Naqi peered into the milky-grey depths of the cube. Now that she saw it closely she realised that there were things embedded within the translucent matrix. There were chains of unfamiliar symbols, intersecting at right angles. They resembled the complex white scaffolding of a building.
“What is it?”
“Mathematics. Actually, a mathematical argument—a proof, if you like. Conventional mathematical notation—no matter how arcane—has evolved so that it can be written down on a two-dimensional surface, like paper or a readout. This is a three-dimensional syntax, liberated from that constraint. It’s enormously richer, enormously more elegant.” The cube tumbled in Sivaraksa’s hand. He was smiling. “No one could make head or tail of it. Yet when I looked at it for the first time I nearly dropped it in shock. It made perfect sense to me. Not only did I understand the theorem, but I also understood the point of it. It’s a joke, Naqi. A pun. This mathematics is rich enough to embody humour. And understanding that is the gift they left me. It was sitting in my mind for twenty-eight years, like an egg waiting to hatch.”
Abruptly, Sivaraksa placed the cube back on the table.
“Something’s come up,” he said.
From somewhere came the distant, prolonged thunder of a dirigible discharging its cargo of processed ore. It must have been one of the last consignments.
“Something, sir?”
“They’ve asked to see the Moat.”
“They?”
“Crane and her Vahishta mob. They’ve requested an oversight of all major scientific centres on Turquoise, and naturally enough we’re on the list. They’ll be visiting us, spending a couple of days seeing what we’ve achieved.”
“I’m not too surprised that they’ve asked to visit, sir.”
“No, but I was hoping we’d have a few months’ grace. We don’t. They’ll be here in a week.”
“That’s not necessarily a problem for us, is it?”
“It mustn’t become one,” Sivaraksa said. “I’m putting you in charge of the visit, Naqi. You’ll be the interface between Crane’s group and the Moat. That’s quite a responsibility, you understand. A mistake—the tiniest gaffe—could undermine our standing with the Snowflake Council.” He nodded at the com-pad. “Our budgetary position is precarious. Frankly, I’m in Tak Thonburi’s lap. We can’t afford any embarrassments.”
“No sir.”
She certainly did understand. The job was a poisoned chalice, or at the very least, a chalice with the strong potential to become poisoned. If she succeeded—if the visit went smoothly, with no hitches—Sivaraksa could still take much of the credit for it. If it went wrong, on the other hand, the fault would be categorically hers.
“One more thing.” Sivaraksa reached under his desk and produced a brochure that he slid across to her. The brochure was marked with a prominent silver snowflake motif. It was sealed with red foil. “Open it; you have clearance.”
“What is it, sir?”
“A security report on our new friends. One of them has been behaving a bit oddly. You’ll need to keep an eye on him.”
For inscrutable reasons of their own, the liaison committee had decided she would be introduced to Amesha Crane and her associates a day before the official visit, when the party was still in Sukhothai-Sanikiluaq. The journey there took the better part of two days, even allowing for the legs she took by high-speed dirigible or the ageing, unreliable trans-atoll railway line between Narathiwat and Cape Dorset. She arrived at Sukhothai-Sanikiluaq in a velvety purple twilight, catching the tail end of a fireworks display. The two snowflake cities had only been married three weeks, so the arrival of the off-worlders was an excellent pretext for prolonging the celebrations. Naqi watched the fireworks from a civic landing stage perched halfway up Sukhothai’s core, starbursts and cataracts of scarlet, indigo and intense emerald green brightening the sky above the vacuum-bladders. The colours reminded her of the organisms that she and Mina had seen in the wake of their airship. The recollection left her suddenly sad and drained, convinced that she had made a terrible mistake by accepting this assignment.
“Naqi?”
It was Tak Thonburi, coming out to meet her on the balcony. They had already exchanged messages during the journey. He was dressed in full civic finery and appeared more than a little drunk.
“Chairman Thonburi.”
“Good of you to come here, Naqi.” She watched his eyes map her contours with scientific rigour, lingering here and there around regions of particular interest. “Enjoying the show?”
“You certainly seem to be, sir.”
“Yes, yes. Always had a thing about fireworks.” He pressed a drink into her hand and together they watched the display come to its mildly disappointing conclusion. There was a lull then, but Naqi noticed that the spectators on the other balconies were reluctant to leave, as if waiting for something. Presently a stunning display of three-dimensional images appeared, generated by powerful projection apparatus in the Voice of Evening’s shuttle. Above Sukhothai-Sanikiluaq, Chinese dragons as large as mountains fought epic battles. Sea monsters convulsed and writhed in the night. Celestial citadels burned. Hosts of purple-winged fiery angels fell from the heavens in tightly knit squadrons, clutching arcane instruments of music or punishment.
A marbled giant rose from the sea, as if woken from some aeons-long slumber.
It was very, very impressive.
“Bastards,” Thonburi muttered.
“Sir?”
“Bastards,” he said, louder this time. “We know they’re better than us. But do they have to keep reminding us?”
He ushered her into the reception chamber where the Vahishta visitors were being entertained. The return indoors had a magical sharpening effect on his senses. Naqi suspected that the ability to turn drunkenness on and off like a switch must be one of the most hallowed of diplomatic skills.
He leaned towards her, confidentially. “Did Jotah mention any—”
“Security considerations, Chairman? Yes, I think I got the message.”
“It’s probably nothing, only—”
“I understand. Better safe than sorry.”
He winked, touching a finger against the side of his nose. “Precisely.”
The interior was bright after the balcony. Twenty Vahishta delegates were standing in a huddle near the middle of the room. The captain was absent—little had been seen of Moreau since the shuttle’s arrival in Umingmaktok—but the delegates were talking to a clutch of local bigwigs, none of whom Naqi recognised. Thonburi steered her into the fray, oblivious to the conversations that were taking place.
“Ladies and gentlemen . . . I would like to introduce Naqi Okpik. Naqi oversees the scientific programme on the Moat. She’ll be your host for the visit to our project.”
“Ah, Naqi.” Amesha Crane leaned over and shook her hand. “A pleasure. I just read your papers on information propagation methods in class-three nodes. Erudite.”
“They were collaborative works,” Naqi said. “I really can’t take too much credit.”
“Ah, but you can. All of you can. You achieved those findings with the minimum of resources, and you made very creative use of some extremely simplistic numerical methods.”
“We muddle through,” Naqi said.
Crane nodded enthusiastically. “It must give you a great sense of satisfaction.”
Tak Thonburi said, “It’s a philosophy, that’s all. We conduct our science in isolation, and we enjoy only limited communication with other colonies. As a social model it has its disadvantages, but it means we aren’t forever jealous of what they’re achieving on some other world that happens to be a few decades ahead of us because of an accident of history or location. We think that the benefits outweigh the costs.”
“Well, it seems to work,” Crane said. “You have a remarkably stable society here, Chairman. Verging on the utopian, some might say.”
Tak Thonburi caressed his cowlick. “We can’t complain.”
“Nor
can we,” said the man Naqi recognised as quizzical-faced Simon Matsubara. “If you hadn’t enforced this isolation, your own Juggler research would have been as hopelessly compromised as everywhere else.”
“But the isolation isn’t absolute, is it?”
The voice was quiet, but commanding.
Naqi followed the voice to the speaker. It was Rafael Weir, the man who had been identified as a possible security risk. Of the three who had emerged from Moreau’s shuttle, he was the least remarkable looking, possessing the kind of amorphous face that would allow him to blend in with almost any crowd. Had her attention not been drawn to him, he would have been the last one she noticed. He was not unattractive, but there was nothing particularly striking or charismatic about his looks. According to the security dossier, he had made a number of efforts to break away from the main party of the delegation while they had been visiting research stations. They could have been accidents—one or two other party members had become separated at other times—but it was beginning to look a little too deliberate.
“No,” Tak Thonburi answered. “We’re not absolute isolationists, or we’d never have given permission for Voice of Evening to assume orbit around Turquoise. But we don’t solicit passing traffic either. Our welcome is as warm as anyone’s, we hope, but we don’t encourage visitors.”
“Are we the first to visit since your settlement?” Weir asked.
“The first starship?” Tak Thonburi shook his head. “No. But it’s been a number of years since the last one.”
“Which was?”
“The Pelican in Impiety, a century ago.”
“An amusing coincidence, then,” Weir said.
Tak Thonburi narrowed his eyes. “Coincidence?”
“The Pelican’s next port of call was Haven, if I’m not mistaken. ‘It was en route from Zion, but it made a trade stopover around Turquoise.’” He smiled. “And we have come from Haven, so history already binds our two worlds, albeit tenuously.”
Thonburi’s eyes narrowed. He was trying to read Weir and evidently failing. “We don’t talk about the Pelican too much. There were technical benefits—vacuum-bladder production methods, information technologies . . . but there was also a fair bit of unpleasantness. The wounds haven’t entirely healed.”
“Let’s hope this visit will be remembered more fondly,” Weir said.
Amesha Crane nodded, fingering one of the items of silver jewellery in her hair. “Agreed. All the indications are favourable, at the very least. We’ve arrived at a most auspicious time.” She turned to Naqi. “I find the Moat project fascinating, and I’m sure I speak for the entire Vahishta delegation. I may as well tell you that no one else has attempted anything remotely like it. Tell me, scientist to scientist, do you honestly think it will work?”
“We won’t know until we try,” Naqi said. Any other answer would have been politically hazardous: too much optimism and the politicians would have started asking just why the expensive project was needed in the first place. Too much pessimism and they would ask exactly the same question.
“Fascinating, all the same.” Crane’s expression was knowing, as if she understood Naqi’s predicament perfectly. “I understand that you’re very close to running the first experiment?”
“Given that it’s taken us twenty years to get this far, yes, we’re close. But we’re still looking at three to four months, maybe longer. It’s not something we want to rush.”
“That’s a great pity,” Crane said, turning now to Thonburi. “In three to four months we might be on our way. Still, it would have been something to see, wouldn’t it?”
Thonburi leaned towards Naqi. The alcohol on his breath was a fog of cheap vinegar. “I suppose there wouldn’t be any chance of accelerating the schedule, would there?”
“Out of the question, I’m afraid,” Naqi said.
“That’s just too bad,” said Amesha Crane. Still toying with her jewellery, she turned to the others. “But we mustn’t let a little detail like that spoil our visit, must we?”
They returned to the Moat using the Voice of Evening’s shuttle. There was another civic reception to be endured upon arrival, but it was a much smaller affair than the one in Sukhothai-Sanikiluaq. Dr. Jotah Sivaraksa was there, of course, and once Naqi had dealt with the business of introducing the party to him she was able to relax for the first time in many hours, melting into the corner of the room and watching the interaction between visitors and locals with a welcome sense of detachment. Naqi was tired and had difficulty keeping her eyes open. She saw everything through a sleepy blur, the delegates surrounding Sivaraksa like pillars of fire, the fabric of their costumes rippling with the slightest movement, reds and russets and chrome yellows dancing like sparks or sheets of flame. Naqi left as soon as she felt it was polite to do so, and when she reached her bed she fell immediately into troubled sleep, dreaming of squadrons of purple-winged angels falling from the skies and of the great giant rising from the depths, clawing the seaweed and kelp of ages from his eyes.
In the morning she awoke without really feeling refreshed. Anaemic light pierced the slats on her window. She was not due to meet the delegates again for another three or four hours, so there was time to turn over and try and catch some proper sleep. But she knew from experience that it would be futile.
She got up. To her surprise, there was a new message on her console from Jotah Sivaraksa. What, she wondered, did he have to say to her that he could not have said at the reception, or later this morning?
She opened the message and read.
“Sivaraksa,” she said to herself. “Are you insane? It can’t be done.”
The message informed her that there had been a change of plan. The first closure of the sea-doors would be attempted in two days, while the delegates were still on the Moat.
It was pure madness. They were months away from that. Yes, the doors could be closed—the basic machinery for doing that was in place—and yes, the doors would be hermetically tight for at least one hundred hours after closure. But nothing else was ready. The sensitive monitoring equipment, the failsafe subsystems, the backups . . . None of that would be in place and operational for many weeks. Then there was supposed to be at least six weeks of testing, slowly building up to the event itself . . .
To do it in two days made no sense at all, except to a politician. At best all they would learn was whether or not the Jugglers had remained inside the Moat when the door was closed. They would learn nothing about how the data flow was terminated, or how the internal connections between the nodes adapted to the loss of contact with the wider ocean.
Naqi swore and hit the console. She wanted to blame Sivaraksa, but she knew that was unfair. Sivaraksa had to keep the politicians happy, or the whole project would be endangered. He was just doing what he had to do, and he almost certainly liked it even less than she did.
Naqi pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and found some coffee in one of the adjoining mess rooms. The Moat was deserted, quiet except for the womblike throb of generators and air-circulation systems. A week ago it would have been as noisy now as at any other time of day, for the construction had continued around the clock. But the heavy work was finished; the last ore dirigible had arrived while Naqi was away. All that remained was the relatively light work of completing the Moat’s support subsystems. Despite what Sivaraksa had said in his message there was really very little additional work needed to close the doors. Even two days of frantic activity would make no difference to the usefulness of the stunt.
When she’d calmed down, she returned to her room and called Sivaraksa. It was still far too early, but seeing that the bastard had already ruined her day she saw no reason not to reciprocate.
“Naqi.” His silver hair was a sleep-matted mess on the screen. “I take it you got my message?”
“You didn’t think I’d take it lying down, did you?”
“I don’t like it any more than you do. But I see the political necessity.”
“Do yo
u? This isn’t like switching a light on and off, Jotah.” His eyes widened at the familiarity, but she pressed on regardless. “If we screw up the first time, there might never be a second chance. The Jugglers have to play along. Without them all you’ve got here is a very expensive mid-ocean refuelling point. Does that make political sense to you?”
He pushed green fingers through the mess of his hair. “Have some breakfast, get some fresh air, then come to my office. We’ll talk about it then.”
“I’ve had breakfast, thanks very much.”
“Then get the fresh air. You’ll feel better for it.” Sivaraksa rubbed his eyes. “You’re not very happy about this, are you?”
“It’s bloody madness. And the worst thing is that you know it.”
“And my hands are tied. Ten years from now, Naqi, you’ll be sitting in my place having to make similar decisions. And ten to one there’ll be some idealistic young scientist telling you what a hopeless piece of deadwood you are.” He managed a weary smile. “Mark my words, because I want you to remember this conversation when it happens.”
“There’s nothing I can do to stop this, is there?”
“I’ll be in my office in”—Sivaraksa looked aside at a clock—“thirty minutes. We can talk about it properly then.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
But even as she said that she knew she sounded petulant and inflexible. Sivaraksa was right: it was impossible to manage a project as complex and expensive as the Moat without a degree of compromise.
Naqi decided that Sivaraksa’s advice—at least the part about getting some fresh air—was worth heeding. She descended a helical staircase until she reached the upper surface of the Moat’s ring-shaped wall. The concrete was cold beneath her bare feet and a pleasantly cool breeze caressed her legs and arms. The sky had brightened on one horizon. Machines and supplies were arranged neatly on the upper surface ready for use, although further construction would be halted until the delegates completed their visit. Stepping nimbly over the tracks, conduits and cables that criss-crossed each other on the upper surface, Naqi walked to the side. A high railing, painted in high-visibility rot-resistant sealer, fenced the inner part of the Moat. She touched it to make sure it was dry, then leaned over. The distant side of the Moat was a colourless thread, twenty kilometres away, like a very low wall of sea mist.