Alastair Reynolds: Poseidon's Wake

‘It would be more than three of us. Your medical suitability for skipover would need to be assessed. There are no guarantees.’

‘I’m still more likely to cope with it than my mother.’

‘You place me in an unfortunate position.’

‘Then I’m glad you understand how it feels. Put me on the expedition and reserve a space for Ru. I won’t ask again, uncle. And my words earlier?’

‘Yes?’

‘They weren’t a threat. But if you want to think of it as a robust bargaining position, be my guest.’

He smiled fondly, simultaneously proud and a little terrified. ‘You were wasted on science, Goma. We could have made a fine politician of you.’

In the early spring of the northern hemisphere of Occupied Mars, in the year 2640, on the evening of the day before he died, Kanu Akinya stood at a tall fretted window with his back to Swift. He had his hands behind him but not quite clasped, a slim-stemmed goblet dangling loosely from his fine-webbed fingers. It had been years since he was a true merman, but his anatomy retained traces of that phase of his life. Muscles corded his mountainous neck; his shoulders had a swimmer’s top-heavy broadness. Kanu’s mouth was small, his nose flat, his eyes large and expressive, optimised for light-gathering in conditions of low visibility. Grey now, he still wore his hair long, gathered into a pleated tail that hung halfway down his back.

‘Your move,’ Swift reminded him.

Kanu had been watching the sunset. The sky at his eye level was an extremely deep blue, virtually black at the zenith, shading to purple and then salmon pink as his gaze tracked down to the horizon. This ancient volcanic summit had been the obvious location for the embassy: the closest point to space, and the furthest from the confusion and danger of the forbidden surface.

‘My apologies,’ he said, turning from the window.

Kanu resumed his position at the table facing Swift and set his goblet next to the board. They were playing chess, that most ancient of African games.

‘Troubled?’ Swift asked.

‘Thinking about my brother, actually. Wondering if it wouldn’t hurt the universe for us to swap places, just for a year or two.’

‘Your brother is twenty-nine light-years away. Also, technically speaking, he is not your brother.’

‘Half-brother, then.’

‘Not even that. Your mother died on Earth. Mposi’s mother may or may not be dead, although the balance of probability points in that direction. I’m sorry to belabour these unfortunate facts, Kanu, but I have difficulty enough understanding human affairs without you complicating things.’

‘I’m sorry it’s not simple enough for machine comprehension. I’ll make a note of that for future reference.’

‘Pray do so, your memory being as fallible as it is.’

Swift had adopted scrupulously human anatomy and dress for the purposes of diplomatic relations, his face, outfit and bearing approximating those of a young man of learning of the late eighteenth century. He favoured a frock coat, a white scarf around his neck and pince-nez glasses through which he was inclined to peer with his chin cocked at a high, imperious angle. A head of thick, boyish curls was combed and oiled into some sort of submission.

After a moment, while Kanu continued staring at the board, Swift added, ‘Seriously, though — you would swap places with Mposi, if that were an option?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? A backwater colony, a modest but growing economy, easy relations between humans and machines… no Consolidation breathing down my neck, no great concerns about the Watchkeepers. I bet Mposi even has a room with a view.’

‘I feel obligated to point out that it’s easy to maintain cordial relations between humans and machines when there are hardly any machines. Are you planning to make that move, incidentally, or would you like a few more months to think about it?’

Kanu had evaluated his narrowing options and was about to move his piece. But as he raised his hand towards the board, a chime sounded from across the room.

‘I’d better take that.’

‘If it helps delay the inevitable, be my guest.’

Kanu rose from his chair, walked to the console and angled its screen to address his standing form. The face of Garudi Dalal, one of his three human colleagues on Olympus Mons, appeared before him.

‘Garudi. I’m late for dinner, I know. I’ll be on my way up shortly.’

‘It’s not about dinner, Kanu. I take it you haven’t heard the news?’

‘That Swift is terrible at chess?’

But the normally amiable Dalal — his best friend among the other humans — did not respond in kind. Her face was grave. ‘There’s been a development in the last few minutes.’

‘That sounds ominous.’

‘It may well be. Something’s come in. Slipped right through interdiction.’

Kanu glanced at Swift again. Technically, this information was confidential, a communication between ambassadors. But if something had happened close to Mars or on it, Swift would not be ignorant of it for long.

‘Normally we worry about things leaving Mars.’

‘Not this time. It’s a supply shuttle, inbound from Jupiter. Semi-autonomous. Sometimes they put a crew inside, but not for this run. It wouldn’t have got close to us except it was scheduled to dock with one of the fortresses. Approach clearances all checked out. Then at the last minute it veered off and slipped into the atmosphere.’

‘In which case there won’t be much left of it. Do we have an impact point yet?’

‘I’m afraid,’ Swift said, rising from his chair to stand behind him, ‘that you have rather more than an impact point.’

Kanu turned to his friend. ‘What do you know?’

‘The news has just reached me — by somewhat different channels, of course — the ship made it down.’ Swift directed his own face to the screen. ‘Good evening, by the way, Ambassador Dalal.’

Dalal acknowledged Swift with a nod but did not reciprocate the verbal greeting.

‘Swift’s right. Most of it’s still in one piece. The guns hit part of it, and then the atmospheric friction did some more damage, but that’s when things got strange.’

‘Strange? In what way?’ Kanu said.

‘It slowed down. Used thrust after it was in the atmosphere. By the time it hit the surface it was hardly moving at all.’

‘Sounds like a deliberate attempt to land.’

‘That’s the theory,’ she said. ‘Reclamationist sabotage, maybe. If they intercepted and boarded it somewhere between here and Jupiter… ’

‘Do you think Reclamationists were inside it?’

Dalal gave a weary shrug. ‘Who knows. What I do know is that someone’s going to have to find out, even if all they end up doing is recovering corpses. I’m convening the others to discuss how we handle this.’

Kanu nodded — she shared exactly her misgivings over the whole business. ‘Let Korsakov and Lucien know I’m on my way. So where did it come down? Please say it was the other side of Mars, that this doesn’t have to be our problem.’

‘I’m afraid it’s just within range of a flier.’

Kanu closed the console and returned to the chessboard. He moved his piece, setting it down with a decisive clack .

‘More fool me.’

Swift looked puzzled. ‘For what?’

‘Hoping for some drama in my life. This is what you get.’

It was always cold on the landing deck. The dome at the top of the embassy was sealed, the air pressurised to a breathable norm, but it never got warm enough to be comfortable. This was the literal summit of the human presence on Mars — the embassy rising like a small pinnacle of its own from the monstrous upwelling of Olympus Mons.