They had descended a good hundred metres, Chiku estimated, when they reached the bottom of the stairs. They were deep into the cool, dark African bedrock, the day’s heat and brightness a memory far overhead. The stairs had brought them into a large room through which the metal tube of the blowpipe passed from one wall to the other.
Chiku explained to Pedro that the blowpipe did not begin here, within the household, but somewhere hundreds of kilometres to the east, in an Akinya-owned transhipment facility that had probably long been mothballed. At that location, cargo and passengers – mostly cargo – were loaded into the blowpipe’s capsule-like packages, ready to be catapulted into space.
But to Chiku’s surprise, Eunice or her children, perhaps, had made provision for a quick getaway. Next to the horizontal shaft of the blowpipe was a heavy mechanical rack containing three launch capsules, each a rounded bullet barely larger than a cryogenic casket. There was also a complicated thickening in the pipe, some kind of valve and airlock device, Chiku presumed, with a door that looked about the right size to admit one of the capsules.
‘This is insane,’ Pedro said. ‘When was the last time anyone used one of these things?’
‘There’s power. No reason for it not to work just because it hasn’t been operated in a long while.’ Chiku climbed onto a little walkway that brought her up to the level of the racked capsules. She looked inside the unit closest to the blowpipe and studied the thickly padded interior, working out where her feet and head would go.
‘It’s only big enough for one,’ Pedro said, clambering onto the platform next to her.
‘Looks that way – but there are three capsules.’
‘Do you have the faintest idea how to use one of these things?’
‘Let’s just hope that’ll take care of itself, shall we?’ She planted her hands on her hips and inhaled deeply. ‘OK – how do we do this? Draw straws?’
‘Because that worked out really well on Venus, didn’t it? No, no straws.’
‘I agree.’
‘But what’s in your head is more important than what’s in mine, so I think you should go first. On the other hand, it’s an untested system, so maybe I should go first instead.’
‘And while we’re debating, the artilect might be about to smash the house to rubble and cut our power. I’ll take the first capsule. After that, we’ll just have to wing it.’
‘These things go into orbit, right?’
‘Yes, so let’s hope Mecufi’s up there waiting to rescue us. He must be monitoring us by now. Surely he knows we’re in trouble.’
Pedro kissed her. ‘Get in. We’ll be fine. I’ll be right behind you.’
‘See you on the other side.’
‘Yes, you will.’ And he kissed her again, then gently encouraged her into the capsule. As soon as the lid closed, the already snug interior became even snugger as the padding sensed her intrusion and began to conform to her precise body shape, becoming a Chiku-shaped mould. She could hardly move once it had finished oozing into place around her. Her face was clear, though, and in front of her was a small glowing panel filled with text and status diagrams, updating rapidly.
A soft female voice said in Swahili: ‘Checkout complete. Vacuum integrity verified. Projected airspace clear. All magnetic and optical systems at nominal readiness. Launch authority enabled. Awaiting go command.’
‘Launch me,’ Chiku said.
‘Launch sequence initiated. Please stand by for induction tube insertion.’
She barely felt the shove through the padding as the capsule slid sideways, into the valve/airlock mechanism. She felt like a jacketed round being chambered in a rifle.
‘Launch spoolback commencing. Spoolback will terminate in ninety seconds and may be overridden at any point. Maximum spoolback acceleration: five gees. Maximum forward launch acceleration: ten sustained, two hundred momentary.’
She understood – or thought she did, at any rate. She was being shuttled back to the start of the blowpipe to give the capsule the full run of the tube to build up its speed. On the display hovering before her face, a green digit climbed up to five gees and stayed there. Cocooned in the protective padding, the acceleration was easily bearable.
But ninety seconds was a hellishly long time. She thought of Pedro, waiting back there on his own. Presumably the system would not allow his capsule into the blowpipe until hers was already clear and on its way to orbit. The spoolback was taking too much time, she decided, and the capsule did not need it to reach launch velocity.
‘Override. Abort spoolback.’
‘Continue launch sequence?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was dry, barely comprehensible. ‘Yes. Do it.’
‘Decelerating. All safe-load ceilings now suspended. Forward acceleration will exceed recommended physiological tolerances. Launch may be aborted until alpha threshold. Maximum induction will be applied in five seconds. Four . . . three . . .’
She closed her eyes, as if that would make a difference.
Acceleration hit hard, like a monstrous metal piston slamming into the back of the capsule, ramming it forwards. For a terrifying instant, she thought nothing in the universe could apply or endure so much force.
Yet somehow she remained conscious. Through blurred, tunnel-constricted vision she saw the acceleration digit rise to ten . . . eleven . . . twelve and finally level out around thirteen gees. But she knew this was the smooth part of the ride. Ahead, the induction tube curved to thread through the stone bowels of Kilimanjaro. She had heard that was the tough part – a transitional moment of hundreds of gees as the capsule made the swerve.
‘Alpha threshold in twenty seconds. No abort possible after alpha threshold . . . Alpha threshold in ten seconds . . . Alpha threshold passed. No abort now possible. Nominal launch sequence proceeding. Prepare for transient load.’
She prepared, if that was the word, by clearing her thoughts. She would lose consciousness during the swerve as the blood was squeezed from her brain like water out of a sponge, curtailing every thought until it flooded back in again when the capsule decelerated. In an eyeblink she would be rising through Kilimanjaro, then shot into rarefied atmosphere as launch lasers stationed around the summit provided her remaining escape velocity.
As she felt her consciousness fading, she wondered how much she would remember, when it was all over.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Falling. She remembered falling in her dreams, falling out of the rigging of a great swaying galleon, high above oil-grey seas, and now she was falling in her waking life, weightless as a moonbeam. In that everlasting fall she felt warm and blissful and eternally safe. She wanted it to go on for ever, a dream of never being born.
But then a shrill voice pierced her amniotic tranquillity: ‘Alert condition. Orbital injection has failed. Atmospheric re-entry will commence.’
She forced herself into something approximating alertness. Where am I? What just happened to me? A few disconcerting moments of blankness, then the images began to surface. The household. A nightmare of cats and darkness. Red stairs and a thing like a coffin, into which she had climbed. Leaving Pedro behind, with the cats.
And then something had gone wrong.
The launch lasers should have pushed her the rest of the way to orbit, fingers of light cradling her upwards from the summit snows of Kilimanjaro like a gift from Earth. But they had failed. She was falling back home, a prisoner of ballistics, following a mathematical arc that had only one inevitable outcome.
She was not feeling quite so weightless now.
‘Atmospheric interface detected. Transitioning for blunt-capsule re-entry. Anticipated entry gee-loads in range four to four-point-five. Ablative measures at nominal temperatures. Impact projection locus: Indian Ocean, fifty-seven-point-five degrees east, one-point-one-five degrees north, point-five-degree error ellipse. Political jurisdiction: United Aquatic Nations seaspace. Anticipated splashdown in eight minutes. Scrambulance and air/sea rescue services alerted. Please remain
calm.’
‘Chiku?’
Her battered brain registered a new voice. ‘Yes,’ she said, thick-tongued.
‘It’s Mecufi. I’m speaking from the seasteads. We have a lock on your capsule and a communications channel I think we can rely on. You’re currently falling back to Earth.’
‘I know.’
‘There appears to have been a momentary fault with the launch array – one of the lasers was misaligned. In light of my recent conversation with Arethusa, technical sabotage cannot be ruled out.’
She tried to nod, but found herself still immobilised in the capsule’s embrace. ‘It’s possible,’ she said, imagining Arachne infiltrating the launch lasers’ control system or co-opting a service robot to physically damage the array. ‘Mecufi, listen to me. You also need to get someone to the household – Imris Kwami has been badly injured. While you’re at it, can you tell Pedro to sit tight? I don’t want him risking his neck in this thing.’
‘Mr Braga is not with you?’
‘No – we had to ride this thing one at a time. I went first.’
‘I see.
‘Mecufi?’
‘Yes.’
‘What aren’t you telling me?’
‘We have a . . . seismic indication that the blowpipe is currently active.’
‘You have to stop him – tell him to abort.’
‘We can’t, Chiku. We could only speak to you once you were in space, above the atmosphere. The launch lasers create a plasma that interferes with communications—’
‘Mecufi, I don’t fucking care. Just find a way to stop him.’
‘I’m sorry, Chiku, but we can’t just turn off the blowpipe. Your should know that – your family made this thing.’
She felt infinite dread and helplessness. ‘You have to help him.’
‘We’ll do what we can, but you are our immediate priority. Your entry vector looks satisfactory. How do you feel?’
‘Oh, just marvellous.’
But in truth she could not complain about her immediate physical needs. The gee load was nothing compared to what she had already experienced. It was starting to get warm inside the capsule, but it would be a while before it became uncomfortable. She could feel some buffeting, the occasional flutter of hard turbulence, but nothing excessive.
‘We have Pedro,’ Mecufi announced suddenly.
‘You’ve reached him already?’
‘No – we have a lock on him. He’s cleared the top of the mountain . . . rising at a steeper trajectory than your own ascent. The lasers are continuing to push the capsule . . . I think he will reach orbit safely.’
‘You think?’
‘It’ll take a few moments to plot his projected course. The failure of your launch was much more obvious from the outset. Ah, now this is concerning.’
‘What now?’ She made no effort to hide her irritation.
‘Your estimated impact point is very close to a Provider construction project.’
‘I thought I was coming down mid-ocean.’
‘You are, but there are Providers everywhere. The breakaway seasteads, the independencies with their stupid alliances. This may be coincidence, but . . . well, perhaps not.’
‘What the hell’s happening, Mecufi?’
‘The Providers are breaking off from their work – they’ve been tasked to move to your splashdown area.’
‘Mecufi, listen to me. I don’t know what Arethusa’s told you, but it’s vital that those Providers don’t reach me.’
‘Preventing them may be . . . problematic. Our own deep-ocean assets are moving to your splashdown location, but they may not reach you before the Providers do.’
‘You’d better make sure they do.’ Then she closed her eyes, surrendering to her fate.
After that, there was nothing to do but fall. As the atmosphere thickened, the capsule gradually decelerated to terminal velocity. The temperature inside the capsule had not increased and its soothing voice assured her that parachutes would soon deploy, slowing her descent further. She breathed a silent prayer to the blowpipe’s engineers for considering the possibility of launch failure and installing safety measures.
She felt the parachutes deploy – a quick succession of tugs as drogues and canopies popped. Ancient technology, but a clean and dependable breaking mechanism nonetheless. A couple of minutes later, she felt a firmer jolt as the capsule hit water and submerged, then a rising and falling sensation as it resurfaced and bobbed on the waves. Cued by some automatic trigger, a large area of the capsule’s skin flicked to transparency. She was floating on her back, water sloshing across her field of vision as each swell broke.
‘Please await rescue,’ the voice instructed, as if some other option might have presented itself. ‘Capsule integrity optimal. Life-support systems functioning normally. Sedation is available upon request.’
Under normal circumstances, the knowledge that the Providers were on their way would have made her relax. A few hours aboard this bobbing glass lifeboat, while scarcely pleasant, were a distinct improvement on drowning. She could even, with an effort of will, imagine how she might have viewed her surroundings under better circumstances. It was, in the objective sense, actually quite a nice day to be floating out at sea. The sea was a luscious jade green, the sky boundless and cloudless. There were no ships or boats visible, but the capsule was so low in the water that there might be vessels not too far away. She pictured the coloured fishing boats she had seen on the flight from Lisbon, imagined being hauled out of the sea by laughing fisherfolk, with their tall stories and strong coffee.
‘I see you’re safe.’ Mecufi’s voice startled her from her reverie. ‘The Providers are advancing but our assets should reach you first. You’re in UAN seaspace now, so sovereign jurisdiction should be clear. Are you comfortable?’
‘I’ll cope. Do you have an update on Pedro?’
‘Yes . . .’ The merman was silent for a few moments. ‘The news is not as good as we might have hoped.’
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, with a profound, visceral apprehension. ‘Did Pedro fail to reach orbit?’
‘The trajectory looked good to begin with and his arc was much higher than yours, but the lasers were still malfunctioning.’
‘He can still re-enter, can’t he? He’ll just come down somewhere else, right?’
‘There is a . . . difficulty. Pedro’s capsule is still moving ballistically, above most of the atmosphere. Soon his trajectory will bring him dangerously close to one of our vacuum chimneys and—’
She cut in. ‘Will he hit it?’
‘He will most probably skim past the tower and continue deeper into the atmosphere, but unfortunately the chimney won’t tolerate the possibility of a collision.’
‘What do you mean, “tolerate”?’
‘The chimney is equipped with self-defence protocols. We’re attempting to override them, but it might not be possible.’
She could hear his words, process their surface meaning, but her mind wouldn’t comprehend their full import. ‘Mecufi, you can’t let this happen.’
‘I assure you, Chiku, we’re doing everything in our power to prevent it.’
‘Can I speak to him?’
‘Yes, but please be aware that Pedro isn’t aware of the danger he’s in. Since he can’t act upon that information, it may be kinder to let him—’
‘I want to speak to him. Now.’
‘Are you sure, Chiku?’
In the rise and fall of the swelling waves she was certain of nothing, much less the wisdom of this course of action. What would she want, if their roles were reversed? To think she was safe when she was not? Or to know the truth, bitter as it was, and have a few moments to compose herself, or perhaps choose drug-induced painlessness and bliss, a little promise of heaven?
‘Let me speak to Pedro.’
‘Establishing the connection. You have a couple of minutes before he enters the avoidance volume. We’ll keep trying.’
She could blam
e Mecufi, but that would be pointless. The avoidance volume was designed to protect the many at the expense of the few. A cruel calculus, but it allowed the world to work.
‘Chiku?’ Pedro’s voice filled the capsule.
‘Yes,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘It’s me. I’m down, floating. I’m told help’s on its way.’
‘The right sort of help, I hope. That was a hell of a ride, by the way. We should do it again some time!’
‘Yes. We should.’ And then she had to bite her tongue, because nothing she was about to say sounded right in her head.
‘I’ve spoken to this friend of yours – Mecufi, is it? He says I nearly reached orbit but couldn’t quite make it. I guess I’m not going to come down anywhere near you.’
‘They’ll find you,’ she said.
‘Yes, of course. I’m not worried now, just glad to be out of that place. I can’t stop thinking about Imris. I hope he’s going to be all right.’
‘We did everything we could for him. Imris wanted us to escape. And he’d be glad we saw what June and Eunice and Arethusa wanted us to see.’
‘It’s in your head now – you being rescued is all that matters.’
His choice of words was accidental, but they cut her to the core. As if he knew, deep down, the truth of his predicament.
‘Mecufi will take me to the seasteads. I’ll be safe there, and they can do whatever they need to do to access my memories. Depending on where you come down, it might be a while before we’re reunited.’
‘She won’t leave you alone, you know. You’ll never be safe.’
‘Nor will you.’
‘But you’re her primary target. I doubt Lisbon will be safe any more – too many ways she can reach us, if she’s still interested.’
‘Maybe she won’t be.’ But deep down Chiku knew Arachne would never lose interest in them, not even after she had transmitted her memories back to Zanzibar. Chiku would still be a liability, walking around with a head full of secrets. ‘You’re right, though – we could move on. Become merfolk! Join the aquatics! It wouldn’t have to be for the rest of our lives – just a holiday from being human.’