Poseidon's Wake

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‘Not in this body.’

‘So something has vastly decelerated the normal ageing mechanisms. Slowed but not stopped them. Hayflick limits, telomere attrition — these factors must have been modified by the Watchkeepers. Perhaps we would be better off calling them Watchmakers, Goma, since they have taken the basic ticking mechanism of human biology and made it really sing. Every cog polished, every spring tightened — every tiny piece of dirt, every imperfection removed from the process. With Eunice’s permission, I plan to introduce a small wound — nothing serious — in order to study her healing processes. As to her ultimate lifespan, in the absence of further intervention? I have no idea. Another couple of hundred years does not sound outlandish. And as for children — a whole new flowering of descendants — why not? She has a womb, and eggs. I see no obvious reproductive impediment.’

‘One lineage will do us for the time being,’ Goma said. ‘It’s caused more than enough trouble as it is.’

The alterations to the lander had started almost immediately upon the authorisation of the expedition, with the vehicle being kept outside Travertine for ease of access. Despite appearances, Vasin assured Goma that everything was going smoothly and on schedule.

It still looked like chaos, the ship surrounded by vacuum-suited workers, tangled access lines, modular parts and free-floating tool tenders. Nonetheless, there was clearly some sort of order to it all, and Goma herself had reviewed the list of specification upgrades. The lander had been designed for an expansion of its long-range capabilities, with many detachable or swappable components which could be shared with other vehicles. Cargo racks were removed and replaced with additional fuel and thruster assemblies. Life-support systems were modified to keep a smaller crew alive for a longer period of time. Skipover equipment was provided in case of emergency, as well as a small medical suite furnished according to Dr Andisa’s exacting specifications. There were additional vacuum suits, two single-person runabouts for in-space repair and reconnaissance, and an augmented communications array.

Was this overkill or just barely sufficient? Goma wondered. It was hard to say. Five days to reach Zanzibar, five days to make the return trip — but an unguessable interval in between. They could not be held hostage, Goma kept telling herself — not while Travertine remained here, its engine a very palpable instrument of negotiation.

But if the Tantors had a ship, then they also had access to Chibesa technology of their own. Would they submit to argument by force or simply presume that the humans would never stoop to mass murder?

How well did they understand people, anyway?

‘Peter?’

For the first time since returning to consciousness, the man opened his eyes and began to show recognition of his environment. He looked around slowly with an expression of perfectly neutral acceptance, as if this was no more or less than he had been expecting.

‘So, are you going to hang me now?’

Dr Andisa had alerted Goma and Vasin that he would shortly be fully awake after his emergence from skipover, and now the three of them were at his side.

‘The first thing you get,’ Vasin said, ‘is an apology. We treated you poorly, Peter, and I take personal responsibility for that.’

He looked unmoved by this news. ‘I’ve no idea how long I’ve been under. Have we returned to Crucible?’

‘No,’ Goma said. ‘We’re in the other system, at our destination. There’ve been… developments. It’ll take a while to explain everything to you, but we now know who killed my uncle.’

‘And what has it taken to establish my innocence?’

‘More deaths,’ Vasin answered. ‘Did you have any idea who the actual saboteur was?’

‘You appeared so certain of my guilt that I started to doubt myself.’ He raised himself slightly, a spark of engagement showing in his eyes for the first time. ‘Who was it?’

‘Doctor Nhamedjo,’ Vasin said.

Grave gave a slow nod. ‘I considered him a possibility, but he was only one of several candidates.’

‘But if you had doubts about him—’ Goma began.

‘I couldn’t risk casting suspicion on an innocent member of the crew, especially not on a vital figure like Doctor Nhamedjo. Our voyage had barely begun — that business with the Watchkeeper had already led some of us to advocate turning around.’

‘You were one of them!’ Goma said.

‘I suggested we should at least consider that option. Don’t tell me you didn’t have similar thoughts?’

Goma was tight-lipped. She could not deny that she had been afraid in the face of the alien machine.

‘But when the threat of the Watchkeeper evaporated,’ Grave continued, meeting her eye with a nod of understanding ‘I was content for us to continue. Remember, I’d committed my life to this expedition, too — I hadn’t left Crucible expecting us to turn around. Fundamentally, I wanted us to succeed — but not if that meant taking unacceptable risks.’

‘But someone wanted to destroy the expedition!’ Goma said.

‘I told you there was the possibility of a secondary threat. Beyond that, I had nothing to offer. My only hope was that Mposi’s murderer would be exposed through a combination of heightened vigilance and human error on the saboteur’s part. Is that what happened?’

‘Not before two Tantors died,’ Goma said.

‘Tantors?’ he asked, between wariness and excitement. ‘You’ve contacted them?’

She nodded. ‘A few. But there are others — many others — and we hope to meet them as well. But it’s not that straightforward. Mposi trusted you, Peter — can I trust you, too?’

‘That is an odd thing to ask a man who has been accused of murder and put on ice for the rest of the trip.’

‘It is, but you knew my uncle. If he thought well of you, that makes you valuable to me. Gandhari says she’s happy to reinstate you as a member of the crew, with a full apology and pardon. But I want more than that.’

For the first time, some of the old amusement creased his lips. ‘Do you, now?’

‘We’re sending a small ship out to meet the other Tantors — just the lander, but with enough fuel and supplies to see us through every contingency we can forsee. The crew will include Maslin Karayan. I would be grateful for your presence, too. But I need to ask — are you really a Second Chancer?’

‘What I believe and what I think can’t be expressed in a sentence. But do I believe dreadful mistakes have been made in the past, and that we’d be very unwise not to learn from them? Most certainly. I count the Tantors among these mistakes — they should not have come into being. But now they are here, we must accept the fact of them with grace.’

Remembering his words from one of their first exchanges, Goma said, ‘You hate the sin that made them.’

‘Yes. The sin of intellectual hubris. The sin of thinking we understand our own nature well enough to meddle in the natures of others.’

‘But you do not hate the fact of them.’

‘They are what they are — thinking creatures as capable of sin or goodness as the rest of us. They were never given a choice to be what they are. The greater sin would be to wish harm upon them for the sins of others. Besides, we are on a mission to seek the truth of things. The truth is seldom something to be feared.’

‘I think we have some more truth-seeking to do. Are you strong enough to join us?’

‘That is not for me to say.’

‘I will monitor him closely over the next few hours,’ Dr Andisa said, ‘but the signs are encouraging so far. I think he will be up on his feet as quickly as the rest of us were.’

‘We wronged you, Peter,’ Goma said, ‘and I take my share of responsibility for that. Mposi would have been disappointed in me that I did not stand up for you. But I am trying to do better.’

‘And succeeding, by the sounds of things.’

‘I still have some way to go.’

‘So do we all,’ Grave said. ‘But that is called living.’

They were looking at Zanzibar, projected onto one wall of Vasin’s quarters. It rotated slowly, bringing all its facets into view. It was the best 3D image they had gathered so far, assembled from a multitude of angles and sensor bands, across many light-minutes of space, with every conceivable image-sharpening algorithm thrown into the fray.

‘It’s not that we doubted you, Eunice,’ Vasin was saying, ‘but you’ll understand we had reasons to be sceptical.’

‘And now?’ Eunice asked, arms folded, unable to entirely hide her triumph.

‘The shape speaks for itself — it fits into the larger profile of the original Zanzibar very convincingly, and its mass is just about equal to that believed to be missing from the ring system around Crucible. Of course, few of these artificial surface features correspond to the original holoship — but then you’ve already told us there was a scramble for survival after the translation event. Do you see much evidence of change since you were last aboard?’

‘Nothing drastic,’ Eunice said. She sketched a finger across blurry details. ‘A few airlocks here and there, some alterations to the power grid, but I wasn’t expecting much. The Risen can work outside if they need to — they also have spacesuits and the means to move independently — but it’s not their natural environment, and they don’t adapt easily to it.’

‘Less easily than we do?’ Goma asked.