Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

‘Do you remember me asking you to try to reprogram my bangle?’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘No, but Aiyana Loring could. Ve fixed it, and I broke into Grave’s room — where they were keeping him after the trial, before they put him into freeze. It was late one night, no one else around. I wanted to see him, to speak to him, before skipover.’

‘In the name of hell, why?’

‘Doubts. Mposi. Him being a better judge of people than most of us will ever be. I wondered… worried…’ Goma hesitated, realising she was on the threshold of confessing something that could not easily be undone. ‘I wondered if Grave was telling the truth — that he didn’t kill Mposi, and they were acting together after all.’

‘Oh, he really got to you, didn’t he?’

‘I had to be sure, Ru.’

‘You mean you had to let that little weasel plant the seed of doubt in your mind. I thought you were stronger than that, wife. I thought you had sense.’

Goma did not rise to the provocation. She was prepared to give Ru the benefit of many doubts given the drugs currently swirling through her blood.

‘No one got to me — and Grave’s story isn’t ridiculous. Even Captain Vasin couldn’t establish his guilt beyond all doubt, which is why she accepted this half-measure of having him frozen rather than executing him. Someone did try to damage the ship — no doubt about that. But if it wasn’t Grave, then the culprit is still out there.’

‘Well, let’s see. Grave was a Second Chancer, and there are eleven other Second Chancers on the ship. Where do we start — with the women, or the children?’

‘Please take me seriously.’

Ru nodded firmly. ‘I am. But equally I have no idea how we’re meant to act on this change of heart of yours. Nothing you just told me will cut any ice with Gandhari. Have you told spoken to her about it?’

‘I can’t see what it’d achieve. She’s heard Grave’s side of things. I’ve nothing to add to that.’

‘Then what exactly was it about this midnight visit that rocked your world to its foundations?’

‘He mentioned Tantors.’

Ru made a sneer of disgust. ‘And if there was one emotional button he knew would work on you—’

‘It wasn’t just that,’ Goma said, trying hard not to snap. ‘He’s aware of the possibility that splinters of the original population might be out there. He doesn’t even hate what they are. But he says whoever’s behind the sabotage attempt won’t sit back if we encounter them.’

‘Won’t sit back — what does that even mean?’

‘That the saboteur has another weapon, but won’t use it until we’re close to them.’

‘If we ever meet them.’

Goma nodded solemnly. ‘If.’

‘Then we’d both better hope Grave was delusional, hadn’t we?’

‘Or keep our wits about us. I keep thinking Uncle Mposi would have had all the answers, all the wisdom. But I bet he’d have given anything for Chiku’s guidance, and Chiku probably felt the same way about Sunday.’

‘And Sunday would’ve missed whoever, all the way back to your mouldering ancestor. Hard to think of that sour old relic missing anyone, but I suppose she must have. One day, Goma, it’ll be you that someone misses.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘I am,’ Ru said.

The lander had a crew capacity of twelve, so there was more than enough room for six of them, including spacesuits and surface equipment. Goma had seen the heavy transport being prepared for departure. It was a squat, multi-engined cylinder with retractable landing legs and an angular cockpit bubble jutting out from the cylinder’s side, its faceted windows offering the best possible field of view for the pilot. Inside there was a surprising amount of space, with a bridge, commons area, medical suite, galley and several semi-private crew compartments, each of which was rigged with zero-gravity sleeping hammocks. Vasin was already in the command chair on the bridge when Goma boarded, the chair projecting out into the bubble, Vasin imprisoned by folding screens and controls. She appeared to be in her element, utterly indifferent to the risks presented by this expedition. If the worst befell her, though, Nasim Caspari had the necessary skills to command Travertine .

After a series of checks and reports, they were finally given permission to detach from the larger ship. They pushed out to a safe distance then executed a deorbit burn. The lander descended under controlled power, shrugging aside the atmosphere’s ghostly resistance. They were never quite weightless, and as they lowered closer to Orison, so the pull of its gravity became steadily more apparent until it reached a maximum of about half a gee.

They overflew the encampment, first at an altitude of ten kilometres, then at successively lower elevations, while Vasin picked out a suitable landing site — it was near one of the scratchy trails that led out to the more distant features. The terrain was uneven, with escarpments and slab-sided plateaus. On some of the lower outcroppings Goma noticed dome-shaped piles of rock, arranged too deliberately to be accidental.

‘I meant to speak to you before this,’ Maslin Karayan said, sitting close enough that she could not ignore him.

‘Did you?’

‘Yes, but the time was never right. I wanted to say that I am truly sorry for what happened to Mposi.’ They had made the bullish, barrel-chested man trim his beard in readiness for skipover. All of them had also had their scalp hair cut short or shaved off completely so that the requisite transcranial scans could be conducted with minimum difficulty. In Karayan’s case the change was the most dramatic, softening his features and making him look both younger and less sternly patrician.

Goma saw this as a trap, not a blessing.

‘And I am sorry that extremists were ever allowed on this expedition.’

‘In your view, then,’ Karayan said, ‘anyone who does not share your exact philosophy is an extremist?’

‘If you want to put it like that.’

Karayan ruminated. She thought she had silenced him, but after a moment he said, ‘Mposi would not have agreed with you.’

‘You think you knew him that well?’

‘Well enough. Our paths crossed over the years and I always found him willing to set aside differences, to see beyond ideology.’

‘Ideology is all there is.’

‘Really? I would have thought there were many other human qualities worth considering. Fairness. Generosity. A sense of humour. A willingness to see the best in people, even those we do not automatically agree with.’ He glanced out of the window at the monotonous and arid terrain over which they were now circling. ‘Shall I tell you a story?’

‘If you must.’

A whirr signalled the deployment of the landing gear. It whined into place and locked with a series of metallic thuds.

‘I was gravely ill, once — a bad reaction to one of the local organisms on Crucible. Mposi and I were political adversaries, but he still found time to arrange help for my wife and children, and to come and see me when I was well enough for visitors. He did a great deal for me and mine, although he always downplayed it — said it was a small favour, nothing more. I never forgot that gesture, and I always made sure Mposi knew it.’

‘You fought like cats.’

‘We argued our positions when much was at stake, but nothing interfered with our basic respect for each other as human beings. And I regret very much that we have lost Mposi’s stabilising influence. He was an ally to us all.’

She could have left it at that, but something in his manner had undermined her instinctive dislike of him. She thought back to a conversation with Mposi, when he mentioned the ‘small favour’. It accorded with Karayan’s account of the same kindness.