Alastair Reynolds: On the Steel Breeze

But the Providers were not there to do harm. They reached down with their snaking manipulators and tentacles, tipped with tools that could reshape a coastline, and plucked the shuttle from the sea with great care. It had only been in the water for minutes and already a green hem had formed around its lower hull. The Providers carried their dripping prize back to shore and set the shuttle down on a large apron of level ground a short walk from the overlooking balcony.

It had looked small in the air and tiny in the sea, but once the party walked into the shadow of its wings and overhanging body, the vehicle’s true proportions were more than a little forbidding. All things were more forbidding in gravity, Chiku had decided. It rested on the thick keel of its hull, balanced by sturdy retractable landing skids deployed when the Providers were almost ready to set it down. In the original scheme, the shuttles would have landed on prepared surfaces, ready to be turned around and sent back to orbit – the sea-splashdown capability was only ever a secondary contingency.

Chiku waited impatiently as Travertine and two of the revived technicians walked around the still-hot machine, verifying that it was safe to lower the ramps. They folded out of the hull with grinding slowness: one main cargo ramp at the rear of the belly and two smaller ones near the front of the crew compartment. The forward ramps formed stairs when they were fully deployed.

‘I think,’ Chiku said to Arachne, ‘it would be best if you wait a moment. Arriving here will be enough of a shock.’

The girl reflected on this for a moment or two before nodding. ‘There will be time to make their acquaintance later. Do you think they’ll be satisfied with the arrangements?’

Behind the landing area, on gradually rising ground backdropped by a dense curtain of forest, stood a cluster of stalk-towers much like the ones where Chiku and the other hostages had spent their early days on Crucible. This was a much more extensive hamlet, though, containing several dozen towers, and the cross-linked domes varied in size and height.

‘Cities would have been nice,’ Travertine said, ‘but these will do for now. Do you think they’ll find room for a prison cell?’

‘Who did you have in mind?’ Chiku asked, surprised by the question.

‘Well, me, at the very least. I was pardoned, it’s true. But there have been a couple of regime changes since then. I’m not sure in what sort of light I’m going to be viewed once we get onto all the interesting stuff, like governments and judiciaries and penal systems.’

‘Your pardon still stands. I’ll stake everything on that. And you have my word that whatever medical resources we can bring to bear, you will be given the utmost priority.’

Travertine glanced down at vis bracelet. ‘That’s very reassuring, Chiku. But I’ve been thinking things over since we arrived. I’m not sure I want that reversal therapy after all.’

‘You have every right to it.’

‘And every right to decline, if I choose. You can’t argue with that, can you? Perhaps I want to grow old. Perhaps our brave new world could use a little mortality, just until we’re up and running.’

‘You don’t have to make any decisions immediately,’ Chiku said.

‘Oh, I think my mind’s adequately settled. But it’s good of you to give me that option. You seem – I was going to say self-absorbed, but that’s not quite what I mean. There’s still something on your mind, isn’t there?’

‘When is there not?’

Chiku adjusted the pressure seals on her breather mask. She hated wearing the things, but in fairness so did everyone. In some respects, though, the news of the last six months was quite good. Crucible’s micro-organisms, airborne or otherwise, had produced remarkably few ill effects in the sixteen settlers of the first expedition. Short of wearing spacesuits, it was impossible to keep the micro-organisms from infiltrating the body. They slipped in around the edges of the mask and reached the eyes, invaded through the pores of exposed skin. But other than some pseudo-allergic reactions, a bout of red eyes and itchiness, it could have been much worse. Dr Aziba had been monitoring their blood almost constantly, and as yet had nothing too problematic to report. Travertine’s bracelet continued functioning normally despite the thudding it had taken against the physician’s jaw. Crucible’s biology appeared Earth-like on the macroscopic scale, but at the level of molecular and chemical processes it was simply too alien to do much harm.

Satisfied that there was nothing to be gained in delaying, Chiku walked to the base of one of the forward ramps and began to ascend. Any exertion was physically taxing on Crucible, and she had learned the hard way not to rush her movements. What the excess oxygen provided, the stifling heat and humidity took away. They would adapt eventually, just as primates had adapted to almost every climate and terrain on Earth. For now, though, the idea of ever finding life on Crucible pleasant struck Chiku as laughably unlikely.

But as callous as the thought made her feel, that was not going to be her particular problem, anyway.

She was halfway up the ramp when the door at the top opened and a pair of figures appeared in the aperture. She paused in her ascent. She recognised them instantly, for it had not been so long since she was last in their virtual presence. Ndege looked, if anything, taller than she remembered. And Mposi, still shorter than his sister, appeared to have gained broadness and strength. Their faces, naturally, were hidden behind masks.

Chiku steadied herself on the ramp. On an impulse, she slid her mask aside. ‘Don’t do this!’ she called. ‘It’s tolerable for a short period, but only after repeated exposure. It’s taken me weeks to build up to this!’ And that declaration was in itself almost too much, for she felt the dizziness coming on almost immediately. She allowed the mask to snap back over her face. Finding some reserve of strength, she pushed on to the top of the ramp. It was impossible to choose which child to embrace first, but Mposi spared her the difficulty by hugging her first, their masks pressing against each other, and then surrendering his mother to his sister. They embraced as well.

Through her mask, Ndege said, ‘This is real, isn’t it? We’ve really made it? It’s not some trick made up by machines?’

‘You’re here,’ Chiku said. ‘You’re here and this is real. I should say, welcome to Crucible! Somebody should say it, if only for the history books. The welcome we received was a bit different.’

‘I can’t get over the colour of that sea,’ Mposi said, looking out beyond the sea wall. ‘I thought it was an illusion from orbit, but it’s just as remarkable down here! It’s not the mask, is it?’

‘Keep it on,’ Chiku said. ‘You’ll thank me for it later. In a few days, with Doctor Aziba on hand, you might be able to take a few seconds of direct exposure. But don’t run before you can walk.’

‘I never thought we’d meet again,’ Ndege said.

‘Did you really understand, the day I left?’

‘In our own way,’ Mposi said. ‘Later, definitely, when we had some idea of what you’d really done for us.’

‘I’m so sorry about Noah. It was brave of you to risk as much as you did sending those transmissions. But when we stopped hearing from Zanzibar, I thought the worst as well.’

‘Zanzibar ’s still a problem,’ Ndege said, as if this fact might somehow have slipped Chiku’s mind. ‘Every second takes her forty thousand kilometres further away from us – that’s the circumference of this planet!’

‘All’s not lost,’ Chiku said. ‘For Zanzibar, or Malabar, or Majuli, or any of the other holoships. We’ll find a way. Muddle through. But look: there’s a welcoming party down there, waiting to speak to you. I’m sure we’ve all got a thousand questions for each other, but there’ll be time for that later.’