Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

When the call from Goma was done, Swift was still there, leaning casually against the back wall of the shelf. He was the only one of them not dressed in a spacesuit, his stockinged legs crossed over each other, his pince-nez perched on the tip of his nose, and he was peering at Kanu with a certain provisional interest, as if he were a new species of sea creature discovered during some nautical expedition.

‘You really think my use for you is so shallow?’ Swift arched an eyebrow, inviting an answer.

Kanu answered subvocally, sparing his companions this exchange. ‘When the moment came, you couldn’t wait to show your true colours. You sided with that other machine — took events into your own hands.’

‘Only because I had the best interests of a friend in mind, Kanu. Need I labour the point?’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘When you attempted to kill yourself on Icebreaker , I intervened. I did so because our twin fates were intertwined — if you died, so would I. But I also did so because you are my friend, and I believed that the situation was not quite as hopeless as you perceived it to be. I had, after all, already installed my image inside Icebreaker by then. I knew there was a faint chance of intervention, albeit under circumstances I had yet to foresee. But I also made a mistake. I denied you the free will I had always promised would be yours. And when you made me promise that I would not take similar action again, I held to that vow. Scrupulously. Even when it cut against every sensible instinct in my head. I mean, your head.’

‘That’s not funny, Swift.’

‘It’s not meant to be. My point is, I did not stop you entering Poseidon. We had the opportunity to turn around and only the lives of the Risen complicated that picture. To me they were a distraction, a nuisance. Statistical noise, interfering with my — what did you call them? Lofty ideas?’

‘The Risen are living beings. People.’

‘I came here to know the minds of machines, not mammals.’

‘You still had an incentive for carrying on. That was your opportunity to experience the Terror, to touch the M-builders’ minds. There was always something in it for you.’

‘Along with an excellent chance of dying. I would much sooner have abandoned the expedition, cooperated with Goma and organised an expedition under our own terms, rather than those of the Risen or the Watchkeepers. That point is moot, though. Did I break my vow?’

‘No,’ Kanu admitted, with a certain sullenness.

‘When everything was at stake, when my oldest human friend was about to throw himself into the fire for the sake of some elephants? Did I so much as tip the scales of his free will?’

‘No,’ Kanu said again.

‘Louder. I need to hear it.’

‘No. You didn’t. You kept your vow.’

‘Well, then,’ Swift said. ‘With that unpleasantness behind us, let us discuss the base cause of your present malaise.’

‘My malaise?’

‘I speak not of your present mental disequilibrium, occasioned as it is by the uncertainty surrounding Nissa’s condition. That is to be expected, and like you I hope fervently that she will come through this ordeal unscathed. My concern is a larger one — that the Terror has driven a gaping wound into your psyche, one that time and tide may struggle to repair.’

‘You were in my head when we felt the Terror, Swift. You got a dose of that as well. Don’t tell me otherwise.’

‘Yes, and the experience was every bit as bracing as I anticipated. A cold, hard blast of reality.’ Swift bounded to the edge of the groove with a chilling indifference to the drop beyond his toes. ‘What could be colder than being made to feel the utter futility of existence? To know that not only is there no meaning to anything, but there never can be? That life itself is completely devoid of purpose? That nothing will be remembered? That despite our grandest efforts, our boldest endeavours, nothing can or will ever be preserved? That the kindest acts are doomed to be forgotten, along with the cruellest? All loves, all hates erased from the record? Yes, what could be worse than that?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all in the whole of creation. And if death troubles me — which, I am pleased to say, it most certainly does — then the idea of not even being remembered, not even leaving the tiniest quantum ripple in the wake of the coming vacuum fluctuation… well, that is a great deal more than troubling. We live by our deeds, whether we are machines or people or elephants. And if our deeds are meaningless and forgotten, what does that make us?’

‘Nothing,’ Kanu answered, fiercely enough that he spoke the word aloud. ‘Pointless interactions between matter and energy, doomed to be erased. That’s the message, Swift. That there’s no meaning. That we don’t matter.’

‘No,’ Swift answered, with corresponding force. ‘We do matter. This truth does not rob us of meaning — it gives it back to us. It liberates us from the burden of posterity, from the burden of deluding ourselves that our acts have some chance of outlasting eternity. If we are kind to each other now, it’s not because we’re hoping to be remembered well, to be lauded in some great accounting of things. It’s not because we want to be rewarded for our behaviour, or to be admired for the wonderful things we did during our brief span of existence. Exactly the opposite! Now that we know there is no chance of that, our deeds have no higher meaning than the context of the moment in which they occur. One decent deed, one kind gesture, enacted without thought of recompense or remembrance, performed in the full and certain knowledge that it will be forgotten, that it cannot be otherwise — that single deed refutes the entire message of the M-builders. They were wrong! There is no Terror, only enlightenment! Only liberation! And we will continue to refute their message with every gracious act, every decent thought, every human kindness — until the moment the vacuum rips.’

‘Just a fancy speech, Swift. That’s all it is.’

‘More than a speech, Kanu. A viable moral strategy for negating the M-builders’ nihilism. It’s a choice. A question of free will. Do you choose it, or reject it?’

‘You’re a machine,’ he said. ‘How could you ever understand?’

‘I was a machine,’ Swift answered. ‘Once. But then I spent too long in the company of the living.’

‘Over here,’ Eunice said sharply.

Kanu turned. He had been so wrapped up in his conversation with Swift that he failed to notice Ru was no longer standing. She had slumped over at the back of the ledge and was lying akwardly on her side. It was not the posture of someone who had sat down carefully with the intention of closing their eyes or conserving energy. He saw in the same glance that none of her suit’s status indications were glowing.

Eunice was quickly at her side, easing her into a more natural position with her back braced against the rear of the ledge, her legs stretched out before her.

‘What is it?’ Kanu asked.

‘I don’t think it’s the concussion — she was lucid enough when Goma called. That bump she took coming down here must have done more harm to her suit than we realised. There’s been a sudden systems failure.’

‘She said nothing.’

‘Then she couldn’t have got much warning. Wait a second.’ Eunice was repeating the exercise she had already performed on Nissa, flipping open hatches in the chest pack, squinting through her own faceplate with steely concentration, not wanting to miss a detail.

‘We still have oxygen and power,’ Kanu said.

‘That won’t help her. There’s a system failure deep in the pack, maybe a secondary leak here as well. It must have opened up as the ambient pressure reduced. She’s in trouble, Kanu. Plugging in more air and power won’t help — the fault’s too extensive. Did you see her go down?’