Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

Goma recounted Eunice’s ideas as best she could. Kanu listened with interest and the occasional wry smile, Goma hoping that the topic was sufficiently diverting to push his grief to one side, at least while they talked.

‘So we’re left with a question,’ she said. ‘Did they do it, or did they fail?’

‘Could we ever know?’

‘The universe hasn’t suffered a vacuum transition. If it had, we wouldn’t be around to debate it.’

‘On the other hand, it might be about to do so and we wouldn’t have so much as an inkling of it. Or it could soldier on for unguessable aeons, always on the verge of collapse but never quite getting there. There’s room for a little history, I think.’

‘The Watchkeepers were denied access to the wheel,’ Goma said, ‘but we were allowed to interact with it. On some level, the M-builders must trust us with the knowledge. Does that mean we should try reaching them?’

‘You mean dig down into quantum reality?’

‘Into the floorboards, Eunice said.’

‘I imagine that might be the work of a considerable number of millions of years. So there’s no immediate rush to make a decision. Not today, at any rate.’

She forced out a smile of her own. ‘Is it hard to live with?’

‘The Terror?’

‘The knowledge. The futility. The end of everything, the pointlessness of every act. Can you go on now they’ve put that in your head?’

Kanu, to his credit, did at least give every sign of considering his answer. ‘Not easily, Goma — I’ll be truthful. I’ve seen it. Felt it, deep in my bones. Not just as some abstract, theoretical result, but as a deep governing truth. I know that everything I see, everything I do, counts for nothing. We could sit here, now, and solve the mysteries of human happiness and all of that would be forgotten, erased, as if it had never happened. Which it may as well not have done.’

‘That sounds unbearable.’

‘It is. But then again, the eternal verities haven’t gone away. I watched my wife die. I saw her brain patterns fade to nothing, and although I know that our lives were meaningless, that neither of us has contributed anything to posterity, I still wept. I wish she were here with me now. I wish I had her in my arms, so I could ask her forgiveness. I would like to be back with her in Lisbon, feeling the sun on our faces, deciding where to eat. And I am hungry, and I have a bruise on my thigh and will be very glad when it heals because it is uncomfortable. So in that sense, I am still a human being, living in the moment, buffeted by wants and needs. Is that enough to build a life around, to carry on living?’

‘Eunice knew the Terror. She found a way.’

‘She was hardly typical.’

‘No, but I don’t think you are, either. We need you, Kanu. You’ve come through something truly momentous. You need to stick around for the rest of us — we need your wisdom.’

‘My wisdom?’

‘Your experience. Whatever you want to call it.’

He acknowledged her point but looked discomforted by it. She wondered what he was thinking.

‘What about you?’ he said. ‘You mentioned Africa, but unless I’m mistaken, you’ve never been to Earth.’

‘Always a first time for everything, including that. Anyway, they have elephants there. I like elephants.’

‘So do I,’ Kanu said. ‘But to be honest, it took me a while to warm to them.’

By the time Travertine fell back into orbit around Orison, the lander had been restocked and made ready for the descent to Eunice’s old encampment. Goma and Ru travelled with Hector, squeezed into the pressurised bay alongside the hammock-suspended Risen, while Vasin handled the descent — a much easier proposition than landing on the wheel, and one which she handled with a certain casualness. Accompanying them were Kanu, Dr Andisa, Peter Grave and Karayan, and the body of Eunice Akinya.

She had been autopsied in orbit. Nothing in Andisa’s examination contradicted Nhamedjo’s original findings, although she made a few discoveries of her own — quirks of anatomy and genetics that betrayed the handiwork of her alien makers, any one of which would have provided sufficient scholarly interest for an entire academic career. Andisa debated with Goma and Vasin about the best way to deal with the body — whether they were being negligent by taking it down to Orison to be buried with the other Risen and were in fact obliged to put it into skipover and return it to human civilisation.

‘You have your scans, your autopsy,’ Goma said without rancor, for she fully understood Andisa’s concerns — she was a scientist, too, not so different from Goma. ‘Some DNA and tissue samples, some blood. I’m afraid they’re the best you’re going to get. This is the way it has to be, Mona.’

‘She expressed a clear wish to be buried with the Risen?’

‘According to Kanu,’ Goma said.

‘Then we must honour that wish.’

Before they landed, they had already made contact with the human skeleton staff left behind after the last visit. Goma, Ru and Vasin suited up and walked from the lander to the camp’s entrance, passing the stone burial mounds on their way. The remaining Tantors — Atria, Mimosa, Keid and Eldasich — had been forewarned about Eunice’s death. Goma nonetheless felt that she had a duty to share the message again in person. In their underground rooms, she and Ru sat and talked for long hours, recounting their memories of Eunice. Death was never mentioned, out of respect for the customs of their hosts. Goma and Ru spoke only of Eunice passing into the Remembering, and they stressed that hers had been a good and brave passing.

It was hard to read the Risen, even now. They appeared satisfied with this account of things. But Goma could not guess at the errors she had made, the myriad small hurts she must have inflicted. All her old knowledge of elephants and Tantors felt obsolete in the presence of these bold new creatures with heads full of language and time.

‘There is another,’ she said, judging that the moment was right. ‘Hector is his name. He was with Dakota. I know that makes him your enemy after everything that happened between you and Zanzibar . But Hector’s on his own now.’

‘Is he here?’ Atria asked.

Goma nodded. ‘In the lander. I wanted to see how you felt before we arranged for him to come here.’

‘You may bring him,’ Keid decided. ‘We will wait.’

It took three hours to arrange this first meeting between the two factions of the Risen, after their long sundering. It was an uneven congress, Goma had to admit — four of them, one of him. At first all were trepidatious, as nervous and hesitant in their way as any wild elephants would be on encountering unfamiliar herd members.

But the awkwardness passed. Trunks were intertwined. The Risen began to speak to Hector. Hector replied.

It was clear to Goma that they had much to talk about. She wondered what she was witnessing in those first moments of cordiality. She hoped it was the beginning of something — a keystone on which the Risen could start the difficult work of becoming a viable line again. She could not count on finding the Tantors of Zanzibar any time soon, if they were recontacted within her lifetime. But they would make the best of what they had, with the best that their genetic science and wisdom could do for these five individuals. Doubtless there would be many setbacks — it would be ominous if there were none. But they had come so far, all of them. They were due some luck.

She allowed herself an optimistic thought: Let the Risen make the best of what they are, and let us all find the best in each other. Humans and Risen — people both.