Alastair Reynolds: On the Steel Breeze

‘What about the research programmes? Most of those were housed in Kappa, right? Thousands of scientists, engineers, all their support staff… hundreds of them must have been there at the time.’

‘Including Travertine,’ Noah said quietly.

That was the connection she had almost made for herself. Travertine and Kappa.

How could she not have seen it?

‘The hours ve kept… how could Travertine not have been there?’

‘Travertine?’ Namboze asked, incredulous. ‘The same Travertine?’

‘There’s only one Travertine,’ Noah said, with a long-suffering expression.

‘I thought Travertine wasn’t allowed to conduct experiments any more,’ Namboze said.

‘Not quite,’ Chiku answered. ‘Travertine didn’t break the old rules deliberately, they were just drawn up badly. After Pemba there was a mad rush to create new legislation, and it wasn’t done properly.’

‘I think Travertine knew full well what ve was doing,’ Sou-Chun said.

‘You could just as easily say ve acted in the interests of the local caravan,’ replied Chiku. ‘No one ever thought Travertine had been motivated by personal gain, just a desire to solve the slowdown problem. Look, can we save this for later? For all we know, ve’s among the dead or dying.’

‘I’ll see if I can reach the children,’ Noah said. Then he put a hand on Chiku’s elbow. ‘Be careful, please.’

‘I will,’ she said, and made a mental note to the effect that from this day forward she would never once complain about having an uneventful life.

Chiku and Namboze went to the nearest transit point and requested pod conveyance to Kappa. When the pod arrived, it brought four workers who would soon be suiting up and going outside. The workers disembarked and Chiku and Namboze boarded and took opposite facing seats. The pod gathered speed, smooth-bored rock rushing past its airtight canopy.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Chiku told the younger woman.

‘Nor do you.’

‘I’m old enough to take some risks – and some responsibility. How old are you, Gonithi?’

‘Thirty-eight.’

‘In absolute years?’

‘Yes. I was born thirty-eight years ago.’

‘Then you’ve only ever known Zanzibar.’ Chiku shook her head as if this were some strange and miraculous condition, like the ability to part waves or turn base metals into gold. ‘No skipover intervals?’

‘I haven’t applied, and at my age I doubt there’d be any point.’

‘I still can’t get my head around the idea that there are grownup people walking around who’ve never lived anywhere but the holoship.’

Namboze produced a shrug. ‘It’s normal enough to me. This is my world, just as Crucible will be my world when we get there. What was all that about, by the way?’

‘All what?’

‘Well, two things. I wasn’t sure whose side to take when you started talking about Travertine.’

‘Travertine’s a pretty divisive figure. Ve’s a friend of mine – or was, I suppose. When ve was last in trouble, I was one of those who pushed for a lighter punishment. The issue split the assembly – Sou-Chun was among those who felt we needed to make a clearer example of ver, if only to keep the rest of the local caravan happy.’

Namboze brooded on this for a few seconds. ‘Weren’t you and Sou-Chun political allies at one time?’

‘We’re not exactly enemies, even now. I’ve known Sou-Chun for longer than you’ve been alive, and we have a lot in common. Sure, we had our differences over Travertine. And then there was that whole stupid business over what to do with the high-capacity lander – whether we should keep it or dismantle it and make room for something else. But it’s nothing, really.’ In her mind, she added: You’ll see how it is, when you’ve played at politics a little longer. Aloud, she said, ‘I still have a lot of respect for Sou-Chun.’

The pod swerved sharply into a different tunnel and Chiku’s stomach tingled. They were travelling against Zanzibar ’s spin, counteracting it to a degree.

‘What if this mess turns out to be something to do with Travertine?’

‘It won’t. Everything that went on in Kappa was under tight control. All the research programmes. Improved energy conversion and storage, better skipover protocols, more efficient recycling and repurification techniques. Rehearsal of methods that will serve us well when we land on Crucible. Agriculture, water management, low-impact terraforming. God, I sound like a politician, don’t I? But that kind of thing, anyway. Even simulations of what we can expect when we start hands-on investigation of Mandala.’

‘Nothing fundamental, then?’

‘After Pemba? Good grief, no. We’re not fools, Gonithi. I’ll argue to the death against stupid legislation, but some rules exist for a reason.’

Presently the pod slowed as it approached one of Kappa’s access stations. It was snug in the bedrock out of which the chamber had been hollowed, and provided its automatic pressure seals had closed, there was no further risk of exposure to vacuum.

Chiku and Namboze stepped out of the pod. The atrium was as busy as the docking station, but there was also a sense of subdued resignation, of people going through the motions. And indeed as Chiku looked around, she saw rescue workers, citizen volunteers, medical teams and assembly members. But no one who looked as if they had just been pulled out the rubble, or whatever was left inside Kappa. The triage teams seemed bewildered, at loose ends.

Chiku reminded herself that the incident had really only just happened – less than an hour ago they were still in space, waiting to dock. Why, she wondered, did the brain insist on inducing this time-dilation effect during periods of intense emotional stress? Why could it not bestow equivalent favour during Mposi and Ndege’s birthdays?

Chiku and Namboze found a local coordinator and volunteered their services. They were shown to a staging area where suits were being issued. Some were coming fresh out of storage; others were being recycled as work teams emerged from a stint inside Kappa. Several of the suits came equipped with an extra pair of teleoperable arms, mounted at waist level, for which special operational training was required. More suits were arriving from elsewhere in Zanzibar, riding the pods under autonomous control then offering themselves up for use. They walked around headless, helmets tucked under their arms.

Namboze was in her suit, ready to go, needing only trivial adjustments – a glove-and boot-swap, that was all – while Chiku was still struggling to find a torso section that did not feel too tight around the waist or chafe under her armpits. Finally she was done, helmet locked down, the visual field stripping away all unnecessary distractions. The suit’s power-assist made movement effortless.

Chiku and Namboze emerged through a portcullis-like airlock into the ruins of Kappa at the top of a gently sloping ramp leading down to the chamber’s true floor. In the community cores, the pod-terminal ramps were often lined with flagpoles, benches and bright-painted concessions. But not here.

Kappa was now darker than any of the thirty-five other chambers Chiku had visited in Zanzibar. Even at night, when the sky became a bowl of simulated stars, there would still have been lights from buildings and street lamps. Now the entire chamber had been enucleated, gouged clean like an eye socket. She might as well have been staring into the void between galaxies.

The aug dropped a faint overlay across Chiku’s visual field. Compiled from Zanzibar ’s own memory of itself, it revealed roads and structures, bridges and underpasses, subsurface tunnels and ducts, possible refuges for survivors. Everything was colour-coded and annotated. The overlay was updating constantly as the other search parties made their own reports and improved the aug’s real-time picture of the chamber.