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Poseidon's Wake

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‘Well, Kanu, I had my suspicions, but they didn’t come close to this. You’ll forgive me for shadowing you in this fashion?’

There was almost no time lag now. ‘Everyone needs a pastime, Yevgeny. I’m just sorry I became yours.’

‘Oh, don’t feel bad about it. It wasn’t your fault. If I blame anyone, it’s myself.’

‘Really?’

‘I should have listened to my instincts.’

‘Your instincts ended my career. Wasn’t that enough?’

‘Evidently not. In fact, all I’ve really done is facilitate something else. Isn’t that true? You’d have done your best to leave Mars no matter what I said or did.’

‘It must be nice to have all the answers.’

‘I’d like a few more. You’ve done very well with that ship, Kanu, and in the long run I know we’ll never stop you reaching interstellar space. But we’re in the short run right now. These enforcement craft can easily outpace you and we have the means to disable your ship. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.’

‘Since when have you been a mouthpiece for the Consolidation?’

‘Our differences look slight now compared to the danger you pose. I agreed to an information exchange with our allies in the Consolidation. They were more than willing to accommodate me.’

‘Which ship are you in?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It might. I am not a traitor. I have not sided with the machines or turned my back on humanity. I love humanity. I love my own people. But the machines are an opportunity — a chance to do great things, together. Between us we must confront the Watchkeepers, or at least find out what they want of us.’

‘How did they turn you, Kanu? How did the machines make you see everything through their eyes?’

‘They didn’t. I chose my own path. I’m still choosing it now.’

When Korsakov replied, all the reasonableness had gone. It was as if he had given up any hope of negotiation. ‘I cannot persuade you to stop, Kanu, but you should be aware of our capabilities. You will receive no warning shot across your bows when our long-range weapons lock on to you.’

‘I understand, Yev. And you know I won’t stop. That’s clear, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it is, Kanu.’

‘Then for the love of god please turn around. I am also armed.’

‘You may be misguided, Kanu, but I know you are not a murderer. You were an ambassador, a man who stood for peace and negotiation, for the non-violent solution. You won’t fire on us. You don’t have it in you.’

‘You’re right,’ Kanu answered. ‘I was an ambassador, and I stood for all those things. I believed in them with all my heart. But then I died.’

He offered them one last chance to abandon the chase. When Korsakov refused, Kanu gave Swift the order to fire on the pursuing craft, once more allowing Swift control of his body. It was supposed to be the minimum effective force, a disabling shot. He was certain Swift had done his best to comply.

But in space there was sometimes no option but to kill.

Afterwards, with the memory of the two amplified flashes — two virtually simultaneous detonations — still fresh in his mind, Kanu felt no sense of relief or escape. With their present speed and course and the power available in reserve, Swift assured him there was no real prospect of any further trouble. The drive was functioning perfectly, the ship capable of much more than it was already giving. They had cleared Jovian space and were now burning out of the ecliptic, soon to be moving faster than any other human-made thing within a light-year of the sun.

‘The losses were regrettable, of course, but they were given every chance—’

Kanu told Swift to get out of his head, at least for the moment. To shut up and make himself invisible.

Alone, he stumbled on weak muscles to the bathroom nearest to the control deck. It was small but functional. He fell to his knees and vomited, but for all his nausea and revulsion, almost nothing came up. The dry heaving burned his throat and made him feel worse. His eyes stung. He was crying, in discomfort and loathing.

He had done the worst thing. The act he had never expected to commit, the sin above all others. He had taken another life, maybe several, and done so not in a blaze of terror or anger but in a cold assessment of his chances. Because it needed to be done, and he could not allow himself to fail.

Nothing excused it.

He was still weeping when he became aware of a presence standing over him, looking down.

‘I told—’ he began, certain it was Swift, outside his head again.

But the presence knelt down, took his head between her hands and for a moment looked on the verge of some tremendous kindness, a kiss to banish his shame. It was Nissa Mbaye.

Instead, she slapped him hard across the face.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

‘It’s one of them,’ Ru was saying, for the fourth or fifth time. ‘Why bother looking elsewhere? Why bother locking up the rest of us when we all know the truth? None of us wants the expedition to fail — why would we?’

‘Gandhari’s got to follow procedure,’ Goma felt obliged to point out. ‘It can’t be easy for her, dealing with this.’

‘And if and when they find out who it is, what do you think they’ll do? What kind of law are we working under now, anyway?’

‘Are you hoping for blood?’

‘I saw what happened to your uncle.’

‘So did I. But if there’s one thing Mposi would have opposed, it’s mindless retribution. He was on Zanzibar during the troubles — when all hell nearly broke loose. Mposi and Ndege tried to stand for something better. For reconciliation, acceptance — for putting the past behind us.’

‘And look where that idealism got him. Same goes for your mother.’

‘You don’t need to remind me.’ And it was true: it was a constant fight to keep that image of him out of her mind, his body slumping over in the slow-bubbling digestive machinery of the well, the milky horror of what had become of the rest of him. She did not want to carry that memory with her for the rest of her life, but the more she resisted, the deeper it branded itself.

She forced herself to think of better times. Mposi at his desk in Guochang, Mposi swimming, Mposi the way she imagined him as a young man, emboldened by the challenges of building a new world — squaring up to a future he had earned, with forgiveness and prudence and an abundance of precocious wisdom.

Presently there was a knock on the door of their quarters. Goma opened it. It was Captain Vasin, looking tired.

‘I thought you should be the first to know,’ she said in a low, exhausted voice. ‘It’s starting to look like Grave was involved. We’ve already moved him from his quarters to a secure compartment.’

Goma nodded slowly — on one level, none of this surprised her. ‘What do you have on him?’

‘Enough to detain him for now. Maslin and your uncle both had their doubts about him. It turns out he was a late addition to the Second Chancer delegation — forced on them at almost the last minute. He has strong connections to a much more orthodox, conservative strain of Chancer thinking and they had enough influence to get their man aboard the ship. The others — the moderates — didn’t know him all that well.’

‘So you’re saying he was — what?’ Goma said. ‘A plant, put aboard to sabotage us? Exactly the man he said he was sent here to track down?’

‘It could be as simple as that. As to whether he was acting alone or as part of a larger plan against us, we’ll have to wait and see. There’s only so much background I can dig into on the ship.’

Goma recalled their handful of conversations, and the opinion she had already formed of Grave. ‘What the hell was a throwback like him doing on the ship in the first place?’

‘Obviously, a mistake was made.’

‘Tell me what else you know. This can’t be just about his background — they’re all true believers of one stripe or another.’

‘You’re right — it’s more than that. To begin with, there’s a strong likelihood that Grave had the technical know-how to reprogram the nanomachines in the well. Even the records I have say that he spent time aboard the holoships, including Malabar. Obviously a mistake was made.’

‘That’s an understatement if ever I heard one,’ Ru commented darkly, standing just behind Goma.

‘What’s the significance of Malabar?’

‘After the information wave hit Crucible, Malabar was one of the few holoships that still managed to maintain viable populations of industrial nanomachines. All the nanomachinery now in use, here or anywhere else in the system, derives from the Malabar samples. Grave was there as a schoolteacher. There’s no direct link, but with the right connections, he could easily have gained practical experience in handling and reprogramming nanomachines.’

‘Enough for what he did?’

‘With some additional tuition, maybe,’ Vasin said.

‘You’ll need more than that to nail him.’

‘When we first found Grave, not long after you found Mposi, he was returning to his cabin from the direction of the drive sphere. That’s suspicious, although not damning in and of itself. But we’ve now found blood traces in one of the secured areas. Evidence of a struggle, too — skin and hair scrapings, a shred of torn fabric.’

‘Grave’s blood?’

‘Mposi’s. Saturnin’s already run a match — he has your uncle’s blood on file from the skipover tests.’