Poseidon's Wake

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Eunice said her farewells to the four surviving Tantors, and after some agonies managed to convince herself that Gandhari Vasin’s skeleton staff was sufficient to maintain the encampment until her return. Goma understood her dilemma: she urgently wished to be on her way, to confront or negotiate with Dakota, but it meant leaving the only home she had known since her exile from Zanzibar. No part of this decision was easily made, and the Tantors’ lives depended on the soundness of her judgement.

Nonetheless, the moment was upon them. The party returned to the lander, its descent jets still glowing from its most recent return trip from Travertine, and Eunice purposefully avoided giving her home more than a backward glance. Soon they were aboard the lander, Vasin in the command chair, Eunice looking on with an examiner’s impassive scrutiny. They took off, taking care to keep their blast away from the old and new cairns, and were soon approaching Travertine.

Eunice stirred from her seat, undid the restraints and floated to the nearest suitable window.

‘A starship,’ she said. ‘An actual, proper starship — not some excuse for one like Winter Queen, or the holoships. I always wondered if I’d live long enough to see one of those.’

‘Are you impressed?’ Goma dared ask.

‘I don’t really do “impressed”. But consider yourselves the recipients of grudging approval.’

‘Praise indeed,’ Ru muttered.

‘That said, you’ve had long enough to build it. And if I’m going to labour the point, you really ought to have understood the mechanics of the Mandala translation by now. Why build a starship when you have an alien transportation device sitting right there on your planet, waiting to be used?’

‘You should have stopped at “approval”,’ Goma said.

‘With me, dear, you take what you can get.’

For Eunice’s benefit, they executed an inspection pass around the much larger craft, Vasin offering a commentary on points of interest like a tour guide.

‘It will do,’ was Eunice’s final judgement. ‘Can you break orbit as soon as we’re docked?’

‘You’re under a misapprehension,’ Vasin said. ‘I have no intention of committing Travertine to a situation we already know to be dangerous. Coming here was one thing — dabbling in a human — Tantor stand-off is quite another, especially as you’ve confirmed that the Watchkeepers have an interest in all this as well. Besides, the lander has just as much in-system capability as the mothership.’

‘Then we don’t even need to dock. Set course for Zanzibar immediately.’

‘We need fuel and a few component swaps ahead of that,’ said Vasin. ‘Say, a day or two to make ready and assemble the final crew selection. Besides, there’s the small matter of quarantine.’

‘You are all responding well to the antivirals.’

‘I’m not talking about us.’

If it was not a quarantine in the strict sense of the word, it was still an extremely thorough medical examination, far more exhaustive than anything possible in the camp. There were two medical bays on Travertine — one with gravity for normal procedures and a second where weightlessness was beneficial. They were in the second bay now, which was located in the central spine, just beyond the rear pole of the forward sphere. There was no centrifugal spin in this part of the ship, and since Travertine was not presently under thrust, the bay was totally weightless.

Dr Nhamedjo’s immediate subordinate, Dr Mona Andisa, was now in charge of all medical activities on Travertine. The weightless suite, she said, was a great benefit for performing full-body scans since there was no distortion of interior organs due to gravity or the pressure of supporting surfaces.

Andisa’s patient had already been prepared for her examination. Eunice floated free, stripped to her undergarments, arms at her sides, while scanning systems orbited her like a host of tiny whirring satellites. Goma watched as the scanners slowly assembled a three-dimensional image of Eunice with sub-cellular resolution on a variety of flat and solid display media.

‘I did not doubt what I heard from the surface,’ Andisa said, tapping a finger against a cross section of Eunice’s skull, a coral atoll of bone enclosing a softer patterning of lagoon-blue structures, ‘but this settles the argument. If you presented to me as an ordinary patient, I would have no cause to doubt your authenticity.’

‘It’s always reassuring to be authenticated.’

‘Her DNA,’ Goma said, ‘assuming she has DNA — have you sequenced it?’

‘She would not last long without it,’ Andisa answered, a touch of testiness to her tone.

Goma could forgive her that. She knew how shocked and upset the soft-spoken Andisa had been by the death of Saturnin Nhamedjo — her discomfort as much to do with the fact of his demise as the manner in which he had disguised his true priorities, even from his diligent co-workers. They felt betrayed, and now they were expected to shift effortlessly into running the ship’s medical activities. Worse than that, there remained the lingering suspicion, albeit unvoiced, that perhaps one or more of them had been co-conspirators. Goma was certain this was not the case, but she could imagine the toll it was having on Andisa and the other medics. She wished there was a way to show them that they were still respected, still trusted.

‘Certainly her DNA has been doctored,’ Andisa continued. ‘Rather comprehensively, in ways that are not reflected in your own genetic history.’

‘But you can see that we’re related?’

‘Yes, but much less obviously than if I were looking at a simple, uncluttered mitochondrial line. The books have been cooked too many times for that — in both of you. You are the daughter of Ndege, and Ndege was the daughter of someone who underwent radical genetic and phenotypic restructuring for the purposes of triplication. There has never been an orderly genetic lineage for Akinyas. Eunice doubts that the Watchkeepers had access to the actual DNA of the original Eunice Akinya — she certainly didn’t bring any such thing with her on the holoship. But they’d had ample opportunity to sample Chiku Green’s genetic structure, and from that they could have reverse-engineered the DNA they used to synthesise this living exemplar of Eunice. There are still some sequences I have yet to identify. It would not surprise me in the slightest if they turn out to contain elephant DNA.’

‘So she’s telling the truth — she’s really alive? Alive and living, just like the rest of us?’

It was still hard to take in, and Goma was perfectly aware that Eunice was lying there listening in on this conversation.

‘How deep a philosophical definition of “living” would you like?’ Andisa asked.

‘She eats and breathes — we know that. She does something that approximates sleeping — we saw that in the camp. Does she dream?’

‘She does,’ Eunice said.

‘I wasn’t asking you. Can you put a number on her age, Mona?’

‘Not easily. By her own account, we know she has been in this “human” form for more than two hundred years, completely cut off from any orthodox rejuvenative medicine. She tells me she has aged during that time, but if she were ageing at a normal human rate, in the absence of prolongation therapy she would have been dead many decades ago. Have you spent time in skipover, Eunice?’

‘Not in this body.’

‘So something has vastly decelerated the normal ageing mechanisms. Slowed but not stopped them. Hayflick limits, telomere attrition — these factors must have been modified by the Watchkeepers. Perhaps we would be better off calling them Watchmakers, Goma, since they have taken the basic ticking mechanism of human biology and made it really sing. Every cog polished, every spring tightened — every tiny piece of dirt, every imperfection removed from the process. With Eunice’s permission, I plan to introduce a small wound — nothing serious — in order to study her healing processes. As to her ultimate lifespan, in the absence of further intervention? I have no idea. Another couple of hundred years does not sound outlandish. And as for children — a whole new flowering of descendants — why not? She has a womb, and eggs. I see no obvious reproductive impediment.’

‘One lineage will do us for the time being,’ Goma said. ‘It’s caused more than enough trouble as it is.’

The alterations to the lander had started almost immediately upon the authorisation of the expedition, with the vehicle being kept outside Travertine for ease of access. Despite appearances, Vasin assured Goma that everything was going smoothly and on schedule.

It still looked like chaos, the ship surrounded by vacuum-suited workers, tangled access lines, modular parts and free-floating tool tenders. Nonetheless, there was clearly some sort of order to it all, and Goma herself had reviewed the list of specification upgrades. The lander had been designed for an expansion of its long-range capabilities, with many detachable or swappable components which could be shared with other vehicles. Cargo racks were removed and replaced with additional fuel and thruster assemblies. Life-support systems were modified to keep a smaller crew alive for a longer period of time. Skipover equipment was provided in case of emergency, as well as a small medical suite furnished according to Dr Andisa’s exacting specifications. There were additional vacuum suits, two single-person runabouts for in-space repair and reconnaissance, and an augmented communications array.

Was this overkill or just barely sufficient? Goma wondered. It was hard to say. Five days to reach Zanzibar, five days to make the return trip — but an unguessable interval in between. They could not be held hostage, Goma kept telling herself — not while Travertine remained here, its engine a very palpable instrument of negotiation.

But if the Tantors had a ship, then they also had access to Chibesa technology of their own. Would they submit to argument by force or simply presume that the humans would never stoop to mass murder?

How well did they understand people, anyway?

‘Peter?’

For the first time since returning to consciousness, the man opened his eyes and began to show recognition of his environment. He looked around slowly with an expression of perfectly neutral acceptance, as if this was no more or less than he had been expecting.

‘So, are you going to hang me now?’

Dr Andisa had alerted Goma and Vasin that he would shortly be fully awake after his emergence from skipover, and now the three of them were at his side.

‘The first thing you get,’ Vasin said, ‘is an apology. We treated you poorly, Peter, and I take personal responsibility for that.’

He looked unmoved by this news. ‘I’ve no idea how long I’ve been under. Have we returned to Crucible?’

‘No,’ Goma said. ‘We’re in the other system, at our destination. There’ve been… developments. It’ll take a while to explain everything to you, but we now know who killed my uncle.’

‘And what has it taken to establish my innocence?’

‘More deaths,’ Vasin answered. ‘Did you have any idea who the actual saboteur was?’

‘You appeared so certain of my guilt that I started to doubt myself.’ He raised himself slightly, a spark of engagement showing in his eyes for the first time. ‘Who was it?’

‘Doctor Nhamedjo,’ Vasin said.

Grave gave a slow nod. ‘I considered him a possibility, but he was only one of several candidates.’

‘But if you had doubts about him—’ Goma began.

‘I couldn’t risk casting suspicion on an innocent member of the crew, especially not on a vital figure like Doctor Nhamedjo. Our voyage had barely begun — that business with the Watchkeeper had already led some of us to advocate turning around.’

‘You were one of them!’ Goma said.

‘I suggested we should at least consider that option. Don’t tell me you didn’t have similar thoughts?’

Goma was tight-lipped. She could not deny that she had been afraid in the face of the alien machine.

‘But when the threat of the Watchkeeper evaporated,’ Grave continued, meeting her eye with a nod of understanding ‘I was content for us to continue. Remember, I’d committed my life to this expedition, too — I hadn’t left Crucible expecting us to turn around. Fundamentally, I wanted us to succeed — but not if that meant taking unacceptable risks.’

‘But someone wanted to destroy the expedition!’ Goma said.

‘I told you there was the possibility of a secondary threat. Beyond that, I had nothing to offer. My only hope was that Mposi’s murderer would be exposed through a combination of heightened vigilance and human error on the saboteur’s part. Is that what happened?’

‘Not before two Tantors died,’ Goma said.

‘Tantors?’ he asked, between wariness and excitement. ‘You’ve contacted them?’

She nodded. ‘A few. But there are others — many others — and we hope to meet them as well. But it’s not that straightforward. Mposi trusted you, Peter — can I trust you, too?’

‘That is an odd thing to ask a man who has been accused of murder and put on ice for the rest of the trip.’

‘It is, but you knew my uncle. If he thought well of you, that makes you valuable to me. Gandhari says she’s happy to reinstate you as a member of the crew, with a full apology and pardon. But I want more than that.’

For the first time, some of the old amusement creased his lips. ‘Do you, now?’

‘We’re sending a small ship out to meet the other Tantors — just the lander, but with enough fuel and supplies to see us through every contingency we can forsee. The crew will include Maslin Karayan. I would be grateful for your presence, too. But I need to ask — are you really a Second Chancer?’

‘What I believe and what I think can’t be expressed in a sentence. But do I believe dreadful mistakes have been made in the past, and that we’d be very unwise not to learn from them? Most certainly. I count the Tantors among these mistakes — they should not have come into being. But now they are here, we must accept the fact of them with grace.’

Remembering his words from one of their first exchanges, Goma said, ‘You hate the sin that made them.’

‘Yes. The sin of intellectual hubris. The sin of thinking we understand our own nature well enough to meddle in the natures of others.’

‘But you do not hate the fact of them.’

‘They are what they are — thinking creatures as capable of sin or goodness as the rest of us. They were never given a choice to be what they are. The greater sin would be to wish harm upon them for the sins of others. Besides, we are on a mission to seek the truth of things. The truth is seldom something to be feared.’

‘I think we have some more truth-seeking to do. Are you strong enough to join us?’

‘That is not for me to say.’

‘I will monitor him closely over the next few hours,’ Dr Andisa said, ‘but the signs are encouraging so far. I think he will be up on his feet as quickly as the rest of us were.’

‘We wronged you, Peter,’ Goma said, ‘and I take my share of responsibility for that. Mposi would have been disappointed in me that I did not stand up for you. But I am trying to do better.’

‘And succeeding, by the sounds of things.’

‘I still have some way to go.’

‘So do we all,’ Grave said. ‘But that is called living.’

They were looking at Zanzibar, projected onto one wall of Vasin’s quarters. It rotated slowly, bringing all its facets into view. It was the best 3D image they had gathered so far, assembled from a multitude of angles and sensor bands, across many light-minutes of space, with every conceivable image-sharpening algorithm thrown into the fray.

‘It’s not that we doubted you, Eunice,’ Vasin was saying, ‘but you’ll understand we had reasons to be sceptical.’

‘And now?’ Eunice asked, arms folded, unable to entirely hide her triumph.

‘The shape speaks for itself — it fits into the larger profile of the original Zanzibar very convincingly, and its mass is just about equal to that believed to be missing from the ring system around Crucible. Of course, few of these artificial surface features correspond to the original holoship — but then you’ve already told us there was a scramble for survival after the translation event. Do you see much evidence of change since you were last aboard?’

‘Nothing drastic,’ Eunice said. She sketched a finger across blurry details. ‘A few airlocks here and there, some alterations to the power grid, but I wasn’t expecting much. The Risen can work outside if they need to — they also have spacesuits and the means to move independently — but it’s not their natural environment, and they don’t adapt easily to it.’

‘Less easily than we do?’ Goma asked.

‘We’re arboreal apes. We enjoy being high up and in our bones we feel safer. Elephants spend their lives glued to the ground, rooted there like trees. Being in space will never feel as natural to them as it does to us.’

‘So we have an edge over them,’ Vasin said.

‘Only a small one. They’re as determined as we are, and sufficient determination will conquer any natural reluctance. Monkeys don’t like water, but we’ve overcome that instinct well enough.’

‘But still,’ Goma said, ‘if they don’t like being outside, maybe we can use that to our advantage.’

Eunice leaned in eagerly, as if about to make a constructive suggestion. ‘Engage them in close-quarters combat? Daggers between teeth, no quarter given?’

‘I was trying to think of something useful — some way we could exploit our innate differences without resorting to violence. What about that power grid?’

‘What about it?’

‘If we stop it working, will they be able to repair it easily? I don’t mean shut it off permanently, just demonstrate that we can deprive them of power. You said we need a means of negotiating with Dakota — would that help?’

‘It might, it might not.’

‘Could we do it, though?’ asked Vasin.

Eunice thought about it for a few seconds, or at least gave every impression of doing so.

‘The mirrors were an emergency measure installed during the difficult days immediately after the translation. We worked with the surviving humans to cobble them together, using spacecraft parts and materials from inside Zanzibar. I never expected them to work as long as they have.’

‘And?’ Goma pushed.

‘The orbital control and mirror-aiming system is as autonomous as we could design it to be. We wanted the mirrors to keep working even if there was some total breakdown in communications with Zanzibar. Obviously, we did a fairly good job. But we did leave a back channel — a control protocol, in case we needed to reprogram or reassign the mirrors.’

‘Would Dakota know about that channel?’ Vasin asked.

‘Maybe, but it would still be hard for her to close it off without physical access to the mirrors. So… yes — maybe there’s a possibility. But it’s been a while and everything I know about the control architecture is in here.’ She tapped the side of her head.

‘Is that good or bad?’ Vasin asked.

‘Oh, my memory is excellent. But I can’t promise anything until I’ve done some tests. Can I use your spaceship?’

Vasin looked appalled. ‘Of course not!’

‘Then at least your long-range communications array. It’ll need to be done delicately — I don’t want Dakota to guess that I’m trying to speak to the mirrors or she’ll be a step ahead of us.’

‘With appropriate supervision,’ Vasin said, ‘I suppose I could permit it.’

‘Good to know I’m considered such a trusted guest,’ Eunice answered archly. ‘By the way, I like your choice of painting — it’ll remind us what’s at stake.’

Goma had been so fixated on the image of Zanzibar that she had not noticed Vasin’s wall image had changed again. Gone were the violent, world-shattering sun and the pale maiden with the skeletal figure. This was a skull-faced person clasping their hands to the bony bulb of their head, standing on a bridge or pier, under a lava-red sky that oozed and throbbed like a wound.

‘The Scream,’ Vasin said.

‘The Terror,’ Eunice answered.