Poseidon's Wake (73 page)
The ambassadors would soon be walking these alien plains, but not just yet: there were still weeks or months of acclimatisation ahead of them, before they could comfortably breathe Crucible’s air. But elephants had made that transition once before, without the benefit of contemporary medicine, and Goma had no doubt the ambassadors would prove equally adaptable.
For now it was just her and Ru, standing together a few dozen paces from the aircraft.
‘I spoke to Malhi,’ Goma mentioned. ‘They’re still tracking her, after all this time.’
Ru looked at Goma with only mild interest, her real attention still on the distant spaceport, lying somewhere beyond the distant shark fin of the medical pyramid. ‘Her?’
‘Arethusa. She’s still alive, still somewhere out there. But bigger and stranger than she ever was before. She nearly killed Mposi, did you know? He tried fixing a tracking device on her. That didn’t go down well.’
‘And now . . . ?’
‘Someone needs to bring her up to speed. She may not be an Akinya, but she’s been part of this for long enough. I want Malhi to take me out there. A boat, submarine, whatever it takes. There are still merfolk. They can help me find her.’
‘And if she tries to kill you as well?’
‘I’m counting on her wanting to hear my story first. Someone owes her this much.’
‘For old times’ sake?’
‘For old times’ sake.’
They saw it long before any sound had a chance to reach their ears. A rising spark, steady as an ascending star, a glint of hull balanced on that brightness, arrowing its way to orbit, to meet with the larger starship that would soon be embarking for interstellar space. Goma waited, and waited, but there never was any sound, just the heat and stillness of the day, their own breathing, the untroubled silence between them. She thought of Kanu in that ship, his wife with him, their hopes and fears, and the heart that travelled with them, on its long homecoming.
There had been warning, but not quite enough.
When the moment of translation came, there was still much that the Risen could have done to ready their world for its next port of call. In the stony corridors, enclosed halls and great vaulted chambers of
Zanzibar
, countless Risen were still engaged in their daily activities. They had been going about their business despite Dakota’s departure and the irksome human interference with their power-generation grid. Fortunately, the grid was not essential for their continued existence, although it certainly made life easier. Ideally, when the warning arrived, the Risen would have abandoned their less vital tasks and taken up monitoring stations throughout
Zanzibar
, but most especially near the vulnerable points of its skin, ready to act if some part of that outer layer ruptured. None of them had direct memories of the first translation event, the one that had brought
Zanzibar
(or rather this chip of it) from the orbit of Crucible to the orbit of Paladin, across a numbing span of light-years. But in the community of the Risen, direct memories were only one strand in the larger tapestry of the Remembering. All knew of the severity of that event – the terrible toll of Risen and human lives. All could recount the hard days that had followed as the survivors fought to transform this severed fragment into a home that could keep them alive. And after the hard days – hard weeks, months, years. Crushing setbacks, bruising failures. Not until Dakota came to them had the worst of it been surpassed, and even then their difficulties were not over.
Not by a long margin.
But they had prevailed, and they had found stability. Whatever the outcome of this latest event, Memphis felt certain they would find it again – no matter how hard it would be, no matter how long it took them. It would not be his generation that broke the continuity of the Remembering, nor the one that followed.
In fact, this translation event was not violent at all. This time, all of
Zanzibar
was displaced, leaving no trace of it – save the mirrors, which were too far away to be caught up in the event – in orbit around Paladin. But Memphis knew that something had happened. Beneath the pads of his feet he felt the world shudder as if gong-struck. There was one large upheaval, then a diminishing series of lesser vibrations. Dust fell from the ceilings; water trembled in basins; the fabric of the world gave a single bored groan; and then all was still again.
And they were somewhere else.
To begin with, of course, Memphis had no idea where that might be. In her final urgent transmission from
Icebreaker
during the last few minutes before the event, Dakota had warned that they could expect to end up around another star, in some other solar system – but she could offer nothing more specific than that. No idea of what sort of star, what sort of worlds it might have gathered around itself, how far from Paladin it lay. All of that, it was made clear, Memphis and his fellows would have to work out for themselves.
Were they up to such a task?
There were some Risen who considered Memphis slow. None of them was as quick as Dakota, that was true. But among her subordinates there were indeed Risen who had a quicker, more fluid command of language than Memphis. Words did not form as easily in his head as they did for others. But the weakness of that faculty should not have blinded them to his inner strengths. He comprehended as well as any of them, and although he might not be the quickest at expressing the ideas that took shape in his head, he had no doubt as to his own capabilities. He had served Dakota well, and she had entrusted this world to him. When the instruction came to dispose of the bodies of the Friends who could never be revived, he had understood her intentions perfectly. She was not a natural murderer, and nor was Memphis. And just as she had placed her trust in him then, he felt bound by an implicit trust now. He felt that burden of duty even though he was certain he would never see the matriarch again.
So he would live up to it. To start with, they would not concern themselves with what lay outside. That could wait. In the immediate hours following the event, there was more than enough to be done making sure that their home had come through without serious damage, and that the Risen were all aware of the sudden change in their circumstances. Memphis made a point of informing as many of them in person as he was able to, but before long he had to appoint deputies of his own, sending them out into the warrens and tunnels with such facts as he could give them.
Robbed of the mirrors,
Zanzibar
was running on emergency power for now. They could endure this for a while, but in the longer run, Risen needed bright skies. The mirrors, Memphis knew, had been made from bits and pieces scavenged from inside
Zanzibar
and lashed together with haste and ingenuity. The Risen could not have done such a thing on their own back then, but these were different times. They had learned a lot – not least the fact that they did not need human authority or permission to run their own world. Memphis would pick the cleverest of his Risen and assign them the job of making new mirrors. They would succeed – he was sure of it. Fortunately, there was still abundant water and food. After centuries of occupation, it would take more than a few years for
Zanzibar
’s stone walls to lose all their trapped heat, even if they had popped out far from the warmth of a star. The essentials were still in place. The Risen could live, and keep living, while they addressed their problems in a methodical fashion. They would do what they had always done – place one sure foot in front of another.
When Memphis had satisfied himself that the absolute essentials were in hand (
in trunk
– he would force his mind out of these old human patterns of speech eventually, but not today) – when all was
in trunk
– he at last allowed his mind to turn to the question of where they had arrived.
Memphis organised a small expeditionary party. They made their way out through the peripheral tunnels to one of the docking points, where there were windows.
Zanzibar
was still turning. It had kept its angular momentum during the translation, which meant there was still gravity in its chambers. The view wheeled around with the clock-like rhythm Memphis had known all his life. Until this latest development, the only significant thing beyond the windows had been rocky, airless Paladin and its single Mandala. He had long been accustomed to the presence of Gliese 163, but the star was always too distant to be anything other than an abstract source of light.
Now a harder and brighter light, a light that was much bluer, much fiercer, streamed through layers of pitted and scratched glass.
‘We will need fewer mirrors,’ Memphis declared.
If they needed mirrors at all. The blaze caused him to squint. He had rarely needed to squint before, so in a way it was encouraging that the old reflex worked as reliably as it did. Their new sun was hotter and bluer than their old one, and it looked larger. He raised his trunk as a point of comparison. He could not quite block the disc of his new blue star, whereas he had never had any difficulty obscuring Gliese 163.
There was a world, too. They were orbiting it. It was hard to tell how big it was – they would need more time to take that sort of measurement. But it was spherical and a very emphatic green, and there was a mottling in that green which did not quite strike him as the kind of pattern that would arise from purely natural processes. Beyond the curve of this new world’s horizon lay an even larger one, and in a dizziness of hierarchies Memphis grasped that, as
Zanzibar
orbited this planet, so this planet was but a moon of the larger one.
There was much to explore here – much to keep the minds of the Risen occupied.
Memphis became aware of something then – a black object sliding across the patterned face of the green world. It appeared at first to be an extension of the planet’s surface, but as their relative angles diverged he saw that the black object was raised above it, perhaps in its own orbit. It was a flattened six-sided surface, and on it was another Mandala.
The black object was easy to see when it was over the green, but as it slipped beyond the limb of the world he lost track of it. There was another, though. It followed on behind the first, and then there was a third, as if there might be a necklace of them strung around the green world.
So this location had more than one.
Zanzibar
had come here from somewhere else; from here, presumably, they could also travel to other places.
If they so wished.
The blue sun washed out the stars, but when
Zanzibar
turned from it, Memphis’s bright-adapted eyes still made out a handful of them. He had never studied the shapes of the stars, the patterns and constellations they formed, but some shiver of disquieting intuition told him that these configurations were not at all familiar, not even to those who had made their home under the alien skies of Paladin. How far had the Risen come?
Did it matter? The Risen were the Risen. This home was their home, wherever it took them.
Presently, as
Zanzibar
again swung its face back towards the green world, he noticed movement. He stirred, alarmed at first, then realised it would do his deputies no good at all to see him perturbed. So he squared his ears and adopted a posture of studied repose.
‘Visitors.’
Little gold things were crossing space to
Zanzibar
. They came in several antlike processions, dozens at a time, converging from different directions. Each was a tiny double sphere with many golden appendages. It was impossible to say precisely where they had originated from – the green world, the orbiting Mandalas or the larger planet beyond the green one. Memphis allowed himself a moment’s speculation as to their intentions. Perhaps they meant ill to
Zanzibar
and its citizens – startled and alarmed by the sudden arrival of this oddly shaped rock. More charitably, though, he could presume their intentions were benign, for the time being, at least.
They would arrive very shortly. It occurred to Memphis that the prudent thing might be to wake up some of the Friends, to see what the humans made of the golden envoys. In time, he decided, he would do just that. The humans were owed their stake in
Zanzibar
, after all – they would all have to share its spaces for a while.
But for the moment, just for now, the Risen had no need of anyone else.
Thank you to the editors who have been involved with this trilogy during its long road to completion
–
Jo Fletcher, Simon Spanton and Gillian Redfearn in the UK, and Ginjer Buchanan, Lisa Rogers and Diana Gill in the United States, and the many good people at Orion, including (but not limited to!) Charlie Panayiotou, Marcus Gipps and Krystyna Kujawinska who have worked to bring my books into the world, and helped them find their audience, both here and abroad. Thanks also to my agent, the indefatigable Robert Kirby, for endless enthusiasm and support during the long six years that it took to write these books, and to the readers who have followed me from Earth to the waters of Poseidon.
ALSO BY ALASTAIR REYNOLDS FROM GOLLANCZ:
Novels
Revelation Space
Redemption Ark
Absolution Gap
Chasm City
Century Rain
Pushing Ice
The Prefect
House of Suns
Terminal World
Blue Remembered Earth
On the Steel Breeze
Short Story Collections:
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days
Galactic North
Zima Blue
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Alastair Reynolds 2015
All rights reserved.
The right of Alastair Reynolds to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09052 1
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