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Poseidon's Wake

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‘Very good, Kanu,’ Dakota said, when he was done.

‘Don’t thank me. I may as well have had a gun to my head. Was any of that true, by the way?’

‘About the generators? Mostly. I won’t pretend that her actions aren’t a nuisance, but it will be the Friends who are the first to suffer. She is the one damaging Zanzibar’s capacity to sustain life, Kanu, not I. For now my concern is with Icebreaker — and we are safely beyond Vasin’s influence.’

‘You wouldn’t treat the Friends so callously.’

‘Let us not dwell on things yet to happen.’

‘Then you’ll leave it at that?’ Nissa asked.

‘This Captain Vasin is resourceful, but I doubt she is infallible. If there is a way to regain control of those mirrors, I shall find it. I can communicate with them just as readily from Icebreaker as from Zanzibar, and I shall indulge myself with the problem: it will help to pass the hours. Do you know something? For the first time in a very long while, I rather wish I had the assistance of my old friend Eunice. She would know exactly where to start.’

‘It’s a shame she died,’ Nissa said.

‘Yes,’ Dakota answered. ‘Careless of me to depend on the frail. I learned that lesson well.’

Later they were alone, making use of the privacy they had been promised. It would be an exaggeration to say they were enjoying it, but Kanu was at least glad to be away from the Risen and their goal-fixated leader.

‘She’s insane,’ Nissa said. ‘The Watchkeepers have done this to her, but that doesn’t change what she is.’

‘I don’t disagree.’

‘So what are we going to do about it?’

‘Nothing. What else can we do? You saw how easily she shrugged off Vasin’s attempt at persuasion. If that didn’t turn her around, what will?’

‘This is our ship, not hers. We’ll always know it better than she does.’

Kanu gave a joyless smile. Odd how Nissa now felt an equal claim on Icebreaker’s ownership.

‘I know what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t change anything. We already have control of the ship but a mutiny would be pointless. The problem is the Friends. If we act against her, she’ll take it out on them.’

‘So kill her. Then what?’

He shuddered at the thought of it. But repugnant as the very notion might be, killing Dakota was not the biggest problem.

‘She’s in constant contact with Memphis. We can presume that contingency plans are in place — if Memphis doesn’t hear from her, he’ll take action against the Friends.’

‘Would he follow through on an order to commit mass murder?’

‘I don’t know, but we can’t risk the slightest chance that he might.’ He offered his hands in defeat. ‘That’s all there is, Nissa. Square one, and we’re stuck on it.’

‘Swift should help us.’

‘If Swift knew a way, he would. But even he can’t change the facts.’

An undercurrent of scepticism entered Nissa’s voice. ‘That, and Swift might not think this expedition is such a bad idea?’

‘We’re on the same side,’ Kanu asserted, with more confidence than he felt.

Nissa waited a moment before answering.

‘You hope.’

They were stationed at a porthole in a part of the ship that still looked back in the direction of Paladin. After hours of acceleration they were at last free of Paladin’s gravitational environment, pushing deeper into interplanetary space. Kanu could easily block out the planet with his upraised fist, and Zanzibar itself was now much too small to make out with his unaided eye. But the Mandala was still visible when it swung into view, and something of its uncanny regularity demanded attention, snaring the brain’s innate capacity for pattern recognition. It had changed again since his last viewing, the interlocking, intersecting circles and radials shifting to some new configuration. The movement of matter on the scale of continental mountain ranges, as effortless and efficient as the rearranging of cutlery between servings.

‘It’s trying to tell us something,’ he said.

‘Or it’s waiting for us to answer,’ Nissa replied.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

It was not the first time that Gandhari Vasin had gathered her crew together since their departure from Travertine, but there was something different in her mood on this occasion — a lightness, or at least an elevation of her spirits, which had not been there before. Her demonstration of the mirrors had not achieved the intended effect, but perhaps, Goma reflected, she was pleased it had worked at all.

‘The ship needs a name,’ Vasin said.

‘Do you have one in mind?’ Goma asked.

They were stationed in the lander’s common area, a space barely larger than one of the bedrooms aboard Travertine. They had been on full power almost since detaching from the main ship and the acceleration provided the effect of gravity, allowing the crew to sit or stand as they pleased.

‘Well, possibly,’ Vasin said. ‘I hoped that one particular good and wise man would be with us today. Since fate has taken him from us, we can at least carry his name as our inspiration. I trust it will encourage us to be the best we can — and let us have faith that this little ship, Mposi, does all that we ask of it.’

‘It is a good name,’ said Karayan.

‘Peter?’

‘Mposi was an honourable man. You could not have picked a better name, Gandhari.’

‘Goma — any objections?’

‘None whatsoever, and thank you for thinking of him. I just wish he were here to share in all this.’

‘We don’t have Mposi,’ Vasin said, ‘but we have his example. Let’s do our utmost to live up to his memory. We owe it to him, but we also owe it to those we left behind on Travertine, and the millions more on Crucible. I have confidence in us.’

‘Thank you, Gandhari,’ said Loring.

‘Thank me when we’re back home. Until then, it may be tempting fate.’

The lander’s interior configuration had changed slightly since Goma’s trip to Orison, its walls and partitions repositioned to accommodate the extended mission requirement. This was no hardship — there had been no time to get used to the old arrangement — but it puzzled her that one locked room would not open to her bangle. She wondered what could be in that room that she was not meant to see.

‘I meant to tell you about it,’ Vasin said when Goma put the question to her captain. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you going in there, but I felt you ought to hear about it from me before you do.’

‘Hear about what, exactly?’

‘We have a mass restriction even with our Chibesa drive — we don’t want to be carrying things we won’t use. But we are an expedition, and we should have all the necessary tools at our disposal. I’m reluctant to limit our ability to visualise any new findings as they are gathered by our sensors.’ Vasin elevated her bangle and the door unlocked itself. ‘So I’ve brought the well of nanomachines from the Knowledge Room. For the moment, they are more useful to us than to our colleagues on Travertine.’

Goma understood, although she did not wish to. ‘You mean you brought a subset of the machines?’

‘No, the entire well. Aiyana rendered them dormant, which allowed us to transplant the whole thing. The mass burden is slight, and we now have a viable population of nanomachines.’

‘They destroyed Mposi,’ Goma said, shivering as images of his half-digested form played back in her mind’s eye.

Vasin opened the door. It was a smaller space than the original Knowledge Room and the well nearly filled it, leaving only a narrow aisle around its sides. Vasin entered, Goma lingering outside until Vasin urged her to cross the threshold.

‘No,’ she said, closing the door behind them. ‘Saturnin Nhamedjo killed your uncle. The machines were simply how he hoped to dispose of the body. They can’t be blamed any more than we’d blame earth or fire or water.’

‘I saw what they did to him.’

‘As did we all. Believe me, if I did not think the well could be useful to us, I’d have left it behind. But we need it, Goma — we need every speck of advantage we can get.’ She pulled rings from her fingers and passed them to Goma. ‘Hold these for me, please.’

‘You’re worried it’ll eat them?’

‘No, I just don’t want to have to fish them out from the bottom if they slide off.’ Vasin pushed back her sleeve, flicked her scarf over her shoulder, leaned over the side of the well and dipped her hand into the yielding liquid substrate.

Goma flinched — it was an unavoidable reaction after what she had seen happening to Mposi. Vasin closed her fingers around the floating figment of Paladin and hauled it from the well.

‘You should have told me sooner.’

‘I’m telling you now. I’m also telling you that there’s nothing to fear. The programming has been corrected — the machines are safe. Do you think I’d trust my hand to them if I doubted that?’

‘You might if you had a point to make.’

‘If there’s a point, it’s that we can’t afford not to have them. Let me show you something — maybe it’ll soften your opinion.’ She was holding Paladin above the surface of the well, red as an apple, the Mandala a bruise on its skin. The simulation of the shard — what they now knew to be Zanzibar — was a microscopic grain of dust so small that it was easily capable of holding itself aloft without any physical connection to the planet or the well.