Poseidon's Wake

CHAPTER FIVE

Goma was suffering another medical examination by the expedition’s physician, Dr Saturnin Nhamedjo, when the call came in from Ru. She was to leave Guochang and return with all haste to the sanctuary. Goma made her apologies to the gentle, accommodating Nhamedjo and was soon on her way back to the elephants. A year ago she would have taken the aeroplane, but her role in the expedition brought a number of new perks, chief among which was the ability to hire a government flier at short notice. She took the little beetle-shaped machine from Guochang, vectoring around Mandala to avoid a bad weather system. When Goma arrived at the facility, Tomas explained that Ru was already out with the Alpha herd.

‘That bad?’ she asked.

‘Worse, I think. You’d better not hang around. Take the buggy — it’s already loaded up for the day.’

Goma raced back out into the heat and humidity. She gunned the electric vehicle hard, nearly tipping it over on the bends, dust pluming up from its wheels as she sped away from the compound. It only took her twenty minutes to reach Alpha herd. She slowed and then stopped, taking in the scene from a slight elevation. From the disposition of the elephants, it was obvious that something was wrong. They were turned inwards, an audience facing some central spectacle. Goma left her buggy and walked the remaining distance, passing Ru’s vehicle on the way. They were so deeply preoccupied that she was nearly with them before any of the elephants deigned to acknowledge her presence.

Goma paused to allow the young mothers and calves to accept her arrival. A calf brushed against her with boisterous disregard, but the older elephants shared none of its exuberance. They were making low, agitated rumbles, with much mutual trunk-touching taking place, as if the herd members sought constant reassurance.

Goma scanned the familiar forms, noting body size, tusk disfigurement, ear shape.

She moved carefully between the adults, conscious of their size and heightened mood. She had rarely been the target of elephant aggression. In their present state, though, it would not take much provocation to draw a bad-tempered response. She was small and they were large, and nothing in the universe would change that basic asymmetry in their relationship. They could crush her between breaths.

At the focus of the gathering lay a dying elephant. Goma recognised her immediately: the elderly Agrippa, the herd leader. Even as she moved through the standing elephants, Goma had been aware of Agrippa’s absence among their ranks, so unlike this dutiful matriarch.

‘You’re in time,’ Ru said.

Agrippa lay on her side, her breathing laboured. Ru knelt at her head, one hand on Agrippa’s forehead, the other dabbing a wet sponge around the elephant’s eye. Agrippa’s trunk lay limp as a hose on the ground, only the end twitching up as Goma approached.

She knelt next to Ru. Ru had brought a pail of water and there was another sponge in the pail. Goma wrung most of the water from the sponge and then touched it gently to the end of Agrippa’s trunk.

‘When did this happen?’ she asked, keeping her voice low, as if there was a risk of the elephants understanding.

‘She was on her feet at dusk yesterday. Overnight, this.’

Agrippa had been ailing for many seasons, slowly losing her strength. But she had retained her authority as matriarch, and Goma had allowed herself to think that the elephant would go on until at least after her departure, that her death was a problem she need not face.

‘Thank you for calling me.’

‘I knew you’d want to be here.’ Ru recharged her sponge, the water in the pail already turning dusty. ‘As soon as I saw how bad things were, I called you.’

‘There’s nothing we can do, is there?’

It was a rhetorical question. She knew the answer as well as Ru.

‘Make things as easy as possible. Keep her eyes from drying, keep the sun off her. I should have told Tomas to send some blankets out with you.’

‘I think he did. The buggy was pretty well loaded.’

‘She’s been so strong,’ Ru said, pausing at a catch in her voice. ‘I thought she’d endure longer than this. Even when I knew she was ill, I didn’t think it would be so sudden.’

‘She was putting up a show of strength,’ Goma said. ‘For the sake of the herd.’

‘As always.’

After a moment, it occurred to Goma to ask, ‘How long have you been here, Ru?’

‘You’re cross I didn’t call you sooner?’

‘No, I’m worried that you’ve been here hours and hours without thinking of yourself. You brought water for Agrippa, but I don’t see anything for you.’

‘There’s water in my buggy.’

Goma had passed the other vehicle long before she reached the herd. She doubted Ru had been back to it since reaching the fallen matriarch. ‘Wait here,’ she said, risking placing a hand on Ru’s shoulder by way of comfort.

She was as quick as she could be, but not so hasty that her movements would further disconcert the herd. In Ru’s buggy she found water flasks and a wide-brimmed hat. A little further back, where she had parked her own vehicle, she found a pair of survival blankets and a box of emergency rations. She bundled everything into the blankets and headed back to Ru.

Ru took her flask distractedly at first, as if being reminded to drink were a nuisance. But after she had swallowed a mouthful, she gulped the rest in sudden thirst.

‘Thank you,’ she said, with a certain wariness, as if the words might put her in some unspecified debt to Goma.

‘It’s all right. I’ve got these blankets, too. They should keep her a little cooler.’

The blankets only covered part of the elephant, but they did the best they could to make her comfortable. Goma opened the ration kit and showed Ru the contents, then tore the foil from an energy bar and bit into it.

‘I wonder if there’s more we should do,’ Ru said, wiping her mouth. ‘Then I wonder if we’re already doing too much. Prolonging something that shouldn’t be prolonged.’

‘You couldn’t just leave her,’ Goma said. ‘I know you. And this is a kindness, so don’t start doubting yourself. All you’re doing is easing things for her, not making it worse. Seriously, how long has it been?’

‘Seven hours. Maybe eight. I arrived just after sunrise.’

‘Then in a little while I want you to go back to the buildings. I bet you didn’t bring your medicines, did you?’

‘She’s what matters now.’

‘No, you matter, too — to me, anyway. You drive back and I’ll stay here. We can take turns holding vigil.’

‘I won’t leave her.’

‘She could be like this for days.’

‘I think it will be faster. Her breathing’s weaker than it was a few hours ago.’

‘All the same, you still have to think of yourself.’ Goma allowed her hand to rest on Ru’s shoulder again. It was what one colleague would do for another, she told herself, a gesture of emotional support that had nothing to do with their shared history.

‘I’m all right. But I was getting a little dehydrated. I didn’t realise it until now.’

Two of the senior females had come closer while this exchange took place, testing their trunks against the rise and fall of Agrippa’s ribcage. It was as if they needed validation that their matriarch had not yet taken her final breath, drawing the air of this alien world into her lungs one last time.

‘They know,’ Goma said.

‘Of course.’

Of all the animals, only elephants had a sophisticated understanding of death. They knew the difference between breath and bones. They had their own customs of grief and remembrance. More than once, Goma had found herself wondering if it was precisely this apprehension of mortality that had primed the elephants for taking the next step on cognition’s ladder, a rung up to language and sentience. To know death was to know time, to know the past and the future. Most creatures were bound entirely to the present moment, blissful prisoners of an ever-moving now. They knew hunger or anger, contentment or lust, but they did not know doubt or longing or regret.

Elephants knew that their tomorrows were not numberless, that each day was a gift. In that awareness lay both their majesty and their tragedy.

Ru would not be persuaded to leave her vigil for more than the few minutes necessary to wander to the bushes to relieve her bladder. On the way back, she stopped at her buggy, washed her hands and face and hair and scraped dust from her eyes. She refilled the portable water flasks and found extra rations, tucked into a forgotten compartment. As the sun moved, they adjusted the blankets.

Ru was right, Goma decided. After two hours, even she had noticed that Agrippa’s breathing had deteriorated.

The knowledge had communicated itself to the other elephants, too. The next-oldest Alpha-herd females, Arpana and Agueda, appeared to be assuming the role of matrons at a deathbed, ushering the other elephants to their matriarch’s side and ensuring that none lingered at the expense of another. Even the younger males looked more sombre in mood than when Goma had arrived. Armistead, the male calf who had nearly knocked her down, was emulating the trunk-touching of the older animals. He might not have understood the significance of the affair any more than a human child grasped the deeper implications of a human funeral, but Goma could not help but be moved by the sense of shared observance. Ru was right. They knew.

What were we thinking? Goma wondered to herself. Why did we ever think that elephants needed to be more like us and less like themselves?

Soon the hour was upon Agrippa. They had moved the blankets again and again, but during the course of the afternoon her breathing had grown progressively less detectable, her eye responses weaker, her trunk almost still. They continued their ministrations, sponging her skin and eyes, offering what solace they could with the gentle laying on of their hands. Until the moment when Ru said: ‘She’s gone.’

Goma had felt it, too, but not had the courage to say so for fear that voicing her suspicion might be enough to make it real.

‘Yes, she is.’

Ru could not stop moving the sponge across Agrippa’s face. Feeling the same impulse, Goma shifted the blankets again. There had been no convulsive final breath, no obvious marker of life’s passing. It had simply happened, as steadily and irrevocably as the movement of the sun.

But she noticed a shift in the other elephants’ behaviour. The laying on of trunks had become more desperate. They were touching and prodding her with trunks and feet now, evidencing a forcefulness that to a human’s sensibilities appeared almost indecent. It was as if they were angry at what she had done and wished to scold her back to life. They know, she thought again. They know but they do not fully understand. That will take time.

‘Thank you,’ Ru said, and for a moment Goma thought her words were addressed to the matriarch. Then Ru added, ‘I wanted you to be here. I hoped you’d come, but I wasn’t sure you would.’

‘I’m glad I made it in time. I’m so sorry, Ru. We knew this day was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier.’

‘She was a good elephant. Whoever accepts her place will have a lot to live up to. I’ve changed my mind, by the way — I’m coming with you.’

Ru barely drew breath between sentences. Goma heard the words, but her natural reaction was to doubt them, or search for a different meaning.

‘With me where?’

‘To Gliese. I made my mind up a couple of days ago, and I would have told you sooner or later.’ Ru was at last able to rise from the ground, scuffing dirt from her knees. ‘I suppose I wanted to live with my decision for a while, to see if I still liked it.’

‘I’m… sorry.’ Goma barely knew how to respond. ‘Of course I want you to come, but I don’t think it’s possible now. They’ve filled all the slots.’

‘I’ve already spoken to your uncle. He was the first person I discussed this with.’ Ru gave an easy shrug. There were dark patches under her armpits, inverted triangles like two little maps of Africa. ‘I know I was meant to be removed from consideration, but I think leaving me on the list was Mposi’s way of giving us a chance of reconciliation.’

‘I don’t—’ Goma started.

‘They had offered my slot to another candidate, but it turned out there was a question over his commitment — when push came to shove, he didn’t want to go, so they’ve been scrambling around to find someone else. When I asked Mposi if I could be allowed back onto the expedition, he said it would solve a number of difficulties.’

Goma shook her head, caught between joy and irritation. ‘I talk to Mposi almost every day — he never said a thing!’

‘I told him not to until I’d thought things over. He was just doing as I asked. You can be cross, if you like, but don’t blame him.’ She squinted at Goma with her tired, dirt-kohled eyes. ‘You are pleased, aren’t you?’

‘I’m… shocked. And pleased, yes. More than pleased. I’m delighted. This is… the best news I could have hoped for. Please tell me you’re certain about this. I couldn’t bear the disappointment if you change your mind.’

‘When I make my mind up about something,’ Ru said, ‘it tends to stay made up.’

‘But medically—’

‘Mposi arranged for Doctor Nhamedjo to visit me. There’s not much he doesn’t know about Accumulated Oxygen Toxicity Syndrome — the man practically wrote the textbook on AOTS. Saw exactly how screwed-up my nervous system is, too. But he says with the right medicines, the right care, I could make it through skipover like the rest of you.’

‘It was the Tantors, wasn’t it? What I told you about Travertine’s theory?’

‘I don’t know whether to believe in that possibility or dismiss it out of hand. All I know is that if there’s even the faintest chance of it being true, I want to be part of that.’

Goma looked at Agrippa’s body, wondering if the matriarch’s death had been the decisive factor in Ru’s change of heart. Perhaps she had not truly made up her mind until now.

‘You’ll miss the herd, watching how they move on,’ Goma said.

‘Not really. We haven’t left yet and, in any case, it will be years before we totally lose contact with Crucible. I intend to stay awake for as long as they’ll let me.’

Goma hardly dared ask the next question, the one uppermost in her thoughts. If Ru had committed to the expedition, did that mean she had also renewed her commitment to their relationship? To ask now, even in the most indirect of ways, would be unforgivable. There was opportunity enough for that, in their last months on Crucible.

Goma felt herself beginning to cry, an expression of both joy at Ru’s news and inexpressible sorrow at the loss of the elephant. But the joy and sadness mingled, each colouring the other, and she knew all would be well, given time.

‘I could never have faced this without you.’

‘Yes you could,’ Ru said. ‘Because you’re strong and stubborn and you don’t need me as much as I need you. But that’s all right. You get me as well. And if it’s okay with you, I’d still like to be your wife.’

Soon the last months were upon them, and then the last weeks. Goma expected Ru to express misgivings as the day of departure approached, but in fact she was resolute, refusing to admit to the slightest of doubts. Perhaps it was a bluff, but if so it was an exceedingly persuasive one.

Goma wished she shared the same resolve. As the days counted down, the prospect of departure began to take a steepening toll on her emotions. She found herself dwelling on aspects of her world that she had until then taken for granted, appreciating them anew now that she knew they would be taken from her: the specific seasonal tang of the sea breezes at this time of year, heavy with their cargo of microorganisms; the swollen sun at dusk, ripening as it met the horizon; the horsetail patterns of clouds; the glint and glimmer of the rings, which — their origin aside — were unquestionably beautiful. Even the constellations, disfigured and displaced from their classical forms — they would suffer a further estrangement from the vantage of Gliese 163. Soon there would be a final morning, a final afternoon, a final sunset. She measured her life by these thoughts and then reprimanded herself for not simply enjoying such pleasures while she still could. The thought of leaving Crucible left her numb with self-recrimination, stung by a sense that she was committing an act of grave betrayal to the world itself.

She usually felt better after speaking to Ndege.

‘You adjust,’ she told her daughter. She had said the same thing, time after time. ‘That’s what happens. My mother left Earth and never saw it again. But she lived a life, and she never looked back over her shoulder. You’ll do the same.’

‘It’s going to tear me apart, the day I go.’

‘It will. But you’ll heal. We all heal.’

They had been allowed to walk in the park, under discreet surveillance, but for some reason Ndege had insisted on Goma coming back to the house. Now they were alone at her table, Goma quietly aware of the hour and the fact that she wished to be at the elephant sanctuary before evening.

‘I have to be in Namboze tomorrow,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be back in Guochang in a few days.’

‘I’m sure you will. But before you go, there are a few things I’d like to give you.’

‘You don’t have to. I won’t be able to take very much with me on the ship.’

‘Won’t be able to, or won’t want to?’

Goma did not have an answer for that.

Set on the table was a dark wooden box which Goma did not recognise. Ndege opened its lid, disclosing a nest of tissue paper. She pulled the paper away carefully, setting the wads down next to the box, and then produced six individually wrapped forms. She peeled each from its tissue cocoon and set them down on the table in order of size. They were a family of six wooden elephants, each mounted on a rough black plinth.

‘Have you seen these before?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘They’re very old and very well travelled. They belonged to Eunice, and then Geoffrey, and then my mother, and then me. They’ve never been split up before, this family. But I think the time is right.’ Ndege grouped the elephants into three pairs, each of which consisted of a larger and smaller elephant. She stared at the permutation for a few seconds before making a substitution between two of the pairs.

‘Two will remain with me. Two will go with you, and two will go with Mposi. Good luck charms. I hope the universe bends itself to bring the elephants back together one day. I’m not inclined to mystical thinking, but I’ll allow myself this one lapse.’

‘Thank you,’ Goma said, quietly relieved that the gift was nothing likely to embarrass her. The elephants were small and charmingly carved, and she appreciated the gesture.

‘There’s something else.’

Goma settled back into her chair, chiding herself for thinking it was ever going to be that simple. ‘Is there, now?’

Ndege creaked up from her own chair, went to the bookcase — the same one where she kept the note from Travertine — and came back with three of her black-bound notebooks. She set them down on the table next to the box and the family of elephants.

She offered one for Goma’s inspection. ‘You’ll have seen me with these, but I doubt you’ve ever looked at them closely.’

Goma opened the pages. They were unlined and filled with her mother’s hand. Very little of it was orthodox writing. There were pages and pages of winding angular glyphs, like the patterns made by dominoes. Sometimes there was a line down the middle of a page and symbols on either side of it, cross-linked by a tangle of arrows.

‘This is the Mandala grammar,’ Goma said, stroking a finger down the right-hand column on one of the pages. ‘The language of the M-builders. Right?’

‘You recognise it.’

‘Yes, but that’s not the same as understanding it, the way you can.’

‘You needn’t blame yourself. They’ve made it difficult. Books locked away in libraries, direct access to the Mandala tightly controlled…’ Ndege shook her head in disgust.

‘What are these other symbols?’ Goma asked, indicating the left-hand column, which appeared to be made up of stick figures in various poses, headless skeletal men with squiggles and zigzags for limbs. ‘They’re not part of the Mandala grammar, are they?’

‘No — these are elements in the Chibesa syntax.’

‘Which is…?’

‘The set of formal relationships underpinning both classical and post-Chibesa physics.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Goma was staring at the cross-linking lines, the arrows and forks implying a logical connection between the two sets of symbols, the Chibesa syntax and the Mandala grammar. ‘One of these is the alien writing we found on Crucible. The other is… there can’t be a connection, Mother. It’s a human invention. Chibesa invented the syntax to work out her calculations.’

Ndege shot her a look of stern reproval. ‘I know it was a long time ago, but you could at least do Memphis Chibesa the dignity of remembering that he was a man.’

Goma was not sure she had ever heard Chibesa’s first name. It was rather odd to think of this mythical figure being born, like any other human being.

‘Did you know him?’

‘Goodness, no. Memphis died… Well, it was a ridiculously long time before I was born. Eunice knew him, though. Look, there’s no need to rake over old ground here. Just accept that Chibesa lent a helping hand in formulating his theory — that it had its origin in some scratches Eunice found on a piece of rock on Phobos, one of Mars’s moons.’

‘Scratches?’

‘The keys to the new physics. Cosmic graffiti, if you like — a kind of irresponsible mischief-making left by someone or something who neither knew nor cared what the consequences would be, thousands or millions of years later.’

Goma considered, at least provisionally, that her mother might be delusional. Not a word of this had been mentioned in any previous conversation between them, at any point in Goma’s life. But nothing in Ndege’s manner suggested confusion.

‘How… Phobos?’ Goma shook her head, trying to clear a thickening mental fog. ‘What does Phobos have to do with Mandala? The Mandala is the product of a hypothetical alien civilisation — the M-builders. For all we know, the Watchkeepers are something else entirely. Now you’re asking me to accept that Eunice discovered the remnants of another alien culture, centuries before any of this?’

‘We do like our family secrets.’

‘Or our tall stories.’

‘If it was a tall story, it wouldn’t have told me how to talk to Mandala.’ Ndege tapped the notebooks again. ‘It took me years to make that connection, to see the links between the two linguistic structures. Once I did, though, it was like being given a key. I was able to unlock huge tracts of the Mandala’s inscriptions. I understood that the inscriptions were a kind of control interface, an invitation to start making the Mandala work for us.’

‘And that turned out well, didn’t it?’ Goma said, knowing her mother would not take her sarcasm to heart.

‘Accept that I had my insights,’ Ndege said, with a tolerant smile. ‘I realised that the rock carvings were an ancestral form of the Mandala inscriptions — that whoever or whatever left the scratchings on Phobos was there a long, long time before Mandala came into existence.’ Ndege pushed all the notebooks over to her daughter’s side of the table. ‘You’ll take these with you, too.’

Goma looked at the books. Even with the elephants, they only added up to a negligible fraction of her mass allowance. It would cost her nothing to take them on the ship, nothing except pride.

‘I am a biologist,’ she said slowly, as if her mother might somehow have forgotten this salient detail. ‘I know elephants, nervous systems, cognitive tests. I don’t know a single thing about physics or alien language systems.’

‘We’re cut from the same cloth, Goma. If I could make sense of these connections, then I expect no less from my daughter.’

‘You do have copies, don’t you?’

‘I destroyed them shortly before I was detained. I thought it would be safer that way.’

‘Then I can’t take them!’

‘They’re of no conceivable use to me, not now, so I would rather they were in your care. Even if they do end up halfway across the galaxy.’

Goma sensed an easing in her mother, the relief of a burden discharged. She began to wonder how long it had been playing on Ndege’s mind, this business with the books.

‘I can’t go with you and Mposi — that’s settled — but it would have been nice to get some answers. You’ll just have to be my eyes and ears. Rise to the occasion. Roar like a lion. Be an Akinya, like Senge Dongma herself.’

At the door, with the notebooks and two of the elephants in her possession, Goma said, ‘One day they’ll see they were wrong. You never deserved this.’

‘Few of us get the things we deserve,’ Ndege said, ‘but we make the best of what we’re given.’