Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

Perhaps there was still time.

Almost without thought, he programmed the same sleep interval into his own casket. They would awaken together. Whatever the shard held for them, they would face it as partners.

And so Kanu submitted himself to the cold once more.

The airlock was set into the side of the largest dome, near the transmission tower. It was a high-capacity lock with a lofty ceiling, large enough to take a big vehicle. The chevroned door opened and they all passed through at the same time, Goma studying Eunice’s mirrored visor, trying to glimpse the face behind the glass.

Beyond the lock was a gently sloping corridor leading to lower levels. Eunice guided the party a short distance along it until they reached a secondary door set into the corridor’s wall. It was not an airlock, but was clearly capable of holding pressure in the event of a blow-out. She opened the door and invited them to step through.

They entered some kind of accommodation area with metal-lined walls and several passages leading off in various directions. There was a table and a set of chairs, although not nearly enough for all of them. Around the metal walls were shelves and cabinets, and various utensils and implements set upon the shelves.

Eunice lowered herself into the grandest chair at the table, then bid the others to take such chairs as were available.

‘We don’t need to sit down,’ Vasin said. ‘Not yet. We’ve come a long way and what we’d like first is an explanation.’

‘It’s rude not to sit,’ the spacesuited form said. ‘But look at me! Calling you rude and I haven’t even had the common courtesy to remove my helmet.’

She reached up with both hands, undid some latching mechanism on the neck ring and lifted the helmet free of her head. She placed it before her on the table and beamed at them over its crown.

Goma should not have been surprised — she had seen this woman’s face in the earlier transmission, after all — but a transmission could easily be faked or doctored. Yet here was the unmistakable face of Eunice Akinya, a figment from history, strikingly real and human-looking down to the last details.

‘There. Fresh air. I hate suit air. Always have, ever since I took that long trek on the Moon. Well, what about the rest of you? Are you going to stand there like fools?’

Nhamedjo was glancing down at his cuff readout. ‘The air looks good. Perfectly breathable, in fact — no trace toxins, according to the filters. I think we are safe to remove our helmets.’

‘No,’ Vasin said.

‘Oh, but I insist,’ Eunice said. ‘No — really. I insist. You want answers from me, meet me on my terms. Take off your helmets. I want to know who I’m dealing with.’

‘Worried we might be robots?’ Goma asked. But she had already taken a leap of faith and was reaching up to undo her own helmet.

‘Goma!’ Vasin said. ‘Don’t do it!’

‘You heard her. I want answers. If this is what it takes, so be it. I don’t think she’d drag us seventy light-years just to play a nasty trick with poison gases.’

‘Good girl.’

Goma lifted her helmet off and the air gushed in. It was cold, but nothing about it smelled or tasted suspicious. She gulped a load of it into her lungs and waited for some ill-effect to manifest.

Nothing. No headache, no light-headedness, no sense that her thoughts were in any way affected.

‘The air is breathable,’ Eunice said, looking not at Goma but at the rest of them. ‘The gases’ ratios won’t differ greatly from those on your ship, I expect. There are no biological toxins or radiological hazards. If there were, I’d already know about them.’

‘Why would a robot care about biological toxins?’ Dr Nhamedjo asked. ‘For that matter, why does a robot need airlocks or a spacesuit? You’re a construct. You could walk out there naked and not feel a thing.’

‘Those are cooking utensils,’ Goma said, nodding at some of the tools she could see racked and shelved around the room. ‘That is a stove. Why would you need cooking utensils? Why would you ever need to cook anything?’

‘A woman’s got to eat. Why else?’

Ru lifted the lid on a plastic container, then sprang away in revulsion. ‘Worms!’

‘Mealworms,’ their host corrected. ‘Very tasty. Very good source of protein. Practically all we ate on Mars in the early days. You should try them. Go well with a little curry powder — stops them wriggling off your chopsticks, too. Now — since you’re staying — will you be good guests and remove the rest of your spacesuits?’

‘Why?’ Vasin asked.

‘Manners, dear Captain.’

They obliged, stripping down to their inner clothing layers, and set the spacesuit parts in neat piles by the door. Then, in plain view so there could be no possibility of substitution or subterfuge, she also discarded the outer elements of her spacesuit, removing the parts neatly and methodically, as befitted a veteran space explorer who had come to trust her life to the complex, interlocking components of the garment, and who accorded them the respect and care which was their due.

Beneath the suit she wore a sleeveless ash-grey top and tight black leggings. She resumed her position at the table and offered one arm across it to Dr Nhamedjo, her palm raised.

‘Go ahead. Feel my pulse. Poke and prod to your heart’s content.’

Nhamedjo moved to touch his fingers to her skin, but hesitated at the last instant. He glanced at his colleagues.

‘She cannot be living. We know what she was when she left. This is not open to debate.’

Eunice gave a pout of disapproval. ‘Do I look like a robot to you?’

‘The records say you were a very good emulation. You could pass for a living person except under close scrutiny — you looked and sounded and moved like the real Eunice Akinya. But you were still a machine, a robot, under the layers of synthetic anatomy. You got better at acting like a person, but the essence of what you were did not change.’

‘Test her pulse,’ Goma said.

Nhamedjo did as he was bid, holding the contact for long seconds. ‘It feels real.’

‘Not just the pulse,’ Eunice said.

‘No — everything. The texture of your skin, the anatomy of your wrist joint… it’s astonishingly good. May I examine your eyes?’

‘Whatever you like. You’ll come to the same conclusion.’

He indulged himself by staring carefully into either eye, pinching back the surrounding skin with physicianly gentleness. He held a hand before her mouth and reported that he could feel the passage of her breath. ‘I can conduct further tests… scans, blood samples. But why doubt the evidence of our eyes and what she’s already telling us?’

‘Because history says she can’t be alive,’ Goma said.

‘History’s a stopped clock,’ Eunice said. ‘It’s nice to look at, but there’s only so much it can tell you.’

‘Then start by telling us how you can possibly be alive,’ Vasin said.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Because the living version of you, the flesh-and-blood Eunice, died in deep space,’ Goma said. ‘You went out in a stupid little ship, barely equipped for interstellar space, and unsurprisingly you didn’t make it. Years later, they came and found you. They pulled your frozen corpse out of that ship and found that there was no hope of ever reviving you. Your brain cells were just so much slush.’

‘But there were recoverable patterns,’ Eunice said. ‘Chiku brought them to me on Zanzibar . I uploaded them into myself, used them to make my emulation even better.’

‘But you were still a robot,’ Goma said. ‘You were a robot with some neural patterns copied from the dead corpse of the real Eunice — a few human flourishes to embellish your programming. But that didn’t make you flesh and blood.’