‘Here they are,’ Nissa said, shooting a glare at Swift, who did the decent thing and returned to being one of the statues.
The two women appeared out of thin air on the lowest part of the terrace. One was small, the other not much taller. For a second or two they looked thoroughly unsettled, like two fish that had fallen out of the sky. The smaller of the two was Eunice, Kanu decided instantly – he would have recognised her from Sunday’s emulation were her face not already known to him from a thousand historical records. The other woman he now knew to be Goma – Mposi’s niece. Mposi was his one-third-brother, so what did that make Goma? His one-third-niece-once-removed? Or did the common language of family ties simply collapse in the face of Akinya profligacy?
Both were thin, hair cut short, their clothing modest but casual – black or ash-grey trousers, loosely belted slash-necked tunics, low-heeled slip-on shoes. Neither wore conspicuous ornamentation or jewellery, although he noticed a ring on the younger woman’s fingers.
He raised a hand in greeting. ‘Welcome aboard Icebreaker. A few words of explanation before we go on – this environment will do its best to eliminate time lag by anticipating our responses and stalling our conscious processes while signals pass between our two vehicles. But the less strain we place on it, the easier it will be for Dakota – she’ll be experiencing everything in strict real-time. I suggest we consider our interruptions very carefully and try to speak as clearly and unambiguously as we can?’
‘We’ll do our best,’ Eunice said. She nodded at the other woman and they made their way up the terrace steps to the area where their hosts were already seated. Eunice and Goma took their places on the other side of the low stone table. Both of them sat with their backs straight, heads held high.
‘You have to stop what you’re doing,’ Goma said.
Kanu smiled, charmed by her bluntness. It cut across a life’s worth of diplomatic training to state her position so nakedly, so early in the process. He continued smiling, assuming there would be some elaboration.
But after a few moments’ silence, he concluded she had said all she meant to say.
‘Goma is correct,’ Eunice said, patting the other woman’s knee by way of mutual support. ‘You’re on the wrong course, Dakota – and you, Kanu, have been very unwise to get yourself tangled up in her plans. Who are you, by the way?’ She was looking at Nissa now. ‘I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.’
‘Nissa Mbaye. I was married to Kanu, once upon a time. Things happened to us and now we’re here. But you’re wrong about us. Or rather, if anyone’s to blame for this, it’s you. We came in response to your message – your summons. And if you’d warned us in time, we wouldn’t have run into trouble around Poseidon.’
‘Trouble you are about to repeat,’ Goma said.
‘We’re better equipped this time,’ Kanu answered. ‘It wasn’t Poseidon that damaged us, it was the remains of a Watchkeeper. All we have to do is steer clear of their corpses and it won’t happen again.’
‘I admire an optimist,’ Eunice said. ‘My guess, though, is that you haven’t been properly informed about the stakes. Dakota and I both know what’s involved, don’t we? We both experienced the Terror.’
‘A deterrent,’ Dakota said. ‘A keep-out sign, nothing more. But if we heeded all the keep-out signs, where would we be?’
‘Safe,’ Goma said.
‘Tell that to your ancestor. She never did a safe thing in her life. How are you, by the way, Eunice? You look well, rested. Orison has been kind to you. I knew I did the right thing by not killing you.’
‘I might be about to change your mind on that one.’
‘Well, we do have some bridges to build, do we not? I presume you supplied the technical expertise to gain control of my mirrors, for the little good it did you? But, Goma – I’m equally intrigued by what you said. You mentioned Tantors to Kanu. We call ourselves the Risen, but I shan’t split hairs over a matter of definition. Have you met my kind before?’
‘I met Sadalmelik, Achernar and the others on Orison. But none of them was like you.’
‘You find me distinct?’
‘You’re smarter. There’s no point in denying it. Or perhaps you’re more like us. Either way, you’re something new.’ Goma held up a hand before Dakota could interject – she was not done. ‘But not in a good way. My mother knew you on Crucible and you were not like this.’
‘You fear me because I am something outside your immediate experience? Because I have dared to escape from your control – to achieve true autonomy?’
‘That would be wonderful if you’d done it on your own. But whatever you’ve become, it’s because the Watchkeepers want you this way. You’re not their slave, you’re not even their puppet – even I can tell that you have some sort of free will. But they’ve seeded a very bad idea in you, and you’re so close to it you can’t see how bad it really is.’
‘You would frame mere curiosity as an unhealthy, even dangerous impulse?’
‘The point here isn’t for you to talk us out of anything,’ Kanu told the visitors. ‘Our mission is fixed – we cannot and will not abandon it. But you can spare yourselves pointless aggravation and risk by turning away from your interception course. You will not catch us – we both have a good grasp of our mutual capabilities – so why waste time going through the motions? There’s far too much at stake. Back off, continue your remote investigations, restore external power to Zanzibar and let us conduct our exploration of Poseidon. Later, we can discuss terms for cooperative exploration of the whole system – but only after we’ve returned from Poseidon.’
‘Something’s really put a bee in your bonnet, hasn’t it?’ said Eunice.
‘He’s being coerced,’ Goma said. ‘We guessed as much. Why don’t you just admit it, Kanu? And you, Nissa – what have you got to lose?’
‘There is no coercion,’ Kanu stated.
‘In your earlier message to us,’ Goma said, ‘you warned us that lives are at stake. You said you have “no choice” but to comply.’
‘Your lives will be at stake if you place yourselves at risk of collision, or stray too close to Poseidon without a proper understanding of the consequences,’ Kanu answered.
‘That’s not what you meant,’ Eunice said.
‘There is no point in debating this further,’ Dakota said. ‘Our objective is simple: scientific truth-gathering. If it takes a human–Risen cooperative expedition to unlock some of the secrets of the M-builders, so be it. We can’t spend the rest of history failing to understand the Mandalas and what they meant to their makers. We’ve both been through the Terror, Eunice and I – both of us sensed larger truths, almost glimpsed, leaking through into the prison of animal consciousnesses. The collapse of the vacuum? The fluctuation that ends everything, that negates every act, every thought? How can we bear not to know how the M-builders addressed that truth? Besides, we may also learn something of the Watchkeepers – and hopefully find out what they want of us.’
‘No one disputes any of that,’ Goma said. ‘We’re all here because of the quest for deeper understanding. But rushing into it is as bad as burying your head in the sand. We’ve barely begun to map this system, let alone poke our noses into it deepest secrets.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Dakota said. ‘Some of us have been here for centuries.’
‘So have I,’ Eunice said, ‘and I’m still inclined to be cautious. We could easily spend another century here, gathering information, before attempting close exploration of Poseidon.’
‘And be no more confident of success after all that time,’ the Tantor said.
Eunice leaned forward. ‘You sound very confident of your position, Dakota. I’m pleased. Confidence is a marker for intelligence – it shows that you have sufficient self-awareness to model the parameters of your environment. But it’s also a hazard. There’s far too much that we d
on’t know about our surroundings.’ Her eyes narrowed to a sharp, inquisitorial focus. ‘The variations in the second Mandala – have you been studying them?’
‘I could hardly be unaware of them, Eunice.’
‘Your interpretation, then?’
‘The changes were precipitated by the arrival of Zanzibar. Beyond that, we have no basis for further speculation.’
‘I do,’ Eunice said.
‘Anyone could make such a claim,’ Dakota answered.
Kanu nodded. ‘You’ll have to give us more than that, Eunice.’
‘I shall. The way I was left on Orison made it very difficult for me to conduct long-range studies of anything, let alone the Mandala on Paladin. But Goma’s ship – Travertine – has the sensor capability I lacked. They’ve been tracking the Mandala variations since their arrival. The exact meaning of the individual states isn’t clear to us – yet – but at least we understand the timing of the variations. Mandala is an eye, sweeping across the heavens. Once in a while, its gaze chances upon another star.’
‘Mandala is at a fixed latitude,’ Dakota said, ‘and Paladin’s angular tilt only changes on timescales of tens of thousands of years. At best, this eye can only ever sweep a narrow track.’
‘That’s true, to a point. But the state changes appear to be related to an alteration in the direction of the eye’s gaze. It’s like a radio telescope built into the bowl of a valley. You can’t move the primary mirror, but you can adjust the position of the antenna. We think that’s how the Mandala works. It can sweep a broader swathe of sky, direct its gaze onto objects that aren’t along its precise line of sight.’
‘That’s supposition,’ Dakota said.
‘I had two of Travertine’s technical experts take a close look at the timing of the state changes and their corresponding angular projection onto the sky. Within a fixed error margin, the focus is always another star of a broadly similar spectral type to Gliese 163, within a distance of a few hundred light-years.’
‘What does that prove?’ Nissa asked. ‘Look hard enough, you’ll find any alignment you want. It’s like drawing lines between pyramids.’
‘But the statistical odds against these alignments being chance is actually rather high according to our experts – about one in twenty thousand, if I understand the analysis. Shall I tell you what I think is happening?’ But she glanced quickly at Goma. ‘What we think?’
‘We may as well hear it, as you’re here,’ Kanu said.
‘The Mandala on Paladin is communicating with other Mandalas in other solar systems. It is sending them wake-up signals – telling them to begin rebooting.’
‘Rebooting,’ Nissa said. ‘I don’t know that term.’
‘Old spacefaring terminology. It means to put your boots on – to start getting ready for business.’
‘I see,’ she said, nodding doubtfully. ‘And what exactly is it that is “rebooting”?’
‘It’s a machine,’ Goma said. ‘A machine hundreds, maybe thousands of light-years across. It’s been dead, dormant, for longer than we can imagine, thousands, millions of years, at least. But my mother restarted it. Crucible was a peripheral branch of the Mandala network – an outlying system, a dead end. Ndege’s Mandala sent its wake-up signal to this one and transported Zanzibar here during the same event, probably because Zanzibar just happened to get caught up in the initial reactivation process. But this system isn’t a dead end. It’s a node, a hub, in some wider network. There may be others, but this must be the closest one to our part of the galaxy. It’s what the Watchkeepers have been drawn to all this time. They know it’s significant – they just can’t advance their knowledge beyond that.’
‘A machine wouldn’t take this long to start up,’ Kanu said.
‘It could if its basic components are still light-limited,’ Eunice replied. ‘Depending on how far out the furthest parts of the network are, it might take tens of thousands of years for the whole thing to come back online. Signals whispering across the void – start-up instructions, error correction, status reporting. A process longer than the span of recorded history. But that’s what’s happening. And on a local scale, it may already be partly operable.’
‘Operable,’ Kanu said, almost laughing. ‘As if it’s a thing we might use?’
‘Why not?’ Eunice said. ‘The Risen are here because of it. Instead of barging to Poseidon, we should be consolidating our efforts, trying to understand how to make safe use of the Mandala network. We know from the survivors that the Zanzibar translation was instantaneous within their reference frame, which means they must have been travelling at only a whisker below the speed of light. Consequently, any other part of the network is also only a blink away in subjective terms. Deep exploration of the galaxy is within our grasp – and you’re risking all that for the agenda of a bunch of mindless alien robots?’
‘Why do you say mindless?’ Dakota asked.
‘We all felt it,’ Eunice replied, ‘from the moment the Trinity made direct contact with the Watchkeepers. There’s nothing inside them. They’re hollow – scooped out like an ice-cream cone. They’ve forgotten how to be conscious. Or are you in some sort of denial about this? Does it not worry you that you might be the willing servant of a zombie machine intelligence?’
‘They’ve passed the Gupta–Wing threshold,’ Nissa said. ‘Is that what you mean?’
‘At least one of you has a grasp on things,’ Eunice said, miming applause. ‘Perhaps I should be addressing you, Nissa – are you the one I should be reaching out to?’
‘I am afraid we must curtail this discussion,’ Dakota said, rising from her seat – more nimble than any elephant had a right to be. ‘The time lag has consumed valuable hours.’
‘We’ve barely begun!’ Goma said.
‘It’s been six hours,’ Kanu said. ‘I’m sorry, but I think we’ve said all we can. We’re not adversaries, any of us, but we are on different paths. You have your concerns, we have ours – but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together when we returned from Poseidon.’
‘It’s going to kill you,’ Eunice said. ‘Dakota knows that – whether she admits it to herself or not. If you have a chance of turning away from this, I strongly recommend that you do so.’
She might have been on the point of saying something else, but before she had a chance her figment vanished from the environment. Goma was gone as well, their stone seats vacated.
Kanu expected to be snapped back into the normal time-flow of Icebreaker, no longer in ching. But Dakota turned her huge broad forehead to face him. ‘We have a measure of privacy here so we might as well use it. The younger human – Goma. What did she mean when she spoke of your “earlier message”?’
‘You’ve monitored all the transmissions between the two ships,’ Nissa said.
‘But she appeared to be referring to a conversation I do not know about. The mention of coercion, of lives being at stake – how could she know about the Friends, Kanu, unless you told her?’
‘Eunice would have told them.’
‘Eunice knows nothing of what has happened in any part of Zanzibar since her departure. This was specific, directed knowledge. How could either of them make such a deductive leap?’
‘It’s what we do,’ Nissa said. ‘Being humans.’
‘You think highly of your faculties. I don’t blame you for that. But it would be a mistake to underestimate me. If there was communication between Icebreaker and Travertine ahead of the exchanges I know about – or in parallel with them – I would very much like to know. What was discussed? What was considered, then abandoned?’
‘Nothing,’ Kanu said. ‘There was no communication.’
The Watchkeeper came in so swiftly that they had only a couple of hours to prepare for its arrival. It must have been among the gathering of alien machines on the system’s edge, waiting beyond the orbit of Paladin until
Icebreaker’s movement snared its interest. For a little while, as it closed in with disdainful swiftness, it looked inevitable to Kanu that there would be a collision, or something just as catastrophic. This was nothing at all like the patient, inscrutable comings and goings of the Watchkeepers in the old system.
‘It’s not been damaged like the others,’ he said as they studied the sharpening images on the bridge – the Watchkeeper rendered as a stubby cone sidling in at a definite angle to its velocity vector.
‘Of course not,’ Dakota chided. ‘The corpses are as old as your hominid forebears. It has been aeons since a Watchkeeper was unwise enough to chance a close encounter with Poseidon; aeons since one of them was harmed. They learn slowly, but they do learn. You are quite wrong about the alien consciousness, by the way. It may be slower than you can perceive, but that does not mean it is absent. The machines have learned that the endurance of cosmological time demands no swift actions, no hasty measures.’
‘This looks pretty hasty to me,’ Nissa said.
‘An exception, because human activity is itself exceptional, especially when such activity is directed towards Poseidon. You would have drawn their attention sooner or later, even without that unfortunate accident. This movement, though, must be of particular interest to them – it originates with Zanzibar.’
‘They think you’re involved,’ Nissa said.
‘And that pleases them. These centuries are long to us. They swallow our lives as a whale swallows water. But they are merely a breath to the Watchkeepers – a moment between their great, slow thoughts. From their perspective, Zanzibar arrived a few busy instants ago.’
The image shivered, gaining a new layer of detail.
‘What should we do?’ Kanu asked.
‘Maintain our heading. Make no change. If it meant to stop us, it would already have done so. This is curiosity, concern, encouragement. It shares our desire to unravel the secrets of Poseidon.’
‘Oh, I’m just bursting with curiosity,’ Nissa said.
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