On the Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds

will be initiated. Hundreds, thousands of minds, with all the resources and equipment they need. A massive cooperative effort. But that’s never sat very well with you, has it? You could never be part of a collective enterprise. It has to be Travertine, the lone genius.’
    Travertine turned around in vis seat again and addressed the Assembly. ‘I was using more energy in my lab than could ever be explained by the experiments I claimed to be doing. But did one of you ever have the courage to question me about it?’
    ‘That sounds like a confession to me,’ Utomi said. ‘Before my constables commit it to the record for posterity, would you like to amend your statement?’
    ‘What I did was an obligation, not a crime. My statement stands.’
    ‘Then why did you run?’ Utomi asked.
    ‘Because I’m human. Because I know what this will mean for me.’
    ‘Nothing is . . . settled,’ Utomi said, as if he sought to offer this beleaguered, belligerent individual some glimmer of hope. ‘The legislation is very precisely worded – it had to be, after you tested our existing laws to destruction last time. We require proof that you knowingly brought this risk upon us, that you deliberately invoked Post-Chibesa Physics rather than stumbling into it by accident, while engaged in some other line of research.’
    Travertine rewarded this statement with a look of blazing contempt. ‘I’ve never stumbled into anything in my life.’
    None of the representatives had spoken so far, but Chung, therepresentative from Mu Chamber who was sitting a few spaces to Chiku’s right, could restrain himself no longer. ‘The Pemba Accord wasn’t instigated to stifle scientific enquiry, Travertine. It was to ensure it didn’t accelerate out of our control. If we wished to abandon experimentation altogether, we could easily have done so after Pemba. Yet we still allow it, even encourage it – but always under the assumption that those conducting the research will do so responsibly.’
    ‘The trouble is,’ said Firdausi, the representative from Sigma Chamber and who was sitting behind Chiku, ‘that we know Travertine’s history. There’s never been anyone less likely to accidentally transgress the Accord.’
    ‘That’s true,’ Travertine said, with blithe disregard for the consequences of this admission. ‘Why would I ever deny it? We don’t understand Post-Chibesa Physics, so how can we draw a fence around it and say never cross that line?’
    ‘In time,’ said Utomi, ‘we will develop a much fuller understanding.’
    ‘Yes,’ Travertine replied levelly. ‘And to the best of my recollection, you were saying exactly the same thing fifty years ago – everything will be all right, little children. Go to bed and stop worrying. And don’t mention slowdown in polite company.’
    There was truth in this, Chiku knew. Slowdown had gone from being an awkward, emotionally sensitive topic to something that was barely ever mentioned. As if, by not talking about it, the problem would somehow magic itself away.
    The simple fact of it was this: the holoships were travelling too quickly. Early in their voyages, in the flush of optimism that accompanied a time of rapid technological and scientific progress, their governments had wagered against the future. Rather than take three hundred years to cross space to Crucible – the original, achievable intention – the journey could be compressed to a mere two hundred and twenty. The trick was to keep burning fuel, eating into the mountainous stocks that were supposed to be held in reserve until the holoships needed to slow down. Instead of using that fuel to slow down, they would use something else – some more efficient process, or an entirely new propulsion system.
    Something – in other words – yet to be invented.
    But that ‘something else’ had shown a stubborn reluctance to arrive. Many promising avenues had led to dead ends. Glimpses had revealed themselves to be mirages, hoaxes.