Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

But the absence of glass left Kanu oddly unsettled, as if it had been omitted purely to throw him off-kilter. On Mars, a thumb’s width of glass had stood between him and death. He had come to depend on the sanctity of glass, to sleep well in its care.

He tried not to disturb Nissa when he returned to their bed.

‘You can’t sleep?’

‘Still on Mars time,’ Kanu said.

‘You’ve been back on Earth for weeks.’

‘It takes a while. Perhaps it’s the Moon. It’s very high and full tonight and I’ve never slept well when it’s bright. I’m a marine organism — we live by the tides.’

‘You mean you’re a creature of water.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Then you should come with me when I take the ship. I’m going somewhere wet.’

He smiled. ‘There aren’t many wet places in the solar system.’

‘Do you like surprises or not?’

‘Sometimes.’ But after a silence, he added, ‘Surely not Europa? Don’t tell me you’re going there?’

‘You’re no fun. You guess too easily.’

‘It was just a guess.’

A cat shrieked across the night. Kanu knew that his chances of sleeping were now hopelessly lost. It would be best to resign himself to that. Before very long, from the telephone masts and solar towers of old Tangiers, the faithful would be called to prayer.

The Al Asnams had been marvellous hosts, but Kanu and Nissa had a world to see and limited time in which to do so. From Tangiers they took the coastal express to Dakar; from Dakar they crossed the Gulf of Guinea to Accra, riding a sleek old clipper ship that had once navigated autonomously but whose sails were now trimmed by a boisterous crew of sea-hardened merfolk. In the evening, as the ship cut through wine-dark waters, Nissa and Kanu sat on deck. They listened to happy shanties about foolhardy mariners and troublesome sirens and fell asleep under equatorial stars. Kanu slept better on the ship than he had in the household, even when they ran into heavy seas off Freetown.

In Accra there was a museum to visit, a modest public affair but nonetheless bright and well maintained. They had six Sunday pieces on permanent display — three paintings, two Maasai-inspired sculptures and a ceramic jug she had bought in a Lunar flea market and glazed with her own designs. Nissa patiently explained the various provenances of these pieces and their relatively minor significance within Sunday’s wider output.

‘Really,’ she said, when they were out of earshot of the museum’s hosts, ‘it’s just an excuse to visit Accra. It’s lovely at this time of year.’

It was, but since Tangiers a disquiet had settled over Kanu’s mood. It was with him at all hours of the day. If it began to slip away, the mere observation of its departure was enough to bring it scuttling back.

They had been married, but that was an earlier part of his life and for years Nissa had barely troubled his thoughts. He would never have wished harm upon her, but equally he had taken no interest in her day-to-day affairs. If she wished to place herself in peril for the sake of intellectual curiosity or academic reward, that was her right; he would have resented Nissa telling him he was taking an absurd risk by living on the surface of Mars. Now they were lovers and companions again, and it was natural that he should take a greater interest in her well-being. But he did not think this breezy affair would last for the rest of their lives. It would come to its natural conclusion, as their marriage had, and they would go their separate ways again. And in time there would be a day during which he did not think of Nissa, and eventually a week, and sooner or later what she did with herself would cease to concern him.

And yet here they were, wandering Accra’s public gardens, and the thought of her travelling to Europa alone drove a knife into him.

Kanu was staring at the jangle of light through a fountain when his anxiety shifted into focus.

It was not precisely Europa that worried him, he realised. Nor was it the notion of Nissa going there in her little ship.

It was a fear of not being there as well.

They caught up with Fall of Night over the Horn of Africa. It was parked in the orbit where Nissa had left it, quietly minding its own business. Like all spacecraft, it had a level of autonomy that would have been unusual or forbidden on the Earth’s surface.

‘I warned you it was small,’ Nissa said as their transfer shuttle completed its final approach.

‘I wasn’t expecting a holoship.’ Kanu was floating at a porthole, restraining himself by his fingertips. ‘Actually, it’s bigger than you led me to expect. Quite an old ship, isn’t it?’

‘Old is good, they say. It’s served me well enough over the years. I’ve splashed out on a few modifications since the last time I used it.’

Fall of Night was a charcoal-coloured arrowhead, sharp at one end and swelling out to a fistful of engines at the other. They docked and boarded, transferring their luggage at the same time. Nissa completed some basic checks and then signalled that the shuttle could be on its way. Kanu quickly orientated himself, exploring the living quarters, the two separate cabins, the command deck. For an old ship, Fall of Night was bright and modern inside. There were a couple of skipover caskets, but they would not be needing those on the hundred-hour cruise out to Jupiter space.

‘I can tell this is your ship,’ he said.

‘I should hope so. There’ll be hell to pay if we’ve docked with someone else’s.’

‘The smells and colours remind me of our old house. I’d forgotten them until now. You chose everything in here, just as you did back then.’

‘You never had much of an opinion, Kanu. It was up to me to make the decisions.’

There were more system check-outs to complete. Kanu could operate a ship but it was clear that Nissa had a great deal more experience than he did, especially with Fall of Night ’s particular idiosyncrasies. He watched over her shoulder, weightless, as she sat buckled into the pilot’s position and reviewed status updates. Screens had petalled around her, bright with diagrams and scrolling tables of numbers as the ship roused itself to full life. Pumps whirred, fuel lines ticked, engines ran through start-up cycles.

‘Why don’t you go and do something useful?’ Nissa asked, twisting away from the screens to look at him. ‘Make us some chai. You’ll be on tea duty until we reach Europa.’

Kanu obliged.

Nissa cut in the engines for departure. They broke orbit at half a gee, then ramped up to one and a half until they were clear of UON jurisdiction.

‘Can you tolerate two gees?’ Nissa asked.

‘If I start make choking noises, you’ll know the answer.’

The engine reached maximum sustainable output. They would be on two gees all the way to Jupiter, flipping for a thrust reversal a little more than halfway to their destination. Nissa had programmed in an aerobrake passage to shave off the rest of their speed. ‘That’ll be bumpy,’ she cautioned, ‘but no worse than those seas off Freetown.’

At night he had the dream again. They were on the converted cyber-clipper, weathering the swell off Freetown. By the dream’s disfigured logic the stars were blazingly bright and clear overhead, even as the sea moved to the thrust and parry of storm winds. The merfolk were singing sea shanties. Nissa and Kanu lounged in deckchairs, a small table set between them. Although the ship rolled and pitched, they were still soldiering on with a game of chess.

The game had reached a decisive moment. Kanu was about to move his knight. He reached to pick up the piece, victory in his sights. But the ship tilted and the knight began to slide across the board, square to square, even though the other pieces were curiously unaffected. Kanu tried to stop it, but his hand moved sluggishly. The knight sped to the board’s edge and toppled off. Still Kanu attempted to catch it. But the knight fell to the deck and continued its slide, out to the drainage slot cut into the ship’s gunwales. Kanu rose from the table and went to the side of the ship. He saw the knight drop into the waves. In an instant he was overboard, in the water, chasing the chess piece. It was sinking again, down into still, stormless black. Kanu could not swim fast enough to catch it. The water was thickening, resisting his passage, turning to iron.