Alastair Reynolds - Poseidon's Wake

The vehicle was slowing now as Memphis steered them along a dirt track passing between two of the buildings. Elephants turned to study them, lifting their trunks in a kind of salute. The elephants were talking to each other, or expressing some shared emotional response.

‘I hope that means they’re pleased to see us,’ Nissa said.

‘I can’t tell.’

They stopped at one of the larger buildings — it had a forbidding, civic look to it, with a frontage of grey pillars like a mouthful of teeth. The ramp lowered and Nissa and Kanu were encouraged to disembark.

‘Follow,’ Memphis said. ‘Dakota will see you.’

They entered the civic building through an open doorway twice as tall as an elephant. Beyond the entrance was an equally impressive lobby, at least a hundred metres wide and perhaps three times as long. For all its size, it was a gloomy place. Shafts of light shone down through windows in the ceiling and upper walls, but all they did was push the darkness into the corners. Kanu and Nissa’s boots clacked on the marble floor. Only Memphis accompanied them. Kanu guessed that the elephants were wise enough to know their guests would not attempt an escape now, when they were so far from their point of entry.

There was a kind of ramp in the middle of the floor leading down to lower levels, but Memphis steered them around this and brought them to a halt at the far end of the chamber. Next to a set of doors was an upright glass rectangle set on a stone plinth, and next to this was a huge metal staff. Memphis wrapped his trunk around the staff, lifted it effortlessly from the ground and hammered its blunt end against the floor.

The sound — a dull, atonal dong — echoed and echoed around the empty chamber. Kanu noticed now that the place where Memphis had struck the ground was spiderwebbed by myriad cracks, as if this ceremonial summoning had been conducted many times before.

A moment passed. Then a large pair of doors swung open in the chamber’s wall.

‘We found two people,’ Memphis said, addressing the form that waited in the red-lit space beyond.

‘Only these two?’

‘Yes. The man Kanu Akinya and the woman Nissa Mbaye.’

‘Where is their ship?’

‘We have it.’

‘You mean the smaller ship, of course.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then where is the larger ship?’

‘It is still where it was. We brought them straight here from the lock.’

‘Have they seen the Friends yet?’

‘No.’

‘But they shall. Bring them to me, Memphis. Let me see what they are. Let me see what time and tide have washed up for us.’

The voice was as deep as Memphis’s but the intonation was recognisably distinct — older, slower in its utterances, but at the same time conveying a sly and calculating capacity that Kanu had not sensed in the first animal. If it had been a surprise to find himself in the presence of a talking elephant, now he had the first disquieting sense that this intellect was superior to the first, and perhaps even to his own.

He wondered how Swift felt.

‘I am searching your memory, Kanu. There was an elephant by the name of Dakota, who may have been the product of genetic cognition enhancement. But it is quite impossible that particular Dakota could still be alive after all this time.’

Kanu could have sworn he felt Swift rummaging through his memories, travelling from one part of his skull to another like a slowly moving itch.

‘We’ll see about that. What happened to Dakota?’

‘Dakota was one of the three Watchkeeper ambassadors — the three intelligences that left Crucible shortly after settlement. The first was Chiku Green, the second Eunice—’

‘And the third an elephant. I should feel as if I’m getting answers to questions, Swift — why don’t I?’

‘Conceivably they are not quite the answers you were hoping for.’

Memphis encouraged them into the red-lit space beyond the doors and then retreated — his own head lowered, adopting a posture that Kanu could not help but interpret as submissive.

He thought about elephant power structures, the singular importance of the matriarch. No matter how much intelligence had been grafted onto elephant minds, the hard, strong bones of those ancient hierarchies would still push through.

But could this really be the same Dakota, after all these years?

The doors closed behind them. The room was a library, or part of one. Its shelf-lined walls were two storeys tall, with a narrow wooden balcony running around the upper level. The shelves were occupied by hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of heavy physical books. Their spines were mostly black, occasionally a dark academic red or an equally sombre blue or green. Their titles were printed in metal leaf, embossed into the leather of the spines.

The floor level contained an arrangement of study tables set with slightly sloping tops. Many books littered the tables in various states of organisation, some in loose piles, others spread open. Hooded reading lamps were scattered about, some of which cast a muted red light. These and equally muted lights set between the shelves were the only sources of illumination in the room. Kanu had the impression that the books must be too fragile to be exposed to anything brighter.

In the middle of the room, framed by two long rows of reading tables, was an elephant. It was on its knees, angled away from them, its great head lowered, its forehead almost brushing the surface of a reading table. There was a concentration of books before the elephant, stacked into haphazard piles. One was open before it, and in its trunk, pinched delicately at the very end, the elephant held a circular magnifying glass.

The elephant set down the glass. Still with its back to them, it picked up one of the books, rose from its knees — daintily managing not to upset the reading tables — and moved to one of the shelves. Taking its entire weight on its rear legs, the elephant used its trunk to return the book to a vacant spot on a high shelf. Then it plucked another down, just a little to the right of the one it had been reading.

‘Excuse me a moment.’

The elephant set the new book on the reading table, then employed the tip of its trunk to leaf through the densely printed pages. Finally it arrived at a passage near the middle, which it proceeded to study closely with the aid of the magnifying glass.

Kanu and Nissa watched in silence. Kanu had the feeling he had walked in on some surreal fantasy of his childhood.

‘Scholarship is one of the more harmless habits of old age. Sometimes I lose myself among these books for days at a time, following one thread of research to another. My needs are modest, and I am, regrettably, something of a slow reader. And an inexcusably bad host, too: you must forgive me.’ The elephant replaced the glass on the desk and turned around slowly to face them. ‘I am Dakota, as you were doubtless forewarned. You must excuse Memphis his clumsiness with Swahili — it is not his strong point — but in all other respects he is thoroughly dependable. I would miss him like the dung of my mother were he to leave us. Memphis mentioned your names, but I confess I need them repeated. Would you mind?’

‘I’m Kanu Akinya,’ he answered carefully. ‘This is Nissa Mbaye.’

‘Akinya,’ the elephant said, drawing out the syllables. ‘Yes, I thought that was what Memphis said. I would be surprised if that were a coincidence.’

‘I imagine it’s no more of a coincidence than you being called Dakota,’ he said. ‘Are you really the elephant that went with the Watchkeepers?’

‘I shall admit you into a confidence. “Elephant” is a term best reserved for conversations between people. If you must insist on a name bestowed on us by people, then we are the Tantors. Perhaps you know of us. But even Tantor has connotations of a doubtful past we would much sooner put behind us.’