Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

‘No one really knows what happened,’ Malhi said. ‘Clearly your intervention around Gliese 163 played a part in it. From a causal standpoint, no other explanation is possible. But until we have your own accounting of events…’

‘Don’t expect answers to every question,’ Kanu said, in a tone of friendly warning. ‘We may not have one.’

‘Not even you, Kanu?’ Yefing queried, a notch of doubt pushing into her forehead. ‘Our understanding was that no one had a closer contact than you.’

‘It was Swift, not me,’ Kanu said.

‘But you were there,’ Yefing persisted. ‘The Watchkeeper took you… the Watchkeeper returned you. It was why our medical examination of you had to be unusually thorough.’

‘I was a bystander, that’s all.’

Malhi cleared her throat with a cough. ‘But you do think we are free of them? For ever?’

Kanu smiled at that. ‘Ever’s a long time. I suppose the real test will be when we return to Gliese 163, or when we start making active use of the Mandala network. Perhaps that will draw them back to us. But they won’t necessarily return as our foes.’

‘You are an optimist,’ Yefing said.

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘You could a play a part in these grand adventures,’ Malhi said, as if she wished to brighten his mood. ‘Our rejuvenation methods are the equal of anything from the Age of Babel — superior in some respects. You could be made as strong or young as you desire.’ And she turned to Ru: ‘And your AOTS. It’s curable. Easily done. There’s barely a mention of it in the medical literature these days.’

‘I don’t need it cured,’ Ru said. ‘Unless it’s to help me through another skipover episode.’

Yefing pinched her lips. ‘We use a different process now. There are fewer complications.’

‘Then I’ll be fine. Goma and I only need to live on Crucible until there’s a ship to take us to Earth. Or are you going to tell us we couldn’t afford passage?’

‘You are… celebrities,’ Malhi answered, with a touch of awkwardness. ‘There would be few impediments, if you were determined to leave us. But please make no decisions in haste — you’ve barely arrived.’

The vehicle sped on. They had been passing through residential districts for a while now, sprawling suburbs and precincts, thatches of woodlands, recreational lakes, new building developments. Eventually the houses thinned out into continuous parkland. They passed some kind of sports stadium, a pagoda garden, more woods. Then the vehicle turned onto a tree-lined side road and Goma recognised where they were.

Ndege’s house.

They had kept the area around it undeveloped, and the dwelling itself appeared serenely untouched by the centuries. The walls of the old secured compound were still present, but there was nothing to stop anyone going through the gate — no checkpoint or guards any more. The vehicle slipped through unchallenged and parked between the compound and the house.

They got out, all five of them. Goma studied the house again, searching for traces of time’s hand.

‘You hated her,’ she said quietly, speaking not to Malhi or Yefing as individuals, but in their roles as government operatives. ‘Why didn’t you tear the place down once she was gone?’

‘That was a long time ago,’ Malhi said. ‘Things changed. You should go inside.’

Goma looked at Ru and Kanu, nodding that they should accompany her.

But Kanu raised a hand. ‘I don’t want to intrude.’

‘You came all this way,’ Goma said.

‘And I’ll enter the house shortly. But not until you’ve had a moment or two to yourself.’

He had not spoken for Ru, but after only the slightest hesitation she nodded. ‘Kanu’s right. We’ll be right outside, until you need us.’

‘I need you now.’

‘No,’ Ru said. ‘You only think you do. But you’re stronger than you realise, Goma Akinya. If I didn’t know that before we left Crucible, I know it now. Go on in.’

So she walked to the front door, pushed it open and went on in.

And a thought flashed through her head: Mposi always used to bring her greenbread. I should have brought greenbread.

No one else was in the house, and Malhi and Yefing had remained outside with Ru and Kanu. Inside it was cool and shadowed, with no illumination beyond that which the windows provided. They threw oblongs of brightness across the rooms’ pale surfaces, the walls, the bookcases and furniture and such sparse ornamentation as Ndege had allowed herself. Goma touched a window sill, testing it for dust. She held her fingertip up for inspection. It was immaculate, harbouring not a trace of dirt. Someone had taken pains to keep this place both pristine and exactly undisturbed, as if it were a hallowed public shrine.

Goma moved between rooms. She had never been here without Ndege. Some part of her mind kept trying to impose her on the scene: a suggestion of human presence at the corner of Goma’s vision, dissolving when she turned her gaze upon it. Not a haunting, but the power of memory, the forcefulness of its influence on the present moment.

Nothing was kinder or crueller than memory.

She went to take a book from one of the shelves. But as her hand neared the shelf, a glowing rectangle lit up on a portion of the ajoining wall. Text and images appeared in the rectangle. To her surprise, the text was in a familiar form of Swahili, the wording easily comprehensible. The images were of Ndege, and of things to do with her life. The holoship, her mother Chiku, the early days of the settlement, the Mandala, her experiments in direct communication with it… the ring of rubble that was all that was left of Zanzibar .

Trial, censure, imprisonment.

It was a familiar story, even though the tone of it was not quite what Goma would have expected. Not so much damning and judgemental, as sympathetic: framing her mistakes as understandable errors, rather than as crimes of hubris. Miscalculations, not misdeeds.

This rectangle told only part of the story. As she wandered the rooms, similar patterns of text and image appeared. Sometimes there were moving images and audio recordings, with her mother’s voice whispering softly from the walls of her house.

Goma traced the arc of a life. Ndege had lived for another thirty years after the expedition’s departure. It had not been long enough for her to learn the truth about Zanzibar , but then Goma had never really thought she would. Ndege had been dead long before the expedition reached Gliese 163, and still more years had passed before any news of their findings made its way back to Crucible. There had been no death-bed pardon for her, no easing of her conscience in those final years.

Still, with time, the government had decided to reassess its view of her. With the Watchkeepers gone, and with the news about the second Mandala — and its activation by Eunice — there was now a concerted push to understand and tame this daunting alien technology. It might take decades, centuries, before the Mandalas could be made to sing at humanity’s whim. What was clear, though — and abundantly so, given the content of these biographical fragments — was that Ndege’s work provided the foundation for all subsequent experiments. Need dictated that they build on her accomplishments, and what had once been considered a crime must now be viewed in a new, more clement light.

Goma wanted to accept this tacit forgiveness on its own terms. It was good to know her mother was no longer detested, no longer held morally accountable for a terrible accident. But there was a cynicism here that she could not set aside. It suited the government to build on her work, and therefore her reputation had to be rehabilitated.

But still. Forgiveness was better than opprobrium, wasn’t it?