On the Steel Breeze Page 12

  Beyond the tents lay something that looked like a herb garden: neat arrangements of cultivated plants in wooden frames and trellises. Nothing pretty or ornamental about it – it looked too methodical for that.

  Eunice boiled water and set a metal cup of tea before Chiku. ‘Drink the chai,’ she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘It’ll do you no harm, and there are some potions in it to help with those cuts and bruises.’

  ‘Potions.’

  ‘Just drink. I’ve summoned the Tantors – they’ll be here shortly.’

  Chiku sipped at the scalding green brew. It was not quite as foul as it looked.

  ‘These will be the “others” you spoke of earlier, I assume? Are they involved with the elephants?’

  ‘They are the elephants,’ Eunice said, punctuating the statement with an impish smile ‘I took a liberty while you were unconscious – a blood sample. You appeared to be Akinya, and the pod shouldn’t have brought you here unless you are, but I needed to be sure. The analysis confirmed that you are Chiku Akinya, as you claim. Or at least, very nearly.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re some kind of clone – there are commercial fingerprints all over your DNA. You’re like a book that’s had all its pages torn out and put back in again. You’ve been duplicated by someone or something called Quorum Binding. Does that relate to the Chiku Red you mentioned earlier?’

  ‘I really feel you ought to be the one answering questions.’

  ‘The difficulty is that we both have interesting pasts. How about a little give and take?’

  Chiku decided that she had little to lose from complete honesty, as much as it displeased her to revisit her own history. ‘You’re right about Quorum Binding. It’s no secret, in any case. When I was fifty, I became three people – me, Chiku Red and Chiku Yellow. Two of us are clones of the original, but there’s no way of knowing which is which. I’m Chiku Green to the others, but I only think of myself as Chiku.’

  ‘Well, of course you would. I think I heard of that sort of thing being done.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I did say my memory isn’t what it should be.’ She was sitting opposite Chiku, hands laced together and resting on the table-top, not drinking. ‘I suppose you think I might be something similar – some kind of genetic construct.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No. But despite what I said earlier, I’m not exactly Eunice Akinya, either.’ She made an apprehensive face. ‘Oh dear. I doubt you’re going to like this.’

  ‘Why don’t you try me?’

  ‘I am a robot.’ After this utterance she looked supremely pleased with herself. ‘There. I’ve always wanted to say that, but you’d be surprised at how few opportunities have ever presented themselves. And when I say “robot” – well, I mean artilect, to be precise. Your mother made me. Or started me, anyway. I’m the final result of her project to create an interactive memorial to myself. You know about this, surely? She used posterity engines to stitch together a construct sentience capable of emulating my every response. I’m very true to myself. I look like Eunice, and I act like her, and I carry much of her life history as part of my own stored data. All that said, I’m not alive. I’m just machinery.’

  While the idea repelled Chiku, she also found it plausible. Sunday had indeed been working on a construct of her grandmother, but what became of that construct – what it had grown into – was a matter of speculation. Neither Sunday, Jitendra or Geoffrey had been forthcoming on the subject.

  ‘I should be surprised, but I’m not.’

  ‘That’s hugely encouraging.’

  ‘It answers some questions – starting with how someone could have survived here all this time, on their own. A human would have gone mad, or fallen ill, or starved, long ago. But a robot wouldn’t need much to keep going.’

  Now Chiku was trying to find the flaw, the giveaway that her host was not flesh and blood. Perhaps there was a dryness around the eyes and lips, or a too-flawless plastic tautness to the skin, hinting at polymers and manufacture rather than biological processes of growth and healing?

  No, she decided. Nothing about Eunice looked fake.

  ‘I thought you’d need more persuasion.’

  ‘I saw how easily you moved the aircraft around, and you’re obviously very strong and quick – you nearly took the wind out of me when you threw me my helmet.

  ‘If you want some more proof, there’s this.’ Eunice scooped up one of the medical devices lying on the table. It was a pale-grey handle with a circular hoop on one end. ‘Scanner. Pass it along your arm, then compare it with mine.’

  Chiku did as she was bid. She slid the hoop over her hand, up her wrist. A palm-sized display was incorporated into the handle, just beneath the point where it joined the hoop. The scanner saw through her suit, through margins of skin and muscle, elucidating harder structures of bone and sinew beneath. Medical data fluttered over the little grey-green image, tagging anatomical landmarks.

  Eunice held out her arm, stiff as a signpost. ‘Now me.’

  Chiku slid the scanner over Eunice’s hand. The screen revealed armatures, universal joints, hinges, power feeds and mesh-like grids and actuators. Confronted with engineering where it expected biology, the scanner gave up trying to tag anything.

  ‘This could still be a trick,’ Chiku said.

  ‘Yes, I could have programmed the scanner to lie. Or I might be mechanical from the elbow down and flesh and blood everywhere else. Short of cutting myself open, though, you’re going to have to take my word for it. Of course, there’s this.’

  ‘What?’

  Chiku’s fingers were suddenly clutching at nothing. A heartbeat earlier they had been holding the scanner.

  Now it was in Eunice’s hand, and she returned it to the table.

  ‘Party trick, for doubters and sceptics. I can move very quickly when the need demands.’

  Chiku had felt nothing, not even a breath of air. Eunice had moved and then returned to exactly her former position, slipping through the gaps in Chiku’s perception.

  ‘You haven’t run away screaming. That’s a good sign.’

  ‘If you’re that fast, running away wouldn’t do me much good. Why are you here, Eunice?

  ‘I’m hiding from something that wanted to kill me.’ She jerked up in her seat, not quite rising, just enough to see over Chiku. ‘Ah – here come the Tantors.’

  Chiku hardly dared look around, but once again, curiosity compelled her. Something big – several big somethings – were nearing, shouldering through overgrowth, trampling undergrowth. She squinted into the darkening gloom of trees until she made out the elephants. She could hear them now: the rolling crunch of their tread, the breathing and snorting, a deeper sound than anything humans could make. By increments, she relaxed. Elephants did not frighten Chiku. She knew their ways as well as anyone in Zanzibar.

  She wondered why Eunice called them something other than elephants.

  ‘As I said,’ Eunice declared, as if picking up a conversational thread only just dropped, ‘I don’t like to think of myself as their keeper. But it’s true that they need me . . . or have had need of me. That’s a large part of why I’m here. The Tantors needed protection and guidance, and – with no disrespect intended – a human being just wouldn’t be up to the job.’

  ‘We have elephants,’ Chiku reminded her. ‘Many more than the fifty or so you claim to have here, and we’ve managed very well with them.’ She looked at Eunice sharply. ‘Why is your memory faulty, anyway? Shouldn’t a machine work better than that?’

  The Tantors broke through into the clearing. There were four of them, all adults, by Chiku’s estimate. But these were not just any old elephants. They were from African stock, probably not too far removed from the ancestral herds that had seeded the other elephants in Zanzibar. They looked well, with clean, undamaged tusks and ears. Their foreheads were broad, their eyes alert and fixed on her.

  They were a
lso wearing . . . not clothes, precisely, but harnesses – big and elephant-grey and flexible, made from articulated plates of plastic or alloy fixed around their bodies and heads but allowing ease of movement. There were things attached to the harnesses, especially around the head: dark modules, boxes and cylinders of unguessable function, almost like trinkets and trophies the elephants had collected.

  Chiku recalled the elephant she had in the other chamber for comparison, but the glimpse had been too brief for her to determine its species, never mind whether it had been wearing a similar harness.

  ‘They haven’t had a lot of experience with people other than myself,’ Eunice said quietly. ‘Assuming I count as such, of course. Do nothing unless I tell you.’

  The Tantors approached the tents in a line, then stopped. Chiku looked to Eunice for guidance, saw her rising from her chair and did likewise. She moved slowly, turning around with hands at her sides, holding only the helmet. She wondered how strange and fierce she looked in the vacuum suit. Like a hard-skinned monster with a tiny, shrunken head.

  ‘What are they?’ she whispered.

  ‘Elephants with enhanced cognition,’ Eunice answered, her voice as low as Chiku’s. ‘Uplifted animals. The result of illegal genetic experimentation conducted before Zanzibar ever left the solar system. Their minds are larger than those of baseline elephants, and they have a level of modular organisation approaching that of the human brain. They have a highly developed sense of self, an advanced capacity for tool use, the rudiments of language, an understanding of time’s arrow. Some of these traits were already present in elephants, of course. They’ve just been . . . enhanced, augmented, amplified. But whatever they are, these creatures are no longer simply animals.’

  Chiku was as awed and horror-struck as if the sky had parted to reveal the gears and ratchets of heaven’s own clockwork. She had spent a good measure of her life in the company of elephants. It was a family thing, a long and noble tradition.

  The wrongness of the Tantors drove a hot lance into her moral core.

  ‘Who did this?’

  ‘If I ever knew, I don’t remember now. But they are what they are, Chiku. There’s no point feeling revulsion. The Tantors didn’t do this to themselves. They didn’t choose to be evolved.’

  ‘This should never have happened.’

  ‘I gather Geoffrey felt much the same way when he learned about the Lunar dwarves. They were the result of genetic manipulation, which he found profoundly distasteful.’ Eunice started walking toward the four Tantors, beckoning Chiku to accompany her. ‘But Geoffrey realised that he had to accept the reality of the dwarves, and to do what he could to make their world better. It was just the hand he’d been dealt. You’ll come to the same accommodation with these creatures.’

  Eunice’s glib self-assurance was beginning to grate on Chiku. ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Because you remind me a little of Geoffrey. The second one from the left – that’s Dreadnought.’

  Chiku studied the elephant, drawing on years of learning. ‘He’s a bull.’

  ‘Yes he is – well done you. The one on the far left? That’s Juggernaut – she’s the closest this group has to a matriarch. The other two, Castor and Pollux, are brothers. You think it’s odd that a bull should remain with this group, long after puberty?’ Eunice nodded, anticipating Chiku’s answer. ‘The old rules, the old hierarchies and patterns, don’t apply here. In terms of social organisation, Tantors are as far beyond baseline elephants as we are beyond chimpanzees. They don’t have herds. They have community.’ Eunice raised her voice a notch. ‘Dreadnought! This woman is Chiku. Chiku is a friend.’ Then, to Chiku, ‘Give me the helmet and step forward. Let Dreadnought examine you. Don’t be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  But that was not quite true. Her suit would protect her to a point, but a charging elephant could easily run her down, pick her up and fling her around like a doll.

  ‘The helmet,’ Eunice repeated.

  Chiku passed it to her, then slowly crossed sun-dappled ground towards the waiting flank of Tantors. She kept her gaze on Dreadnought the whole time. Dreadnought stared right back at her, eyes dark and heavy-lidded and alert with an uncanny intelligence. As Chiku drew nearer, she saw that the elephant’s harness sported a flat black rectangle across the broad battering ram of his forehead. The rectangle contained an armoured, flexible screen, which was presently showing an image of Chiku as she must have appeared to Dreadnought.

  Dreadnought extended his trunk. Chiku stopped and stood her ground. She let the trunk examine her suit, probing its way up her body, lingering over the joints and the batteries of controls. Hairy bristles tickled Chiku’s chin as the trunk felt around the neck ring. Warm, humid air blasted her and she resisted the urge to flinch with difficulty. Dreadnought moved on to her face, mapping it with surprising gentleness. The trunk traced the contours of her scalp, then retreated.

  ‘Dreadnought, say the name of this woman.’

  Text appeared on Dreadnought’s screen.

  CHIKU

  CHIKU

  CHIKU

  She looked at Eunice. ‘He spells pretty well, given that we’ve only just been introduced.’

  Eunice touched the side of her head. ‘I just added the word to his lexicon. I could make them speak, if I wished – all I’d need to do is hook a voice synthesiser into the circuit. But they don’t need that, and nor do I. The system lets them exchange symbolic patterns even when they’re not in each other’s line of sight, or when they’re too far apart for vocal communication.’

  ‘So we have talking elephants now. Even if they don’t actually talk.’

  The text changed. Now it said:

  TANTOR ≠ ELEPHANT

  TANTOR >> ELEPHANT

  ‘Tantor does not equal elephant,’ Eunice interpreted. ‘Tantor greater than, or superior to, elephant. Why don’t you introduce yourself? Tell him you’re a friend?’

  Chiku did not know whether to look into his eyes or the screen. Her gaze switched between them.

  ‘I’m a friend. I mean you no harm.’

  ‘What are you, a Martian? Talk to him the way you’d talk to a three year old.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve had surprisingly little experience with talking elephants.’

  The screen changed again.

  TANTOR

  TANTOR

  TANTOR

  TANTOR >> ELEPHANT

  ‘I get the message. They’re a bit touchy about the elephant thing, aren’t they? What have you been telling them? That they’re better than elephants?’

  ‘That they can be more than elephants.’

  ‘Have they even seen an unaugmented elephant?’

  ‘No, but I’ve shown them pictures, described the place they came from. Tell Dreadnought you’re sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Chiku said.

  DREADNOUGHT ≠ ANGRY

  CHIKU FRIEND DREADNOUGHT

  ‘Well, you appear to have been accepted. Word of you will spread. The Tantors know that any friend of mine is a friend of theirs.’

  ‘Easy when you don’t have many friends,’ Chiku said.

  ‘Cutting.’

  Chiku took a cautious step back from Dreadnought. The other Tantors watched her with guarded interest. One of the brothers – Castor or Pollux, she could not be sure which – nudged a piece of dirt with his trunk. Chiku heard a low rumble, impossible to localise to any single animal. They all had screens fixed to their foreheads, but only Dreadnought had communicated.

  ‘Do you think it’s time yet?’ Eunice asked.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For all of us to leave the chamber and enter Zanzibar proper.’

  ‘Are you serious? You’re a robot with superhuman speed and strength. These are talking elephants.’

  ‘I was hoping attitudes would be more accepting after all this time.’ She raised a hand. ‘Dreadnought – you can go. Juggernaut, Castor, Pollux – thank you for checking on me. I’ll see you bef
ore skyfade.’

  The Tantors turned and walked out of the clearing.

  ‘Who knew about this place?’ Chiku asked.

  ‘As few people as possible. Geoffrey and Lucas, certainly, and your mother knew about me, of course, at least to begin with.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘In the nicest possible way, Chiku, I escaped your mother’s control. After that, we had less to do with each other. It was a matter of mutual self-interest. The less she knew about me, the less she had to conceal from the authorities. I was, remember, totally illegal. And the less contact I had with the family, the less risk there was of my own existence being exposed. I suppose it upsets you that all this happened without you being in any way aware?’

  ‘Should it?’

  ‘Oh, I think so. It would certainly upset me.’ But after a moment Eunice went on: ‘Don’t feel too bad about your lack of knowledge, though. You were protected from consequences, that was all. Even the family knew very little about the Tantors. They were the responsibility of Chama and Gleb, friends of your mother and Jitendra. In fact Chama and Gleb oversaw the Tantors’ development from the original elephant genestocks on the Moon. They knew to keep that nicely under wraps – they knew exactly how well the Tantors would be received back then.’

  ‘Not well, for sure.’

  ‘Having created these cognitively enhanced creatures, the safest option at the time appeared to be to launch them into interstellar space. The idea was that I’d protect them, give them guidance and medical assistance, until such time as it was safe to reveal ourselves.’

  ‘You said you were hiding,’ Chiku said.

  ‘Remarkably, I can do two things at once. I can hide and also do some good for the Tantors. Chama, Gleb and the others envisaged a time, a century or two into the crossing, when the Tantors might be able to emerge into the holoship on equal terms with the humans. And that I, too, would be able to walk safely among them.’

  ‘I think you’re in for a bit of wait.’

  ‘So much for the tolerant acceptance of the other. We’re forging out into deep space – who knows what we’ll meet out there? If we can’t even accept a robot and some talking elephants, what good are we going to be when we meet something really strange?’