Geoffrey was about to admonish the figment – she had as good as promised not to appear without his direct invocation – when it occurred to him that, since Matilda was sharing his sensorium, she should also be aware of Eunice.
He voked to suspend the link, but the damage had been done. Matilda had seen something there, something entirely novel, something she had never encountered before in her life. The figment would have been disturbing enough in its own right, popping into existence like that – elephants moved through a world of solid persistence, of dusty ground, rocks and weather-shaped trees – but the figment would also have been made visible, ghostly and translucent, by virtue of the five-per-cent threshold. Elephants didn’t have to believe in ghosts to find an apparition profoundly upsetting.
Matilda certainly didn’t like it. He had primed her by stimulating the fear response, but he doubted she would have taken the figment well under any circumstances. She alternated trumpeting with threat rumbles and began backing away from the spot where the figment had appeared. Geoffrey might have broken the link, but Matilda wasn’t going to let it slip that easily.
‘You stupid fool!’ he shouted. ‘I told you not to show up like that.’
‘What’s wrong with them? Why are they behaving like that?’
‘Because she was in my head when you appeared. She saw you, Eunice. And she doesn’t know how to deal with it.’
‘How could she have seen me, Geoffrey?’
‘Get out of here,’ he snapped. ‘Leave. Now. Before I rip you out of my head with a rock.’
‘I came to tell you something important. I’ve just learned the news from my counterpart up on the Moon. Your sister’s on her way to Mars.’
‘What?’
‘Mars,’ the construct repeated. ‘There’s a Maersk Intersolar swiftship leaving tomorrow and the Pans have bought her a slot aboard it. That’s all.’
The figment vanished, leaving him alone with the elephants.
Matilda might have been the only elephant neurally linked to Geoffrey, but it hadn’t taken more than a couple of seconds for her agitation to communicate itself to the others. They had seen nothing, but when the matriarch alerted them that there was a problem, they took her at her word. Geoffrey couldn’t see their eyes, but their postures told him that they were directing their attention to the same patch of ground where Eunice had appeared. There was no guessing what they thought Matilda might have seen or sensed there, but they were very clearly not taking any chances.
He thought of opening the link again, and doing his best to project calming reassurance . . . but with his mind in its present state, that was about the worst thing he could have tried.
Mars. What was Sunday playing at, after what she’d promised him?
No rash decisions.
He held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Matilda. There’s nothing wrong, but I don’t expect you to understand that now. And it was my fault.’ He began to back up, barely giving a thought to what might be behind him in the darkness. ‘I think it’s best if I leave you alone now, let you sort this out on your own. I’m truly sorry.’
She trumpeted at him then, an answering blast that he could not help but interpret as fury. He did not doubt that it was directed at him. He, after all, was the only alien presence in this environment. And if she grasped that the figment was in some sense unreal, then it was also the case that she had been made to look foolish, jumping at something that wasn’t there, in the presence of the rest of the herd. She was matriarch, but only until the next female rose to challenge her.
He left the elephants to their grumbling, still feeling Matilda’s disgruntlement even as he risked turning his back on her. He found his way to the Cessna, letting the aug light his path, and it was only when he was aloft that his hands stopped shaking. He had, he realised, left his bag down by the waterhole, along with the drawings: he’d forgotten it when the figment appeared.
Under other circumstances he might have circled down and retrieved it. Not tonight, though.
He’d done enough damage as it was.
CHAPTER TEN
Sunday was just wondering what the time was in Africa – or, to be precise, at the household – when her brother placed a ching request. A coincidence like that should have left her reeling, but she’d long since learned to take such things in her stride.
She went to a leafy corner of the departure lounge, while Jitendra wandered over to poke at one of the maintenance bots, which was locked in some kind of pathological behaviour loop.
‘Just thinking of calling you,’ she told her brother as his figment popped into reality.
After the usual two-and-a-bit seconds of time lag he answered, ‘Good, I’m very glad to hear it.’
She studied his reaction. ‘You don’t sound overjoyed, Geoffrey. Have I done something wrong?’
‘I’m not sure where to begin. You’re on your way to Mars without telling me, despite everything we talked about, and all of a sudden I’ve got my grandmother inside my head.’
‘You two have already made your acquaintance, then.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘Look, I should probably have warned you, but . . . well, what are surprises if you can’t spring them on people now and again? Besides, I thought it would be useful for the construct. She needs to see a bit more of the world, and I’m obviously not going to be much help in that regard. So I took the liberty.’
‘You certainly did.’
‘I thought you’d appreciate the gesture. She’s a . . . very useful resource.’
‘Good. Now you can tell me what you think you’re doing. According to your tag you’re already at the departure station.’
‘We are. Jitendra and I are just about to board the swiftship.’ They’d come up by surface-to-orbit liner, spent a couple of hours in the freefall and spun sections of the station, eaten a meal, drunk too much coffee and passed the final medical tests prior to cryosleep. ‘They’ll put us under soon,’ she went on. ‘Lights out until Phobos.’
‘And where the hell did the money for this come from?’
‘Plexus funds,’ Sunday answered. ‘June Wing’s paying for Jitendra to go and do field work for the R&D division.’
‘I hear the Pans are paying your fare.’
‘Yeah. They want an artist in the loop, someone who can communicate their big ideas to the wider public. Because I know the zookeepers, I sort of got the job. Or at least a try-out, to see how it goes. There are Pans on Mars – they’ve got some start-up venture going on there.’
‘And none of this comes with strings.’
‘Oh, a few. But I don’t have to buy into the ideology; I just have to wear it for a while.’
‘And how long are you going to be away?’
‘Not less than ten weeks, even if I get right back on the ship as soon as we reach Mars. Which, obviously, isn’t the idea. It’ll probably be more like four months, realistically – the return trip will take longer, too. I’m not going all that way just to spend a few days down there, and if the Pans are footing the bill . . .’ She halted. ‘You’re all right with this, aren’t you?’
‘Like I have any choice.’
‘It’s only Mars. It’s not like I’m going Trans-Neptunian.’
‘There’s a difference between you being on the Moon and . . . whatever it is, twenty light-minutes away.’
‘I have to do this, Geoffrey. I’m thirty-five, and apart from a small coterie of admirers in the Zone, I’m virtually unknown. In two years I’ll be older than Van Gogh was when he died! I can’t live with that any longer: it’s now or never. This opportunity’s come up, and I have to take it. You understand, don’t you? If it was something about elephants, and it meant that much to you—’
‘Think I might have told you about it. Just in passing.’
It was a strange conversational dance they were engaged in. Geoffrey was rightly cross about her decision to go to Mars, but he was well aware of her real motivation, which had not
hing to do with the Panspermian Initiative. On the faint chance that their conversation was being intercepted, though, he had to pretend that the whole thing was a massive shock, in no way related to the events in Pythagoras. And his questions about funding were perfectly sincere. Her own finances couldn’t possibly stretch to this.
But they hadn’t needed to. The right word to Chama and Gleb, and it hadn’t been long before Truro put in another appearance. That took care of her ticket, even if it put her deeper into hock with the Pans. Jitendra, similarly, had ramped up his debt to June Wing.
‘If I’d told you,’ she said, ‘we’d have ended up having exactly this conversation, only with the possibility of you talking me out of it.’
‘I’m not trying to be overprotective.’ He paused. ‘Well, maybe just a little. But Mars is a long way away. Stuff happens there.’
‘I’m not travelling alone, and I won’t be getting up to any mischief.’
Apart, she thought, from the kind of mischief she and her brother already knew about.
‘I know you meant well with the construct,’ Geoffrey said, ‘but she got me into a world of trouble.’
‘How so?’
‘Managed to screw up one of my exchanges with Matilda. Spooked the whole clan, and now I’m going to have to go back and start rebuilding trust.’
‘How . . .’ Sunday started asking, because she could not imagine how the construct could possibly have played any role in Geoffrey’s elephant studies. But her instincts told her to abort that line of enquiry. ‘If that’s the case, then I’m sorry. Genuinely. It’s my fault – I gave her enough volition to auto-invoke, based on your perceptual stimuli. Basically, if she sensed sufficient attentional focus, she was cued to appear.’
‘Even when I’d told her not to?’
‘She can be contrary like that. But you don’t have to put up with her – I’ll deactivate your copy. I can do it from here.’
‘Wait,’ Geoffrey said, letting out a sigh. ‘It’s not that I mind having Eunice on tap. I just don’t want her springing up like a jack-in-the-box and scaring me half to death. Can you just dial down that . . . volition, or whatever it was?’
Sunday smiled. ‘I’ll assign the necessary changes before they put me under.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re doing me a big favour with this, although I’m sure you know that.’
‘Just as long as we’re clear on one thing,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I’ll keep her until she drives me mad, or you get back from Mars. Whichever comes first.’
‘I’ll call you when I wake up. But be prepared for the time lag – we won’t be able to ching, so that’s going to feel . . . weird. Be like the days of steamships and telegrams.’
‘All else fails, send a postcard.’
‘I will. Meantime, give my regards to Memphis?’
‘We’re going out to the elephants tomorrow. We’ll be able to have a good old chat.’
‘Wish I could be there with you.’
Geoffrey smiled tightly. ‘Some other time.’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Some other time. Take care, brother.’
His response took longer than time lag could explain. ‘Take care, sister.’
Geoffrey closed the ching, saving her from having to do it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He dropped into what was obviously a departure lounge, bright and tree-lined, shops and restaurants hewn out of something resembling white stone, all irregular windows, semicircular doorways and rounded roofs, the floor and ceiling curving away out of sight, people walking around with the bouncy-heeled gait that he immediately recognised as signifying something close to Lunar gravity.
He had no physical embodiment. All local proxies and golems were assigned, and would remain so for at least the next hour. Still, the figment body he’d been allocated would suffice for his needs. When he made to walk, there was a lag of three seconds before anything happened, and then his point of view was gliding forwards, ghost arms swinging purposefully as ghost feet slid frictionlessly against the floor. The body was slightly transparent, but that was merely a mnemonic aid, to remind him that he wasn’t fully embodied and couldn’t (for instance) intervene in a medical emergency, or prevent an accident or crime by force. The other people in the lounge would either see him as a fully realised figment, a spectral presence, a hovering, sprite-like nimbus – simply a point of view – or, depending on how they had configured their aug settings, not at all.
Walking with time lag was hard, but stopping was even worse. No harm could possibly come to Geoffrey or his environment, of course, and the ching was considerate enough to slow him down or adjust his trajectory before he appeared to run into obstacles, and therefore risked looking clumsy.
Other than that, it was disarmingly easy to forget there was any time lag at all. He could turn his head instantly, but that was because his ‘eyes’ were only ever intercepting a tiny slice of the available visual field.
He wandered the lounge, completing a full circle of the centrifuge without seeing anything of the ship. Eventually he found his way out of the centrifuge, into a part of the station that wasn’t rotating. The ching protocols permitted a form of air swimming, which was in fact far more efficient than would have been the case had he been embodied. He paddled his way to a window, incurving so that it faced the station’s core, and there was his sister’s swiftship, skewering the hollow cylinder from end to end.
Geoffrey looked at it for several minutes before it occurred to him to invoke Eunice.
‘You should see this,’ he said quietly, when she had appeared next to him. ‘That’s Sunday’s ship, the one that’s going to take her to Mars. She’s aboard now. Probably unconscious.’
‘You’re speaking to me again?’ Eunice asked. ‘After that unpleasantness with the elephants?’
‘Sunday says you need more stimulation.’ He waved at the view. ‘So here’s some stimuli. Make the most of it.’
Eunice’s ghost hands were resting on the curving handrail. No one was paying her the slightest attention. Geoffrey’s figment might be visible to anyone who chose to see it, but Eunice was an entirely private hallucination.
‘They’re nearly ready to go,’ Eunice said. ‘Docking connections, power umbilicals, all decoupled and retracted.’ She was silent for a few moments, looking at the liner.
The Maersk Intersolar vehicle was essentially a single skeletal chassis a thousand metres long, with the engines at one end, various cargo storage, navigation and manoeuvring systems in the middle, and the passenger and crew accommodation at the front, tucked behind the blunt black cone of the ship’s aerobrake. The engines were a long way down the cylinder, difficult to make out beyond an impression of three city-block-sized rectangular structures, flanged with cooling vanes. The swiftship was ugly and asymmetric because there wasn’t a single kilogram of mass aboard that wasn’t mission-critical. In Darwinian terms, it was as sleek and ruthlessly efficient as a swordfish.
‘That business with the Pans hiring her as an artist,’ Eunice remarked, ‘obviously a cover, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I don’t have an opinion on the matter.’
‘Don’t be obtuse, Geoffrey. We can be as hurtful or helpful as we please, and today I’ve come to help. I know why Sunday has to go to Mars – it’s because of what we found in Pythagoras.’
‘We,’ he scoffed. ‘Like you’re part of this now.’
‘Look at that ship, though,’ Eunice said, with renewed passion. ‘What we would have given for something like those magnetoplasma rockets when I was young. Even our VASIMR engines couldn’t touch what she can do. Exhaust velocities in the range of two hundred kilometres per second, specific impulse off the scale – we’d have murdered our own mothers for that. Our best fusion plants back then were the size of battleships, even with Mpemba cooling – not exactly built for lugging around the solar system. Mars in four weeks now, and you don’t even have to be awake for the trip! That’s the trouble with you young
people – you barely know you’re born. We were just out of the chemical rocket era, and we still did more in fifty years than you’ll do in a century.’
‘You lived to see all this develop,’ Geoffrey said, ‘but instead of enjoying it you chose to rot away in seclusion.’
‘I’d had my hour in the sun.’
‘Then don’t blame the rest of us for getting on with our lives. You pushed back the boundaries of outer space. There are plenty of us doing the same with inner space, the mind. It might not have quite the grandeur or romance of exploring the solar system, but that doesn’t make it any less vital.’
‘I’m not arguing. Still want to be on that ship, though.’
After a moment he said, ‘I know when you were last on Phobos – 2099, just before your final expedition. A year later, maybe less, you donated the book to the museum. And if we could pin down when you returned to Pythagoras, it would have been around the same time, wouldn’t it? You were rushing about, hiding these clues. What’s Sunday going to find on Phobos?’
‘I don’t know.’ Seeing Geoffrey’s frustrated expression, she added, ‘You still don’t understand. I’m not here to lie, or keep things from you. If I think I know something useful to you, you’ll know about it.’
‘But you don’t even know what you did on Phobos.’
‘I went back to Mars for Jonathan’s funeral. I don’t know what I got up to, or where. But it’s a small moon, and there aren’t many possibilities.’
‘Sunday should still have told me her plans.’
‘And risk being found out by the cousins? We can have this conversation safely enough now, but a routine ching bind between Earth and the Moon, with minimal quangle? Sunday didn’t dare take that chance, Geoffrey.’
‘Hector and Lucas couldn’t have stopped her.’
‘You’re still not getting it. It’s not them pressuring her that Sunday was concerned about. It’s them pressuring you. She was thinking of you, your elephants, your whole self-centred existence back in Africa. Being a good sister to her little brother.’