On the Steel Breeze

  To counteract this, they had packed the lander with liquid water, thereby increasing Icebreaker’s effective mass by a factor of three. Theoretically, it would allow the engine to be run up to maximum capacity without imposing bone-crushing loads on the living crew. The engine would need to run for a hundred hours to bring Icebreaker up to its cruising velocity of one-quarter of the speed of light, and two hundred hours to achieve slowdown around Crucible – more than a week of continual thrust. As soon as they were happy that the engine was working as it should, they could begin to dump the ballast and selectively pressurise the evacuated hull spaces, giving the crew more room to move around when they emerged from skipover.

  Once Chiku was satisfied that her volunteers were either strapped down or on their way into skipover, she reviewed the developing situation around Zanzibar.

  Already she felt the distance. Space between Chiku and her world, her children, Noah and her work, the good things in her life, her home and its simple pleasures, was dilating itself with spiteful haste, as if it held some deep personal grudge against her. Icebreaker had been on its way for only an hour (an hour that seemed longer than that, it was true) and in that time it had crossed two thirds of a million kilometres – enough distance to wrap the Earth eighteen times, or to ensure that a radio signal took more than four seconds to travel to Zanzibar and back. Already the events she witnessed on Zanzibar were pushed back into her personal past by entire heartbeats, entire moments.

  Zanzibar had made no efforts to resist the inspection parties, and now they were docking and boarding, taking turns to use the airlocks. The ships that had veered off to meet the shuttle and Icebreaker had by now returned to the main grouping, standing off until docking slots were available. Meanwhile, the second wave of vehicles was very close to arriving, and more were on the way. More than fifty ships, at the last count, each of which could easily contain a dozen or more constables. Zanzibar’s normal peacekeeping authority, even for a citizenship of millions, numbered much less than a thousand. They had simply never needed a strong police force. It would not take many more arriving ships to place their own constabulary in the minority.

  Public eyes showed the new constables emerging from the airlocks and moving out into Zanzibar’s civic spaces. They were not obviously armed or armoured, but some were accompanied by peacekeeping robots, striding black things like long-legged spiders. They unnerved Chiku, and she was momentarily glad of the widening distance. She had seen similar robots during her visits to other holoships, but they had never been considered necessary in Zanzibar.

  ‘The mood is about as calm as you’d expect,’ Noah reported from a car taking him back to the Assembly Building. ‘We’ve issued general orders to all citizenry and constables – treat the visitors as honoured guests, obey all reasonable requests. It’s too soon to tell if there’ll be trouble – it’ll be hours before they establish a visible presence throughout Zanzibar. People are twitchy and confused. Most of them don’t even know what happened with Icebreaker!’

  ‘Issue a statement,’ Chiku said. ‘Give the citizenry the facts. Help them understand that what we’ve done could be considered a provocative act.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s the only way. If they start feeling the constables have come barging in without justification, someone somewhere is going to do something stupid. Probably involving a shovel and a skull.’

  ‘We’re already fielding questions. People want to know if this is the start of an occupation.’

  ‘Just tell them the truth – which is that you don’t know and it isn’t in your power to decide. Say that Zanzibar will comply with the wishes of the Council of Worlds.’

  ‘Don’t you think our assurances are going to ring a bit hollow given that we’ve already gone against the Council by launching the ship?’

  ‘They can believe us or not, Noah, but Icebreaker is a fait accompli. We’re on our way now, and there’s no point in punishing those of you left behind. Most of had nothing to do with the expedition in the first place.’

  ‘I look forward to testing out that line of argument. We’re ahead of the constables now, but they’re moving in on the administrative core. They’ve demanded access to the Assembly Building.’

  ‘You’d better let them in – they’ll only make you if you don’t.’

  ‘No kidding. It’s going to be very difficult for the Assembly to have any kind of private discussion to decide on our next move. You’re right to dismiss armed resistance – but we don’t have to let the rest of the ships dock. We could seal off Zanzibar, declare unilateral independence from the Council.’

  ‘And what about the constables already inside?’

  ‘The numbers are marginal at the moment – we could take them, if we have to.’

  ‘And their robots?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s not an option, Noah. We depend on the caravan for so much. We can’t pull up the drawbridge, expect to go it alone. At the very least we’d put our citizens – including my children – through hardships that they don’t deserve. At worst we’d invite a forced occupation. If we won’t give them access to our locks, they’ll tunnel their way in through our skin.’

  ‘We can’t just . . . concede.’

  ‘The work is done. Icebreaker is on its way. In that sense we’ve achieved what we wanted to.’

  ‘No,’ Noah corrected. ‘We’ve taken the first step, that’s all. Even if the engine works, we still need to scale it up for holoship use. If the Council can’t be made to see that, then perhaps we really do need to declare independence.’ She heard him thump part of the car’s interior in frustration. ‘Fuck! I don’t feel equipped for this. Maybe we have it all wrong, you know? Maybe we should just keep going, forget about Crucible.’

  ‘We must reach Crucible, Noah,’ she said. ‘Don’t start doubting that now.’

  ‘It was just a thought.’

  ‘Good – keep it that way. Look, we both know this is going to be difficult, but I trust you to make the right decisions – to hold the line, to do the right thing by our people.’

  ‘I’m nearly at the Assembly. The constables won’t be more than half an hour behind, if we’re lucky. I’m going to speak to Eunice.’ She smiled as he spoke the name – a daring thing, even now. ‘She needs to know what’s going on.’

  ‘I doubt she’s in the dark, but you’re right – talk to her now, before it gets more difficult. And tell the children not to worry. It’s all going to be all right.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘I want to,’ she said. ‘Very badly. And I think if we all try our hardest not to do anything stupid, all of us – you, me, her, the rest of the caravan – we might have a chance.’

  ‘Just a chance?’

  ‘It’s better than no chance at all. We’re in a mess, Noah – cleverness got us into it, and more cleverness will have to dig us out of it. We have to be wise, like Eunice said, rise above ourselves.’

  ‘I’m all ears if you have any bright ideas you’d like to share.’

  ‘Take care, Noah. We’re going to light the PCP engine very soon. I hope we’ll have a chance to talk again, but there are no guarantees.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell Mposi and Ndege?’

  ‘Not until it’s done. Whatever happens.’

  ‘I will.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Well, we’re here, and we’ll just have to weather it. I don’t suppose your family had the foresight to make this place defensible?’

  ‘I suspect not.’

  ‘Tell them to try harder next time. Good luck, Chiku. I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Regardless of all the stuff that’s gone on between us, I hope we speak again.’

  ‘So do I,’ she said.

  When she was done, Travertine informed her that they were ready to push to full power.

  ‘I suppose it’s occurred to you,’ Travertine said, ‘that all of this could just be a form of suicidal revenge on my behalf? That I know the engine
won’t work, but I’ll have the satisfaction of seeing you give the order to start it up?’

  ‘Actually, that had not occurred to me.’

  ‘As satisfaction goes, it would be pretty fleeting, I’d guess. Anyway, I’m not the avenging type – strikes me as a fairly futile use of one’s energies. Shall we do this?’

  ‘It will work,’ Chiku said firmly, as if her conviction alone was enough to guarantee success.

  ‘I know,’ Travertine agreed. ‘But it would be a kindness to you if it didn’t, wouldn’t it? Take that burden of worry off your shoulders. I’m feeling years younger, by the way. You should try it sometime: nothing puts a spring in your step like a commuted death sentence.’

  They pushed the engine into uncharted physics. Even with the ballast to deaden the acceleration, the shift from one to three gees was still a shock, for there was almost no transition, just a steplike increase in power. Travertine gave very little away as ve studied the numbers and curves, matching them against vis mental predictions. Ve pursed vis lips and squinted, and made odd little catlike noises, the meaning of which was lost on Chiku.

  ‘We can take it to ten,’ Travertine announced finally, but there was nothing triumphant in vis tone. ‘That’ll get us away from Zanzibar the fastest and out of reach of the caravan. But you’ll want to be in skipover before we disperse all the ballast. After that, there’s no going back.’

  ‘I’m done with second thoughts.’

  ‘I thought so, but best to check rather than assume. How does it feel, to be leaving everything behind?’

  ‘I suspect you feel much the same way. Anyway, we’re not leaving Zanzibar for good.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as someone entirely convinced she’ll ever see her home again. There’s a kind of grey deadness in your eyes, as if little shutters have come down. I hope you do get back, of course, for your children’s sake. Have you told Noah the whole story – what we’ll really be facing when we arrive at Crucible?’

  ‘We should sleep now,’ Chiku said bluntly, effectively ending the conversation.

  Travertine could not resist having the last word. ‘Well, whenever you feel like sharing . . .’

  Chiku and Travertine were the last to enter skipover. Doctor Aziba was already sleeping, so they were left in the care of the surgical robot. The robot fussed over them, blundering through its routines. Travertine had to fight to stop it removing vis bracelet. Ve was quite intent on keeping it where it was.

  Even at three gees, there was no realistic prospect of the caravan’s ships catching up with Icebreaker – not if they wanted a chance of getting back home. So Chiku had the surgical robot delay administering the knock-out drugs until she had taken one last look at the news from Zanzibar. Noah had enough business to keep him occupied now, so she did not disturb him for an update. Instead she wandered the holoship’s civic spaces, tapping into public eyes, haunting the world she had once walked. The new constables were almost everywhere now and more were cycling in through the available locks by the hour. Their numbers were still small, but they would soon be able to impose effective authority. To their credit, her citizens – her citizens, as if she was still in charge – were handling the situation with dignity and composure. So far there had been no real trouble, but something would give in the end, she knew. Such was the way of things. Pressure had to be released.

  Be wise, she prayed, directing her wish to her own people and the occupying force alike. Be wise, be tolerant, be human. Because against the truth of Crucible, none of this will matter in the slightest.

  And then the robot pushed the drugs into her and she fell into skipover.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ‘I’m sorry to bring bad news,’ Kanu said, one bright morning in Lisbon, ‘but Mecufi is dead. I thought you’d both like to know.’

  For a while, their son had fallen into the habit of visiting his mothers once or twice a year, returning from the seasteads to spend a day or two in their company. Lately, though, the visits had become less frequent. Chiku had not minded that, for she knew that Kanu had many demands on his time, especially now that he had risen to a position of some considerable responsibility in the Panspermian hierarchy. The main thing – indeed, the only thing that really mattered – was that they were in communication again, however irregularly. And that, by some silent token of understanding, they had agreed to forgive each other for whatever transgressions and misunderstandings each might have committed. Chiku, for her unwillingness to let her son choose his own path, even if that meant surrendering his future to the inscrutable objectives of the capricious merfolk, who could veer from allies to enemies with the turning of the wind. Kanu, in turn, for failing to see how much his decision would hurt his mother, and rather than explain himself he had chosen instead absolute isolation, refusing all contact until that day when he rode his kraken to her rescue. Pride against love, stubbornness against blood and kin.

  All that was behind them now, and the world was better for it. Kanu had never become the totally alien being she feared – he had stopped his transmigration long before he became fully committed to the aquatic and maintained that he had no plans to further alter his current anatomy, which allowed him to move with relative ease on dry land. Chiku, for her part, wondered exactly what it was she had always feared. He was still her son, after all, no matter the changes rendered to his anatomy. With hindsight she should have urged him forward, grateful that the Akinyas would at last have some small leverage within the merfolk.

  So many regrets, she thought. They were the stitches that held her life together. She feared that if they were unpicked, her past would unravel and reveal itself to be a single thread, not the complex knotted design she imagined. One of the downsides of a long life was the almost infinite scope it offered for reflection.

  And by any measure, she was becoming a very old creature indeed.

  ‘Why did Mecufi die?’ she asked.

  As time went by and prolongation techniques improved, there was increasingly little acceptance of death as a natural outcome of old age. When her mother died in 2380, she had been part of a slow-crashing wave of die-offs, one of what the experts predicted would be among the last statistically significant human extinction events. Almost everyone born later than Sunday Akinya – meaning almost everyone now alive – had started life with a superior suite of genetic and exosomatic prolongation options. Chiku was now two hundred and fifty – almost the same age her mother had been at the time of her death – and she had lived the full and merciless measure of those years, spending none of them in skipover.

  She was not immortal. Someone born now might have every expectation of living five hundred years or more – long enough to see in the fourth millennium, if their cards fell right. As the genetically oldest of the three clones, Chiku Yellow’s options were less favourable. It would be complex and risky to submit to a second triplication process, and in any case she lacked the necessary funds. But she had no complaints, and no strong sense that she was about to die. Another century was within her grasp, and if it came to less than that, she would not complain.

  It was 2415 now. Sometimes she looked at the date and thought: That’s not right. It’s a mistake, some weird way of saying fifteen minutes after midnight. Not a year I happen to be living in.

  ‘It wasn’t a bad death,’ Kanu said. ‘He didn’t suffer. But he was very old – nearly as old as June Wing, or Arethusa – and the years finally caught up with him. There was a lot they didn’t understand, back in the early days of aquatic remodelling, and they did a lot of unintentional damage to his genes.’

  The three of them were down at the quayside, sitting with their legs hooked over the side of the dock, the water trembling and spangling below. Seagulls loitered and squabbled. The air smelled brine-laden and fishy. Coloured boats were bobbing a little way along the dock. The light coming off the suspension bridge was so bright that Chiku had to keep blinking. It was as if the thing had been carved out of filaments of the sun and magick
ed into trembling solidity.

  ‘I’m grateful for the things he did for us,’ Chiku said. ‘At least, I am now. I wasn’t always convinced at the time.’

  Chiku Red added, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Kanu. You knew him very well.’

  Chiku Red mostly spoke Portuguese these days. Chiku Yellow had gained a halting sort of fluency – some command of a language was required to teach it, after all – and over the years Kanu had picked up a satisfactory working knowledge. They could communicate in Portuguese without the aug – Chiku Red had no access to it, anyway. Sometimes Kanu and Chiku Yellow swerved into words or phrase-fragments from Swahili or Zulu or Mandarin or Gujarati for a little colour, but seldom whole sentences. Chiku Red preferred them to confine their efforts to Portuguese, and Chiku Yellow had no difficulty understanding why. It was a good language, old and road-tested. It had been an Olympic endeavour for Chiku Red just to regain any use of one language after the damage her mind had suffered.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kanu acknowledged. ‘Even Arethusa has transmitted her condolences, although for obvious reasons she won’t be returning to Earth. You did a good thing, Chiku, bringing her back into contact with us.’

  Arethusa, Chiku had long since gathered, was in danger of becoming the oldest living sentience in the universe. Unless, of course, anyone knew something to the contrary. It was all dumb luck, in the end. The genetic alterations she had worked on herself had turned out to be beneficial rather than detrimental. Although by all accounts, like a free-market economy, she had no option but to just keep growing. It was said that she would only leave Hyperion when the moon became too small for her and she had to discard it like a too-tight garment.