Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

Some of Ru’s fire had died away now, too. Perhaps she sensed Goma’s sincerity and her obvious anguish at being forced to conceal something from her.

‘What is it?’

‘Someone wants to hurt us.’

‘Who?’

‘That’s all I know. As I said, we’d be better off talking in our room. Mposi knows more — that’s why he came to see me.’

After a lengthy silence, Ru said, ‘Whatever it is, you should have told me.’

‘I know.’

‘Never again. No more secrets. Understood?’

‘Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson.’

‘Good.’ But Ru laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I can understand how you’d feel, with Mposi putting you on the spot like that. Fucking politician — I’m sorry, but that’s still what he is — they think they own the rest of us. Mostly because they do.’

‘If he wasn’t my uncle, maybe I wouldn’t have listened.’

‘That only makes it worse. Relying on family loyalty — playing the same old Akinya tune. When will you lot get over yourselves?’

‘I already have,’ Goma said.

‘I’ll need a lot more convincing of that. How long has this been playing out?’

‘Since before the Watchkeeper.’

‘Fuck.’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds. Mposi mentioned it once, then it appeared to die away. I almost stopped thinking about it. That’s the honest truth.’

‘Until now?’

‘He’s received some news — that’s why we were speaking.’

They made their way back to their room, the tension between them lessened but still there, Goma feeling she was only one mistake away from never being forgiven again. And perhaps that was justified, because Ru had surely earned better than this.

At their door, Goma realised she had left the room in such a hurry that — against her usual habit — she had not snapped her bangle on. Ru had hers, though, and the door opened for them.

But Mposi was gone.

‘He said he had something to tell me,’ Goma said.

‘And maybe he decided we’d need some time alone after that little incident. It’s late, anyway, and I’m tired.’

‘I think I’ll go and see him.’

‘Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.’

Ru was right, of course, and Goma was in no mood to find something else to argue about. She conceded the point with a weary nod, glad that at least they were back in their room and speaking. She would talk to Mposi tomorrow, and all would be well.

The ice was twenty kilometres thick; twenty thousand seconds of travel once Nissa’s ship had reached a vertical-descent angle. From the first moment of immersion, the melted ice screening windows and cameras, there was nothing to see except the graphs and numbers of cockpit displays tracking their progress. For the most part they were heading straight down, but now and then Nissa steered them around some rocky or metallic thing entombed in the ice, preferring caution to bravado. ‘There are whole ships down here,’ she said, with a sort of reverent awe in her voice. ‘They crash-landed, began to melt into the ice whether they wanted to or not. They’ll still be here when the sun swallows Mars!’

After a while, Nissa felt she could rely on the automatic pilot. She had not slept since their arrival at Jupiter and wanted to be as alert as possible once they were through the ice.

‘We’ll pop out in another two hours unless the radar picks up something we need to steer around. You should grab some rest, too. We’ll be busy little beavers once we break through, and our forty-eight hours will be over before you know it.’

It was sleep she meant rather than two hours of lovemaking. Agreeing with the eminent good sense of this proposal, Kanu retreated to his cabin. He doubted he would be able to sleep for the entire two hours but decided to make the best of what was on offer. Everything was flipped now, up and down reversed compared to deep space, and the noise of the heating and traction devices was louder and less regular than the in-flight systems. But he would adapt to one set of circumstances as readily as another.

‘It’s time.’

The voice was clear, quiet and quite unmistakably his own.

Kanu froze — every doubt, every bad thought confirmed in that one impossible utterance. He was alone in his chamber, Nissa doubtless already asleep in hers. There was no immediate sense of another presence in the room. But he knew how the voice of his own thought processes sounded, and this was different. An acoustic and spatial shift, the auditory information reaching his brain along the usual sensory and neural channels, as if it had been whispered into his ear.

‘I said, it’s time.’

He whispered back, ‘I heard you.’

‘You don’t have to speak aloud. That would get awkward very quickly. Simply think your responses clearly.’ The voice paused — almost as if giving him a moment to adjust to its presence. ‘How much do you understand or remember?’

‘I remember Mars. I remember nearly dying on Mars. This is about that, isn’t it?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’ve done something to me. I’ve been feeling as much for days. You put something in me, changed me in some way. My meeting Nissa — that never was a coincidence, was it?’

‘If you are a puppet, Kanu, then you should know your puppeteer. Will you do me a small favour?’

‘Do you a favour?’

‘All right, for both of us, then. Move to your private washbasin and run the hot water until the mirror steams up. Can you do that for me?’

Of course he could. If it meant getting an answer, or even just the beginning of an answer, he would oblige. He allowed the mirror to begin to mist, greying out his reflection.

‘Now — neatly and precisely — draw an equilateral triangle in the steam, flat side down. Position yourself exactly in front of the triangle and look at nothing else.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a visual mnemonic trigger. Your memories will unlock in their own good time, but this will accelerate the process. Do it, Kanu. What do you have to lose?’

He recognised the room instantly. It was where Swift had first allowed him sight, and where he had first learned of the deaths of Dalal and Lucien. He recalled sitting in a chair, and a view of the robot city beyond the window.

Now he was in the chair again. This time there was a difference, though: he was looking at himself, seeing his body from the outside.

Seeing himself, he realised again, from Swift’s point of view — as he had during the dream of the operating theatre.

‘This is complicated.’ The version of him seated in the chair was addressing the version haunting his own memory.

‘Very complicated, and very delicate, but we need to get the essential facts straight before we go any further. Something bad happened to you on Mars. Call it a terrorist incident, call it a stupid accident. Either way, the machines did not engineer it. But there are never truly any accidents, just unforeseen opportunities.’

‘Who am I?’

The seated counterpart of himself raised a silencing hand. ‘I’m you. I am you before some of your memories are — or were — deliberately blocked from conscious recall. That’s so you can leave Mars and pass our colleagues’ scrutiny before returning safely to Earth. It’s your choice. My choice. Our choice.’

Kanu had a hundred questions, but he allowed the speaker to continue.

‘After your accident but before your return to the embassy, Swift confided something in you. Swift revealed to you knowledge obtained by the Evolvarium, knowledge of a potentially destabilising nature. Shall I remind you of what Swift told you, Kanu? Briefly, then. The machines have intercepted a signal from deep interstellar space. No one here knows about it — yet — because it was never aimed at our solar system. The signal was directed at Crucible, around Sixty-One Virginis. Its point of origin, as near as can be determined, is another solar system about seventy light-years from Crucible. That system is Gliese 163. It has never been of interest to you, the machines or anyone else. No human expedition has gone anywhere near it. And yet someone there has sent a message, and the message was aimed at Crucible, and the message appears to be urgent.’