‘Whatever it was, believe it or not, it appears to have worked. If only you’d taken care of yourself way back when, this would have been easier on you.’
‘We’d never have met.’
‘Don’t be so sure of that.’
‘Oh, I can be. You and me – intellectual rivals, competitive investigators in the same line of research? I’d have been nothing to you unless I was a threat, Goma Akinya. And I only made myself a threat by working myself halfway to the grave.’
‘So I’m responsible for what you did to yourself before we met?’
‘I’m just saying – if I’d taken care of myself, I’d never have come to your attention.’
‘But I fell in love with you the moment I saw your face.’
‘And why was my face of such interest to you?’
Goma had no choice but to confess. ‘I wondered who this annoying woman was, trampling all over my research interests, daring to question my methods, having the nerve to imply that she knew more about animal cognitive science than I did.’
‘Bet you wanted to scratch her eyes out.’
‘I wouldn’t have stopped at the eyes.’
‘So the message here is . . . if you can’t beat them, marry them?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Poor fool me. I didn’t have a clue what I was letting myself in for.’
‘Neither did I,’ Goma said. ‘But I’m glad it happened.’
She kissed Ru. She was back, and for a moment, brief as it was, all was well with Goma’s world. They were in love, they were together again, there were mysteries waiting to be solved. This state of momentary, careless bliss could not last, and she did not expect it to. But she had grown old and wise enough to take such gifts when they were presented, without fear for their transience.
Vasin did her best to keep everyone informed about their discoveries in the new system. She made regular announcements over the shipwide intercom, and periodically, for those who were interested, she arranged gatherings in the largest of the common areas and showed the latest images and data. Goma wondered how the woman managed to find time to sleep. Less than a third of the crew were still in skipover now, and hour by hour that number grew smaller.
Goma tried hard not to resent each newly woken face. They were all entitled to be here, even the Second Chancers.
Vasin told them about the new Mandala, the strange rock orbiting Paladin, the structures on the waterworld, the transmission from the construct. The images amplified her story but added nothing dramatically new. Travertine was still operating at the limit of its sensory capabilities, offering tantalising glimpses rather than hard details. The Mandala on Paladin was clearly the same kind of thing as the object on Crucible, but its geometry differed in various interesting ways. Arch-like structures appeared to rise from the ocean on Poseidon, but their exact nature was difficult to guess at. Perhaps they were indeed arches, or – as Loring suggested, based on tantalising hints in the data – wheel-like structures which actually continued down into unimaginably deep layers of water. The girdling moons were simply weird – confusing Travertine’s sensors in a thousand ways, their orbits spherical according to some measurements, ring-shaped according to others. They would need to get much closer to say more than that.
But their immediate concern was another world entirely. Orison lay on an orbit between the hot Poseidon and the cooler Paladin, too far from its sun to have held on to a thick atmosphere. Whereas Paladin swung around Gliese 163 in just over two hundred days and Poseidon in a mere twenty-six, Orison’s orbit was seventy-four days. It was an unpromising, nearly airless little world, and were it not for the signal, this moonless planet would not have attracted their attention.
The origin of the signal, they now knew, was some kind of transmitter on Orison’s surface. It only swung into view with the planet’s rotation, and even within that rotational cycle the signal was only being sent for a relatively short interval.
Goma was ready with her response when the message started coming in again. She had gone over it with Vasin, and now the captain and Ru sat watching her as she prepared to recite her response.
She coughed, cleared her throat. Vasin nodded.
‘My name is Goma Akinya,’ she said. ‘I’m Ndege’s daughter, and I’ve come all the way from Crucible. I know you called for Ndege, but my mother was too old to make the crossing. Besides, there were other . . . complications. So I’ve come instead, as part of an expedition funded by Crucible. We come with no agenda, no objective beyond the gathering of knowledge. But of course we’re curious about you. And now that we know of the other Mandala, we’d like to find out some more about it, as well as whatever is on Poseidon. We don’t know why you’ve warned us away from them, we’ll assume you had good reason. You also mentioned someone arriving before us. That’s news to us. Maybe you can share some information when we meet. We have a fix on your transmission site and we are bringing in our ship. We’ll come down in our lander, as close to you as possible. If there’s anything else you feel we should know, we would be glad to hear it.’
Goma touched a hand to her throat. Her mouth was dry, but she was done.
‘Good,’ Vasin said.
‘What do you think will happen next?’ Ru asked.
‘No idea, but it’ll be interesting,’ Vasin said. ‘That first signal was very generic – it could have been aimed at anyone – and sent by a very simple repeating-transmission system with no intelligence behind it. But now she knows your name, and your relationship to Ndege. If we are dealing with anything more than a mindless recording device, we should know it soon enough.’
Orison completed another turn. There was silence, no hint of a return transmission. But on the next rotation the signal was there again.
‘Good,’ the woman said. ‘It was Ndege I wanted, but if I must make do with second best, another Akinya will have to suffice. How far the apples have fallen from the tree, Goma Akinya. I do hope you measure up.’
‘I’ll try,’ Goma answered acidly.
‘Assume orbit around Orison. You shouldn’t have any trouble spotting my surface encampment. Land at your convenience, within a kilometre or so, and meet me on foot near the main surface lock. I have food and water, so don’t worry about bringing rations. Oh, and prepare yourselves for a surprise or two.’
Tantors, Goma thought. It was a treacherous line of thinking – all too liable to lead to bitter, crushing disappointment. But she could not help herself. They would put everything right – every wrong thing in her universe.
She could not stop herself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It turned out that more than one Watchkeeper had died around Poseidon. There were dozens, at least. Once they found the first corpse, it was as if their eyes – their sensors and instruments and analysis tools – had become attuned to the task of finding more.
The dead machines had all been caught up inside the thresh of moons circling Poseidon. Their orbits were irregular, and their sizes varied from fragments only a few kilometres across to one corpse that – given what they already knew of Watchkeepers – was almost whole. Almost intact, save that it was also dead, adrift and dark and absolutely inert. The space around Poseidon was a graveyard and its gatekeepers were the forty-five moons.
Gatekeepers or executioners – presuming there was a distinction.
‘Where have you brought us?’ Nissa asked.
‘Somewhere we shouldn’t be.’ But they were still inside the moons’ domain, still following their course around Poseidon, and they were not dead. Yet. They were moving without thrust on a trajectory that ought not to be mistaken for an attempt to fall into orbit or land on Poseidon. ‘Whatever happened here,’ Kanu went on, ‘it may have been a very long time ago. Something did that to the Watchkeepers, but we don’t appear to be attracting its attention.’
‘We might, at any moment,’
said Nissa. ‘We don’t know what those Watchkeepers were doing, or how close to the surface they got. For all we know we’re just about to cross some threshold.’
She was seated next to him on the control deck, the ship having furnished a second chair while they were on the long approach from the system’s edge. It had happened without either of them asking, rising out of some buried concealment in the floor.
‘I know, and I agree,’ Kanu said. ‘But we can only slow or change course by using our engines, and that may be the one thing that makes us conspicuous. I think the safest option may be to carry on as we are until we come out the other side.’
‘Another eight hours.’
‘I don’t like it either.’
‘And what does Swift think?’
Swift’s figment stood to the left of Kanu, hands on hips, conveying fretful agitation. He kept taking off his pince-nez, polishing them, returning them to the tip of his nose. ‘As a matter of fact, I agree with Nissa – we may be about to sail into difficulty. Equally, I have some sympathy with your position, Kanu. It could be a mistake to use thrust.’
‘He’s a fat lot of use. Swift says we’re both right.’
‘Then ignore Swift. We still have to do something.’
‘I’ve felt this same indecision once before, near our old household in Africa. I was out in the grass, not more than an hour’s stroll from the gates, and I noticed a large black snake moving through the grass near me. I’d not had much experience with snakes and was so terrified I couldn’t move. My brain said: if you almost didn’t notice that snake, there might be one there as well, and there, and there.’
‘And were you surrounded by snakes?’
‘I have no idea. The big snake passed me by. It wasn’t interested in me at all – I’m not even sure whether it sensed me or not. But my point is, that’s how I feel now. I don’t want to make a move, to do one thing that might bring disaster. But we have to act.’
‘Full drive,’ Nissa said. ‘Empty the tanks if we have to. Ditch the escape pods to save mass. Sacrifice Fall of Night, if we must. But we get out of here as quickly as we can.’
‘There’s another way,’ Swift said quietly, as if to speak were an impertinence.
‘Go on,’ Kanu said.
‘Go on what?’ asked Nissa.
‘Swift has an idea.’ But there was a sense of words forming in his throat, sounds pushing out of his mouth. ‘You must excuse me taking this liberty,’ he said, or rather was compelled to say, an invisible hand squeezing speech out of his larynx. ‘It is simpler, Nissa, if I speak directly to you both. The Watchkeepers have been killed, but their remains are tolerated, allowed to follow their orbits.’
Nissa regarded Kanu from her seat, making no effort to hide her appalled revulsion. But there was fascination, too, of a clinical kind.
‘What have you done to him?’
‘Nothing has been done to him; nothing will be done. He is my friend. Now might we speak of the Watchkeepers? We would be well advised to get out of here, but we dare not make too much of a show of ourselves doing so. On the other hand, none of us wishes to spend another eight hours trusting to our luck. Therefore, a compromise. If we maintain our present heading, we will soon pass very close to one of those fragments. It’s moving slower than us, but with a short, sharp burst of thrust we can match velocities. We park ourselves next to the fragment – on or inside it, if necessary – and let it carry us beyond the orbit of the outermost moon. When the fragment reaches its apogee, we depart – and cross everything we have for luck.’
‘Or we could just cut and run,’ Nissa said.
Swift relinquished his control of Kanu’s larynx, Kanu letting out a small involuntary gasp in the process. ‘I’m back,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry, but I don’t like Swift’s idea. It’s still too risky, given how little we know.’
‘So we do nothing, is that your plan?’
‘I didn’t say that. Continuing with our present course of action is still doing something.’
‘Well, if we keep talking about it long enough, those eight hours will just fly by,’ Nissa said, rolling her eyes with heavy irony.
‘We’re on edge,’ Kanu said. ‘It’s natural – we’d be fools if we weren’t. And there are no rules for this situation, no precedents. None of the ideas is bad. But if the thing we’re doing hasn’t harmed us—’
Swift walked over to Kanu, ghosted through the console and lowered himself into the same volume of space occupied by Kanu’s body.
‘I am sorry, Kanu, but I think this is necessary.’
Kanu could neither speak nor control his body. Swift was puppeteering him again, working the levers inside his skull. He had done it once, with Kanu’s consent, but this time there had been no invitation, not even tacit permission.
Kanu rose from his seat, pushing aside the console. He moved to face Nissa, still seated in her chair, and sank until he rested on his haunches.
‘The choice must be yours,’ Swift said. ‘Kanu is right – there are no precedents. Equally, you did not ask to be placed in this position, whereas Kanu and I embarked on our enterprise in the full and certain knowledge that there would be grave unknowns. So, as I said, the choice is yours. Whatever you decide, that is what we will do.’
‘Why?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion of a trick.
‘Because I would very much like you to begin trusting me, and this looks like an excellent place to start. Whatever you say, that is what we will do. I will implement your decision.’
‘Then . . . get us out of here as quickly as possible.’
‘Very well.’ As Swift moved Kanu’s body back to his seat, he added, ‘Normal structural and accelerational safeguards will be suspended. That seat should protect you, but I would strongly advise bracing in readiness for the load. In a moment I will disengage spin-generated gravity and align the control deck for the new vector.’
‘Wait,’ Nissa said.
‘Yes?’
‘It is a risk.’
‘Indeed. But there are no risk-free options.’
‘All the same . . . no. We don’t cut and run. Your option – is that still valid?’
‘For the moment.’
‘Then do it. Get us close to that fragment, like you said. There are forty-five moons – I presume they can’t all see us at the same time?’
‘If sight lines are relevant, then we are presently within the range of visibility of thirteen moons, although the number will fluctuate as we continue our course.’
‘Are you clever, Swift? As clever as Kanu thinks you are?’
‘I doubt anyone is that clever.’
‘Then here’s a test for you. When the drive comes on, make sure we’re as invisible as we can be. Use that fragment to its maximum advantage.’
‘You are presenting me with a somewhat challenging N-body problem.’
‘I’ll tell you what’s challenging, Swift – being dragged fifty fucking light-years across the galaxy without my consent. So rise to the occasion. You said the choice was mine – this is my choice.’
‘And you could not have put it more eloquently, Nissa. Well, I do appreciate a challenge, and I shall apply myself to the matter with alacrity. This will take a few moments . . . fortunately, we can already draw on Icebreaker’s detailed model of the moons to minimise our visibility.’
When Swift returned to his console, Kanu again had the strange experience of seeing his hands whip across the controls, his vision blurring with the speed of his eyes’ jolting attentional shifts. It felt strange to him; it must look monstrous to Nissa.
But necessary. As resentful as he felt – it was not remotely pleasant to be usurped from control of his own body – he understood why Swift had done it. To surrender before Nissa, to give her not just a say in her fate but absolute control – it was the only thing that might prompt he
r to see Swift as an ally rather than a parasite.
A risk. But as Swift had said, there were no risk-free options.
After a few minutes, Swift said, ‘It’s done. I’m relinquishing Kanu. We’ll make our course change in a completely automated fashion, beginning in about seven minutes. It can be revoked at any point. Once we start, though, I would strongly suggest we continue.’
Kanu had to take a deep breath as he returned to himself – Swift had drawn deeply from the well of his energies.
‘Remind me not to let him do that too often.’
Nissa looked at him through guarded eyes. ‘Do you have a choice?’
‘I thought I did.’
‘He could take you over completely, couldn’t he? If he can lock you out at that level, what’s to stop him?’
‘Nothing,’ Kanu said. ‘Except his respect for the trust I had in him.’
‘And is that trust still intact?’
‘Battered, but it will heal. I think he did the right thing.’
‘Good. But I take it this is the point where you start trying to argue me out of my decision?’
‘No,’ Kanu said, after a moment of reflection. ‘I don’t know which of us is right. But Swift had an idea, and you’ve chosen it, and that’s good enough for me. Whatever happens, it should be interesting – you realise no one has ever come as close to a Watchkeeper as we’re about to?’
‘Dead Watchkeepers don’t count. Anyway, your mother . . . one of your mothers – she’d say differently, wouldn’t she?’
‘I suppose she would,’ Kanu said. ‘But the Watchkeeper came to Chiku, not the other way round.’
It was a long seven minutes – time enough for doubts and second-guessing. But their nerve held, and at the appointed moment, Icebreaker commenced its course change. It was as hard and sudden as Swift had warned, an assault to the frailty of the human body, but they were ready for it and the shock was bearable. Kanu sensed himself on the verge of blacking out, but unconsciousness never quite came and his thoughts remained lucid. The course correction continued for several minutes, a succession of nerve-rattling instants, any one of which could have seen some dreadful reprisal from the moons. But no attack came. Perhaps they were too small to draw the moons’ attention, or Swift had timed their course change accurately enough to avoid drawing down their fire. Or perhaps, Kanu mused, all this destruction was the work of millions of years ago, and they had never been in harm’s way.
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