The image jumped again.
‘Still, let us hope for the best, not the worst. If the Risen and the people have endured, something beautiful will have happened. And should you find it of interest to wake those of us who sleep, I do not think you will find it too taxing a proposition. By the time you reach this system, you’ll have decades or centuries of advancement over us. But because I want to maximise our chances, I’m appending all the relevant information I can think of which may be useful to you. You’ll find it at the end of this recording. There is more to say – much more – but this will have—’
The image made a deferential bow.
‘I am Chiku Akinya. I was born on the Moon, within a light-second of Earth. My great-grandmother was Eunice Akinya – Senge Dongma, the lion-faced one. She opened a door to the future, and some of us had the nerve to follow her through it. Whoever you are, wherever you have come from, whether blood or electrons run through your veins –– I wish you the best of luck. May wisdom and humility guide your actions.’
This part of the recording had finished playing. A sequence of schematics followed, flickering past too quickly for the eye to absorb. Kanu had just enough grasp on them to tell that the data was medical in nature, presumably referring to the functioning of skipover technology.
‘Interesting,’ Swift said, in the quietest of voices.
‘What do you mean, “interesting”?’ Kanu asked.
But the glass slab darkened, and for now Swift had nothing more to add.
They docked Fall of Night with Icebreaker, disembarked, made some system checks. They had been gone for a short enough time that the ship had made the barest progress in repairing itself. Equally, nothing untoward had happened.
Kanu remained on Icebreaker, while Nissa returned to Fall of Night, continuing to use it as a tug to shift the larger craft nearer to Zanzibar. The nearer they got, the more fraught and delicate the operation became – it would be so easy to lose control, and send Icebreaker battering into the elephants’ home.
When they first scouted Zanzibar, not knowing its true nature, they had noticed the depression at one end, like a dimple pushed into its skin. Kanu understood now that this was the vestigial remains of the holoship’s original Chibesa engine, the monstrous drive that had pushed it up to a fraction of the speed of light. Slow by the standards of his own ship – but then again, this was a thing the size of a mountain. The wonder was that it could be moved at all.
The holoships’ Chibesa engines had not been needed during most of the crossing. Some had even been temporarily dismantled, freeing up an enormous amount of interior space, before the engines were reintegrated for slowdown. After the holoships reached Crucible, though, there had been no need for the engines any more. They were stripped down completely, reforged into a thousand bright new things for the young colony. Zanzibar was no different, and the space vacated by the gutted engine had been turned over to spacecraft berthing – a walled dock for handling much larger vehicles than the usual landers and shuttles.
Now the sheer wall at the base of the depression was sliding aside, offering access to the interior. It was a cylindrical space equipped with many docking clamps, holdfasts and airlocks, but there were only a handful of spacecraft visible, and none of them was a tenth the size of Icebreaker. The designs of the other vehicles were unfamiliar, but he could guess their capabilities and functions well enough. These were short-range ships, the sort that might have been used to venture down to Crucible or hop from one holoship to another, but none of them looked large enough to be capable of deep-system operations. They were also all built for human passengers – an elephant could not board most of them, let alone operate them.
The docking bay rotated along with the rest of Zanzibar, and Nissa had to perform some deft piloting to nudge Icebreaker into position against one of the holdfasts. Any damage done now would just have to be added to the ledger.
Icebreaker lurched, followed by a groan of structural complaint from somewhere beneath Kanu’s feet. Then the holdfast’s multiple clamps locked against the hull and all was silent.
Nissa redocked with Icebreaker, then moved through the ship until she had rejoined Kanu.
‘Nice work,’ he said.
‘I hope you’re right about this.’
‘So do I.’
‘You mean,’ she said, ‘so do both of you.’
*
Memphis was waiting for them on the other side of the airlock. They were taken to another vehicle, perhaps the same one they had ridden originally, and conveyed swiftly through a succession of tunnels and chambers until at last they returned to the civic building where their audience with Dakota had taken place. Only a few hours had passed, but Kanu nonetheless had the sense that his previous encounter with the matriarch belonged to another part of his life – one that preceded a momentous and irreversible decision.
‘Memphis showed you the sleepers,’ Dakota said as she walked slowly around the four walls of the lobby. ‘In his way, I imagine he tried to explain our predicament. The humans gave up their conscious lives so that the rest of us might survive, submitting themselves to the uncertainty of skipover. It was a great sacrifice – a truly noble and courageous act. They were as mothers to us. But as you may have judged for yourselves, our circumstances are now much improved. Zanzibar is hardy, and in a thousand small ways it has begun to heal itself. Now there is no question of it being able to support the Risen. Beyond that, there is also capacity for Risen and people to share the same resources.’
‘All of them?’ Kanu asked, thinking of the multitudes he had seen in the vaults.
‘To begin with, no – that would be too dramatic a change. But a forerunner population, a small cohort of woken humans woken to assist and put right what the Risen cannot do for themselves? That is entirely achievable. Or rather, it has become so.’
‘You mean since our arrival,’ Nissa said.
‘With the best will, we are limited in what we may achieve. Intellect is only part of the difficulty. We are also hampered by our very natures – our physical size. These tools and prosthetic enhancements you will have noticed upon us – they allow us a measure of control over Zanzibar’s functioning systems. But there have always been areas we cannot reach; control or sensory systems that are simply too delicate or complicated for us to operate. I may be able to read books, but even I would be daunted by the challenge of bringing sleepers out of skipover. I am sure the systems aboard your ship are highly automated.’
‘Of course,’ Kanu said.
‘It was not the case here. When the designers installed the skipover vaults, it was always with the presumption that there would be living caretakers on hand. Their concern was to provide for a great number of sleepers, with automation being a secondary concern. They succeeded, of course – the skipover vaults literally saved our lives. But we cannot simply rouse the sleepers at the touch of a button. For that we need human assistance.’
‘Even then it’ll be tricky,’ Nissa said.
‘But you will have as much time as you need, and all the resources of Zanzibar at your disposal. If at first you fail, none of us will think ill of you.’
‘Even if lives are lost?’ Kanu asked. ‘At least those people are frozen now, beyond any immediate threat.’
‘Of course there will be a chance of deaths,’ Dakota said. ‘But just as the settlers of Crucible made their Covenant with the Watchkeeper, so we have our solemn Covenant with these sleepers. They surrendered their conscious lives so that we might live – and for that they have our eternal gratitude. But the debt cannot go unpaid.’
‘You feel an obligation to bring them back,’ Nissa said.
‘It is long past time – the duty weighs heavy on us. Your arrival is a great stroke of fortune.’
Kanu gave a half-smile. ‘It didn’t feel so fortunate to us.’
‘Nonetheless, I could not b
e happier to have you among us. Your ship will be repaired. Once the work is under way, please feel perfectly free to make use of your own skipover facilities. But with your permission, and when the time suits you, I should very much enjoy continuing our conversations. I have not often found my mental equal among my fellow Risen, but I think the pair of you will provide suitable stimulus.’
‘Of course,’ Kanu said, putting aside whatever misgivings he presently felt.
‘But all that is for the future. Tomorrow, if you are suitably rested, I should like you to make an examination of the sleeper vaults – as thorough as you feel it needs to be. In turn, we will discuss the detailed arrangements for the repair work – the supply of materials, the use of our manufacturing systems. In the meantime, we will do our level best to make you feel at home. I believe you will find the arrangements exemplary, but you must not hesitate to speak up if some aspect of it may be improved.’
‘We will,’ Nissa said. ‘Might I ask a question, though?’
‘By all means.’
‘Chiku’s recording was edited. Does a complete record of her statement exist anywhere?’
‘That recording is all that we have. The regret is ours – we could have made much use of her wisdom. Are you troubled by the recording?’
‘No,’ Kanu answered, with as much conviction as he could manage, although he shared Nissa’s doubts about the recording’s integrity.
‘Then Memphis will take you to the White House. I think one of you will find yourself on very familiar ground.’
When at last the household came into view – within another chamber a few kilometres beyond the point where they had been detained – Kanu’s first impression was that his memories were playing an odd and unsettling game with him. He had been here before and already come to know this place – but that was quite impossible.
The vehicle was descending a steeply sloping path flanked by woodland, at the base of which lay an extensive area of flattened ground set with lakes and copses of trees. The trees thickened in the middle, enclosing a blue and white building whose outline – glimpsed from the path’s descending elevation – was at once familiar and estranging.
‘We were here,’ Nissa said, and he knew he was not going mad. ‘You showed me this place once. But that was in Africa!’
‘On the old border between Kenya and Tanzania,’ Kanu said, understanding coming to him in waves. ‘It’s where the old Akinya household used to be – the base of operations for the whole commercial empire, five or six hundred years ago. This is what it used to be like, before it became a ruin!’
‘I don’t understand how it can be here.’
‘It’s a copy, not the same building. It must be my family’s thumbprint on the holoship project – their way of reminding everyone what they’d made possible.’
‘As if anyone needed to be told.’
‘It looks in good repair,’ he said, raising a flattened palm over his eyes to shade out the ceiling lights. ‘Good as new. Given all the troubles aboard Zanzibar, I’m amazed it looks as fresh as it does.’
‘Someone thought it was worth taking care of, I suppose.’
The vehicle picked its way through the thicket of trees surrounding the household, following a path that was either one of the original roads or had simply been cleared by the continuous passage of elephants. The vehicle rolled up in front of the house and Memphis dropped the ramp.
Two Risen were waiting to escort them into the household. The front entrance was easily tall and wide enough to accommodate them, although Kanu could not say how accurately it now reflected the architecture in Africa. If it had been modified, it had been done so neatly, with an eye to preserving the elegance of the original frontage. Beyond, lit by glass ceiling lights, was a wide, airy corridor which formed the cross member of the building’s A-shaped profile. Again, it was comfortably large enough to accommodate two elephants and their human guests, but not all the connecting halls and rooms were as generously proportioned.
‘You will stay in these rooms,’ one of the Risen declared, gesturing at a set of doors with a swish of its trunk. ‘You will have water and food. If you need more water and food, you will ask. If there is anything broken in the rooms, you will say.’
‘Thank you,’ Kanu said.
‘Was that a series of orders or just very stilted Swahili?’ Nissa asked in a semi-whisper.
‘I’m going to be optimistic and assume the latter.’
Finding the doors already unlocked, they entered the suite. Within, they discovered that the rooms were connected in such a way that they did not need to go back out into the hall to move from room to room.
The rooms contained clean furniture, bedding, toilets and washing facilities. Kanu ran a gloved finger along a surface and inspected it for dust, hoping to gain some idea of when these chambers had last been occupied, but there was no sign of neglect.
They searched and found hot water, a cooking device and a refrigerated store of basic foodstuffs. Kanu was doubtful of the long-term nutritional value of some items, but there was clearly enough to keep them alive for the time being.
‘We will come for you tomorrow,’ the Risen said when Kanu and Nissa returned to the hall.
‘Can we leave the property?’ Kanu asked.
‘You will stay in these rooms. You will not leave. If you need us, you will make a noise.’ The Risen gestured at a metal staff, similar to the one Memphis had used to alert Dakota, leaning next to one of the doors.
‘Are we prisoners here?’ Nissa said.
‘You will not leave.’
‘That’s clear enough,’ Kanu said.
When the Risen had gone, they removed their outer spacesuit layers and set the pieces down on one of the several beds. It was a relief to be out of the suits, able to move freely – and to wash, and feel fresh again – but Kanu had never felt more nakedly vulnerable in his life. For all that it might have been illusory, the suit had at least given him a sense of armour, a shell that would offer some protection against the brute force of the Risen.
‘What have we blundered into?’ he wondered aloud.
‘You’re the diplomat – you tell me.’
‘You’re no help. Dakota’s shown no ill intentions towards us and we could easily have left when we went outside to fetch Icebreaker. So why do I feel like we’ve just made a tremendous mistake?’
‘Maybe we have.’
Exhausted, Kanu sat down at a table and cradled his hairless head in his hands. Nissa moved to a bedside console and made one of the walls start cycling through panoramic views, rich and detailed enough that Kanu felt he could have stepped into any one of them. A sunset savannah, a rainbowed waterfall that he nearly recognised, some boys playing football on a beach. He watched the boys wistfully, thinking how delightful it would be to have no cares beyond the kicking of a ball.
‘We fix the ship. Then we leave. There’s no reason for Dakota to prevent that, provided we help with the sleepers.’
‘What is she to them?’ Nissa asked. ‘A matriarch, or something more? What keeps her at the top of the heap?’
Now there was kora music floating gently through the rooms.
‘I don’t know – respect for her age and wisdom? Does it have to be more than that?’
‘She’s not just an elephant, though.’
‘I think the magnifying glass was a giveaway. That and the ability to read and talk.’
‘I do the sarcasm around here, Kanu. What I mean is she’s more than just an exceptionally bright elephant. Where did that human-level intellect come from? What did you do to them?’
‘Me, personally? Nothing at all!’
‘But you know what happened, and it was something to do with your family.’
‘“My” family now, is it?’ Kanu asked irritatedly. ‘You were happy enough to marry into it.’
Des
pite his provocation Nissa kept her cool. ‘You know what I meant.’
Kanu nodded, ashamed at himself for overreacting. He softened his tone. ‘I’m sorry – that wasn’t warranted. The truth is, I don’t really know what went on with the elephants. Human genes must have been involved, or the expression of dormant gene sequences in the elephant genome which could be used to shape human neurological structures – like throwing a big bank of switches, turning things on and off. The genetic engineers made them small, to begin with – something about phyletic dwarfism. The smart elephants only came later, but they were probably an outgrowth of the same experimental programme. Which wasn’t strictly an Akinya programme, incidentally – we only helped it along.’
‘That doesn’t absolve you of responsibility.’
‘I know.’
She sat on a bed, tucked her legs underneath her and rasped a hand over her scalp. ‘I’m not really blaming you for this – not you personally, anyway. Maybe your ancestors. But I’d still like to know what she is. If we could dissect her brain, what would it look like – an elephant with some human attributes, or the other way around? And if she was already different when she left Crucible, what other changes did the Watchkeepers make? What use could an elephant be to an alien civilisation?’
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