‘Did you try talking to them?’ Goma asked.
‘Not until it was too late. They made me nervous, popping up in the wrong corner of the sky like that. Call it a fault of old age but I’m not fond of surprises. Anyway, I did eventually try to signal them, but by then they’d run into some trouble around Poseidon and either I wasn’t sending reliably or they weren’t listening.’
‘When was this?’ Goma asked.
‘A little over a year ago. Frankly, I was starting to think Poseidon had done us all a favour by taking that ship out of the argument.’
‘And then?’ Ru asked.
‘Six weeks ago I intercepted another burst of transmissions – short duration, low signal strength. These came from the other side of the system, close to Paladin. Did you pick up something similar?’
‘We’d still have been on deceleration thrust then,’ Vasin said, ‘which limited our sensitivity. Unless the signal was strong or kept repeating, we were more likely to miss it than hear it.’
‘You think it was the same ship?’ Goma asked.
‘Almost certainly. It must have gone dark – spent the intervening year making a very slow transfer from Poseidon. No way for me to track that. Probably damaged, too, if that second burst was an indicator of their transmitting capacity. I tried signalling again, but either they couldn’t hear me or they chose not to respond. You had a good look at Paladin on your approach – did you see any evidence of a ship?’
‘No,’ Vasin said. ‘And I don’t see how we could have missed something that big.’
‘You would if they’d hidden it inside Zanzibar while they make repairs.’
‘Mystery ship or not,’ said Karayan, ‘that rock cannot be Zanzibar. The remains of that holoship are still orbiting Crucible. End of discussion.’
‘Whatever remains you’ve seen,’ Eunice answered, ‘they’re not the whole thing. A good bit of it ended up here. It wasn’t teleported or sent down a wormhole. It came the same way you did – moving through space, through all the points between here and Crucible. It just did so very, very quickly.’
‘Faster than the speed of light?’ Goma asked.
‘No – that really is impossible. But close to the speed of light. Very close. The survivors didn’t report any subjective time interval between being in one system and the next, which means their clocks barely had time to tick.’
‘You just said survivors,’ Goma stated, hardly daring to imagine what that news would have meant to her mother, to the people who had damned her, to the loyal but ridiculed Travertine. It would not have absolved Ndege of a crime, but it would have made the magnitude of it far less – and she would have been hailed in the same breath as the discoverer of something wonderful.
Too late now.
‘Hundreds of thousands of them,’ Eunice said. ‘Adults, children – Tantors, as I’ve already mentioned. Snatched from Crucible to Paladin, bounced between two Mandalas.’
‘Then it’s no wonder that ship made contact,’ Ru said. ‘If you weren’t answering them, they must have homed in on the first signs of human habitation elsewhere in the galaxy.’
‘And that’s where we run into a little local complication. No easy way of breaking this news, but I’m afraid there aren’t any people left in Zanzibar. There were . . . difficulties . . . differences of opinion. Rather violent differences.’
‘What happened to my grandmother?’ Goma asked.
‘Something bad,’ Eunice said. ‘But understand this: you can’t blame the Tantors for any of it. It was Dakota who led them astray. But even she can’t be held to account for what became of her, what the Watchkeepers turned her into. It was never her fault that she became a monster.’
‘And these Tantors – did they play any part in what happened?’ Ru asked.
‘Blameless. As innocent as babes. But please don’t underestimate them on that basis.’
They had reached a flatter part of the corridor where an enormous door led into the sidewall. Eunice touched a control and the door heaved open. Light drenched the corridor, accompanied by a steamy warmth. She stepped into whatever room lay beyond, indicating that the party should wait before following her.
Goma felt her emotions wrenched askew – dismay and horror at what might have happened on Zanzibar, to the people in general and her own grandmother in particular; and a delicious, giddy anticipation of what she was about to experience. She felt like a traitor to herself, not fully surrendering to the sadness and anger that were the right and proper response. But what could she do? There was joy in her heart that Ndege might now, at least in death, receive a measure of forgiveness. She would have given anything to communicate this one vital fact to Crucible, back in time, so that it might ease Ndege’s burden. She could not bend time to her will; she could not bring that greater happiness to Ndege. But she had this moment, and for now she was thankful.
And she was about to meet Tantors.
She heard Eunice speaking. She heard answering voices. She felt as if all the arrows of her life pointed to this moment.
Eunice came back into the corridor. ‘All right, they’re ready for you. These Tantors are my friends and they mean well, but aside from me, they’ve never seen another human being. So please – no sudden movements, no shouting, nothing that could be construed as a threatening gesture.’
‘We won’t scare them,’ Goma said.
‘It’s not them I worry about, dear.’
‘The two of you should go first,’ Vasin said, beckoning Goma and Ru to step through the doorway. ‘You’ve earned this. May it be everything you’ve hoped for.’
‘Thank you,’ Goma said with genuine gratitude.
They entered with Eunice next to them, and for a moment all they could do was squint against the brightness of this underground room. It was warm – much warmer and more humid than the corridor – and Goma felt the blood returning to her fingertips.
Under their feet was dirt. The chamber had a huge vaulted roof, with a dome-shaped skylight set into it. The floor was stepped, with different levels.
‘It was a natural bubble,’ Eunice was saying. ‘Ours for the taking. We roofed it over, sealed it against pressure loss, pumped it full of atmosphere. We’ve dug out some adjoining chambers, but this is still the biggest.’
She might as well have been talking gibberish for all Goma cared. It was the Tantors that had her absolute and binding attention. In that instant, nothing else in the universe mattered.
‘They’re glorious,’ she said.
Ru was holding her hand. Goma squeezed back. The moment was theirs and theirs alone, as precious as any they had shared. ‘Yes.’
The cold of the corridor had already brought water to her eyes; now the water became tears of joy. It was only three of them, yes – nothing compared to the multitude she had dared hope for. But still: to be here now, to be standing in this room and beholding three living Tantors – there would always be her life before this moment, and her life after it, the one a dim reflection of the other, and nothing would ever be the same.
The universe had given them a gift. She was light-headed with the thrill of it all, delirious with gratitude and wonder and a sense that beautiful possibilities still lay ahead of them all.
‘Say something,’ Eunice said. ‘It generally helps.’
Goma opened her mouth and found her throat was dry. She coughed, swallowed, tried to gather some tatters of composure. It was hard to speak, grinning the way she was. Mposi and Ndege – if only they could be here, seeing what she was seeing.
But they were, if she wanted them to be.
‘I am Goma Akinya,’ she said. ‘This is Ru Munyaneza. We’ve come a long way to find you. You are magnificent – a wonder to us. Thank you for allowing us to see you.’
Three Tantors stood before them on a slightly raised part of the floor, adults or near-adults by her estimatio
n. They were elephants, of course – the physiological differences between Tantors and baseline elephants were not dramatic – but everything about the way they stood, the intense, unwavering scrutiny of their gaze, spoke of something beyond animal intelligence. It was in their deportment, in the lowering of their heads – not subservience, but more a kind of greeting, displaying the boulder-like prominence of their skulls, crammed with intellect.
Tools and equipment hung from belts and harnesses fastened around them, and above the trunk and between the eyes, their brows were covered by a curving metal plate that fastened in place like a horse’s bridle. The black plate contained a screen and a grille, and it was from these grilles that their voices emerged. The middle of three, the largest and most mature, spoke first.
‘Welcome, Goma Akinya – and Ru Munyaneza. I am Sadalmelik.’
‘I am Eldasich,’ said the one to Sadalmelik’s left.
‘I am Achernar,’ said the third Tantor.
‘Are there more of you?’ Goma asked.
‘Outside,’ Sadalmelik answered. ‘Atria, Mimosa and Keid. They have gone outside to make repairs to one of the distant antennae. It is more than a day’s walk from here. But they will soon return.’
Their voices were machine-generated and sounded with no corresponding movement of the Tantors’ mouths – a kind of ventriloquism. Each had been assigned a different pitch and timbre. Goma had already decided on the basis of body morphology and tusk thickness that Eldasich was the female of the three, and her voice was slightly higher and purer than the two males’. It was a concession to human anthropomorphism, but it accorded with what she knew of the original Tantor populations. The language-generating equipment was familiar, too – long after Crucible’s Tantors had died out, the augmentation gear had remained, dusty and unused but too valuable to throw away. The black plates read neural signals, translating subvocal impulses into sound, which left the Tantors free to continue using the entire normal repertoire of elephant vocalisations and rumbles.
‘Eunice tells us that you’ve never seen other people before,’ Ru said.
‘No,’ said Sadalmelik. ‘But we have studied images and recordings, and heard many accounts. You are new to us, but not unfamiliar. Have you come from Crucible?’
‘Yes,’ Goma said, still grinning. ‘By starship. Eunice sent for us. For my mother, actually.’
‘Ndege,’ said Eldasich. ‘You were known to her?’
‘Yes. I had to leave her behind.’
‘We remember Ndege. She was kind to us. It is good to remember such things,’ said Achernar.
‘You can’t possibly have known her,’ Ru said.
‘Our kind knew her,’ Achernar, the smaller male said. ‘We remember. We pass down the knowing of things. Is this strange to you?’
‘No,’ Goma answered. ‘Not at all. And my mother would have loved to meet you. She knew Tantors on the holoship, and then for a little while after we reached Crucible. But it wasn’t to last.’
‘Then you have not known Tantors?’ asked Sadalmelik.
Goma looked to Eunice for guidance, but their host had evidently decided to let them deal with this on their own.
‘You are special,’ she ventured. ‘Very special and rare. After we lost Zanzibar, there were not enough of you left to carry on your line. Ru and I – our work on Crucible concerned you. We were trying to find ways to return Tantors to the world.’
‘Did you succeed?’ Achernar asked.
‘No. We failed. There are none of your kind left now. There was a wise one . . . her name was Agrippa. She was strong and clever. We loved her very much, but she grew old.’
‘Were you there at her end?’ asked Eldasich.
‘Yes,’ Goma said. ‘Both of us were.’
‘It is good that you were there,’ Sadalmelik said. ‘Speak of her to us. We will remember her. We will find her true name and pass down the knowing of her. Then she will always be known.’
‘Thank you,’ Goma said.
Ru asked, ‘Can we come nearer?’
‘Do you wish to touch?’ asked Sadalmelik.
‘To touch. And be touched. If you’re fine with that.’
‘We are fine with that,’ Eldasich said.
Remembering Eunice’s instruction not to make sudden or threatening movements, they approached with the utmost care. Behind Eunice, Vasin, Nhamedjo, Loring and Karayan watched the proceedings with a sort of nervous encouragement, like spectators at a circus.
‘You mentioned Agrippa’s “true name”,’ Goma said.
‘Yes,’ answered Sadalmelik.
‘What did you mean by that? The names you just told us – are these your true names?’
‘Those are our short names, the names for people to use. They help you separate us. But they are not our true names. Our true names are too hard for you, and too long. We never speak our true names.’
‘I understand,’ Goma said, although she was not sure that she did. Better that the Tantors had their secrets and mysteries, though, than be too transparent, too easily understood.
She approached to within touching distance of Sadalmelik, reached out slowly and raised her hand to touch his shoulder. She felt the warm, bristly roughness of his skin as it moved with the great tidal surge of his breathing. She shifted her hand, maintaining the gentlest of contacts, from shoulder to neck, from neck to the side of his face. Ru, meanwhile, had stationed herself next to Eldasich and was stroking the upper part of her trunk. Goma moved a hand to one of Sadalmelik’s tusks, warm to cold, soft to hard. His eye regarded her steadily, and despite every instinct she could not bring herself to avoid contact with his gaze. Far from repelling such contact, the eye’s intelligence appeared to demand it. She stared into its liquid depths, trying to imagine the sharp and curious intelligence within.
Sadalmelik moved his trunk and touched her other hand with the tip, then traced its way to her face. An elephant’s trunk was a marvel of elastofluidic engineering – a tool both supple and strong, sensitive and expressive. Goma was used to being examined by elephants but this was a different order of intimacy – guided and methodical. She held her ground fearlessly, even as the trunk moved from her nose to her brow, mapping her like an instrument.
‘You are like Eunice.’
‘I should be.’
‘You are also like Ndege. She stands where you stand. She sees what you see. Did she pass into the Remembering, Goma?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, and the answer was like a damburst, the first time she truly felt the knowledge of her mother’s passing.
‘Then we will speak of Ndege as well, until her true name has spoken itself.’
‘There’s a lot to talk about.’ It was all Goma could do to hold herself together. ‘Would you mind if Ru and I spent some time with you? We can tell you about Agrippa – about anything you like. And we want to hear your stories, the knowledge you have passed down.’
Sadalmelik elevated his great head to look beyond Goma. ‘Is there time, Eunice?’
‘A little,’ she said. ‘We must wait for the others to return, at any rate.’
‘Then we shall talk.’
‘Not just yet,’ Eunice said. ‘My guests are tired, and they need feeding and watering. We have some discussions of our own to attend to. But they will not be far away.’
The good news was that Eunice could offer something besides mealworms; the less good news was that the alternatives were scarcely more appetising. Today’s offering was some kind of fibrous edible fungus, lithoponically grown in one of the domes she had set aside for food production. Eunice flavoured her dishes with carefully rationed spices, some of which had been with her since the exile, some of which were the product of her own experiments in cultivation.
‘They didn’t expect me to last as long as I have, I suspect.’ Their host was pottering with plates and cutlery. ‘Equa
lly, Dakota didn’t have the stomach to just kill me. We’d seen and done too much together for her to turn against me totally. I think she always hoped I’d change my mind, become useful to her again instead of actively unhelpful. Well, fat chance of that.’
‘Go back to the beginning,’ Vasin said. ‘Your arrival here, to start with. The three of you – the Trinity. How did it go from that to this?’
‘We were brought here by the Watchkeeper. We travelled close to the speed of light, although probably not quite as quickly as Zanzibar. Say when.’
‘When.’ The captain took her plate of processed fungus, staring at it with a measure of trepidation.
‘It won’t kill you, Gandhari.’
‘Thank you, Eunice. When you say Zanzibar, though – this was before the arrival, the translation event?’
‘Yes – long before. Think about it. The Trinity left Crucible more than twenty years before your Mandala event. We had that much time to explore this place – to begin to understand for ourselves what the Watchkeepers had in mind for us.’
‘Which was?’ Loring asked. They were all seated around Eunice’s table, squeezed together like the unexpected drop-ins they were, with Ru and Dr Nhamedjo perched on storage crates instead of chairs.
‘Exploration. To serve as their proxies. To learn things they themselves could not discover. Doctor Nhamedjo?’
‘About the same as Gandhari, please. Maybe a little less.’
‘Suit yourself.’ She deposited a generous dollop of the fungus on his plate. ‘You can always come back for seconds. Maslin?’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘How was that supposed to work, exactly?’ Goma asked. ‘What could the Watchkeepers not discover for themselves that they’d need our help with? We’re nothing to them – we’re not even the same order of intelligence.’
‘And therein lies your answer. There are facts concerning the M-builders that they would like to uncover, but they can’t because of what they are. The M-builders put up barriers. Think of them as intelligence filters, capable of deciding what is allowed access to the truth and what isn’t. Consider yourselves lucky: without my intervention you’d have likely blundered into one of the filters yourselves.’
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