Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

Akinya.

Thus satisfied, the ship opened its secrets to him. It was still cold in the corridors and passageways, but light and warmth were now returning. Displays came on as Kanu walked past them — scrolling updates and complicated diagrams. He had never been aboard this ship before, had played no direct part in its construction, but it felt as familiar as if he was wandering the hallways of a childhood home.

Kanu found his way to the command deck. It was four-fifths of the way along the ship, near the rounded front. The deck would have been spacious for a small crew; for one man, it was outlandish.

But the deck was also extremely simple in its layout, its provisions reduced to the elegant essentials: a single chair, a bank of controls in a horseshoe configuration, an illusion of wide-sweeping windows. In fact — as Kanu well knew — the room was dozens of metres in from the ship’s skin. He surveyed subtle hints of East African influence in the patterning and coloration of his surroundings. Inlays of wood and metal, glowing filaments of green and red and yellow. A selection of small black sculptures set into lit alcoves — Maasai figures, Kanu thought, wondering if they might be Sunday’s handiwork. A bas-relief design of blocky interlocking elephants had been worked into the black framework of his chair. A map of the world radiated out from beneath it, with Africa at its focus.

Kanu settled into the chair, which automatically slithered a restraint across his lap, then tightened it. The horseshoe controls moved obligingly closer to his fingertips. He stared at the sweep of displays and keypads with a sort of numbed recognition, as if seeing it in the first moments of waking.

‘Kanu Akinya,’ he stated, as if following a silent prompt. ‘Assuming control. Request departure readiness.’

The ship answered in the tongue with which he had addressed it. It spoke Swahili with a soothing tone, as if there could be no problem, no contingency, for which it were not magnificently equipped.

‘Welcome, Kanu. Systems are transitioning to operational condition. Final fault checks and calibration procedures are now in progress. Chibesa core is initialising. Estimated time to departure readiness: six hours, thirteen minutes.’

‘Give me an option for departure within two to three hours. In fact, present me with a range of options and associated risk factors.’

‘A moment please, Kanu.’

The console presented him with his choices. They ranged from an immediate departure, which brought with it a fifteen per cent chance of losing the ship completely, to the more reasonable alternative of waiting the full six hours, by which point the likelihood of losing the ship would be negligible — at least to a fault of its own making.

If he insisted on leaving in three hours, the likelihood was down to a tolerable two per cent.

Odds he could live with, given the stakes.

The console chimed and a voice spoke from it. ‘Kanu, this is the Margrave. I’m afraid I had to leave you for a moment. Matters have taken another turn and I think you need to be aware of it.’

Kanu pressed himself back into his seat, bracing for the worst. ‘Go on.’

‘The Consolidation are through. Their ships are still on the ice, but they must have brought high-speed tunnelling devices and submarine combat equipment with them. My agents report three or four separate points of entry into the ocean, as well as an increase in their orbital presence. They are bringing in forces from across Jovian space and further afield.’

Kanu nodded, the news exactly as bad as he had feared. ‘So there are enemy — I mean Consolidation — forces in the ocean? In addition to the other Regals trying to batter their way into Underthrace?’

‘Things have indeed come to a pretty pass.’

‘If this is in any way our doing… my doing… you have my sincere apologies.’

‘We will endure, Kanu — have no doubt of that. In the meantime, though, you might wish to leave sooner rather than later.’

‘Things are that bad?’

‘I cannot guarantee the security of Underthrace. If — when — it falls, it will happen quickly. You should be aware of that.’

‘My safety is secondary — it’s Nissa who matters. She hates me now, and frankly I don’t blame her. I’ve treated her badly, Margrave — inexcusably — but I couldn’t see any other way to get here. I don’t want her coming to any harm on my account.’

‘Let me worry about Nissa. I have taken a personal interest in her welfare, and will continue to do so.’

Kanu allowed himself the meagre consolation of knowing she would be well looked after, at least to the limits of the Margrave’s power. It did nothing to lessen his remorse, or his sorrow at the terms of their farewell, but if he could trust that her safety was taken care of, it would be one less thing on his mind.

‘Thank you.’

‘I wish you had parted on better terms, Kanu.’

‘What’s done is done,’ he said, returning his attention to the console. The options it had given were still there, and the numbers had scarcely changed. What had been a fourteen per cent chance of disaster if he left immediately had now dropped to twelve point six. Even as he watched, the digits shifted again. The ship was doing everything it could to better his chances. Was a risk factor of one in ten tolerable? He had cheated death once — did that allow him a different perspective on such matters? He did not think so. He might be old, but these last few weeks with Nissa had given him every incentive to keep living.

Equally, he could not wait too long.

No one dared speak of murder, at least not to begin with. But it was the only thing any of them was thinking.

Two things quickly became apparent. Dr Nhamedjo conducted an examination of his body — what remained of it — and arrived at a clear medical conclusion. Mposi had almost certainly not been conscious when he entered the well. Despite the gash on his forehead, there were no traces of blood anywhere in the Knowledge Room, and no sign that he had struggled or suffered obvious distress in there. The presumption was that he had been hurt somewhere else — knocked out or killed — and then transported to the Knowledge Room, with a view to having the nanomachines break down and dispose of his body.

That was the second thing: the nanomachines in the well had been reprogrammed to enable them to process and absorb human tissue.

It was not supposed to be possible, Vasin told them. Granted, nanotechnology was, by its nature, almost infinitely protean. The difference between a medicinal form and a military version lay only in the expressed instruction mode — the deep-programming architecture. But Vasin had been assured that it was all but impossible to change one to the other, especially given the limited resources available on her ship.

Someone had managed it, though.

‘It wasn’t a perfect solution,’ Vasin said, when Goma and Ru were in her cabin two hours after Mposi’s body was found. ‘So I’m told. The nanotech’s returned to a safe configuration, but it’s still contaminated by the presence of many kilos of organic matter — enough to affect its efficiency.’ She looked up sharply. ‘I am sorry, Goma, but I see no gentle way to speak of these things.’ Goma held her composure with a force of will — there was nothing to be gained from going to pieces now.

‘Whoever did this,’ Ru said, ‘they’d have known their way around the working of the well pretty thoroughly, wouldn’t they?’ Goma was grateful to Ru for speaking so bluntly. It was more than she could have done.

‘They’d have needed more than basic familiarity with the systems,’ Vasin said.

‘Then they weren’t expecting a perfect solution, just a means of buying time. If they could hide the body this way rather than keeping it in a cabin — somewhere easily searched — they might have bought themselves a few days.’