On the Steel Breeze

CHAPTER TEN

‘Don’t move,’ a voice said. ‘You’ve had a fall. I don’t think anything’s seriously damaged, but I want to be sure first.’

Chiku allowed her eyes to find bleary focus. She was lying flat on her back. The sky was a blazing blue quilt, cross-hatched with areas of geometric darkness. Off in the middle distance, a thick curtain of trees. Behind the trees, dense green rising terrain, curving back up to the sky. She was somewhere down on the valley floor.

A figure leaned down and touched a hand to her forehead. She risked moving her head. The figure was a slight-framed woman.

‘Who are you?’

‘Never mind me. What’s your name?’

She had to think for a moment, but the answer was only momentarily out of reach. ‘Chiku. Chiku Akinya. You’ll know my name from the Assembly.’

‘Very good,’ the woman answered quietly. ‘And how did you get here, Chiku Akinya from the Assembly? I need to know what you remember.’

‘I… came by pod.’ It was the truth, but it gave nothing vital away. Until she knew who she was speaking to, Chiku thought it wise to keep her answers guarded. ‘I was coming down a path. Something attacked me. I was trying to take cover. That’s the last thing I remember.’

The woman lifted her hand from Chiku’s forehead and began to pass it up and down Chiku’s chest and abdomen, the fingers tensed, but without actually touching her. ‘A few cuts and bruises on your head and face, a pulled muscle in your leg. But you’ll live. Why did you panic?’

‘You mean when that machine tried to kill me?’

‘I got a bit close with the aircraft. You’ll forgive me. I just wanted a better look at you.’

Chiku tried to raise herself. Her chest hurt. She grunted into a sitting position, inspecting limbs for evidence of damage. She still had the suit on. ‘You might want to revise your welcoming routine. Did you find my helmet?’

‘It can’t have gone very far. Why are you dressed in vacuum gear, Chiku Akinya?’ She had the feeling the woman knew the answer already and was engaged in playful interrogation for the sake of it. Chiku looked at her face again, struck now by the sense that she did know her after all, despite first impressions. She was an African woman of indeterminate age, delicately boned, with black hair shorn almost to the scalp.

She came back with a question of her own. ‘Do you know where we are? The name of this chamber?’

‘Yes, of course I do. Chamber Thirty-Seven is what they used to call it, although of course it was never part of the documented architecture of the holoship. Fewer than twenty people knew about it, all told. Nowadays we just call it “the chamber”.’ The woman paused. ‘Something happened, didn’t it? A few days ago? I felt the vibration, a shudder through the entire fabric of the holoship. As if we’d hit an iceberg.’

‘You felt that?’

‘Let’s just say I’ve developed a knack for these things. Do you think you can try to stand?’

Since she had no intention of staying in this place for the rest of her life, Chiku decided that standing was an excellent idea. She grimaced as her weight fell on her injured leg, but it was bearable. The suit’s armour had obviously cushioned her from serious harm.

The woman was right to focus on Chiku’s head: that had been the only truly vulnerable part of her body.

The woman was shorter than Chiku, though strong for her size. She supported Chiku until she was able to find her own balance, then stood back with arms folded across her chest. She was dressed for field work, like an agricultural technician or botanist: tight brown leggings, thigh-high boots with many lace-holes, a short-sleeved brown sweater. Over the sweater she wore a dun-coloured utility vest with multiple pockets and pouches.

‘Tell me what happened a few days ago.’

‘There was an explosion,’ Chiku said. ‘In Kappa Chamber, or in Kappa’s outer skin. Breached the hull. A physics experiment went wrong.’

‘How bad was the damage?’

‘Pretty bad, but it could have been a lot worse. The effects were confined to Kappa, and we didn’t have many people there. Still lost more than two hundred, but when you think how many more it could have been, had the explosion occurred in one of the community cores… It’s still a big bloody mess, though.’

‘And how did you get here? It can’t be coincidence, this soon after the explosion.’

‘We’ve been searching for survivors. And evidence. Mainly evidence. In the process, I found…’ Chiku hesitated. ‘Something that didn’t belong. I followed up on it, and it brought me here. Wherever here is.’ She walked a few paces, unsteady at first, then with gathering confidence. ‘Never mind me: how did you get here? You must travel between this chamber and the rest of Zanzibar.’

‘I can’t say I make a habit of it.’

‘But I know you. I’m sure I’ve seen you around. You obviously can’t live here all the time.’

‘Why not?’

Chiku looked around. There were no buildings or facilities; no signs of civilisation at all, in fact, other than the flying machine – what the woman had called her ‘aircraft’ – resting on plump black wheels a few dozen metres away. On the ground, it looked remarkably placid and harmless.

‘There’s nothing here. No amenities, no houses, nothing. You can’t live off trees and rain.’

‘I have modest needs.’

‘Do you have anything to do with the elephants?’

The woman looked pleased. ‘You saw them, did you?’

‘Just a glimpse. I know about our elephants, and there shouldn’t be a hidden group aboard that no one’s heard about. How many are there?’

‘About fifty. Numbers go up and down.’

‘And are you their keeper?’

The woman winced slightly. ‘I look after them, if that’s what you mean. Although I much prefer to think of us as sharing the space on equal terms.’

‘You said “we” back then, when you were talking about what you called this chamber, so there must be other people here.’

The woman cocked her head before giving a nod of agreement. ‘I did.’

‘How many of you live here? You’ve got to have medicine, food, basic amenities. You look healthy.’

‘Fit as a fiddle, apart from some memory issues. But there’s only me here, and I don’t get out into the rest of the ship very often. I’ll ask again: why the vacuum suit? Has the tunnel lost pressure?’ Then she closed her eyes, as if something that should have been screamingly obvious had just clicked into space. ‘Of course – the breach you mentioned. If it sucked all the air out of Kappa, it probably drained the access tunnel as well.’

‘That’s probably what happened. Is that tunnel the only way in and out?’

‘The only connection to Kappa. But there are other tunnels.’

Chiku marvelled. It was another landslip to her certainties, to learn that Zanzibar was wormholed with these hidden tunnels, decades-old secrets entombed in rock. She asked: ‘Where do the others come out?’

‘I don’t remember all the details. The entrance you found, though – it was hidden until this accident?’

‘I’d never have found it, if not for the collapse.’

‘And your colleagues… they’ll not be long behind you? You didn’t come alone, did you?’

‘Will it make any difference what I say to you? You might as well do whatever you intend to do now.’

‘And what would that be, exactly?’

‘Kill me, or keep me here hostage, I suppose. Because you obviously don’t want anyone else to know about this place.’

‘I’ve done some extreme things,’ the woman mused. ‘Killing, though, that’s out of my league. I’d far rather we arrived at a mutually beneficial arrangement.’

‘You could start by telling me your name. I know we’ve met before.’

‘You know my face, that’s all. You’ve probably seen it thousands of times, on the statue in the grounds of the Assembly building.’

Chiku saw it then.

The woman was right: her face was strikingly similar to that of the bronze casting. A little younger, the hair shorter, but the bone structure otherwise unmistakable.

‘You’re one of us, then. An Akinya.’

‘Not just one of you, Chiku. I’m Eunice Akinya.’

Chiku shook her head. ‘You’re lying, or deluded.’

‘I concede that the truth may be slightly more complicated than it looks.’ The woman cocked her head at the waiting aircraft. ‘I must insist on showing you some basic hospitality. Will you come with me in the Sess-na?’

Chiku had no idea what that last word meant. Perhaps it was the woman’s pet name for the aircraft.

‘Come on – it’s only a short hop from here, and then you can meet the others, and I promise I’ll bring you right back here in good time.’

‘How about we find my helmet first?’ Chiku said. ‘Then I’ll decide.’

‘An excellent proposition.’

The woman found the helmet very easily, as if she had always known where it lay. She scooped it from the ground like a rugby ball and tossed it towards Chiku. She caught it awkwardly, surprised at the strength the woman had put into the throw. Chiku spun the helmet between her gloves. It looked intact, save for some dirt and dust and a few scratches that might well have been present before her fall.

She doubted that there was anything wrong with it, but decided against wearing it for now.

The propeller had quickened into a tinted blur, like a glass disc bolted onto the front of the machine.

‘What did you call this thing?’ Chiku asked, as she worked the complicated arrangement of belts and latches inside the machine. The interior smelled hot and leathery and old.

‘Sess-na,’ the woman said. ‘It’s an old Masai phrase – means “extremely reliable thing”. It’s been in the family quite a long time. Had a few improvements over the years, of course – cut it open, it nearly bleeds. It’s grown itself an entirely new self-repairing nervous system – infiltrates the entire airframe, strengthening it, healing microfractures.’

They bounced along the ground for a short distance before rising into the air. To Chiku, it felt as though the aircraft was balanced on a wobbling tower of mattresses rather than flying.

‘I’m surprised you see the need,’ she said. The helmet rested in her lap, like an egg. It had been a struggle, contorting herself into the tiny cockpit.

‘The need for what?’

‘To fly. Nowhere in Zanzibar’s very far from anywhere else.’

‘It’s not about needing to fly.’ The woman yanked the control stick sharply, banking them to the right. ‘Anyway, consider yourself honoured – this machine used to belong to Geoffrey.’

Chiku recalled, distantly, some image of her aged uncle, a photo pinned among his later paintings of elephants – Geoffrey standing next to a toylike white flying machine backdropped by sun-bleached veldt. More out of disbelief than reverence, she touched the padded curve of the cockpit console, wondering if it could be true. There was a good chance that every word out of this woman’s mouth so far was a lie.

‘Let’s get something straight. You can’t be who you say you are.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I know my history. You died somewhere out in deep space. Me… I… one of us… we went out there, to find you. But Chiku Red never came back. There’s no way you could have ended up on Zanzibar – physics doesn’t allow it. You took Winter Queen off in a totally different direction.’

‘Did you just say “one of us”?’

‘It’s complicated. The point is, though, you can’t be here. That just doesn’t work.’

They were passing the sheer stone wall Chiku had seen from the path. Its grey lustre, she now realised, was the result not of weather or geology but columns of dense inscription worked into it from the ground up. They had been executed with astonishing neatness and regularity. She blinked, trying to focus on the details. The inscriptions resembled mad hieroglyphics.

The Sess-na banked again.

‘Well, you’re right about physics. Although if anyone could have pulled it off, it would probably have been me.’

‘You’re not Eunice. Maybe you’re delusional – someone called Eunice who happens to look a little like my ancestor, but that doesn’t make you her.’

The woman steered the aircraft towards what appeared to be a dead end at the valley’s limit. The chamber was bathtub-shaped: a strip of flat ground hemmed in on all sides by rising terrain. Eunice – Chiku decided she would think of her as such, for now – pushed the stick down to dip the Sess-na’s nose, and then banked sharply to slip between two molar-like rock formations that looked ready to gnash together on the tangle of vegetation filling the gap between them. Astonishingly, there was a hole in the wall of greenery ahead, and the aircraft slipped through this green-lipped mouth with what appeared to be mere atomic monolayers of clearance. Chiku heard the fast scissoring of foliage being torn away by the wings and the furious whirling scythe of the propeller. She sank into her neck ring. The Sess-na slipped down a short connecting throat of rough-hewn rock wider than it was tall, and then they were out, flying free into another space.

‘My god,’ Chiku said, straining to look around. ‘Where are we now?’

‘It’s all the same chamber,’ Eunice said, ‘just divided into three lobes. You came out in the middle one. There’s a trail up the valley side to the connecting passage, big enough for elephants, but it’s a long trek and flying is quicker. The Sess-na does have its uses after all.’

Chiku saw more dense swathes of forest below, the same blue sky cross-hatched with ribbons of blackness above. Eunice banked the Sess-na fiercely, shedding height and speed in a tight spiral. They skimmed tree-tops, then threaded a reckless, weaving course through the canopy itself. Eunice was as calm as if she had done this a million times, working the stick and waggling the wings, correcting and recorrecting faster than Chiku could think.

Eunice finally brought the aircraft down on a stretch of level ground where the grass had been worn away to bare dry soil. They disembarked.

‘If you’re comfortable in that suit, I won’t argue with you,’ Eunice said, taking hold of the aircraft by its tail and turning the whole thing as if was folded up from paper. ‘But I’m not going to harm you. Harming you would be pointless, but most of all boring.’ She added imperiously: ‘Come.’

‘Where?’

‘If I’m going to be a gracious host, the least I can do is offer you chai. And a chance to meet the others.’

She headed off into the woods and Chiku followed, her curiosity getting the better of her fear. They walked a short way through the trees along a dusty path and soon came upon a clearing. A dwelling occupied the middle of the area, surrounded by something approximating a garden. The house was a clover-leaf of four tented domes, dun-brown in colour, sides zipped open and peeled back. Within the shady tents, Chiku saw furniture – tables and chairs, cabinets and shelves – and a tremendous assortment of tools and instruments. A proxy of ancient design stood slump-shouldered in the corner.

Eunice bid her take a seat at one of the tables. The seat was flimsy, a metal frame with canvas stretched across it. Chiku sat down carefully, still in her vacuum suit. Everything around her looked scrupulously well-maintained. There were medical kits, rations boxes, odd items of surgical equipment, vacuum-suit parts. Evidence of careful repair and ingenious improvisation.

Beyond the tents lay something that looked like a herb garden: neat arrangements of cultivated plants in wooden frames and trellises. Nothing pretty or ornamental about it – it looked too methodical for that.

Eunice boiled water and set a metal cup of tea before Chiku. ‘Drink the chai,’ she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘It’ll do you no harm, and there are some potions in it to help with those cuts and bruises.’

‘Potions.’

‘Just drink. I’ve summoned the Tantors – they’ll be here shortly.’

Chiku sipped at the scalding green brew. It was not quite as foul as it looked.

‘These will be the “others” you spoke of earlier, I assume? Are they involved with the elephants?’

‘They are the elephants,’ Eunice said, punctuating the statement with an impish smile ‘I took a liberty while you were unconscious – a blood sample. You appeared to be Akinya, and the pod shouldn’t have brought you here unless you are, but I needed to be sure. The analysis confirmed that you are Chiku Akinya, as you claim. Or at least, very nearly.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re some kind of clone – there are commercial fingerprints all over your DNA. You’re like a book that’s had all its pages torn out and put back in again. You’ve been duplicated by someone or something called Quorum Binding. Does that relate to the Chiku Red you mentioned earlier?’

‘I really feel you ought to be the one answering questions.’

‘The difficulty is that we both have interesting pasts. How about a little give and take?’

Chiku decided that she had little to lose from complete honesty, as much as it displeased her to revisit her own history. ‘You’re right about Quorum Binding. It’s no secret, in any case. When I was fifty, I became three people – me, Chiku Red and Chiku Yellow. Two of us are clones of the original, but there’s no way of knowing which is which. I’m Chiku Green to the others, but I only think of myself as Chiku.’

‘Well, of course you would. I think I heard of that sort of thing being done.’

‘You think?’

‘I did say my memory isn’t what it should be.’ She was sitting opposite Chiku, hands laced together and resting on the table-top, not drinking. ‘I suppose you think I might be something similar – some kind of genetic construct.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No. But despite what I said earlier, I’m not exactly Eunice Akinya, either.’ She made an apprehensive face. ‘Oh dear. I doubt you’re going to like this.’

‘Why don’t you try me?’

‘I am a robot.’ After this utterance she looked supremely pleased with herself. ‘There. I’ve always wanted to say that, but you’d be surprised at how few opportunities have ever presented themselves. And when I say “robot” – well, I mean artilect, to be precise. Your mother made me. Or started me, anyway. I’m the final result of her project to create an interactive memorial to myself. You know about this, surely? She used posterity engines to stitch together a construct sentience capable of emulating my every response. I’m very true to myself. I look like Eunice, and I act like her, and I carry much of her life history as part of my own stored data. All that said, I’m not alive. I’m just machinery.’

While the idea repelled Chiku, she also found it plausible. Sunday had indeed been working on a construct of her grandmother, but what became of that construct – what it had grown into – was a matter of speculation. Neither Sunday, Jitendra or Geoffrey had been forthcoming on the subject.

‘I should be surprised, but I’m not.’

‘That’s hugely encouraging.’

‘It answers some questions – starting with how someone could have survived here all this time, on their own. A human would have gone mad, or fallen ill, or starved, long ago. But a robot wouldn’t need much to keep going.’

Now Chiku was trying to find the flaw, the giveaway that her host was not flesh and blood. Perhaps there was a dryness around the eyes and lips, or a too-flawless plastic tautness to the skin, hinting at polymers and manufacture rather than biological processes of growth and healing?

No, she decided. Nothing about Eunice looked fake.

‘I thought you’d need more persuasion.’

‘I saw how easily you moved the aircraft around, and you’re obviously very strong and quick – you nearly took the wind out of me when you threw me my helmet.

‘If you want some more proof, there’s this.’ Eunice scooped up one of the medical devices lying on the table. It was a pale-grey handle with a circular hoop on one end. ‘Scanner. Pass it along your arm, then compare it with mine.’

Chiku did as she was bid. She slid the hoop over her hand, up her wrist. A palm-sized display was incorporated into the handle, just beneath the point where it joined the hoop. The scanner saw through her suit, through margins of skin and muscle, elucidating harder structures of bone and sinew beneath. Medical data fluttered over the little grey-green image, tagging anatomical landmarks.

Eunice held out her arm, stiff as a signpost. ‘Now me.’

Chiku slid the scanner over Eunice’s hand. The screen revealed armatures, universal joints, hinges, power feeds and mesh-like grids and actuators. Confronted with engineering where it expected biology, the scanner gave up trying to tag anything.

‘This could still be a trick,’ Chiku said.

‘Yes, I could have programmed the scanner to lie. Or I might be mechanical from the elbow down and flesh and blood everywhere else. Short of cutting myself open, though, you’re going to have to take my word for it. Of course, there’s this.’

‘What?’

Chiku’s fingers were suddenly clutching at nothing. A heartbeat earlier they had been holding the scanner.

Now it was in Eunice’s hand, and she returned it to the table.

‘Party trick, for doubters and sceptics. I can move very quickly when the need demands.’

Chiku had felt nothing, not even a breath of air. Eunice had moved and then returned to exactly her former position, slipping through the gaps in Chiku’s perception.

‘You haven’t run away screaming. That’s a good sign.’

‘If you’re that fast, running away wouldn’t do me much good. Why are you here, Eunice?

‘I’m hiding from something that wanted to kill me.’ She jerked up in her seat, not quite rising, just enough to see over Chiku. ‘Ah – here come the Tantors.’

Chiku hardly dared look around, but once again, curiosity compelled her. Something big – several big somethings – were nearing, shouldering through overgrowth, trampling undergrowth. She squinted into the darkening gloom of trees until she made out the elephants. She could hear them now: the rolling crunch of their tread, the breathing and snorting, a deeper sound than anything humans could make. By increments, she relaxed. Elephants did not frighten Chiku. She knew their ways as well as anyone in Zanzibar.

She wondered why Eunice called them something other than elephants.

‘As I said,’ Eunice declared, as if picking up a conversational thread only just dropped, ‘I don’t like to think of myself as their keeper. But it’s true that they need me… or have had need of me. That’s a large part of why I’m here. The Tantors needed protection and guidance, and – with no disrespect intended – a human being just wouldn’t be up to the job.’

‘We have elephants,’ Chiku reminded her. ‘Many more than the fifty or so you claim to have here, and we’ve managed very well with them.’ She looked at Eunice sharply. ‘Why is your memory faulty, anyway? Shouldn’t a machine work better than that?’

The Tantors broke through into the clearing. There were four of them, all adults, by Chiku’s estimate. But these were not just any old elephants. They were from African stock, probably not too far removed from the ancestral herds that had seeded the other elephants in Zanzibar. They looked well, with clean, undamaged tusks and ears. Their foreheads were broad, their eyes alert and fixed on her.

They were also wearing… not clothes, precisely, but harnesses – big and elephant-grey and flexible, made from articulated plates of plastic or alloy fixed around their bodies and heads but allowing ease of movement. There were things attached to the harnesses, especially around the head: dark modules, boxes and cylinders of unguessable function, almost like trinkets and trophies the elephants had collected.

Chiku recalled the elephant she had in the other chamber for comparison, but the glimpse had been too brief for her to determine its species, never mind whether it had been wearing a similar harness.

‘They haven’t had a lot of experience with people other than myself,’ Eunice said quietly. ‘Assuming I count as such, of course. Do nothing unless I tell you.’

The Tantors approached the tents in a line, then stopped. Chiku looked to Eunice for guidance, saw her rising from her chair and did likewise. She moved slowly, turning around with hands at her sides, holding only the helmet. She wondered how strange and fierce she looked in the vacuum suit. Like a hard-skinned monster with a tiny, shrunken head.

‘What are they?’ she whispered.

‘Elephants with enhanced cognition,’ Eunice answered, her voice as low as Chiku’s. ‘Uplifted animals. The result of illegal genetic experimentation conducted before Zanzibar ever left the solar system. Their minds are larger than those of baseline elephants, and they have a level of modular organisation approaching that of the human brain. They have a highly developed sense of self, an advanced capacity for tool use, the rudiments of language, an understanding of time’s arrow. Some of these traits were already present in elephants, of course. They’ve just been… enhanced, augmented, amplified. But whatever they are, these creatures are no longer simply animals.’

Chiku was as awed and horror-struck as if the sky had parted to reveal the gears and ratchets of heaven’s own clockwork. She had spent a good measure of her life in the company of elephants. It was a family thing, a long and noble tradition.

The wrongness of the Tantors drove a hot lance into her moral core.

‘Who did this?’

‘If I ever knew, I don’t remember now. But they are what they are, Chiku. There’s no point feeling revulsion. The Tantors didn’t do this to themselves. They didn’t choose to be evolved.’

‘This should never have happened.’

‘I gather Geoffrey felt much the same way when he learned about the Lunar dwarves. They were the result of genetic manipulation, which he found profoundly distasteful.’ Eunice started walking toward the four Tantors, beckoning Chiku to accompany her. ‘But Geoffrey realised that he had to accept the reality of the dwarves, and to do what he could to make their world better. It was just the hand he’d been dealt. You’ll come to the same accommodation with these creatures.’

Eunice’s glib self-assurance was beginning to grate on Chiku. ‘How would you know?’

‘Because you remind me a little of Geoffrey. The second one from the left – that’s Dreadnought.’

Chiku studied the elephant, drawing on years of learning. ‘He’s a bull.’

‘Yes he is – well done you. The one on the far left? That’s Juggernaut – she’s the closest this group has to a matriarch. The other two, Castor and Pollux, are brothers. You think it’s odd that a bull should remain with this group, long after puberty?’ Eunice nodded, anticipating Chiku’s answer. ‘The old rules, the old hierarchies and patterns, don’t apply here. In terms of social organisation, Tantors are as far beyond baseline elephants as we are beyond chimpanzees. They don’t have herds. They have community.’ Eunice raised her voice a notch. ‘Dreadnought! This woman is Chiku. Chiku is a friend.’ Then, to Chiku, ‘Give me the helmet and step forward. Let Dreadnought examine you. Don’t be afraid.’

‘I’m not.’

But that was not quite true. Her suit would protect her to a point, but a charging elephant could easily run her down, pick her up and fling her around like a doll.

‘The helmet,’ Eunice repeated.

Chiku passed it to her, then slowly crossed sun-dappled ground towards the waiting flank of Tantors. She kept her gaze on Dreadnought the whole time. Dreadnought stared right back at her, eyes dark and heavy-lidded and alert with an uncanny intelligence. As Chiku drew nearer, she saw that the elephant’s harness sported a flat black rectangle across the broad battering ram of his forehead. The rectangle contained an armoured, flexible screen, which was presently showing an image of Chiku as she must have appeared to Dreadnought.

Dreadnought extended his trunk. Chiku stopped and stood her ground. She let the trunk examine her suit, probing its way up her body, lingering over the joints and the batteries of controls. Hairy bristles tickled Chiku’s chin as the trunk felt around the neck ring. Warm, humid air blasted her and she resisted the urge to flinch with difficulty. Dreadnought moved on to her face, mapping it with surprising gentleness. The trunk traced the contours of her scalp, then retreated.

‘Dreadnought, say the name of this woman.’

Text appeared on Dreadnought’s screen.

She looked at Eunice. ‘He spells pretty well, given that we’ve only just been introduced.’

Eunice touched the side of her head. ‘I just added the word to his lexicon. I could make them speak, if I wished – all I’d need to do is hook a voice synthesiser into the circuit. But they don’t need that, and nor do I. The system lets them exchange symbolic patterns even when they’re not in each other’s line of sight, or when they’re too far apart for vocal communication.’

‘So we have talking elephants now. Even if they don’t actually talk.’

The text changed. Now it said:

‘Tantor does not equal elephant,’ Eunice interpreted. ‘Tantor greater than, or superior to, elephant. Why don’t you introduce yourself? Tell him you’re a friend?’

Chiku did not know whether to look into his eyes or the screen. Her gaze switched between them.

‘I’m a friend. I mean you no harm.’

‘What are you, a Martian? Talk to him the way you’d talk to a three year old.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve had surprisingly little experience with talking elephants.’

The screen changed again.

‘I get the message. They’re a bit touchy about the elephant thing, aren’t they? What have you been telling them? That they’re better than elephants?’

‘That they can be more than elephants.’

‘Have they even seen an unaugmented elephant?’

‘No, but I’ve shown them pictures, described the place they came from. Tell Dreadnought you’re sorry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Chiku said.

‘Well, you appear to have been accepted. Word of you will spread. The Tantors know that any friend of mine is a friend of theirs.’

‘Easy when you don’t have many friends,’ Chiku said.

‘Cutting.’

Chiku took a cautious step back from Dreadnought. The other Tantors watched her with guarded interest. One of the brothers – Castor or Pollux, she could not be sure which – nudged a piece of dirt with his trunk. Chiku heard a low rumble, impossible to localise to any single animal. They all had screens fixed to their foreheads, but only Dreadnought had communicated.

‘Do you think it’s time yet?’ Eunice asked.

‘For what?’

‘For all of us to leave the chamber and enter Zanzibar proper.’

‘Are you serious? You’re a robot with superhuman speed and strength. These are talking elephants.’

‘I was hoping attitudes would be more accepting after all this time.’ She raised a hand. ‘Dreadnought – you can go. Juggernaut, Castor, Pollux – thank you for checking on me. I’ll see you before skyfade.’

The Tantors turned and walked out of the clearing.

‘Who knew about this place?’ Chiku asked.

‘As few people as possible. Geoffrey and Lucas, certainly, and your mother knew about me, of course, at least to begin with.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘In the nicest possible way, Chiku, I escaped your mother’s control. After that, we had less to do with each other. It was a matter of mutual self-interest. The less she knew about me, the less she had to conceal from the authorities. I was, remember, totally illegal. And the less contact I had with the family, the less risk there was of my own existence being exposed. I suppose it upsets you that all this happened without you being in any way aware?’

‘Should it?’

‘Oh, I think so. It would certainly upset me.’ But after a moment Eunice went on: ‘Don’t feel too bad about your lack of knowledge, though. You were protected from consequences, that was all. Even the family knew very little about the Tantors. They were the responsibility of Chama and Gleb, friends of your mother and Jitendra. In fact Chama and Gleb oversaw the Tantors’ development from the original elephant genestocks on the Moon. They knew to keep that nicely under wraps – they knew exactly how well the Tantors would be received back then.’

‘Not well, for sure.’

‘Having created these cognitively enhanced creatures, the safest option at the time appeared to be to launch them into interstellar space. The idea was that I’d protect them, give them guidance and medical assistance, until such time as it was safe to reveal ourselves.’

‘You said you were hiding,’ Chiku said.

‘Remarkably, I can do two things at once. I can hide and also do some good for the Tantors. Chama, Gleb and the others envisaged a time, a century or two into the crossing, when the Tantors might be able to emerge into the holoship on equal terms with the humans. And that I, too, would be able to walk safely among them.’

‘I think you’re in for a bit of wait.’

‘So much for the tolerant acceptance of the other. We’re forging out into deep space – who knows what we’ll meet out there? If we can’t even accept a robot and some talking elephants, what good are we going to be when we meet something really strange?’

Chiku spread her hands in a gesture of profound hopelessness. ‘You’re used to waiting, Eunice. You may have to wait a while longer. Me coming here, finding my way into this chamber… it’s all accidental. If not for Kappa, I wouldn’t be standing here. Who knows how long you’d have had to wait before someone found you?’ Then she remembered something that Eunice had already told her. ‘You’ve been outside, though.’

‘I’d forgotten too much, and it began to worry me. There were supposed to be secure data connections between this chamber and the rest of Zanzibar, so that I could tap into the public nets without leaving this chamber. Also, that proxy – it doesn’t work now, but it was left here so that someone like you, an Akinya with inside knowledge, could visit me without being physically present. But without the data links or the proxy, I had no choice but to leave the chamber if I wanted to fill the gaps in my memories.’

The thought that this machine, this artilect, had on occasion walked in the public spaces of Zanzibar left Chiku profoundly unnerved.

‘And did you manage to fill those gaps?’

‘To some extent, but there are still absences. I was damaged, you see. I was powerful for a very long time. Scarily powerful. Then things changed.’

‘In what way?’

‘I met something. Crossed paths with… whatever it was. Another artilect, almost certainly. Just as powerful as me, just as furtive.’

‘Something like you?’

‘Similar, but disembodied, the way I used to be. Spread across the networks, haunting their vulnerabilities. Whatever she was, she must have been there for a long while. Lurking in the solar system, quietly aware of me.’

‘You say “she”—’ Chiku said.

‘I told you I was damaged. It reached me, tried to kill me. It stabbed me with mathematics. Infected me with viruses and malware that spread like a disease, causing progressive failure of my core systems. Even after I’d consolidated myself into a single body and become small enough to move unnoticed among people, the disease progressed. When I ventured back into Zanzibar, I was trying to put right what had gone wrong. Trying to plug the holes in my soul.’

‘Why do you think it locked on to you? What did you mean to it?’

‘I don’t know, and I’d very much like to. What was it? Who made it, and for what purpose? How extensive was its reach in our home solar system? Might it still be there now, or did it manage to infiltrate Zanzibar? Is it still looking for me?’

Chiku sighed. ‘You don’t have much to go on.’

‘I have a name. The thing that tried to kill me calls herself Arachne.’

Chiku was glad to return home, to Noah and the children. The pod returned her to Kappa and she climbed out of the shaft without incident. When she returned her suit, she was almost disappointed when no one demanded an account of her actions. It turned out that she had only been gone an unremarkable five hours, no cause for alarm. Her casually proffered explanation for the dents and scratches on the suit – that they had been occasioned by a minor collapse when she was exploring one of the basements – was accepted without question. Eunice had cleaned up her minor head wounds well enough that they were not obvious. Only a clump of mud and grass caught in the articulation between knee and thigh threatened to undermine Chiku’s account. But if anyone noticed it, it was assumed to have been contamination from inside Kappa.

That night, when Ndege and Mposi were asleep, when their neighbours’ lights had gone out, she and Noah discussed what she had found.

‘Before we begin,’ Chiku said, ‘I need you to accept what I’m about to tell you without question.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘You’ll understand in a minute. All I’m saying is, if you stop me to quibble over every tiny little detail, we’ll be here until next week. Are you willing to listen first and ask questions later?’

Noah poured wine. ‘Talk away.’

So she talked, and Noah, to his credit, did not quibble. He interrupted once or twice, but only for the sake of amplification or clarification, never because he doubted the essential veracity of her story. She told him all of it, from the pod, to the aircraft, to Eunice and the Tantors. She told him what she had learned of Eunice’s nature, and why she had no reason to doubt that she had been talking to a machine. She told him of Eunice’s amnesia, and the thing called Arachne.

‘I know I made you a promise at the start of all this,’ she said, when she was done with the account. ‘I said I’d either go to the Assembly with my findings or never mention the matter again. But you see now why I can’t keep that promise, don’t you?’

‘This is too big for you to handle, Chiku.’

‘I agree. But I know this for a fact – we absolutely cannot risk invoking the Assembly.’

‘Sooner or later,’ Noah said, ‘they’ll start rebuilding Kappa, and someone else will find that shaft.’

‘Eunice knows that. But she also knows the time isn’t right for full disclosure.’

‘Can you trust her? Given what you told me about her memory, is she totally sane?’

‘I don’t know. I’m going to see what I can find out about Arachne, at least. Beyond that, though, one thing’s very clear to me. I’ve established that we can enter and leave the chamber in relative safety – for the moment, at least.’ She paused, knitting her fingers over and over. ‘When I go back, you have to come with me, Noah. You need to see this, too.’

‘It still sounds too risky to me – what about the children if we’re harmed?’

‘I know what to expect now and I don’t think we’re in any danger from anything in that chamber. But we don’t have long – once the reconstruction work gets under way, we’ll lose access.’

‘I could go on my own,’ Noah said.

‘The transit pod wouldn’t work for you. But even if it did, I promised to go back. I trust her, Noah. She’s Akinya, too. She may not be flesh and blood, but we made her. That makes her a family problem.’

‘Your family’s past has an annoying habit of intruding on the present,’ Noah said.

‘You’re not the only one who wishes it would stop,’ Chiku said.

In the morning she found herself called to the Assembly Building for a private meeting with Chair Utomi. They took coffee in Utomi’s office, while the Chair made troubling smalltalk. This was in disquieting contrast to his usual directness. It was quite obvious to Chiku that he was building up to something she was unlikely to find pleasant.

‘You seem tired,’ he observed, as if that was supposed to improve her mood. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Well, aside from this business with Travertine, the accident that could easily have killed us all, not to mention the political fall-out we can expect from the rest of the local caravan and then slowdown rearing its head… no, everything’s fine.’

‘Sarcasm will be the death of you,’ Utomi said, peering at her over the rim of his coffee cup with owlish regard. In his sturdy fingers the cup looked like something made for a doll. ‘But your point is well made. These are difficult times, and this Travertine mess hasn’t improved things. So, would you like some good news, for a change?’

She wondered how well she was hiding her suspicion. ‘We could all use some, Chair.’

‘Two things. I mentioned a few days ago the likelihood of a favourable outcome regarding your recent request for skipover. Nothing’s formalised, but I can tell you now that the indications are very, very positive. You’ve been a valued member of the Assembly, Chiku, and the feeling is that it would be a shame not to have the benefit of your good judgement on the final approach to Crucible.’

‘I hope to be alive then, whatever happens, Chair.’

‘True, and we hope you will be, too. But while you’re up and about there’s always a chance of accident or something worse. In skipover, we can safeguard you against any mishaps – foreseeable ones, at any rate.’

‘I understand. When might I expect the formal announcement?’

‘Soon, I hope – which brings me to my second piece of good news. The local caravan really doesn’t want trouble, Chiku – we’ve enough on our hands without emergency rule being imposed on Zanzibar. You’ll hear none of that in the public statements, of course – the Council of Worlds has to at least give the impression of holding firm on its threats and promises – but there are always back channels. Not even Teslenko wants things to come to martial law. All everyone’s looking for is a way to close this sorry little affair and get on with our lives. We want closure, a clean conclusion that makes an example of the complicit parties.’

‘An example,’ she repeated.

‘I know you and Travertine are, or have been, friends – that can’t be helped, and no one’s blaming you for it. Ve was a friend to many of us, once. But Travertine committed a serious crime, and regardless of the loyalties that come with friendship, a transgression of that magnitude can’t go unpunished, can it?’

‘I don’t think anyone would disagree with that, Chair.’

‘I won’t pretend that your vote will swing things one way or the other, Chiku. Travertine’s fate is already all but sealed. But a show of unanimity… a forceful declaration that we will not tolerate this kind of meddling… that could go a long way to keeping our enemies at bay. In return, we’ll be allowed to continue to enjoy the open and democratic rule we presently enjoy. It is also my view that such a show of unanimity would actually be in Travertine’s best interests.’

‘I’m not sure I quite follow that.’

‘If the Council perceives a whiff of disunity, they’ll press for execution. But if we make this gesture, show some solidarity, then they may accept the lesser sentence of denial of prolongation.’ He smiled tightly. ‘Frankly, we’d be doing Travertine a favour.’

‘We’ll all sleep easily in our beds, then.’

‘This is about the entire community, Chiku. It’s bigger than a single human existence. Bigger than a life. Bigger than personal loyalties. And I’m not asking you to push the dagger in yourself, merely to set personal feelings aside and acknowledge that Travertine committed a crime that warrants harsh punishment.’

‘And if I chose not to go with the majority?’

‘You’ve been an asset to this community. Why blot your copy-book now with a single rash action?’

‘I see.’

‘I’m not saying that your vote for or against Travertine will have the slightest influence on your chances of securing skipover.’

‘No, of course. You couldn’t possibly say that.’

‘Exactly.’ Utomi sighed, smiling softly. ‘I think we can be of one mind here, Chiku.’