Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

Kanu did not need to think about it for long. ‘You’ll be able to see and hear Swift.’

‘More than that — I’ll be able to talk to Swift just as easily as you can, at least when we’re in close proximity. Equals at last — or as equal as I want to be. Does that strike you as an acceptable arrangement?’

Kanu considered his options — try and talk her out of it, or accept that allowing Swift to be visible to both of them might be a path to forgiveness, or at least a step along the way.

‘I suppose it does.’

‘I’m glad. Although, to be fair, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to me either way. I’d still be doing it.’

After a silence, Kanu said, ‘Do you hate me?’

‘Hate you? No, I don’t even dislike you. Why would I? We were married, and then we were lovers again. You’re all over me like a chemical stain.’

‘That’s a flattering way of putting it.’

‘You’ve been flattered enough. Things change now.’ She leaned over as if to kiss him, but instead she was merely activating the surgeon. ‘Now sleep. When you wake up, we’ll talk about our options. The three of us, as one happy family.’

The surgeon’s sterile hood whirred over him and he heard the hiss of anaesthetic gas.

‘Did you agree to this?’ he asked Swift.

‘I had to. You’d be surprised how persuasive a harpoon gun can be.’

The three of them were sitting on the bridge, the evidence of Kanu’s surgery visible as tiny clots of blood on either side of his temples.

‘So basically there are no good choices,’ Nissa said. ‘Is that what you’re telling us?’

‘We haven’t escaped Poseidon’s gravity well,’ Swift said, ‘and left to itself, Icebreaker doesn’t have the capability to do so. The damage to the propulsion system is simply too extensive. Equally, we aren’t in immediate peril. We’ll simply orbit and orbit, and hope we don’t attract the attention of either those moons or any more almost-dead Watchkeepers. Power isn’t our problem — we can easily return to skipover and await rescue.’

‘From where?’ Kanu asked.

‘Given that no one will be able to reply to our transmission until we repair our antennas, that is an exceptionally good question. At the moment our effective communicational range is no more than light-seconds, perhaps less. Sooner or later another ship will reach this system, and perhaps they will find a way to signal us, but we might have wait many decades for that to happen.’

Kanu and Nissa were in their control chairs; Swift’s figment was seated before them in a chair of his own imagining. He had one leg hooked over the other, an elbow on the armrest, chin resting in his hand, pince-nez glasses dangling from his fingers, the very model of urbane relaxation. Kanu thought back to their many chess games and wished that nothing more was at stake now than his own intellectual pride.

‘That’s no good,’ Nissa said.

‘Which is why we must consider Paladin,’ Swift said. ‘ Fall of Night is much smaller than Icebreaker , but it has the capability to shove both ships out of Poseidon’s gravity well and into a transfer orbit for Paladin. When we reach Paladin, Fall of Night can steer us into a rendezvous with the orbiting shard.’

‘How long will that take?’ Kanu said.

‘About a year. I’m afraid that’s orbital transfer mechanics for you. The damage to our ship has effectively catapulted us back into the early rocket age. Now we move at the speed of comets, of asteroids.’

‘We could be there a lot quicker if we just took Fall of Night ,’ Nissa said. ‘It can talk to other ships, too, if anyone’s listening.’

‘But then we would be abandoning our only hope of return,’ Swift answered patiently. ‘And we would still need to drag Icebreaker across the system to get it repaired and refuelled. At least this way we arrive with our ship.’

‘But all that time!’ Nissa said.

‘It won’t be wasted,’ Swift said. ‘Kanu’s ship can begin to repair some of the damage now — rebuild steering control and communications. That will give us a valuable head start.’

‘Then we go back into skipover,’ Kanu said.

‘Unless you would rather be awake for the entire transfer. Is this acceptable to you, Nissa?’

‘You did say there were no good options — I suppose sleeping is as good a way to pass the time as any other. But you’ll be asleep as well, won’t you, Swift?’

‘I’m afraid so. Skipover will suppress all Kanu’s higher brain functions, including those useful to me. But we need not worry. Icebreaker already has a high level of autonomy. It will wake us if there is a development.’

‘Such as what?’ Nissa said.

‘I have no idea,’ the figment answered. ‘I can tie our systems into Fall of Night ’s and continue transmitting our recognition signal via Nissa’s ship. It will be less powerful, and less capable of detecting a weak return signal, but we will lose nothing by trying.’

‘Nothing will answer us,’ Kanu said, struck by a sudden gloomy fatalism. ‘If they meant to, it would already have happened.’

‘Nonetheless, we may as well keep trying. Nissa: I will provide you with a range of solutions for the transfer orbit — each will put a different strain on Fall of Night . I will leave it to you to make the final selection and handle the operation itself.’

‘That’s very good of you, Swift,’ Nissa said, drenching her answer in sarcasm.

Swift gave an obliging smile. ‘One tries.’

Nissa was easily capable of using her ship as a tug. They agreed on an option which provided for rendezvous with Paladin in just over eleven months, with fuel in reserve for the corresponding orbital correction at the other end of the manoeuvre. Not that it really mattered if they used up all of Nissa’s fuel: if they could not replenish Icebreaker ’s initialising tanks, they would be going nowhere anyway.

Inside the larger ship, it was hard to believe there had been any course correction at all. Such was the difference in the masses of the two ships that even with its drive at maximum output, Fall of Night could provide only the gentlest of accelerations. But the push was sustained over several hours, and when it was done, Swift confirmed that they were on course.

Kanu spent a restless couple of days making sure the repair systems were working as intended. When that was not on his mind, he kept transmitting his recognition signal, this time sending it via Fall of Night ’s much smaller antenna. He had announced his arrival to every obvious body in the solar system; now he was ready to consider anything larger than a pebble. But still the signal went unanswered. He was starting to imagine something in that silence: not the simple absence of an answer, but something more sinister, a kind of purposeful withholding. A decision not to speak, a deliberate and calculated refusal to acknowledge his presence.

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be so surprised,’ Nissa said as his mood began to darken again. ‘The message wasn’t meant for you and Swift in the first place.’

‘They could at least do us the courtesy of answering, after all the distance we’ve travelled.’

‘It’s not how far you’ve come that matters. It’s where you’ve come from.’

After that, there was nothing to do but sleep.

Kanu reviewed the orbital transfer again and programmed their caskets for an interval a few days short of the end of the crossing. It would give them time to adjust to their surroundings, make renewed efforts at contact and generally recover from skipover before they arrived at their destination.

He put Nissa to sleep, watched her casket seal itself over her body, monitored the medical readouts for the smooth transition to unconsciousness, and then observed her gradual decline into cryogenic suspension. He touched a hand to the casket’s cool side, feeling an intense protectiveness for her. He loved her and wanted to make amends for the wrongs he had done her, from the failings of their marriage to the recent deceits concerning his intentions for Europa and beyond. It would please him very much if Nissa Mbaye were to start seeing him as a good man again.