Poseidon's Wake - Страница 109

109

‘You’re so pleased with yourself,’ Ru accused.

‘Pleased that I’ve given Kanu a hope of digging his way out of that mess he’s in? Yes, I am. Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘You know nothing about Kanu’s situation,’ Grave said. ‘Wishing to turn around and being able to — they’re not the same thing. You’ve staked countless lives on this gamble.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘How can you know?’ asked Vasin.

‘Because I’ve spoken to Swift,’ Eunice answered.

And for a moment there was silence, until Goma asked the question they must all have been thinking.

‘Who the hell is Swift?’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

There was darkness, and then there was light. For a few seconds Icebreaker had gone dead, all its displays inactive, its interior illumination shut off, the background noise of its life-support systems silenced. Even the Chibesa core had fallen to a sudden and ominous stillness. Nothing in Kanu’s prior experience of the ship had prepared him for this, not even the Watchkeeper’s attack.

As the systems began to recover — emergency lights coming on in the bridge, fans restarting, a chorus of recorded voices informing him of various status indications — Nissa and the Tantors began to speak at once.

‘What has happened, Kanu?’ Dakota asked.

‘I don’t know.’

The elephant persisted. ‘Do you think it is connected to the Mandala event — the energy spilling out from Paladin?’

‘Zanzibar must have streaked past pretty close,’ Nissa said. ‘Maybe we got buffeted by… something?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kanu repeated.

For once, he had no need of a mask, no need to lie. He genuinely had no idea what had just happened — he had neither initiated it nor expected it. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it felt to him that the Mandala event itself had anything to do with Icebreaker going dark. They had witnessed the event and the ship’s normal functions had continued uninterrupted, registering nothing of immediate concern within its environment. Zanzibar was long gone before the arrival of whatever hit Icebreaker.

Whatever this was, it must have been initiated locally, whether by accident or design.

A dark suspicion began to form.

‘Talk to me, Swift,’ Kanu subvocalised.

‘Ah, you can still hear me. That’s excellent. I wasn’t totally sure, you know. A shock to the ship of this magnitude — who knows what the collateral effects might be?’

‘I can hear you. Now talk to me.’

Kanu was still in semi-darkness, but he was not alone. Nissa was next to him, both of them seated. Dakota and the other Risen were still present, too, but drifting free of the floor. Their huge breathing presences were tumbling like boulders — there was nothing fixed within reach of a trunk or foot to arrest their motion.

Presumably they were just as bewildered by this latest development as Kanu. Or perhaps, having witnessed the Mandala event, their capacity for astonishment had been overloaded like a blown circuit. He could relate to that well enough.

‘The ship is ours again, Kanu,’ Swift said. ‘Or it will be, soon enough.’

‘It was never not ours.’

‘You know exactly what I mean. We were unable to take decisive action while the Friends were in jeopardy. Now they are no longer in jeopardy — or at least their prospective fates lie completely beyond our influence. That frees us, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘You made the ship do this?’ Nissa asked through the same subvocal channel. ‘You could do this all along, and you waited until now?’

‘You are both silent, yet I sense deliberation,’ Dakota said. ‘I will ask again. What do you know of this event — both of you?’

‘Some fault in the ship,’ Kanu said, for the sake of giving her something. ‘That’s all I know.’

More of the lights and displays were coming online now and the recorded warnings were beginning to die down. The ship was restarting itself, cycling through health and calibration checks, but the process appeared to be running without complication.

‘Your ship seemed reliable until now,’ Dakota answered. ‘Do you have an explanation for this sudden fault?’

‘Nothing I’d bet my life on,’ Kanu said.

She rammed the ceiling and tucked her trunk around a structural member. ‘Try me anyway.’

‘Clearly we missed something. But the ship’s coming back to us. When we have full functionality, the event logs should explain what the problem was.’

‘I find it telling that it happened so soon after the atrocity we just witnessed.’

‘I wouldn’t read too much into that. Can you get down from there?’

A lurch signalled the centrifugal wheel restarting itself, providing gravity in the absence of thrust. Dakota held on for a few seconds while the spin slowly phased in, then allowed herself to ‘fall’ the short distance to the floor. She landed hard enough to send a solid thud through the fabric of the ship. Hector and Lucas found their own footing, stumbling and then regaining balance.

‘Are you being honest with me, Kanu?’ Dakota asked.

‘No, he isn’t. But don’t blame him for that. He’s not responsible for me — at least, not entirely.’

The sounds were coming from Kanu, but Swift was generating the words. Kanu had no control over them. With the same absence of volition, Kanu rose from his seat. They had reached normal gravity. He walked around until he faced the Risen and gave a small bow, tucking his hand against his belly.

‘Permit me to introduce myself,’ he said.

Dakota eyes glittered with vehemence. ‘What is this?’

‘I am Swift. We haven’t met.’

Dakota shifted her gaze onto Nissa. ‘Do you understand what is happening?’

‘I do,’ she answered, ‘and I think you should listen.’ But there was apprehension in her voice as well — Kanu sharing her sense that Swift had begun to operate entirely on his own agenda.

‘I am an artificial intelligence,’ Swift said. ‘I came from the Evolvarium society on Mars, inside Kanu — operating on the same neural platform as his own consciousness.’

‘A parasite?’

‘A passenger,’ he corrected delicately, tapping a finger to Kanu’s lip. ‘My host was entirely cooperative — a full and willing partner in our enterprise.’

‘Which was?’

‘To understand ourselves. To explore our origins and our ultimate potential. To seek the paths by which the machine and the organic might coexist. Or, if such coexistence proved impossible, to learn which strategies would suit us best when forced into opposition. The least destructive paths. I had two primary ambitions. The second was to achieve meaningful contact with the Watchkeepers, something quite impossible within the human hegemony of the old solar system.’

‘And the first?’

‘To meet my maker.’

‘You believe in a god?’

‘I believe in Eunice Akinya. That may or may not be an equivalent statement. That ambition was achieved. I met Eunice, and we had a full and frank exchange of opinions.’

‘We met her,’ Dakota said. ‘In the ching environment. But only us.’

‘You forget — where Kanu goes, I go. What Kanu witnesses, I witness. But there’s so much more to it than that. Within the bounds of that environment, Eunice and I were able to exchange a great deal of information. You caught none of it. We used non-verbal channels — a battery of subtle methods. You’d be surprised at the resourcefulness of two artificial intelligences when they have something to communicate. Actually, I should clarify: she’s no longer running on a machine substrate. She’s become meat — returned to her human origins. That was an interesting adjustment for me to make — like discovering that god is made of wood, or flint. But the essence is still her, and her faculties haven’t been entirely diminished by reversion to the flesh.’

‘Reversion,’ Nissa said. ‘Thanks.’

‘No offence intended.’

‘None taken. What else did she tell you?’

‘That we have a chance. She believed she might be in a position to initiate a Mandala event, although nothing was certain. She encouraged me to do everything I could to maximise the usefulness of such an action. Fortunately, I had already done some preparatory work of my own. Of course, I knew nothing about the viability of instigating the Mandala event. But I had long thought it wise to install some precautionary measures in the operating architecture of this ship.’

Had Kanu been capable of registering surprise, this would have been his turn.

But Swift continued, ‘Let me explain. It’s rather impolite of me to keep using Kanu as a puppet in this way so I am going to relinquish control to him. In any case, I think the ship has now regained sufficient capacity to render this mode of communication quite superfluous.’

Kanu felt himself return. He worked his jaw, drew breath — Swift never appeared to breathe enough when he was in control.

‘Swift—’ he began.

‘A moment, my friend.’

The bridge’s main display filled with an image of Swift’s head and upper torso, dressed as always like a man of learning from the late eighteenth century, with a white scarf, frock coat, pince-nez glasses and a head of boyish curls.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Some explanation may be in order and we’ll come to that in a moment. Before we do, though, there are a couple of pressing issues to be addressed. The first concerns our trajectory. The Chibesa core is restarting — I have it on a fast cycle — and in a few minutes we will have full power and control. Once we have that capability, we will initiate a hard burn to avoid crossing the outer threshold of the moons. Given our present speed and course, that burn will push the ship to the limit of its structural and energetic tolerances. It will be uncomfortable for all passengers, but with due preparations it should be bearable for everyone.’

109