Poseidon's Wake

CHAPTER NINE

Goma had been aboard Travertine for more than two weeks. Each morning she woke to find that the light-speed delay between the ship and Crucible had increased by many seconds compared to the previous day. She preferred not to be reminded of that during the waking hours, for if she dwelt too much on the widening separation between herself and her home, it would have been more than she could easily endure. But it was happening whether she cared for it or not. With the ship under constant thrust, they had locked down the centrifuge wheels for the remainder of the acceleration phase. The fact that she could still walk around, eat and drink, wash and shower, was testament to the force of the Chibesa drive dragging her deeper into the void.

No one was immune to it, including Ru. They’d both had bad moments — a breakdown, a sobbing fit, a spasm of misdirected anger. Fortunately one had always been there for the other. Goma worried what would happen if they both lapsed at the same time. It did not take much to set it off — a news report from home, a smell or a taste that triggered some sequence of memories that in turn related to something they would not experience again, at least until their distant, largely hypothetical return. Goma only had to pick up on some sadness in Ndege’s communications, real or imagined, and she herself was a wreck.

‘Sometimes I wake up back on Crucible,’ she told Captain Vasin, ‘and I’m overwhelmed with joy to discover that the whole thing on the spaceship was just a bad dream. And then I wake up again, for real this time, and I’m here.’

Vasin tilted her head in fond sympathy. ‘If I told you that just about everyone on the ship will have experienced something similar, including myself, would that make it a little easier to bear?’

They were in Vasin’s cabin, drinking chai. The room was slightly smaller than Goma and Ru’s own accommodation, but then again Vasin had no one to share it with, and she had obviously chosen the space and furnishings to reflect her own modest needs A small annexe with a bed and washing facilities was visible through an open doorway, and the main cabin contained a low coffee table, a console, some chairs and soft cushions. The main feature, spread across most of one wall, was a painting of the sun rising over a lake framed between grey and purple crags. At least, Vasin had told her that the name of the painting was The Sun. To Goma’s eyes, it might as well have been a depiction of some destructive stellar event, or even the violent birth of the universe itself — a primordial explosion of light and matter.

Their captain made a point of arranging these little social occasions. As far as Goma could tell, she was not being singled out for any special favours.

‘Even you, Captain?’

‘Gandhari, please.’

‘All right, Gandhari. But I can’t believe you have weak moments.’

‘More than my share. Not necessarily to do with Crucible, although I was happy enough during my time there, but I have fears enough of my own. I would not be a very effective captain if I did not. Our fears keep us on our toes.’

‘Are you worried about the ship?’

‘Oh, I trust the ship with my life. I’d better! Of course, a lot could go wrong. But then again, we have the best technical crew Crucible could muster. No, my fears are external — directed at the factors I can’t control.’

‘Like the Watchkeepers?’

‘They have certainly been uppermost in my concerns. It was always a gamble, taking a ship out on an interstellar heading. We couldn’t guess how they’d respond. So far, though…’

Behind Vasin, on the wall next to the one displaying the painting, was a schematic of the solar system. It was a real-time image, updated according to new data as it became available to Travertine. The arc of their trajectory formed a bold, straightening stroke, arrowing out from the middle. The orbits of Crucible and the other major planets were squeezed into increasingly tight ellipses, crowding around 61 Virginis. But there were also cone-shaped symbols dotted around the schematic, each of which indicated the known location of a Watchkeeper.

‘They’ve not moved?’ Goma asked.

‘No response that appears directly connected with our departure. In a way, it’s almost too good to be true.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘I expected to draw some interest, at the very least, but I won’t complain if they leave us well alone. Perhaps we’ve been too cautious, all these years?’

‘One in the eye for the Second Chancers, in that case. They’ve been the main fear-mongers, haven’t they? Going around telling everyone that the instant we leave Crucible, we’ll feel the wrath of alien judgement.’

‘In fairness,’ Vasin said, ‘that viewpoint isn’t just shared by Maslin and his disciples.’

‘It’s a point of view. It’s also idiotic.’

Humans had first encountered the Watchkeepers around Crucible as the holoships slowed down from crossing interstellar space. After the agreement brokered by Chiku Green, the Watchkeepers had departed Crucible space — to all intents and purposes vanishing from human affairs and leaving the colonists free to explore the Mandala. So it had remained for a century. But they were back now in significantly larger numbers. Not just in Crucible space, but also in Earth’s solar system and around every extrasolar world where humanity had staked a significant presence.

No one knew what to make of them. In the early days of their return some ships had been destroyed. But whether that was because those ships ventured too close to the alien machines or because they were imposing a general injunction against interstellar travel, no one was quite sure.

Interstellar travel had continued but at a much reduced level. Once or twice, the Watchkeepers had acted to destroy or incapacitate in- or outbound ships, but there was no obvious pattern to their interventions. The result was nervousness and a growing political conservatism. Each system had its own specific manifestation of this trend, whether it was the Consolidation of Earth space, the Bright Retreat of Gliese 581’s colonies or the Second Chance movement of Crucible. Interstellar travel was deemed a risky provocation, with the more extreme voices calling for its complete abandonment, at least for a few centuries. None of those voices was louder, or more strident, than the Second Chancers’.

‘You really don’t have a lot of time for Maslin’s people,’ Vasin said.

‘And you do?’

‘I’m a pragmatist. So’s your uncle. Getting Crucible to agree to hand over this ship to an expedition took a lot of doing, Goma. The Second Chancers were dead against it.’

‘So why the hell are they here, stinking up the place?’

Vasin wrinkled her nose as if the bad smell were right before her. ‘That was Mposi’s masterstroke — and the only reason he secured agreement for the mission. They’d have organised a block vote against us, and that would have been the end of it. But offering them a place on the expedition as observers?’ She shook her head in admiration. ‘Even I couldn’t have come up with that, so hats off to Mposi.’

‘Compromise. What about sticking to your principles?’

‘If it’s a choice between the expedition happening or not, I’ll take compromise over principle any day. Incidentally, I’ve heard about your run-ins with Karayan and Grave. I’m trying to maintain a happy ship — are you going to keep making more work for me?’

‘I can’t stop being a rationalist just because it upsets some people.’

‘Nor would I expect you to. But you appear far more upset by them than they are by you.’

Goma looked down at her chai. All of a sudden the temperature in the room felt cooler than when she had arrived. She set the cup on the coffee table. The liquid surface threw back her reflection, but the mirror was imperfect, blurred by the tiny but constant vibrations that worked their way along the ship from the relentless, roiling furnace of the Chibesa engine.

Another reminder that home was falling further away with each breath.

‘I didn’t realise I’d been called here for a dressing-down.’

‘You haven’t. You’re the most critical member of this expedition and I respect your opinions. I trust everyone else to do the same. But I also need cohesion. Believe it or not, the other scientists are looking to you to take the lead on this. No one’s asking for the world here — I don’t expect you to start embracing Maslin’s beliefs. But if you could at least make a gesture towards mutual cooperation, accepting that they have as much right to be here as we do?’

‘You know what they did to my mother.’

‘And I know what it must mean to you to have left her behind. But the Second Chancers weren’t the only reason your mother was locked away, Goma. You have to allow that she had her critics from all corners of Crucible, people of all stripes, all persuasions — even hard-nosed scientists like yourself.’

‘You weren’t there.’

‘I didn’t have to be — I know my history.’ Vasin offered a conciliatory smile. ‘Difficult, I know, all this. But just do your best. Who knows? There may be friends among the Second Chancers you’ve yet to meet.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘But time will tell. Set an example, Goma. Reach out. What’s the worst that could happen?’

The days continued passing — Crucible becoming first a starlike dot and then a mote of light so insignificant that Goma could not readily separate it from its star. Distance and then more distance — time opening up like a wide swallowing mouth. The ship functioned with an almost merciless reliability. Some part of Goma almost willed it to malfunction — hoping for some serious but not fatal glitch, sufficient to make them turn around.

But the ship did not oblige.

Goma, meanwhile, did her best not to disappoint Vasin. Reaching out was a step too far, but she avoided the Chancers when she was able and bit down on her worst impulses when she was forced to talk to them. Most of the time, it was not too difficult. She had learned a lot of self-control around elephants as well as people.

She continued to enjoy the solitude of the Knowledge Room, delighting in the endless, childlike pleasure of dipping a hand into the well and scooping out worlds. But soon even that simple pleasure was tested. Aiyana Loring and the other scientists began to show up with increasing frequency, using the well to explore speculative ideas about the Gliese 163 solar system. Goma and Ru were also expected to join in, offering their insights and opinions. Goma was rankled to begin with, feeling that she was no longer at liberty to organise her day as she wished. But it was hard to stay annoyed with the elegant, obliging Loring for very long. Goma was fascinated by the way ve moved, the sense that the slightest, most trivial gesture had been considered and choreographed. There was also something captivating about Loring’s androgynous beauty, even the deep, calm register of ver voice.

‘This is the central mystery, as far as I’m concerned,’ Loring was saying, kneeling at the well, reaching into it with one hand to scoop out the blue ball of Poseidon. ‘Our superterran waterworld. Maybe the origin of the signal? Not necessarily from the surface, but somewhere in orbit? If there aren’t moons around it, we’ll have an equally fine time explaining their absence.’

‘Why not the surface?’ Ru asked.

‘There won’t be one?’ Loring had a way of phrasing ver statements as questions, even when they were not. ‘Just a continuous layer of water, much deeper than any terrestrial ocean? A true waterworld?’

‘Sounds boring,’ Goma said.

‘Would be, if we didn’t already know that something’s going on there. No detailed imagery of the world itself yet — this sphere is conjecture, nothing more — but we know enough to be puzzled. There’s oxygen, to begin with — spectral lines in the atmosphere, green tints and chlorophyll signatures. So, life? Not necessarily multicellular, but enough to sustain an oxygen cycle?’

‘In the oceans?’ Ru asked.

‘Or maybe on top of them? Blooms, mats, entire floating land masses and ecologies?’

Goma delicately extracted the sphere from Loring’s hand. It still felt odd to know that there was nanotech between her fingers — feared, fabled nanotech. And yet it felt as innocent and harmless as clay.

‘Why not dry land?’ she asked.

‘Because there won’t be any. Poseidon’s too massive, with too much surface gravity. Continents, mountain ranges? They get flattened out, smothered by water. Push one up and it’ll be gone again before you can blink.’

‘By which you mean over tens of millions of years,’ Ru said.

Loring smiled. ‘Think like an exobiologist. A million years? That’s nothing. There and gone. Anyway, I don’t expect dry land. But it’ll be exciting to see what is there. Not the real mystery, though.’

‘No?’ Goma asked.

‘Question is why it hasn’t cooked itself to death. Runaway greenhouse effect — water vapour boiling off that sea, trapping heat in the atmosphere? Feedback cycle — more heat, more vaporisation?’

‘That obviously hasn’t happened,’ Ru said.

‘No. Hot but not too hot. Bearable for us, with tech. Maybe even limited exposure without. So: some thermoregulation process. Life by itself maybe not be sufficient to achieve that. Also, Poseidon ought to be tidally locked by now — keeping one face to Gliese 163. Hot one side, cold the other. Why isn’t it? What’s keeping it spinning? Need to get in closer, find out.’

‘Maybe it’s not even the world we’re interested in,’ Goma said, thinking only of the signal and its point of origin.

‘I am,’ Loring answered.

‘It’s just a planet,’ Goma said, ‘a rock and some gas and liquid, and — if we’re very lucky — maybe some scummy green organisms.’

‘Scummy green living organisms!’

‘The clue’s in the name,’ Goma said, taking a malicious pleasure in pedantry.

‘But life — doesn’t that fascinate you in and of itself?’

‘I’d have to say it doesn’t,’ Goma answered. ‘Life’s commonplace. We understand the basic processes — the originating principles of self-replication, the chemistry, the metabolic pathways. The same story plays out over and over again.’

‘Doesn’t make it any less marvellous.’

‘No, but it makes it less novel. Plant cells on Crucible aren’t exactly like plant cells on Earth, but neither are they unrecognisably different — there are only so many molecular transport mechanisms, only so many energy cycles, only so many ways of organising cells into larger structures. Biologists didn’t take long to solve the major mysteries of Crucible — much less time than it took to figure out how everything worked on Earth. They already had the tools, the ideas, and they knew the right questions to ask. Where’s the intellectual thrill in solving a puzzle twice?’

‘Elephants, though? Just another manifestation of those same principles?’

Goma glanced at Ru before answering. ‘There’s a difference. Elephants are intelligent. They have consciousness, self-awareness, a notion of self.’

‘It’s true,’ Ru agreed. ‘We’ve seen that they can acquire language, with some minor genetic enhancements. They can even speak, given the right prosthetic tools.’

‘But those elephants are gone now,’ Loring said. ‘They’ve lost the ability to speak, haven’t they? What did you call it — the cognitive decline?’

‘They’re gone on Crucible,’ Goma said, ‘but that doesn’t mean they’ve gone for good.’

‘I have read your work,’ Loring said. ‘The circumstances that produced the genetic breakthrough — the emergence of the Tantors? They’re not at all clear, are they? It happened in secret, across many generations? Hard to replicate, even if you had the tools?’

‘Maybe we don’t need to replicate it,’ Goma answered. ‘The gene stocks on Crucible were too small to sustain a viable population of Tantors. Genetic dilution — the averaging out of the Tantor traits across successive generations. But if we could locate a larger group of Tantors…’

‘Elsewhere in human space?’ Loring said.

Goma shrugged, equivocal, as if she had given the matter no great thought. ‘Perhaps.’

‘But no one has spoken of such a thing. If there were an independent Tantor population back in Earth space, would we not know, after all this time?’

‘Maybe they’re somewhere else.’

‘You’ll forgive me,’ Loring said, ‘but that does not sound like science to me.’

‘So what does it sound like?’ Ru asked.

‘Faith,’ Loring answered.

A day later, Goma was called to Vasin’s quarters again. She went there expecting another kindly lecture about the need for harmonious relations between the crew, but when she arrived it was immediately apparent that the purpose of this summons was very different. In addition to Gandhari Vasin, Mposi was also present, as was Aiyana Loring, Dr Nhamedjo, and Maslin Karayan. None of them looked at ease.

‘Come and join us,’ Vasin said, indicating a space at her coffee table, which was set with a formation of playing cards, evidence of an interrupted game. ‘This will be made public within the hour, but given your centrality to the expedition, I thought you should know about it immediately.’

Goma settled into the seat between Mposi and Maslin Karayan, the only vacant position.

‘It’s a Watchkeeper, isn’t it?’

Vasin nodded at the schematic of the solar system still on her wall, clotted with symbols and numbers. ‘I suppose that’s a bit of a giveaway. Apparently we finally have their interest. Taken long enough. As I said to you the last time we spoke, I almost dared to hope we’d managed to slip under their radar.’

‘Not very likely,’ Goma said.

‘With hindsight, not remotely. Aiyana — do you want to summarise the findings, for the benefit of Goma and Maslin?’

‘This Watchkeeper broke its position eight hours ago,’ ve said, touching a stud on her bangle that made the schematic spool back in time, then begin moving forward again, covering hours of movement in seconds of real-time. ‘Nothing unusual in that? They move around. Acceleration small to begin with, but increasing? Hard to extrapolate trajectory to begin with, but numbers firming up. Course intercepts our own — no chance of that being coincidence.’

‘When?’ asked Karayan, scratching idly at his beard.

‘Best guess, Maslin, fifty hours?’

‘I’d sooner it were five. At least let the judgement be done with.’

Goma made to speak, intending to quibble with that choice of term, but a glance from Mposi convinced her to think better of it.

‘Crucible will send us better figures,’ Vasin said. ‘That may shift the projection by a few hours. But for now we work on the assumption that it will be on our position in just over two days.’

Goma looked at Mposi. Her uncle was impassive, his emotions bottled. She wondered how long ago he had been informed of this news, hoping it was minutes rather than hours. She did not like the idea of him keeping it from her, even if that had been Vasin’s express instruction.

‘Can we change course, outrun it?’

‘It would be a gesture, nothing more,’ Vasin said. ‘We know from the records that they can easily outpace and outmanoeuvre us, probably without breaking a sweat. The only thing we can do is maintain our intended course.’

Goma’s eyes settled onto the landscape painting again, with its shards of light emanating from a bright central focus. It was like a hammer-blow against brittle glass, a spidery fracturing along radial lines.

If the artist had meant to celebrate the sun’s return after night, they had instead produced an image of brutal cosmic obliteration. It struck Goma as less a depiction of renewal than a fierce cleansing annihilation — space itself breaking down, or returning to a more primal, basic condition.

‘And what happens when they get here?’ she asked.

‘As your captain, I wish I had something concrete to offer you. If pushed, I’d say there are two distinct possibilities. The first is that we are scrutinised and then ignored, in the same way that the Watchkeepers appear happy to ignore almost all of our day-to-day activities.’ Vasin moved two of the playing cards which were still set out on her coffee table.

‘And the second?’ Goma pressed.

‘It destroys us. From what we know of previous encounters, it will at least be quick, and probably painless. Chances are we won’t even have any warning.’

‘We’ll take our mercies where we find them,’ Mposi said.

‘What are you hoping to get from Crucible?’ Goma asked the captain.

‘Chai and sympathy, not much more than that. Really I am waiting for them to tell me not to attempt evasive action, because we all know how much good it would do.’ She moved another card. It was a coping strategy, Goma decided, not a reflection of her lack of concern. ‘Of course we will transmit our intentions to the Watchkeeper, in every language they have ever been exposed to — for all the good that will do: “Please ignore us, we mean no harm.”’

‘What about the other Watchkeepers?’ Karayan asked. ‘Are they doing anything?’

‘Just this one,’ said Aiyana Loring.

‘Maslin is right,’ Vasin said. ‘Better five hours than fifty. But better fifty hours than have this hanging over us for the rest of our expedition. None of us wants this fear inside us all the way to Gliese 163.’

‘I think we’d all agree with that sentiment,’ Nhamedjo said. ‘I have fifty-four largely sane individuals to look after — including myself. Confined surroundings, the routine dangers of space travel, the knowledge that whatever world we return to, it will no longer be our home — those are bad enough stressors for the human psyche. I would much rather not add years of anxiety to the melting pot. Whatever that Watchkeeper means to do with us, let it be done, and let it be quick.’