On the Steel Breeze (19 page)

They were in one of the Atlantic seasteads, not far from the Azores. Chiku’s progress was being assessed from hour to hour as the new memories branched and rebranched. The Merfolk had considered this a wise precaution. Many years had passed since the Quorum technology had last been allowed to work as intended, and the presence of anti-tamper countermeasures beneath the ones they had already identified and
neutralised could not be eliminated. Some glitches in mnemonic transcription, harmless or malign, were also possible.

But Chiku at least had detected no obvious signs of error. The memories went back to Chiku Green’s meeting with Representative Endozo aboard the holoship
Malabar
the day Kappa exploded, and not much further. When she packaged the memories for transmission back to Earth, she had only sent Chiku Yellow a sliver of her life. The rest, everything that had happened since
Pemba,
was merely implicit. A good wife, a good husband, two good children and a position of responsibility in the Legislative Assembly. What more could she have wanted?

Odd now to think of herself for a moment not as Chiku but as Chiku Yellow, as if in some sense she was standing outside her own body, observing. It had been like this during the early years of their triplication, but she had forgotten that peculiar sense of non-localisation – as if her sense of self belonged not in any one particular body but in the shifting, unstable centre of gravity located between them.

Yet there was a quality, the most delicate chromatic tinting, the most subtle modulation of timbre or microscopically altered angle of reflection, which denoted that these memories of
Zanzibar
were new experiences, things that had happened to this other version of her. This was some clever thing done to her hippocampus, to enable her to organise and orientate the two experience streams. Without that, it would have been too confusing for words.

So she knew who she was, and what had happened to her, in both streams. Holding the shifted timeframes in her mind was more difficult. These were not fresh memories. They felt new, but they had been on their way back from
Zanzibar
for seventeen years.

Here, now, on Earth, the year was 2365. The memory package had been on its way since 2348 – time enough for it to hopscotch back home and then circle the world for months, waiting to be opened. These events, these things that had happened to Chiku Green, lay just as far back in Chiku Yellow’s past. Ndege and Mposi were older now, and would be older still by the time any response made its way to
Zanzibar.
It would be more like forty years before her counterpart received a reply.

How was a person supposed to deal with this?

Chiku wondered what her counterpart could possibly have expected of her. Was she really out there, prepared to wait forty years for an answer? Could anything matter that much?

A shaft leading underground. The brilliance of a blue sky, etched away in geometric patches. The stomp and snort of Tantors, the subsonic
throb of a musth rumble. The voice of Dreadnought, booming out like a biblical proclamation. A woman who looked like her great-grandmother, sitting on the wheel of an aircraft. A name – Arachne – that might mean nothing at all.

Another, June Wing, which certainly meant something.

And the merfolk, here and now, expecting her to do them a favour in return for these memories. It had not slipped her attention that they also had an interest in the elusive June Wing.

Popular woman,
Chiku thought.

She said to Mecufi, ‘You want me to make contact with this person, hoping she might put you in touch with Arethusa.’

‘I’m very encouraged that you remember that as clearly as you do. Very occasionally the new memories will cause some confusion with those laid down just before the start of the mnemonic scripting. In your case things seem to have proceeded without complication.’

‘I feel fine. You said something about June Wing being on Venus.’

‘Indeed, but June moves around a lot, gathering pieces for her collection, and she won’t stay there long. You should be on your way sooner rather than later, while she’s still in the inner system.’

‘I can’t promise anything.’

‘But you’ll do your best. The memories appear to be stable, but we can continue monitoring them all the way to Venus. Do you own a spaceship?’

‘I don’t
think
so.’ But she had owned several in her youth, including a sleek little number that she had been very fond of. ‘Not lately, no. I had to sell them – that’s what it’s come to, being an Akinya.’

‘Poor little you,’ Mecufi said.

He was all for her leaving immediately, riding the great glass chimney to orbit and then a commercial loop-liner to Venus. Chiku, against the merman’s wishes, insisted on returning to Lisbon first. They argued the point until Chiku won.

When she returned to Pedro’s studio, he came to the door with the neck of a guitar in his hands, neatly slotted for frets. He appraised her carefully, as if she might be an impostor. ‘It’s been a day longer than you said. I wondered if I ought to worry. Then I thought, what can possibly go wrong?’

‘Almost nothing.’

‘That’s what I figured. They’d have told me if there was a problem. I mean, what’s so unusual about having thousands of new memories stuffed into your head by tiny machines?’

Before they kissed, before she sat down, even, she got the worst news out of the way. ‘I need to go to Venus.’

‘It’s a lovely place. When the tides are low, some of the old buildings are visible.’

‘Venus. I said Venus, not Venice.’

Pedro smiled. ‘I know.’

‘According to Mecufi, the conjunction’s especially favourable right now, and it shouldn’t take me long to do what I have to do.’

‘Which is?’

‘Catch up with June, this woman who used to know my mother and father. All the Pans want me to do is tell her they’d like to get back in touch with Arethusa. She can help them do that, if she wants. If she doesn’t, it’s really not my problem.’

‘And then – what – your obligations are over?’

‘More or less.’

Pedro put down the guitar neck. ‘I don’t like the sound of this. Fine, they’ve done you a favour. That doesn’t mean they own you for life. It’s not like you ever had any interest in June before all this started.’

‘Actually I always meant to talk to her at some point, if I could make it happen – for the biography, if nothing else.’

‘But there’s more to it than that now, isn’t there?’

She did not want to be having this conversation right now, or in fact at any point between now and the end of the universe. But better out than in, as the saying went.

‘There’s another reason I’d like to meet June.’

‘Then it’s something to do with the ghost, the memories from the other Chiku.’ Pedro did that endearing thing he did when puzzled, which was to scratch beneath his fringe, squinting out at her under an overhang of curls. ‘Which you haven’t mentioned yet.’

‘Can we eat? I’m starving.’

‘And then talk?’

‘Let’s eat. And you can open a bottle of wine – at least one of us is going to need it.’

‘We’re all out. I meant to go shopping, but I got tied up with this commission. It’s not too late, is it?’

They went out to buy wine, Chiku light-headed with Tantors and artilects, bobbing through the streets of Lisbon like a balloon on a string, barely anchored to the world. They bought a nice bottle of Patagonian merlot, then changed their plans and stopped at a restaurant on their way back to the apartment. The establishment had mustard-coloured walls, crumbling plaster that must have been overpainted a thousand
times and could still have used another coat. It was already dusk. Musicians and their instruments were tucked into a red-lit corner, like statues in a shrine.

‘It’s complicated,’ Chiku said, when they were halfway through their meal.

‘Please,’ Pedro said, pausing between bites. ‘When is anything with you
not
complicated?’

‘I have Chiku Green’s memories now, and I know why she was trying to reach me.’ She was glad of the musicians, the
fado
singer, the illmannered diners who refused to lower their voices while they performed. The hubbub created a background that made their conversation much more intimate than if they had been in the studio, with its silent audience of unfinished guitars.

‘What she’s relayed to me is important, and there are things I probably can’t tell anyone.’

‘Not even me?’

‘Chiku Green trusted me with something significant.’ She closed her eyes. She desperately wanted to tell him. But it would have to wait, the full truth of it, her doubts about Arachne and Crucible, until she had spoken to June Wing. She could barely trust herself with this knowledge. It felt like a fire on her tongue, burning for release.

‘Well?’

‘I made a discovery, on
Zanzibar.
I mean, Chiku Green did. I . . . she wants me to talk to June.’

‘Wait. I’m totally confused now. The Pans want you to talk to June, and so does your counterpart?’

‘Yes. But it’s not that straightforward. The Pans want June for one thing, and Chiku Green wants her for another. And right now I don’t think I want to tell the Pans about the second thing.’

‘Well, I’m sure they’ll be fine with that.’

‘I just have to reach her. I don’t give a damn about Arethusa, she can tell me to go to hell as far as that’s concerned. But the other thing . . . I’ve
got
to speak to her about that, and it has to be somewhere safe. There’s a ship leaving for Venus tomorrow. The Pans will get me aboard. I have to be on that ship, Pedro. Right now there’s nothing more important in the world.’

‘That message took years to get to you – what could possibly be this important?’

‘Everything. Nothing. I don’t know, and I won’t until I’ve spoken to June. She’ll know, I think.’

‘And she’ll talk?’

‘She knew my mother. My father was a friend of hers before he ever met Sunday.’

‘Perhaps you should speak to your parents instead.’ He corrected himself. ‘I mean, to Jitendra. I’m sorry.’

Her mother and father were both still alive. Jitendra was in his two hundred and thirtieth year, hitting the long-delayed consequences of the prolongation therapies he had undergone late in his first century. Sunday was . . . somewhere over a cognitive horizon, her mind altered and re-altered as she chased a deeper understanding of Chibesa physics.

‘Even if they could help, it’s not their problem. Or yours. This is between me and June.’

‘I still don’t understand why you have to
go to Venus.’
He said this as if interplanetary travel was some risky new fad, like hot-air ballooning.

‘Even if June was the other side of Lisbon, I’d still need to visit her in person. She won’t want to speak to me, so if there’s the slightest chance of avoiding contact, she’ll take it. She could always decline a ching, or ignore a proxy. She’ll find it tougher if I’m there in the flesh, having come all the way from Earth.’ Chiku dabbed at her lips with the napkin. ‘Look, it’s only Venus – we’re not talking about the Oort cloud.’

‘I could come with you.’

‘Or you could stay here and try to keep your business afloat.’

‘I am several months behind on commissions,’ Pedro admitted.

‘Exactly.’

‘So a week or two more won’t make any difference, will it?’

‘No, categorically not.’

‘Talk to this fish-faced friend of yours. Tell him it’s very simple. If he can move the world to make you go to Venus at the drop of a hat, he can certainly find room for another passenger. I’m very inexpensive. I’ll even pay for my own drinks.’

‘Mecufi won’t go for it.’

‘And you won’t know that for sure unless you ask, will you?’ He smiled at her, lifted his glass and sipped.

A couple of days later they took a maglev from Lisbon, then a black and yellow passenger airship from the maglev terminal flew them out to sea, to the base of one of the atmosphere chimneys. They boarded the shuttle at sea level, through a pressurised connecting dock. The ship was already in vacuum, ready to depart. Its engine was totally silent and smooth – Chiku strained to detect even a rumour of a rumble as they gathered speed, but there was only the white noise of air conditioning,
the murmur of a low conversation from two Tamil businessmen a little way down the cabin.

From the chimney’s trumpet-shaped maw, the shuttle rose and kept rising. Then it transitioned into true spaceflight and there was an hour or two to be killed until they made rendezvous with the passing loop-liner. It was like a fatter, gaudier version of the liner that had once carried Chiku out to the birthing orbits. It was white with gold and platinum trim. Huge millwheel parts of it were counter-rotating, simulating various planetary gravities. Other components – central spheres and cylinders – remained static. It reminded Chiku of an over-elaborate wedding cake.

Three days to Venus barely gave them time to unpack their bags. The loop-liner was so huge that it would have taken weeks or even months to explore all its promenades and galleries, its curving rows of boutiques and restaurants. Chiku and Pedro contented themselves with the areas of the ship outfitted for terrestrial gravity, and even then there was far too much to investigate. Wandering the halls, Chiku came upon a reproduction of Watteau’s
The Embarkation for Cythera.
There was a quality of melancholia about the painting despite – or perhaps because of – its oddly contradictory subject matter: the frolicking nymphs and cupids, its groups of wistful, trysting lovers seemingly preparing to board the boat to leave this breezy island arcadia rather than arrive there. Not an embarkation, then, but a farewell.

Chiku’s mother had always been opinionated about art. She wondered what Sunday would have said about this painting.

The hours gobbled each other. Periodically, Mecufi checked in to make sure Chiku’s memories were behaving themselves. Pedro chinged back to Earth to complete some business until the time lag made it difficult. When they were together, there was only so much they could talk about. Chiku would not be drawn on the matter of June Wing, not until she had spoken to the woman. Pedro accepted this, to a point. He had secrets of his own, after all.