On the Steel Breeze Page 10

  Zanzibar was huge, but at a steady half-gee of thrust it diminished rapidly to the size of a pebble. Holoships only felt big when you were inside them, Chiku reflected. Viewed from outside, it was quite absurd to imagine ten million busy lives squeezed into the interstices of that little rock, infiltrating it like some kind of endolithic bacteria.

  She had been to Malabar recently, but this time the destination was New Tiamaat. From the outside, it resembled the other holoships. It had the same rocky hide, barnacled with human industry; the same docking ports studding the surface, with wider apertures at the leading and trailing poles. Fat bumble-bee ships and transports congested its airspace. Congregations of drones and suited people flitted around them like tiny golden sparks. There were many people outside Zanzibar at the moment, but only because of the accident. New Tiamaat was always like this. Blisters and domes bulged from the surface as the citizens sought new habitable space. They had slowed their world’s rotation and hollowed out most of its interior.

  Chiku did not quite trust the inhabitants of New Tiamaat. They were Panspermians, to begin with, and Panspermians had decidedly odd ideas about lots of things. They had set their holoship on a course for Crucible, but lately there was talk of not making landfall when they arrived. They would continue to live in New Tiamaat, orbiting Crucible. Or they might even carry on into deeper space, having already achieved perfect adaptation to interstellar conditions. They liked it out here, sliding between stars. When the terms of the Pemba Accord were drafted, the people of New Tiamaat had pushed for the strictest legislation. They had no real interest in solving the slowdown problem.

  Lacking spin and no longer under thrust, there was no sense of up and down in New Tiamaat. When they demolished their connecting walls, the rubble – a portion of it, anyway – had been fused into fantastic spires and outcroppings, spirals and arcs and buttresses, jutting from the floor, ceiling, walls – projecting into open space, providing the foundation and bedrock for dreamlike sky palaces and aerial citadels. Buildings, towers erupted out in every direction, growing like crystal or coral. Jagged promontories of glass, blocky extrusions of windowed stone, nets and nests, like traps or filters, and frogspawn clumps of pastel spheres. Tiny flying things – citizens of New Tiamaat, air-swimming through the weightless spaces – came and went in all directions. It was an explosion of possibility, an architectural expression of the Pans’ cherished Green Efflorescence.

  But in embracing one set of possibilities, another was denied. These structures were as lacy as sugar sculptures. Slowdown – the application of even a hundredth of a gee of thrust – would court disaster. The citizens knew that, of course. They had sanctioned these marvellous palaces and cities in precisely that knowledge.

  The Zanzibar delegation was escorted to the core of one of the city complexes. Flute-shaped towers burst in all directions from an anchoring foundation of green-matted rock. Some way inside was spherical courtroom. It was white and bony, like a monstrous hollowed-out skull. Airy light seeped in through cunning ducts and channels. Functionaries and delegates stationed themselves around the incurving walls, clinging to studs and handholds, gargoyling from warty outgrowths.

  Chalky struts buttressed a central platform to the walls. Upon the platform, big as a throne and rife with carved ornamentation, was a strap-in chair in which constables and New Tiamaat functionaries secured Travertine. A ring of smaller and less impressive seats than Travertine’s surrounded the platform and accommodated the representatives of the eleven democratic Assemblies of the local caravan, together with the empty chairs that would have been occupied by the Pemba delegation.

  The Council of Worlds was brought to session by New Tiamaat’s senior representative, Chair Teslenko. An aquatic born in one of Earth’s seastead communities, the stern Teslenko had long ago forsaken oceans for space. The whiskered, seal-like representative wheezed a lot and his skin needed to be moisturised with oils at regular intervals.

  Chiku knew Teslenko well enough. He had never made much secret of his dislike for the way they did things on Zanzibar, with its lax approach to public scrutiny. Travertine would have had to work very hard to find a worse foe.

  The preliminary business proceeded rapidly, motes formulated and exchanged as tokens of good intent. Chiku was required to do very little except witness and nod. Travertine’s identity was formally established with evidence offered to prove that ve was who Zanzibar’s delegation claimed ver to be. Travertine disputed neither the delegation’s identification nor their accusation that ve was responsible for what had happened in Kappa.

  ‘I know what I did, and I’d take the same risks a second time, and a third. Can I go now?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Teslenko rumbled through his whiskers.

  ‘It was actually a rhetorical question.’

  ‘You offered no defence in your earlier account,’ said another of the New Tiamaat delegates. ‘Do you wish to amend your statement?’

  ‘I’ve said everything that needs to be said.’

  ‘You display no contrition, no hint of remorse,’ commented Representative Endozo, the Malabar politician Chiku had recently liaised with regarding the matter of elephants.

  ‘When you permit someone to do something,’ Travertine said, ‘when you secretly want them to do it, contrition’s not required.’

  ‘Are you saying that this work of yours had tacit approval from Zanzibar’s Assembly?’ enquired one of the delegates from the holoship Cheju, with sharp, sceptical interest. ‘That’s an astonishing claim, Travertine.’

  ‘And one we refute, absolutely,’ said Utomi, glancing at Chiku and her fellow delegates for support. ‘We most certainly did not authorise this work. Travertine went to great pains to make sure none of us was aware of it. There was no “tacit approval”.’

  Chiku spoke up. ‘I know Travertine at least as well as anyone else in this room. We were friends, once – I won’t deny that. Ve certainly has a streak of intellectual vanity a mile wide. I recognise it because I’ve seen it in many of us, myself included. That’s not a crime, and neither is honesty. I believe Travertine states vis position accurately. Ve won’t admit to making a simple blunder because that would be a lie. But I also know this: Travertine would never have done anything unless ve believed it was for the best, for all of us.’

  ‘This isn’t the time to debate the Pemba Accord,’ Teslenko said, to murmurs of agreement from around the chamber.

  Chiku forged on. ‘But we can’t discuss Travertine’s actions as if they occurred in a vacuum. Time and again, good people have attempted to use legitimate political channels to challenge the Accord. Time and again, they’ve been rebuffed. But Travertine’s conscience wouldn’t let ver just stand by and do nothing.’

  ‘Are you trying to justify what happened?’ Endozo asked.

  Chiku shook her head forcefully. ‘Travertine’s actions were wrong – but that doesn’t make them inhuman.’

  Teslenko turned to face Chair Utomi. ‘No one has offered a plausible defence of Travertine’s actions. Under your internal system of governance, what would be the appropriate response?’

  Of course, Teslenko knew exactly the range of penalties available in Zanzibar, and the limits of their severity.

  ‘We have no death penalty,’ Utomi said.

  ‘Regardless, Travertine’s crime must be among the worst you’ve faced,’ Teslenko said.

  ‘Ve didn’t set out to commit murder,’ Utomi answered.

  ‘And you have no form of punishment more severe than incarceration, yet less severe than execution?’ Teslenko asked.

  ‘You know we do,’ Utomi said, ‘but it’s one we’re disinclined to use. Historically, it’s only ever been a tool of absolute last resort. It has come to acquire a stigma worse than execution itself.’

  Teslenko settled his gaze on Travertine. His eyes were liquid, dark, like black gems pushed into the mottled clay of his face. ‘You are aware of this punishment – the denial of prolongation?’

  ‘O
f course,’ Travertine replied.

  ‘And would you not regard it as a kindness, if the alternative were execution?’ Teslenko asked.

  ‘The alternative isn’t execution,’ Chiku protested, in as firm a tone as she dared. ‘It’s house arrest, or a hundred other disciplinary measures.’

  ‘Under Zanzibar law, perhaps,’ Teslenko said. ‘But this is a Council matter, and we have a range of options open to us. If Zanzibar exercises responsible judgement, the Council will have no need to impose a sentence of execution. The Council would also be inclined to adopt a sympathetic position with regard to any further sanctions, such as the imposition of external administration. And Travertine’s . . . condition would serve as a continued reminder to those who might contemplate challenging the Pemba Accord in the future.’

  Chiku saw it then, with acid clarity. There would be the illusion of debate, a façade of procedural give and take. But Travertine’s fate was already determined. Zanzibar would snatch at this chance to close the whole sorry business at the earliest opportunity. No escalation to higher levels of justice, no reprisals, no threat of takeover by another holoship.

  ‘The decision need not be made immediately,’ Teslenko said. ‘Shall we say . . . three days?’

  Three seconds would have been enough, Chiku thought.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The pod was such an anomaly that it would not have surprised her to find it gone, vanished back into the tunnel in the two days since she had last seen it. But there it was, still waiting, pinned in the wavering light of her helmet. As before, the door opened obligingly and she stepped apprehensively into the plush interior. Everything was the way she remembered it. The system map still hung under the glossy surface of the console in its three-dimensional complexity. And the pod was still offering to convey her to Chamber Thirty-Seven.

  Submit for familial genetic verification.

  She had come this far. There was no going back.

  She touched the console with her gloved hand, wondering as before if that might be sufficient to establish her genetic credentials. But instead of moving, the pod’s door slid closed behind her and her suit registered an inrush of air. As soon as the air pressure equalised, she removed her glove and pressed her hand against the glass. Something prickled against her palm, like static electricity.

  Genetic verification complete. Journey commencing.

  Chiku put her glove back on.

  The pod lurched gently, levitating away from its induction rails, and began to move, accelerating as smoothly and surely as if it was only moments since it had last carried a passenger. Chiku eased into the forward-facing seat as well as her suit allowed. Speed built up quickly, then levelled out. The pod had no forward lights, but periodically an illuminated ring of red interrupted the tunnel’s smooth bore, probably demarking some maintenance hatch or service duct. For a long while the red circles were perfectly concentric, but then the tunnel began to bend, gently at first, and then more sharply. Where was it taking her? Forward, according to the suit’s inertial compass – closer to the leading cone of Zanzibar’s elongated profile. The suit estimated that their velocity was somewhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundred kilometres per hour. No point trying to make herself more comfortable, in that case. Wherever they were going, they would arrive soon enough.

  Fear spiked. If the tunnel came to an abrupt end, would the pod actually stop? At the speed they were racing, Chiku would only have a few moments to react. She stiffened involuntarily and braced a hand against the console.

  But the pod sped on, and there was no dead-end. Chiku forced herself to relax again, trusting to fate. The tunnel curved and straightened, hair-pinned and kinked, then straightened again. The red hoops rushed by. And after fifteen minutes of travel she felt the pod commencing a smooth, unhurried deceleration.

  It came to a halt. On the console it read:

  Chamber Thirty Seven. Arrived. Please stand by for environment exchange.

  The air returned to its reservoir. When vacuum had again been reached, the door opened. Chiku extracted herself from the seat and disembarked from the pod.

  It had indeed reached the limit of travel. Ahead, the three rails terminated in angled blocks, as they had under Kappa. As in Kappa, the tunnel was wider here, to allow movement around all sides of the pod. Needing reassurance that she had a ride home, Chiku walked to the other end of the pod. She opened the door and climbed in. An identical arrangement of seats and console awaited her.

  The console read:

  Chamber Kappa. Proceed?

  She was almost ready to touch it. Perhaps she had done enough for today. But she stilled her hand and exited the compartment. Reviewing her suit systems again – all functioning optimally, reserves all close to their maximum values – she set off into the tunnel beyond the pod, glancing back every few dozen paces to assure herself that the pod was still there.

  She walked along the gently curving tunnel for a hundred paces, at which point it widened further. Blue lights shone from the floor, strips of pale green higher up the walls. Chiku searched for foot-or handprints, evidence that someone else had been this way, but the surfaces were flawless.

  Ahead, outlined in green on one wall, stood the upright rectangle of a door. At Chiku’s touch, the green lines pulsed and brightened as the door sank back into its recess and slid aside. A soft amber glow greeted her. Stairs, as sharp edged as if recently lasered from marble, climbed away. Continuing down the tunnel felt by far the less risky option, but Chiku had to know where the stairs led.

  She climbed. The staircase was a gentle spiral. She counted three complete turns before she reached a rectangular enclosure at the top, about the size of a small bathroom. Another door was set into one of the walls. Confidence rising, Chiku opened it and stepped through into the narrow little space beyond.

  She was in an airlock.

  After the door behind her had sealed, air began to flood the chamber. The lock soon completed its work, and she stepped through the outer door at the one end of a short, rough-hewn rock-walled corridor. Beyond was a curtain of greenery penetrated by a hard blue light.

  Chiku walked forwards, leaning and stooping to avoid damaging her suit against the rock’s sharp edges. The tunnel’s floor was compacted dirt or soil, and vegetation flourished abundantly all around her. She brushed aside the loose-hanging curtain – a tangle of branches and leaves that had grown across the opening – and stepped out into the full glory of daylight.

  She did not know this place.

  That was wrong, and impossible, but there it was. She was not just seeing an existing chamber from a novel vantage point. This was somewhere she had never been before.

  The chamber was not particularly large by Zanzibar standards, but it was by no means small by any human measure – it was still an easy two or three kilometres to the other side of the the steep-sloped valley rift she was now overlooking. The chamber was considerably longer than it was wide and the ceiling was a curving surface sewn with facets of false sky. Patches of squared-off darkness signified where bits of the sky had stopped working or fallen to the ground.

  There was no sign of civilisation: no towns, hamlets or roads. But there was a kind of rough, meandering path zigzagging down from the covered entrance through thickets of trees and overgrowth toward the valley floor some two or three hundred metres below.

  After checking her suit functions again – all was well – Chiku began to pick her way down the path, watching her footing all the while. There was a steep drop to her left.

  The patches of missing sky – cryptic daytime constellations – suggested decay, but most of the sky was still functioning, and there were trees in this chamber. Rain must still fall occasionally, misting down from the fine grid of ceiling ducts. The mere fact that there was a ecosystem here proved that temperatures could not become uncomfortably cold or warm. It was a marvel of both robust design philosophies and the basic tenacity of living organisms. That this place endured was a tribute
to both human skill and the natural resilience of trees and plants and soil ecologies.

  A few paces ahead, where the path kinked around a small rocky outcropping, something exploded from the ground. The shock of it had her teetering, wheeling her arms for balance as her heart thundered in her chest. Then she began to laugh. The thing had been a bird, breaking cover. Regaining her balance, her footing secure again, she watched it wheel against the black-patterned sky. Some kind of plump ground-nesting thing.

  So the ecology in Chamber Thirty-Seven went beyond plants and trees. Many birds were insectivores, of course. She wondered how isolated this place really was; whether it had been hermetically sealed since departure.

  Her composure regained, Chiku resumed a cautious descent as the bird gyred overhead. Though the valley floor was densely forested, there were also clearings and wider tracts of open ground. As her angle of view changed, she glimpsed the muddy mirror of a small lake or pond, hemmed by trees. Further away, she could see an odd, slightly unnatural-looking conjunction of semicircular clearing and sheer rock face, the rock as smooth and flat-faced as a tombstone. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed something vanishing into the cover of trees.

  Slow and ponderous and grey, like a boulder on legs.

  She blinked. There was no doubt in her mind. She had seen an elephant.

  Chiku grinned, shaking her head in both wonder and disbelief.

  ‘Really, though, you shouldn’t have bothered,’ she said aloud in a delighted half-whisper. ‘We already have more elephants than we know what to do with.’

  Chiku made a decision. The presence of an elephant proved that the air was breathable. She wanted to taste it, gulp it into her lungs, compare it with the air she had been breathing since departure. She reached up and released the equalisation valve on the side of her neck ring. There was a hiss, followed by a painless pop in one ear. Chiku lifted the helmet free of the ring and inhaled greedy breaths.

  The air tasted disappointingly normal.