‘Maybe it can’t be done,’ Hector said. ‘This has been orchestrated with exceptional thoroughness. Our grandmother was not one for leaving loose ends.’
‘Except the ones she meant us to find,’ Geoffrey said.
‘This ship has been prepared for us,’ Hector went on. ‘It was waiting for an Akinya to enter it, and it has a destination in mind. I do not think it is any accident that those hibernation units were provided.’
‘Why six?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘Eunice was taking no chances. The ship only needed one of us to trigger its countdown, but there was always the possibility that there might be other people aboard when that happened. As it transpired, it’s just the three of us. But you’ve seen the provisions. Even if there were more than six, I think the ship could easily keep a few more people alive for fifty-two days.’
‘And the return trip,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Let’s not forget about that.’
‘Let’s hope sending us back was in her plans,’ Hector said.
When Mira Gilbert next chinged in, it was with imagery of their own ship, captured by public eyes as it fled Lunar space. Geoffrey could appreciate her concern over the engine now. There’d been nothing that bright since the age of chemical rockets. The difference was that the ship was able to sustain its thrust for hours, not minutes. There was no sign of the drive flame guttering out, and even sceptical witnesses were beginning to speculate that the engine might not be as prone to imminent destruction as they’d first supposed. If anything, some of its initial instabilities were beginning to settle down.
The ship had emerged from the Winter Palace almost unscathed. The aerobrake had acted like a battering ram, shoving most of the debris out of harm’s way. The centrifuge arms had decelerated and folded into their stowed positions, tucked along the sides of the hull like grasshopper legs.
‘It may not be much consolation,’ Gilbert said, ‘but you’re breaking news all over the inner system. You’ll be systemwide when light’s had time to bounce back from Saturn.’
‘How does that help us?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘It doesn’t. I warned you that you were already out of range of local traffic. Things are no better when we factor in faster ships. There are a couple of swiftships on Earth approach that might be able to match your instantaneous speed now, if they diverted immediately, but by the time they reached you they’d be out of fuel. That wouldn’t help you at all.’
‘No one is to risk anything on our behalf,’ Geoffrey said.
‘I agree,’ Hector put in. ‘And I speak for Akinya Space in this regard.’
‘Once we have confirmation of your destination,’ Gilbert said, ‘we can talk about sending out a rescue party. But you’re going to be looking at a long wait before anyone shows up.’
‘The ship appears to have everything it needs to keep us alive,’ Hector answered. ‘We’ll find out about the iceteroid when we get there. It’s a mining facility, so there should be life-support equipment for visiting technicians.’ Hector didn’t sound sure of that, though. At this point Geoffrey didn’t blame him for having doubts.
‘We’re just going to have to trust the ship,’ Geoffrey said. ‘We’ll be entering hibernation soon – there’s no point staying awake if our hands are tied. We all have friends and family elsewhere in the system. I think we’d all like time to make statements to them before we go under. We still don’t have full aug reach, and we may never get it. We’ll need your assistance to relay our messages.’
‘I’ll make sure they get where they’re meant to,’ Gilbert said. ‘You have my word on that.’
There wasn’t much to say, when it came down to it. They recorded their statements privately, committing them to the care of the Pans, and then returned to the command deck. Jumai made one last attempt to break the lockout, but she got no further than before.
‘Whoever designed this,’ she said, gesturing vaguely at the suite of readouts and controls, ‘didn’t throw it together in five minutes. This ship was designed from the ground up not to accept external inputs unless it wants to. Honestly, if it wasn’t my life on the line here, I’d be impressed. As it is, I could cheerfully strangle whoever put this architecture together.’
‘It’s a little late for that,’ Hector said.
Geoffrey was still thinking about what he had said to Sunday, and whether it needed amending. The last thing he wanted to do was add to her troubles, but he had still asked her to find someone who could take care of the elephants – at least watch over them – until he was back. He did not go so far as to voice his own fear, which was that he might never return. Geoffrey just hoped she was faring well on Mars. It would have been good to know that she was safe, before he went under.
‘I suspect I know what you are thinking,’ Hector said a little while later.
‘What?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘You would have liked to have spoken to Memphis again before he died. You may find this difficult to accept, but I feel the same way. I did not kill him, Geoffrey. Nor did Lucas.’
Geoffrey looked away for a moment. ‘I know. It was what you always said it was: just a stupid accident.’
Hector’s face showed that he had been expecting any answer but that one. ‘You were so certain we had done it. What made you change your mind? Did you play back our movements, examine data from the public eyes?’
‘I didn’t need to. I had a choice, when I came aboard the Winter Palace and found your suit. At that point, part of me was still willing to accept that you and Lucas might have been behind it.’
‘No one could blame you for feeling angry. You were always close to him.’
‘Another part of me knew it wasn’t possible. We’re family, after all. We may have different opinions about the way we live our lives, but that doesn’t make us implacable enemies. Or it shouldn’t. We’ve all had the enhancements, too. Why should you and Lucas be capable of premeditated murder if I’m not?’
‘Some fish always slip through the net. It was not an outlandish possibility. When you tried to punch me . . . it’s not as if you didn’t want to draw blood, is it?’
The memory of that moment, the red rage, the numbing clampdown as the Mech retaliated, remained raw.
‘I’m ashamed of what I did.’
‘None of us has acted as well as we might have in this,’ Hector said. ‘Lucas and I . . . we should not have approached you the way we did. It would have been better if we’d just asked you for help, rather than offering money. Rather than bribing you. Then at least there would have been the implication that we trusted each other. But I am afraid business runs rather thick in our veins.’
‘What’s done is done.’
‘I am still glad that you came back for me,’ Hector said. ‘Perhaps I would have done the same for you. The point is, the moment tested you, and you rose to the challenge. I have not yet been tested.’ He paused, smiling slightly. ‘I am not sure if we will ever be friends, in the accepted sense, but if we can somehow find a way not to despise each other, I think that will be an improvement. For the old man’s sake, if nothing else. Memphis always did wish we could all get on like a happy family.’
‘I still can’t accept that he’s gone,’ Geoffrey said.
‘It will take us all a long while to adjust. When this is over, we must find a way to honour his memory. All of us, as best we can.’
‘I agree,’ Geoffrey said.
Hector offered his hand. Geoffrey looked at it, allowing the moment to stretch. He did not want to give the impression that this was an easy or casual reconciliation, or that there was not still a vast gulf of trust to be bridged. But Hector was right. They had to start somewhere, and now was as good a time as ever. They might not, after all, get another chance.
He shook.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was the morning of the nineteenth of March, another spring day dawning in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the sky as clean and pink as bottled plasma. Soya had driven Sunday and Jitendra back
to Vishniac, traversing the Evolvarium at night in a tiny four-wheeled buggy with a bubble-top pressure cabin. They had come out of the Aggregate’s belly down a steel ramp which had folded back into the machine as soon as their wheels touched dirt. Jonathan had said that the journey was safe, that the other machines would keep their distance – none of them wished to provoke the Aggregate – but Sunday nonetheless sensed a constant low-level tension in Soya as they bounced and yawed across the endless high plains of the Tharsis Bulge. Now and then she’d bite her lower lip, clench her knuckles on the controls, glance nervously at the radar and sonar devices, or scan the horizon for the auroral flashes which signalled the death struggles of lesser machines. They had crossed the transponder boundary and put many kilometres between themselves and the technical limit of the Evolvarium before Soya allowed herself to relax. Even then, it was a twitching, high-strung sort of relaxation. She might be free of the machines, but Soya still wished to keep a low profile.
They had only been away from Vishniac for two full days, yet it felt like weeks to Sunday. And the little settlement, skewered by its railway line, so dismal and unprepossessing upon her arrival, now looked magnificent.
Soya parked the buggy in the same underground garage where Gribelin had kept his truck. ‘I should be going,’ she said, while Jitendra and Sunday grabbed their things. ‘Got jobs to do for my father.’
‘At least let us buy you a coffee,’ Sunday said.
Soya resisted, but Sunday pushed, and at last they were riding the elevator back up to the public levels. In the elevator’s unforgiving light, Soya looked older than before. Sunday began to appreciate the toll that her shadowy existence had enacted upon this woman. Then she caught her own reflection, and it was scarcely an improvement. Their genes were not so very different, she supposed. Both of them looked like they could use a few days off.
They found the same cafeteria where Gribelin had been waiting for them. While Jitendra was ordering drinks at the bar, Sunday held Soya’s hand. ‘I’m glad we got this chance to meet. Nothing’s going to be the same now. I’ll always know that you’re out here.’
‘I suppose we’re cousins,’ Soya said.
‘Something like that. Whatever we are, I’m happy there’s someone out here I didn’t know about. Not just because you’re a direct connection to my grandfather, although that’s part of it, but just because . . .’ Sunday faltered. ‘I think we could both use more friends, couldn’t we? And I meant what I said about coming back here. I will.’ Although that might be easier said than done, she thought. It wasn’t as if she could count on Pans for her expenses any more, was it?
‘I would like to travel. There are problems with that, though. My past is a fiction. It’s good enough to let me move around Mars, but I could never leave this planet.’
‘What’s the worst that could happen? They’d find out who you really are? I can’t see that you’ve done anything wrong, Soya, other than maintain a falsehood to protect Jonathan. And who wouldn’t do that? He seems like a good man.’
‘If the world finds out who I am, then it will discover what happened to him,’ Soya said.
‘Maybe it’s time. There’s no rule that says he has to hide away for the rest of his days, is there?’
‘I think he likes it better this way. Dropping out of history, like a deleted chapter.’
‘Fair enough, that’s his choice. But you don’t have to sacrifice your whole life to serve him, do you? You’ve already done more than enough.’
‘I’m not that old,’ Soya said. ‘There’s still a lot of time ahead.’ And she clearly meant a lot of time without her father, which was equally true, though Sunday had been careful not to voice that fact herself.
‘Like I said, I’m glad we met.’
Soya appeared to come to some private decision. She reached around her neck, undid a hidden fastening and lifted away one of the wooden charms. ‘This is yours now, Sunday. My father gave it to me. It used to belong to Eunice. It was a gift from her mother, Soya. Soya told her it was old, even then. I think it goes back a long way.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You will.’ Soya peeled apart Sunday’s fingers and forced the charm into her palm. ‘You have no say in this. No one ever does.’
Sunday stared down at the gift. Fastened onto a simple leather strand was a circular talisman, enclosing a more complex form that had been engraved and stained with fine geometric patterning. She allowed her fingers to curl around it, imagining her grandmother echoing the gesture, and Eunice’s mother before her, a lineage of closing hands, bound in this moment as if time itself was membrane-thin, easily breached.
‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
Jitendra was coming back with a tray and three steaming mugs of coffee. Sunday was debating whether or not to show him the gift – wondering if it ought to remain a secret, between her and Soya – when without warning a proxy arrived and took his seat.
It was not a golem; this was a purely mechanical-looking thing, shaped like an improbably skinny suit of armour, all silvers and chromes and burnished blues. It had a minimalist face: a slit of a mouth, two round eyes like double craters.
‘We need to talk,’ the proxy said.
Sunday slipped the talisman into her pocket for safekeeping. She recognised the voice, but requested an aug tag to be on the safe side. ‘Lucas,’ she said, with icy politeness. ‘Fancy seeing you here. The last thing I remember is my boot crushing your face. Didn’t you get the message?’
‘Shut up.’
Sunday had had enough of this crap. She braced herself and kicked out at the proxy, landing her heel in the middle of its abdomen. She pushed hard, toppling the proxy back. It went crashing, taking the table with it as its own foot flicked up. The spent drink containers left on the table by the previous customers went flying. From across the concourse faces swivelled towards the commotion like a bank of radar dishes.
Jitendra had frozen, the tray still in his hand.
‘We’re long past the point of reasoned debate, Lucas. Don’t you get it yet? It’s over, finished. The Pans screwed me. I came all this way for noth—’
‘Shut up.’ The proxy was getting back up, disentangling itself from the chair. ‘Just shut up. Everything’s changed now.’
There was something too calm about the way it was telling her to shut up. More in resignation than anger.
‘How?’ she asked.
The proxy placed the seat back upright, leaving the table tipped over. ‘It’s about your brother. I think you should listen.’
She wasn’t talking to Lucas, she reminded herself. Lucas was another world away; this was just an emulation – cleverer and quicker than the simulation of Eunice running in the helmet, but no closer to true sentience. Yet for all that, the illusion was compelling. The urgency in its voice was all too real.
‘Why do you care about Geoffrey?’
Jitendra had put the drinks down on the next clear table and was busy righting the tipped-over one, picking up the self-healing glassware and setting it down out of harm’s way. The coffee dregs were being sucked into the floor before they had a chance to stick to anyone’s shoes.
‘As a rule, not much. But I do care about my brother. Hector got into trouble. Geoffrey . . .’ The proxy tilted its head downwards. ‘Geoffrey tried to help him. Now they are both in difficulty.’
Sunday could have sworn she had exhausted her capacity to feel anxious after everything that had happened in the Evolvarium. But the proxy’s words still managed to touch something raw. ‘What do you mean?’
There was that not-quite-human pause while the proxy formulated its response. ‘Hector tried to gain entry into the Winter Palace. Geoffrey went in after him, only a few minutes later. Something happened shortly afterwards. The Winter Palace is gone.’
Sunday wasn’t sure if she’d understood correctly. ‘Gone?’
‘It destroyed itself. But Hector and Geoffrey are alive, for the moment. They’re on a ship, together with Jumai
Lule.’
‘I don’t believe it. My brother wouldn’t work with Hector. This is some kind of trick to lull me into trusting you.’
‘You don’t have to take my word for it – consult the aug. The news has gone systemwide.’
Sunday doubted that the proxy would call her bluff that readily, so perhaps it was true after all. ‘I need to talk to my brother.’
‘You can’t. They’re asleep, and the ship is on its way to Trans-Neptunian space. It’s moving very quickly, which in itself is noteworthy. We are concerned that the ship may damage itself, perhaps fatally. If it doesn’t, it will reach its destination in a little over seven weeks. In truth, we don’t really understand what’s going on. But the landscape has certainly changed.’
‘Not from where I’m sitting.’
‘Sunday,’ the proxy said, leaning forwards to emphasise its point, ‘let us not pretend that you and I retain any great affection for each other. But my brother is on that ship, and your brother tried to help him. Shortly before he went under, Hector told me that we must reassess our position with regard to Eunice’s legacy.’
‘Are you saying you made a mistake?’
‘We’ve both made mistakes.’ The proxy folded its skinny mesh-muscled arms. She could see all the way through them, to metal bones and actuators, and out the other side. ‘You said it yourself. The Pans screwed you.’
She’d been wondering if the proxy had the smarts to pick up on that. Evidently it did.
‘How else was I supposed to get to Mars? Flap my wings?’
‘The question should be: how are you going to get back to Earth, now that your friends have deserted you?’ Quicker than she could blink, the proxy’s hand whipped out and touched her wrist. Contact was made for only a fraction of a second – she felt the implication of a touch, not the touch itself – and then broken.
Then the icon popped into her visual field. ‘I doubt the Pans will honour their obligation to return you home,’ the proxy explained. ‘In any case, the next swiftship with an available slot isn’t due to break orbit for another week. But who needs commercial liners when you have Akinya Space at your disposal?’