Pushing Ice

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Then why show me all this?”

  “Because I could. Because I wanted you to know that I could have ended all this hours ago. I could have taken Eddytown, Svieta. In minutes. There’d have been casualties, but the reeves would have prevailed.”

  Still Svetlana didn’t understand. “So why didn’t you?”

  “I’m tired, Svieta,” Bella said. “I felt the same way Parry did when he concealed those murderers. I didn’t want any more killing. If the only way to achieve that was to surrender to you, to give you everything you wanted, then fine, I was ready to do that. But I wanted you to know that it could have ended differently.” Bella paused, about to stop speaking, when she felt the need to add something else. “You’ll win now, Svieta. You’ll get the High Hab, and Parry. But when I board that train, I’ll ride it to Eddytown knowing I did the right thing. If you want to think of all this as a demonstration of my moral superiority, I won’t stop you. It’s not going to be much consolation to me when Janus goes up.” She moved to board the train.

  “Wait,” Svetlana said. She lifted up her helmet, frowning at something on the internal HUD.

  “Send Wang the second half of the file,” Bella said.

  “Wait, damn it. Something’s happening. I don’t understand, but —”

  “What?” Bella asked.

  “The suit’s not happy about something. I need to put the helmet on. Tell your… reeves not to pounce.”

  “Do it slowly,” Bella warned.

  Svetlana lowered the helmet back into place. She took longer than before. When she lifted it again and let it glue itself back to her hip, Bella could not gauge the expression on her face. It was somewhere between affront and abject dread.

  “What?” she asked again.

  “I don’t know,” Svetlana said, her eyes wide with incomprehension. “All I know is… I’m not seeing Eddytown.”

  “What do you mean, not seeing it?”

  “It isn’t there. It’s dropped off the net.”

  Something convinced Bella that this was no ruse. She retrieved her flexy, stiffened it and examined ShipNet.

  It was exactly as Svetlana had said: Eddytown was out of contact.

  “Something’s happened,” Bella said.

  “I know. I know something’s happened.”

  “It’s specific to Eddytown. It can’t be anything to do with what the Musk Dogs have done to Janus.”

  “This was a trap,” Denise Nadis said. “This whole set-up — these… things — it was all to keep our eyes off the plot. She’s done something to Eddytown.”

  “I haven’t,” Bella said firmly. “Believe me, this is none of my doing. Maybe I’m wrong and Janus is going to blow up in a few minutes. Maybe the Uncontained have slipped through already —”

  “It isn’t Janus, and it isn’t the Uncontained,” said Chromis Pasqueflower Bowerbird, stepping fully formed from the embossed face of the memorial cube. “But it is, possibly, a question of containment.”

  They were all looking at her, not just Bella. They could all see Chromis.

  Chromis stopped and looked apologetic. “I’m sorry — I wish there was more time for introductions. Bella can vouch for me, I think. My name is Chromis Pasqueflower Bowerbird and I’ve been dead a very long while. But don’t hold that against me.”

  “You’re solid,” Bella said, almost dumbfounded.

  “There is little further point in subterfuge now that the reeves have made their appearance.” Chromis touched the electric-white fabric of her gown. “I must emphasize to all concerned that I’m not human: merely a plausible simulation of a long-dead personality. This body is simply another shell of femtotech machinery, like the body of a reeve.” She looked momentarily sad. “Although it does feel very convincing to me, if my memories of life are to be trusted.”

  “What’s happening, Chromis?” Bella asked.

  “Something very unfortunate has occurred in Eddytown.” Chromis looked sternly at Svetlana. “You have a forge vat there. You were attempting to create the passkey.”

  “Yes,” Svetlana said, with a renewed flash of defiance, “but there was no deception in that. I agreed to hand the construction file to Wang. I never said I wouldn’t make one myself. I thought that might be the wise thing to do.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve run into certain… difficulties,” Chromis said.

  “I don’t understand,” Svetlana said fiercely. “Tell me what’s happening to Eddytown. My daughter’s there. I want to know that’s she’s okay.”

  “She may not be,” Chromis said simply.

  “Talk to me!” Svetlana demanded.

  “The passkey required femtotech machinery. The Musk Dogs may have warned you about this.”

  “They did,” Svetlana said. “They also said I could get around it using a normal vat.”

  “I don’t doubt that they did.” Chromis looked furious. “They probably mentioned something about a temporary kernel, or some such? Hellishly dangerous. There’s only one safe way to create femtotech, and that’s with a metastable kernel.”

  “What’s gone wrong?” Bella asked.

  “The kernel has ruptured,” Chromis said. “Replicating femtotech has escaped. It will have consumed the forge vat within a few seconds, the room within a few dozen more, major areas of Eddytown within a minute. Imagine a nuclear explosion, Bella — slowed down, black and boiling. That’ll give you some idea of what it looked like.”

  Svetlana and Bella both spoke at the same time. “How do you know all this?”

  Chromis looked at both of them crossly. “Because I’m already there. How else do you think?”

  “You’re standing right here, Chromis,” Bella said.

  “Part of me is here,” she said patiently, “but several hundred kilograms of me are now in Eddytown, and I’m reallocating more of myself there by the second. Do you need these reeves any more?”

  “No,” Bella said.

  The air screamed. The reeves were gone.

  “They’re on their way,” Chromis said. “When they arrive, they’ll fuse with the material I’ve already dispatched.”

  Bella glanced at Svetlana, wondering how much of this she was understanding. “To do what?”

  The question tested Chromis’s usually saintlike patience. “To do something constructive about the runaway event, of course. What else?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bella said.

  “Can it be stopped?” Svetlana asked.

  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “My daughter… the other people — you’ve got to do something for them.”

  “Many of them are already dead,” Chromis informed her.

  Svetlana paled. “Emily. Tell me Emily’s okay.”

  “What can you do?” Bella said. “She’s right — whatever’s happened, the survivors need to be saved.”

  “Early indications are that the replicating elements are malformed, which may be in our favour. If my femtotech elements can form a containment envelope around the bad matter, I may be able to hack in and persuade the replicators to self-disassemble, as they were always intended to do.” Chromis tightened one fist, as if the effort were already costing her something. “Nothing is certain, though. Femtotech is not child’s play.”

  Bella suddenly noticed something: although the reeves had departed, there was still a mild breeze stirring the air. Then a faint, nearly subliminal flicker of motion caught her eye.

  A line of black emerged from one blank face of the memorial cube. She followed it as it flowed through the air, out through the concourse, snaking through the space above her until it reached and pierced the concourse roof, tunnelling a path through to the clear vacuum beyond, and then pushing itself across eighty kilometres to Eddytown.

  A hosing line of black femtotech, bleeding out of the cube.

  “How much of you will it take?” Bella asked.

  “More than I’d hoped.” Chromis’s jaw was stiff with determination. In that instant, Bella saw the political steel
that had brought the memorial project into existence. Chromis Pasqueflower Bowerbird would not have been a woman to be crossed.

  “How much of the cube have you sent so far?” Svetlana asked.

  “I’ve pushed a hundred tonnes over already. It’s formed a shell, but it isn’t strong enough. It’s being assimilated as fast I can deploy it. It’ll need more of me.”

  “How much more?” Svetlana asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m doing everything I can.”

  “How many have died? How many are still alive?”

  Chromis didn’t reply.

  Bella noticed, with consternation, that the cube was not as large as she remembered it. It was visibly shrinking as it gave up more and more of itself to the battle at Eddytown.

  “Chromis…” she said, hopelessly.

  “This must be done, Bella.”

  “You’re dying.”

  “I was sent to be useful.” Then she looked at Bella with a stern but conciliatory expression. “You still need that passkey.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Bella said, suddenly remembering that Svetlana still had not sent Wang the second half of the file. “Svieta — we need the rest of the data right now.”

  “Send it all to me,” Chromis said, her tone commanding attention. “Both files, Svetlana. While I still have time, I will attempt to remove the worst bugs. Then there will at least be a remote chance that you may achieve success in a larger forge vat.”

  Svetlana looked helpless. “How do I send it to you, Chromis?”

  “You’re right. There isn’t time. Step forward.” Svetlana obeyed, almost without thinking. “Now, do you trust me?”

  Svetlana looked at Bella. There was something in that look Bella had thought she would never see again. It was not friendship, or even affection — it was much too late for such things — but it was something very close to respect, and that in itself was something Bella had not seen in a long while.

  Svetlana was asking Bella what she thought.

  “Trust her,” Bella said.

  Svetlana let Chromis touch her. The white woman immediately lost form and enveloped Svetlana, flowing over her like a wave of spilled milk. The white membrane trembled, held steady and then poured away to reshape itself into the form of a standing woman.

  Svetlana was still there, her mouth open, breathing heavily.

  “I have the data,” Chromis said. “This will take a few moments, so bear with me.”

  Bella shuddered to think at the agonies of frantic computation Chromis was putting herself through. The politician must have known that she was dying, or would at least be left wounded and weakened by the battle she was fighting at Eddytown. The memorial cube was down to half its original size, still visibly shrinking with each passing second as the flow of matter intensified.

  “It isn’t working, is it?” Bella asked disconsolately.

  “Yes,” Chromis said, with savage emphasis, “it is working, finally. I said it was badly formed and I was right. It just took a little more time and effort than I anticipated —”

  “Then you’re winning.”

  “Yes.” But the cube was still shrinking. Bella wondered how much of it Chromis could afford to lose before the distributed simulation of her personality began to lose coherence.

  “I’m afraid,” she said.

  “You should be. A word of advice: when you start the next vat run, take the vat into space first. At least it won’t be able to gorge itself on surrounding matter if you get another rupture. The file is ready, by the way. It’s still far from safe, though I’ve endeavoured to remove the more egregious instances of sloppy assembly programming —”

  “Can you send it to Wang?” Bella asked.

  “It’s done. He already has it.”

  “Thank you,” Bella said.

  “I wish you the very best of luck with it, Bella. Unfortunately, I won’t be around to see the results.”

  The cube had shrunk down to the size of a footstool and was continuing to shrink, like a chunk of abstract black receding into the distance.

  “Chromis… no! You said you were winning.”

  “I am winning. Don’t doubt that for a second. Unfortunately, the task is using up more of me than I can spare for computation.”

  “But when the containment’s dealt with — can’t you reassemble?”

  Chromis shook her head regretfully, as if it was Bella’s misfortune they were discussing rather than her own imminent destruction. “There won’t be much femtotech left, either from me or the runaway kernel.” Chromis sighed and fingered the fabric of her gown again. “I can’t spare this mass any longer, I’m afraid. I’ll have to throw it into the fray. It’s a shame. It was rather nice to have a body again after so much time in the cube.”

  She vanished.

  Bella stared, numb with loss, at the space where she had been. An instant later, Chromis reappeared.

  “It’s all right,” she said, “only you can see or hear me now, Bella. I can’t stay around long in this form, either — I’m running very low on processing capacity now. I just want you to know that I enjoyed being found.” Bella started to say something, but Chromis cut her off with gentle insistence. “No — please let me finish, before I go. I’m not the only one, Bella. I told you we sent out a great many memorial cubes. If this one survived, others might have, too. Somewhere out there, there could be others like me. You only have to find one.”

  “But it wouldn’t be you.”

  “But it would be Chromis,” she corrected kindly. “And every Chromis deserves to find her Bella one day. You have made me very happy. Now do the same kind deed for another one. Promise me that, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Bella said.

  “That will have to do.” Chromis smiled, held up a hand in farewell and vanished. It was for good this time. Bella knew this on a neural level: suddenly there was an echoing emptiness in her head, like a house grown too large after the departure of a guest. She had liked Chromis, and she knew she would come to miss her quiet wisdom in the times ahead.

  She looked for the cube, but there was nothing left of it.

  For a long time no one dared speak. Even those who had never known Chromis were moved by her sacrifice, and there was a collective unwillingness to disturb the reverential silence that followed.

  It was Bella, finally, who spoke. She nodded at the bailiff. “Detain Parry Boyce, please.”

  Parry made no effort to avoid the robot as it stalked over to him and reapplied the bonds. Everything Bella thought she knew about him had told her that he would not resist, but she still allowed herself an upwelling of relief that he had not disappointed her.

  “Now summon other bailiffs,” she said, then turned to the three representatives from Eddytown.

  “What now?” Svetlana asked.

  “I’m resuming control,” Bella said, forcing any hint of triumph from her voice. It was not difficult. All she felt was a dejected sense of obligation. Someone had to pick up the reins again.

  “Then what?” Svetlana said.

  “We continue with the evacuation. Nothing’s changed there: we’re still sitting on a ticking bomb. In the meantime I’m going to organise a rescue party to Eddytown.” She looked at Axford. “Ryan — you’d better warn your people to expect casualties. All we have to do is keep them alive until we reach the embassy. Nothing else matters.” Then to Shen, “Liz — I want you to get on to Nick and see what he can spare from his end. Assume anything up to a hundred and twenty people are going to make it out.”

  Shen nodded. “I’ll speak to Wang as well. He can start brewing emergency rations and clothing.”

  “By all means, but remind him that we still need the passkey. If he can’t give us anything without delaying work on the key, we make do with what we already have.”

  “Okay,” Shen said, on a falling note.

  “We need that passkey,” Bella insisted. “Nothing else will matter if we can’t get that door closed.”
<
br />   “I’m on it,” Shen said, heavily.

  Svetlana said, “You haven’t mentioned landers. A lander could reach Eddytown in a few minutes.”

  “There are no landers on this side of the Sky,” Bella snapped back, annoyed at having to remind her of this fact. “And forget about drilling through the plug at Underhole: it’d take too long.”

  “The Musk Dogs drilled a new hole — that’s how I came back through.”

  Bella had completely forgotten about the new hole. She wondered if she would have remembered it if Svetlana hadn’t reminded her. “Is it big enough to squeeze a lander through?”

  “One of the old ones should fit easily enough — Crusader or Avenger.”

  Bella glanced at Shen. “Get on it, Liz. It’ll take time to fuel and prep them, so we’ll still need the maglevs and tractors. You’ll need to designate a landing area near Crabtree, preferably within reach of a docking umbilical from one of the outlying domes.”

  “I’m on that, too,” Shen said.

  Bella turned to Svetlana. “You were right. I shouldn’t have forgotten about the landers.”

  “Let’s just hope it works, okay?”

  “Let’s.”

  “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “Protsenko and Nadis are free to go. They can report to Nick Thale and offer assistance at Underhole after they’ve handed over their suits.”

  “What do you want with their suits?”

  “I want them for the rescue operation. I’ll need two volunteers to wear them, preferably people who’ve had at least some experience of Chakri fives.”

  “I’m in,” Parry said automatically, before Protsenko or Nadis had a chance to say anything. “I’ve used a five, and I know Eddytown as well as anyone here.”

  “Count me in as well,” Takahashi said, stepping out of Bella’s group.

  Bella shook her head flatly. “No way, Mike. We didn’t bring you back to lose you again.”

  “Parry goes, I go.”

  “You don’t know Eddytown. You’ve probably only logged an hour of suit time since you came back from the embassy.”