Poseidon's Wake

CHAPTER FIFTY

Kanu had gone back to the two surviving Risen, who were still in their hammocks. ‘You should prepare yourselves,’ he told them. ‘There’ll be a bump, I think, but nothing worse than what we’ve already been through. How are you coping with the gravity? Do you think you can stand it?’

‘I believe the gravity may be the least of our problems, Kanu. I shudder to imagine the depth of water beneath us, that it can swallow half the width of that wheel. Have you seen it?’

‘Yes. It’s magnificent. And humbling. Whoever made it, they weren’t exactly lacking in confidence.’

‘No, I do not think they were. I saw some of it through the window. I would very much like the time to know it better — the time to study those writings. Do you know the strange thing, Kanu?’

‘This is all strange, frankly.’

‘Then let us talk of specifics. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted nothing more than to be here, inside the mysteries of Poseidon. Within the sentinel moons, having once more endured the Terror, close enough to see the wheels, close enough to understand them for myself. And yet now that I am here, I realise there can be no understanding. Not for me, at least. I gather information, but I was never intended to be anything more than a recording instrument, a conduit to transmit observations to the minds of the Watchkeepers. I am their eyes, a branch of their extended nervous system — nothing more.’

Once again Kanu marvelled at the bony prominence of her forehead, holding back the force of her mind like the wall of a dam.

‘I think you underestimate yourself, Dakota.’

‘I think they would say that I have failed them. I might say that I have failed myself.’

‘No,’ Kanu said. ‘Not yet.’

‘You ought to despise me, knowing what I ordered done. But while there is time, I would like to absolve Memphis of any complicity in my actions. Should the opportunity present itself, I would ask you to present this information to your fellows — the other humans. If they find Zanzibar again, Memphis ought not to be blamed for the deaths of the Friends.’

Kanu phrased his question as softly as he was able. ‘Because he was only following orders?’

‘Because there were no deaths. I deceived you. The hundred cold corpses? They were already long past any chance of revival. I told Memphis to use only those who could never live again.’

Kanu nodded slowly — he had no means of validating this claim, but it did not strike him as a lie. She had continued to value and respect the Friends long before his arrival, and he believed that she felt genuine remorse for the humans who had perished during the time of troubles.

‘And if another hundred had needed to die?’

‘I trusted that my point would be adequately made by those first hundred.’

He smiled. ‘It was.’

‘What became of me, Kanu, to bring us to this place?’

‘Nothing you need blame yourself for.’

‘I made questionable choices.’

‘So did we all.’ He set his jaw, tried to look confident in the face of dauntless odds — one of the oldest tricks in the book of diplomacy. The void was still inside him — it was going to take more than a few hours of his life to eclipse that darkness. But like a stiff new spacesuit, cumbersome at first, he was beginning to adjust to its presence. ‘We’ll be hitting the water very soon. The odds are that the ship isn’t in excellent shape, but we’ll do our best to hold it together.’

‘We always do our best.’

The impact was hard, but perhaps not as bad as he had feared. After the initial bump, Noah’s momentum carried it through the water, bellying up and then settling into a level configuration. Water sizzled where it touched the still-hot hull and fanned out in butterfly wings of spray on either side. And then they were resting, with barely any rocking from side to side as the lander floated. Dakota and Hector began to extract themselves from their hammocks, Hector labouring over it at first, then appearing to find some of his old strength.

Kanu went forward. Nissa was already out of her seat.

‘Well, we’re down,’ she said. ‘More than I was expecting when that shock wave hit us.’

‘We’re in one piece. How is the ship?’

‘I wouldn’t bet my life on it — or yours. If the hull’s as damaged as it thinks it is, we may not remain afloat for long.’

Kanu leaned down for a better look through the window. ‘You did well. Hard to say, but I don’t think we can be much more than five kilometres from that wheel. We should be able to cross that, and then find a way to set up camp on the wheel.’

‘I hope they packed some climbing gear.’

‘We’ll manage,’ he said.

But the simpler truth was that he could think of better ways of dying than drowning in a sinking ship. Dying in open water was scarcely an improvement, but if it came to it, at least the choice would have been his. He knew they had no hope on the wheel, not now that its sheer size was so clear. And although it might only be a short distance from the waves up to the nearest groove — a scant few metres, probably — what use was that to an elephant?

They would die, all of them. But at least they would be moving.

‘That’s it,’ Nissa said, nodding at the horizon. ‘We’re picking up a definite list to the right. Noah’s flooding.’

‘Time to go.’

Dakota showed him to the onboard equipment store. It was well stocked, a mixture of the old and the new — items that must have come from Crucible and others fashioned more recently, for the express convenience of Tantors. They had supplementary oxygen supplies, water flasks, bales of compressed food concentrate. They decided to empty some of the flasks so they could serve as flotation aids. Meanwhile, Nissa and Kanu locked their helmets down over their neck rings but kept their external air valves open so they were not yet reliant on suit air. These were simple suits with a fixed supply of no more than twenty hours, and the less they used of that air now, the better. They strapped on as much of the equipment and supplies as they could manage.

Periodically, Nissa bent down to inspect the angle of the horizon, but Kanu could tell without looking that they were taking in more water. It was starting to become difficult to move around under the gee and a half of gravity and with the floor gaining a steepening tilt. Kanu moved to the side lock and operated the manual pressure equalisation, allowing Poseidon’s atmosphere to flood into Noah.

He inhaled deeply. It was oven-warm even after it had passed through the suit’s intake valve. The oxygen partial pressure was enough to keep them alive, although it would be similar to breathing at altitude. If there were organisms or toxins in the air, his suit had not yet detected them. Either way, he doubted they were his most pressing concern.

He opened both the inner and outer doors of the airlock. They were looking out over the wing that was already dipping down into the sea. The sun glared off it in an arc of brightness. The water had begun lapping over its furthest edge.

‘We need the rafts,’ Kanu said. ‘They’re in the external hold, just aft of the wing. It’s not underwater yet, but once it is we may find it hard to open against the sea pressure. I’m going in now.’

‘Take care,’ Nissa said.

He grinned back at her. ‘I used to be a merman.’

It was getting warm in his helmet — like inhaling the hot spent air from the mouth of a giant. The refrigeration cycle would not work properly until the suit was running off its own air supply, and he did not want to commit to that just yet. Outside, the temperature was a shade over fifty degrees. The organisms that floated on the ocean, the great green biomass rafts, were operating near the upper thermal limit for multicellular life forms.

He was out on the wing now. He moved to the edge, cautious on the slippery upper surface, and eased himself into a seated position, dipping booted feet into the water. He closed the intake valve and slid in. The water closed over him in an instant. Nets of sunlight wavered overhead. He surfaced and found that he was able to float, the suit providing sufficient buoyancy.

At least the waves were gentle. He swam to the cargo hold, most of its door still just above water. Next to the hold was a fold-back panel with scuffed stencilling in Swahili and Chinese. Kanu read enough to identify the panel as containing the manual release. He dug his gloved fingers into the gap around the panel and tried to hinge it back.

It would not move.

Kanu tried and tried again, but he had nothing to brace against and his fingertips refused to gain traction on the smooth, glossy material. Quickly he sensed that the effort was futile. Nissa was standing on the wing, leaning forwards to watch with her hands resting on her knees. Her voice boomed out through the amplifier in her neck ring. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Won’t work. Must’ve picked up some damage during the entry.’

‘Can Swift help?’

‘I think we’d have already heard by now if he could.’

The lander lurched, its tilt increasing by several degrees from one moment to the next. It stabilised, but the sudden change had nearly sent Nissa tumbling.

‘Something just flooded in a hurry.’

‘Get the Risen out,’ Kanu called. ‘Once it goes, it may go fast.’

‘What about the rafts?’

‘I don’t think we’re getting rafts. Not today.’

Neither Dakota nor Hector wanted to abandon dead Lucas, but when the lander tilted again, fear overcame their unwillingness. They shuffled out onto the wing, heavy under their burden of equipment, each footfall seeming to transmit itself through the fabric of the ship, into the water in which Kanu floated. He urged Nissa to join him, fearful that Noah was about to upend itself without warning. She held her mask for safety and splashed into the water. He reached out a hand, but Nissa was strong enough to tread water on her own.

The Risen were wearing their emergency spacesuits. They were made of a flexible grey fabric with accordioned limb joints, the round-eyed helmets similar in design to the one Dakota had already used. The suits would have been easier and quicker to don in the confined space of the shuttle, but to Kanu’s eyes they had a makeshift look about them, like something sewn together by prisoners as part of an escape attempt.

There was no graceful way for the Risen to enter the sea. They bounded off the wing, making two bomb-like splashes before resurfacing, armour-sheathed trunks periscoping for the sky in a pure reflex to immersion.

Dakota’s voice boomed from the white mask of her helmet. He had no trouble telling the two Tantors apart, for the differences in their size and body shape were still obvious despite the suits.

‘What is the difficulty, Kanu?’

‘We can’t use the rafts — the door’s jammed. We’ll have to swim for it. We can do that, can’t we? It’s not too far.’

‘In spacesuits?’ Nissa asked.

‘Better in them than out — we’d boil alive in these waters.’ He looked back at the floating ship, now listing hard to one side. ‘Whatever we do, I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay close to Noah.’

At least there was no wind or ocean current, and no doubt as to the direction in which they needed to swim. The wheel’s rim was the only landmark to be seen in any direction. The sky was cloudless. Even when the waves lapped high enough to hide its base, they could always see the wheel’s soaring flanks.

They swam out from the lander, the two humans setting the pace, the two Risen following. The going was not too hard at first. Kanu kept looking back, to reassure himself that Dakota and Hector were indeed still with them. He heard the regular huff and chuff of their suits’ life-support systems — oxygen packs strapped like panniers to either side of them — but beyond that they made little noise, with all the work of swimming going on under the surface. It struck him as profoundly absurd that elephants should be so capable in water, but there was the evidence. Not that it was easy for them, for they felt the pull of gravity just as surely as on land, and it took work to move those muscles and bones.

Kanu and Nissa floated well enough but they needed to move arms and legs to make any headway in the direction of the wheel. That was fine for a while, but before long Kanu felt himself beginning to overheat. Immersed in water, the suits were having trouble keeping their wearers cool. Kanu found himself needing to pause, allowing his strength to recover and the suit to chill down again from his labours. He tried to find a posture that kept as much of his backpack out of the sea as possible, giving its radiators the best chance to work. He hoped all the critical systems were watertight.

‘It’s as far away as ever,’ Nissa said when they stopped for the fourth time.

Kanu could not disagree. Equally, the lander now looked very distant, so they had come some way. While they paused, he watched Noah with agonies of indecision. It had not sunk so far, and the angle of its tilt did not appear to have worsened since they abandoned it. Perhaps they had made a terrible miscalculation in surrendering their chances to the sea. Could they make it back? It was better than their chances of getting to the still-distant wheel, he reckoned.

‘Look,’ Nissa said.

She was nodding back to the only other thing visible besides the wheel and the four swimmers.

Something was taking Noah.

A dark mass, grey-green, glossily brilliant and quilted with scales, had swelled up from the water and enclosed some muscular parts of itself around the lander. From this low, bobbing vantage he could make out no more than that. Perhaps that was for the best.

‘There aren’t supposed to be monsters here,’ he said, feeling oddly calm in spite of himself. ‘It’s too warm. Nothing multicellular should be able to hold itself together.’

‘We’re multicellular,’ Nissa said, still watching as the grey-green thing hauled Noah out of sight.

‘For now.’

‘Is that a joke?’

‘Not a good one. I apologise.’

Kanu supposed that the monster must have come up to the surface from much cooler depths below, kilometers down, where perhaps a whole marine ecology lay waiting and undiscovered. Perhaps, once in a great while, the denizens of these cool black layers detected some surface disturbance which made the journey into the warm layers worth the risk of overheating.

After that, there was no point looking back. They swam on because to do otherwise was to leave space in their thoughts to dwell on the apparition. But the swimming cost Kanu so much of himself that after willing his arms and legs into motion, he had nothing else to spare. A sea-monster of some kind. But he had known sea-monsters and not all of them were monstrous.

Swim. Keep swimming.

Stop thinking.

The wheel shimmered and wobbled before him like a line of smoke in a thermal. The waterline bobbed up and down the glass of his faceplate. The air above the sea cut the horizon into ribbons, buckling it with mirage heat. He still had the dizzy sense that the wheel was moving.

‘I think—’ Nissa began.

‘Don’t speak. Save your energy. We still have a long way to go.’

Soon they had to stop again. The temperature inside his suit was unbearable now, his breath fogging the faceplate like the inside of a sweltering greenhouse. He wanted to remove the helmet, be rid of that glass, but the air outside was no cooler than the water. It had become a struggle even to maintain the correct angle in the water to prevent his backpack from being fully immersed.

‘Kanu,’ a voice said finally.

‘Swift. Yes.’

‘You must fight, Kanu. Fight or I will do it for you. Is that understood?’

‘I can do it.’

‘Then do it. I would much sooner spare you the indignity of being puppeteered because you lack the will to overcome your own tiredness.’

‘Fuck you, Swift.’

‘Good. Anger. Anger is an excellent sign. Now put some of that anger into your arms and legs.’

He did, for a little while. He would show Swift that he still had the determination to strike forward, to push through the pain and fatigue. But the effort was temporary, and by the end of it the suit had become a furnace, his own sweat stinging his eyes, his breathing ragged.

‘Kanu!’

‘I’m sorry, Swift. I need to rest.’

There was an interlude, a dream of coolness, and then he awoke. He was still hot, still drained, but he was not in water now. He had come to rest on a warm, dry surface, like a sun-baked boulder. He had taken off his helmet but was still holding it in one hand even as he lay sprawled like a drunkard. Through pained, salt-encrusted eyes he made out Nissa a little to his right. She was on a boulder, too, prone atop its ridged upper surface, head lolling away from him. Her foot dragged through the water.

The boulder moved under him. Beneath a membrane of flexible grey material it was breathing.

Kanu understood. The Risen were ferrying them over the water, to the wheel. Dakota was under him; Hector beneath Nissa. They were lying on the backs of swimming elephants.

The nearer they came, the more impossibly sheer the wheel looked. It ascended vertically for what looked like dozens of kilometres, until finally, resentfully, it began to arc over. Climb that? Kanu thought. Not in a million years, even if there was some way to get from one groove to the next. Could they worm their way up the near-vertical grooves cut into the rim rather than the horizontal ones in the tread? It would be no easier, he reckoned — and after the Risen had brought them this far, he could not countenance abandoning them.

‘Kanu.’ It was Nissa, her voice hoarse.

‘Try not to speak too much,’ he said. ‘We’ll tap into the fluid rations when we reach the wheel.’

‘Look up.’

‘I am looking up.’

‘Not at the wheel, merman. The moons.’

It took his tired, salt-gummed eyes a few moments to pick out the tiny orbs of the moons against the sky’s blue. He had not noticed them before, and had given no thought to how they must appear from Poseidon’s surface, from within the atmosphere. But however he might have imagined them, it was not like this.

‘They’re lining up.’

‘I know.’

‘What does that mean? Is it good or bad?’

‘We’ll find out,’ Nissa said.

He woke again. They were at the wheel, a few scant elephant-lengths from the tread. They had arrived close to the right side of the tread, not far from the right angle between the tread and rim. Kanu felt a shudder of vertigo, imagining the wheel’s continuation beneath the visible surface, plunging down through tens of kilometres of darkening water, enduring pressures beyond anything in his experience on either Earth or Europa. He had never felt vertigo in water before. Water was his element, the place where he felt safest. Water sustained, water provided, water gave him suspension.

Not here.

‘It’s turning,’ Nissa said. ‘I’ve been watching it for a while, and there’s no doubt.’

‘The wheels don’t turn.’ He had no strength for discussion, but the last thing he wanted was for Nissa to pin her hopes on something ridiculous. ‘We scanned them from orbit. Icebreaker would have seen signs of movement.’

‘Not then. Now,’ Nissa said. ‘The moons have changed, so why not the wheels? Besides, we’re close enough to see the grooves clearly now. Close enough to fix on them and watch them — they’re coming out of the water, one at a time, and going up. The wheel’s turning, or rolling.’

From his perch on Dakota’s back, he stared with as much concentration and focus as he could muster. The motion was slow — easy to miss when they were further away, with the rise and fall of the waves to confuse their eyes.

Not now.

It took about three seconds for a metre of the wheel to emerge from the sea. About every thirty seconds, an entirely new groove emerged. He tracked the latest one — watched it inch slowly above the sea, water sluicing out of it, until the next groove came into view.

‘We can get on it,’ Nissa said. ‘We all can.’

‘Yes.’

The Tantors were slower now, their strength ebbing. Kanu put his helmet on, again seeing the world through steam-smeared glass. He slipped from Dakota’s back into the blood-hot bath of the water. He bobbed, forced his limbs into motion. It felt as if the water were turning to something solid, like a cast setting around him. Nissa replaced her helmet and slid off Hector to join him in the water. She looked as exhausted as he felt.

They closed the distance to the wheel, but the last couple of hundred metres were a kind of torture. They were swimming so slowly by then, all of them, that the wheel must have been rolling away at nearly the same speed. They had to fight not only to keep up with it, but also to close the gap. He lost any sense of how long that final closing took — it could have been minutes or hours. All he knew was that when they were finally at the wheel’s side, he had given everything he had.

But at least there was no doubt that it was turning. The wheel made no noise, not even up close, except for the slosh as the water drained out of each kilometre-wide groove. The sloshing was nearly continuous, each newly emerged groove adding to the sound as the one above began to empty. It was like ocean breakers, a lulling, pleasing sound.

The grooves rose out of the water slower than walking pace, but they were only three or four metres from top to bottom — between nine and twelve seconds’ worth of ascent time. After that came a stretch of smooth, flawless surface until the top edge of the next groove appeared. They would have no purchase on that, and no chance to cross from one groove to the next. Once they were in a particular groove, there would be no way off — no way of reversing their decision.

‘Spread out,’ Kanu said, summoning the energy to talk as he trod water. ‘We all want to be on the same groove. No good being one above the other — we may as well be kilometres apart.’

Nissa had swum to within almost touching distance of the wheel. ‘One chance,’ she agreed. ‘That’s all we have. When the ceiling appears out of the water, we’ll swim into the gap — let the floor rise up under us, push us out of the water.’

‘The grooves vary in height,’ Kanu said.

‘Yes.’

‘And we can’t see that height until the floor’s already under us.’

‘By which point it’ll be too late to change our minds.’

‘I know.’

‘And that backwash looks fierce,’ Nissa said. ‘Could easily suck us out again.’

‘There is a significant risk of that occurring,’ Swift added.

‘Do you have something better to offer?’ Kanu asked.

‘Only my very best wishes. I do not think it would help to puppet you — the variables are quite beyond my accounting.’

Swift was right. Until they were inside a groove, there was no telling how grippy or frictionless the walls were going to be. He hoped they could wedge themselves in tight enough to avoid being pulled back by the drain-off. He hoped there would be room for the Risen.

But they would not know until they tried.

‘We must do what we can,’ Dakota said. ‘We have no love of high places. But to be on the wheel will be better than remaining in these waters. Have strength, Hector.’

‘The next groove,’ he said. ‘All of us. Give it everything.’

They spread out — Kanu, Nissa, Hector and Dakota, with a few metres of clear water between each of them. Kanu reached inside himself for the reserves of energy and concentration he hoped had to be there. Once chance, he told himself — all or nothing.

The groove began to appear. Centimetres — tens of centimetres already.

‘Now!’

But the others had seen it as well and were not waiting for his word. Nissa spread her arms for one last push against the water — she was a stronger swimmer than he had ever given her credit for. Kanu found his own burst of strength and pushed himself into the widening space. A metre of the groove was now out of the water. He touched the fingers of one hand against the inner surface and jammed his other hand against the cool ceiling. An instant later, he felt the floor press against his feet. He glanced at Nissa. She was in, twisting around to secure herself as best she could. Beyond her, through eyes stinging with seawater, he saw Hector shunt his massive bulk into the same rectangular space. Dakota had to be behind him, but his vision was too blurred to make out more than a suggestion of motion, a confusion of grey mass and surging water.

Now the lower part of the groove was clearing the sea. He braced against the surge of escaping water, but mercifully it was not as strong as he had feared. And then he was standing, feet on solid ground, hands on the cold interior of the groove.

Safe.

‘Kanu!’

The lower part of the groove was now fifty centimetres above the water, higher than most of the waves.

Nissa was moving away from him, towards the Risen. He saw in an instant what was wrong. Hector was safe — he had made it into the groove and was bracing himself in place with his spine against the ceiling. But Dakota was not quite secure. Her head and forequarters were over the groove’s threshold, but the rest of her was still hanging over the edge. There was a metre of vertical distance now from the bottom of the groove to the surface of the water. Her front legs struggled for traction on the slick surface, her trunk stretching into the groove. Hector had turned around to extend his own trunk out to her. Their trunks met, sheathed tips coiling around each other. Had the elephants not been wearing suits, their trunks might have gripped more readily. But the sheathing was too slippery.

A metre and a half — still rising.

Nissa squeezed past Hector’s bulk. There was only just room for her to do it without leaning dangerously far out into the void. She reached for Dakota, too, closing a hand around the nearest tusk-like protrusion of her helmet. Kanu in turn reached for Nissa, fearful that she was about to be pulled back into the sea.

The wheel was still turning. The lowest part of the groove was now two metres out of the water. He could see Dakota’s hindquarters — her legs struggling to find a grip on the smooth surface between the grooves.

Still the wheel turned.

‘Let go!’ he shouted. ‘You’re rising too far! Fall back into the water and try again on the next groove!’

‘Help me,’ Dakota said.

Other than the fading roar of the water sluicing from further down the groove, there was no sound beyond their own breathing, their own grunts and bellows of exertion, their own voices.

Dakota was completely out of the water now — her whole weight borne by her forequarters. A metre between her tail and the sea. Another metre every three seconds.

She was starting to slide.

‘Hector! You have to let go! Much higher and the fall will kill her!’

‘I cannot,’ Hector said.

Kanu tugged at Nissa, risked a moment of imbalance to free her hand from Dakota’s tusk. But she could only have held on for a second longer in any case, for the tusk was smooth and slick, offering no friction to her palm.

‘Dakota,’ Kanu said. ‘Fall. Get into the next groove. We’ll find you. It isn’t over.’

‘It is,’ she said.

‘No!’ Nissa said.

‘Is all forgiven?’ Dakota asked.

‘Yes,’ Kanu said, horrified at the growing space beneath her, the drop she was about to take. ‘Yes. All is forgiven. For ever and always. All is always forgiven.’

‘Think well of me. Do well by Hector. Think kindly of the Risen.’

‘We will.’

Dakota slipped from the groove. Had Hector not relinquished his hold on her trunk, he would have been pulled over the edge. As it was, the sudden easing of tension sent him falling back into the groove’s depths. Kanu pulled Nissa to him, wrapped his arm around her waist. He dared look down. He watched Dakota fall, tumbling away with her belly to the sky. By then, the next groove must already have emerged from the water. An elephant could never have survived such a fall on Earth. On Poseidon, where the gravity was half as strong again, the impact with the water would be even more severe.

He leaned into the void, one hand around Nissa, the other gripping the right angle above his head where the top of the groove met the smooth surface of the wheel. He looked for some sign of Dakota, hardly daring to hope that she might have survived. But if her body resurfaced, Kanu was too high up to see it when it did.

Yes, of course she was forgiven.

Forgiveness was the least he could offer.

They were safe, for now — or at least out of the ocean.

The wheel would keep carrying them higher, and eventually the air would thin and cool. But facing that was better than boiling to death in the ocean, or being eaten by sea-monsters, Kanu told himself, and at least the wheel gave them time and the possibility, however slim, of rescue from above. Dared he pin his hopes on that?

No — not yet. Focus instead on the present moment, the immediate practicalities of survival. Secure in the groove, there was no chance of their falling out again now. Indeed, as the wheel turned, so the gradually steepening angle of the groove’s floor made it even less likely. Granted, it was a small thing. In an hour they had risen no more than a kilometre, by Kanu’s reckoning.

He was still breathing the ambient air. It was cooler now — almost pleasant compared to the heat of the ocean’s surface. It would keep cooling as they rose, though, cooling and thinning, and before very long it would not be breathable. They had both needed to tap into suit air and power while swimming, and now — according to the indicator on Kanu’s wrist — he had no more than fifteen hours of life-support remaining. Nissa’s suit was down to a similar margin. Worse than that, some of her suit systems were showing error conditions, presumably because of exposure to the water.

Nissa was standing at the edge of the groove, a sheer drop beyond her feet.

‘We won’t have to freeze or suffocate if we don’t want to. There’s always that.’

‘Perhaps we’d have been better off in the ocean,’ Kanu said, fiddling with his suit’s communication settings.

‘I’ll regret not knowing more about those moons,’ said Swift, who was sitting on the very edge of the groove, his stockinged legs dangling over the drop. He had his pince-nez glasses in one hand, squinting against some microscopic blemish on the lens. ‘But I cannot be too ungrateful. To have come this far, to have touched the wheel itself — that’s more than we had any right to expect.’

‘We’ve learned nothing,’ Kanu said, overcome by a sudden fatalistic gloom. ‘The wheel’s still a closed book. Just because we’re in it doesn’t mean it’s suddenly revealed its secrets.’

‘The grooves are a form of Mandala grammar,’ Swift said. ‘I don’t have to understand it to recognise it. Although a little of the meaning keeps suggesting itself to me rather coyly, but I can’t quite bring it into focus. Do you have the same sense of the numinous?’

‘Something came through to us,’ Nissa said. ‘Some knowledge, some information, when we felt the Terror. Just as Chiku told us.’

‘Secrets and imponderables.’ Swift settled the pince-nez back into place on the bridge of his nose. ‘I rather feel for Hector. Do you think he will be all right?’

Hector was balled up at the back of the groove. The Tantor had said nothing since Dakota’s death, and they had been careful not to press him. It was not necessarily some fault of his suit, Kanu decided, but the terrible weight of a loss none of them could begin to appreciate. She had been more than a matriarch to the Risen. She had been the spearhead of a new order of being — a vanguard of promise and power.

‘We’re all going to die, Swift,’ Kanu said, allowing a little of his anger to flash through. ‘None of us is going to be “all right”. And you being in our heads isn’t going to change that.’

‘You are a rational animal, Kanu,’ Swift said amiably. ‘You would not have placed us in this position unless you thought there was some hope of survival. You know full well that the wheel is turning, and that it will take us higher.’

‘Our suits don’t have enough life left in them. It’s just a question of which kills us first — the cold or the thinning air.’

‘Or, as Nissa said, you can choose the drop. But you won’t do that. Neither of you has it in you to abandon Hector. For which I am glad.’

‘Glad?’ Kanu asked.

Swift nodded to the sky beyond the groove, where a bright moving spark was crossing the darkening zenith.

‘That, if I’m not very much mistaken, is a Chibesa signature.’

Something crackled across his helmet channel.

‘Kanu Akinya,’ he said.

Another crackle, a silence, then a broken, nervous voice — as if she had not even dared hope she might receive an response and was not quite ready to trust what her ears were telling her.

‘This is Goma. Are you all right?’

‘For the moment. Ask me again in fifteen hours. Is that your ship we can see?’

‘It must be. We can see your thermal signatures on the wheel — we tracked you from the moment you splashed down. The wheel’s bringing you higher — it looks like it’s rotating!’

‘Not that it’ll do us much good, I’m afraid, but it felt better than staying in the sea.’

‘You’re not out of options just yet, Kanu. You’re coming up to us, and we have every intention of coming down to meet you. Can you hold out for those fifteen hours? You may need every last minute of them.’