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Poseidon's Wake

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The chai was ready. He set a cup before Goma and took his own seat.

‘I have a slightly unusual position on this ship. The captain isn’t a politician, and because she’s an outsider she doesn’t have strong ties to the Crucible political structure. Whereas I do, which makes me the natural point of contact, I suppose you would call it, for those friends and colleagues concerned with our mutual welfare.’ Mposi spooned honey into their cups, drawing from his precious personal ration. ‘When intelligence comes to light… intelligence relating to us, to our expedition, I am the trusted party. And there has been intelligence, Goma. This Watchkeeper isn’t my immediate concern. Or, to put it another way, I am obliged to look beyond it. There is a deeper threat to our success.’

‘What kind of threat?’

‘Call it a sabotage plan, although it’s likely a lot more complicated than that.’

Goma was momentarily lost for words. She had spent enough time around her uncle to know when he was making idle play with her and when he was serious. There was nothing frivolous in his manner now.

‘You’re serious?’ she asked. ‘Actual sabotage — a physical threat to the ship?’

‘My sources on Crucible believe we are carrying something we should not be. A weapon, perhaps — smuggled aboard with the rest of the cargo. Thousands of tonnes of equipment and supplies, much of it for inscrutable purposes — it wouldn’t have been that difficult to slip something through. And by implication, there must be someone — maybe several someones — with the wherewithal to use that weapon. Or maybe the weapon is us, and we just don’t know it. This crisis places us under a lot of stress. But that’s the perfect time to observe our individual reactions. I may have said too much. Have I said too much?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Goma was still unsettled. ‘Why would anyone put a weapon aboard? What’s the point?’

‘The expedition has never sat well with everyone.’

‘You mean Maslin and his nutcases?’

‘Perhaps.’ But Mposi’s answer was not the automatic affirmation she might have hoped for.

‘What do you know?’

‘Enough to keep me awake at night. As you can imagine, I need to tread very, very carefully. The wrong word, a note of misdirected suspicion — it could sour everything.’

‘Have you spoken to Gandhari about this?’

‘Not yet. To the best of my knowledge, she isn’t aware of the issue, and our captain has enough to worry about for now. When I have definite answers, I’ll go to her.’

‘So who does know?’

‘You, for a start. You’re my extra pair of eyes and ears, Goma, but I don’t want you to do anything out of the ordinary or change your routine in any way. Just carry on as normal.’

‘With that thing out there?’

‘You know what I mean. But be alert, watch other people — and not just the obvious candidates. If you see or hear anything that you think might be of interest to me… well, my chai may not be the best, but my door is always open.’

‘And Ru?’ Goma asked. ‘Can I tell her?’

‘It might be expecting too much of an Akinya, asking one to keep a secret,’ Mposi said. ‘Certainly your mother found it beyond her. But you would be doing me a great favour if we could keep this between ourselves, just for now.’

At last the alien machine had turned to face the same direction of travel as the ship, matching their course and acceleration precisely. Goma wanted to do something, and she knew she was not alone in that compulsion. The instinct was to talk, to negotiate, to offer explanation. To beg for clemency, or pray for salvation. But what was the point of even attempting communication after all the years of failure and silence? Negotiating with the Watchkeepers was like negotiating with geology, or some vast, indifferent weather system.

She had been at a window, watching for long, silent minutes, thinking herself alone, when Peter Grave announced his presence at her side.

‘Does it frighten you?’

As irritated as she was at being jolted from her contemplation, she had vowed to be civil with the Second Chancer.

‘It would be strange if it didn’t. They’re an alien machine civilisation, they’ve probably been in space longer than we’ve had tools and language. They could dismantle our entire culture in an afternoon if we did something they didn’t like. We barely know what they want, or what they really think of us. And they’re back, hanging around as if this is judgement hour. Which part shouldn’t I be frightened by?’

‘I agree, totally. And maybe, as you say, this is the hour, the moment. No one has operated a ship like this in this system for decades, and certainly not a ship as fast as Travertine. Perhaps this is the point where we cross a line with them? Some algorithm trips inside them, a decision path, and that’s it? Extinction for the monkeys?’

‘Would you like that to happen?’

‘Do you think I would?’

‘At least you could say you were right all along.’

‘I don’t think that would be much of a consolation. How about you? With your family connection, your grandmother and the Watchkeepers — do you feel you’ve earned some kind of special treatment from them? Your mother must have, when she went poking into Mandala’s secrets.’

‘First,’ Goma said, trying to keep her voice as level as possible, ‘she wasn’t “poking”. She was conducting a structured scientific investigation based on a profound theoretical breakthrough in the understanding of the Mandala grammar. Second, I didn’t ask for a deep, meaningful conversation about my ancestors.’

‘Ah, and there was me thinking we’d turned a page.’

‘Don’t hold your breath.’

‘Regardless of what you think of me, I honestly admire what your grandmother did for us. All of us do — every human being on Crucible. Chiku’s martyrdom —’

‘Don’t put martyrdom on her — she deserves better than that.’

‘You speak as if she might still be alive.’

‘No one’s proved that she isn’t.’

‘Someone sent this message to us. No one would blame you for presuming a family connection. But it has been a very long time, Goma.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘I know many of us were alive at the time of the first landing, but your grandmother was already old by then.’ For a few seconds, Grave studied the alien machine, some of its holy blue radiance anointing his face. If it had not been so dark in the room she would never have tolerated him being so close to her. ‘I hope you find answers, anyway. I meant everything I said to you, when we first met. I do have great respect for your work.’

‘So you say.’

‘Believe me, Goma — nothing’s as black and white as you think. Our feelings towards the elephants are much more complex than you imagine. We regret what they were, we regret the mistake of them, but we also mourn for what became of them.’

‘Hate the sin but not the sinner?’

‘If you wish to put it in those terms. It was a terrible day, in any case — a stain on our collective history. Yet Mandala’s retribution could have been much more severe.’

‘You think this was about retribution? That Mandala was somehow acting against the Tantors?’

‘The facts are all we have,’ Grave replied. ‘Mandala was provoked, Mandala acted, and the uplifted elephants ceased to exist. I make no inferences. It is up to each and every one of us to draw such conclusions as we see fit.’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Goma said, after a silence. ‘I was starting to think I might be able to stand being in the same room as you, let alone the same ship. I was wrong.’

‘And I am very sorry that we cannot find common ground.’

‘There isn’t any. There never will be.’

She was speaking when the blue radiance increased its intensity by many factors. There was barely time to react, barely time for anyone in the room to do more than draw breath. Goma had an impression, no more than that, of the gaps in the Watchkeeper’s layered, armour-like plating opening up, the way a pine cone changed with the weather, permitting more of its internal blue glow to gush out into space. And then it was gone — not just the blue glow, but the entire alien machine.

It had simply disappeared.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kanu was unsettled. While Nissa slept, her ship operating itself, he made his way from window to window, pausing at each to survey his reflection — the cabin lights were dim but not totally off — and attempt to convince himself that he had not begun to slip into madness. What he saw in the reflection was the face of a profoundly troubled man with a desperate, searching stare in his eyes — as if the face in the glass expected answers of him, the man least capable of giving them.

He thought about what happened to him on Mars and everything he had been through since — the deaths of his colleagues, his own recuperation, the end of his political career. It would have been odd if he did not look troubled, like a man cast adrift from every certainty. But there was more to it than that, and as much as he tried to rationalise, he could not find a way to explain what he had dreamed. He had not known the name of her ship until she told him. So how was it possible that it had been prefigured during his dreams on Mars, when he never had the slightest intention of recontacting Nissa Mbaye?

Coincidence, he tried telling himself. His dreams had contained a set of random symbols, the senseless output of his subconscious mind, and by chance they gained an uncanny significance now that he knew the name of her ship. Had the name been different, he would never have returned to the content of those dreams — of him and Swift playing chess in heaving seas.