Alastair Reynolds - Blue Remembered Earth

‘I’d like that.’

‘I’ll hold you to it, all right?’ Only then did she drop her hand from his sleeve. ‘You’d better go and scrub up, rich boy. I’ll see you in the courtyard when you’re done – Sunday and Jitendra are already there.’

‘I won’t be long.’

He went to his room, stripped and showered, and was halfway through dressing in clean clothes when his gaze chanced upon the six wooden elephants. He’d been too tired and preoccupied to pay any attention to them yesterday. Why should he? They were part of the furniture, that was all. The fact that the constructs guarding both the Winter Palace and Lionheart had questioned him about them was neither here nor there. It only meant that the elephants really had been a gift from Eunice, as he had believed at the time. Or rather from whatever intelligence had been masquerading as his grandmother, during all the long years of her imaginary exile.

But he realised now that there was rather more to them than that. He sat down on his bed, as momentarily dizzy as if he’d been knocked on the head. It couldn’t be, could it? After all this time, so close at hand. So close to his hands.

He picked up the heaviest of the elephants, the bull at the head of the group. Not very plausible given elephant social dynamics, but he supposed that hadn’t really been the point.

He stroked the elephant’s body, reassuring himself that its composition was what he had always assumed, always been told: some dark, dense wood.

It was. He was sure of that.

But the base material, that was something else. Heavy and black and irregular, flat along the top and bottom, as if cleaved from some larger coal-like motherlode. He tipped the piece to look at its base, the elephant upside down, and made out the faint scratch bisecting it from one side to the other. He’d never noticed that scratch before, and even if he had, he’d have had no reason to attach any significance to it. But now he knew. It only took a few moments to confirm that there were similar scratches on the other five bases.

He knew exactly where they’d come from.

Thinking of what they had lost, what they had gained, what was yet at stake, Geoffrey sat sobbing, the bull elephant in his hand as heavy and cold as a stone.

Sunday and her brother walked out with the rest of the clan, the family and friends, into the evening air, Lucas with them, Jitendra and Jumai not far away. The sky was pellucid and still, as clear as that long-ago evening when they had come to scatter Eunice’s ashes. She had not been embodied then, at least not in flesh and blood, but it was hard to dislodge the memory that she had been here, walking on African soil, breathing African air.

‘I have been giving some thought to the matter we discussed over dinner,’ Lucas said, his voice low enough not to carry more than a few paces. He walked with his back straight and his hands clasped behind his back.

‘If you want evidence,’ Sunday said, ‘that’s going to be a little difficult. At least for the moment. There’s Summer Queen , obviously, but beyond that, you’ll just have to take a trip to Lionheart and see the test machinery for yourself. The construct told my brother that it’s fully operational.’

‘ Summer Queen itself points to new physics, or at least an area of current physics that we only thought we understood,’ Lucas said. ‘That in itself does lend a certain credibility to the rest of the story. You’ll excuse any scepticism on my part, though, I hope. Even if it was Hector telling me these things, I’d still want more than mere words. It’s difficult enough to accept that our grandmother knew about this new physics, everything it implies… but to be asked to believe these things of Memphis? That he was not the man we imagined him to be?’

‘He was old enough not to have a past fixed in place by the Mech, or posterity engines,’ Geoffrey said.

‘I admit that there are… absences in his biography. But no more so than would be the case in a million people of his age.’ Lucas touched a hand to his mouth, coughing under his breath. ‘And there was once a physics student with a similar name, born in Tanzania at about the right time.’

‘Then you accept that there’s at least the possibility this is all true,’ Sunday said.

‘It would help if there was something… more. I believe what Geoffrey and Jumai have told me, and I also believe what you have told me about your exploits on Mars. I saw some of that for myself, remember, even if it wasn’t through my own eyes.’

Sunday flinched at the recollection of Lucas’s ruined face, the dislodged eyeball, the milky eruption of the proxy’s slick, wet innards.

‘Might I interrupt?’

The girl asking the question was someone Sunday had seen before, under similar circumstances. She was even wearing the same red dress, the same stockings and black shoes, the same hairstyle.

Out of curiosity, Sunday requested an aug tag. The girl was a golem, although the point of origin of the ching bind couldn’t be resolved.

‘You’re Lin.’

‘Of course,’ the girl said. ‘I knew your grandmother.’

Geoffrey sneered. ‘After what happened on Mars, I’m surprised you’d show your face.’

‘Did I cross you personally?’ she asked, shooting a sharp stare at him from under her straight black fringe.

‘You never got the chance,’ Geoffrey said.

‘If I had something to be ashamed of, do you think I’d have bothered introducing myself? What happened on Mars was not my concern, and I wouldn’t have approved it had I known. As it transpires, the gesture achieved nothing.’

‘Chama and Gleb told me there was a rift,’ Sunday said.

‘The Mandala discovery has only stressed fault lines that were already present,’ Lin Wei said. ‘I think the world has a right to know that we’ve found evidence of alien intelligence on another world, and that it shouldn’t have to wait until that data seeps into the public domain. Some of my colleagues have a different view. If I’m feeling charitable, it’s because they don’t think the rest of humanity is quite ready for such a shattering revelation. In my less charitable moments, it’s because they don’t want to share their secret with anyone.’

‘I can’t help you,’ Geoffrey said.

‘The data will be made public sooner or later,’ Lin Wei said unconcernedly, as if his help didn’t matter one way or the other. ‘I’ve put in measures to ensure that happens. Naturally, I have my critics, even enemies. Some of them are going to make life very interesting for me in the coming years. But that’s not a bad thing: at least I won’t be bored. I was ready to leave Tiamaat long before you gave me an excuse, Geoffrey. But I thank you for providing the spur.’ She paused. ‘I’ve a gift for you, but you’ll have to come and get it. It would be far too bothersome to bring it back down to Earth again.’

Sunday searched her brother’s face for clues. Geoffrey looked none the wiser.

‘You don’t owe me any gifts, Arethusa.’

‘Oh, all right then.’ She wrinkled her nose in irritation. ‘Call it returned goods. Your little aeroplane, Geoffrey. It was retrieved from the sea, when the Nevsky rescued you.’ What was that, Sunday wondered, but a sly reminder of the debt he owed her? ‘In all the fuss, it ended up being loaded aboard the heavy-lift rocket. I’ve had it cleaned and repaired, and it’s yours to take back whenever you like.’

‘What’s the catch?’

‘None, other than that you’ll have to visit one of our orbital leaseholds to retrieve it. But there’ll be no diplomatic complications. You are, after all, still a citizen of the United Aquatic Nations.’

Sunday frowned, wondering exactly what she meant by that. There was still a lot she needed to talk about with her brother. She supposed there would be plenty of time in the days to come.