Poseidon's Wake - Страница 120

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Stop thinking.

The wheel shimmered and wobbled before him like a line of smoke in a thermal. The waterline bobbed up and down the glass of his faceplate. The air above the sea cut the horizon into ribbons, buckling it with mirage heat. He still had the dizzy sense that the wheel was moving.

‘I think—’ Nissa began.

‘Don’t speak. Save your energy. We still have a long way to go.’

Soon they had to stop again. The temperature inside his suit was unbearable now, his breath fogging the faceplate like the inside of a sweltering greenhouse. He wanted to remove the helmet, be rid of that glass, but the air outside was no cooler than the water. It had become a struggle even to maintain the correct angle in the water to prevent his backpack from being fully immersed.

‘Kanu,’ a voice said finally.

‘Swift. Yes.’

‘You must fight, Kanu. Fight or I will do it for you. Is that understood?’

‘I can do it.’

‘Then do it. I would much sooner spare you the indignity of being puppeteered because you lack the will to overcome your own tiredness.’

‘Fuck you, Swift.’

‘Good. Anger. Anger is an excellent sign. Now put some of that anger into your arms and legs.’

He did, for a little while. He would show Swift that he still had the determination to strike forward, to push through the pain and fatigue. But the effort was temporary, and by the end of it the suit had become a furnace, his own sweat stinging his eyes, his breathing ragged.

‘Kanu!’

‘I’m sorry, Swift. I need to rest.’

There was an interlude, a dream of coolness, and then he awoke. He was still hot, still drained, but he was not in water now. He had come to rest on a warm, dry surface, like a sun-baked boulder. He had taken off his helmet but was still holding it in one hand even as he lay sprawled like a drunkard. Through pained, salt-encrusted eyes he made out Nissa a little to his right. She was on a boulder, too, prone atop its ridged upper surface, head lolling away from him. Her foot dragged through the water.

The boulder moved under him. Beneath a membrane of flexible grey material it was breathing.

Kanu understood. The Risen were ferrying them over the water, to the wheel. Dakota was under him; Hector beneath Nissa. They were lying on the backs of swimming elephants.

The nearer they came, the more impossibly sheer the wheel looked. It ascended vertically for what looked like dozens of kilometres, until finally, resentfully, it began to arc over. Climb that? Kanu thought. Not in a million years, even if there was some way to get from one groove to the next. Could they worm their way up the near-vertical grooves cut into the rim rather than the horizontal ones in the tread? It would be no easier, he reckoned — and after the Risen had brought them this far, he could not countenance abandoning them.

‘Kanu.’ It was Nissa, her voice hoarse.

‘Try not to speak too much,’ he said. ‘We’ll tap into the fluid rations when we reach the wheel.’

‘Look up.’

‘I am looking up.’

‘Not at the wheel, merman. The moons.’

It took his tired, salt-gummed eyes a few moments to pick out the tiny orbs of the moons against the sky’s blue. He had not noticed them before, and had given no thought to how they must appear from Poseidon’s surface, from within the atmosphere. But however he might have imagined them, it was not like this.

‘They’re lining up.’

‘I know.’

‘What does that mean? Is it good or bad?’

‘We’ll find out,’ Nissa said.

He woke again. They were at the wheel, a few scant elephant-lengths from the tread. They had arrived close to the right side of the tread, not far from the right angle between the tread and rim. Kanu felt a shudder of vertigo, imagining the wheel’s continuation beneath the visible surface, plunging down through tens of kilometres of darkening water, enduring pressures beyond anything in his experience on either Earth or Europa. He had never felt vertigo in water before. Water was his element, the place where he felt safest. Water sustained, water provided, water gave him suspension.

Not here.

‘It’s turning,’ Nissa said. ‘I’ve been watching it for a while, and there’s no doubt.’

‘The wheels don’t turn.’ He had no strength for discussion, but the last thing he wanted was for Nissa to pin her hopes on something ridiculous. ‘We scanned them from orbit. Icebreaker would have seen signs of movement.’

‘Not then. Now,’ Nissa said. ‘The moons have changed, so why not the wheels? Besides, we’re close enough to see the grooves clearly now. Close enough to fix on them and watch them — they’re coming out of the water, one at a time, and going up. The wheel’s turning, or rolling.’

From his perch on Dakota’s back, he stared with as much concentration and focus as he could muster. The motion was slow — easy to miss when they were further away, with the rise and fall of the waves to confuse their eyes.

Not now.

It took about three seconds for a metre of the wheel to emerge from the sea. About every thirty seconds, an entirely new groove emerged. He tracked the latest one — watched it inch slowly above the sea, water sluicing out of it, until the next groove came into view.

‘We can get on it,’ Nissa said. ‘We all can.’

‘Yes.’

The Tantors were slower now, their strength ebbing. Kanu put his helmet on, again seeing the world through steam-smeared glass. He slipped from Dakota’s back into the blood-hot bath of the water. He bobbed, forced his limbs into motion. It felt as if the water were turning to something solid, like a cast setting around him. Nissa replaced her helmet and slid off Hector to join him in the water. She looked as exhausted as he felt.

They closed the distance to the wheel, but the last couple of hundred metres were a kind of torture. They were swimming so slowly by then, all of them, that the wheel must have been rolling away at nearly the same speed. They had to fight not only to keep up with it, but also to close the gap. He lost any sense of how long that final closing took — it could have been minutes or hours. All he knew was that when they were finally at the wheel’s side, he had given everything he had.

But at least there was no doubt that it was turning. The wheel made no noise, not even up close, except for the slosh as the water drained out of each kilometre-wide groove. The sloshing was nearly continuous, each newly emerged groove adding to the sound as the one above began to empty. It was like ocean breakers, a lulling, pleasing sound.

The grooves rose out of the water slower than walking pace, but they were only three or four metres from top to bottom — between nine and twelve seconds’ worth of ascent time. After that came a stretch of smooth, flawless surface until the top edge of the next groove appeared. They would have no purchase on that, and no chance to cross from one groove to the next. Once they were in a particular groove, there would be no way off — no way of reversing their decision.

‘Spread out,’ Kanu said, summoning the energy to talk as he trod water. ‘We all want to be on the same groove. No good being one above the other — we may as well be kilometres apart.’

Nissa had swum to within almost touching distance of the wheel. ‘One chance,’ she agreed. ‘That’s all we have. When the ceiling appears out of the water, we’ll swim into the gap — let the floor rise up under us, push us out of the water.’

‘The grooves vary in height,’ Kanu said.

‘Yes.’

‘And we can’t see that height until the floor’s already under us.’

‘By which point it’ll be too late to change our minds.’

‘I know.’

‘And that backwash looks fierce,’ Nissa said. ‘Could easily suck us out again.’

‘There is a significant risk of that occurring,’ Swift added.

‘Do you have something better to offer?’ Kanu asked.

‘Only my very best wishes. I do not think it would help to puppet you — the variables are quite beyond my accounting.’

Swift was right. Until they were inside a groove, there was no telling how grippy or frictionless the walls were going to be. He hoped they could wedge themselves in tight enough to avoid being pulled back by the drain-off. He hoped there would be room for the Risen.

But they would not know until they tried.

‘We must do what we can,’ Dakota said. ‘We have no love of high places. But to be on the wheel will be better than remaining in these waters. Have strength, Hector.’

‘The next groove,’ he said. ‘All of us. Give it everything.’

They spread out — Kanu, Nissa, Hector and Dakota, with a few metres of clear water between each of them. Kanu reached inside himself for the reserves of energy and concentration he hoped had to be there. Once chance, he told himself — all or nothing.

The groove began to appear. Centimetres — tens of centimetres already.

‘Now!’

But the others had seen it as well and were not waiting for his word. Nissa spread her arms for one last push against the water — she was a stronger swimmer than he had ever given her credit for. Kanu found his own burst of strength and pushed himself into the widening space. A metre of the groove was now out of the water. He touched the fingers of one hand against the inner surface and jammed his other hand against the cool ceiling. An instant later, he felt the floor press against his feet. He glanced at Nissa. She was in, twisting around to secure herself as best she could. Beyond her, through eyes stinging with seawater, he saw Hector shunt his massive bulk into the same rectangular space. Dakota had to be behind him, but his vision was too blurred to make out more than a suggestion of motion, a confusion of grey mass and surging water.

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