Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

‘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.

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.’