Poseidon's Wake (56 page)

Two gees, then two and a half. Warning messages had begun to sound again, but these were of no evident concern to Swift. Kanu did not need to speak – he could have subvocalised easily enough – but for the sake of the Risen he made the effort.

‘Tell me how you did this, Swift.’ His voice was strained and he had to fight for breath between words. ‘I understand how you found a way to communicate with Eunice, but you couldn’t have put all this in place since then. There’s no way you’d have time to install any kind of avatar, or whatever you want to call it.’

‘I must confess there has been a degree of deception on my part, but I hope you will not hold it against me.’

‘What did you do?’ Nissa asked.

‘When you were sleeping, after the Watchkeeper attack, but before the arrival at
Zanzibar
, I saw it as an opportunity to put certain provisions in place . . . and therefore I took it.’

‘I don’t see how,’ Nissa said. ‘We were both in skipover. I was with Kanu when we went under.’

The engine had topped out at three gees. Kanu could hear as well as feel it, like an endless thundering storm front.

‘She’s right,’ Kanu said. ‘I programmed the sleep intervals myself.’

‘You
think
you did,’ Swift replied, with a trace of bashfulness. ‘The truth is, I intervened. The sleep interval you programmed was not the one you intended. And when you emerged from skipover, I held you in a state of borderline unconsciousness while I made use of your body.’

‘Fow how long? Hours, days?’

Swift equivocated. ‘Rather more than days, Kanu. Weeks and months would be more truthful.’ He paused to fiddle with his sleeve, as if a button had come adrift. ‘There was a lot to be done, even operating at the limit of your capacity. Getting the ship to obey me wasn’t the hard part – it already thought I was you. But installing a useful part of me in the architecture with only the tactile and expressive channels available via the use of your body . . . that was supremely challenging.’

‘You duplicated yourself?’ Nissa asked.

‘No. There was never time for that. It took every resource available to the Evolvarium to stuff me inside Kanu’s head – I had nothing to guide me, and nothing to work with but your own flesh and blood. What I created was an image, a kind of shadow of myself. I gave it the ability to make some autonomous decisions, but primarily its job was to conceal itself and eventually respond to my commands. The implant protocol Nissa suggested? That was helpful – it gave me a direct channel into
Icebreaker
’s neuro-medical surgical suite, which in turn offered me a window into the larger operating architecture. But it was still daunting work!’

‘I dreamed of wandering the ship,’ Kanu said. ‘Haunting it like a ghost, passing through empty, cold corridors. It felt like a nightmare – a horrible, endless fever dream. But that wasn’t a dream at all, was it? That was
you
, using me.’

‘Some small component of the experience must have slipped through to conscious recollection. I can only apologise for that.’

‘You don’t sound in the least bit apologetic.’

‘Forgive me, in any case.’

‘Swift,’ Nissa said. ‘The Risen. They’re unconscious. They can’t endure this the way we can.’

Kanu had shifted his attention from Dakota to Swift, but now he saw that her eye was closed and her breathing unusually sluggish and laboured. ‘You said it yourself, Swift – what’s hard on us might be fatal for them. You have to reduce the thrust.’

‘In a little while I will do just that. But we must sustain this output if we are to correct our course.’

‘How long?’ Nissa asked, groaning out the question.

‘Another thousand seconds, give or take.’

Kanu looked at Lucas and Hector, then back at their leader. He knew nothing about elephant anatomy, still less regarding their chances of surviving another thousand seconds. He imagined their hearts, slow at the best of times, now being pushed to the limit of their strength – each beat a triumph of muscle over fluid mechanics. Only an evolutionary eyeblink separated Kanu from the savannah, and that was just as true for the Risen. Their minds might be fixed on the stars, but their bodies were only a footstep from the dust and heat of Amboseli.

‘It’s too long. Reduce the thrust now.’

Swift made a quick tooth-sucking sound. ‘I would gladly do so, Kanu, were this course correction not already critical. We can make it – but only if we hold our present output.’

‘Then we can’t make it.’

‘Kanu – I do not think you properly grasp the implications.’

‘No,’ Nissa said. ‘He grasps them, and so do I – it’s us or the Risen. We can survive this, but they probably won’t.’

‘Given recent events,’ Swift said, ‘I would venture
that
is not such an unthinkable trade-off.’

‘Only in your world,’ Kanu answered. ‘Not in mine. While there’s a chance to save them, I won’t have their deaths on my conscience.’

‘Let me be completely clear: unless we complete this burn, we will
not
avoid entering Poseidon’s influence. Do I need to define the word “not”?’

‘No, you don’t. And yes, I understand exactly what’s at stake.’

‘And once we do approach Poseidon, we will not have sufficient time to prevent ourselves reaching the atmosphere.’

‘I understand that as well.’

‘Where we may very well die, since this ship was never engineered for atmospheric entry.’

‘We have
Noah
,’ Nissa said.

‘
Noah
will do well to survive entry at the speed we will be travelling.’

‘We understand,’ Kanu affirmed. ‘It changes nothing. Reduce the thrust, Swift.’

‘I could disobey you, I suppose.’

‘But you won’t, because you want my friendship and respect as much I want yours. You’ve admitted one breach of our trust, Swift. Don’t make things worse.’

A moment later, Kanu heard the engine noise die down and felt his weight easing. It was not a complete shift to weightlessness, but enough of a transition that it felt just as welcome.

‘One gee,’ Swift said. ‘We’ll try and lose as much speed as we can. And if this doesn’t suit the Risen, then god help us all.’

‘You did the right thing,’ Nissa said.

‘Oh, I’m sure I did.’ Swift prodded his pince-nez glasses higher up the fine profile of his nose. ‘Even if it means the end of us, which may well be the case. But at least this will be
interesting
.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

From
Mposi
they had witnessed the total shutdown of
Icebreaker
and the gradual return of the ship’s systems. Although they were still too distant to image any salient details of the other vessel, they had a clear lock on its thermal signature. The dimming and reactivation of the Chibesa drive – even with the thrust directed away from them, towards Poseidon – were impossible to miss.

Besides, they had the benefit of Eunice’s insider knowledge.

‘You asked me about Swift,’ she said, with a certain primness of tone. ‘The truth is, I don’t entirely know what Swift is, or what Swift wants. Swift is some kind of artificial intelligence, that’s clear enough – he’s an artilect consciousness, much as I used to be. But unless I’m hugely mistaken – and frankly the likelihood of that isn’t worth mentioning – Swift is running on an entirely neural substrate. That’s how Swift was able to communicate with me at all. He’s inside Kanu’s skull.’

‘Like some sort of parasite?’ Dr Andisa asked.

‘I think we may presume that the relationship is mutually consensual and to the benefit of both host and symbiote. That Kanu has willingly allowed Swift to co-opt part of his neural network. What do we know of Kanu? He was an ambassador to the machines on Mars. I do not think these two facts are unrelated.’

‘Then who – or what – is Kanu acting for?’ Goma asked.

Eunice wriggled in her restraints. ‘Are you going to let me out of this chair any time soon?’

‘No,’ Vasin said. ‘You acted without authorisation. You took a foolhardly gamble with thousands of lives, both human and Tantor.’

‘I took a gamble to stop someone else taking a worse one. I gave Kanu an opportunity to challenge Dakota, with Swift’s reassurance that he had the means to take control of
Icebreaker
. Swift explained that there would be some kind of restart of
Icebreaker
’s systems, which is what we’ve just witnessed. Clearly, the humans are back in charge. That’s why the ship is making such a concerted effort to reverse course.’

‘So you’ve succeeded,’ Ru said.

‘It’s starting to look that way. A little closer to the bone than I’d like, but what are nerves for, if not to be frayed?’

‘You haven’t even considered the lives on
Zanzibar
. The Friends, the Tantors – they’re not even a part of your thinking any more. You’ve moved them off the board and forgotten about them. We were all wrong about you.’

She looked at Ru with an expression of pleasant interest. ‘Were you, my dear?’

‘You’re still a fucking machine.’

‘Well, thank you for that considered opinion. Shall I be equally candid, then? I don’t care. I expected to die. I expected to be torn limb from limb or stuffed into the nearest airlock. I expected that and I knew I had to act anyway – that nothing else was going to work. So spare me your lofty human sanctimony, because until you’ve been through the Terror, you have no idea what’s at stake. And if you had an idea, even the tiniest grain of an inkling, you’d know full well that my actions were not only necessary but the very least that needed to be done. If I could have destroyed
Icebreaker
, do you think I’d have hesitated?’

‘No,’ Ru said. ‘I don’t suppose you would have.’

‘Then we’re getting somewhere.’

But Vasin said quietly, ‘You say the humans should be back in charge by now.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then explain this.’

Over the next few hours they watched Kanu’s ship fall into the barricade of moons. The course correction had been going well, the engine signature reading clean and steady, no cause for concern even as
Icebreaker
topped out at a crushing three gees of reverse thrust. Then it dropped down to a single gee even though
Icebreaker
still had far too much residual motion in the direction of Poseidon. Their first guess was some kind of engine failure, but nothing in the data hinted at anything other than a smooth, controlled reduction of power – a deliberate change of plans.

They waited to see if this was a temporary adjustment, soon to be corrected. Eunice was as bothered about it as the rest of them – her confidence in both herself and Swift severely damaged. More than anything, that was the deciding moment when Goma put aside the last trace of doubt that they were dealing with a human being. No matter what Ru thought, no machine would have shown such consternation at this change in circumstances. A robot would have absorbed the altered parameters without the slightest sense of betrayal or personal failure.

Soon they had the confirmation they had been dreading.

‘This is Kanu. I hope you can read me. Shall I begin with the good news or the bad?’

They were close enough for real-time communications again. His face loomed large, but now the effects of gravity made him look drawn and fatigued, older and wiser by many years.

‘Go ahead, Kanu,’ said Captain Vasin.

‘Nissa and I have complete control of
Icebreaker
. Tell Eunice – if she isn’t already listening in – that she and Swift did a very good job with their scheme for
Zanzibar
. They can be proud of their achievement. That doesn’t mean I approve. Right now I’m not certain what approval would say about any of us. Was it an act of kindness or cruelty? I’m not exactly sure.’

‘Nor are we,’ Vasin said. ‘Horrified, and awed – there’s no doubt about that. But was it the right thing to do? I’d say it was, if we couldn’t see you continuing to Poseidon.’

‘We ran into a local complication which neither Swift nor Eunice anticipated. We had the means to turn
Icebreaker
around and were in the process of doing so, but it was too hard on the Tantors. They couldn’t take the gee-load. If we’d carried on, we are fairly sure they would have died.’

‘Just a second,’ Eunice said, now free of her chair but still shackled at the wrists. ‘You can turn around, but you’re not going to?’

‘We won’t murder them. That’s what it would have been. You can see that, can’t you?’

‘You owe them nothing,’ Eunice snapped back. ‘Especially not Dakota. You’re not dealing with an elephant, Kanu, or even a Tantor – you’re dealing with an alien intelligence that just happens to be using her body.’

‘I can understand why you feel that way. But if there’s a shred of humanity left in any of us, we can’t place our own lives over theirs.’

‘That’s very noble of you, but it’s not just your lives on the table here. Turn your ship around.’

‘It’s too late for that now, Eunice – you know that as well as we do. We’re committed to Poseidon now, for better or for worse. It’s going to be hard, in more ways than one.’

‘Not just hard,’ she said. ‘Suicidal.’

Kanu’s gravity-strained face managed a weak smile. ‘Yes. I’m aware of that. And believe me, I don’t like it for a second. But we’re not totally out of chances. We’ll see how we weather the moons. Even if we survive passage through them, we’ll still have the problem of atmospheric entry. We’re moving a little too quickly for safe planetfall, and
Icebreaker
certainly isn’t designed to cope with the stresses. But we have our lander,
Noah
. It’s large enough to accommodate all of us, and once we’re through the moons it
might
get us down to the surface, and maybe we can reach one of those wheels, see what we make of it. But we’re under no illusions about getting back out again. Since we’re going in, though, we may as well make the best of it. We’ll be gathering all the information we can and doing our best to share it with you. But you’ve done your part now.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ Vasin asked.

‘Turn around. You gave it your best shot and I think we can both agree there need be no hard feelings. There’s nothing to be gained from debate now – the time for that has passed. We have no option; we’re going in, and we’ll endeavour to be your eyes and ears. I was about to wish you the best in forging ties with
Zanzibar
, but I keep forgetting that won’t be necessary – it isn’t here any more. Will you be all right? Can you get back to your starship?’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ Vasin said. ‘We have everything we need, and even if we didn’t, there’s still Eunice’s camp on Orison. We’ll return there to help the surviving Tantors – but not until we’ve done all we can for you.’

‘There’s nothing to be done. But Nissa and I appreciate the sentiment.’

‘Let me speak to Swift,’ Eunice said.

‘So that you can talk him into destroying
Icebreaker
in a moment of glorious self-sacrifice?’ Kanu smiled sadly. ‘As it happens, we’ve already discussed that, and maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But we’re not quite ready to face total oblivion just yet. Not while there’s a chance to learn something new. It’s the reason we came here, after all – to gather knowledge. And if, collectively, none of us is quite up to the measure of the M-builders – well, then it looks to me as if we’re all doomed anyway. But I’m handing no one my head on a plate.’

‘Tell Swift—’

‘Swift says that he’d welcome the exchange of further views, but for the time being we have a little preparation of our own to be doing. I’ll talk to you all on the other side of the Terror. Wish us well, won’t you?’

The channel was closed, but they could still track
Icebreaker
clearly enough to observe its progress. They watched it fall deeper, slowing all the while but never enough, and they ran their own simulations for atmospheric insertion assuming a spread of assumptions for the capabilities of Kanu’s ship.

Until Eunice drew their attention to one of the moons, now veering out of its orbit like a marble that had wandered out of a groove.

‘There’s always one,’ she said. ‘The chasing moon. It’ll be on them soon enough. And if Kanu has an ounce of sense – or if he listens to Dakota – he’ll know better than to try to escape.’

‘What will the moon do?’ Goma asked.

‘Swallow them. And cut them open. Crack their spines and read them like books. But don’t worry. It’s less painful than it sounds.’