Poseidon's Wake

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‘And Ru?’

‘You appear convinced of her innocence. I admit that the force of your opinion is… compelling.’

‘We studied Tantors on Crucible — we put our lives into bringing them back. Ru almost literally — that’s why she’s as damaged as she is. She didn’t want to follow me here at first — this expedition was going to tear us apart, wife from wife. But when she realised there was even a glimmer of a chance that they might still be alive… that was enough to change her mind.’

‘So the Tantors persuaded her where you could not?’

‘I love her. And I know she loves me. But I can’t ever be the biggest thing in her universe.’

Eunice nodded slowly, as if some great truth had disclosed itself to her. ‘Then we’re similar.’

‘You and me, or you and Ru?’

‘All three of us, I think. I like people — much more than my reputation would suggest. I’ve experienced happiness and loneliness, and I know which I prefer. I was married once, to a man called Jonathan Beza, who made money selling mobile telephones. A good, kind man, but we drifted apart. I couldn’t stay still, whereas Jonathan could. We watched the sun go down on Mars. As we held hands in our suits, Jonathan said to me, “I could watch this happen a thousand times and never grow bored of it.” And I found myself thinking: sunsets are all well and good, but who wants to see the same one twice?’

‘Almost all of humanity except for you.’

‘Well, yes. I never said I wasn’t an outlier. But nor am I a hermit. On Zanzibar, it was a joy when Chiku Green found me. Another face, another head to swim around in. And I have enjoyed seeing new faces on Orison.’

‘Until, as they say, all guests begin to stink.’

‘You don’t. Neither does Ru. I am not sorry I acted quickly to quarantine her, but I do regret hurting her.’

‘You had cause to be angry.’

‘But a moment’s consideration would have told me she was unlikely to be the knowing instrument of a sabotage plot. Do you think she will forgive me, after the pain I’ve caused?’

‘You’d have to ask her.’ But Goma remembered the agonised shriek Ru had let out and the fear in her eyes as Eunice transformed from friend to enemy, like the turning of the weather.

Justifiable, under the circumstances. But forgivable?

Knowing her wife as she did, Goma was not so sure of that.

A day passed, and then another. On the morning of the third day, Sadalmelik died. They were with him when it happened, although the Tantor had long since lost consciousness. Even Eunice had resigned herself to the inevitable by then, accepting that the battle was not to save Sadalmelik but to help Eldasich and Achernar. In their cases the infection had not been so advanced, and it appeared that the broad-spectrum antivirals had brought some valuable time — a window in which it might be possible to develop and administer something more effective.

The Tantors were still quarantined — Eldasich and Achernar in their own separate chambers, Atria, Mimosa and Keid in a temporary holding area where they could be relieved of their heavy, hulking spacesuits. By then it was clear that the infection could only have been passed via close proximity or direct contact and not through the air-circulation system. Nonetheless, Eunice refused to take any chances.

During the long vigil with Sadalmelik, Goma was often alone with Eunice as they did what they could to ease the Tantor’s suffering.

‘It was true what I said, about welcoming new faces,’ Eunice said, ‘but Sadalmelik has been a good friend to me over the years. We are different, yes — you only have to spend a few minutes with them to know that. They feel time differently from us. But partners don’t have to be alike. We could be so strong together — so useful.’

‘Do you think we’ll ever learn to get along?’

‘Each death makes it harder.’ She squeezed out a sponge, moistening the area around Sadalmelik’s sightless, gummed-over eye. ‘All our crimes against them have been senseless, but there’s a special idiocy about this one. Your doctor must have planned this before you even left Crucible.’

‘He probably did,’ Goma said, thinking of the demolition charges smuggled aboard Travertine. ‘I think he meant to get close enough to the Tantors to hurt them by destroying the ship — literally blowing it up in their faces. Suicide, obviously, unless he planned to put those charges aboard the lander. That failed — Mposi flushed out the threat — so he fell back on the virus. But even that wasn’t straightforward since he didn’t know that the majority of the Tantors were still aboard Zanzibar.’

‘He didn’t even know about the six here until he landed.’

‘That’s true. But if they were anywhere, the odds were pretty good that they’d be near you. He was wrong — thankfully.’

‘Not that it did Sadalmelik any good.’ After a silence, she added, ‘What put so much hate into someone, Goma?’

‘Not hate, exactly — I mean, how could he hate something he’d never known? More likely fear, I suspect.’

‘Fear of sharing the universe with another thinking species?’

‘Fear that the Tantors will always be something… wrong, I suppose — a mistake born from a mistake.’

‘Fucking stupidity. Is there any part of this universe that didn’t start out as a mistake?’

‘Not everyone has your perspective. And right now, I wish more of us did.’

‘Sadalmelik never knew Zanzibar — only ever this world, these closed-in spaces, these airlocks and spacesuits. Me for company. Me as his sole living example of a human being. And yet when we talked, I had to remind myself that he had never walked in those places, never known how they smelled, how they sounded. That’s what the Remembering is like, Goma — it’s more than recollection, passed-down stories, oral history. They feel it. It’s deep within them — a bridge of blood between the present and the past. He remembered Earth. He spoke of it not as something he’d been told about, but as a world he knew in his bones. As if he ached for blue skies, hard sunlight, the promise of the long rains. Life as an elephant — simple as breathing, hard as death, the joy and the sadness of being alive. Nothing was ever easy for them. But nothing was ever as strong, either. They were born knowing they were the kings of creation. They took the worst that the world could throw at them, including humanity.’

‘You weren’t such a bad companion,’ Goma said.

‘I tried to be what I could for them.’

‘And you succeeded. If there are debts to be repaid, yours is done. Whatever you are, whatever you were, you’ve achieved one human thing — you’ve been kind to the Tantors.’

Eunice touched Sadalmelik’s trunk, now quite cool and still. ‘He is passing.’

‘I know.’

‘I never speak of death in their presence. It’s not that they don’t understand, or need protecting from the truth. They understand perfectly well. They just find our view of it somewhat simplistic — limited, even. You won’t speak of death, will you?’

‘I promise,’ Goma said.

Eldasich rallied; Achernar worsened. On the fourth day he entered a coma. On the fifth, as Sadalmelik had done before him, he passed. It turned out they were brothers, born to a mother who had lived with Eunice in the earlier years of her exile.

The deaths were harrowing but by the time Achernar succumbed it was clear that the remaining four Tantors were now out of danger. The lander had made a return trip to Travertine, bringing better medicines from the well-equipped suites in orbit. These were administered to both people and Tantors, and after some adjustment of the relative dosages, the virus was in retreat. It had been studied, understood, its vulnerabilities pinpointed. It was clever, and engineered to hurt Tantors much more than humans, but it was not infallible. They were far from Crucible now, but their government had equipped the ship with the best tools at hand, and unlike Dr Nhamedjo they were not obliged to work in secrecy.

Ru, now also recovering from the infection, was released from quarantine. The experience had been harrowing, and it was clear to Goma that it was going to take more than her reassurances to rebuild her trust in Eunice.

‘I saw it in her eyes,’ Ru said. ‘The naked hate. And felt her strength. She might be skin and bones now, but she’s still a machine. She was only a twitch away from killing me.’

‘She’s human.’

‘And that’s meant to set my mind at ease?’

‘She regrets what she did to you. It was a heat-of-the-moment thing — you saw how much the Tantors mean to her. She knew that someone had tried to hurt them and you were the nearest thing to a suspect.’

‘I never want to be around her again. No, I’ll qualify that — around that thing shaped like your ancestor.’

It pained Goma, but she could hardly blame Ru.

‘She likes you.’

‘You mean she’s saying whatever she needs to, to keep you on her side.’

Goma had not thought of it in those terms, but now Ru had put the idea into her mind, it established itself with a nasty tenacity. Perhaps it was true. But then she thought back to Eunice’s tenderness with the dying Sadalmelik, the genuine and touching empathy she had shown. Yes, she had treated Ru badly. But it was a human thing to err, and a human thing to feel remorse afterwards.

In any case, Ru would have to accept sharing a ship with Eunice whether she cared to or not. They were leaving soon. Complicated arrangements were already in hand.