Over a span of hours, Mposi adjusted its trajectory. The alteration in their course was far too gradual to be perceptible to any of the crew, save for the shift in the position of the stars through the lander’s unshuttered windows. Paladin had been their previous objective; now it was displaced to one side, replaced by the blue crescent of Poseidon swinging close around Gliese 163. Icebreaker had maintained one gee all the while.
‘Kanu,’ Goma said, staring into the recording lens, ‘we see you moving. We have a fix on your ship and we believe you know your objective. I’m Goma, by the way. Gandhari already mentioned me, but I’ll say a little more about myself. I’m Ndege’s daughter, and my grandmother was Chiku Green. If I’m right, you must be my half-uncle, or one-third-uncle. I believe you were born to Chiku Yellow, back on Earth – at least, there’s a Kanu in the family tree who bears a distinct resemblance to you. That would make you Mposi’s brother – or half- or one-third-brother, depending how you want to cut it. Mposi was my uncle, and we both lived on Crucible. I knew him well, and he sometimes spoke of you – he liked to think you were living a much less complicated life than he was. If you’ve come here in response to the message about Ndege, then presumably you know of her as well. She was Mposi’s sister, my mother, and she was too old to come with us when we left Crucible.’
Goma paused and drew breath. What she had to speak of next was hard, a truth she had yet to fully internalise.
‘My mother is dead now – she died while I was crossing interstellar space to this system. But I am here instead – trying to be where she could not, trying to stand in her place. Kanu, I have to tell you about Uncle Mposi. He died – was murdered. But first I need a reply from you, to confirm that you can hear this.’
Icebreaker’s position relative to Mposi dictated a four-minute time lag for round-trip communications, although that figure was decreasing as the gap between the ships narrowed. Five minutes passed, then six. Kanu had already stated his case – it was entirely possible that he would decline any further contact.
Goma was just starting to resign herself to the fact – and wondering how it would shape Vasin’s tactical decisions – when his response arrived. She studied his image, measuring it against her own idea of Akinya faces. He was one of them, without a doubt.
An older man, his face carried the unmistakable signatures of aquatic modification, notably a flattened nose and large, dark eyes that were almost seal-like. His hair was short, bristly and mostly white. He had a strong jaw and an even stronger neck, flaring out to merge into the broad musculature of his shoulders. His face was handsome, dignified – but in his expression there was also a world of worry and sadness, more than anyone ought to be made to bear.
‘Thank you for your communication, Goma,’ he said. ‘As you observe, we’re still on our way. Our drive flame must be very obvious to you so I won’t pretend that our goal is anything other than Poseidon. I know you have concerns about our expedition – so do we. But the truth is, we have no choice but to continue. Dakota has allowed me to speak freely of the conditions under which we’re travelling so that there need be no misunderstandings. It is paramount to her that she fulfil the Watchkeepers’ needs, and we are obliged to cooperate with her agenda. That said, we also came here to gather information – to find answers to questions. If cooperation with Dakota is the key to unlocking the secrets of the M-builders and the Watchkeepers, it does not feel like too great a price to pay. Sooner or later we must face our ignorance – it may as well be now. But I understand your fears.’ His handsome, familiar face softened. ‘May I say that I am sorry to hear about Ndege? I never knew her, but we knew of each other, and it always pleased me to think of my distant one-third-sister sharing a new world with Mposi. I am sorry that she could not be here with you, Goma. But you mention that Mposi is also dead, and you speak as if you knew each other well. May I hear more about him?’
Goma answered, ‘I’ll speak of Mposi. It’s hard, but I’ll do it. But I’d like to talk to Dakota, too, if that’s possible. Tell her I am Ndege’s daughter, and that I worked to help the Tantors. Tell her that I stand for Ndege – I am here because my mother could not be. Tell her also that I have helped bury two Risen, Sadalmelik and Achernar. I was with them as they passed into the Remembering. Will you do that for me, Kanu?’
The delay was almost unendurably long this time, and Goma was halfway to convincing herself that the window of communication had closed – that she had gambled too much on the mere fact of being Ndege’s offspring.
But Kanu responded, ‘Dakota will speak with you but not negotiate, because there is nothing to be negotiated. You have soured the terms of engagement with that little trick with the mirrors. But she still wishes to clarify her intentions – and to urge your continued non-interference.’ Irritation showed on his face. ‘This time lag is a nuisance to us all – it would be so much simpler if we could talk directly. I suppose you are too young to carry the necessary neural machinery for chinging?’
Goma looked at Vasin, unsure of Kanu’s meaning.
‘Virtual telepresence. “Virching”, or “chinging”, in one of the old pre-Babel languages. At a deep enough level of neural management, time lag can be edited out of your perceptual stream. But I haven’t heard anyone speak of such a thing for at least a century. It’s irrelevant. Even if Kanu still has the implants, you don’t. There’s no way to inhabit a shared consensual space if only one of you has the neuromachinery.’
‘We could meet him halfway, though,’ Eunice said. ‘One of your spacesuits will give Goma the immersive experience she needs, even if we can’t turn off her consciousness.’
‘There’s a better way?’ Loring said. ‘But we will need a little time to prepare for it. Tell Kanu that we are ready to arrange a meeting in a consensual space – Kanu’s free to set the parameters?’
‘But I don’t have the implants,’ Goma said.
‘You won’t need them – not for this.’
Goma understood what they had in mind when they opened the door.
‘No.’
But Vasin placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Aiyana says it’s safe. What went wrong before can’t happen again.’
‘My word on this,’ Loring said, offering ver own hand to Goma. ‘I’ve dug into the deep architecture – locked in additional safeguards against rogue replication? Hard for you, I know. But if we want dialogue with Kanu, no other options.’
‘Not until we’re closer,’ Vasin said, ‘and I’d much rather not wait until then.’
The well stood before her. It had been altered from its usual default display configuration, no longer containing the figments of Gliese 163 and its clutch of worlds. Now the well appeared to be full of a semi-translucent pale gold syrup, like a very fine honey.
‘Doctor Andisa tells me,’ Vasin said, ‘that if one of us suffered a severe accident, we would have used the well as an emergency life-support medium. That’s one of its basic utilities.’
‘Burns, chemical exposure, vacuum, radiation contamination,’ Andisa said. ‘The nanomachinery in the well can adjust to provide a recuperative support medium for all of these injuries. Fortunately, we’ve not needed to use it until now.’
‘I am not injured,’ Goma stated, as if this needed to be spelled out.
‘But the support medium can also help us in other ways,’ Andisa said. ‘Had you been severely injured, the medium would allow us to address and access neural functions directly by infiltrating your central nervous system. It is programmed to do that, and the process is quite painless, if a little disorientating. Mainly, though, it will permit us to duplicate the basic protocols of ching.’ Andisa looked at her colleague, the physicist. ‘Aiyana and I have completed the tests.’
‘You mean you’ve put yourselves in it?’ This was Ru, asking over Goma’s shoulder.
‘No time for that?’ Loring said. ‘Infiltration and adjustment process takes several h
ours. Medium needs to work its way across the blood-brain barrier into deep brain structure? Best not to delay Goma’s immersion?’
‘Try it on me first, in that case,’ Ru said.
‘It’ll waste just as much time as trying it on myself or Andisa. Besides, your own nervous system is, shall we say, somewhat atypical?’
‘You mean it’s screwed up.’
‘Trying to think of a nice way to put it?’
‘Mine’s also atypical,’ Eunice said, ‘so you’d better hope it works for me as well.’
‘It would not be any quicker for you,’ Vasin said.
‘I know, and I’m not proposing that I go instead of Goma. But that well is easily big enough for two of us. At the very least she shouldn’t have to face this on her own.’
‘Establishing parallel interfaces? Going to be challenging—’ Loring began.
‘Then you’d better get started,’ Eunice said.
Goma’s throat was tight with apprehension. ‘How? When?’
‘As soon as you’re ready,’ Loring said. ‘The less encumbered you are, the better the proprioceptive immersion? But you need only strip down to your underwear.’
‘How do we breathe?’ Eunice asked.
‘The medium’s fully capable of supporting respiratory function, but you may find the transition uncomfortable?’ Loring began to open a sealed sterile container. ‘We have breather masks – they’ll fit over your mouth and nose, provide an airtight seal? You’ll still be able to speak.’
‘The masks sound clumsy to me.’
Ru glared at Eunice. ‘No one asked you.’
‘No,’ Goma said. ‘She’s right. All or nothing. Forget the masks, Aiyana. I can do this.’
Goma shed her outer layers of clothing, eyeing Eunice as she stripped down to a similar state of undress. Vasin gathered their clothes in two neat bundles. Goma believed Loring – the well had been made safe. Even if it malfunctioned, she was neither alone nor as helpless as Mposi had been. No harm could come to her. But it was impossible to rid herself of the feeling that the amber fluid still contained traces of him.
‘I’ll go first,’ Eunice said. ‘Wait until I’m fully immersed, breathing the fluid, before you join me. If there’s anything wrong with it, we’ll know soon enough.’
‘I should go first,’ Goma said.
‘Age has its privileges, dear.’
Eunice stepped over the rim of the well, pushed a foot into the medium – watching as it resisted and then yielded, behaving less like a fluid than a membrane. Once her foot reached the base of the well, she risked planting the other one beside it.
‘It’s all right. Warm, cloying, but no ill-effects. Yet.’
Eunice lowered herself slowly down onto her rump, knees bent against her chest. She maintained this position for a few seconds then began to stretch her legs out to their full extent. At the same time she allowed her arms to descend into the medium. Only her head and upper torso were not yet immersed.
‘In for a penny.’
She submerged herself. They could see her through the medium, blurred but still distinct. Her mouth was closed but her eyes open. She stayed like that for a few seconds then gaped her mouth wide. As the fluid pushed into her she released a few bubbles of air – human air, from human lungs – and gave a sharp but controlled twitch. Then she was still. They studied the rise and fall of her chest. She did not appear to be in distress, but then again this was Eunice. Her eyes remained open, oddly unblinking. She allowed a hand to rise above the surface, gloved with a clinging epidermis of the amber medium, and shaped her thumb and forefinger into an ‘O’.
‘She’s all right,’ Dr Andisa said. ‘It’ll be a while before we can communicate directly, but she’s going to be fine. You next, Goma.’
She made to move to the well, intending to follow suit, but Ru clutched her arm.
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Not really.’
But Goma kissed Ru and allowed herself to slip from her grasp. Then she stepped into the well, one foot at a time. It was warm, as Eunice had said – the sensation was akin to pushing through jelly, the substance resistant at first, then yielding easily and obligingly to her movement. Less like being immersed in a liquid than pushing into a multitudinous crowd of tiny and obligingly helpful creatures. There was no sense of it doing her harm, no tingling or unpleasantness. She sat down and stretched out her legs. Then she lowered most of herself into the medium, side by side with Eunice.
Now came the hard part. She dropped her head below the level of the medium, feeling it slither over her chin, nose, eyes and forehead. She blinked as she descended, but once submerged she forced her eyes open. She felt an odd slithering coldness around her eyeballs, then nothing. She could still see, albeit through the golden tint of the medium. Her ears made a gurgling rush. Then a roaring silence.
She opened her mouth.
It was in her, and for an instant she thought she could bear it. But two terrors hit simultaneously. The first was that she was drowning, and the reflex to fight against this was as strong as any she had known. The second was that Mposi was in her mouth, in her windpipe, in her lungs – and the horror of this, the need to gag away the traces of him, was as fierce as the need to breathe.
Goma convulsed. This was not the dignified twitch Eunice had given but a full-body spasm, and she had no conscious desire other than to be out of the medium, back into air. She knew she did not have the strength in her to overcome this, not now, not ever. She had made an awful mistake – banked on a courage she did not possess. She flailed, reaching for a solid surface, a means to push herself from the well.
Eunice took her arm. There was a vicelike strength in her grip. She was holding her down, preventing her from surfacing.
Until Goma could hold her breath no longer.
CHAPTER FORTY
By the time the women joined him, Kanu had fashioned the parameters of their meeting place. He had needed a lot of help from Swift for that. There was information in his memories and data in Icebreaker’s files, but stitching the two together, forging a place that was simultaneously familiar, neutral and aesthetically satisfying to all parties including the elephants, and doing it in much less than a lifetime, would have been quite beyond his abilities.
He drew on the Akinya household as his template. Swift had direct knowledge of the replica of the building on Zanzibar, and Kanu also carried his own experiences of the real structure, albeit in the faded decay of its later years. From these threads, Swift concocted a three-dimensional environment, programming it directly into Icebreaker with all the embellishments necessary for the time-honoured protocols of ching. He did all this right under Dakota’s nose, puppeteering Kanu – letting her think Kanu was the true architect.
The result was limited in its scope, spartan in its details, and its solid facades hinted at depths it did not contain. It had the shimmering, dreamlike quality of a fondly remembered place rather than an actual location, with dirt and dust and cracks.
It would have to suffice.
Kanu and Nissa both possessed legacy neuromachinery, which Swift was already using to speak to both of them. Dakota was slightly more problematic. The Tantor had no implants, but thankfully her external prosthetic communication aids were easily adapted to meet the needs of the exchange. Her human voice had always been machine-generated, so it was an easy matter to add earphones and goggles to allow her to participate in the environment.
Now Kanu, Nissa and Dakota awaited their guests. They were sitting within the enclosure of the household’s A-shaped geometry, in the triangular courtyard framed by the two main wings and the connecting bar between them. Within the courtyard lay a pond, some fountains, a series of layered terraces, a handful of marble statues. There were small trees and bushes, and the sky above them was the cloudless pink of late afternoon. The two humans sat on stone cha
irs positioned around a low stone table. The Tantor rested her haunches on a stone pedestal, tail draping the ground, a repose of perfect scholarly contentment.
‘They’re late,’ said the elephant.
‘They warned us there might be technical difficulties,’ Nissa said.
‘We shan’t wait much longer. I already warned you that I have no interest in negotiation.’
‘And I made sure to tell them,’ Kanu said. ‘But it’s also in your interests to convince them to leave us alone. You don’t want a confrontation if you can avoid it, do you?’
‘There would be no confrontation – only the nuisance value of them being close behind us.’ Dakota swivelled her huge tank-turret of a head. In this environment, she carried no prosthetic enhancements and her speaking voice appeared to emanate from her mouth rather than a piece of machinery fixed between her eyes. ‘You did well with this, Kanu – especially given the limited time you had at your disposal. I remember the household well enough to vouch for its accuracy.’
‘It’s a combination of the one aboard Zanzibar and my memories of the one on Earth.’
‘I’m still impressed that you were able to construct this environment as quickly as you did. Are you surprised, Nissa?’
‘It takes a lot to surprise me these days.’
Dakota signalled her agreement, head descending like the nodding counterweight of some huge steam-driven pump. ‘I never doubted your capabilities, Kanu, after all that you have done for me, but this is still a formidable achievement.’
‘Well, I’ve had practice. On Mars we often spent our downtime playing with virtual spaces. The ambassadors were all old enough to carry the requisite neural technology.’
Swift bent over to whisper in Kanu’s ear. ‘Incoming packets – clean and ching-compliant. Best not to answer me – it’s safe for me to talk to you, but this environment is so merrily slapdash I can’t swear that your subvocal intentions won’t be picked up.’
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