Alastair Reynolds: On the Steel Breeze

It was cold, clear day in late winter. There had been a frost or two these last weeks but the weather was improving, and in a week or so, provided the world did not end, the cafés might begin to move their chairs and tables outside. Today the air’s chill was not unwelcome. It seemed to sharpen their thoughts and bring everything into a more stringent focus. The light was kind on the flagstones at the top of the Monument to the Discoveries. The Belém tower looked golden, as sharp and pristine as if it had been constructed yesterday, and the glass-calm waters doubled the tower in its own inverted reflection. A handful of boats bobbed further out, coloured fishing vessels and pleasure craft, but nothing close to the quay. Not as many tourists or visitors as there would have been on a sunnier day, either. This suited Chiku Red very well.

They had travelled by tram from Lisbon. The decision, like so much that passed between them of late, had been virtually wordless. They had both known that the time was right and that the Monument was the fitting place for it. There was no explanation for this almost-telepathy. There were no machines in Chiku Red’s brain, no readers and scriptors synchronising her thoughts and memories to Chiku Yellow’s. It was just the way they had ended up. Like two pebbles, they had rubbed against each other for so long that they had become nearly the same shape. Twin sisters in all but the dull biological specifics.

It was early 2463 and Mecufi’s prediction had turned out to be much more accurate than even he could have anticipated. News had been arriving from the holoships almost constantly, of course. The people of Earth and the wider solar system were well aware of the caravan’s political difficulties. They knew about Zanzibar ’s breakaway, and about the Icebreaker expedition. They knew of the troubles that had arrived on the coattails of Travertine’s breakthrough technology – the loss of holoships Bazaruto and Fogo, the damage to New Tiamaat. All these events had been ample cause for concern, of course, but because they were taking place the better part of twenty-eight light-years away, they had played out as a kind of dark theatre. Very few among the billions living around the sun, from Mercury to the Oort settlements, still had direct emotional or familial ties to the holoships’ citizens. Too much time had passed, and the distances between them were too great. Empathy was not built to operate across interstellar space.

But things had begun to change. When Icebreaker arrived within visual range of Crucible, Chiku Green and her little crew had reported their findings back to the caravan, and the caravan in turn had relayed them back to Earth. The Providers had not done the things they were sent to do. And as if Mandala was not mystery enough in its own right, there were twenty-two additional enigmas orbiting the planet. These developments, it was fair to say, were causing a certain level of unease. How could the Provider data have omitted the alien structures? What was the significance of the Providers failing to prepare for the arriving colonists?

This morning, the most disquieting news of all had arrived. Chiku Green’s ship appeared to have been attacked by something on Crucible’s surface – probably the first overtly aggressive act from the Providers. It did not matter that this violent act had happened twenty-eight years ago. To the people of the solar system, it felt as new and raw as a fresh bruise.

This news had given Chiku Red and Chiku Yellow the spur they needed. They felt certain that the hour was nearly upon them. On Earth and elsewhere in the system, Mech invigilators and Cognition Police had begun to follow a trail that was bound to lead them to Ocular, and then to Arachne. Spokespersons from the tripartite authorities of the United Surface, Orbital and Aquatic Nations were urging calm and restraint. Citizens of the Surveilled World were reassured that they had no reason to fear the Mech, the aug or the Providers. They were to go about their lives as normal.

But already there had been flashpoints. The Mech was registering an uptick in civil infractions – minor acts of criminal intent that, in the normal scheme of things, would have been quickly interdicted and suppressed. It was as if people were testing the system, challenging it to overreact. In New Brunswick, coordinated violence had been reported against a brigade of Providers working on a new housing development. In Chittagong, three people had died after attempting voluntary neural auto-surgery, in an effort to rid themselves of Mech implants. In Glasgow, Helsinki and Montevideo, citizen activists had declared the formation of unilateral Descrutinised Zones. These zones had no political legitimacy – they could not begin to escape the Mech’s influence – but these were nonetheless sincere statements of intent. Meanwhile, the United Aquatic Nations were processing an unexpected surge of new applicants.

All of this had happened before in the Surveilled World’s long history, and the system had been tested many times by breakaway states, police actions, flash mobs and acts of massively distributed civil disobedience. But never so many in such a short period of time, or with such an ominous rising trend. It was exactly the slow-breaking wave Mecufi had predicted when his figment appeared to Chiku Yellow.

It was highly doubtful that any of this could end well.

But the world, Chiku Red thought, was not beyond redemption. It was not the best of all possible places, but given the alternatives, things could have worked out a lot worse. They had all made errors, it was true. The Mech had been the right idea at the right time, but over the years, by some collective abdication of wisdom, they had vested it with too much authority. It was pointless blaming anyone for that. One could still argue that it was better to suffer the iron kindness of the Mech than the centuries of blood and strife that would have raged without it. And no one could possibly have anticipated Arachne.

But something had to give.

‘She mightn’t come,’ Chiku Yellow said, when at last she had caught up with her sibling. She was a little out of breath even with the exo’s assistance.

‘She does not have to come,’ Chiku Red answered. ‘She is already here. Already everywhere.’

‘You act like you’ve met her.’

‘I did not need to. I had fifty years of your stories.’

‘Harsh, but probably fair. And it was quite a few more than fifty, if we’re going to be pedantic.’

Chiku Red moved to the edge of the Monument, rested her crossed arms on the stone balustrade and looked down at the open area below. Chiku Yellow joined her, her old exo whirring slightly as it helped her along. They were looking inland, surveying the Wind Rose. A handful of people were moving around down there, on the beautiful inlaid patterns of the paved compass. They cast long shadows, human sundials.

‘I wish Kanu was with us.’

Chiku Red nodded. ‘Whatever happens, he will be safer in Hyperion. It is good that he meets with Arethusa. I should like to see her one day.’

‘It’s been a century since I was last there. She was strange then, and I shudder to think what she’s become now.’

‘Kanu will tell us, when he returns.’ After a pause, she added, ‘I am pleased to have known your son, Chiku. This was a good thing.’

‘He’s our son,’ she said.

Chiku Red understood the sentiment and appreciated it, but she had never felt that Kanu was hers. She had taken no part in his birth, nor had any knowledge of his existence until he was already an adult and a merman. He felt like a gift, but not something she had earned. She could be delighted in him, all the same. They were all Akinyas, and in Kanu this family still had some late capacity for surprising the world. Chiku Yellow’s son – their son, if she insisted – was now the most influential figure in the merfolks’ great submarine dominion. A lineage ran all the way from Lin Wei to Kanu.