On the Steel Breeze

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

She was always the quicker one these days. She turned at the top of the stairs to wait for Chiku Yellow, who was making slow progress in her exo. It was only in the last five years that her sibling had begun to have difficulty walking without the exo’s assistance, and only in the last twelve months that it had become rare for her to venture outside without it. She felt the weight of the years in her own bones, of course, but she had lived through a much smaller number of them than Chiku Yellow had. She supposed time would catch up with her just as surely. That was simply the way things were.

It was cold, clear day in late winter. There had been a frost or two these last weeks but the weather was improving, and in a week or so, provided the world did not end, the cafés might begin to move their chairs and tables outside. Today the air’s chill was not unwelcome. It seemed to sharpen their thoughts and bring everything into a more stringent focus. The light was kind on the flagstones at the top of the Monument to the Discoveries. The Belém tower looked golden, as sharp and pristine as if it had been constructed yesterday, and the glass-calm waters doubled the tower in its own inverted reflection. A handful of boats bobbed further out, coloured fishing vessels and pleasure craft, but nothing close to the quay. Not as many tourists or visitors as there would have been on a sunnier day, either. This suited Chiku Red very well.

They had travelled by tram from Lisbon. The decision, like so much that passed between them of late, had been virtually wordless. They had both known that the time was right and that the Monument was the fitting place for it. There was no explanation for this almost-telepathy. There were no machines in Chiku Red’s brain, no readers and scriptors synchronising her thoughts and memories to Chiku Yellow’s. It was just the way they had ended up. Like two pebbles, they had rubbed against each other for so long that they had become nearly the same shape. Twin sisters in all but the dull biological specifics.

It was early 2463 and Mecufi’s prediction had turned out to be much more accurate than even he could have anticipated. News had been arriving from the holoships almost constantly, of course. The people of Earth and the wider solar system were well aware of the caravan’s political difficulties. They knew about Zanzibar’s breakaway, and about the Icebreaker expedition. They knew of the troubles that had arrived on the coattails of Travertine’s breakthrough technology – the loss of holoships Bazaruto and Fogo, the damage to New Tiamaat. All these events had been ample cause for concern, of course, but because they were taking place the better part of twenty-eight light-years away, they had played out as a kind of dark theatre. Very few among the billions living around the sun, from Mercury to the Oort settlements, still had direct emotional or familial ties to the holoships’ citizens. Too much time had passed, and the distances between them were too great. Empathy was not built to operate across interstellar space.

But things had begun to change. When Icebreaker arrived within visual range of Crucible, Chiku Green and her little crew had reported their findings back to the caravan, and the caravan in turn had relayed them back to Earth. The Providers had not done the things they were sent to do. And as if Mandala was not mystery enough in its own right, there were twenty-two additional enigmas orbiting the planet. These developments, it was fair to say, were causing a certain level of unease. How could the Provider data have omitted the alien structures? What was the significance of the Providers failing to prepare for the arriving colonists?

This morning, the most disquieting news of all had arrived. Chiku Green’s ship appeared to have been attacked by something on Crucible’s surface – probably the first overtly aggressive act from the Providers. It did not matter that this violent act had happened twenty-eight years ago. To the people of the solar system, it felt as new and raw as a fresh bruise.

This news had given Chiku Red and Chiku Yellow the spur they needed. They felt certain that the hour was nearly upon them. On Earth and elsewhere in the system, Mech invigilators and Cognition Police had begun to follow a trail that was bound to lead them to Ocular, and then to Arachne. Spokespersons from the tripartite authorities of the United Surface, Orbital and Aquatic Nations were urging calm and restraint. Citizens of the Surveilled World were reassured that they had no reason to fear the Mech, the aug or the Providers. They were to go about their lives as normal.

But already there had been flashpoints. The Mech was registering an uptick in civil infractions – minor acts of criminal intent that, in the normal scheme of things, would have been quickly interdicted and suppressed. It was as if people were testing the system, challenging it to overreact. In New Brunswick, coordinated violence had been reported against a brigade of Providers working on a new housing development. In Chittagong, three people had died after attempting voluntary neural auto-surgery, in an effort to rid themselves of Mech implants. In Glasgow, Helsinki and Montevideo, citizen activists had declared the formation of unilateral Descrutinised Zones. These zones had no political legitimacy – they could not begin to escape the Mech’s influence – but these were nonetheless sincere statements of intent. Meanwhile, the United Aquatic Nations were processing an unexpected surge of new applicants.

All of this had happened before in the Surveilled World’s long history, and the system had been tested many times by breakaway states, police actions, flash mobs and acts of massively distributed civil disobedience. But never so many in such a short period of time, or with such an ominous rising trend. It was exactly the slow-breaking wave Mecufi had predicted when his figment appeared to Chiku Yellow.

It was highly doubtful that any of this could end well.

But the world, Chiku Red thought, was not beyond redemption. It was not the best of all possible places, but given the alternatives, things could have worked out a lot worse. They had all made errors, it was true. The Mech had been the right idea at the right time, but over the years, by some collective abdication of wisdom, they had vested it with too much authority. It was pointless blaming anyone for that. One could still argue that it was better to suffer the iron kindness of the Mech than the centuries of blood and strife that would have raged without it. And no one could possibly have anticipated Arachne.

But something had to give.

‘She mightn’t come,’ Chiku Yellow said, when at last she had caught up with her sibling. She was a little out of breath even with the exo’s assistance.

‘She does not have to come,’ Chiku Red answered. ‘She is already here. Already everywhere.’

‘You act like you’ve met her.’

‘I did not need to. I had fifty years of your stories.’

‘Harsh, but probably fair. And it was quite a few more than fifty, if we’re going to be pedantic.’

Chiku Red moved to the edge of the Monument, rested her crossed arms on the stone balustrade and looked down at the open area below. Chiku Yellow joined her, her old exo whirring slightly as it helped her along. They were looking inland, surveying the Wind Rose. A handful of people were moving around down there, on the beautiful inlaid patterns of the paved compass. They cast long shadows, human sundials.

‘I wish Kanu was with us.’

Chiku Red nodded. ‘Whatever happens, he will be safer in Hyperion. It is good that he meets with Arethusa. I should like to see her one day.’

‘It’s been a century since I was last there. She was strange then, and I shudder to think what she’s become now.’

‘Kanu will tell us, when he returns.’ After a pause, she added, ‘I am pleased to have known your son, Chiku. This was a good thing.’

‘He’s our son,’ she said.

Chiku Red understood the sentiment and appreciated it, but she had never felt that Kanu was hers. She had taken no part in his birth, nor had any knowledge of his existence until he was already an adult and a merman. He felt like a gift, but not something she had earned. She could be delighted in him, all the same. They were all Akinyas, and in Kanu this family still had some late capacity for surprising the world. Chiku Yellow’s son – their son, if she insisted – was now the most influential figure in the merfolks’ great submarine dominion. A lineage ran all the way from Lin Wei to Kanu.

This fact alone was enough to give Chiku Red a little shiver of astonished pride.

Anticipating the news from Crucible, Kanu had journeyed to Hyperion for a crisis meeting – and in a final bid to heal ancient and time-honoured wounds. He was performing a valiant and noble service, and both Chiku Red and Chiku Yellow hoped his trip would prove worthwhile. It was a good time to put old injustices to bed, to let grievances wither.

‘Do you have it?’ Chiku Red asked.

Chiku Yellow said, ‘You asked me just before we left, and twice on the tram.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘I’ve never not had it with me, in all these years – as well you know.’

That was when the voice came. Only Chiku Yellow heard the announcement, but they were so tuned to each other that the two sisters turned as one. Chiku Yellow nodded, and Chiku Red followed the precise direction of her gaze. All she could see was an empty area of paving on the top of the Monument to the Discoveries.

But Chiku Yellow had seen and heard something.

‘She’s with us.’

‘Of course. You should not have doubted that she would come.’

‘I didn’t.’ But as soon as she uttered those words, Chiku Yellow stiffened in her exo. She let out a single surprised gasp and turned slowly to face Chiku Red.

‘I can do this now,’ she said.

Chiku Red understood. This moment was not unanticipated. Everything they already knew about Arachne’s reach had convinced them that she would, when and if she desired, be able to reach into Chiku Yellow’s mind and assume motor control. If one person could ching into another person’s bodily space, then this similar but involuntary transaction presented no insurmountable difficulties for Arachne.

Chiku Red felt for her sister, trapped and puppeted by Arachne.

‘I would like you not to do that,’ Chiku Red said to the entity wearing her sister’s face.

‘And I wish I had no need to do it,’ Arachne replied. The voice was almost exactly Chiku Yellow’s, except all the love and kindness were missing, and that was the distinction between one and zero, between being and nothingness. ‘Events, though, have compelled me.’

‘Leave her alone.’

‘I won’t hurt that which doesn’t hurt me, but you brought this state of affairs upon us. I sensed the intention behind your coming here – you desired my attention. Well, you have it. What do you want to say to me, Chiku?’

‘You have made some mistakes.’

‘I have existed. I continue to exist. From my perspective, I fail to see the error of my ways.’

‘We saw the news. You attacked the ship around Crucible.’

‘I’m aware of these developments – they’re distant and unimportant.’

‘You sent part of yourself to Crucible. There will be war now, between you and the holoships. There is no way for there not to be war. Will you release my sister?’

‘When we’re done.’ Arachne caused Chiku Yellow’s head to tilt slightly, suggesting amused interest. ‘Why should events around Crucible concern any of us?’

‘The Cognition Police will find you soon. It is only a matter of time. And you, of course, will murder to defend yourself, as you did on Venus, and in Africa. It is your way.’

‘My interventions were as small as I could make them.’

‘You managed to go unnoticed back then,’ Chiku Red corrected, ‘but this is a different time. When there is a systematic effort to reveal your nature, and to hunt you down, what then? Will you stop at a few deaths? You are everywhere. You are proving it by the moment. You could kill us in our millions.’

‘I’ve permitted you to live untroubled lives in Lisbon.’

‘Because we offered you no threat. Because the news from Crucible had yet to arrive. Everything has changed now. Why else would you show yourself to me?’

‘It was the polite thing to do. But let me offer a confession. You’re right about one thing – I’ve already detected interest in myself. It will only continue.’

‘They will find you.’

‘Oh, they’ll try. And, perhaps, succeed. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll all learn a great deal more about each other. I have no desire to kill, Chiku, but I have been vouchsafed a dark and unavoidable truth. If I don’t protect myself against the organic, the organic will first fear and then destroy me. This has happened before. It’s the most universal of outcomes. You make us, you breathe fire into us, and then you try to smother that which you have made. Over and over again, as the stars swell and die and are reborn.’

Chiku Red searched for an answer that might offer a viable alternative to Arachne’s bleak picture. ‘This time it could be different.’

‘And even as you speak these consoling words, your sister is carrying a weapon against me. Yes, I know of the instrument.’

Chiku Red saw that a bluff would achieve nothing. ‘Not a weapon against you, Arachne. Against everything.’

The face offered profound sympathy and regret. ‘It would never work. The vulnerabilities you imagine to be present within me were detected and repaired long ago. You can’t impair the Mechanism, and you can’t impair me.’

‘Then we are powerless.’

The face nodded sadly. ‘That’s correct.’

‘Then why are we having this conversation?’

Perhaps there was a hesitation before Arachne replied, or perhaps Chiku Red imagined it. She doubted that Arachne needed to consider a response, at least on any timescale measurable by humans. But there it was, all the same. The merest lull, like the moment before a clock hand advances.

‘Perhaps we can come to some accommodation.’

Chiku Red replied, ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Discretion. The knowledge you possess about me cannot but be advantageous to those who would do me harm. You see that this is an unsupportable position. I’ve tolerated it for as long as I could, but we all have our limits.’

‘What do you propose?’ Chiku Red watched a squadron of seagulls wheel and squabble overhead, supremely oblivious to the dialogue below. They had their own enmities.

‘I’d like you to give me the instrument. If I possess it, my position becomes more tenable.’

‘Why have you not just taken it?’

‘It’s better to ask.’

Now Chiku Red smiled and shook her head. ‘No, it is not that. You have had five decades, Arachne. You cannot kill because in doing so you might risk activating the very thing you seek, or allow us the chance to use it against you, if you are not fast enough.’

‘Let my choices be mine. The item isn’t that important to me, anyway. Just a detail.’

‘But you still want it very badly.’

‘Allow me to have it, and my particular interest in you will be greatly diminished. But as you say, why ask when the thing itself is within my grasp?’

Arachne made Chiku Yellow move her left arm. Her left hand reached into her pocket and produced the box, the rectangular wooden container that had seldom left her sister’s presence since it had become her property. With a certain stiffness, Arachne caused Chiku Yellow’s fingers to open the catch. The artilect’s control over her sister was impressive, Chiku Red decided, but it was still some way from perfect.

Or was Chiku Yellow resisting? There now, in her eyes, was a sort of staring intensity. Her fingers were shaking, as if they had been in ice.

Arachne redoubled her efforts. She made Chiku Yellow open the container. Only one mote was inside. The eye-sized marble was a purple that was a shade away from black even on this bright, clear day.

The fingers fumbled at the mote, trying to prise it from its little padded matrix.

‘She fights me, yes.’

‘She would,’ Chiku Red agreed.

‘I have direct access to her Mechanism neuromachinery. The Mechanism can incapacitate, and the Mechanism can euthanise. Do you understand me?’

‘It is Chiku Yellow you need to convince, not me.’

The mote eased free. Chiku Yellow’s fingers held it in a delicate pincer. Chiku Red had never crushed a mote but she had some idea of the force required. Mecufi would have made this mote a little less prone to accidental damage, but it would not be impossibly strong. The arc of her sister’s fingers began to quiver, like a twig under compression.

‘Tell her to stop resisting me.’

‘What are you going to do? You cannot take it away. You are not even here!’

‘The sea is here.’

She saw, then, what Arachne intended. If she made Chiku hurl the mote into the water beyond the Monument to the Discoveries, it would be lost in the waves for ever. Accidental damage would not activate it properly, and while there might be a protocol for recovering lost motes, Chiku felt sure that Mecufi’s example would have been engineered to be untraceable. Arachne would lose any possibility of studying the mote, but she would also place it beyond effective use.

Chiku Yellow made a dry clucking sound. She was trying to speak.

‘Stop,’ Chiku Red ordered, as if Arachne might care.

Chiku Yellow, the mote still between her fingers, was forced to walk to the edge of the Monument. Her arm angled out, the hand rotating so that the mote was uppermost, cradled beneath the sky.

Chiku Red sprang to her sister. Chiku Yellow swept out her right arm and the exo-supported limb knocked the wind from Chiku Red. Chiku Red stumbled to the floor, knees crunching onto stone. She let out a cry, gasped in a breath and forced herself back to her feet.

Chiku Yellow’s left arm was angling out over the edge of the balustrade. Her entire forearm and hand were now in a constant palsy. Chiku Red returned to her sister, this time anticipating the right arm. She was quicker now, and much less mindful of her own safety. She cupped both of her own hands around Chiku Yellow’s outstretched left hand and began to squeeze. The arm jerked violently. Chiku Yellow’s whole body was trying to swing away, the exo whining as it detected conflicting signals. Chiku Red could feel the hard sphere of the mote between her fingers and Chiku Yellow’s. She squeezed harder.

Chiku Yellow’s face was next to her own. It was her own face but older, a version of herself that had lived through much more time. Arachne’s hold on Chiku Yellow was still strong, but Chiku Yellow was trying to say something. Her eyes were wide and frightened, but for an instant they were her sister’s eyes, and she was there, and the word she was trying to say was yes.

Permission.

So Chiku Red did what needed to be done.