Alastair Reynolds: On the Steel Breeze

‘You’ve earned this world, Chiku. You shouldn’t have to give it up so soon.’

‘Don’t feel too bad for me. I’ve been here for months. Besides, I’m hoping I won’t be travelling alone.’

Eunice understood immediately. ‘Ah.’

‘I couldn’t speak for you, but I hope you’ll come. It’s just the way it has to be. The price we have to pay.’

‘Then it’s a good thing the crowd didn’t pull me apart, isn’t it?’

‘You’ve always been the explorer, the novelty seeker. I wondered if that part of you had made it into the construct. I had some doubts, until you accepted the neural patterns. When you crashed that aircraft… You’re not angry with me, are you?’

‘You did what needed to be done to save a world. Besides, I can’t say it was a total surprise. I always expected the Watchkeepers to have some interest in me. I’d have been disappointed if they didn’t. I suppose that’s a kind of vanity, isn’t it?’

‘A very human failing, if it is,’ Chiku said. ‘We’ll allow you that.’

‘Thank you. Very decent of you.’

‘There’s something else you need to know. It won’t just be the two of us. The Watchkeepers have requested… actually, demanded would be closer to the truth… a third representative. A third type specimen of the new order. They have their human, and they have their machine-substrate consciousness. That’s you, by the way.’

‘And the third?’

‘An emergent intelligence, the product of mutual human and machine developmental assistance.’

‘You’re speaking about Dakota, of course.’

‘Did she make it here safely?’

‘I expected her to die years ago, but she’s old and stubborn. Plus each generation of Tantors seems to live a bit longer than the last. She’ll be with us for a little while.’

‘A proper wrinkly old matriarch, you called her.’

‘Older and wrinklier, by now. But still very canny. I assumed she’d be in the vanguard when the Tantors come to settle Crucible.’

‘They’ll come,’ Chiku said. ‘One way or another. We might have to build big domes first – I can’t see them adapting to breather masks. But in a decade, we might be ready for them.’

‘It’ll take that long to figure out how to bring them off the holoships.’

‘I know. A world of problems, and we’ve only just started. We still have some delicate negotiations with Arachne ahead of us. Troubled waters. She’s defended herself once by destroying holoships, and she can do it again.’ Chiku felt a sudden wave of tremendous weariness crash over her. ‘Look at us! There aren’t even two dozen people on Crucible yet, and we’re already worrying about Arachne’s reaction! How’s she going to feel when we start moving in by the millions?’

‘Great diplomacy will be needed. Continual reinforcement of trust and mutual goodwill. Constant practical demonstrations of benign intentions. Forgiveness and tolerance on both sides. There are going to be some setbacks, Chiku. Some fuck-ups.’

‘I know.’

‘For the most part, though, it sounds as if they’re going to be someone else’s problem.’ The construct’s expression brightened. ‘You’ve got things off to a tolerable start, at least. Could be worse, as they say.’

‘That’s the sum story of human history, isn’t it? Could be worse. As if that’s the very best that we can manage.’

‘Your people are waiting,’ Eunice said. ‘I don’t think we should delay our descent too much longer.’

‘I’d like to see Dakota first.’

‘Tantors aren’t very good at keeping secrets, so you might want to keep your plans for her just a little vague for now.’

‘We owe her an explanation, at some point.’

‘At some point, yes. Maybe not now.’

Chiku nodded. In the moment, at least, this made perfect sense to her. She would be careful not to lie to the Tantor, though. In fact, if she could get through the rest of the day without lying to anyone or anything, she would be very pleased with herself.

But she had to be realistic.

Sixty-One Virginis f, their new star, the star they would eventually come to call their sun, was boiling its way down towards the horizon. It was always warm on Crucible, especially at these equatorial latitudes. But the heat had moderated itself, offering the tiniest morsel of respite to the humans gathered on the overlook. In a little while, when the breathing creatures had wearied of masks and filters, they would retire to their new living quarters. The robots, of course, had no such difficulties. But they would indulge the humans for the sake of etiquette.

‘The sky is beautiful,’ Ndege was saying. ‘So many colours… I’ve never even imagined a sunset like that.’

Chiku wanted to tell her daughter that the show of pinks and crimsons and salmons and lambent golds was only a consequence of the dust grains still circling in the high atmosphere. Week by week, after the cessation of the impactors, in rains and downdraughts, the atmosphere had begun to repair itself. The Watchkeepers, Chiku was certain, had played some role in that restoration – their machines had dipped in and out of the air for weeks, stirring and clearing it like whisks.

Whatever the case, much of the dust had now returned to the surface. In the high canopies it formed a talcum film that slowly worked its way back into the green furnace of the world. Over the coming months, these fire-stoked sunsets would abate.

But there were things Ndege did not need to know tonight.

Or, for that matter, tomorrow.

When the glass broke, and the mote shattered, the world did not at first shift on its axis. In fact, there was a moment, longer than I cared for, when I began to think that the thing had not had any effect at all. I imagined how we must look, my sister and I.

There must be something almost farcical about it, these two similar-looking women wrestling each other for control of an eye-sized purple marble, one of them squeezing the other’s left hand as if she meant to break every bone in her sibling’s fingers. And then a sort of hiatus, after the mote had been destroyed but before its effects became manifest, the world continuing, the seagulls redoubling their squabbling, the fishing and pleasure boats tilting on the gentle swell beyond Belem and the Monument to the Discoveries.

And then my sister Chiku Yellow became limp. She slumped to the ground, her exo suddenly giving up its duty of support. The rigour had also gone from her limbs. They were no longer stiff or quivering, for Arachne had absented herself.

Bruised and breathless, I knelt next to my sister.

‘Something happened,’ I said. By which I meant that Mecufi’s gift had evidently had some effect. Enough to knock Arachne out of direct control, at the very least.

At first my sister could not say anything. ‘Yes,’ she said, after a worrying interval. ‘Yes.’

‘The Mechanism?’

My sister swallowed and took a series of ragged breaths. Several times she looked on the verge of saying something. I supported her head and stroked the side of her face, this version of myself who now appeared to be both older and more childlike than only a few moments earlier. I felt an oceanic wave of love and despair crash over me. She had turned herself from her two other siblings, and that had hurt us. When Mecufi told her that I would probably die in the process of surrendering my Quorum Binding implant, she had deemed that a price worth paying. As unquestionably callous as that act had been, though, I had never blamed her for it. Mecufi would never have had the nerve to attempt bringing me back to life, if she had not compelled him to act. I would still be in their seastead, still frozen, a puzzle that no one was in any rush to solve. So Chiku Yellow had given me life as well as death. Her reasons, too, had not been entirely selfish. Under similar circumstances, I would probably have come to the same conclusion.