‘As you just said, I’ve told you who I am.’
‘You have, and we shall proceed on that basis.’ Eunice – the recording of Eunice – glanced down at the book she’d been reading. ‘Firstly, you’ve done well to come this far. That took resourcefulness. I trust there were no particular unpleasantnesses along the way?’
‘You could have picked a better burial site on Mars.’
Eunice’s eyes sharpened. ‘There were local difficulties?’
‘This is the middle of the fucking Evolvarium, Grandmother.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Evol-what? Succinctly, please.’
‘Other than burying your helmet in a minefield, you couldn’t have picked a worse spot on Mars. This whole area, for a thousand kilometres in any direction, is a no-go zone. It’s a place where self-replicating machines are allowed to run riot. They evolve through generations, fighting for survival. Every now and then that evolutionary process throws up some gimmick, some idea or gadget that someone can make money from outside the ’varium. The machines are dangerous, and the people who run the place don’t take kindly to outsiders poking around. Our guide was killed out there, and Jitendra and I came close to dying as well.’
‘I’m . . . sorry.’ The contrition sounded genuine. ‘I meant you to be challenged, but not put in real peril. Still, I can’t be held accountable for what happened to Mars after the burial.’ Again there was that sharpening of her gaze. ‘It’s an odd thing to happen, though. This is the only place like it on Mars?’
‘I told you, you couldn’t have picked a worse location.’
‘Then that’s strange. I’m not one for coincidences, Sunday. Not this kind, anyway. There must be an explanation.’
‘You tell me.’
‘I only know what I know. But how could my little adventure on Pavonis Mons have led to this?’ She gave every impression of thinking about that, reopening the book and leafing through it, scratching her fingernail against the fine Bible-thin paper, even though her eyes were not on the close-printed text. ‘After I lost the aeroplane . . . but no.’ A quick dismissive head-shake. ‘That can’t be it.’
‘What can’t be what?’
‘I had to take shelter while the storm raged. The Russian station was still airtight, and it had power and the basic amenities. But I couldn’t stay there for ever. The wind had damaged the aircraft, but I still needed a way out.’
Sunday issued a terse, ‘Continue.’
As if Eunice needed permission.
‘The Russians had left a lot of equipment in their station, some of it still semi-functional. Before landing, I’d scouted a number of abandoned facilities and assets in the area. If I could salvage some of that junk, I’d be able to keep myself alive longer. Batteries, air-scrubbers, that kind of thing. Maybe even rig up some kind of repair to the aircraft. But I couldn’t go out there. My suit wasn’t stormproof, and in any case it only had limited range. I couldn’t have walked far enough to do any good.’
‘So you were in deep shit.’
‘Until I found the robots.’ Eunice snapped the book shut again. ‘The Russians had left them behind, in one of the storage sheds. I’m not surprised: they were old, slow, their programming screwed. Still, I didn’t need them to do much for me.’ She smiled quickly, as if abashed at her own resourcefulness. ‘I . . . patched them together, fixed their programming as best I could. Took me eight days, but it kept my mind off the worst. Then I sent them out in different directions, running on maximum autonomy. I’d told them to locate anything that looked potentially useful and drag it back to me.’
‘I guess it worked.’
‘No – rescue came sooner than I anticipated. The storm cleared, and my people were able to get me out. As for the robots . . . I forgot about them. But they were still out there, running with my lashed-up programming. They were supposed to take care of themselves, and to act competitively if the need arose. Do you think . . . ?’
‘Do I think you inadvertently created the Evolvarium? I’d say yes, if I wasn’t worried that your ego might already be on the point of stellar collapse.’
Eunice dislodged a fly from her brow. ‘I’ve achieved enough by intent, without dwelling on the things I made happen by accident. Regardless, I’m truly sorry if circumstances were more complicated than I envisaged, but it appears you weathered the adversity. Congratulations, Sunday. You’ve come through very well.’
‘My brother and I have been sharing the burden.’
‘And does that mean you have the full authority of the family behind you?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, no.’
‘I never counted on it. The important thing is that you’ve demonstrated the necessary insight and determination to make it this far.’ Eunice lifted her head to study the sun. ‘My internal clock tells me that more than sixty years have passed since the burial. Is that really the case?’
‘Yes,’ Sunday said. ‘And you’ve only just died. The reason I’m here is because of an audit the household ran just after your death.’
‘A long time in anyone’s book. How have things been, while I was gone?’
‘With the family?’
‘Everything. The world, the flesh and the devil. Us. Have we managed not to screw things up completely?’
‘I’m here,’ Sunday said. ‘That should tell you something, shouldn’t it?’
‘I was born in 2030,’ Eunice said. ‘People told me it was the best and worst of times. To me it just seemed like the way of the world. Whether you’re born with famine in your belly or a silver spoon in your mouth – it’s always just the way things are, isn’t it? You know no different. Later, I realised I was fortunate, extraordinarily so. Fortunate to have been born African, for one thing, in the right place at the right time. My mother and father always said we should make the best of things, so that’s what we did. The world still had some catching up to do, mind. I grew up with the last wars ever fought on Earth. They never touched me directly, but no one could entirely escape their influence. Please tell me they were the last wars. I couldn’t bear to think we’d slipped back to our bad old ways.’
‘There haven’t been any more wars, which is not to say things are perfect back on Earth. I tease my brother about it often enough. They still have police, armies and peacekeeping forces, the occasional border incident. But it’s not like it used to be.’
‘The Resource and Relocation crisis taught us to grow up,’ Eunice said. ‘We were like a house full of squabbling children for most of our history. And then the house started burning down. We had to grow up fast or burn with it.’
‘We did.’
‘What is it like out there now? Have you seen much of the system?’
‘Not much. I was born on Earth, but I’ve spent most of my adult life on the Moon. This is the first time I’ve ever been anywhere else.’
‘You never had the means?’
‘It’s . . . complicated.’ Sunday nodded at the book her interlocutor was holding. ‘Is that Gulliver’s Travels?’
Eunice glanced absent-mindedly at the title. ‘Finnegans Wake,’ she said. ‘I liked Swift when I was little. Maybe Gulliver turned me into an explorer. But this is . . . denser. I still haven’t got the bottom of it. So many questions. You could spend a lifetime on it and still not understand it.’ She flicked open a random page, frowned at something written there. ‘Who was Muster Mark? What do you suppose he wanted with three quarks?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sunday was ready to leave the suit now. ‘What’s this all about, Eunice? Why did you bury the helmet? Why are you asking me these things?’
‘You disappoint me, Sunday. To have so much of the world ready for the taking, and to have seen so little of it. I thought wanderlust ran in our blood. I thought it was the fire that made us Akinyas.’
‘You saw it all, and then you came back, a sad old woman with no interest in anything except money and power and lording it over the rest of us. Doesn’t that suggest all that exp
loring was really just a waste of time?’
‘It would, if it hadn’t changed me.’ The book’s leather binding offered a creak of complaint as she shut it. ‘I’ve seen marvellous things, Sunday. I’ve looked back from the edge of the system and seen this planet, this Earth, reduced to a tiny dot of pale blue. I know what that feels like. To think that dot is where we came from, where we evolved out of the chaos and the dirt . . . to think that Africa is only a part of that dot, that the dot contains not just Africa, but all the other continents, the oceans and ice caps . . . under a kiss of atmosphere, like morning dew, soon to be boiled off in the day’s heat. And I know what it feels like to imagine going further. To hold that incredible, dangerous thought in my mind, if only for an instant. To think: what if I don’t go home? What if I just keep on travelling? Watching that pale-blue dot fall ever further away, until the darkness swallowed it and there was no turning back. Until Earth was just a blue memory.’
Sunday’s scorn was overwhelming. ‘You never had the nerve.’
‘Maybe not. But at least,’ Eunice answered mildly, ‘I’ve stood on the edge of that cliff and thought about jumping.’
‘I came to Mars. Isn’t that adventurous enough for you?’
‘You’ve only taken baby steps, child. But I can’t fault your determination. After all, you found me.’
‘Yes. And where has that got me?’
‘To this point. And I’m not done with you yet. Not by a long mark. There’s a choice that needs to be made, a difficult one, and in all conscience I just don’t have the mental capacity to make it.’
‘That’s uncharacteristically modest of you.’
‘Oh, I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about this thing I’ve become: this bundle of clanking routines stuffed into a hundred-year-old space helmet. That won’t suffice, not when so much is at stake. That’s why I’m going to leave matters in your hands. Return to Lunar space. Go to the Winter Palace, if it’s still there.’
‘It is.’
‘If you’ve managed to find the helmet, then you’ll get past the sphinxware guarding the Palace. And if you are, as you say, Akinya . . . then the rest will follow.’ She paused. ‘At some point, you will be challenged by more sphinxware. The answer you give will be critical. But I can’t tell you what that answer should be. I’ve been buried under Mars for sixty years.’
‘And that’s meant to be helpful . . . how, exactly?’
Her eyes twinkled. ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’
‘Thank you,’ Sunday said, drenching her answer with as much sarcasm as she could muster.
‘I wish I could tell you more, but the simple fact is that I only know the things I need to know, here and now. Yet wisely or otherwise I have faith in you, Sunday Akinya.’
‘You just told me you’re a bunch of routines stuffed into a helmet. How could you possibly know whether I’m up to the task?’
‘Because you remind me of me,’ Eunice said.
‘You mean, up my arse with my own divine self-importance?’
‘It’s a step in the right direction.’
Sunday took deep and grateful gulps of air. Her clothes were soaked with sweat, sticking to her as she was extricated from the suit.
‘I hope that wasn’t too traumatic,’ Jonathan said, pushing a glass into Sunday’s clammy hand.
‘You’ve had the helmet all this time, yet in sixty years you never figured out a way to break through the sphinxware?’ She drank the glass down in one go. ‘Even if you couldn’t do it, surely someone else would have been able to?’
‘There might have been a way,’ Jonathan said, ‘but would the risk have been worth it? If the helmet sensed it was being hacked, it might have erased its contents. Besides, it didn’t really interest me.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘You have to remember that I was the one who bored your grandmother. When she’d grown restless of Mars, I was happy to put down roots. The helmet was from that other part of her life, the part I had nothing to do with.’
Soya dabbed Sunday’s forehead with a cloth.
‘Then why dig it up?’ Sunday asked.
‘I still wanted to make sure it reached the right hands. If that meant acting as a curator, so be it. If I hadn’t, the machines would have recycled it decades ago.’
‘You can’t argue with that,’ Soya said.
‘No, but I’m not sure what either of us has achieved. Yes, there was a message from Eunice in the helmet, and it told me some stuff. But answers? All she gave me was some cryptic horsepiss about something being a blessing or a curse. She wouldn’t say which. Other than that I need to get to the Winter Palace, which is back where I started.’
‘She dragged you all the way to Mars . . . to tell you the answer is on your doorstep?’ Jitendra asked.
‘I don’t know what she was telling me.’ Sunday accepted another glass of water from Jonathan. She was beginning to feel human again, save for the lingering aches and pains where the suit had been squeezing her. ‘There was some stuff about looking back at Earth, seeing it from all the way out.’ She paused and said doubtfully, ‘Maybe there’s more it can tell me.’
‘You want to get back in that thing?’ Jitendra asked, with what struck her as a particularly touching concern for her well-being.
‘Maybe, when we’re back in aug reach, the construct can find a way in without tripping the sphinxware to self-erase. But we have to leave the Evolvarium for that. She thinks she might have created this place, by the way. By accident!’
‘She was here,’ Jitendra admitted. ‘No one can argue with that. And when all this is over, someone really needs to dig around and find out how the Evolvarium got started. Maybe I’ll do it.’
‘You’ll ruffle a few feathers,’ Soya said.
‘Good. It’s about time.’
‘That’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,’ Sunday said. ‘I need to get a message to Geoffrey, very urgently. Even if I left Mars right now, I’m still more than a month from home. That’s too long. One of us needs to look inside the Winter Palace before Hector or Lucas gets the same idea.’
‘We can reach Vishniac by tomorrow morning,’ Soya said.
‘Cross the Evolvarium at night?’
‘It’s safer when you have friends in the right places,’ Jonathan said. There was a gleam in his eyes that didn’t belong in a man that old. ‘Trust Soya – she’ll get you back in one piece. But promise me something – this won’t be the last time we speak, will it?’
‘We’ve barely begun,’ Sunday said.
‘Count on it,’ Jitendra said. ‘Even if she doesn’t come back, I will. I’m serious about ruffling those feathers. And I have a feeling there’s a lot you and I could talk about.’
‘I think so too,’ Jonathan said. Then he frowned slightly, turning back to Sunday. ‘What you said just now, about it all being horsepiss?’
‘What?’ Sunday asked.
‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you sounded just like your grandmother.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Geoffrey heard his own footsteps through the suit’s auditory-acoustic pickup and the timbre was different now, each footfall accompanied by a distinct steel-edged echo. The open door had shown only darkness, and it was no lighter now that they were on the other side of it, cut off from the Quaynor. He felt as if he’d climbed into the hold of a ship: some huge metal-walled void with no windows.
‘There’s an image-intensifier mode on these things,’ Jumai said, quietly, as if there were things astir that she did not wish to alert. ‘Voke amplification, see what you make of it.’
Jumai was never more than arm’s reach away, her form outlined on the helmet’s display. Geoffrey did as she had suggested, voking the suit to apply a light-enhanced overlay. Grey-green perspectives raced away from him, curving in one direction, arrow-straight in the other. He pivoted around, Jumai manifesting as a blazing white smudge. The floor angled up behind her, commencing its great steepening arc, the
arc that would eventually bring it soaring overhead and back down behind him. At right angles to the direction of curvature, the floor stretched all the way to the far endcap. He couldn’t see anything of the endcap. There wasn’t enough ambient light for that.
‘This isn’t right,’ he said, shaking his head inside the helmet. ‘It shouldn’t be like this.’
‘You want to let me in on what you were expecting?’
‘I’ve never been here before,’ Geoffrey said, ‘but I’m very familiar with this space – from whenever she talked to us, whenever she delivered one of her sermons.’ The words were a struggle. ‘This wasn’t just an empty shell. It was full of trees, full of greenery and light. Like a jungle. There were plants, borders, paths and stairs. It rained. There should be a whole closed-cycle ecology running in here.’
‘Looks more like a big room full of nothing to me,’ Jumai said.
‘Arethusa was here. She chinged aboard, not long before Eunice died. She’d have noticed anything strange. She’d have said something to me.’
Jumai had her hands on her hips. She was looking up, towards the central axis of the empty chamber. ‘Least there’s a ship. That is a ship, isn’t it?’
‘I think so.’ But he could hardly tell. It was nearly seventy-five metres away. All he could make out was a spine of organised darkness running from one end of the chamber to the other. ‘We need more light,’ Geoffrey said decisively. ‘Is there a flashlight mode somewhere? I’m surprised it hasn’t cut in automatically.’
‘Maybe there are situations where you wouldn’t want that to happen. Wait a second.’ Jumai reached up and started fiddling with the crown of her helmet. ‘Thought I saw something while we were suiting up. Got some flares in my toolkit, all else fails.’
Light blazed from her helmet. She doused the blue-white beam against the central axis, picking out details of the Winter Queen. Geoffrey felt his world lurch slightly back into sanity, if only for a few lucid moments. He was still reeling from the absence of the jungle. Even if the air in the chamber had been swapped for pure oxygen and allowed to consume itself, there’d still be ashes . . . scorching. Yet there was nothing. The flooring under his feet had the improbable antiseptic gleam of an airpod showroom.