Poseidon's Wake

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‘That’s very kind, but you were never much of a liar. Really, though — what happened? I’ll admit, I saw your name in the news. Some bad business on Mars.’

‘I was in an accident — injured, quite badly. But I’m all right now. They fixed me.’

‘They?’

‘The machines of the Evolvarium. I was hurt on the surface and taken into their care.’ After a moment, he said, ‘I still bleed. They didn’t turn me into a robot. I wouldn’t have got far from Mars if they had.’

‘My god. I had no idea it was that serious.’

‘Two of the other ambassadors were killed, so I got off lightly. But the robots’ intervention made it hard for me to carry on in that line of work — there’s a perception that I got too close to the robots. Which is why I’m at a loose end.’

‘So you came back to Lisbon?’

‘Madras first — one of my colleagues had family in India. But how could I resist the pull of this old place?’

‘This is too strange, you and I sitting together. I feel as if the universe has pulled a nasty trick on us both.’

‘Nasty?’

‘All right — unfair. We weren’t expecting this, were we?’

‘I certainly wasn’t.’ Kanu started to fold the brochure and slip it back into his satchel. After the oddness of this encounter, he had lost what little enthusiasm he had for the rest of the exhibition.

‘What are your plans in Lisbon?’

‘I didn’t have any, beyond visiting the exhibition.’ Kanu patted the satchel. ‘Early days, you see. I thought this would be a good way to get my bearings before digging deeper into her legacy. I suppose you’ll be in town as long as the exhibition’s here?’

‘There are only a few weeks left. You did well to make it back to Earth in time.’

‘There’d have been another one sooner or later, I suppose.’

‘And doubtless our paths would have crossed eventually. I know this wasn’t something either of us planned, but it is nice to see you again, Kanu.’

‘I feel the same way.’

There was a silence. He felt certain that Nissa could sense the inevitable question, floating in a state of unrealised potential between them. She had almost voiced it herself when she asked about his plans in the city. Perhaps she had meant him to go further in his answer.

‘We should meet up again,’ Nissa said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘We should definitely do that.’

CHAPTER NINE

Goma had been aboard Travertine for more than two weeks. Each morning she woke to find that the light-speed delay between the ship and Crucible had increased by many seconds compared to the previous day. She preferred not to be reminded of that during the waking hours, for if she dwelt too much on the widening separation between herself and her home, it would have been more than she could easily endure. But it was happening whether she cared for it or not. With the ship under constant thrust, they had locked down the centrifuge wheels for the remainder of the acceleration phase. The fact that she could still walk around, eat and drink, wash and shower, was testament to the force of the Chibesa drive dragging her deeper into the void.

No one was immune to it, including Ru. They’d both had bad moments — a breakdown, a sobbing fit, a spasm of misdirected anger. Fortunately one had always been there for the other. Goma worried what would happen if they both lapsed at the same time. It did not take much to set it off — a news report from home, a smell or a taste that triggered some sequence of memories that in turn related to something they would not experience again, at least until their distant, largely hypothetical return. Goma only had to pick up on some sadness in Ndege’s communications, real or imagined, and she herself was a wreck.

‘Sometimes I wake up back on Crucible,’ she told Captain Vasin, ‘and I’m overwhelmed with joy to discover that the whole thing on the spaceship was just a bad dream. And then I wake up again, for real this time, and I’m here.’

Vasin tilted her head in fond sympathy. ‘If I told you that just about everyone on the ship will have experienced something similar, including myself, would that make it a little easier to bear?’

They were in Vasin’s cabin, drinking chai. The room was slightly smaller than Goma and Ru’s own accommodation, but then again Vasin had no one to share it with, and she had obviously chosen the space and furnishings to reflect her own modest needs A small annexe with a bed and washing facilities was visible through an open doorway, and the main cabin contained a low coffee table, a console, some chairs and soft cushions. The main feature, spread across most of one wall, was a painting of the sun rising over a lake framed between grey and purple crags. At least, Vasin had told her that the name of the painting was The Sun. To Goma’s eyes, it might as well have been a depiction of some destructive stellar event, or even the violent birth of the universe itself — a primordial explosion of light and matter.

Their captain made a point of arranging these little social occasions. As far as Goma could tell, she was not being singled out for any special favours.

‘Even you, Captain?’

‘Gandhari, please.’

‘All right, Gandhari. But I can’t believe you have weak moments.’

‘More than my share. Not necessarily to do with Crucible, although I was happy enough during my time there, but I have fears enough of my own. I would not be a very effective captain if I did not. Our fears keep us on our toes.’

‘Are you worried about the ship?’

‘Oh, I trust the ship with my life. I’d better! Of course, a lot could go wrong. But then again, we have the best technical crew Crucible could muster. No, my fears are external — directed at the factors I can’t control.’

‘Like the Watchkeepers?’

‘They have certainly been uppermost in my concerns. It was always a gamble, taking a ship out on an interstellar heading. We couldn’t guess how they’d respond. So far, though…’

Behind Vasin, on the wall next to the one displaying the painting, was a schematic of the solar system. It was a real-time image, updated according to new data as it became available to Travertine. The arc of their trajectory formed a bold, straightening stroke, arrowing out from the middle. The orbits of Crucible and the other major planets were squeezed into increasingly tight ellipses, crowding around 61 Virginis. But there were also cone-shaped symbols dotted around the schematic, each of which indicated the known location of a Watchkeeper.

‘They’ve not moved?’ Goma asked.

‘No response that appears directly connected with our departure. In a way, it’s almost too good to be true.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘I expected to draw some interest, at the very least, but I won’t complain if they leave us well alone. Perhaps we’ve been too cautious, all these years?’

‘One in the eye for the Second Chancers, in that case. They’ve been the main fear-mongers, haven’t they? Going around telling everyone that the instant we leave Crucible, we’ll feel the wrath of alien judgement.’

‘In fairness,’ Vasin said, ‘that viewpoint isn’t just shared by Maslin and his disciples.’

‘It’s a point of view. It’s also idiotic.’

Humans had first encountered the Watchkeepers around Crucible as the holoships slowed down from crossing interstellar space. After the agreement brokered by Chiku Green, the Watchkeepers had departed Crucible space — to all intents and purposes vanishing from human affairs and leaving the colonists free to explore the Mandala. So it had remained for a century. But they were back now in significantly larger numbers. Not just in Crucible space, but also in Earth’s solar system and around every extrasolar world where humanity had staked a significant presence.

No one knew what to make of them. In the early days of their return some ships had been destroyed. But whether that was because those ships ventured too close to the alien machines or because they were imposing a general injunction against interstellar travel, no one was quite sure.

Interstellar travel had continued but at a much reduced level. Once or twice, the Watchkeepers had acted to destroy or incapacitate in- or outbound ships, but there was no obvious pattern to their interventions. The result was nervousness and a growing political conservatism. Each system had its own specific manifestation of this trend, whether it was the Consolidation of Earth space, the Bright Retreat of Gliese 581’s colonies or the Second Chance movement of Crucible. Interstellar travel was deemed a risky provocation, with the more extreme voices calling for its complete abandonment, at least for a few centuries. None of those voices was louder, or more strident, than the Second Chancers’.

‘You really don’t have a lot of time for Maslin’s people,’ Vasin said.

‘And you do?’

‘I’m a pragmatist. So’s your uncle. Getting Crucible to agree to hand over this ship to an expedition took a lot of doing, Goma. The Second Chancers were dead against it.’

‘So why the hell are they here, stinking up the place?’

Vasin wrinkled her nose as if the bad smell were right before her. ‘That was Mposi’s masterstroke — and the only reason he secured agreement for the mission. They’d have organised a block vote against us, and that would have been the end of it. But offering them a place on the expedition as observers?’ She shook her head in admiration. ‘Even I couldn’t have come up with that, so hats off to Mposi.’