Poseidon's Wake

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For now she had no appetite for it.

‘If not here, then Earth,’ Grave said.

‘Assuming Earth isn’t even further behind,’ Goma said. ‘And even if we find out what the situation’s like now, Crucible’s best knowledge of Earth is still thirty years old. Just going on to Earth will still be a gamble, a leap into the dark.’

‘Would you consider it?’ he asked.

‘I promised I’d take her heart back home.’ Goma swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes. I mean to do that.’

But it was so much harder now that she was home. The vow had been easy when even Crucible lay at an unimaginable distance, and she had barely dared count on seeing it again. Yet to be here now, looking down on her old home, knowing its airs and waters were almost close enough to touch — and soon would be — made her wonder if she really had the resolve to deliver on that pledge.

But a vow was a vow.

‘You have my admiration,’ Grave said. ‘Both of you, because I do not believe for a moment that Goma will make this crossing alone.’

It had been meant as a kindness, but having his admiration only left her feeling more beleaguered, as if the task ahead of her had become even more daunting. She held her nerve, though. And Ru closed her hand around Goma’s.

‘Of course,’ Ru said, as if nothing could have been less contentious. ‘I’m her wife. We do this together.’

A little later, Goma went to see how their five most vulnerable passengers had coped with the crossing.

The surviving Risen had returned to Crucible along with the human members of the expedition. For the first ten years of the voyage, Hector and the others had remained awake aboard Travertine, accompanied by a small and dwindling support team, working with the Tantors to overcome the biological impediments to putting them into skipover. Goma and Ru had remained awake for a good portion of that time as well, and even after entering skipover Goma had come out again when the Tantors were ready for their own immersion. By then, all but a handful of doubts had been settled… but there would be no guarantee of success until the Tantors were revived. There had even been talk of keeping the Tantors awake for the entire crossing, down through generations of offspring. Nothing was without risk, though, and in the end Mona Andisa had declared herself confident that the Tantors had at least a better than average chance of surviving skipover.

So it was agreed, and the Risen had been drugged and drip-fed and intubated, and finally placed in immersion vessels converted from expended fuel tanks, each now a giant, makeshift skipover casket. Periodically — once every decade or so — a waking technician would peer through dark windows into the murky interior of the caskets, make readouts, slide a stethoscope across the curving alloy, perform some tiny, precise adjustment of the life-support systems.

All of this seemed risky and perhaps unnecessary, given that some or all of the Risen could have remained back in the Gliese 163 system. But if the Risen were left to themselves, they would have to fend alone for another three centuries. Without Zanzibar, without thousands of their fellow beings, without the stewardship of Eunice, that would have been another risk again. Transporting them to Crucible was the least worst option.

Or so Goma tried to convince herself. She had been a strong advocate of exactly this outcome. But then again, she had been thinking of her own elephants, and of the genetic bounty now carried by the Risen. Agrippa’s death had extinguished the signal of intelligence in the Crucible herds. But a signal could be pulled back out of the noise, with the right encouragement. It was her profound hope that the Risen would provide the means of amplifying that trace, no matter how uselessly faint it had now become.

A forlorn hope?

Perhaps. But she had entertained wilder fantasies, and some of them had become real.

‘Goma,’ said Mona Andisa — her face carrying the lines and shadows of the years she had spent awake, ministering to the Tantors. ‘You’ve arrived just in time. Hector is rousing.’ And she nodded at a display, the cross section of a mighty skull, fortified with bone the way a castle armoured itself with walls and ramparts. ‘The signs are good,’ she added. ‘I think they all made it.’

‘We made it,’ Goma said. ‘All of us. And we all owe you our thanks, Mona. Have you seen Crucible?’

Andisa flashed a quick smile, as if she had something to apologise for. ‘Not yet. Too busy with the ambassadors.’

‘You should. It’s still beautiful.’

Ambassadors. The word had stuck, when speaking of the Risen. But ambassadors to whom, and representing what, exactly? All the rest of their kind now lay somewhere off in deep space, wherever Zanzibar was now. If indeed Zanzibar were still not travelling, still hurtling along the path the Mandala had ordained for it, at a breath below the speed of light, so fast that the Risen aboard would not yet have had the time to formulate a single thought, let alone ponder their fate…

Less than a century and half had passed since the second Zanzibar translation, thought Goma, with a shivering insight into the scale of things. At best, Zanzibar was now one hundred and fifty light-years from Paladin… a distance to shrivel the soul, but still nothing, not even a scratch, on galactic terms.

Wherever they’re going, they may not even be a tenth of the way there yet… or a hundredth part.

Andisa brought her to Hector. He had been taken from the skipover tank and placed on a support hammock. His forelegs were angled over the hammock’s front, the boulder-like mass of his head resting on his knees, his trunk brushing the floor. There was gravity in this section of the ship, and although her bones and muscles still ached from the adjustment after skipover, Goma was glad of it. She would soon be walking on Crucible.

So would the ambassadors.

Hector breathed. She touched a hand to the upper part of his trunk, feeling the leathery, bristly roughness of it against her palm. At the contact, Hector opened one weary, sleep-gummed eye. It was the pink of a sunset, like a pale jewel jammed into grey flesh.

‘We made it,’ she said softly. ‘All of us. There’s a world down there. You can walk in the open air, under the sky, without suits or domes. For as far as you like.’

Andisa nodded at the neural display. Colours were blooming in tight knots of activity. ‘He wishes to respond. Those are vocalisation impulses. But I don’t want to hook up the voice apparatus until he’s up and about.’

‘Take your time,’ Goma said, still stroking his trunk. ‘You need to be strong, Ambassador Hector. All of you. Your work’s barely begun.’

Nor, for that matter, had hers.

Travertine’s orbit gradually brought it within range of a station. It was a golden structure, with a dozen curving docking arms flung out from a bulbous glowing core. Beautiful and strange, it made Goma think of a chandelier, or perhaps an octopus. Along the arms were numerous studlike docking ports, many of which were occupied by ships of various sizes. Some were like the cylinder they had seen earlier, but there were also spheres and darts and translucent, barb-tailed things shaped like manta rays. The spacecraft glowed gently with different colours — there were no lights or markings as such.

Travertine had obviously been assigned a docking port. They nudged home and a small swarm of mothlike service craft was soon in attendance. Goma and Ru watched the colourful display, mesmerised, until a summons drew them to the main commons area. Grave had already gone on to speak with the other members of the Second Chance delegation, and Vasin was calling the entire ship to a meeting.

Kanu was there, the first time Goma had seen him since their revival. She and Ru joined him. They hugged, each thankful that they had come through the crossing.

‘I went to see the Tantors,’ Kanu said. ‘They’re doing well. It’s a fine thing you did, helping them with the skipover equipment.’

‘It wasn’t anything compared to the years Mona and her team put in,’ Ru said.

‘You all made sacrifices,’ Kanu replied.

Goma knew she could either skirt awkwardly around the Nissa question, or get it out in the open. ‘I understand there’s already been some contact between Travertine and the medics on Crucible. We’ve been gone a long while, Kanu. There must be a lot of options open to them.’

He nodded, like a man trying to put a brave face on things. ‘We’ll see.’

‘They’ll do the best they can,’ Ru said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘I’m certain they will.’ He was speaking slowly, distantly. ‘It was the best thing, keeping her in skipover. Even though she missed most of our time in the Tantors’ system.’

‘We’ll have to go back, won’t we?’ Goma said, trying to strike an optimistic note. ‘Not us, necessarily, but people. Maybe we won’t even need a starship to do it. Just crank up Mandala again, the way it worked before.’

‘Someone’s going to have to try,’ Kanu agreed.

But it would not be him, Goma thought. Or her, or Ru. Captain Vasin, perhaps, if she had not yet had her fill of cosmic exploration. But even Gandhari looked drawn, worn out by what they had gone through.

She was speaking.

‘In a little while, so I am assured, we will be met by diplomatic envoys from the present government. They are bound to seem odd to us. Perhaps a little frightening, too. It’s been a while. But you can be certain that they are just as apprehensive about meeting us. We must seem very strange to them indeed. But with good intentions in our hearts, good faith in our new hosts, good faith in ourselves, we will find a way through. Some of you will attempt to return to your old lives on Crucible. I do not wish to understate the challenges you will face — although I am quite sure you have a ready appreciation of what lies ahead. But never forget this. We are a crew now, and we will remain a crew. When you leave this ship, you do not leave behind the friendships and alliances we have forged. They remain with us. They will be our bond across all the years and challenges to come. Each and every one of you has my respect and gratitude.’