Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

‘Assume orbit around Orison. You shouldn’t have any trouble spotting my surface encampment. Land at your convenience, within a kilometre or so, and meet me on foot near the main surface lock. I have food and water, so don’t worry about bringing rations. Oh, and prepare yourselves for a surprise or two.’

Tantors , Goma thought. It was a treacherous line of thinking — all too liable to lead to bitter, crushing disappointment. But she could not help herself. They would put everything right — every wrong thing in her universe.

She could not stop herself.

It turned out that more than one Watchkeeper had died around Poseidon. There were dozens, at least. Once they found the first corpse, it was as if their eyes — their sensors and instruments and analysis tools — had become attuned to the task of finding more.

The dead machines had all been caught up inside the thresh of moons circling Poseidon. Their orbits were irregular, and their sizes varied from fragments only a few kilometres across to one corpse that — given what they already knew of Watchkeepers — was almost whole. Almost intact, save that it was also dead, adrift and dark and absolutely inert. The space around Poseidon was a graveyard and its gatekeepers were the forty-five moons.

Gatekeepers or executioners — presuming there was a distinction.

‘Where have you brought us?’ Nissa asked.

‘Somewhere we shouldn’t be.’ But they were still inside the moons’ domain, still following their course around Poseidon, and they were not dead. Yet. They were moving without thrust on a trajectory that ought not to be mistaken for an attempt to fall into orbit or land on Poseidon. ‘Whatever happened here,’ Kanu went on, ‘it may have been a very long time ago. Something did that to the Watchkeepers, but we don’t appear to be attracting its attention.’

‘We might, at any moment,’ said Nissa. ‘We don’t know what those Watchkeepers were doing, or how close to the surface they got. For all we know we’re just about to cross some threshold.’

She was seated next to him on the control deck, the ship having furnished a second chair while they were on the long approach from the system’s edge. It had happened without either of them asking, rising out of some buried concealment in the floor.

‘I know, and I agree,’ Kanu said. ‘But we can only slow or change course by using our engines, and that may be the one thing that makes us conspicuous. I think the safest option may be to carry on as we are until we come out the other side.’

‘Another eight hours.’

‘I don’t like it either.’

‘And what does Swift think?’

Swift’s figment stood to the left of Kanu, hands on hips, conveying fretful agitation. He kept taking off his pince-nez, polishing them, returning them to the tip of his nose. ‘As a matter of fact, I agree with Nissa — we may be about to sail into difficulty. Equally, I have some sympathy with your position, Kanu. It could be a mistake to use thrust.’

‘He’s a fat lot of use. Swift says we’re both right.’

‘Then ignore Swift. We still have to do something.’

‘I’ve felt this same indecision once before, near our old household in Africa. I was out in the grass, not more than an hour’s stroll from the gates, and I noticed a large black snake moving through the grass near me. I’d not had much experience with snakes and was so terrified I couldn’t move. My brain said: if you almost didn’t notice that snake, there might be one there as well, and there , and there .’

‘And were you surrounded by snakes?’

‘I have no idea. The big snake passed me by. It wasn’t interested in me at all — I’m not even sure whether it sensed me or not. But my point is, that’s how I feel now. I don’t want to make a move, to do one thing that might bring disaster. But we have to act.’

‘Full drive,’ Nissa said. ‘Empty the tanks if we have to. Ditch the escape pods to save mass. Sacrifice Fall of Night , if we must. But we get out of here as quickly as we can.’

‘There’s another way,’ Swift said quietly, as if to speak were an impertinence.

‘Go on,’ Kanu said.

‘Go on what?’ asked Nissa.

‘Swift has an idea.’ But there was a sense of words forming in his throat, sounds pushing out of his mouth. ‘You must excuse me taking this liberty,’ he said, or rather was compelled to say, an invisible hand squeezing speech out of his larynx. ‘It is simpler, Nissa, if I speak directly to you both. The Watchkeepers have been killed, but their remains are tolerated, allowed to follow their orbits.’

Nissa regarded Kanu from her seat, making no effort to hide her appalled revulsion. But there was fascination, too, of a clinical kind.

‘What have you done to him?’

‘Nothing has been done to him; nothing will be done. He is my friend. Now might we speak of the Watchkeepers? We would be well advised to get out of here, but we dare not make too much of a show of ourselves doing so. On the other hand, none of us wishes to spend another eight hours trusting to our luck. Therefore, a compromise. If we maintain our present heading, we will soon pass very close to one of those fragments. It’s moving slower than us, but with a short, sharp burst of thrust we can match velocities. We park ourselves next to the fragment — on or inside it, if necessary — and let it carry us beyond the orbit of the outermost moon. When the fragment reaches its apogee, we depart — and cross everything we have for luck.’

‘Or we could just cut and run,’ Nissa said.

Swift relinquished his control of Kanu’s larynx, Kanu letting out a small involuntary gasp in the process. ‘I’m back,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry, but I don’t like Swift’s idea. It’s still too risky, given how little we know.’

‘So we do nothing, is that your plan?’

‘I didn’t say that. Continuing with our present course of action is still doing something.’

‘Well, if we keep talking about it long enough, those eight hours will just fly by,’ Nissa said, rolling her eyes with heavy irony.

‘We’re on edge,’ Kanu said. ‘It’s natural — we’d be fools if we weren’t. And there are no rules for this situation, no precedents. None of the ideas is bad. But if the thing we’re doing hasn’t harmed us—’

Swift walked over to Kanu, ghosted through the console and lowered himself into the same volume of space occupied by Kanu’s body.

‘I am sorry, Kanu, but I think this is necessary.’

Kanu could neither speak nor control his body. Swift was puppeteering him again, working the levers inside his skull. He had done it once, with Kanu’s consent, but this time there had been no invitation, not even tacit permission.

Kanu rose from his seat, pushing aside the console. He moved to face Nissa, still seated in her chair, and sank until he rested on his haunches.

‘The choice must be yours,’ Swift said. ‘Kanu is right — there are no precedents. Equally, you did not ask to be placed in this position, whereas Kanu and I embarked on our enterprise in the full and certain knowledge that there would be grave unknowns. So, as I said, the choice is yours. Whatever you decide, that is what we will do.’

‘Why?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion of a trick.

‘Because I would very much like you to begin trusting me, and this looks like an excellent place to start. Whatever you say, that is what we will do. I will implement your decision.’

‘Then… get us out of here as quickly as possible.’

‘Very well.’ As Swift moved Kanu’s body back to his seat, he added, ‘Normal structural and accelerational safeguards will be suspended. That seat should protect you, but I would strongly advise bracing in readiness for the load. In a moment I will disengage spin-generated gravity and align the control deck for the new vector.’