Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

‘We already think on that kind of timescale, as a species. We’re starting to live long enough, and we’ve accepted the burden of century-long endeavours like the repairing of Earth’s climate. So it’s not completely abhorrent to think of interstellar travel in those terms. Of course, there’s a catch.’

‘There’d have to be,’ Geoffrey said, ‘or else why wouldn’t you have gone public sixty years ago?’

She nodded, with what looked to Geoffrey to be inexpressible relief and gratitude, as if her most dire fear had been that he would not understand. ‘I said it wasn’t a toy. Sixty years ago, I did not think that as a species we had the wisdom to accept these gifts. Not at the end of that century, when there were still people who not only remembered wars, but had experienced them… Would you have felt any more confident, in my shoes?’

Geoffrey discarded the flip answer he’d been about to give. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Probably not.’

‘The energy implicit in the rock diagrams would have been enough to wipe us out many times over,’ Eunice said. ‘We’d dodged that bullet once, in the era of nuclear weapons. Did we have the collective smarts to dodge it a second time? I thought not – or at least had such grave doubts that I could not leave matters to chance. So I didn’t. I followed what struck me as the only rational course, under the circumstances. I decided to sleep on matters, and see what happened.’

‘You didn’t sleep,’ Geoffrey said. ‘You went into seclusion, for the next sixty-two years – or however long it was after you figured all this out. Then you died.’

‘I didn’t die,’ Eunice said. ‘I just put other arrangements in place. Lin Wei and I might have had our differences, but I’d always hoped that Ocular would find something remarkable. When Lin came to me, when she presented the evidence of the Mandala structure on Sixty-One Virginis f, a series of processes were set in irrevocable motion. For the first time, we had a clear objective: a target for interstellar exploration. It felt right that we should also have the means to reach that target, if we so chose.’

‘But you can’t decide if the time is right,’ Jumai said. ‘Maybe we’re a fraction smarter than we were a hundred years ago, but is that smart enough? You’re just an artilect. You can’t possibly make that kind of choice.’

‘I don’t have to,’ Eunice said. ‘I’ve merely passed on my responsibility. Now it’s yours.’

‘You’re not serious,’ Geoffrey said.

Eunice’s smile was not without sympathy. ‘I did warn you that I was about to place a heavy burden on you.’ She offered her hand, not for him to take, but to sweep majestically around the room. ‘All this is yours now. The experiment, the rock carvings… do with them as you will. If you think humanity deserves this gift, is ready for it… then it’s yours to disseminate. Not as a commercial property, but as freely distributed knowledge. We’re rich enough as it is, wouldn’t you say? We can afford to give this away. If we’re wise enough to deal with this as a species, then we’re wise enough to deal with it collectively.’

‘And if we don’t think we’re ready?’ Jumai asked.

‘Forget about what you’ve seen in Lionheart, or better still destroy it. You have the resources of the family at your disposal; shouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘Everyone’s seen what the engine can do,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Even if we wanted to keep this quiet, people will want to know how we did that.’

‘Have the engine,’ Eunice said dismissively. ‘Without the conceptual framework of the new physics, it’s an awfully long leap from that to the stardrive.’

‘Even that small advance changes everything,’ Jumai said. ‘Just being able to get out here in a few weeks rather than months is going to shake things up. The outer solar system isn’t going to look so far away any more.’

‘So push the frontier back a little further,’ Eunice said. ‘It’s what I always did.’ She clasped her hands. ‘Now, this may sound ungracious given that you’ve really only just arrived, but we should begin making preparations for your return journey. I was perfectly serious about not keeping you prisoner here. That wasn’t the point of this exercise.’

‘You’ll let us take the ship back?’ Jumai asked.

‘After it’s refuelled and repaired, which – with all of Lionheart turned to the task – shouldn’t take more than a week. Then you can go back into hibernation. Perhaps when you arrive, you’ll be closer to your decision.’

‘I still don’t know what happened to you,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I know you didn’t die in the Winter Palace because there was nobody up there to die, and consequently no ashes to be brought home, either. Which means that the last time anyone saw you alive – anyone we can trust, that is – was before you left for your final mission.’

‘Lin Wei was kind enough to think of me,’ Eunice said. ‘The least I can do is pay her back, in some small measure. Remember these numbers, and give them to Lin. I think they will answer at least one of your questions.’ She reeled off a string of digits, then repeated them. ‘Lin Wei will understand.’

‘There’s one more thing,’ Jumai said. ‘You talk as if you’re the only person… the only thing … that knows any of this. Fine, you’re an artilect – I’m ready to accept that there isn’t another living soul in this iceteroid. But your husband knew, and you’ve told us about the physicist. You’ve also told us that it took insider help to pull all this off without the rest of your family finding out. So we’re not the only ones, are we?’

‘My husband died a long time ago,’ Eunice said. ‘Long before the true significance of the rock drawings became clear. And anyway, even if he’d lived, and known… I’d still have trusted him to keep it all a secret. This information will be destabilising, whenever it’s made public knowledge, and Jonathan liked stability more than anything else. That’s why I left him on Mars.’

‘And the physicist?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘He was a brilliant young Tanzanian,’ Eunice said. ‘A brave and courageous thinker. But the rock drawings destroyed him. Not as a human being, but as a scientist. He’d… seen too much. Glimpsed too much of the inner workings of the universe, too soon and too quickly. He was a searcher after truth, and to have it revealed to him so readily, without effort… the entire intellectual purpose of his life was undermined in one blow. Once the experiments were designed, he pulled back – left the detailed running and interpretation to the artilects.’

‘And the insider?’ Geoffrey probed.

‘The same person,’ Eunice told him. ‘When he turned his back on physics… he returned to Africa. He was a very good man, and none of this could have been achieved without him.’ Then her voice softened. ‘And now he has died, and you must go home to bury him.’

They were in Lionheart for a week, as the golem had anticipated. The ship was allowed to approach and dock, and soon after that robots were swarming all over it, attending to the damage and preparing it for the return journey home.

‘We never had a name for it,’ Geoffrey said, ‘since it obviously isn’t the ship you left in.’

‘Call it Summer Queen , if you like,’ Eunice told them.

Since the repairs and refuelling were entirely automated processes, there was nothing Geoffrey and Jumai needed to do but wait until their ride was ready. They had been given the option of re-entering hibernation early, but both had decided against that. Neither wished to go to sleep until the ship was already on its way, putting distance between itself and the iceteroid.