Mandala was quieting, cycling through an ever-slowing sequence of changes. The mirrors had withdrawn, their purpose served. Aboard Mposi, Eunice surrendered herself to the consequences of her actions. She had done something that would be hard to explain, but the right course had presented itself to her with the supreme and ecstatic clarity of a temporal-lobe vision. She knew, given the choice, that she would do it again in an instant.
‘It was the only way.’
They had bound her to a chair using its acceleration straps. She had made no effort to resist, offering herself up as compliantly as a puppet. Whatever they decided to do with her, she would accept.
‘Explain,’ Vasin said.
‘Kanu couldn’t turn around if there was a chance of the Friends being harmed. To begin with, I hoped Dakota wouldn’t go so far as to start killing them. Once she did, though, I saw no option but to initiate the translation.’
‘You worked very quickly,’ Karayan said.
‘I’d already prepared the groundwork. I’ve been thinking about the possibilities for a long time — almost as long as I was on Orison. It was always clear to me that a second Mandala event would shake things up a bit if the need ever arose. Of course, I didn’t have all the pieces until I saw Ndege’s work. And even then I didn’t have the means to make it happen. Not until we found the mirrors.’
‘But you had this plan at the back of your mind the whole time?’ Vasin said.
‘I’m all for spur-of-the-moment decisions, but sometimes you have to play the long game.’
‘Half the crew want to kill you,’ Goma said.
‘I don’t blame them.’
‘If I were you, I’d start presenting a few arguments in your defence. It looks as if you just committed mass murder.’
‘She did,’ Ru said.
‘I didn’t kill anyone. Zanzibar survived one translation; it will make it through another. The chances are better this time: there’s no debris left behind so the effect was cleaner, nothing outside the edges of the field. I think they will do perfectly well — thrive, most likely.’
‘You don’t even know where they’ve gone!’ Vasin said.
‘Where they’re going. It’s true — I don’t know. I didn’t have time to finesse anything to that degree. I couldn’t even be sure it would work! But the Mandala won’t have just sent them in a random direction. We’ll work it out — backtrack to the moment of the event, identify the candidate stars in the general angle of view. Then we’ll know.’
‘You’re so pleased with yourself,’ Ru accused.
‘Pleased that I’ve given Kanu a hope of digging his way out of that mess he’s in? Yes, I am. Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘You know nothing about Kanu’s situation,’ Grave said. ‘Wishing to turn around and being able to — they’re not the same thing. You’ve staked countless lives on this gamble.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘How can you know?’ asked Vasin.
‘Because I’ve spoken to Swift,’ Eunice answered.
And for a moment there was silence, until Goma asked the question they must all have been thinking.
‘Who the hell is Swift?’