Poseidon's Wake

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‘You mean you’ve put yourselves in it?’ This was Ru, asking over Goma’s shoulder.

‘No time for that?’ Loring said. ‘Infiltration and adjustment process takes several hours. Medium needs to work its way across the blood-brain barrier into deep brain structure? Best not to delay Goma’s immersion?’

‘Try it on me first, in that case,’ Ru said.

‘It’ll waste just as much time as trying it on myself or Andisa. Besides, your own nervous system is, shall we say, somewhat atypical?’

‘You mean it’s screwed up.’

‘Trying to think of a nice way to put it?’

‘Mine’s also atypical,’ Eunice said, ‘so you’d better hope it works for me as well.’

‘It would not be any quicker for you,’ Vasin said.

‘I know, and I’m not proposing that I go instead of Goma. But that well is easily big enough for two of us. At the very least she shouldn’t have to face this on her own.’

‘Establishing parallel interfaces? Going to be challenging—’ Loring began.

‘Then you’d better get started,’ Eunice said.

Goma’s throat was tight with apprehension. ‘How? When?’

‘As soon as you’re ready,’ Loring said. ‘The less encumbered you are, the better the proprioceptive immersion? But you need only strip down to your underwear.’

‘How do we breathe?’ Eunice asked.

‘The medium’s fully capable of supporting respiratory function, but you may find the transition uncomfortable?’ Loring began to open a sealed sterile container. ‘We have breather masks — they’ll fit over your mouth and nose, provide an airtight seal? You’ll still be able to speak.’

‘The masks sound clumsy to me.’

Ru glared at Eunice. ‘No one asked you.’

‘No,’ Goma said. ‘She’s right. All or nothing. Forget the masks, Aiyana. I can do this.’

Goma shed her outer layers of clothing, eyeing Eunice as she stripped down to a similar state of undress. Vasin gathered their clothes in two neat bundles. Goma believed Loring — the well had been made safe. Even if it malfunctioned, she was neither alone nor as helpless as Mposi had been. No harm could come to her. But it was impossible to rid herself of the feeling that the amber fluid still contained traces of him.

‘I’ll go first,’ Eunice said. ‘Wait until I’m fully immersed, breathing the fluid, before you join me. If there’s anything wrong with it, we’ll know soon enough.’

‘I should go first,’ Goma said.

‘Age has its privileges, dear.’

Eunice stepped over the rim of the well, pushed a foot into the medium — watching as it resisted and then yielded, behaving less like a fluid than a membrane. Once her foot reached the base of the well, she risked planting the other one beside it.

‘It’s all right. Warm, cloying, but no ill-effects. Yet.’

Eunice lowered herself slowly down onto her rump, knees bent against her chest. She maintained this position for a few seconds then began to stretch her legs out to their full extent. At the same time she allowed her arms to descend into the medium. Only her head and upper torso were not yet immersed.

‘In for a penny.’

She submerged herself. They could see her through the medium, blurred but still distinct. Her mouth was closed but her eyes open. She stayed like that for a few seconds then gaped her mouth wide. As the fluid pushed into her she released a few bubbles of air — human air, from human lungs — and gave a sharp but controlled twitch. Then she was still. They studied the rise and fall of her chest. She did not appear to be in distress, but then again this was Eunice. Her eyes remained open, oddly unblinking. She allowed a hand to rise above the surface, gloved with a clinging epidermis of the amber medium, and shaped her thumb and forefinger into an ‘O’.

‘She’s all right,’ Dr Andisa said. ‘It’ll be a while before we can communicate directly, but she’s going to be fine. You next, Goma.’

She made to move to the well, intending to follow suit, but Ru clutched her arm.

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Not really.’

But Goma kissed Ru and allowed herself to slip from her grasp. Then she stepped into the well, one foot at a time. It was warm, as Eunice had said — the sensation was akin to pushing through jelly, the substance resistant at first, then yielding easily and obligingly to her movement. Less like being immersed in a liquid than pushing into a multitudinous crowd of tiny and obligingly helpful creatures. There was no sense of it doing her harm, no tingling or unpleasantness. She sat down and stretched out her legs. Then she lowered most of herself into the medium, side by side with Eunice.

Now came the hard part. She dropped her head below the level of the medium, feeling it slither over her chin, nose, eyes and forehead. She blinked as she descended, but once submerged she forced her eyes open. She felt an odd slithering coldness around her eyeballs, then nothing. She could still see, albeit through the golden tint of the medium. Her ears made a gurgling rush. Then a roaring silence.

She opened her mouth.

It was in her, and for an instant she thought she could bear it. But two terrors hit simultaneously. The first was that she was drowning, and the reflex to fight against this was as strong as any she had known. The second was that Mposi was in her mouth, in her windpipe, in her lungs — and the horror of this, the need to gag away the traces of him, was as fierce as the need to breathe.

Goma convulsed. This was not the dignified twitch Eunice had given but a full-body spasm, and she had no conscious desire other than to be out of the medium, back into air. She knew she did not have the strength in her to overcome this, not now, not ever. She had made an awful mistake — banked on a courage she did not possess. She flailed, reaching for a solid surface, a means to push herself from the well.

Eunice took her arm. There was a vicelike strength in her grip. She was holding her down, preventing her from surfacing.

Until Goma could hold her breath no longer.

CHAPTER FORTY

By the time the women joined him, Kanu had fashioned the parameters of their meeting place. He had needed a lot of help from Swift for that. There was information in his memories and data in Icebreaker’s files, but stitching the two together, forging a place that was simultaneously familiar, neutral and aesthetically satisfying to all parties including the elephants, and doing it in much less than a lifetime, would have been quite beyond his abilities.

He drew on the Akinya household as his template. Swift had direct knowledge of the replica of the building on Zanzibar, and Kanu also carried his own experiences of the real structure, albeit in the faded decay of its later years. From these threads, Swift concocted a three-dimensional environment, programming it directly into Icebreaker with all the embellishments necessary for the time-honoured protocols of ching. He did all this right under Dakota’s nose, puppeteering Kanu — letting her think Kanu was the true architect.

The result was limited in its scope, spartan in its details, and its solid facades hinted at depths it did not contain. It had the shimmering, dreamlike quality of a fondly remembered place rather than an actual location, with dirt and dust and cracks.

It would have to suffice.

Kanu and Nissa both possessed legacy neuromachinery, which Swift was already using to speak to both of them. Dakota was slightly more problematic. The Tantor had no implants, but thankfully her external prosthetic communication aids were easily adapted to meet the needs of the exchange. Her human voice had always been machine-generated, so it was an easy matter to add earphones and goggles to allow her to participate in the environment.

Now Kanu, Nissa and Dakota awaited their guests. They were sitting within the enclosure of the household’s A-shaped geometry, in the triangular courtyard framed by the two main wings and the connecting bar between them. Within the courtyard lay a pond, some fountains, a series of layered terraces, a handful of marble statues. There were small trees and bushes, and the sky above them was the cloudless pink of late afternoon. The two humans sat on stone chairs positioned around a low stone table. The Tantor rested her haunches on a stone pedestal, tail draping the ground, a repose of perfect scholarly contentment.

‘They’re late,’ said the elephant.

‘They warned us there might be technical difficulties,’ Nissa said.

‘We shan’t wait much longer. I already warned you that I have no interest in negotiation.’

‘And I made sure to tell them,’ Kanu said. ‘But it’s also in your interests to convince them to leave us alone. You don’t want a confrontation if you can avoid it, do you?’

‘There would be no confrontation — only the nuisance value of them being close behind us.’ Dakota swivelled her huge tank-turret of a head. In this environment, she carried no prosthetic enhancements and her speaking voice appeared to emanate from her mouth rather than a piece of machinery fixed between her eyes. ‘You did well with this, Kanu — especially given the limited time you had at your disposal. I remember the household well enough to vouch for its accuracy.’

‘It’s a combination of the one aboard Zanzibar and my memories of the one on Earth.’

‘I’m still impressed that you were able to construct this environment as quickly as you did. Are you surprised, Nissa?’