She felt violated. Had the proxy asked her permission to establish a body-to-body link, she would have refused it.
Perhaps that was the point.
‘What did you just give me?’
‘Authorisation to sequester an Akinya deep-system vehicle currently in Martian orbit. It’s a freighter, so don’t expect the height of luxury, but it can get you home in five weeks, if you leave for the elevator today. You’ll be back around Earth before Geoffrey and Hector reach their destination.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to go home. Maybe I want to follow my brother.’
‘He’s headed beyond the orbit of Neptune, Sunday. From that far out, the difference between being on Earth or Mars is nothing. Besides – even our fastest ship would take more than eight months to get there.’ The proxy let that sink in before continuing. ‘You can’t do anything for Geoffrey here, and nor can I for Hector. That’s why I’m still in Africa. And we all have to come home eventually.’
‘I’ve only just got to Mars.’
‘Mars isn’t going anywhere,’ the proxy said. ‘It’ll still be here waiting for you.’
So she went home. Vishniac to Herschel, Herschel to the elevator. As the thread-rider took her higher she watched Mars fall away under her feet, receding and paling like some memory of a dream that began to perish at the touch of daylight. Considered in those terms it had been a strange one, a restless fever stalked by scuttling iron monsters and grinning, bad-smelling madmen. She had nearly died in it, too, but now she was sad because there seemed to be something final in this ascent, some unaccountable certainty that there would be no return. Goodbye, Mars, she thought: Goodbye, cold little world of broken promises. The planet might not be going anywhere, but there was no reason to assume that the trajectory of her life was ever going to intersect with Mars again.
In orbit, she snatched only glimpses of the requisitioned freighter. Ugly as sin, all fuel tanks and radiators, with a random plaque of airtight shipping containers fixed around its skeletal chassis, thousands of them, like blocky 3-D pixels implying a fatter shape she couldn’t quite visualise. The nameless vehicle had no permanent crew and only a tiny life-rated habitat module. They put Sunday and Jitendra asleep before loading them, and then there was nothing, five weeks of oblivion and then the grog and haze of revival. She’d felt like a god, like the centre of her own personal universe, when they brought her back to consciousness on Phobos. Now some switch had flipped in her skull and she felt like a piece of grit that the universe was trying very hard to expel.
But that passed, gradually. And from orbit Earth was marvellous, impossibly blue, lit up like an indigo lantern with its own interior glow. She longed to touch it, to stroke her fingers through that atmosphere, cleaving white billowing clouds and glittering salty seas, until she felt the hard scabbed crust beneath them. She wanted to walk on Earth, breathe its ancient airs, feel the tectonic murmur of its still-beating heart. To be somewhere where she didn’t need to rely on machines and glass and pressure seals to keep her alive. Which was absurd, given the amount of her life that she’d happily spent in a roofed-over cave on the Moon. But Mars had done something to her.
‘I can’t go back to the Zone,’ she told Jitendra. ‘I mean, not right now. Not this moment.’
‘One of us has to.’
He was right, too: their affairs couldn’t just be left to moulder. So two days after revival, they separated: Jitendra returning to the Moon, and the Descrutinised Zone, where he would attempt to resolve any minor emergencies that had arisen since their departure; and Sunday to the elevator, and to Libreville, and to Africa. It was bad, saying goodbye to Jitendra. It might be many weeks, even months, before they were properly reunited – and Sunday doubted that ching was going to offer much in the way of consolation while they were apart. But she had to do this, and Jitendra understood.
She had not walked under terrestrial gravity for years, and the transition was far harder than she had anticipated. Medicine helped, and so did an exo – she did not feel in the least bit conspicuous wearing it, since her predicament was hardly a rare one – but what she had not counted on was the near-permanent ache in her bones and muscles, or the constant fear of tripping, of damaging herself. The ever-vigilant exo would not permit injury, and the ache was only a consequence of her body reconfiguring itself for locomotion on Earth. But neither of these realisations helped in the slightest. She still felt awkward, top-heavy, fragile as porcelain.
But that passed, too – or at least became no more than a tolerable background nuisance. She did not return to the household directly, for she was not yet ready to deal with Lucas. Instead she travelled, tapping funds that were effectively inexhaustible. Libreville to the Brazzaville – Kinshasa sprawl, where there were friends and fellow artists she’d once collaborated with. B – K to Luanda, where she spent long hours losing herself in the surge and retreat of the ocean, its mindless assault on the mighty Cho sea walls. She never had much trouble finding somewhere to stay, company to pass the evenings. Her friends wanted to know what had happened on Mars, why she had been all that way only to come home again. As politely as she could, she rebuffed their questions. Most of her friends were wise enough not to push.
But they wanted to know about Geoffrey, and she could hardly blame them for that. Unlike the death of her grandmother, this wasn’t some seven-day wonder. Winter Queen, or whatever name that ship merited, had defied expectations by not destroying itself. It was still out there, further from the sun than it had any right to be given the mere weeks that it had been under way. It had long since stopped accelerating, but it would need to decelerate if it was to rendezvous with its presumed destination. The ship’s exhaust would be directed away from Earth when that happened, much harder to detect from the inner system. But countless eyes would be straining for a glimpse of those improbable energies, trying to tease out a hint at the unexpected physics underpinning them. Some of the minds behind those eyes, undoubtedly, would be half-hoping for the ship to wipe itself out in a single information-rich flash, all the better for unravelling.
In fact, she wasn’t worried about that herself. By now she had some faith in Eunice. If the ship was capable of getting Geoffrey, Hector and Jumai most of the way to Lionheart, it wasn’t going to screw up the last part of that journey. But she was much more concerned about what would happen to the three of them when they arrived. What awaited them out there? If the ship used up all its fuel getting to the iceteroid, could they get back home again – or survive long enough to await rescue? But again she fell back on that faith. This was engineered, part of a plan concocted by Eunice more than sixty years earlier. There had to be a point to it, beyond an elaborate form of punishment aimed at her descendants. So she hoped, anyway.
Meanwhile, Geoffrey was not in Africa. When he left Earth it had not been under ideal circumstances, and he could not have known how long it would take to break into the Winter Palace and ferret out its secrets. But he had surely not counted on being away for months. Since he had been involved with the Amboseli elephants, Sunday knew, Geoffrey had very rarely been away from them for more than a couple of weeks at a time. A month would have been exceptional. He’d often told her how much effort he had invested in establishing a rapport with the study group, and how easily that rapport could be undermined.
That, fundamentally, was what had brought her back to Africa, although she had not been quite ready to admit it to herself at first. The elephants had never meant much to her, even though she had shared very similar childhood experiences with Geoffrey. But if she had been pulled away from the Moon unexpectedly, and if something she had nurtured was in danger of suffering through neglect, she had no doubt that Geoffrey would have been there for her.
In Luanda her funds provided an airpod. Still awkward in the exo, she folded herself into its interior and told it to fly to the Amboseli basin. She would be within a stone’s throw of the household, but the household could wait.
In the air, east of the Great R
ift Valley, the airpod on autopilot, she chinged Gleb Ozerov. She hadn’t bothered working out what time it was in the Descrutinised Zone. The zookeepers kept weird hours anyway, and after what she’d been through on Mars she was of the distinct opinion that they could damn well take her call.
Sunday had requested outbound ching, and after a moment of hiatus the bind inserted her bodyless presence into the menagerie. Gleb, who must have accepted the inbound call, stood next to a table-sized trolley, collecting leaf samples from the vivariums.
‘It’s good to hear from you,’ he said, doubtfully, as if there had to be a catch somewhere. ‘I was hoping you’d get in touch . . .’ He put down his tools, dusted his fingers on his laboratory smock. ‘I tried reaching you, but you were still on the ship. Are you all right?’
Sunday was already answering before Gleb had finished his piece. ‘How much do you know about what happened on Mars?’
It wasn’t just time lag that delayed his answer. ‘I was hoping to hear your side of the story before making my mind up. Chama’s been trying to find out what he can, but he’s still under lockdown, which complicates things.’
‘You screwed us. Your people, Gleb. The ones I thought I could trust.’
‘My people.’ He sounded stung by this, as if what she’d said was somehow beneath her. As if she had failed to live up to his hitherto unblemished image of her.
‘Truro, Holroyd, whoever. I don’t give a fuck. I was lied to. Told I’d be helped, when all they wanted was to get to the box before me. Jitendra and I nearly died out there, Gleb. The Evolvarium nearly ate us alive, and that wouldn’t have happened if we’d got in and out without being betrayed. Gribelin died out there.’
Gleb selected another tool and nipped a leaf sample. He held the wispy green sliver up to his eyes for inspection, frowning slightly.
‘Nobody comes out of this looking good, Sunday. But if it’s any consolation, Chama and I had nothing to do with what happened on Mars. When Chama put his neck on the line in Pythagoras, he was doing you a favour.’
‘To buy a favour back from my brother.’
‘Perhaps. But beyond that, he had no ulterior motives.’ Gleb placed the nipped-off leaf sample into one of his specimen boxes, clipping shut the airtight lid. ‘Arethusa contacted us, it might interest you to hear – not long after that unpleasantness on Mars.’
‘I’ve no reason to trust her either.’
‘Trust who you like, Sunday – I’m not here to make your mind up for you. She spoke about Truro, though. Said things were possibly going to become difficult for Chama and me, since our sponsorship was so closely tied to Truro and his allies.’ He paused to drag a stylus from behind his ear, using it to scribe a note on the specimen box. ‘Arethusa said things were going to become difficult for her, too – it seems this whole sorry business has precipitated a bit of a rift.’
‘I thought Arethusa was in charge.’
‘So did she. So did we. But it appears there are elements who feel she’s not been promoting the Panspermian ideology with sufficient vigour, at least in recent years.’
‘My brother and I had our theories about Arethusa. If we’re right, then there wouldn’t be a Panspermian ideology without her.’ Sunday hesitated on the threshold of what she hardly dared say, because it felt almost blasphemous to voice such speculation in Gleb’s presence. But the time for tact, she decided, was long past. ‘I think I met Lin Wei, your founder. I think she’s still alive. I think all of you owe Arethusa more than you realise.’
Gleb nodded slowly. ‘I won’t say the possibility had never occurred to us. Given your family’s connection to Lin Wei—’
‘She was at Eunice’s scattering. Arethusa was behind the proxy, of course. And she could only have chosen the form she did because she half-wanted one of us to make the connection.’
Gleb wheeled the trolley to the next vivarium. ‘She still has influence, still has allies. For the time being, I’m fairly hopeful that she can still protect Chama and me. Even ensure a continuation of basic funds and amenities. But that isn’t guaranteed, and right now we need all the friends we can find. Actually, screw us. We don’t matter at all. But the dwarves do. This collaboration is vital, Sunday. We can’t let it fall apart just because of a squabble between Arethusa and her rivals.’
‘Funnily enough, it’s elephants I’m calling about.’
For the first time since she had chinged in Gleb smiled. ‘Yours or mine? I should say, the dwarves, or the Amboseli herd?’
‘Both, ultimately. Right now I need help with the big ones. You know about my brother’s situation, I take it?’
‘Difficult not to. I . . . hope things work out, Sunday. Our thoughts are with Geoffrey.’ Hastily he added, ‘And the other two . . . your cousin, and the woman.’
‘Hector and Jumai. Yes, we’re concerned about them all. But there’s nothing we can do for them and there is something we can do for the elephants. Geoffrey wasn’t expecting to be away this long, and I’m worried about the herd. That’s why I’m back in Africa. I feel I should be doing something.’
‘They are, fundamentally, elephants,’ Gleb said thoughtfully. ‘They’ve been managing on their own for millions of years. It would be presumptuous to assume they can’t do without us for a little longer.’
‘But they’re elephants with machines in their heads, elephants my brother has been interacting with for most of his adult life. They’re used to him coming and going, studying them. He speaks to them, for pity’s sake. I don’t know what his not being there is going to do to them. And that’s before I start worrying about medical issues or pregnancies or anything else going on with the herd. My brother would have known what to do. I don’t.’
‘Did he leave specific instructions?’
She thought back to the message Geoffrey had recorded, before entering cryosleep. ‘Nothing too detailed. I don’t think he wanted to burden me, and anyway, he had enough on his mind back then.’
‘If there was anything vital, he’d have told you.’ She nodded, wanting to believe it, but Gleb sounded much surer than Sunday would have been. ‘All the same, our hands aren’t completely tied. Your ching tag places you . . . very near the herd.’
‘On my way to it right now.’
‘Chama and I know our way around the M-group – remember that we’ve been taking an interest in Geoffrey’s work for years. We know the hierarchies, the bloodlines, and I can probably identify two dozen individuals by sight alone even though I’ve never been to Africa. You’ve never had much contact with them, have you?’
It felt like an admission of weakness, a duty she had shirked. ‘Virtually none.’
‘In which case we won’t risk direct contact. Leave that to your brother, for when he gets home. But we can at least monitor the M-group, and any other parties that take our interest. And – not inconsequentially – maintain enough of a presence to deter any researchers who feel like claim-jumping. Although I hope no one would be that irresponsible, given the very public reasons for your brother’s absence.’
‘I hope not.’
‘But human nature being what it is, we’d best take no chances. Will you be maintaining a physical presence in the area?’
‘For the time being.’ Which meant: until she had news from Geoffrey, good or bad. However long that took.
‘Chama had best not risk involvement, at least until his hundred-day lockdown expires, and there’s no reason for me to be there in person. But I can give you as much support as you need, for as long as you want it. That’s my promise, Sunday. If you feel we’ve wronged you, then I aim to do my small part in rectifying that. I may not succeed, but I’m prepared to give it a damned good try.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. And it was a heartfelt thanks, although it was only in this moment that she realised how much she had been counting on his help.
The airpod’s console chimed, pulling her back into its sensorium. She was nearing home.
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRT
Y-SIX
When the hibernation casket brought him to consciousness, Geoffrey’s first intelligible thought was that there’d been a mistake; that something had gone wrong with the process and it must only have been minutes since the casket’s bioprobes had sunk their sterile fangs into his flesh and begun pumping his blood full of sedatives. It was a perfectly human response, after all. He had no memory of dreams, no sense of elapsed time. But it only took him a little longer to realise that matters were not as they had been when he entered the chamber. He was weightless, for one thing. They had been under thrust when he climbed in; now his body was at rest within the casket, cushioned against movement but otherwise floating, with the anxious feeling of falling in his belly.
A glass-mottled form drifted over him. His eyes tried to focus. They were bleary and the sudden intrusion of brightness and colour felt like a billion tiny needles pricking his retinas. He heard a clunk and felt cooler air touch his face. That was nice. The casket’s lid was sliding off him. The blurred form pushed itself closer and assumed the approximate proportions of a human woman.
‘Welcome back, sleepyhead.’
He grasped for her name. His memories weren’t where he’d left them. It was as if they’d been temporarily boxed away in an attic: still in his head, but poorly organised and labelled. Dimly, he began to realise that he might have been in the casket longer than his initial impressions had suggested.
‘Jumai?’ he managed.
‘Looks like we’ve got us a functioning central nervous system, at least.’ She hauled in closer still, fiddling with his restraints. ‘Hector was the first out. He’s been through this kind of thing dozens of times, so it was no biggie to him. I’ve been up about ten minutes. I think we’re all right, for the time being. The ship’s in one piece, and we’re . . . somewhere, I guess.’