On the Steel Breeze

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

When the moment for choices had passed, the decision as irrevocable as the slipping of the present into the past, Chiku asked Arachne to let her witness the results of her choice. Arachne obliged, but not before she had questioned Chiku regarding the wisdom of this request.

‘Are you absolutely sure? You’ve made your selection, and that can’t have been easy for you. Truly, you have my admiration.’

‘I don’t need it.’

‘But to see the outcome of something already ordained by the mathematical inevitability of moving objects… what would you gain from that? You’d only have my word that I’m showing you the truth, and even if you believe what you’re seeing, surely you would find it painful.’

Chiku almost nodded, for she had arrived at much the same conclusion. But none of that altered her conviction.

‘I still need to see it.’

‘Very well.’

And although it was still day, or what now passed for day on Crucible, Arachne cleared an area of the sky back to space and stars, and made that circle zoom in through multiple magnifications until the five sparks of the slowdown engines formed a dice-like pattern. Time had been compressed again, of course, but Chiku now accepted these manipulations as an inseparable component of her dealings with the artilect.

Arachne pinned names against the sparks. ‘Malabar, Ukerewe, Sriharikota, Majuli, Netrani. I take some satisfaction in the fact that I identified them correctly before we had the benefit of Zanzibar’s transmission. Each holoship a world, brimming with life. Millions of lives – each of which has value, each of which has almost infinite potentiality, branch upon branch stretching into some future neither you nor I can begin to imagine. Don’t imagine for one moment that I’m blind to the tragedy of this act, Chiku. It’s an atrocity, plain and simple. I’m culpable, and you’re complicit. But if these lives must be sacrificed to spare millions more – and, just as importantly, the ecologic and artifactual treasures of an entire alien world – then what choice do we have? I gave them every chance to negotiate – every opportunity to turn from the path of destruction.’

‘They’re terrified of you. What did you expect?’

‘Attend,’ Arachne announced. ‘The moment approaches.’ Then she directed a sidelong look at her human companion. ‘Your choices, incidentally – that I should spare Malabar and Majuli… why not the more populous holoships?’

‘There were no good choices.’

‘But if one’s actions were shaped by the need to save the largest number of citizens—’

‘Mine weren’t.’ Chiku considered leaving it at that. Arachne did not deserve to hear how Chiku made her choice, and there was an undeniable dignity in holding her tongue. But some compulsion made her continue. ‘Even if I’d wanted to save as many people as I could, we have no idea what the populations of those holoships are by now. After all the troubles, anything is possible – mass movements, mass diebacks, from plague or executions. But years ago we established two offshoot elephant populations – one in Majuli, one in Malabar.’

‘Then you acted to save elephants, not people?’

‘You say none of us is blameless. You’re wrong. The elephants are.’

‘You have no evidence that your elephant populations weathered the troubles. If there were… shortages of basic supplies… wouldn’t the elephants have been sacrificed first?’

‘Perhaps,’ Chiku said uneasily. She had not considered that possibility, and now that Arachne had implanted the idea in her mind, it had a horrible self-reinforcing integrity. The more she dwelt on it, the more probable it seemed. But she added: ‘I trusted those populations to people I thought I could depend on. People I believed would do anything to live up to my expectations. If I was wrong about that, so be it. I gave the elephants the best chance I could. I can’t turn my back on them now.’

‘I could have tricked you, I suppose,’ Arachne said. ‘Based my selection of targets on the inverse of your desires. Made Malabar and Majuli among my selection of holoships to destroy.’

‘Did you?’

The girl shook her head. ‘No. That would have been much too spiteful.’

In exceedingly quick succession, like a trill of notes, three of the sparks flared to an intolerable brightness that blended and smothered the flames of the other two holoships as it progressed from white to a very delicate flowerlike pink. The light was as clean as creation, effacing all sins, all desires, all consequences. Chiku stared into the purity of it, imprisoned in the moment. It felt like an eternity before the light faded to darkness, and the two still-burning sparks were visible again.