Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

‘Even if I trusted her not to screw up,’ Jumai said, ‘sixty years is a long time for stuff to keep working. She may have programmed this ship to return to Lionheart, and she may have programmed Lionheart to expect it. But what if some part of that plan didn’t make it through the intervening years in one piece?’

‘Do we have external comms?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘We can send and receive between us and Earth, if that’s what you mean,’ Jumai said. ‘There’s a message waiting for you, actually. Do you want to take it privately?’

He looked at Hector before answering. ‘I don’t think there are any secrets between us now, are there?’

‘Perhaps not,’ Hector said.

As he’d expected, the message was from Sunday.

‘I’ll keep this brief,’ her figment said. ‘If you’re where we think you are, round-trip time for this message is going to be close to ten hours. Firstly, I hope you’re all safe and well. We tracked your exhaust until the point when the engine shut off, by which time you were moving faster than any manned ship in history. We didn’t see your slowdown, but that’s to be expected: you’d have been firing away from us by then, and most of the radiation would have headed out of the system, not back towards us. We haven’t been able to tap into telemetry from the ship, but aside from its speed, it looked to be functioning normally. Of course, if you’re hearing this, we can presume that you’ve been brought out of hibernation. As to what you’ll find in Lionheart, I’m afraid I can’t give you much help. There’s a lot to catch up on, brother. I’m with Lucas now: he told me what happened in the Winter Palace. I’m back on Earth, too – you’ll know that from the quangle tags. I came back the fast way, on one of our own ships. What happened in the Evolvarium… it’s complicated, and I’m still not sure I understand it all.’

Sunday hesitated, before continuing: ‘The Pans cheated us, Geoffrey. Truro, Holroyd… the man I met on Mars. Whether that means we can’t trust them at all, or that we can still trust some of them… I don’t know yet. I think we can still trust Arethusa, and I don’t have any doubts about Chama and Gleb… but whether they still count as Pans is harder to say.’ She flashed a triumphant grin. ‘They didn’t win, that’s the main thing. By now I’m fairly sure they’ll have realised as much, which is why I don’t really give a shit if they’re listening in to this transmission. Are you hearing this, Holroyd, Truro?’ Sunday raised a screw-you finger. ‘We duped them – left them holding a decoy, while I got out with the real thing. I spoke to… a recording of Eunice. She told me that one of us needed to get to the Winter Palace.’ Sunday smiled again. ‘By which time you were already on your way. I wish I could have warned you what to expect, but there just wasn’t a means to get through to you in time. But I still don’t know what you’re going to find in Lionheart. Eunice told me stuff… asked me questions. Decided I measured up, I think. But she still didn’t give me any final answers. I’m hoping that’s where you’re going to come in. I wish I could be with you, all the way out there. But you’ve got Jumai and Hector, and that has to be better than nothing. There’s something else, too. You’re out of aug reach, so you can’t access the construct in the usual way. But I had a better idea. I’ve uplinked a copy of her – you should find a memory file sitting in your shipboard inbox. Bandwidth was limited, so I had to strip her down a little – but the important stuff should still be there. You can do what you like with it, but if you think there’s even a chance that Eunice’s advice might come in useful, assign the memory file to a proxy. Bound to be one aboard somewhere.’

Sunday paused for breath. ‘Reply, and I’ll get it in five hours. In ten, you’ll hear back from me again. The household is standing by, Geoffrey – all of us. I’m here, and the elephants are fine. And we want you all back in one piece, as quickly as possible. Take care, brother.’

‘I will,’ Geoffrey said.

‘I’m glad she made it back,’ Hector said. ‘Although it doesn’t sound as if she gained anything by going to Mars.’

That had been Geoffrey’s thought as well, but he decided not to draw any conclusions for the moment. Sunday might have given the impression that she was speaking openly, but that didn’t mean she’d told them everything.

‘You haven’t asked me about the construct.’

‘I assumed that was between you and your sister,’ Hector replied.

Geoffrey watched another ice package shoot away from the iceteroid, right on time, like clockwork.

‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘Do you trust Sunday?’

‘We’ve had our differences.’

‘I mean here, now. With everything that’s happened to us, and what we now know.’

‘I suppose,’ Hector said.

‘She created a simulation of Eunice, a construct. It doesn’t know anything that isn’t in our archives, anything that wasn’t caught by the posterity engines – and if there’s something the real Eunice didn’t want the rest of the world to know, the construct won’t know it either.’

‘It doesn’t sound very useful,’ Hector said.

‘On the face of it, no. But it’s fast and it knows the public side of Eunice’s life inside out, at a level of detail none of us could ever approach. It’s already proven its worth. I think there’s a chance we could still benefit from its input.’

‘I have the file,’Jumai said, tapping a finger against one of the displays. ‘It looks watertight, subject to the usual filters. I can assign it to the proxy that brought me to the medical suite, if you’d like?’

‘We’re confident it came from Sunday?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘That sounded like my sister, and the tags placed her back in Africa. But with the Pans involved, and knowing what they can do with quangle paths, I’m not sure I trust anything any more.’

‘I see your point,’ Hector said. ‘If they faked the tags, there could be anything in that file – including an assassination programme, ready to be loaded into the proxy.’

‘I said it looked watertight,’ Jumai said, as if she hadn’t been heard the first time. ‘We can bounce it back to Sunday if you’re in any doubt.’

‘And wait ten hours for her to reply? And then be faced with the same qualms that the Pans might be hijacking the signal?’ Geoffrey shook his head. ‘That was Sunday. I’d put my life on it. Who else would bother telling me the elephants were fine?’

‘You may be right,’ Hector said. But he softened the remark with a smile. ‘Do it, Jumai. Assign the construct to the proxy. If the Pans are that intent on killing us, that resourceful, they’ll find a way to do it eventually. May as well save them the bother.’

Jumai tapped commands into the console. ‘Assigning… done.’ Almost immediately she added, ‘The proxy’s moving. It’s on its way up to us.’

‘Doesn’t hang around,’ Geoffrey said, pushing aside the ominous feeling in his belly.

‘It’s just a proxy. They can’t inflict lethal injuries, no matter what’s going on inside them,’ Jumai said. ‘Of course, I’ve never put that theory into practice—’

‘I still don’t know where Arethusa and the other Pans fit into all this,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Holroyd was the Pan Sunday met on Mars. I could imagine him betraying us. But I hope Sunday’s right about Chama and Gleb. They’re her friends. Hell, even I started liking them. I even liked Arethusa, although she scared the hell out of me.’

‘There’s a lot you need to tell me about,’ Hector said quietly.

‘We’ll get around to it,’ Geoffrey said.

Jumai muttered something under her breath. ‘Drawing a blank here. I’ve been pinging Lionheart on every channel the ship lets me access. Either our signal isn’t getting through, or they’re not answering.’