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Poseidon's Wake

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‘We might, at any moment,’ said Nissa. ‘We don’t know what those Watchkeepers were doing, or how close to the surface they got. For all we know we’re just about to cross some threshold.’

She was seated next to him on the control deck, the ship having furnished a second chair while they were on the long approach from the system’s edge. It had happened without either of them asking, rising out of some buried concealment in the floor.

‘I know, and I agree,’ Kanu said. ‘But we can only slow or change course by using our engines, and that may be the one thing that makes us conspicuous. I think the safest option may be to carry on as we are until we come out the other side.’

‘Another eight hours.’

‘I don’t like it either.’

‘And what does Swift think?’

Swift’s figment stood to the left of Kanu, hands on hips, conveying fretful agitation. He kept taking off his pince-nez, polishing them, returning them to the tip of his nose. ‘As a matter of fact, I agree with Nissa — we may be about to sail into difficulty. Equally, I have some sympathy with your position, Kanu. It could be a mistake to use thrust.’

‘He’s a fat lot of use. Swift says we’re both right.’

‘Then ignore Swift. We still have to do something.’

‘I’ve felt this same indecision once before, near our old household in Africa. I was out in the grass, not more than an hour’s stroll from the gates, and I noticed a large black snake moving through the grass near me. I’d not had much experience with snakes and was so terrified I couldn’t move. My brain said: if you almost didn’t notice that snake, there might be one there as well, and there, and there.’

‘And were you surrounded by snakes?’

‘I have no idea. The big snake passed me by. It wasn’t interested in me at all — I’m not even sure whether it sensed me or not. But my point is, that’s how I feel now. I don’t want to make a move, to do one thing that might bring disaster. But we have to act.’

‘Full drive,’ Nissa said. ‘Empty the tanks if we have to. Ditch the escape pods to save mass. Sacrifice Fall of Night, if we must. But we get out of here as quickly as we can.’

‘There’s another way,’ Swift said quietly, as if to speak were an impertinence.

‘Go on,’ Kanu said.

‘Go on what?’ asked Nissa.

‘Swift has an idea.’ But there was a sense of words forming in his throat, sounds pushing out of his mouth. ‘You must excuse me taking this liberty,’ he said, or rather was compelled to say, an invisible hand squeezing speech out of his larynx. ‘It is simpler, Nissa, if I speak directly to you both. The Watchkeepers have been killed, but their remains are tolerated, allowed to follow their orbits.’

Nissa regarded Kanu from her seat, making no effort to hide her appalled revulsion. But there was fascination, too, of a clinical kind.

‘What have you done to him?’

‘Nothing has been done to him; nothing will be done. He is my friend. Now might we speak of the Watchkeepers? We would be well advised to get out of here, but we dare not make too much of a show of ourselves doing so. On the other hand, none of us wishes to spend another eight hours trusting to our luck. Therefore, a compromise. If we maintain our present heading, we will soon pass very close to one of those fragments. It’s moving slower than us, but with a short, sharp burst of thrust we can match velocities. We park ourselves next to the fragment — on or inside it, if necessary — and let it carry us beyond the orbit of the outermost moon. When the fragment reaches its apogee, we depart — and cross everything we have for luck.’

‘Or we could just cut and run,’ Nissa said.

Swift relinquished his control of Kanu’s larynx, Kanu letting out a small involuntary gasp in the process. ‘I’m back,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry, but I don’t like Swift’s idea. It’s still too risky, given how little we know.’

‘So we do nothing, is that your plan?’

‘I didn’t say that. Continuing with our present course of action is still doing something.’

‘Well, if we keep talking about it long enough, those eight hours will just fly by,’ Nissa said, rolling her eyes with heavy irony.

‘We’re on edge,’ Kanu said. ‘It’s natural — we’d be fools if we weren’t. And there are no rules for this situation, no precedents. None of the ideas is bad. But if the thing we’re doing hasn’t harmed us—’

Swift walked over to Kanu, ghosted through the console and lowered himself into the same volume of space occupied by Kanu’s body.

‘I am sorry, Kanu, but I think this is necessary.’

Kanu could neither speak nor control his body. Swift was puppeteering him again, working the levers inside his skull. He had done it once, with Kanu’s consent, but this time there had been no invitation, not even tacit permission.

Kanu rose from his seat, pushing aside the console. He moved to face Nissa, still seated in her chair, and sank until he rested on his haunches.

‘The choice must be yours,’ Swift said. ‘Kanu is right — there are no precedents. Equally, you did not ask to be placed in this position, whereas Kanu and I embarked on our enterprise in the full and certain knowledge that there would be grave unknowns. So, as I said, the choice is yours. Whatever you decide, that is what we will do.’

‘Why?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion of a trick.

‘Because I would very much like you to begin trusting me, and this looks like an excellent place to start. Whatever you say, that is what we will do. I will implement your decision.’

‘Then… get us out of here as quickly as possible.’

‘Very well.’ As Swift moved Kanu’s body back to his seat, he added, ‘Normal structural and accelerational safeguards will be suspended. That seat should protect you, but I would strongly advise bracing in readiness for the load. In a moment I will disengage spin-generated gravity and align the control deck for the new vector.’

‘Wait,’ Nissa said.

‘Yes?’

‘It is a risk.’

‘Indeed. But there are no risk-free options.’

‘All the same… no. We don’t cut and run. Your option — is that still valid?’

‘For the moment.’

‘Then do it. Get us close to that fragment, like you said. There are forty-five moons — I presume they can’t all see us at the same time?’

‘If sight lines are relevant, then we are presently within the range of visibility of thirteen moons, although the number will fluctuate as we continue our course.’

‘Are you clever, Swift? As clever as Kanu thinks you are?’

‘I doubt anyone is that clever.’

‘Then here’s a test for you. When the drive comes on, make sure we’re as invisible as we can be. Use that fragment to its maximum advantage.’

‘You are presenting me with a somewhat challenging N-body problem.’

‘I’ll tell you what’s challenging, Swift — being dragged fifty fucking light-years across the galaxy without my consent. So rise to the occasion. You said the choice was mine — this is my choice.’

‘And you could not have put it more eloquently, Nissa. Well, I do appreciate a challenge, and I shall apply myself to the matter with alacrity. This will take a few moments… fortunately, we can already draw on Icebreaker’s detailed model of the moons to minimise our visibility.’

When Swift returned to his console, Kanu again had the strange experience of seeing his hands whip across the controls, his vision blurring with the speed of his eyes’ jolting attentional shifts. It felt strange to him; it must look monstrous to Nissa.

But necessary. As resentful as he felt — it was not remotely pleasant to be usurped from control of his own body — he understood why Swift had done it. To surrender before Nissa, to give her not just a say in her fate but absolute control — it was the only thing that might prompt her to see Swift as an ally rather than a parasite.

A risk. But as Swift had said, there were no risk-free options.

After a few minutes, Swift said, ‘It’s done. I’m relinquishing Kanu. We’ll make our course change in a completely automated fashion, beginning in about seven minutes. It can be revoked at any point. Once we start, though, I would strongly suggest we continue.’

Kanu had to take a deep breath as he returned to himself — Swift had drawn deeply from the well of his energies.

‘Remind me not to let him do that too often.’

Nissa looked at him through guarded eyes. ‘Do you have a choice?’

‘I thought I did.’

‘He could take you over completely, couldn’t he? If he can lock you out at that level, what’s to stop him?’

‘Nothing,’ Kanu said. ‘Except his respect for the trust I had in him.’

‘And is that trust still intact?’

‘Battered, but it will heal. I think he did the right thing.’

‘Good. But I take it this is the point where you start trying to argue me out of my decision?’

‘No,’ Kanu said, after a moment of reflection. ‘I don’t know which of us is right. But Swift had an idea, and you’ve chosen it, and that’s good enough for me. Whatever happens, it should be interesting — you realise no one has ever come as close to a Watchkeeper as we’re about to?’

‘Dead Watchkeepers don’t count. Anyway, your mother… one of your mothers — she’d say differently, wouldn’t she?’