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Poseidon's Wake

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105

‘You’re taking this very well,’ Goma said.

Eunice gave a semi-shrug. ‘Experience. You can fight the odds up to a point, but sooner or later you have to face reality. The universe doesn’t care about temper tantrums or pity. This was our chance, and we blew it. Captain Vasin — will you turn us around?’

Vasin nodded slowly. ‘I don’t want to — not after we’ve come this far. But I won’t have more deaths on my conscience.’

‘It’s the right decision,’ Eunice said, as if offering sympathy to the bereaved. ‘Hard, I know — but it’s the only course open to us now. If you change our vector, Kanu will see it — there’s no need to make a formal announcement.’

‘I’d like to, all the same, just so there’s no confusion.’

‘If you think that’s for the best,’ Eunice said.

Vasin made her statement. It was short, to the point. She said that there must be no more deaths. To this end, Mposi was abandoning its effort to reach Poseidon. As they peeled away from their present course, they would consider their options — whether to return to Orison or attempt to make diplomatic contact with the Risen on Zanzibar. If Dakota had an opinion, Vasin was ready to hear it.

They did not have long to wait for an answer. It was the elephant this time rather than Kanu.

‘Thank you for seeing sense, Captain Vasin. I am sorry that I had to make my point so forcefully, but I think we can both agree that it was necessary to demonstrate the extent of our convictions. No, there will be no more deaths. If you wish to return to Orison, please do so. If you wish to visit Zanzibar, or are compelled to do so by reason of fuel or life-support demands, you will be treated well. But it will not be diplomatic contact. You have taken action against us, attempted to harm our world, and you will be regarded as prisoners of war. You have my word, though, that you will not be harmed. It was a serious tactical mistake to imagine that you could gain control of our mirrors and retain that control. Be grateful I have decided not to take punitive action for your error of judgement. Such an act would be unfair, though — the Friends cannot be blamed for your short-sightedness.’

The transmission ended. Even as it played, Mposi had begun to change its course, opening up the distance to Icebreaker. The engine was at full output, sending the clearest possible signal to Kanu and Dakota.

‘We took his name for the ship,’ Goma said, ‘and we screwed it up. We didn’t act wisely at all.’

‘This is the wise act,’ Grave said, his tone gently reproving. ‘This is the thing Mposi would have been proud of — that we have the sense to know when the battle is lost. No, we haven’t succeeded in the way we hoped. But we could only do our best under very difficult circumstances.’

‘People died,’ Goma said. ‘Using the mirrors ruined any chance of a peaceful discussion. How is that not a disaster?’

‘Mposi would have understood that we went into this with an incomplete understanding of the facts. We had to test Dakota to see how ruthless she was prepared to be. We know that now, whereas before it was just supposition. The mirrors were a mistake — but even I dared hope we might have gained the upper hand by those means.’

‘Then we’re all fallible. Even Eunice.’

‘Even her,’ Eunice said.

‘Eunice thought she was cleverer,’ Grave said, directing a sympathetic glance at her as she spoke. ‘It’s excusable. Most of her existence, that’s exactly what she’s been. But she forgot that being human comes with some limitations.’

‘Most of us have already worked that one out,’ Goma said.

‘Be patient with her,’ Grave answered. ‘She’s new to this.’

The crew of Mposi convened around the well, squeezed into the tight, knee-scraping spaces between its rim and the enclosing walls. It had reverted to its former function now, offering a three-dimensional view of the entire system from Paladin’s orbit inwards. They were debating their options while also plotting Kanu’s trajectory.

He was nearly at the outer margin of Poseidon’s moons. Unchecked, he had made excellent progress and was now engaged in a steady deceleration burn. The well showed a fist of bright, curving lines worming through and around the orbits of the planet’s moons, eventually terminating at some point close to Poseidon’s surface. Aboard Icebreaker, Kanu must have been faced with a similar spread of possibilities, only now able to refine them down to a set of possible choices. Given the uncertainty in his total journey time from Zanzibar, there would have been nothing gained by planning this stage of the expedition in too much detail ahead of time.

‘Six hours to the limit of the outer moon,’ Vasin said, dipping a finger into the well. ‘After that, guesswork is all we have. We still don’t know the detailed capabilities of that ship — whether the plan is to orbit and send down a secondary vehicle, or whether the whole thing can handle Poseidon’s atmosphere. It’s a pretty compact-looking ship, so maybe it can.’

‘Where would they land, if they make it down?’ Loring said. ‘Other than those wheels, there’s nothing but water.’

‘Maybe the ship can float,’ Vasin answered. ‘Maybe they intend to remain in the atmosphere. Those wheels are huge, after all — there’s presumably a lot to learn just by observing them from close proximity. If they’re content to just study the tops of the wheels, they don’t even have to enter the atmosphere.’

‘If they get that far,’ Goma said. ‘Eunice — you said the Terror always made you turn back — what’s to say they won’t run up against the same thing?’

‘They will if they go deep enough. The moons don’t allow anything to get that close to the surface without being sampled, examined, deemed worthy of further interest. That’s the test the Watchkeepers keep failing — they ring like empty bottles, and the moons don’t like that at all.’

‘And Kanu’s crew?’

‘I think they will pass the test. We always passed. It was the courage to continue that failed us.’

‘And now?’ Goma pressed.

‘I’d still be shit-scared, dear. But that’s because I’m a sane and sensible organism with a ready appreciation of the risks. Dakota is an instrument — a meat probe. The Watchkeepers have turned her into what they can’t be themselves. If she feels the fear, it’s screwed down so tight she can’t act on it.’

‘But Kanu will feel it. And Nissa.’

‘Yes. Pity them. Would you do me a small favour, Captain Vasin?’

‘That depends.’

‘Zoom in on Paladin for a moment.’

Vasin looked puzzled, and then a little troubled. ‘Our concern is Poseidon, Eunice.’

‘Nonetheless, indulge an old woman.’

Vasin played the well with her customary fluency. She centred the display space on Paladin, then enlarged it by degrees until Eunice held up a hand.

‘Good enough for you?’

‘That’s fine. This is a real-time image, right, Captain? It shows the rotational aspect of Paladin, the relative position of Zanzibar in its orbit? It’s accurate to the limit of our current observations, the combined sensor inputs from both Mposi and Travertine?’

‘Yes, but there’s no—’

‘Watch and learn. I think you’ll find this most instructive.’

‘Eunice,’ Goma said, with a slowly dawning dread, ‘what are you about to do?’

‘Nothing that your mother didn’t spell out in her notebooks, child. They were very useful. Enormously instructive. They filled gaps in my comprehension I didn’t even know were there.’

‘What is she talking about?’ Vasin asked. ‘What notebooks?’

‘Never mind,’ Goma said, with equal sharpness. ‘What’s going on? What’s about to happen?’

Eunice jabbed one finger at the little glowing mote that was Zanzibar and another at the second Mandala. ‘If this rendering is as accurate as you claim, the Mandala is not presently visible from Zanzibar. It lies over the horizon, around the curvature of Poseidon — but not for long. Zanzibar’s orbit is low and Mandala is about to start coming into view. In fifteen minutes, the former will be over the latter.’

‘And?’ Karayan asked.

‘I am about to send a sequence of commands to the Mandala. They will duplicate the effect of the command sequence Ndege gave to the original Mandala. I will initiate a second Mandala event.’

For a moment there was silence as everyone struggled to process the full import of what she had just said. Goma was as speechless as the rest of them. There was too much to consider, too much to examine except in small pieces.

How could she think of doing this? How could she be confident that her commands would have the same effect, or any effect, for that matter? How could she talk to the Mandala? How could she take this risk with Tantor and human lives? Where was she planning to send them? Was it too much to hope that she had a plan?

How could she dare to be Eunice Akinya?

‘Any questions?’ Eunice said.

‘It won’t work,’ Goma said eventually, the first of them to break the spell. ‘My mother spent months, years, setting up experiments inside Mandala’s walls. She didn’t talk to it for fifteen minutes from inside a spaceship, across light-seconds of distance. It doesn’t respond to radio, laser, neutrinos or anything we use for normal communication.’

‘Then it’s a good thing I’m not planning to utilise any of those channels. Your mother used light and shade, did she not? The selective masking of areas of the Mandala?’