Poseidon's Wake

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‘We’re arboreal apes. We enjoy being high up and in our bones we feel safer. Elephants spend their lives glued to the ground, rooted there like trees. Being in space will never feel as natural to them as it does to us.’

‘So we have an edge over them,’ Vasin said.

‘Only a small one. They’re as determined as we are, and sufficient determination will conquer any natural reluctance. Monkeys don’t like water, but we’ve overcome that instinct well enough.’

‘But still,’ Goma said, ‘if they don’t like being outside, maybe we can use that to our advantage.’

Eunice leaned in eagerly, as if about to make a constructive suggestion. ‘Engage them in close-quarters combat? Daggers between teeth, no quarter given?’

‘I was trying to think of something useful — some way we could exploit our innate differences without resorting to violence. What about that power grid?’

‘What about it?’

‘If we stop it working, will they be able to repair it easily? I don’t mean shut it off permanently, just demonstrate that we can deprive them of power. You said we need a means of negotiating with Dakota — would that help?’

‘It might, it might not.’

‘Could we do it, though?’ asked Vasin.

Eunice thought about it for a few seconds, or at least gave every impression of doing so.

‘The mirrors were an emergency measure installed during the difficult days immediately after the translation. We worked with the surviving humans to cobble them together, using spacecraft parts and materials from inside Zanzibar. I never expected them to work as long as they have.’

‘And?’ Goma pushed.

‘The orbital control and mirror-aiming system is as autonomous as we could design it to be. We wanted the mirrors to keep working even if there was some total breakdown in communications with Zanzibar. Obviously, we did a fairly good job. But we did leave a back channel — a control protocol, in case we needed to reprogram or reassign the mirrors.’

‘Would Dakota know about that channel?’ Vasin asked.

‘Maybe, but it would still be hard for her to close it off without physical access to the mirrors. So… yes — maybe there’s a possibility. But it’s been a while and everything I know about the control architecture is in here.’ She tapped the side of her head.

‘Is that good or bad?’ Vasin asked.

‘Oh, my memory is excellent. But I can’t promise anything until I’ve done some tests. Can I use your spaceship?’

Vasin looked appalled. ‘Of course not!’

‘Then at least your long-range communications array. It’ll need to be done delicately — I don’t want Dakota to guess that I’m trying to speak to the mirrors or she’ll be a step ahead of us.’

‘With appropriate supervision,’ Vasin said, ‘I suppose I could permit it.’

‘Good to know I’m considered such a trusted guest,’ Eunice answered archly. ‘By the way, I like your choice of painting — it’ll remind us what’s at stake.’

Goma had been so fixated on the image of Zanzibar that she had not noticed Vasin’s wall image had changed again. Gone were the violent, world-shattering sun and the pale maiden with the skeletal figure. This was a skull-faced person clasping their hands to the bony bulb of their head, standing on a bridge or pier, under a lava-red sky that oozed and throbbed like a wound.

‘The Scream,’ Vasin said.

‘The Terror,’ Eunice answered.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

On the morning that he meant to kill himself, Kanu and Nissa made their customary journey from the household to the civic building for their daily audience with Dakota. Kanu had mentioned nothing of his intentions to Nissa and now did his best to banish every trace of them from his words and manner. She must not know, she must not suspect, or she would blame herself for not doing enough to stop him. Equally, Dakota had to be given every reason to believe that Nissa was in no way complicit in the act. His death would serve an obvious and logical end, but if he could engineer it in such a way as to cause the least difficulty for Nissa, all the better.

He did not feel suicidal, not even for a moment. This was not an action springing from some intense weariness of life, nor was he in physical pain. His despair, his sense of utter hopelessness, was derived entirely from his current predicament. He still loved the idea of being alive, and if he could have seen a path through his difficulties that both averted them and allowed for his own continued existence, he would have gladly taken it. But there was no such path. If he denied Dakota her starship, she would murder the sleepers. If he gave her the ship, she would court disaster not just for herself but for the entire human and elephant diaspora. Had he been a more ruthless person, he would have accepted the first outcome as morally preferable to the second. But Kanu would permit himself no such calculus. He would not balance life against life — except his own.

So he would do it. Destroy the ship, and he took away the means of her expedition. If she decided to kill the sleepers anyway, out of spite, that was beyond his control. But he hoped she would not, for they were still valuable to her. He dared apply the same reasoning to Nissa.

‘I’d like Nissa to come with me,’ he bluffed, knowing full well what Dakota’s answer would be.

‘And risk both of you running away with that ship?’ Dakota asked with a certain amusement, as if it was naive of him to think she might be so easily gulled. ‘No — good Nissa will remain here, aboard Zanzibar, while you conduct the tests. If the ship cannot be operated by one individual, it is not yet ready. Yet you have told me it is nearly ready.’

‘It is,’ Kanu said.

‘Then you will go aboard alone. If you require Risen assistance, so be it, but Nissa will remain here.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘No, I won’t need the Risen.’

‘She won’t compromise on this,’ Nissa said.

‘I didn’t expect her to. It was worth a try.’

But in truth, he had never wanted Nissa with him — not given his intentions. He kissed her. He made it brief, lingering only for an instant. He did not want her to sense anything unusual about this parting.

‘How long do you think it will take?’ she asked.

‘Not long,’ Kanu answered.

With great care, he moved Icebreaker under its own power for the first time since the Watchkeeper attack. Only steering motors were required to extract the ship from Zanzibar, but the operation was as slow and painstaking as defusing a bomb. Once free, Kanu allowed his ship to drift to a safe distance of one hundred kilometres, while still following the same orbit around Paladin.

‘Dakota — can you hear me?’

‘Perfectly, Kanu.’

‘Put Nissa on. I want to be sure you haven’t hurt her.’

‘I’m fine,’ Nissa said, after the slightest of pauses. ‘She isn’t so stupid as to throw away one of her assets.’

‘Are you prepared to start the Chibesa drive?’ the Tantor asked, with a certain brusqueness. ‘I am eager for a demonstration.’

‘You’ll get your demonstration. But I need an hour or two to make sure nothing’s shifted since we were in Zanzibar. Go and read a book or something.’

Kanu was in the old control room. During the long course of Icebreaker’s repairs, Kanu had been aboard the ship so many times that it was easy to lose sight of the changes that had been made. From the outside, the alterations were slight, but the ship’s interior was different now, its symmetry and elegance butchered to allow access by the Risen. A number of additional control pedestals now awaited him, rising from the floor like tree-stumps. They came equipped with chunky, tactile interfaces suited for the use of trunks, and with wide-angle visual readouts arranged for the convenience of elephant eyes. Elsewhere, the Tantors had been provided with bulky, padded ‘couches’ — supporting structures they could straddle during periods of high gee-load or weightlessness. They were the size of trampolines.

The shuttle Noah had yet to be attached, but the docking connections were now in place on the upper hull. All but two of the escape pods had been adapted so that each could take a single Risen, leaving Kanu and Nissa a choice of the two remaining three-person pods — if the expedition ever took place.

Many of the locks, corridors and rooms had also been enlarged to suit beings the size and mass of Dakota. Where such enlargement demanded it, walls had been removed and chambers joined together. The ship’s interior spaces were larger, but as a whole it now felt smaller. There were still places Tantors could not reach, mostly because of unavoidable engineering considerations, but none related to the critical functions of the ship.

But there were presently no Tantors aboard — not a living thing save for himself.

Although every part of the ship was now under weightless conditions — the centrifugal wheels had been deactivated during the rebuild — Kanu still assumed his normal seated position with the console folded down over his lap.

Now the console chimed.

He had become used to the ship demanding his attention at frequent intervals — it had done little else during the repairs — but this was something else. Icebreaker was detecting an incoming radio transmission — a purposeful, directed attempt at communication — and it was not originating from Zanzibar.