Poseidon's Wake

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

From Mposi they had witnessed the total shutdown of Icebreaker and the gradual return of the ship’s systems. Although they were still too distant to image any salient details of the other vessel, they had a clear lock on its thermal signature. The dimming and reactivation of the Chibesa drive — even with the thrust directed away from them, towards Poseidon — were impossible to miss.

Besides, they had the benefit of Eunice’s insider knowledge.

‘You asked me about Swift,’ she said, with a certain primness of tone. ‘The truth is, I don’t entirely know what Swift is, or what Swift wants. Swift is some kind of artificial intelligence, that’s clear enough — he’s an artilect consciousness, much as I used to be. But unless I’m hugely mistaken — and frankly the likelihood of that isn’t worth mentioning — Swift is running on an entirely neural substrate. That’s how Swift was able to communicate with me at all. He’s inside Kanu’s skull.’

‘Like some sort of parasite?’ Dr Andisa asked.

‘I think we may presume that the relationship is mutually consensual and to the benefit of both host and symbiote. That Kanu has willingly allowed Swift to co-opt part of his neural network. What do we know of Kanu? He was an ambassador to the machines on Mars. I do not think these two facts are unrelated.’

‘Then who — or what — is Kanu acting for?’ Goma asked.

Eunice wriggled in her restraints. ‘Are you going to let me out of this chair any time soon?’

‘No,’ Vasin said. ‘You acted without authorisation. You took a foolhardly gamble with thousands of lives, both human and Tantor.’

‘I took a gamble to stop someone else taking a worse one. I gave Kanu an opportunity to challenge Dakota, with Swift’s reassurance that he had the means to take control of Icebreaker. Swift explained that there would be some kind of restart of Icebreaker’s systems, which is what we’ve just witnessed. Clearly, the humans are back in charge. That’s why the ship is making such a concerted effort to reverse course.’

‘So you’ve succeeded,’ Ru said.

‘It’s starting to look that way. A little closer to the bone than I’d like, but what are nerves for, if not to be frayed?’

‘You haven’t even considered the lives on Zanzibar. The Friends, the Tantors — they’re not even a part of your thinking any more. You’ve moved them off the board and forgotten about them. We were all wrong about you.’

She looked at Ru with an expression of pleasant interest. ‘Were you, my dear?’

‘You’re still a fucking machine.’

‘Well, thank you for that considered opinion. Shall I be equally candid, then? I don’t care. I expected to die. I expected to be torn limb from limb or stuffed into the nearest airlock. I expected that and I knew I had to act anyway — that nothing else was going to work. So spare me your lofty human sanctimony, because until you’ve been through the Terror, you have no idea what’s at stake. And if you had an idea, even the tiniest grain of an inkling, you’d know full well that my actions were not only necessary but the very least that needed to be done. If I could have destroyed Icebreaker, do you think I’d have hesitated?’

‘No,’ Ru said. ‘I don’t suppose you would have.’

‘Then we’re getting somewhere.’

But Vasin said quietly, ‘You say the humans should be back in charge by now.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then explain this.’

Over the next few hours they watched Kanu’s ship fall into the barricade of moons. The course correction had been going well, the engine signature reading clean and steady, no cause for concern even as Icebreaker topped out at a crushing three gees of reverse thrust. Then it dropped down to a single gee even though Icebreaker still had far too much residual motion in the direction of Poseidon. Their first guess was some kind of engine failure, but nothing in the data hinted at anything other than a smooth, controlled reduction of power — a deliberate change of plans.

They waited to see if this was a temporary adjustment, soon to be corrected. Eunice was as bothered about it as the rest of them — her confidence in both herself and Swift severely damaged. More than anything, that was the deciding moment when Goma put aside the last trace of doubt that they were dealing with a human being. No matter what Ru thought, no machine would have shown such consternation at this change in circumstances. A robot would have absorbed the altered parameters without the slightest sense of betrayal or personal failure.

Soon they had the confirmation they had been dreading.

‘This is Kanu. I hope you can read me. Shall I begin with the good news or the bad?’

They were close enough for real-time communications again. His face loomed large, but now the effects of gravity made him look drawn and fatigued, older and wiser by many years.

‘Go ahead, Kanu,’ said Captain Vasin.

‘Nissa and I have complete control of Icebreaker. Tell Eunice — if she isn’t already listening in — that she and Swift did a very good job with their scheme for Zanzibar. They can be proud of their achievement. That doesn’t mean I approve. Right now I’m not certain what approval would say about any of us. Was it an act of kindness or cruelty? I’m not exactly sure.’

‘Nor are we,’ Vasin said. ‘Horrified, and awed — there’s no doubt about that. But was it the right thing to do? I’d say it was, if we couldn’t see you continuing to Poseidon.’

‘We ran into a local complication which neither Swift nor Eunice anticipated. We had the means to turn Icebreaker around and were in the process of doing so, but it was too hard on the Tantors. They couldn’t take the gee-load. If we’d carried on, we are fairly sure they would have died.’

‘Just a second,’ Eunice said, now free of her chair but still shackled at the wrists. ‘You can turn around, but you’re not going to?’

‘We won’t murder them. That’s what it would have been. You can see that, can’t you?’

‘You owe them nothing,’ Eunice snapped back. ‘Especially not Dakota. You’re not dealing with an elephant, Kanu, or even a Tantor — you’re dealing with an alien intelligence that just happens to be using her body.’

‘I can understand why you feel that way. But if there’s a shred of humanity left in any of us, we can’t place our own lives over theirs.’

‘That’s very noble of you, but it’s not just your lives on the table here. Turn your ship around.’

‘It’s too late for that now, Eunice — you know that as well as we do. We’re committed to Poseidon now, for better or for worse. It’s going to be hard, in more ways than one.’

‘Not just hard,’ she said. ‘Suicidal.’

Kanu’s gravity-strained face managed a weak smile. ‘Yes. I’m aware of that. And believe me, I don’t like it for a second. But we’re not totally out of chances. We’ll see how we weather the moons. Even if we survive passage through them, we’ll still have the problem of atmospheric entry. We’re moving a little too quickly for safe planetfall, and Icebreaker certainly isn’t designed to cope with the stresses. But we have our lander, Noah. It’s large enough to accommodate all of us, and once we’re through the moons it might get us down to the surface, and maybe we can reach one of those wheels, see what we make of it. But we’re under no illusions about getting back out again. Since we’re going in, though, we may as well make the best of it. We’ll be gathering all the information we can and doing our best to share it with you. But you’ve done your part now.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ Vasin asked.

‘Turn around. You gave it your best shot and I think we can both agree there need be no hard feelings. There’s nothing to be gained from debate now — the time for that has passed. We have no option; we’re going in, and we’ll endeavour to be your eyes and ears. I was about to wish you the best in forging ties with Zanzibar, but I keep forgetting that won’t be necessary — it isn’t here any more. Will you be all right? Can you get back to your starship?’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ Vasin said. ‘We have everything we need, and even if we didn’t, there’s still Eunice’s camp on Orison. We’ll return there to help the surviving Tantors — but not until we’ve done all we can for you.’

‘There’s nothing to be done. But Nissa and I appreciate the sentiment.’

‘Let me speak to Swift,’ Eunice said.

‘So that you can talk him into destroying Icebreaker in a moment of glorious self-sacrifice?’ Kanu smiled sadly. ‘As it happens, we’ve already discussed that, and maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But we’re not quite ready to face total oblivion just yet. Not while there’s a chance to learn something new. It’s the reason we came here, after all — to gather knowledge. And if, collectively, none of us is quite up to the measure of the M-builders — well, then it looks to me as if we’re all doomed anyway. But I’m handing no one my head on a plate.’

‘Tell Swift—’

‘Swift says that he’d welcome the exchange of further views, but for the time being we have a little preparation of our own to be doing. I’ll talk to you all on the other side of the Terror. Wish us well, won’t you?’

The channel was closed, but they could still track Icebreaker clearly enough to observe its progress. They watched it fall deeper, slowing all the while but never enough, and they ran their own simulations for atmospheric insertion assuming a spread of assumptions for the capabilities of Kanu’s ship.

Until Eunice drew their attention to one of the moons, now veering out of its orbit like a marble that had wandered out of a groove.

‘There’s always one,’ she said. ‘The chasing moon. It’ll be on them soon enough. And if Kanu has an ounce of sense — or if he listens to Dakota — he’ll know better than to try to escape.’

‘What will the moon do?’ Goma asked.

‘Swallow them. And cut them open. Crack their spines and read them like books. But don’t worry. It’s less painful than it sounds.’