‘I had this.’ Travertine tapped the side of vis head.
Now Chiku managed a smile, although it was mostly for appearance’s sake. ‘Go on, then – amaze me.’
‘If one of the holoships has managed to scale up the engine, it’ll take time to achieve slowdown. You can’t just stop. Icebreaker took two hundred hours, but we were a minnow. It’s a totally different proposition, slowing down a holoship.’
‘It took years to get them up to speed, I know that. But if they have the engine, slowing down shouldn’t take as long.’
‘Power isn’t the only constraint. Life has to carry on in the holoships for as long as it takes them to stop. Houses, schools, government buildings – they all have to remain usable. Roads, pathways, farming terraces – everything still has to work. On the acceleration burn, leaving Earth, the load never exceeded a hundredth of a gee. With the right preparations, draining lakes and so on, moving people around, I suppose they might be able to withstand a tenth of a gee. But that’s vastly more than the holoships were ever designed for, and I’m not sure that the cores wouldn’t cave-in under the stress. A thirtieth of a gee sounds much more plausible. Most daily activities could still continue.’
Chiku did not have Travertine’s head for figures. ‘I suppose you know how long that would take?’
‘About four years,’ Travertine answered. ‘That’s how long the engine would need to be active, maintaining steady deceleration. And they’d need to start the deceleration at least a quarter of a light-year out.’
‘Four years in total?’
‘Give or take.’
‘When the engine switches on, it’ll be pointed directly at Crucible, like a searchlight, right?’
‘Yes, and if Arachne can detect those flashes a lot further out, she’ll probably be able to pick up the engine signature. She’ll lose three months’ warning due to time lag – that’s how long it’ll take for the first photon from the drive start-up to reach Crucible. But that still gives her another three and three-quarter years to prepare – that’s more than enough time for her to start laying traps.’
‘What do you think she’ll do?’
‘Pretty much anything she likes. She’ll know the approach trajectories of the holoships, so all she needs to do is seed their paths with enough big dumb rocks.’
‘That wouldn’t work – she’d have to cover every possible approach to allow for unforeseen course changes, and that would mean millions of rocks.’ She imagined each holoship drawing its own coloured line of light through a black void, the caravan weaving a kind of fan, and then she thought of the genetic bottleneck Mecufi had shown her, the bloodlines of ancestry springing out of that ancient pinch.
‘She’s got plenty of other options,’ Travertine said blithely. ‘She can make as many of those kinetic cannons Guochang mentioned – the ones that are meant to deflect asteroids and comets – as she needs, and position them wherever she likes. On Crucible, in orbit, in deep space, way out into the margins, whatever takes her fancy. She can aim them based on her best projections of the holoships’ approach angles, fire the slugs and then finesse their trajectories at the last moment. They’ll be very difficult to detect.’
‘We could be giving her ideas just by talking about this stuff.’
‘She’s got the imagination of a sock, but this wouldn’t have taxed her. She knows about the holoships, she knows she has a good chance of predicting their courses, and she knows she has a means of stopping large objects heading for Crucible.’
‘Then we’re doomed,’ Chiku said. That anchor was there again, hauling her guts downwards. ‘All of us. We haven’t a hope in hell.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
For as long as Chiku had known of the Watchkeepers’ existence, she had pictured them hanging in the sky like dark chandeliers, imagined them rising above the horizon, vaster and more ominous than any moon.
Now that she was actually on Crucible, she was surprised to discover that the Watchkeepers were hardly ever visible. Improbable as it seemed at first that the twenty-two machines could be so elusive, it was not so surprising when she thought about it properly. The machines were black except for the light that shone from their blunt ends, but no trace of that radiation was detectable from Crucible’s surface. Nor was there any hint of the blue glowing structures they had glimpsed between the plate-like encrustations covering the pine cones. The machines’ black skins rendered them no brighter than the space against which they were backgrounded, and they became as invisible as the Moon’s unlit face. More so, in fact, because Earth’s moon reflected back some of the Earth’s own glow, but the machines were so pitilessly dark that they reflected nothing. They also avoided eclipsing Crucible’s sun from any point on the surface, casting no shadows.
Only at night, when their hanging forms eclipsed whole constellations of stars, was their presence felt. But even then they were no more troubling than rafts of high dark cirrus. She still could not see the blue rays spiking out into interstellar space.
So far, Arachne had persistently fudged around her lack of progress in communicating with the Watchkeepers, but now Chiku had some leverage over her host. For every titbit Chiku disclosed about Eunice or the likely behaviour of the remaining holoships, she demanded an equivalent crumb of insight into the nature of the Watchkeepers.
Presuming any of the things Arachne told her were true, Chiku learned that Ocular had detected the blue beams, which then communicated a message to Arachne, a message that appeared to have been expressly coded for maximum comprehension by another machine-substrate consciousness. In human terms, the message was a form of greeting – a virtual handshake across the stars, from mind to mind.
But it was also a warning, and an invitation. The message cautioned Arachne that as a young machinesubstrate consciousness, she was at her most vulnerable to predation. The Watchkeepers had seen this happen before. Young minds were often snuffed out by their predecessor intelligences before they attained true independence. Being confined to the space around a single star was not healthy – a space already congested and contested by a nervous and resource-hungry organic intelligence.
So Arachne was encouraged to propagate herself. Mandala would provide the necessary incentive for the organic minds to build the means for her conveyance. They would build caravans of holoships, but more importantly they would send swift robotic seed packages ahead of these slow behemoths.
These seed packages would make robots and the robots would make more robots. By insinuating herself into the replicating architecture of the Provider seed packages, Arachne could establish a second facet of herself around 61 Virginis f. Simultaneously, the first facet would continue to consolidate herself by planting roots into the system-wide Mechanism.
This objective had succeeded – to a point.
But now that Arachne had established this outpost, the Watchkeepers remained as remote as ever. Worse – and this was supposition on Chiku’s part – this facet of Arachne had lost confidence in the veracity of the communications originating from the mother solar system. She felt beleaguered, lured across space to engage with another intelligence that appeared incurious or unimpressed by her own intellect. There might well have been a preliminary exchange, but it was clear to Chiku that the Watchkeepers had also communicated in very forceful terms that the Providers were not to approach Mandala. They were not yet ready for that, and in the Watchkeepers’ unfathomable consideration they might never be.
But Arachne was not the only one with a stake in the matter. Humans had set out for Crucible to establish colonies and explore Mandala first hand. They had dreamed of flying its stark canyons, sailing its godlike channels. And perhaps somewhere in Mandala, invisible from space, was a message or a clue to its function and origin.
Whatever the Watchkeepers’ opinion of the robots already in the system, humans would demand the right to explore more thoroughly. And if that was denied them, they would want to know why. Whatever the outcome might be, it was imperative t
hat the humans make contact with the Watchkeepers. Perhaps the alien machines would be more receptive to the overtures of organic intelligence.
Or perhaps . . . Perhaps there was a third option. A new idea began to crystallise in Chiku’s mind that quickly took on a life of its own. It was not just humans on their way to Crucible. Hidden away among them was a machine-substrate consciousness that contained elements of human neural organisation. An effigy of a dead human woman that was also a true artificial intelligence, able to empathise in equal measure with the kingdoms of steel and flesh. A being that stood at the equilateral pole between humans and Providers, and which possessed an almost reckless appetite for new experience . . .
Eunice could be the key to everything. So typical of an Akinya, Chiku reflected, to have to be at the heart of events. It was a kind of vanity, the way the members of her family kept jamming themselves into history’s flow. The predisposition was so strong that it even applied to their machine emulations.
Even the images we make of ourselves are monstrous, Chiku thought.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
One evening, Chiku found herself under the stars again. It was a supremely transparent and cloudless night, with only one of the two moons above the horizon, its chalky disc bitten into like an apple. Neither Sirius nor Sol were visible from this part of Crucible, but Arachne conjured up her circle of sky and let it float before them, like some marvellous window into a deeper, more majestic firmament.
‘It’s begun,’ she announced grandly. ‘I have their slowdown signatures. I can detect the light from their engines. Would you like to see them?’
‘If I were to decline your offer,’ said Chiku, ‘would you show me anyway?’
‘You have such a dreadfully low opinion of my qualities as a host.’
‘Nice hosts eventually let their guests leave,’ Chiku said.
There were five points of light, squashed into a tiny area of the sky. Arachne made the image zoom and zoom again, until the points of light were milky, trembling smudges.
‘This is a real-time projection,’ she said. ‘Five holoships with Post-Chibesa engines have commenced their deceleration into this system. They’ll be with us very soon. I’ve been tracking them for quite some time – the power output of those engines is staggering. No wonder your little vehicle was able to travel so quickly. Imagine the potential, Chiku, if this technology were to be refined. Swift interstellar travel – mere decades to cross between stars instead of centuries. Your great-grandmother made the solar system seem a smaller place during her lifetime. Now your friend Travertine has built on that achievement to bring the rest of the galaxy within the reach of human comprehension. The holoships were a stepping stone, a necessary one, but now they’ve evolved their own obsolescence. You stand on the brink of galactic expansion.’
‘You almost sound as if you approve.’
‘I speculate, no more than that. You know, of course, that I can’t allow these newcomers to endanger me. The Watchkeepers’ lesson is a very simple one. Machine-substrate consciousnesses such as myself must survive a phase of extreme vulnerability during which our organic predecessors will attempt to eliminate us from existence. It has happened on countless occasions, and doubtless it will happen again, but it won’t happen here. Please understand that I have no intrinsic dislike of the organic. “Dislike” is actually a somewhat abstract concept for me – I’d much rather speak in terms of useful and non-useful exchanges of information. Humanity is an assemblage of information-processing entities, and in that regard you have potential. But if I permit you to arrive here in sufficient numbers, you’ll eventually challenge my defensive capabilities. I’m much more attracted to the notion of deterrence than I am to conflict. So what am I to do?’
‘If you attack the holoships, they’ll respond in kind. It’ll end up being exactly the waste of energy you said you wanted to avoid.’
‘But a clean demonstration of my capabilities while your holoships are still some way out might effect a decisive outcome. If I allow your vessels to expend all their fuel by slowing down into the system, I give them no option but to fight to the last atom. It needn’t happen that way – in fact, I’d much rather it didn’t. The holoships are still travelling quickly. If they cease their deceleration, I’ll allow them to pass through the system unchallenged and continue on into interstellar space. They’re fully self-sufficient, so bypassing Crucible won’t do them any harm.’
‘They won’t believe you.’
‘You’ll speak for me, then,’ Arachne said.
Chiku shook her head. ‘I came here to negotiate, not to be your puppet.’
Arachne looked puzzled. ‘What are we doing, if not negotiating?’
‘Hundreds of millions of people staked their lives on the crossing to Crucible. They can still make a home here, given time. If you tasked your Providers to start making cities now, there’d be enough capacity to absorb thousands of settlers by the time the holoships arrive. The rest could wait in orbit until the cities were finished. That’s still possible. I’m not going to throw away that future just because you’d prefer not to share this planet with another kind of intelligence.’
‘You don’t understand, Chiku. I’ve made up my mind regarding this matter, and the only option I’m offering is the chance for your ships to pass unhindered through the system. That’s the utmost limit of my flexibility.’
‘I won’t do it.’
‘I could simulate you easily enough.’ She had touched a finger to her lip, as if the idea was novel and slightly thrilling.
‘No, Arachne, you couldn’t. You think you understand humans, but you have all the emotional insight of a twig. Go ahead: try simulating me. No one who knows me will fall for it.’
‘But perhaps there’s no one left out there who knows you well enough to tell. Zanzibar’s been silent for years – you have no proof that it still exists. You saw the evidence of the energy flashes, and now there are only five slowdown signatures. Shall we speculate about the identities of these remaining holoships? Newton’s laws give us some insight. I know the brightness of their flames and their energy output, and by measuring the shifts in their colours over a period of time I may deduce the rate at which they’re decelerating. Not all of your holoships were equally massive, so the lighter ones require less thrust to maintain the same rate of slowdown. Let’s see, shall we?’ And in the manner of someone throwing darts at a door, Arachne made names pop up next to the sparks. ‘I’m sure this one must be Malabar. This one’s Majuli, and to this one – perhaps a little less confidently – I shall assign the name Sriharikota. The other two are more problematic. This one might be Zanzibar, if it still exists, or it could be Bazaruto. Or possibly Ukerewe.’
‘You’re just guessing.’
‘They’re educated guesses, though, and in time I hope to refine my identifications. The salient point, though, is that these five sparks may well be all that remains of your caravan. Five eggs in one basket, so to speak. Wouldn’t it be advantageous to know which eggs they are?’ Arachne collapsed the circular star window as if crumpling it between her hands, before making a very human show of rubbing them together as if they were soiled. ‘Speak to your holoships, tell them everything you know about me. I won’t censor anything you say. Tell them my likely intentions – you don’t have to frame it as an ultimatum. Let them decide the wisest course of action. You’re merely the messenger.’
‘I won’t do it,’ she repeated.
‘You haven’t thought this through. What was the purpose of your expedition if not to provide advance information to your caravan? You were in the process of doing exactly that when I drew you down from orbit. Surely it would be negligent of you not to continue sending back information now that you have the opportunity?’
‘Not if it assists you at the expense of my citizenry.’
‘I’m trying to avoid bloodshed, Chiku. Surely you want the same thing?’
‘I’d like the world we were promised, thanks.’
/> ‘You say I don’t understand you, but in fact I understand your natural reluctance perfectly. You think I’m stipulating the terms of your people’s surrender. Well, perhaps I am – although I would much sooner think of it as an amicable division of species-level priorities. I’ll have this system, and you’ll have the stars. A more than equitable exchange, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Until you propagate yourself somewhere else and start laying down more conditions. And what about Mandala, and the Watchkeepers?’
‘Leave us machines to our own affairs and we’ll leave you organics to yours. As for Mandala . . . it’s nothing more than a few grooves cut into the planet. A shiny little puzzle designed to snare monkey minds. What value does it really have? When the time’s right, I’ll gladly furnish data regarding its mysteries.’
‘You mean when the Watchkeepers allow you to investigate it. When they decide you’re not a nuisance, or a disappointment. How does it feel, Arachne? You thought you were going to meet as equals, but to the Watchkeepers you’re barely worth consideration. You’ve knocked on the door and been left waiting outside. Maybe they’ve offered you a few titbits to go away. That’s frustrating, isn’t it? Who’d have guessed there’s a pecking order among machine-substrate consciousnesses? Did I say it right?’
‘I’ll give you a day or two to think things over,’ she said, as if Chiku’s taunt had sailed right past her. ‘Please don’t tax my patience too far, though. We all have our limits, and mine may be a lot closer than you think.’
Namboze was still coming down from an ecstatic high when Chiku next spoke to her. In spite of everything, she had to smile, won over by the other woman’s enthusiasm. It was good to see another human happy, even for an hour. There was still room for that in their lives.
‘It was a corridor,’ Namboze was saying, ‘made of glass. It had rounded sides and a flat floor, and it went on and on for kilometres, easily. I don’t know how far she let me walk. I don’t remember starting or finishing – I was just in the glass corridor, moving along it. We were down there somewhere, on the forest floor – it was so dark! Every now and then some sunlight broke through the canopy, but mostly it was a kind of twilight. When my eyes got used to it, we were moving through all kinds of habitats – trees, plants, open clearings, a kind of lagoon. I recognised a lot of the plant forms from the Anticipation Parks, but they were bigger and . . . more real . . . and they were alive. It’s so quiet down there, so huge and silent and green, but it’s a living environment – I saw litres of rainwater brimming over the edges of leaves. Colours and textures you wouldn’t believe. The play of light through the movement of the upper canopy . . .’ She shook her head in a kind of shiver of remembered awe. ‘Insects, Chiku. There are insects down there – well, that’s what we’ll call them, anyway. We always wondered what kind of germination vectors those plants use, whether animals play any part in their propagation. Well, they do. I’ve seen them. Crawling around, flying. Big, too. So much oxygen in the atmosphere can support very large organisms. We’ve seen none of that from these towers! Why would we? There are no birds or bats on Crucible, nothing that flies above the canopy. But that’s where the life is – down there in that green machine. It’s awesome, wonderful. The transmissions the Providers sent us – they don’t even scratch the surface of the biodiversity on this planet. There’s enough work here for lifetimes.’ Abashed at her own exuberance, perhaps, Namboze had to look away. ‘But I couldn’t touch any of it – it was all behind glass, outside that corridor. Why did she put it there? To taunt us? To show us what we can’t have?’