Poseidon's Wake - Страница 140

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Still, with time, the government had decided to reassess its view of her. With the Watchkeepers gone, and with the news about the second Mandala — and its activation by Eunice — there was now a concerted push to understand and tame this daunting alien technology. It might take decades, centuries, before the Mandalas could be made to sing at humanity’s whim. What was clear, though — and abundantly so, given the content of these biographical fragments — was that Ndege’s work provided the foundation for all subsequent experiments. Need dictated that they build on her accomplishments, and what had once been considered a crime must now be viewed in a new, more clement light.

Goma wanted to accept this tacit forgiveness on its own terms. It was good to know her mother was no longer detested, no longer held morally accountable for a terrible accident. But there was a cynicism here that she could not set aside. It suited the government to build on her work, and therefore her reputation had to be rehabilitated.

But still. Forgiveness was better than opprobrium, wasn’t it?

Perhaps.

She was turning to leave the house when Ndege appeared before her, standing in a shaft of sunlight.

Ndege raised a calming hand.

‘You’re back, daughter. At least, if you’re seeing me now, you must be. Don’t fear, I’m no ghost. Long dead. This is a recording. They’ve allowed me to make it, on the assumption you’ll one day be in a position to hear my words.’

It was Ndege, but the older version of her mother she had only seen in the wall’s images — Ndege as she had been near the end of those final thirty years. The All must be playing its part, Goma thought — manifesting this image before her, as real as day. Was that the reason they had been so keen to get the All into her so quickly — so she would be able to see Ndege?

‘You mustn’t fear for me,’ Ndege said. ‘They’ve been kind, these recent years. My brother held the government to its word, even in death. They said they’d ease the terms of my confinement if I volunteered for the expedition, and so they have.’ She had to pause, gathering her breath before speaking again. Her voice was frail and frayed. ‘The fact that I never boarded the ship is incidental — the will was there, as you know.’

‘I do,’ Goma said.

The image continued without interruption. ‘I’ve been holding out for a pardon, but it’s clearly not going to happen while I still have a heartbeat. Still, I’ve confidence in you, daughter. You’ll have found something out there, I know. Something that puts me in a better light. Whatever it is, I know you’ll find it.’

‘I did,’ she whispered, as if to speak aloud might shatter the spell.

‘The doctors are kind, but they skirt around the issue of how much time I have left. I daren’t think in terms of years now. Months would be good, but weeks might be more realistic.’ Her smile was gentle, her eyes sparkling with fondness. Some fierce edge was gone from her mother now — dented or worn away in the years since Goma had left. ‘I want you to know, nonetheless, that these last years haven’t been the worst. Of course I miss you, and I still grieve for Mposi. But I have found ways to keep living. My enemies would be pleased to think that my days have been a catalogue of misery and despair, but I have disappointed them. We’re resilient, and we like life. Sunsets are good, but sunrises are better — even an alien sunrise, on a world that still doesn’t really like us. That’s what makes us who we are. Call it an Akinya trait, if you will. I’d say we’re just being human.’ She paused, drawing breath — slow, laboured inhalations. ‘I’ve made them promise me one thing. I can’t enforce it — I won’t be around to — but I think they’ll keep their word. It really isn’t much to ask, and I wanted you to have something when you got back to us. Whoever’s brought you here, they’ll know what I mean. Have them show it to you. You’ve earned the right to have it back. Welcome home, Goma.’

The image paled, faded from view. Goma wandered the room again, in case something in her motion or bearing might bring Ndege back. But there was no second apparition. Some intuition told her this was all there was; that what she had heard would not be repeated. Ndege would not have cared to have her words ground down to meaninglessness by endless repetition.

But what had she meant?

Goma stepped out into the silvery glare of Crucible’s day. She had to squint against the brightness. The others were still waiting for her, their expressions wary, as if none of them were quite sure what had happened inside.

‘Well?’ Ru said, to the point as ever.

‘She left me a message. She said there’s something for me — something she wanted me to have.’

‘There is,’ Malhi confirmed. ‘But we weren’t sure what to make of it, or what you’d think. It’s round the back of the house. Do you wish to see it?’

Goma swallowed. ‘Yes. Whatever it is.’

Ru took her hand from the right, Kanu from the left. ‘There was a message?’ he asked.

‘From Ndege. On the All. You can go inside, if you like. I’d be interested to know if she appears for you.’

‘She won’t,’ Ru said firmly.

Goma gave a nod. ‘No, I don’t think she will. This was for me. Only me. And I don’t think there’ll be another message.’

‘Does there need to be another?’ Kanu asked.

‘No,’ she answered, after a moment’s consideration. ‘I think we said all that needed to be said.’

Malhi and Yefing had gone on ahead. As Goma rounded the corner to the back of the house, Malhi was standing there with one arm outstretched, pointing to the object that had been hidden from view until then. Goma stared at it for a few seconds, hardly believing what she was being shown. It was both utterly familiar, utterly a part of her, and yet it had been such a long time since she had brought it to mind, such a long time since she had considered its lines, admired its elegant balance of form and function, that it might as well have been the first time she had set eyes on it. It seemed unreal, blazing in the same superluminous white of Yefing’s medical uniform.

‘Geoffrey’s aeroplane,’ she said, wonderingly. ‘The Sess-Na.’

She slipped her hands free of Ru and Kanu, walked up to the aeroplane’s side, touched a hand to that blazing whiteness. She half expected it to burst like a soap bubble. But it was real. It was cold and hard under her palm, undeniably present.

She touched the wing. She walked to the front and stroked the edge of the propeller, like a swordsman testing the keenness of a blade.

‘Who’s Geoffrey?’ Kanu asked, stepping into the wing’s shadow, eyeing the ancient machine with more than a little trepidation.

‘You should know,’ she chided teasingly. ‘He was one of ours. Your… what? Uncle? Great-uncle? He was Sunday’s brother. You figure it out.’

‘I knew I’d heard the name.’ Kanu smiled back at her and continued his doubtful examination of the primitive aircraft. ‘He owned this?’

‘He owned this, and it wasn’t even new at the time. It came with us, all the way from Earth. All the way from Africa. It’s… old. Stupidly old. Nine hundred years. Maybe more.’

‘Can you fly it?’

‘I used to, all the time. Against my mother’s wishes, most of the time — she thought I’d break my neck.’

‘And yet,’ Kanu said, ‘she made sure you got it.’

‘If you were going to break your neck, you’d have done it by now,’ Ru said.

‘Can you dismantle it, or box it up?’ she asked Malhi.

Malhi frowned back. ‘You don’t like it?’

‘It’s not about whether I like it or not. I have to go to Earth. It might as well come back with me. That’s where it belongs, not here.’

‘I’d say it belongs here as well as anywhere,’ Kanu said.

‘Doesn’t matter. It can still come back with me.’

He walked over and placed an arm over her shoulder. ‘The machine belongs here. This is where it’s spent most of its existence, isn’t it?’

‘And?’ she asked, squinting against the abstract white glare made by the Sess-Na’s shape.

‘So do you,’ he said. ‘Here with the Tantors, the Risen. Here on the world where you were born.’ He nodded to Ru. ‘Both of you. This is your world, not Earth. You’ve work to be getting on with. Crucible needs you.’

‘Haven’t we done enough for Crucible?’ Goma asked.

‘The more you do, the more you’re needed.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I have to go back. For Eunice’s sake.’

He lifted his arm from her shoulder, brought himself about to face her, his tone firm but affectionate.

‘You made a vow, at least to yourself, that you’d see her heart returned to Africa.’

‘Yes.’

‘That vow can stand. But I can be the one who delivers the heart. Where’s the problem in that? It’s not as if I’m not family. It’s not as if I couldn’t be trusted to deliver on the commitment.’ He looked at her sharply. ‘Is it?’

‘Of course not. But—’

‘And I’m going there anyway.’

‘But Nissa—’ Ru began.

‘She’ll come with me. Earth’s medicine may or may not be more advanced than what they have here on Crucible. They may or may not have the same ethical constraints concerning the regeneration of damaged neural tissue. But it’s not Earth I’m counting on. I’ll take Nissa to Mars. They remade me once, when I should have died. Rebuilt my brain cell by cell, stitched Swift into my skull like a pattern woven into a tapestry. If they could do that for me, they can bring Nissa back too.’

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