Poseidon's Wake

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Kanu and Nissa looked at each other.

‘We’ll stay here, thanks.’ Nissa said.

‘No, you will accompany me. And no harm shall come to you — that is my promise. Believe me, my own self-interests are served by your not coming to harm. But I have something to say, and I think my point will be best illustrated directly.’

They followed Dakota down the sloping ramps, first one way then the other, until they arrived at the observation gallery where Memphis had first shown them the sleepers. Dakota moved to the same control panel and performed some deft input with the tip of her trunk, bringing on the lights in ascending stages, illuminating each layer of sleepers in turn.

‘They were Friends to us then and are Friends to us now. One day, when the time is right, they will rejoin us. I wished you to be fully satisfied in your own minds that these sleepers can be revived. I wished there to be no doubt in your minds. Now that you have conducted a thorough examination of the technology, there is none — am I correct?’

‘Yes,’ Nissa said, with an edge of doubt in her voice echoing Kanu’s own growing qualms.

‘Then we are in agreement. These are not frozen corpses but potential lives. With a few exceptions, there is no barrier to their being brought back to consciousness. Allow me illustrate my point.’

Dakota touched the panel again. One block of sleepers a couple of levels below their vantage point turned dark.

‘Let me be clear. I have not simply removed the illumination from that section of the vault. I have removed the power entirely. Their units are no longer functioning. Insofar as the Friends have the capacity to live again, that capacity is now being slowly removed. Their cells are warming, but in an uncontrolled, disruptive fashion. They are dying. If the process continues, there will be nothing worth reviving.’

‘Stop,’ Kanu said, as the full horror of what she meant to do became clear.

Dakota touched the same control and the sleepers were again illuminated. ‘I have restored the power. The caskets will resume functioning and no lasting harm will have been done. It was only a few seconds. But it could have been longer.’

‘Then you never needed us,’ Nissa said. ‘You’ve always known how to operate this technology.’

‘That is not quite true. Achieving full revivification would still be a challenge for us. Your help would be beneficial — essential, even. But I do not need complete control or understanding of the technology to make it stop working. That is much simpler.’

‘Why would you do that?’ Kanu asked.

‘Because it is necessary to explain my position. I had hoped that the terms of our relationship would be cordial, but… you have put an end to that. The Friends will be our bond now. You have provided us with a ship, and you will see to it that the damage is repaired. In addition, I will now request some minor structural modifications to enable it to carry a small expeditionary crew of the Risen. Then we will use the ship, but only for a short journey.’

‘Poseidon,’ Nissa said.

Dakota tilted the ram of her brow in a great, slow nod. ‘We will learn many things, and then our debt will be satisfied. The ship will be returned to you. I will allow you to leave, or to remain, whichever you prefer. But until you have helped me, the fate of the Friends lies in your hands.’

‘You can’t do this to us,’ Kanu said, doubting that anything he now said would make a difference.

‘You have done it to yourselves by doubting my good intentions. I hoped that we might stay friends, and perhaps our trust can be reestablished, given time. But the ship will be repaired, and it will be made ready. Nothing will stand in the way of that.’

‘So what does that make us — your slaves?’ Nissa asked.

‘Elephants were the instruments of human will for centuries. We were strong when you were weak. We did your bidding. We crushed your enemies for you, moved your mountains — tore down your forests. In your gratitude, you offered us only death and mutilation. We are better than that — more generous, more forgiving. Is it so wrong of the Risen to ask this one thing of you?’

‘The Risen?’ Kanu asked. ‘Or the Watchkeepers?’

‘What does it matter? Why not serve us, as we serve another?’

Kanu looked at the sleepers again, thinking of the patterns of identity still enshrined in those countless frozen brain cells. The good memories and the bad, the joys and the sorrows, the wisdom and the foolishness, life’s accumulated bounty of kindness and cruelty. Those things made people what they were. Those things had made him, too. And he thought of the warmth stealing into those cold skulls, the patterns losing coherence, the hard-forged connections of a lifetime surrendering to heat and chaos.

That could not be on him. He would not murder these people.

So their work continued. From the outside, there was no essential difference in their daily activities. They spent their nights at the household, treated like human royalty, and by day they were either aboard Icebreaker, nursing it back to health, or dealing with the Risen who had been tasked to assist them. The supply lines ran efficiently; the manufactories spat out the parts they needed, materials and components which slotted together with ominous precision, as if the ship were willing itself back to life. Even the communicational difficulties with the Risen were behind them now as both parties learned to better understand each other. Each day brought fewer problems, less to go wrong before completion. Also, now that they knew the goal of the repairs, Dakota could communicate her requirements openly. Icebreaker had to accommodate the Risen now as well as humans and needed to be adjusted accordingly — its airlocks modified, its interior spaces enlarged, provision made for the Risen to use its control systems and data interfaces. The Noah, one of the short-range winged shuttles from the original settlement of Crucible, was to be attached to Icebreaker’s hull so that the Risen could travel within Poseidon’s atmosphere, perhaps even all the way down to its sea.

Kanu was torn. He could think of nothing worse than succeeding — with the sole exception of failure. If he gave her the ship, in the condition she dictated, she would commit herself to folly on behalf of the Watchkeepers — and take Kanu and Nissa with her. It was not just their own lives at stake, but the collective security of the entire human species. But if he failed in the repairs, she would exact her revenge on the sleepers.

The equation was trivial, he knew. Against the possible consequences of her expedition, the lives of the Friends barely registered. In rational terms, there was only one sensible course of action open to him. But to admit such thoughts was poison.

Their meetings continued. On the surface, there was a sort of lingering cordiality. She made her pleasantries and flattered Kanu and Nissa that she found their company stimulating. Even after showing them what would happen if they let her down, she still acted as if they were her honoured guests. Chai was always served, and if some urgent business needed discussing, she would always take her time getting around to it. Kanu wondered if she was in a state of denial, a kind of conscious forgetting of the unpleasant matter of the Friends.

But one day she was unusually direct.

‘Another ship has entered the system,’ she said, without preamble. ‘Do you know about this?’

Kanu did not need to put on a front of feigned ignorance. ‘No. What ship? Where?’

‘That is an excellent question. Since your arrival, the Watchkeepers have raised their level of vigilance, alert to any other intruders. But perhaps they need not have bothered — it was a Watchkeeper that heralded the arrival of this new ship.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It accompanied this ship across interstellar space — that’s my inference, at least. Now the Watchkeeper has removed itself to the edge of the system — they feel safest the further they are from Poseidon — and there has been a great deal of interest in this new ship. They whisper to each other — a chatter of blue lights across light-minutes, light-hours. Sometimes I have been allowed a glimpse of these thoughts of theirs.’

Kanu thought back to the message from Chiku. ‘They’re hollow. They’ve forgotten how to be conscious. You’re listening to the whispering of zombie machines.’

‘Be that as it may, I can’t help but be intrigued by this new arrival. It has come from Crucible, of all places.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised by that.’

‘No?’

‘When we first met, I mentioned a signal — the reason we came here in the first place. You claimed to know nothing about it. But the signal originated in this system, and it was aimed at the people of Crucible. It was only a matter of time before they responded.’

‘Is this true, Nissa?’

‘As far as I know,’ she answered.

‘Then how did it come to your attention, Kanu?’

‘I am — or was — a diplomat,’ Kanu said. ‘I had ready access to many information channels. This signal was never public knowledge, not even in the Crucible system. But I learned of it, and decided I needed to make an independent investigation.’

‘Were you planning to arrive before the ship from Crucible?’

‘I didn’t even know they were sending a ship. I’d have come anyway.’

‘News of the signal had to reach Earth before you could begin your journey. How did you arrive sooner than them?’