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Poseidon's Wake

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125

‘You might try,’ Goma said.

‘This is going to take some digging into. Probably more lifetimes than I’ve had freeze-dried maggots. Here’s a start, though. A hunch. The wheel is a recipe. It’s a set of instructions — a list of procedures for addressing the fundamental structure of reality. For getting down and dirty and poking around in the greasy guts of the quantum vacuum.’

‘You think that’s what the M-builders did?’

‘I think it’s what they became.’ Eunice let a few grooves go by before she carried on. ‘To alter the vacuum, to shore it up, to change the rules of the game — they had to embed themselves in the vacuum itself. They had to abandon matter and energy as we know them. Become pure structure — pure self-propagating patterns of coherent information. Phantoms in the floorboards. Ghosts in the carpet weave of the world.’

‘Did they?’ Ru asked.

‘That’s a very good question.’

‘I said I could do with less of your sarcasm.’

‘And this time I’m giving it to you straight, my dear. It is a good question — and I’ve a feeling the wheels won’t provide the answer. The wheels may offer an account of what they meant to do, but they won’t tell us whether they succeeded or not. I suspect it was all or nothing for the M-builders — dance into the vacuum or bring annihilation upon themselves. I don’t think they allowed themselves the option of living with failure — they could live with almost anything but imperfection.’

‘Remind you of anyone?’ Goma asked.

‘Oh, I’m not perfect — not by a long stretch. I just make the rest of you look bad.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

They had been descending in silence for hours, fatigue eating into their concentration, the wall now as close to sheer as made no difference, when Ru said, ‘Nineteen kilometres of tether spooled out. Can’t be far now.’

Goma signalled to Kanu that they must be near, but there was no answer. She did not immediately think the worst at this, for Kanu had sounded tired the last time they spoke and it would not surprise her in the least if he were asleep. On the far side of the wheel, the sky was beginning to show the first faint omens of day — an indigo haze where before it had been night. But the environmental readout on her suit still maintained that the outside conditions were entirely incompatible with the wants of human survival — that the air was too thin, too poor in oxygen and cold enough to freeze their lungs if they were so foolish as to breathe it in. By now, Kanu, Nissa and Hector would be totally reliant on the bottled oxygen while trying to keep hypothermia at bay.

‘Kanu?’ she called again, when they had descended another fifty grooves.

The answer came back at last — faint as if he were calling from the other side of the solar system.

‘Quickly, Goma.’

‘We’re coming.’

They gave it one last push, Ru cranking the winch to its maximum output, spooling the last few hundred metres of tether at the emergency deployment rate, almost free fall, with their feet barely kissing the wheel’s rushing succession of grooves and intermediate sections. And then there was a spill of light — not quite directly below them but close enough, a yellow warmth like the glow from a campfire.

They fell.

It was a slip of a few metres, no more — but it was enough to send Ru crashing into a groove, catching the edge of it with her suit’s chest pack. Goma felt the impact travel through the line, a hard pluck of tension caught and then released, and watched Ru suddenly go limp above her, arms lolling at her sides.

‘Ru!’

There was no answer. Goma’s heart was racing. They had been descending fast enough as it was, but that sudden short fall had been as terrifying as anything in her experience.

‘Eunice — are you all right?’

‘Right below you. Grapple must have shifted then regained its grip.’

‘Ru’s hurt.’

‘I can see her. We’re not far from the ledge now. The winch is still spooling — I’m going to swing out, see if I can make it down. You’ll be a few seconds behind me. Watch out for Ru, and for that tether — you don’t want to tangle yourself up in that.’

There was time only to do, not to think. Ru had been hurt, but if Goma dwelt on that they were all going to be in trouble. To help Ru — to help all of them — she had to act quickly and dispassionately.

‘Kanu! We have a problem. Be ready to grab whatever you can — and don’t get pulled off the ledge.’

‘I’m leaning out. I can see you coming down — you’re only a few grooves above me. What happened?’

‘No time to explain. Just grab Eunice and her gear as soon as you’re able.’

‘Hold on.’

Then they heard a groan — Ru’s voice — and Goma’s heart leapt a little. No one groaned unless they still had some life in them.

‘What just—’

‘You were knocked out,’ Eunice said. ‘Turn off the winch. We’re in danger of dropping too far.’

Ru still sounded groggy. ‘I… yes. Wait.’

They slowed. Goma heaved a sigh of relief and realised she had barely been breathing since that first slip of the grapple. Damn their useless technology — could it not work flawlessly, just for once? But she supposed they had been asking rather a lot of it, expecting it to maintain a permanent grip on the alien fabric of the wheel.

Goma looked down.

Eunice had arrived at Kanu’s level. She halted just above the groove from which the yellow light spilled out and waited for Kanu to grab the supply bag and swing it in to safety. Goma saw Kanu’s gloved hands, a sheathed forearm, but no more of him than that.

One by one, they all managed to get into the groove. Ru lowered them a step at a time, taking no chances. Goma thought about the grapple, wondering if it had enough room to slip again without being pulled out of the groove completely. Not much they could do about it, fifty kilometres away.

Kanu was the only one of the party moving. Hector was a grey mass at the back of the groove, tucked into himself like a sculpture carved from a single lump of stone. It took a second glance for Goma to reassure herself that the Tantor really was inside a spacesuit and not simply exposed to the atmosphere. Next to him, squatting with her knees drawn up, hands laced around them, head slumped and with the face behind the visor showing no sign of registering their presence, was another spacesuited human.

They pushed the supplies into the back of the groove, clearing space for Ru, whose feet were just coming down into view. Goma stood as near to the edge as she dared and helped her swing back onto the hard, level floor of the groove. Ru wobbled then found her footing, glancing over her shoulder at the drop.

‘I still don’t know what happened back there.’

‘We fell,’ Goma said, casting an apprehensive eye over the front of Ru’s suit. The chest module was buckled in a crease where it had borne the brunt of the impact with the groove’s hard corner, half its status displays dim, the rest pulsing red.

None of that looked good to Goma.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘It was only a few metres — the grapple must have slipped. You hit the edge of a groove — I saw it happen just above me. How’s your head?’

‘Sore.’

‘There’s a smear on the back of your visor — the impact must have smashed your head against the glass, knocked you out for a second or two. Am I making sense to you?’

‘About as much as ever.’

‘I’m worried about concussion. I hate these suits. Why did we ever agree to doing anything involving spacesuits?’

‘Because it also involves Tantors.’

They unclipped the power winch, leaving it hanging on the end of the tether but still within easy reach.

‘She’s hurt,’ Kanu said, noticing the damage to Ru’s suit. ‘Did that happen just now?’

‘I’m all right,’ Ru said, waving aside his concern.

‘You’ve all taken an incredible risk to help us — I didn’t want any of you to get hurt.’

‘Keep an eye on your life-support traces,’ Goma instructed Ru before turning to Kanu. ‘Nissa doesn’t look good. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner.’

‘You have nothing to apologise for, Goma — not so long ago we were at each other’s throats. But I am concerned for Nissa — her suit hit its margins earlier than mine. When she started running low on air and power, I hoped she’d be able to extend it by remaining motionless. Now she’s in and out of consciousness.’

‘We’ll do what we can,’ Goma said.

She went to Nissa. Her suit’s displays and marker lights were all dimmed or inactive, signifying its low-power condition. Nissa made no acknowledgement of Goma’s approach, not even when she knelt next to her and tried to open the access panel on her chest pack. Goma studied the layout of valves and power connectors for a moment, comparing them against the supplies they had brought down from Mposi. Then she went and selected an oxygen cylinder and emergency energy cell.

Eunice came over. ‘Let me deal with that,’ she said gently, taking the items from Goma’s hands. Eunice coupled them into Nissa’s backpack, and after a second or two there was a twitch of colour from one of the displays. But Nissa showed no immediate response to the influx of oxygen and power.

Eunice watched for a minute; opened another panel in the chest pack and adjusted some manual settings.

‘Well?’ Goma whispered.