Poseidon's Wake (61 page)

After that, there was no point looking back. They swam on because to do otherwise was to leave space in their thoughts to dwell on the apparition. But the swimming cost Kanu so much of himself that after willing his arms and legs into motion, he had nothing else to spare. A sea-monster of some kind. But he had known sea-monsters and not all of them were monstrous.

Swim. Keep swimming.

Stop thinking.

The wheel shimmered and wobbled before him like a line of smoke in a thermal. The waterline bobbed up and down the glass of his faceplate. The air above the sea cut the horizon into ribbons, buckling it with mirage heat. He still had the dizzy sense that the wheel was moving.

‘I think—’ Nissa began.

‘Don’t speak. Save your energy. We still have a long way to go.’

Soon they had to stop again. The temperature inside his suit was unbearable now, his breath fogging the faceplate like the inside of a sweltering greenhouse. He wanted to remove the helmet, be rid of that glass, but the air outside was no cooler than the water. It had become a struggle even to maintain the correct angle in the water to prevent his backpack from being fully immersed.

‘Kanu,’ a voice said finally.

‘Swift. Yes.’

‘You must fight, Kanu. Fight or I will do it for you. Is that understood?’

‘I can do it.’

‘Then
do
it. I would much sooner spare you the indignity of being puppeteered because you lack the will to overcome your own tiredness.’

‘Fuck you, Swift.’

‘Good. Anger. Anger is an excellent sign. Now put some of that anger into your arms and legs.’

He did, for a little while. He would show Swift that he still had the determination to strike forward, to push through the pain and fatigue. But the effort was temporary, and by the end of it the suit had become a furnace, his own sweat stinging his eyes, his breathing ragged.

‘Kanu!’

‘I’m sorry, Swift. I need to rest.’

There was an interlude, a dream of coolness, and then he awoke. He was still hot, still drained, but he was not in water now. He had come to rest on a warm, dry surface, like a sun-baked boulder. He had taken off his helmet but was still holding it in one hand even as he lay sprawled like a drunkard. Through pained, salt-encrusted eyes he made out Nissa a little to his right. She was on a boulder, too, prone atop its ridged upper surface, head lolling away from him. Her foot dragged through the water.

The boulder moved under him. Beneath a membrane of flexible grey material it was breathing.

Kanu understood. The Risen were ferrying them over the water, to the wheel. Dakota was under him; Hector beneath Nissa. They were lying on the backs of swimming elephants.

The nearer they came, the more impossibly sheer the wheel looked. It ascended vertically for what looked like dozens of kilometres, until finally, resentfully, it began to arc over. Climb that? Kanu thought. Not in a million years, even if there was some way to get from one groove to the next. Could they worm their way up the near-vertical grooves cut into the rim rather than the horizontal ones in the tread? It would be no easier, he reckoned – and after the Risen had brought them this far, he could not countenance abandoning them.

‘Kanu.’ It was Nissa, her voice hoarse.

‘Try not to speak too much,’ he said. ‘We’ll tap into the fluid rations when we reach the wheel.’

‘Look up.’

‘I am looking up.’

‘Not at the wheel, merman. The moons.’

It took his tired, salt-gummed eyes a few moments to pick out the tiny orbs of the moons against the sky’s blue. He had not noticed them before, and had given no thought to how they must appear from Poseidon’s surface, from within the atmosphere. But however he might have imagined them, it was not like this.

‘They’re lining up.’

‘I know.’

‘What does that mean? Is it good or bad?’

‘We’ll find out,’ Nissa said.

He woke again. They were at the wheel, a few scant elephant-lengths from the tread. They had arrived close to the right side of the tread, not far from the right angle between the tread and rim. Kanu felt a shudder of vertigo, imagining the wheel’s continuation beneath the visible surface, plunging down through tens of kilometres of darkening water, enduring pressures beyond anything in his experience on either Earth or Europa. He had never felt vertigo in water before. Water was his element, the place where he felt safest. Water sustained, water provided, water gave him suspension.

Not here.

‘It’s turning,’ Nissa said. ‘I’ve been watching it for a while, and there’s no doubt.’

‘The wheels don’t turn.’ He had no strength for discussion, but the last thing he wanted was for Nissa to pin her hopes on something ridiculous. ‘We scanned them from orbit.
Icebreaker
would have seen signs of movement.’

‘Not then. Now,’ Nissa said. ‘The moons have changed, so why not the wheels? Besides, we’re close enough to see the grooves clearly now. Close enough to fix on them and watch them – they’re coming out of the water, one at a time, and going up. The wheel’s turning, or rolling.’

From his perch on Dakota’s back, he stared with as much concentration and focus as he could muster. The motion was slow – easy to miss when they were further away, with the rise and fall of the waves to confuse their eyes.

Not now.

It took about three seconds for a metre of the wheel to emerge from the sea. About every thirty seconds, an entirely new groove emerged. He tracked the latest one – watched it inch slowly above the sea, water sluicing out of it, until the next groove came into view.

‘We can get on it,’ Nissa said. ‘We all can.’

‘Yes.’

The Tantors were slower now, their strength ebbing. Kanu put his helmet on, again seeing the world through steam-smeared glass. He slipped from Dakota’s back into the blood-hot bath of the water. He bobbed, forced his limbs into motion. It felt as if the water were turning to something solid, like a cast setting around him. Nissa replaced her helmet and slid off Hector to join him in the water. She looked as exhausted as he felt.

They closed the distance to the wheel, but the last couple of hundred metres were a kind of torture. They were swimming so slowly by then, all of them, that the wheel must have been rolling away at nearly the same speed. They had to fight not only to keep up with it, but also to close the gap. He lost any sense of how long that final closing took – it could have been minutes or hours. All he knew was that when they were finally at the wheel’s side, he had given everything he had.

But at least there was no doubt that it was turning. The wheel made no noise, not even up close, except for the slosh as the water drained out of each kilometre-wide groove. The sloshing was nearly continuous, each newly emerged groove adding to the sound as the one above began to empty. It was like ocean breakers, a lulling, pleasing sound.

The grooves rose out of the water slower than walking pace, but they were only three or four metres from top to bottom – between nine and twelve seconds’ worth of ascent time. After that came a stretch of smooth, flawless surface until the top edge of the next groove appeared. They would have no purchase on that, and no chance to cross from one groove to the next. Once they were in a particular groove, there would be no way off – no way of reversing their decision.

‘Spread out,’ Kanu said, summoning the energy to talk as he trod water. ‘We all want to be on the same groove. No good being one above the other – we may as well be kilometres apart.’

Nissa had swum to within almost touching distance of the wheel. ‘One chance,’ she agreed. ‘That’s all we have. When the ceiling appears out of the water, we’ll swim into the gap – let the floor rise up under us, push us out of the water.’

‘The grooves vary in height,’ Kanu said.

‘Yes.’

‘And we can’t see that height until the floor’s already under us.’

‘By which point it’ll be too late to change our minds.’

‘I know.’

‘And that backwash looks fierce,’ Nissa said. ‘Could easily suck us out again.’

‘There is a significant risk of that occurring,’ Swift added.

‘Do you have something better to offer?’ Kanu asked.

‘Only my very best wishes. I do not think it would help to puppet you – the variables are quite beyond my accounting.’

Swift was right. Until they were inside a groove, there was no telling how grippy or frictionless the walls were going to be. He hoped they could wedge themselves in tight enough to avoid being pulled back by the drain-off. He hoped there would be room for the Risen.

But they would not know until they tried.

‘We must do what we can,’ Dakota said. ‘We have no love of high places. But to be on the wheel will be better than remaining in these waters. Have strength, Hector.’

‘The next groove,’ he said. ‘All of us. Give it everything.’

They spread out – Kanu, Nissa, Hector and Dakota, with a few metres of clear water between each of them. Kanu reached inside himself for the reserves of energy and concentration he hoped had to be there. Once chance, he told himself – all or nothing.

The groove began to appear. Centimetres – tens of centimetres already.

‘Now!’

But the others had seen it as well and were not waiting for his word. Nissa spread her arms for one last push against the water – she was a stronger swimmer than he had ever given her credit for. Kanu found his own burst of strength and pushed himself into the widening space. A metre of the groove was now out of the water. He touched the fingers of one hand against the inner surface and jammed his other hand against the cool ceiling. An instant later, he felt the floor press against his feet. He glanced at Nissa. She was in, twisting around to secure herself as best she could. Beyond her, through eyes stinging with seawater, he saw Hector shunt his massive bulk into the same rectangular space. Dakota had to be behind him, but his vision was too blurred to make out more than a suggestion of motion, a confusion of grey mass and surging water.

Now the lower part of the groove was clearing the sea. He braced against the surge of escaping water, but mercifully it was not as strong as he had feared. And then he was standing, feet on solid ground, hands on the cold interior of the groove.

Safe.

‘Kanu!’

The lower part of the groove was now fifty centimetres above the water, higher than most of the waves.

Nissa was moving away from him, towards the Risen. He saw in an instant what was wrong. Hector was safe – he had made it into the groove and was bracing himself in place with his spine against the ceiling. But Dakota was not quite secure. Her head and forequarters were over the groove’s threshold, but the rest of her was still hanging over the edge. There was a metre of vertical distance now from the bottom of the groove to the surface of the water. Her front legs struggled for traction on the slick surface, her trunk stretching into the groove. Hector had turned around to extend his own trunk out to her. Their trunks met, sheathed tips coiling around each other. Had the elephants not been wearing suits, their trunks might have gripped more readily. But the sheathing was too slippery.

A metre and a half – still rising.

Nissa squeezed past Hector’s bulk. There was only just room for her to do it without leaning dangerously far out into the void. She reached for Dakota, too, closing a hand around the nearest tusk-like protrusion of her helmet. Kanu in turn reached for Nissa, fearful that she was about to be pulled back into the sea.

The wheel was still turning. The lowest part of the groove was now two metres out of the water. He could see Dakota’s hindquarters – her legs struggling to find a grip on the smooth surface between the grooves.

Still the wheel turned.

‘Let go!’ he shouted. ‘You’re rising too far! Fall back into the water and try again on the next groove!’

‘Help me,’ Dakota said.

Other than the fading roar of the water sluicing from further down the groove, there was no sound beyond their own breathing, their own grunts and bellows of exertion, their own voices.

Dakota was completely out of the water now – her whole weight borne by her forequarters. A metre between her tail and the sea. Another metre every three seconds.

She was starting to slide.

‘Hector! You have to let go! Much higher and the fall will kill her!’

‘I cannot,’ Hector said.

Kanu tugged at Nissa, risked a moment of imbalance to free her hand from Dakota’s tusk. But she could only have held on for a second longer in any case, for the tusk was smooth and slick, offering no friction to her palm.

‘Dakota,’ Kanu said. ‘Fall. Get into the next groove. We’ll find you. It isn’t over.’

‘It is,’ she said.

‘No!’ Nissa said.

‘Is all forgiven?’ Dakota asked.

‘Yes,’ Kanu said, horrified at the growing space beneath her, the drop she was about to take. ‘Yes. All is forgiven. For ever and always. All is always forgiven.’

‘Think well of me. Do well by Hector. Think kindly of the Risen.’

‘We will.’

Dakota slipped from the groove. Had Hector not relinquished his hold on her trunk, he would have been pulled over the edge. As it was, the sudden easing of tension sent him falling back into the groove’s depths. Kanu pulled Nissa to him, wrapped his arm around her waist. He dared look down. He watched Dakota fall, tumbling away with her belly to the sky. By then, the next groove must already have emerged from the water. An elephant could never have survived such a fall on Earth. On Poseidon, where the gravity was half as strong again, the impact with the water would be even more severe.

He leaned into the void, one hand around Nissa, the other gripping the right angle above his head where the top of the groove met the smooth surface of the wheel. He looked for some sign of Dakota, hardly daring to hope that she might have survived. But if her body resurfaced, Kanu was too high up to see it when it did.

Yes, of course she was forgiven.

Forgiveness was the least he could offer.

They were safe, for now – or at least out of the ocean.