Blue Remembered Earth (44 page)

‘Based on what I knew of her, everything you’ve just told me makes perfect sense. She was emotionally detached, cut off from the things that used to matter to her. I’m not sure she cared about anything by the end.’

‘There’s still the fact of her death happening so soon after my visit.’

‘It could be a coincidence.’

‘I’d agree if there’d been a single sign that she was in any way ailing, losing her grip on life.’

‘You chinged up there. That means you were seeing whatever the proxy made you see. Maybe she was more unwell than she let on.’

‘That’s possible,’ Arethusa allowed. ‘But even if she was ill, the timing still troubles me. I show her the images of Crucible, and a few weeks later she dies? After one hundred and thirty years of
not
dying?’ A pause. Then: ‘You’ve been there, since she died? To the Winter Palace?’

‘Not me. Just Memphis – I suppose you’d call him our retainer. Been with the family for years, and the only one of us who was still dealing with Eunice on a face-to-face basis, even though he’s not an Akinya.’

‘I should very much like to speak with Memphis. It sounds as if he knew her better than the rest of you.’

‘Good luck getting much out of him. Memphis isn’t exactly one to go blurting out secrets.’

‘Because he has something to hide?’

Geoffrey laughed. ‘I doubt it. But Memphis was loyal to her when she was alive, and he’s not going to suddenly change now that she’s dead.’

‘And you’ve already spoken to him about Eunice?’

‘I’ve asked him this and that, but he’s not one to betray a confidence. Whatever passed between them, I’m afraid it’ll go to the grave with Memphis.’

‘Unless you make your own independent enquiries.’

‘I do have a life I’d quite like to be getting on with. I’m a scientist, not an expert in digging into private family affairs.’

‘Surely you grasp that this is about more than just your family now, Geoffrey. You are right to point out that I only chinged to the Winter Palace. Given my circumstances, that was unavoidable. But you could visit in person, couldn’t you?’

‘It’s a bit late for that.’

‘I’m thinking of the things she may have left behind. Records, testimonies. An explanation for her death. You should go, while there’s still a chance of doing so.’

‘The Winter Palace has been up there for decades. It’s not going anywhere soon.’

‘On that matter, your family may have other ideas.’

Text appeared to the right of Crucible. For a moment the words hung there in Chinese, before his eyes supplied the visual translation layer.

It was a request for ‘disposal of abandoned asset’. The asset in question was an axially stabilised free-flying habitable structure, better known as the Winter Palace. The request came from Akinya Space, to the United Orbital Nations Circumlunar Space Traffic Administration.

It had been submitted on February 12.

The day he got back from the Moon. The day he handed the glove to the cousins.

‘If I were you,’ Arethusa said, ‘I wouldn’t wait too long before taking a look up there. Of course, if you need any help with that, you know who to call.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Even with her eyes cranked to maximum zoom, Sunday couldn’t see the far end of the cable car’s wire. It was braided spiderfibre, strung between pylons. A dust storm was curdling in from Crommelin’s far rim and all she could presently see was the line, suspended like a conjuring trick before it vanished into a wall of billowing butterscotch.

The car, as big as eight container modules blocked together, had two floors, a lavish promenade deck and a small restaurant. At least a hundred people were milling around in it with room to spare. The golem wasn’t on the car – unless it was wearing someone else’s face, and the Pan intelligence suggested otherwise – but that didn’t mean Sunday wasn’t being watched, observed, scrutinised to the pore. Certainly there were golems and proxies aboard, and in all likelihood one or two warmbloods as well. Chinging struck Sunday as profoundly meaningless in contexts like this. The whole point of being in the cable car was physical proximity to the landscape. One could passive ching as close as one wished, but that wasn’t the same as being here, suspended by a thread of spiderfibre. Or was she just being old-fashioned? She wondered what June Wing would have to say on the subject.

Jitendra came back from the other side of the observation deck carrying two coffees in a plastic tray. ‘We’re getting much lower now,’ he said excitedly. ‘The car’s dropping down from the main cable – there must be winches in the trolley, so we can go up and down according to the terrain.’

Sunday accepted the coffee. ‘You can draw me a sketch of it later. I’m sure I’ll find it riveting.’

‘Aren’t you enjoying this?’

‘Would be, if I’d come to gawp at the scenery. As it happens, there are a couple of other things on my mind.’

Jitendra’s good mood wasn’t going to be shattered that easily. Sipping his coffee, he studied his fellow tourists with avid interest. ‘And you’re sure this is the right car?’

‘I just got on the first one that came in. That was what Holroyd told me to do. Said our guide would make their presence known eventually.’

‘Fine. Nothing to do but wait and see, then, is there?’

The scenery, she had to admit, was something. No, she hadn’t come to play tourist – but she had come to
play at
being tourist, and the two were only a whisker apart.

In Crommelin, billions of years of ancient and secret Martian history had been flensed open for inspection, naked to the sky. Over time, over unimaginable and dreary Noachian ages, wind and water had laid down layers of sedimentary rock, one on top of the other, deposition after deposition, until they formed immense and ancient strata, as dusty and forbidding as the pages of some long-unopened history book. Crommelin’s interior – wide enough to swallow Nairobi or Lagos whole – was a mosaic of these sedimentary layers. Here, though, something remarkable and fortuitous had happened. Not so long ago – aeons in human terms, a mere Martian eye-blink – an asteroid or shard of comet had rammed into the ground, drilling down through Crommelin’s layers.

The impactor, whatever it had been, had made stark and visible the sedimentary deposits, exposing them as a grand series of horizontal steps, dozens upon dozens in height. Awesome and patient weathering processes had toiled on this scene to produce a landscape of alien strangeness. Flat-topped mesas, pyramids and sphinxlike formations rose from a dark floor, tiered sides contoured in neat horizontal steps as if they’d been laser-cut from mile-thick plywood. Some of the formations were bony, making Sunday imagine the calcified vertebrae of colossal dead monsters, half-swallowed into the Martian crust.

Others had the random, swirling complexity of partly stirred coffee, or caramel syrup in vanilla or pecan ice cream. It was gorgeous, moving, seductive. But like everywhere else on Mars, it was also both deadly and dead.

The cable car dipped again – Sunday felt the descent this time as its suspending line spooled out a little more – and they sailed over the edge of a tawny cliff as high as any building in the Zone. Her stomach did a little butterfly flutter. Tiny bright-green and yellow multilimbed robots clung to the cliff’s side, glued like geckos. She voked a scale-grid. Actually, they weren’t tiny at all, but as large as bulldozers. Not rock climbers, or even ching proxies, she was given to understand, but scientific machines, still conducting sampling operations.

The cable car rose and dipped again, clearing a long stepped ridge. Another line came in from the north-east, intersecting theirs at an angle. Sunday watched as a car on the other line lowered down to a railinged platform buttressed off the side of one of the rock formations. A handful of suited figures were waiting on the platform to board; others got off the cable car and began to follow a meandering metal path bolted to the cliffside. The cable car climbed away, reeling in its line to gain height, and soon it was lost in the butterscotch dust.

A sharp voice asked, ‘Sunday Akinya?’

The voice belonged to a proxy, a brass-coloured robot chassis with many gears and ratchets ticking and whirring in the open cage of its skull. Its eyes were like museum-piece telescopes, goggling out of its dialled face.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Since you’re obviously not Holroyd, I’m guessing you’re our guide?’

Sunday was alone. Jitendra had wandered off to use one of the swivel-mounted binoculars situated around the promenade deck.

‘Gribelin will meet you in Vishniac. He knows the Evolvarium. He’s already been very well paid, so don’t let him talk you into any extra fees. Here are your train tickets.’

The proxy offered her its hand to shake and Sunday slipped her hand into its brass grip. The ruby-nailed fingers tightened. An icon appeared in her left visual field, signifying that she was now in possession of the relevant documents. Two seats, a private compartment on the overnight bullet from Crommelin to Vishniac, leaving tomorrow.

‘This Gribelin doesn’t sound very trustworthy.’

‘Gribelin’s mercenary, but he’s also dependable. There’s a coffee bar in the public concourse at Vishniac – he will be waiting for you.’

Sunday studied the bind tag. The proxy was being chinged from Shalbatana, but with the Pans’ expertise in manipulating quangle paths that meant little.

‘Did Holroyd mention the golem?’

‘We know about that and we’ll do what we can to slow it down, but beyond that there are no guarantees.’

‘Can’t you just . . . stop it? Have someone break its legs?’

‘It wouldn’t achieve anything, other than drawing the wrong sort of attention. Your cousin could easily obtain another body, even if it didn’t look like him. We can stop him chinging ahead to Vishniac by renting all available proxies at that end, but we can’t be seen to act in open opposition to Akinya interests.’ The proxy looked around, its telescope-eyes clicking and rotating. ‘We’ve block-booked half the train, so the golem won’t be able to buy a ticket at the last minute. All the same, you mustn’t give it the chance. The station isn’t far from your hotel, so don’t arrive any earlier than you need to.’

‘We won’t,’ Sunday said.

‘Holroyd will be in touch when you return. I was told to let you know that he’s very satisfied with the work so far.’

‘I’m . . . glad to hear it,’ Sunday said.

The brass proxy nodded and walked away, melting into the milling tourists.

‘Give them credit,’ Eunice said. ‘They’ve covered all the bases, or as many as they’re able to. Block-booking the train, renting the proxies in Vishniac . . . that’s only the half of it, too. I’ve been having difficulties synching with my Earthside counterpart ever since we arrived. It’s not just that your brother’s in Tiamaat, either. Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to tie up Earth–Mars comms by all legal means available.’

‘Then they’re on our side, even if it inconveniences you.’

‘My suspicion,’ the construct said, ‘is that they’re on whichever side works best for them from one moment to the next.’

Sunday felt a touch on her arm. She turned, expecting it to be Jitendra, or just possibly the proxy, back to tell her something it had forgotten to mention before. But the young man looking at her in a crisp maroon and silver-trimmed uniform was one of the cable car’s staff. ‘The suit you reserved, Miss Akinya,’ he said, smiling from beneath a pillbox hat. ‘We were expecting you about ten minutes ago.’

Sunday narrowed her eyes. ‘I didn’t book any suit.’

‘There’s definitely one reserved, Miss Akinya. I can cancel it, of course, but if you’d care to take up the reservation, we’ll be making our next stop in about ten minutes?’ His smile was starting to crumble around the edges. ‘You’ll have about an hour on the ground before the last pickup of the day.’

‘Did Jitendra book this?’

‘I don’t know, sorry.’

‘No, he didn’t,’ Eunice said, answering her question. ‘Not unless he managed to do so without me knowing about it, and as clever as Jitendra undoubtedly is, he’s not
that
clever. So someone else has booked this suit for you, and if the Pans knew about it, the proxy would presumably have mentioned it.’

‘If you’d care to come this way,’ the young man said.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Eunice said.

‘It can’t be Lucas. If Lucas wants to talk to me, he can just stroll straight on up, the way he did when we landed.’

‘So you don’t know who’s behind this. All the more reason to be suspicious of it, you ask me.’

‘Which I didn’t.’ Sunday looked through the windows, wondering what was the worst that could happen.

The suit would be the property of the cable-car company, so she could presume it would be in good repair, and it wasn’t as if she’d be going off into the wilderness. The metal walkways down in the crater were fenced off, there were safety lines, the Mech would be as thick as anywhere else in Crommelin and there were sightseers coming and going all the time.

No possible harm could come to her: this was, if anything, an even safer place than the Descrutinised Zone.

‘On your head be it,’ Eunice said.

‘Just do one thing for me. Tell Jitendra where I’ve gone. You can do that, can’t you?’