Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

Geoffrey couldn’t speak for Jumai, but he had no difficulty analysing his own reluctance. He simply didn’t have unquestioning confidence in Eunice, or in the artilect emulating her. It had already proven fallible, and for all that it articulated regret and sadness about Hector’s death, and even Memphis’s, he had no reason to suppose that those utterances carried the slightest emotional weight. It was making placating noises, but behind them, as Jumai had already pointed out, was just stuff. Machinery. And while machinery might ponder a set of actions that had led to a less than desirable outcome and adjust its future behaviour accordingly, it was a stretch to call that remorse.

Lionheart had been equipped to care for human visitors, and that was where they spent the week while Summer Queen – that name was as good as any – was overhauled. There was a suite of rooms and modules, a recreation complex, a gymnasium and a couple of centrifuges, one large enough to contain a commons and dining area – enough to keep a team of technical staff comfortable for months. They chose separate rooms and adjusted the furnishings accordingly to suit their preferences. There was entertainment, incoming transmissions – not full aug, but enough to keep them up to date on developments elsewhere in the system – and they had the means to send and receive private communications.

There was a limit to what Geoffrey was willing to discuss until he was face to face with his sister, but he told Sunday that they were both safe, and would be returning home as soon as the ship was cleared for departure. Allowing for the preparations, and the fifty-odd days of journey time it would take to reach near-Earth space, they would be back in two months.

‘We’ll be difficult to miss,’ he said.

Then he called Lucas, and gave him the news about Hector.

Ten hours later, return transmissions arrived from Sunday and Lucas. Neither of them had a lot to say, simply expressing relief that Geoffrey and Jumai were alive, and would soon be on their way home. Lucas thanked Geoffrey for the news about his brother, but beyond that he was implacable, as if he wasn’t entirely ready to take the news at face value. Even Sunday had appeared reticent to comment on it. She was in Africa, Geoffrey learned: after returning from Mars, she had travelled to the household to keep an eye on his elephants. Not just chinging, but physically there, in body and mind. He was grateful, and when he considered that by being in Africa she was necessarily neglecting her own life back on the Moon, her work and commissions, his gratitude became boundless. But Geoffrey and Jumai were coming back now, and Sunday didn’t need to spend all that time waiting on Earth. He asked her to promise him that she would return to the Moon before his arrival.

Later, when Jumai and Geoffrey were dining in the centrifuge, being waited on by Plexus machines, she said, ‘They’re not sure we’re us. That’s why they’re holding back, I think. That and the fact that we’re obviously holding back something as well. Can you blame them? We’ve been duped and manipulated by artilects; Sunday’s been cheated by the Pans. Right now no one knows who or what to trust. For all they know, we might be dead by now.’

Geoffrey agreed. The fact that they couldn’t give a plausible account of what had happened in Lionheart wasn’t helping their case, either. It would be better when they got home, and he could talk properly. Not just with Sunday and Jitendra, but with Lucas as well. There was no escaping that. Lucas would have to be told about Lionheart.

‘That’s not really true,’ Jumai said delicately. ‘Hector never got to find out why Eunice wanted us here.’

‘So you’re saying that because he was never let in on the secret, I don’t have to share it with Lucas?’

‘I’m saying you don’t owe him anything. You didn’t drag Hector into this – it was the other way around. Later, you saved his neck.’

‘Didn’t do him any good, did it? I just postponed it.’

‘If Hector hadn’t died… it would probably have been one of us. So consider that score settled. Did you hate him at the end?’

Geoffrey had to search himself for the honest answer. The automatic reply was to say that no, he had forgiven Hector everything. But the reality was more complicated than that. ‘We saw things differently,’ he said, fingering the stem of his wine glass. ‘I believe there are absolutes. Rights and wrongs, lines in the sand. Moral certainties. I think Hector was wrong to go about things the way he did. He and Lucas shouldn’t have blackmailed me, they shouldn’t have used the elephants as a bargaining chip, and they shouldn’t have put the family name above all other considerations.’ He smiled at himself. ‘But I understand some of the cousins’ fears now. More so than I ever have. I thought we might end up uncovering something, but I had no idea it was going to be this momentous. And Eunice was right: it is dangerous, and this knowledge shouldn’t be shared until we’re absolutely sure it won’t rip humanity apart. Maybe we are ready for it, and maybe we’re not – just yet. Either way, we know about it – you and me, and soon Sunday and Lucas. That means it’s already out there, in a small way. And maybe Eunice was right about that but wrong about something else: that it’ll take an enormous amount of luck for someone to go from Summer Queen to the physics behind the stardrive. If she’s wrong about that, then the genie’s already out of the bottle.’

He paused and gazed at the wine still in the glass. ‘Which means Hector and Lucas were right to be cautious, right to be concerned about something from the past upsetting the present. They couldn’t have known how potentially damaging it was all going to turn out to be, but their instincts were right. And if their instincts were right, then maybe their methods were as well. Maybe the means do sometimes justify the ends.’ He emptied the glass and waited for Jumai to pour him another measure from the bottle, which was a satisfying Patagonian red – shipped up from the inner system in 2129, if the label was to believed.

The year of his birth, not that he attached any significance to that.

‘So they were wrong,’ Jumai said, ‘but maybe they were right as well. And that line in the sand might not be as simple as it looks.’

‘I didn’t hate Hector,’ Geoffrey replied. ‘I used to, I won’t pretend that I didn’t. But not near the end. I can’t say I ever got close to liking him, but when all’s said and done…’

‘He was your cousin, and he did do one brave thing.’ Jumai raised her own glass. ‘To Hector, in that case.’

‘To Hector.’

‘Although Lucas will always be a prick.’

‘One we have to work with, unfortunately,’ Geoffrey said. He sipped the wine, placed the glass down and continued with his meal for a few mouthfuls. ‘Although it’s Sunday that worries me.’

‘I don’t see Sunday as the problem in this situation – especially as she already knows ninety per cent of the story.’

‘It’s the artilect,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Remember what Eunice told us, about how Memphis’s entire mission in life was undermined by the rock diagrams? That’s how it’s going to be with Sunday. She’s spent years creating the Eunice construct, and now I’m going to have to tell her it’s all been wasted effort. That there’s a simulation of Eunice in Lionheart that’s at least as believable as the one she’s created. How’s she going to take that?’

‘She won’t have to.’

It was not Jumai that had spoken, but the golem. It had arrived unbidden and was standing in the doorway to the kitchen area.

‘What do you want?’ Geoffrey asked, considering its uninvited arrival a violation of their privacy.