Poseidon's Wake (27 page)

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘Swift wonders if machines made the wheels. The worldwheels. And Swift wonders if that would make them gods.’

‘So your friend has begun to turn to faith? I’d watch him carefully if I were you.’

‘Robots are entitled to ask the same questions as the rest of us,’ Kanu said. ‘There’s no law against it.’

Soon they were inside the orbit of the moons, still moving at a hundred kilometres per second.

The forty-five moons were all alike as
Icebreaker
could tell: each a perfectly regular grey sphere two hundred kilometres across. They were still very hard to see, swallowing or scattering electromagnetic radiation and offering nothing to
Icebreaker
’s other sensors. No hint of mass, or magnetism, or particle emission. Artificial, certainly, Kanu decided – and while the moons were larger than the worldwheels and the arrangement of their orbits an impressive feat, he found them less daunting an achievement than the surface structures. They were worthy of admiration, certainly, and definitely merited further attention – but he was content to relegate them to third place after the new Mandala and the worldwheels. They would suffice for study when the other wonders had been picked clean.

But as
Icebreaker
nosed its way through the dance of orbits, its sensors detected another dark thing circling Poseidon.

It was smaller than any of the moons, and consequently they had missed it until now. It was a light-second or two closer to Poseidon, orbiting more swiftly.

Kanu’s first thought was that they had chanced upon a piece of captured planetary debris – a tiny natural moon, blemishing the order of the forty-five artificial satellites. No solar system was free of primordial material, after all, and sooner or later some of those wandering fragments of early planet formation were bound to become gravitationally ensnared, tugged into orbits around larger worlds.

He was curious, though. Maybe there was water ice on this shard, tucked away in the shadows of craters. Maybe they could use it as a base for operations when they returned to take a closer look at Poseidon. He ordered
Icebreaker
to concentrate all its sensors on the little fragment and waited as the results appeared before him.

There it was: a sheared-off splinter of some larger thing – wider at one end than the other and hacked across at an angle with a very clean separation. Kanu stared at it wordlessly. He felt himself on the cusp of some vital recognition but not quite able to make the link.

It was Nissa who identified the thing.

‘That’s a Watchkeeper,’ she said, with a cool, calm reverence in her voice, as if she were speaking of the recently dead.

Which was perhaps the case.

It was the corpse of a Watchkeeper, not the living whole. They were looking at perhaps half of its former extent. It had been sliced in two, severed along an impossibly precise diagonal.

Kanu thought of the Watchkeeper they had seen on their way to Europa – the pine-cone form, the stabs of blue radiation spiking out from between the plates of its armour. They had always been dark apart from that blue light, but here there was only darkness.

‘Something killed it,’ he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Goma’s first thought, when the fog of revival had cleared sufficiently for something like consciousness, was that Mposi and Ndege, sister and brother, her mother and her uncle, must by now be united in death. There could be little doubt of this, given the fact of her own survival. There would have been no cause to wake her before journey’s end, no accident that her body would have been capable of surviving, and at the same time, no chance that her mother had survived the long decades of
Travertine
’s crossing.

They had said goodbye, Goma reminded herself – or at the very least ended things well, with her mother’s loving imprecation that she had to look inside herself now, to find the strength she had depended on in Mposi, and to be that rock for the rest of them.

But Mposi was still dead, and the truth of that was no easier to bear now than before she had gone into skipover.

Presently there was a face, and a voice.

‘Gently now.’

Before the face assumed focus, something cool and sweet and soothing touched her lips. She thought for a drowsy instant that this kind form was Ru, for the voice was a woman’s. But it was Captain Gandhari Vasin helping her back to life.

‘Thank you,’ she said, when she was at last able to coax some sounds from her mouth. ‘I wasn’t expecting . . . I mean, you didn’t need to.’

‘I didn’t need to, but if a captain can’t welcome her crew back to the world of the living, what can she do? Anyway, I need you, Goma. Take your time – getting up and about is hard enough after a normal skipover interval – but I have something of interest to show you when you’re ready.’

Her eyes still would not focus properly, but the vague textures and colours of her surroundings were enough to establish that she was still in the skipover vault.

‘Are we safe? Did we make the crossing?’

‘Yes, we made the crossing. Seventy light-years, and not a single mishap. How much of that we owe to the Watchkeeper ahead of us, I don’t know. But the ship is in good condition, and we are where we wished to be.’

‘What have you found?’

‘A great deal. Most importantly, though, a welcome message – a signal telling us where to go. I think you should hear it. I would be very glad of your opinion.’

‘How is Ru?’

‘There’s no need to worry about Ru. She’s in excellent hands.’

That was meant well, but it was not quite the answer she had been hoping for. And yet Goma could only focus on her fears for so long before drowsiness pulled her under again.

She had no idea how long she was out, but there came a moment when the face of Dr Saturnin Nhamedjo was assuming gradual focus before her. He was studying her with magnificent and serene patience, as if nothing in his universe was more valuable than the health of this one patient. She could easily imagine that he had been there for hours, waiting by her skipover casket, untroubled by any concern save her own well-being.

‘Welcome back, Goma. I know you have already spoken to Gandhari, but I will reaffirm the news. You have come through safely. All is well. We have all survived skipover – even our prisoner.’

She thought of Grave, and that in turn made her think of Mposi. But for the moment there was only one thing at the forefront of her concerns. She made to get up out of the casket, forcing effort into unwilling muscles.

‘Steady!’ Dr Nhamedjo said, smiling at her determination.

‘I want to see Ru.’

‘In good time. Ru is receiving the very best care and I am perfectly satisfied with her progress.’

‘Something went wrong, didn’t it?’

‘We have all survived. This is a blessing. Anything else must be considered a minor setback, nothing more.’ A stern, admonitionary tone entered his voice. ‘I do not wish you to overtax yourself, Goma, not during these early hours. You have more than enough work to do in building your own strength back up. Leave Ru to us. She will be well. I have the utmost confidence in her.’

‘Is it the
AOTS
?’

‘It was always going to be a complicating factor. An already damaged nervous system is not best equipped to deal with the additional stresses of skipover, but I would not have agreed to let her join the expedition if I did not think her strong enough.’ He reached into the casket and patted her wrist, offering reassurance. ‘She is in a medically induced coma now, but that is for her own good. We are giving her a cocktail of drugs that will help with the combined effects of
AOTS
and the ordinary stresses of skipover. There is no reason for them not to work, but it must be done carefully, and the results monitored at each step. Gradually, she will be elevated back to proper consciousness. I have every confidence that she will be well again.’

‘How long?’

‘A matter of days. A hardship for her and a worry for you, I appreciate that, but it is an extremely small price to pay when set against the years we have already crossed. Now rest, Goma – and set your mind at ease. Ru will be well.’

She wanted to demand more of him – additional guarantees. But she was too tired, too groggy, to do more than place her trust in this man. Sometimes that was all you could do.

So she rested. After an hour or two, she was able to experiment with moving around, easing herself out of the casket and onto her feet, steadying herself against walls and furniture until she learned to trust bones and muscle. It was hard at first – she felt pinned down under a dead weight, nauseous and dizzy at the same time. But her strength and confidence returned, and the ill-effects slowly faded away. She kept down fluids and soon found herself able to eat. She wandered around a small area of the ship, regaining her bearings. Hour by hour, more and more people were awake and mobile. All appeared content to share the same assumption: that they were aboard a ship that had crossed seventy light-years of space, in one hundred and forty years of time.

Goma could hold these facts in her head well enough, but accepting them as deep, visceral truths was another thing entirely. She felt exhausted by skipover, physically drained, every part of her bruised, but that was not the same as feeling fourteen decades older.

She kept looking down at her own hand, studying the familiar anatomy of her wrist, the pores of her skin, the fine dark hairs, the architecture of bone and tendon beneath the flesh. Nothing had changed – nothing felt older. She pinched the skin of her belly, but it too appeared miraculously indifferent to the process it had undergone. Blemishes, moles, scars were all present and correct. She did not look quite herself in the mirror – there was a slackness of muscle tone, a vagueness to her gaze – but all of that was a normal consequence of skipover. Indeed, the ill-effects were connected with the transition from total skipover stasis to full animation rather than the fourteen decades of stasis itself.

They had moved Ru out of her skipover casket into a dedicated medical suite – one of two on the ship – and placed her on a normal bed under a bank of conventional medical instruments. She had lines going in and out of her, of different colours and thicknesses, conveying blood, urine, saline and drugs to and from different machines. She had a crown-like device fitted around her forehead, maintaining the medical coma and simultaneously running some sort of cyclic neural scan – peelings of her brain flickering in different colours on the display above her headboard. It was a difficult time for Dr Nhamedjo and his staff since they still had a dozen or more sleepers to bring out of skipover. But they managed to find time to make it look as if Ru was their chief concern.

Goma wanted to be at her side. But Dr Nhamedjo assured her there was no chance of her waking up ahead of schedule; that everything was proceeding according to a fixed and orderly timescale. ‘These prefrontal areas,’ he said, indicating part of the scan, ‘are still inflamed and must be brought under control. She is also suffering microseizures – a kind of temporal-lobe epilepsy. None of this is without precedent in
AOTS
cases, and all of it is responsive to careful management. But above all it must not be rushed, or we will leave Ru with greater impairments than when she joined us.’

It was hard to watch her lying there, so helpless and so clearly afflicted. Every now and then she tremored, sometimes violently enough that it was hard not to think she was in the grip of nightmares, or in pain. But Nhamedjo assured Goma that there was no conscious activity involved, and that Ru would remember nothing of this time.

Goma held her hand, tried to still it when the palsy hit. She whispered kindnesses to Ru and settled a kiss on her fever-hot brow.

‘Come back, my love. I need you.’

For the time being, though, there was nothing to do but wait.

‘Perhaps,’ Gandhari said, ‘a thing or two to take your mind off Ru – would that help?’

‘It might.’

‘The truth is, I hardly know where to begin. We’ve learned so much already, and yet all we’ve managed to do is replace every question with two more. Still, I have to start somewhere.’

They were in the captain’s cabin, just the two of them. Not much had changed since the last time Goma had been in it. The picture on the wall was different now – perhaps Vasin had changed it herself, or else the room had made the choice based on its own selection algorithm. It was a strange, gloomy painting of a pale and naked woman in the embrace of a withered skeletal figure. To one side of the coupling floated sperm-like forms; to the other bulbous-headed aliens.

Goma had difficulty squaring this image – or, for that matter, the destructive landscape that had preceded it – with the calm, collected, warm-spirited person who lived in this room.

‘Who was there to wake you up?’ Goma asked, remembering the other woman’s kindness.

‘Nobody. But one of us had to be first, and it might as well have been me.’

‘That can’t have been pleasant.’

‘Well, it was silent, I’ll say that for it. Colder than I wished. Something was off with the thermostat settings – we soon fixed that, but only after I’d shivered my way through two whole days, trying to restart the climate control. Still, it wasn’t too bad – mainly I was happy we’d made it, that we weren’t just some cloud of atoms sailing on through space.’

The ship had not been totally devoid of life during the main part of its cruise, Goma knew. Periodically, technicians had come in and out of skipover to review the vital systems, while Nhamedjo’s medical team had done the same thing for the sleepers, putting themselves through the ordeal of multiple skipover transitions. From what she could gather, there had been little work for these brave souls to do. Nothing had gone badly wrong; nothing had needed serious repair.

‘Then you were the first to see Gliese 163,’ Goma said.

‘Yes, I had that honour – dubious as it felt at the time. We’re close enough now that it’s harder to see the true colour, but when I first came out, you could really tell it’s a red dwarf – it had a definite pink tinge to it. Now it just looks blazing white, but that’s only because our eyes aren’t very good at dealing with bright objects. You’ll find it very familiar – in fact, it’s not so different in temperature from Crucible’s sun.’

‘Home sweet home.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Still, we didn’t come for the scenery. And if we’d only made one discovery, we’d have justified the expedition a thousand times over.’

‘Tell me what we’ve found.’

‘Another Mandala, for starters.’

Goma was so surprised she laughed. ‘My god.’

‘I know – astonishing, isn’t it? It’s on one of the rocky planets – Paladin, they call it. I’m guessing you remember it from the Knowledge Room.’

‘I do.’

‘If your mother were with us, she could tell us exactly if and how it differs from the one on Crucible. Loring and the others will be studying the data when they’re all awake. You’re welcome to share in the analysis, of course – it might stop you worrying about Ru.’

Goma doubted that, but she knew Vasin meant well by it. ‘I’m not sure I’ll have much to add. Don’t expect deep insights just because of my family connection.’

‘At this point, I’m ready to consider anything that might help. Anyway, the Mandala is only part of it. Are you ready for the rest?’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s a rock orbiting Paladin, like a little asteroid, and someone appears to have reached it ahead of us. There’s evidence of colonisation – surface structures, odd thermal activity. Maybe some additional orbiting objects that we can’t yet resolve, but which will be clearer when we get closer.’

‘Is that where we’re headed?’

‘You’d think so, and it would be a good guess if you didn’t know about the superterran. Remember the waterworld – Poseidon?’

Goma nodded – she recalled trying to clutch the pure blue ball in her fingers, to steal it from the Knowledge Room.

‘There are artificial structures rising from its waters. Not another Mandala this time – something different, but just as fascinating. Anomalous-looking moons, too, in orbits you wouldn’t expect to occur naturally. All very odd, all very enticing. I’m inclined to rate it as a higher priority than the second Mandala. After all, we already know quite a bit about one of those.’

‘Not as much as we’d like.’

‘True. But then there’s also the signal – aimed directly at us during our approach.’

‘From Poseidon?’

‘No – not from Paladin, either, or even the rock orbiting it. The point of origin is Orison, another one of the planets. Based on its characteristics, we think it likely that the sender is the same one who transmitted the original signal – which is the reason we’re here at all. See what you make of it.’

Vasin looked to the wall next to the gloomy painting where a scramble of geometric forms, a hash of numbers and symbols, gave way to a matrix of pixels assembling into a blocky, low-resolution mosaic of a human face looking back at them. Goma squinted, blurring the pixels together.

‘Eunice.’

‘Yes. Easy enough to check against the records, but it helps to have you confirm it.’

Now the face was speaking.

‘I wondered what was keeping you. Is half the speed of light really the best you can do?’ The question was clearly rhetorical, for the face continued its monologue after only the slightest of pauses. ‘Well, good that you’ve finally arrived, even if you’re not the first. Things have reached a pretty pickle and now you’re part of it. Under no circumstances respond to any transmission from Paladin or go anywhere near Poseidon. Come to me instead. Lock on to the origin of this transmission and adjust your course accordingly. I have amenities and technical know-how you may find useful. Above all else, I have knowledge. If you want to know what happened to the Trinity, I’m the one to talk to.’