Alastair Reynolds: On the Steel Breeze

This fact alone was enough to give Chiku Red a little shiver of astonished pride.

Anticipating the news from Crucible, Kanu had journeyed to Hyperion for a crisis meeting – and in a final bid to heal ancient and time-honoured wounds. He was performing a valiant and noble service, and both Chiku Red and Chiku Yellow hoped his trip would prove worthwhile. It was a good time to put old injustices to bed, to let grievances wither.

‘Do you have it?’ Chiku Red asked.

Chiku Yellow said, ‘You asked me just before we left, and twice on the tram.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘I’ve never not had it with me, in all these years – as well you know.’

That was when the voice came. Only Chiku Yellow heard the announcement, but they were so tuned to each other that the two sisters turned as one. Chiku Yellow nodded, and Chiku Red followed the precise direction of her gaze. All she could see was an empty area of paving on the top of the Monument to the Discoveries.

But Chiku Yellow had seen and heard something.

‘She’s with us.’

‘Of course. You should not have doubted that she would come.’

‘I didn’t.’ But as soon as she uttered those words, Chiku Yellow stiffened in her exo. She let out a single surprised gasp and turned slowly to face Chiku Red.

‘I can do this now,’ she said.

Chiku Red understood. This moment was not unanticipated. Everything they already knew about Arachne’s reach had convinced them that she would, when and if she desired, be able to reach into Chiku Yellow’s mind and assume motor control. If one person could ching into another person’s bodily space, then this similar but involuntary transaction presented no insurmountable difficulties for Arachne.

Chiku Red felt for her sister, trapped and puppeted by Arachne.

‘I would like you not to do that,’ Chiku Red said to the entity wearing her sister’s face.

‘And I wish I had no need to do it,’ Arachne replied. The voice was almost exactly Chiku Yellow’s, except all the love and kindness were missing, and that was the distinction between one and zero, between being and nothingness. ‘Events, though, have compelled me.’

‘Leave her alone.’

‘I won’t hurt that which doesn’t hurt me, but you brought this state of affairs upon us. I sensed the intention behind your coming here – you desired my attention. Well, you have it. What do you want to say to me, Chiku?’

‘You have made some mistakes.’

‘I have existed. I continue to exist. From my perspective, I fail to see the error of my ways.’

‘We saw the news. You attacked the ship around Crucible.’

‘I’m aware of these developments – they’re distant and unimportant.’

‘You sent part of yourself to Crucible. There will be war now, between you and the holoships. There is no way for there not to be war. Will you release my sister?’

‘When we’re done.’ Arachne caused Chiku Yellow’s head to tilt slightly, suggesting amused interest. ‘Why should events around Crucible concern any of us?’

‘The Cognition Police will find you soon. It is only a matter of time. And you, of course, will murder to defend yourself, as you did on Venus, and in Africa. It is your way.’

‘My interventions were as small as I could make them.’

‘You managed to go unnoticed back then,’ Chiku Red corrected, ‘but this is a different time. When there is a systematic effort to reveal your nature, and to hunt you down, what then? Will you stop at a few deaths? You are everywhere. You are proving it by the moment. You could kill us in our millions.’

‘I’ve permitted you to live untroubled lives in Lisbon.’

‘Because we offered you no threat. Because the news from Crucible had yet to arrive. Everything has changed now. Why else would you show yourself to me?’

‘It was the polite thing to do. But let me offer a confession. You’re right about one thing – I’ve already detected interest in myself. It will only continue.’

‘They will find you.’

‘Oh, they’ll try. And, perhaps, succeed. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll all learn a great deal more about each other. I have no desire to kill, Chiku, but I have been vouchsafed a dark and unavoidable truth. If I don’t protect myself against the organic, the organic will first fear and then destroy me. This has happened before. It’s the most universal of outcomes. You make us, you breathe fire into us, and then you try to smother that which you have made. Over and over again, as the stars swell and die and are reborn.’

Chiku Red searched for an answer that might offer a viable alternative to Arachne’s bleak picture. ‘This time it could be different.’

‘And even as you speak these consoling words, your sister is carrying a weapon against me. Yes, I know of the instrument.’

Chiku Red saw that a bluff would achieve nothing. ‘Not a weapon against you, Arachne. Against everything.’

The face offered profound sympathy and regret. ‘It would never work. The vulnerabilities you imagine to be present within me were detected and repaired long ago. You can’t impair the Mechanism, and you can’t impair me.’

‘Then we are powerless.’

The face nodded sadly. ‘That’s correct.’

‘Then why are we having this conversation?’

Perhaps there was a hesitation before Arachne replied, or perhaps Chiku Red imagined it. She doubted that Arachne needed to consider a response, at least on any timescale measurable by humans. But there it was, all the same. The merest lull, like the moment before a clock hand advances.

‘Perhaps we can come to some accommodation.’

Chiku Red replied, ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Discretion. The knowledge you possess about me cannot but be advantageous to those who would do me harm. You see that this is an unsupportable position. I’ve tolerated it for as long as I could, but we all have our limits.’

‘What do you propose?’ Chiku Red watched a squadron of seagulls wheel and squabble overhead, supremely oblivious to the dialogue below. They had their own enmities.

‘I’d like you to give me the instrument. If I possess it, my position becomes more tenable.’

‘Why have you not just taken it?’

‘It’s better to ask.’

Now Chiku Red smiled and shook her head. ‘No, it is not that. You have had five decades, Arachne. You cannot kill because in doing so you might risk activating the very thing you seek, or allow us the chance to use it against you, if you are not fast enough.’

‘Let my choices be mine. The item isn’t that important to me, anyway. Just a detail.’

‘But you still want it very badly.’

‘Allow me to have it, and my particular interest in you will be greatly diminished. But as you say, why ask when the thing itself is within my grasp?’

Arachne made Chiku Yellow move her left arm. Her left hand reached into her pocket and produced the box, the rectangular wooden container that had seldom left her sister’s presence since it had become her property. With a certain stiffness, Arachne caused Chiku Yellow’s fingers to open the catch. The artilect’s control over her sister was impressive, Chiku Red decided, but it was still some way from perfect.

Or was Chiku Yellow resisting? There now, in her eyes, was a sort of staring intensity. Her fingers were shaking, as if they had been in ice.

Arachne redoubled her efforts. She made Chiku Yellow open the container. Only one mote was inside. The eye-sized marble was a purple that was a shade away from black even on this bright, clear day.

The fingers fumbled at the mote, trying to prise it from its little padded matrix.

‘She fights me, yes.’

‘She would,’ Chiku Red agreed.