‘I don’t think we should stay here,’ she said, for the third or fourth time. ‘If the hammerhead comes back to take another look at the wreck . . .’
On the other hand, by remaining close to the wreckage of the rover they might be less conspicuous than two figures out in the landscape, far from any other manufactured thing. Did the machines hunt by heat or sound, primarily? And was there sense in staying close to the drill site, in the faint hope that the golem had managed to report home? She might have spurned the family, but they wouldn’t let her die out here. Not knowingly, she hoped.
Gribelin was dead. She was certain of this now. Almost at the point when the dust plume faded into the pink haze of distance above the horizon, there had been a bright and soundless explosion. She had felt the report of it seconds later, rumbling through the ground like elephant talk. She imagined him allowing the hammerhead to come as close to the rover as he dared, before triggering something aboard the vehicle: a cache of explosives, some illegal weapon. Whether it had been enough to destroy the hammerhead, or merely to exclude the possibility of its catching Gribelin alive, there was no way of telling. A bonsai mushroom cloud had curled up, a brain rising swollen and cerebral from its own spinal cord, and there had been no sign of the hammerhead after that.
But the hammerhead was not even an apex predator.
‘I want Eunice,’ Sunday said. ‘She’d know what to do. She always knew what to do.’
Jitendra kicked aside a buckled metal plate. ‘There’s nothing here we can use. And I’m not even sure it’s a good idea to keep communicating like this. Maybe we should go into radio silence from now on.’ He paused, his breath ragged from the exertion of searching the wreck. That was Jitendra’s way of coping, Sunday thought: keep busy, until even he had no option but to admit the futility of it. ‘So, which direction do we walk? The winds haven’t been too bad since we came in. If our air recyclers hold out we can probably follow the vehicle tracks all the way back to Vishniac, even if we lose suit nav.’
If they lost suit nav, Sunday thought, getting lost would be the least of their worries. It would mean the suits were dying on them, and that life support would be among the failing systems. ‘Maybe another Overfloater will take pity on us.’
‘Yes. They do appear to be the kind and considerate sort, based on Dorcas’s example.’
‘I’m just saying. When you’re out of options, you cling to the unrealistic.’ But Sunday had been searching the sky for hours. There were no other airships up there. ‘I could kill her. Better than that. I will kill her, if I ever get the chance.’
Which I won’t, a quiet voice added.
‘I don’t think she meant us to die. On the other hand, I don’t think she thought things through particularly well.’
‘Do me a favour,’ Sunday said. ‘Can you – just for once – stop trying to look on the bright side all the fucking time? And stop trying to always see the good in everyone, because sometimes it just isn’t there. Sometimes people are just arseholes. Evil fucking arseholes.’
Jitendra dragged a piece of rover panelling next to Sunday and jammed it into the ground like a windbreak. ‘We’re going to be the hottest things for miles around. The more thermal screening we can arrange, the better our chances.’
‘Our chances are zero, Jitendra. But if it makes you feel better . . .’ She blinked hard. Her eyes stung with tears, but there was nothing she could do about that now.
‘It would make me feel better if you helped a bit,’ he said. ‘Some of these pieces are too big for me to manage on my own.’
Anything to please Jitendra. And he was right. Better to be doing something. Better to be doing something, no matter how stupid and pointless, than nothing at all.
While the universe surveyed their ramshackle plans and laughed.
They made a crude shelter, open to the skies but offering some cover from anything approaching on or near the ground. Sunday doubted that it would make much difference – their heat was going to bleed out whatever they did – but if it made them slightly less visible then she supposed the effort was not entirely wasted. They had depleted some more of their suits’ power and oxygen, but they had not surrendered. And when the work was done, the shelter fashioned to the best of their abilities and the sun lower still, they sat next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, maintaining tactile contact so they could talk.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sunday said finally.
‘Sorry for being tricked and cheated?’
‘Sorry for what I got you into. Sorry for what I got Gribelin into.’
‘I’m sorry for him as well. But he was an old man, in a dangerous line of work. You didn’t kill him; his job did.’
‘Maybe we’d have been better staying together.’
‘We’re still alive,’ Jitendra said. He tightened his hand around hers in emphasis. ‘He isn’t. That has to be the better outcome, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sunday said, and the words surprised her because they seemed to come unbidden.
‘I do,’ Jitendra said. ‘And while there’s a second more of living to be had, I’ll always choose life over death. Because anything at all could happen in that second.’
‘Since when did you start believing in miracles?’ Sunday asked.
‘I don’t,’ he answered. ‘But I do believe in . . .’ Jitendra fell silent, long enough that she began to wonder if the tactile link had stopped working. She followed his line of sight, out through the narrow vertical gap where two of the wreck’s pieces didn’t quite meet.
‘Jitendra?’
‘I haven’t moved since we sat down,’ he said. ‘My line of sight’s still the same. And I definitely couldn’t see that hill an hour ago.’
Sunday adjusted her position and saw what he meant. She’d have seen it herself, had she been sitting a little to her left. It was no hill, she knew. The topography here was clear: other than the volcanoes and some ancient craters, there were no sharp protrusions in the terrain.
More than that, Jitendra was right. The hill hadn’t been there while they made the shelter.
‘The Aggregate,’ Sunday said, and when Jitendra didn’t answer, she knew it was because he had nothing better to offer.
And the Aggregate was coming closer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Geoffrey checked his restraints. The Quaynor was burning fuel again, continuing with orbital insertion and approach/rendezvous with the Winter Palace. Up in the forward command blister – the nearest thing the ship had to a bridge – Jumai and Mira Gilbert were tethered either side of him, secured within a messy cat’s cradle of bungee cords and buckle-on harnesses. The command blister was a metal-framed cupola set with impact-resistant glass and furnished with quaintly old-fashioned controls and readouts.
‘Your family are still ahead of us,’ Gilbert said, confirming the news that Geoffrey had been half-expecting. ‘We had some delta-vee in reserve. Unfortunately, so did the Kinyeti.’ She tapped at a fold-down instrument panel, muttering some dark aquatic oath. Reaction motors popped and stuttered, finessing the Quaynor’s course. ‘Going to be a nail-biter, I’m afraid. We’ll meet them on the same orbit. Unfortunately it looks like they’ll make dock before we do.’
‘How many docking slots?’ Jumai asked.
‘Close-ups show one at either pole. Anyone’s guess as to whether both are serviceable.’
‘Been a long while since there was any need for two ships to be docked at the same time,’ Geoffrey said. ‘If ever.’
The Quaynor wasn’t new – Geoffrey could tell that much just from the rank mustiness of his living quarters – but he doubted that it dated from much before the turn of the century. Rather it had been tailored to Pan ideological specifications, which dictated a strict minimum of aug-generated contrivances. Glass windows, so that the universe might be apprehended photon by photon, on its own blazing terms, rather than through layers of distorting mediation. Control and navigation systems that required physical
interaction, so that a person had to be present, in body as well as mind. Decision-making abdicated to fallible, slow-witted human pilots, rather than suites of swift and tireless expert systems.
‘What are Hector and Lucas hoping to gain here?’ Jumai asked.
Geoffrey scratched a nugget of crystal-hard dust from his eye. The period of unconsciousness in the rocket hadn’t done anything to take the edge off his exhaustion.
‘The cousins couldn’t give two shits about what’s inside the Winter Palace. Not for themselves, anyway. They just don’t want me finding anything that might hurt Eunice’s reputation or endanger the business.’ He adjusted one of the restraints where it was starting to chafe. ‘They’ll be planning to scuttle it, one way or another. They already have the paperwork in place.’
Jumai asked, ‘Reckon they brought bombs with them?’
‘Plenty of stuff in a ship that can be used to make a bang,’ Gilbert said. ‘That’s before we even get to the fact that there’s a whole other ship stuck inside the Winter Palace.’
Geoffrey tensed at the arrival of a ching request. It was Hector, and the ching coordinates placed him near the Moon.
‘I don’t think we have much to say to each other,’ he said, opting to keep the conversation strictly voice-only.
‘You took the call,’ Hector said, his reply bouncing back from the Kinyeti almost immediately, ‘which suggests you think there’s something worth discussing.’
‘Is it just you, or did Lucas come along for the ride?’
‘Only room for one of us, Geoffrey – I came up in a cargo shot, not the crewed capsule. Stress wouldn’t have been good for Lucas, not after what he did to his leg.’ He emitted a brief, humourless laugh. ‘It was quite a trip. You should try it sometime.’
‘I did it once,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Not this way, with no cushioning and the safety margins dialled to zero. The kick when I hit the bend at the base of the mountain . . . that was something. The view, though . . . once the pusher lasers had me and I was sailing into orbit. Glorious.’
‘Glad it was worthwhile. You’re brave or stupid, one of the two.’
Hector let slip another laugh. ‘It’s still not too late to make this good, Geoffrey. Whatever you think you’re going to achieve in the Winter Palace, you don’t have to go through with it.’
‘So I should just leave you to destroy it?’
‘We have a good life here, cousin, everything we need. Why are you so anxious to ruin things?’
‘If Eunice wanted to screw the family, she had her whole life to do it.’
‘You have a touching faith in human nature. I’d say she’s perfectly capable of screwing us from the afterlife, if that’s what she wanted.’
‘Hector, trust my sister on this. Sunday knew Eunice inside out. Eunice didn’t do pointless, spiteful gestures. And why the hell would she have something against us, anyway?’
‘She lost her mind, cousin. Out there, on the edge of the system. From that point on, she wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘I don’t think she lost her mind. I think she saw something out there, had some kind of experience . . . something that made her look back on everything she’d achieved up to that point and realise it wasn’t necessarily worth all the blood and toil she’d put into it. But that’s not going mad. It’s called getting a sense of perspective.’
After an interval Hector said, ‘Love to think you were right, but we can’t take any chances here. Too much depends on us.’
‘At least let me see what’s inside the Winter Palace.’
‘And if it’s something that hurts us? Something we can’t recover from?’
‘I’m not going to destroy the business,’ Geoffrey said, exhaustedly. ‘I don’t give enough of a damn about it.’
‘And if we’d done something bad? Some crime only she knew about? If you found out that your own flesh and blood had done something unspeakable? Could your conscience allow you to keep the secret then, cousin?’ He imagined Hector shaking his head, tutting beneath his breath. ‘You wouldn’t be able to live with that kind of secret.’
Softly Geoffrey asked, ‘What kind of crime?’
‘How the fuck should I know? Artilects, genetics, weapons: who knows what she got up to a hundred years ago? Who knows what anyone got up to back then?’
‘This doesn’t make any sense, Hector. We’re almost talking like equals now. Why couldn’t we have had this conversation weeks ago?’
Hector sighed, as if it bored him to have to explain something that should have been obvious. ‘Weeks ago you were still family, Geoffrey. Now you’re not. You’ve defected, turned traitor. Now you’re a business adversary. Now you’re an equal. That changes everything. I feel I can almost respect you.’
‘Please turn around.’
‘Kinyeti’s locked on, cousin. I’d maintain a safe distance, I were you.’
‘What are you planning?’
‘What I came here to do,’ Hector said. ‘Demolition.’
Rather than completing its approach, the Kinyeti came to a station-keeping halt fifty kilometres out, following almost the same orbit as the Winter Palace. Geoffrey wondered, optimistically, if Hector had had second thoughts. Perhaps, after all, he had begun to get through to his cousin, making him see sense.
But no. After ten minutes, a much smaller vehicle detached from the head of the mining ship and resumed the original approach vector. They studied the tiny ball-shaped craft at high-mag via the Quaynor’s own cameras. It was the kind of short-range ship-to-ship ferry that could also serve as an escape capsule or single-use re-entry vehicle.
‘Should have seen this coming,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Hector doesn’t want the Kinyeti’s crew getting any closer to the Winter Palace than necessary. Still playing family secrets close to his chest.’
‘Kinyeti is withdrawing,’ Arethusa said as the bigger ship fired a string of steering motors along its spine. ‘Guess they’ll be returning to collect Hector, but for the moment he’s told them to keep the hell away.’
‘They’ll be paid well enough not to ask awkward questions,’ Geoffrey said.
Once he was on his way, it only took Hector twenty minutes to complete the crossing to the Winter Palace. Using the capsule’s micro-thrusters, he executed one inspection pass, spiralling around the station’s cylinder from end to end before closing in for final docking. If the Winter Palace had queried the little ship’s approach authorisation – and then given clearance to commence final docking manoeuvres – there was no practical way to intercept that tight-beamed comms traffic from the Quaynor. Geoffrey could only presume that they would be challenged on their own approach.
‘Synching for dock,’ Gilbert said as Hector’s ship went into a slow roll, matching the station’s centrifugal spin rate. ‘Contact and capture in five . . . four . . . three . . .’
The capsule docked. Clamp arms folded down to secure it. Two or three minutes passed and then there was an exhalation of silvery glitter from the airlock collar. A gasp of escaping pressure, held there since the last time the lock was activated, and then the seals locked tight. The tiny capsule was almost lost in the details of the station’s endcap docking and service structures.
‘Lining us up for the other pole,’ Gilbert said, tapping commands into one of the fold-down keypads. ‘Think we can pass through the entire structure?’
‘It’s just a big hollow tube, with Winter Queen running down the middle,’ Geoffrey said. ‘We shouldn’t have any problems, especially as Arethusa already chinged aboard not so long ago.’
‘I only saw what she let me see,’ Arethusa warned.
Hector’s transfer into the smaller ship had eaten into his lead over the Quaynor, but they were still thirty minutes from docking. Geoffrey drummed his fingertips, the seconds crawling by with agonising slowness. He couldn’t see Hector taking his time inside, no matter the novelty value of being able to roam at will through Eunice’s private kingdom.
They were fifty ki
lometres out when the first challenge came: shrill and automated, fully in keeping with Eunice’s general policy of not extending a magnanimous welcome to visitors. ‘Unidentified vehicle on approach heading one-one-nine, three-one-seven: you do not have docking or fly-by authorisation. Please adjust your vector to comply with our mandatory exclusion volume.’ The voice, which was speaking Swahili, could easily have passed for his grandmother’s. ‘If you do not adjust your vector, we cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by our anti-collision systems.’
‘Hold the course,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Let her – it – know we mean business. Eunice: are you listening to me?’
‘I’m here,’ the construct said, deigning not to project a figment into what was already a cramped space.
‘Make yourself heard by everyone present, including Arethusa. No reason for them not to listen in on our conversation.’
‘Sunday wouldn’t like that.’
‘Do it anyway. I’m ordering you.’
There was a barely measurable pause. ‘It’s done. They can hear me now.’
‘Good.’ Geoffrey looked around at his companions, trusting that they’d settle for asking questions later. ‘I’m afraid there’s no time to bring you up to speed right now, Eunice, but we need docking permission for the Winter Palace.’
‘Tell it you’re on Akinya business.’
There was little point seeking the construct’s guidance if he was not willing to give her suggestions the benefit of the doubt. ‘Mira – am I patched through?’
‘Say your piece,’ Gilbert said.
‘This is Geoffrey Akinya, grandson of Eunice. I am aboard the deep-space vehicle Quaynor, requesting approach and docking authorisation.’ He waited a moment, then, for all that it sounded pompous, added, ‘I am on important family business.’
‘Approach approval has already been assigned to Hector Akinya. No further docking slots are available.’