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Poseidon's Wake

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‘Thank you,’ Ru said, taking the beaker from Goma. ‘How was it for you, coming out?’

‘I thought it was bad until I saw you.’

‘That really lifts my spirits.’

‘If it’s any consolation, they say no one gets an easy ride.’

‘And are you sure this isn’t a hoax — you’re not all pulling a trick on me?’

‘No, we’re really there. Around Gliese 163 — or approaching it fast, anyway.’

‘I want to see everything.’

‘You will. But it’s like a sweet shop — we barely know where to start. I already have a job, though.’

‘Lucky you. What is it?’

‘I get to answer the message. We’ve been signalled, told to head for one particular planet. I think it’s Eunice.’

‘You think.’

‘The tone was frosty enough. We’ll know for sure when we get there.’

‘And Dakota — any word on her?’ Ru glanced at the remaining medic, lowered her voice fractionally. ‘The other Tantors you promised me?’

Goma smiled — it was as if they were sharing a naughty secret, barely daring to mention it aloud in the presence of others.

‘It was never a promise, just a possibility.’

‘Tantors?’ Dr Andisa asked with a smile.

‘We can’t let go of our work,’ Goma said. ‘Can’t stop thinking about the elephants back on Crucible. We live them, breathe them, dream them.’

‘It’s all right,’ Ru whispered. ‘We never expected to receive all the answers in one go, and I’d be disappointed if we did. But when we get to this planet, whichever one it is, I want to be part of that.’

‘You’ve a way to go before you’ll be strong enough.’

‘To be honest, right now I feel like something left out to die. What did they do to me while I was under?’

‘Whatever it was, believe it or not, it appears to have worked. If only you’d taken care of yourself way back when, this would have been easier on you.’

‘We’d never have met.’

‘Don’t be so sure of that.’

‘Oh, I can be. You and me — intellectual rivals, competitive investigators in the same line of research? I’d have been nothing to you unless I was a threat, Goma Akinya. And I only made myself a threat by working myself halfway to the grave.’

‘So I’m responsible for what you did to yourself before we met?’

‘I’m just saying — if I’d taken care of myself, I’d never have come to your attention.’

‘But I fell in love with you the moment I saw your face.’

‘And why was my face of such interest to you?’

Goma had no choice but to confess. ‘I wondered who this annoying woman was, trampling all over my research interests, daring to question my methods, having the nerve to imply that she knew more about animal cognitive science than I did.’

‘Bet you wanted to scratch her eyes out.’

‘I wouldn’t have stopped at the eyes.’

‘So the message here is… if you can’t beat them, marry them?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Poor fool me. I didn’t have a clue what I was letting myself in for.’

‘Neither did I,’ Goma said. ‘But I’m glad it happened.’

She kissed Ru. She was back, and for a moment, brief as it was, all was well with Goma’s world. They were in love, they were together again, there were mysteries waiting to be solved. This state of momentary, careless bliss could not last, and she did not expect it to. But she had grown old and wise enough to take such gifts when they were presented, without fear for their transience.

Vasin did her best to keep everyone informed about their discoveries in the new system. She made regular announcements over the shipwide intercom, and periodically, for those who were interested, she arranged gatherings in the largest of the common areas and showed the latest images and data. Goma wondered how the woman managed to find time to sleep. Less than a third of the crew were still in skipover now, and hour by hour that number grew smaller.

Goma tried hard not to resent each newly woken face. They were all entitled to be here, even the Second Chancers.

Vasin told them about the new Mandala, the strange rock orbiting Paladin, the structures on the waterworld, the transmission from the construct. The images amplified her story but added nothing dramatically new. Travertine was still operating at the limit of its sensory capabilities, offering tantalising glimpses rather than hard details. The Mandala on Paladin was clearly the same kind of thing as the object on Crucible, but its geometry differed in various interesting ways. Arch-like structures appeared to rise from the ocean on Poseidon, but their exact nature was difficult to guess at. Perhaps they were indeed arches, or — as Loring suggested, based on tantalising hints in the data — wheel-like structures which actually continued down into unimaginably deep layers of water. The girdling moons were simply weird — confusing Travertine’s sensors in a thousand ways, their orbits spherical according to some measurements, ring-shaped according to others. They would need to get much closer to say more than that.

But their immediate concern was another world entirely. Orison lay on an orbit between the hot Poseidon and the cooler Paladin, too far from its sun to have held on to a thick atmosphere. Whereas Paladin swung around Gliese 163 in just over two hundred days and Poseidon in a mere twenty-six, Orison’s orbit was seventy-four days. It was an unpromising, nearly airless little world, and were it not for the signal, this moonless planet would not have attracted their attention.

The origin of the signal, they now knew, was some kind of transmitter on Orison’s surface. It only swung into view with the planet’s rotation, and even within that rotational cycle the signal was only being sent for a relatively short interval.

Goma was ready with her response when the message started coming in again. She had gone over it with Vasin, and now the captain and Ru sat watching her as she prepared to recite her response.

She coughed, cleared her throat. Vasin nodded.

‘My name is Goma Akinya,’ she said. ‘I’m Ndege’s daughter, and I’ve come all the way from Crucible. I know you called for Ndege, but my mother was too old to make the crossing. Besides, there were other… complications. So I’ve come instead, as part of an expedition funded by Crucible. We come with no agenda, no objective beyond the gathering of knowledge. But of course we’re curious about you. And now that we know of the other Mandala, we’d like to find out some more about it, as well as whatever is on Poseidon. We don’t know why you’ve warned us away from them, we’ll assume you had good reason. You also mentioned someone arriving before us. That’s news to us. Maybe you can share some information when we meet. We have a fix on your transmission site and we are bringing in our ship. We’ll come down in our lander, as close to you as possible. If there’s anything else you feel we should know, we would be glad to hear it.’

Goma touched a hand to her throat. Her mouth was dry, but she was done.

‘Good,’ Vasin said.

‘What do you think will happen next?’ Ru asked.

‘No idea, but it’ll be interesting,’ Vasin said. ‘That first signal was very generic — it could have been aimed at anyone — and sent by a very simple repeating-transmission system with no intelligence behind it. But now she knows your name, and your relationship to Ndege. If we are dealing with anything more than a mindless recording device, we should know it soon enough.’

Orison completed another turn. There was silence, no hint of a return transmission. But on the next rotation the signal was there again.

‘Good,’ the woman said. ‘It was Ndege I wanted, but if I must make do with second best, another Akinya will have to suffice. How far the apples have fallen from the tree, Goma Akinya. I do hope you measure up.’

‘I’ll try,’ Goma answered acidly.

‘Assume orbit around Orison. You shouldn’t have any trouble spotting my surface encampment. Land at your convenience, within a kilometre or so, and meet me on foot near the main surface lock. I have food and water, so don’t worry about bringing rations. Oh, and prepare yourselves for a surprise or two.’

Tantors, Goma thought. It was a treacherous line of thinking — all too liable to lead to bitter, crushing disappointment. But she could not help herself. They would put everything right — every wrong thing in her universe.

She could not stop herself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It turned out that more than one Watchkeeper had died around Poseidon. There were dozens, at least. Once they found the first corpse, it was as if their eyes — their sensors and instruments and analysis tools — had become attuned to the task of finding more.

The dead machines had all been caught up inside the thresh of moons circling Poseidon. Their orbits were irregular, and their sizes varied from fragments only a few kilometres across to one corpse that — given what they already knew of Watchkeepers — was almost whole. Almost intact, save that it was also dead, adrift and dark and absolutely inert. The space around Poseidon was a graveyard and its gatekeepers were the forty-five moons.

Gatekeepers or executioners — presuming there was a distinction.

‘Where have you brought us?’ Nissa asked.

‘Somewhere we shouldn’t be.’ But they were still inside the moons’ domain, still following their course around Poseidon, and they were not dead. Yet. They were moving without thrust on a trajectory that ought not to be mistaken for an attempt to fall into orbit or land on Poseidon. ‘Whatever happened here,’ Kanu went on, ‘it may have been a very long time ago. Something did that to the Watchkeepers, but we don’t appear to be attracting its attention.’