of the specialised technologies that we’ll need to live on this world? You based your decision on the fate of some elephants?’

  ‘You’ve seen the Tantors,’ Chiku said.

  ‘But these weren’t Tantors,’ Namboze said. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? These were just animals.’

  ‘We can’t pick and choose. The Tantors came from elephants. I owed them—’

  �
��You owed them nothing!’ Dr Aziba said, spitting through his teeth. ‘What did she do to you, Chiku?’ And then he was up and grabbing Chiku’s forearms, hard enough that she felt his nails dig into her skin through the fabric of her clothing. ‘You should never have gone along with this! From the moment you woke me on Icebreaker and told me I’d been lied to, I made a decision to trust you, believing that you’d been forced by circumstance into making hard choices for the good of the caravan.’ Aziba shoved her, hard. Chiku lost her balance and fell backwards, legs buckling over the supply cases she had been sitting on. She thumped hard on the upper part of her back, snapping her neck and jarring the air from her lungs.

  Physical violence had never been part of her world. For a moment, it was more than she could process.

  ‘You should have refused,’ Namboze said, looming over Chiku. ‘Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you demand our help in making the decision?’

  ‘Would that have made it more acceptable to you both?’ Travertine asked.

  Chiku tried to push herself from the ground.

  ‘We should have been party to it,’ the doctor said, planting a foot squarely on Chiku’s belly to keep her on the floor. ‘We should have been consulted!’

  ‘And what if we all came up with different pairs of names?’ Travertine asked. ‘Would voting on it democratically have made the decision any less repugnant?’

  Namboze dived aside – she was kneeling by one of the boxes, digging into it as if looking for something. Chiku tried to get up again, but Aziba increased the pressure of his foot.

  ‘You agree with us then, Travertine – it was repugnant.’

  ‘What was repugnant is that she was asked to choose – that was the crime, not the fact that she did as she was asked.’ Ue leaned over and met Chiku’s gaze again. ‘How long did she give you to think about it?’

  Chiku coughed. Aziba’s foot pressing on her belly was making it difficult for her winded lungs to recover. ‘Five . . . five minutes. Three hundred seconds.’