Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

‘We can’t just sit here for the rest of eternity,’ Hector said. ‘The ship is stopped, and it won’t let us turn around and go home. It has power and supplies to keep us alive for a while, but it’s not a closed cycle.’ He nodded at the iceteroid. ‘At some point we’re going to have to deal with that. Like I said, we do have steering control. It would be enough to take us the rest of the way in.’

‘And then what?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘I’ve already identified a docking structure, near the main bore. If it’s anything like our other facilities, automated approach and capture should cut in once we’re near. We wouldn’t have to do anything – just sit tight.’

There was a knock at the door. The proxy had arrived. Geoffrey nodded at Hector to let it in. They had committed to a certain course of action the moment they assigned Sunday’s file to the proxy; there was no point having second thoughts now.

‘What name do you answer to?’ Geoffrey asked the blank-faced machine.

‘I’m Eunice. Who else were you expecting?’ The effect was unsettling. The proxy might not have looked like anything other than a robot, but it was adept at mimicking voices.

‘It’s a shame it doesn’t have her face,’ Hector said.

‘Be grateful,’ Geoffrey replied. ‘You might want to punch it.’

The proxy pushed itself into the room and came to a floating rest. It might have sounded like Eunice, but it still moved with the eerie precision of a machine. ‘Would someone like to bring me up to speed, or am I meant to guess what’s going on?’

‘Do you recognise that?’ Geoffrey asked, indicating the iceteroid. ‘You damn well should. It’s an Akinya asset, which you gave a name to. Lionheart.’

‘After Senge Dongma, the lion-faced one,’ the construct answered. ‘It was one of our mining facilities. I also selected it as my refuelling point on my last voyage. Winter Queen was to set down here, refill its tanks and continue into deep Trans-Neptunian space.’

‘We’ve been dragged here,’ Hector said. ‘This ship isn’t Winter Queen : it looks similar enough but under the skin it’s something much newer and faster. You must have known about it.’

‘I know that there was a plan, and that Sunday followed some of the clues.’

‘And the point of that plan was to lead us back to the Moon?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘Not solely,’ Eunice said. ‘There was more to it than that. Do you think it was accidental that I showed Chakra’s Folly to Sunday, or asked her that question about the colours of the jewels?’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Geoffrey said.

‘For the sake of transparency, you should know what I am. There is more to me than just the construct you’ve already met.’

‘Delete it,’ Jumai said. ‘It’s obviously got screwed up in the transmission.’

‘Listen,’ Eunice said sharply, making the word a command rather than an invitation. ‘I am what I am. Sunday found my old helmet on Mars. I… the living me… had installed a low-level interactive persona inside the helmet. This persona, because it had been shaped by me, had the possibility of containing knowledge that the more sophisticated construct couldn’t know. Sunday brought the helmet back to Earth. With care, she was able to bypass the sphinxware and integrate the two versions of me into a single construct – one with the personality of the original construct plus the additional information known only to the helmet version.’

‘And that’s what we’re talking to now?’ Jumai said.

‘No,’ Eunice answered patiently, ‘because there simply wouldn’t have been time to upload that version into the ship. Sunday whittled me down to the essentials as best she could.’

‘There were two of you once,’ Geoffrey said, ‘one haunting me, the other haunting Sunday. Now there are… what, three of you? Four?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Eunice snapped dismissively ‘You only get to talk to this one, and if I ever make it back to the aug, all my existing facets can be reintegrated into a single working model. For the moment, the only thing that matters is my immediate usefulness. So tell me what you’ve been doing since you arrived around Lionheart.’

‘Trying to work out our next move,’ Hector said. ‘According to the files, this ship originated here. Now it’s returned home. But we’re at stalemate. We’re just sitting here, and Lionheart won’t respond to our transmissions. What do you know about this place?’

The construct appeared to weigh up its options. ‘All our facilities carry a degree of fortification against other commercial interests. In the case of Lionheart, I would have amplified those defences. But it should have recognised Winter Queen … or whatever this ship is… by now.’

‘There’s no sign that it has,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Have you considered a slow approach, trusting that the automated docking systems will cut in?’

‘That was going to be our next move,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Provided no one talked us out of it first.’

The proxy swivelled its head to look at the display schematics showing the relative orientation of the vehicle and the iceteroid. ‘The ship may have suffered directional comms damage during its escape from the Winter Palace, something that isn’t showing up on the system overview. Or there may have been some unanticipated failure in the watchdog systems I installed in Lionheart, something that’s preventing a correct reply protocol. Until contact is established, or the counter-intrusion defences are turned offline, there would be an element of risk in continuing with an approach.’

Hector looked incredulous. ‘That’s all you’ve got? An “element of risk”? That’s like saying there’s an “element of risk” in Russian roulette.’

Eunice hesitated before answering. ‘There’ll be a master security override in the airlock at the surface docking facility, but someone will need to disarm it first.’

‘Before we dock?’ Jumai asked.

‘Preferably.’

‘Send the proxy,’ Hector said. ‘It can cope with vacuum.’

‘The airlock may block control signals,’ Eunice cautioned. ‘The system’s designed to dissuade machine intruders. Anyway, the master override may require a human presence, maybe even an Akinya. It would depend on how I configured it.’

‘And you don’t remember?’ Hector asked.

‘If I did, I’d tell you.’

‘We’re ten kilometres from Lionheart,’ Geoffrey said. ‘It’s insane to think of crossing that kind of distance. Even if we had the suits.’

‘We do,’ Hector replied. ‘I saw them when I was scouting for bomb sites. There are also clip-on manoeuvring units for EVA operations. I’ve used them before – they’re fairly intuitive.’

‘It’s still insane.’

Hector swallowed. ‘And the alternative is… what? Trusting that this ship will hold up all the way in?’

‘You do have the aerobrake,’ Eunice said. ‘It’s built for punching through atmospheres at Mach fifty. It can take some serious crap.’

‘It’s taken crap already, when we broke out of the habitat,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Line it up between Lionheart and the ship, it should still provide some protection,’ Eunice replied.

‘And there’s no risk at all that it’ll look like a battering ram?’ Hector asked.

‘One you’ll have to accept. If you come in laterally, you’re wide open to a broadside attack. I’ll walk you through the turnaround. Do as I say, and then initiate a slow approach.’

‘We’re taking orders from a proxy now?’ Hector asked.

‘Looks that way,’Jumai said.

Geoffrey shook his head. ‘We’re not taking orders. We’re just running a piece of tactical-analysis software and listening to what it tells us.’