Blue Remembered Earth (48 page)

‘You’ve given me an out from Lagos, Geoffrey. I’m hardly going to resent you for that.’

‘Even if there’s an element of self-interest?’

‘Like we said, it’s business. So long as we’re clear about that, all’s well.’ She picked at her food like a bird rooting through roadside scraps. Geoffrey didn’t have much of an appetite either. Even the coffee sat heavily inside him, sloshing around like some toxic by-product. ‘Has there been any talk . . .’ she began, then faltered.

‘Of what?’

Jumai set her face in an expression he remembered well, drawing in breath and squaring her jaw. ‘I’m assuming there are funeral arrangements. I couldn’t make it back for your grandmother’s scattering, but now that I’m here—’

‘There’s nothing in hand. Memphis never talked to me about what he wanted to happen in the event of his death, and I can’t imagine he was any more frank with the rest of the family. Even Sunday wasn’t as close to him as I am. Was.’ He dragged up a smile. ‘Still adjusting. But I’m glad you mentioned the funeral, because I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought.’

‘Really?’

‘I’ve been so fixated on what happened, and what it means . . . but you’re right. There will be a funeral, of course, and I want my sister to be part of it.’

Jumai looked doubtful. ‘Even though she’s on Mars?’

‘She’ll be back sooner or later. Memphis doesn’t have to be cremated and scattered in a hurry, the way my grandmother was. There wasn’t time for everyone to get back home then, especially not when some of us were as far out as Titan. It won’t be the same with Memphis.’

Jumai nodded coolly. ‘And you’ll make damned sure of that.’

‘Yes,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Because I owe it to my sister. And it’s what Memphis would have wanted.’

‘That’s one thing I never understood about your grandmother,’ Jumai said. ‘I can understand why no one wanted to move the scattering to suit my needs. But why did the rest of you have to get here so quickly?’

‘Because that’s what Eunice wanted,’ Geoffrey said. ‘A quick cremation, and a quick scattering. She didn’t want to wait a year, or however long it would take for the whole family to get back to Africa.’

‘She told you that?’

‘No,’ he answered carefully. ‘But Memphis did.’ And then he thought about that, and what exactly it meant.

After breakfast Jumai went to swim. Geoffrey returned to his room and sat on the made bed. He slid open the lower drawer of the bedside cabinet and took out the shoe he’d brought with him from the study station. He held it in his hands, chalky ochre dust soiling his fingers. The laces were still tied: the shoe had slipped off the old man’s foot without them coming loose. Geoffrey touched the knot, wondering if Memphis had been the habit of tying his left shoe first or his right. He had a picture in his mind of Memphis resting one foot on the Cessna’s undercarriage, doing up his laces, but he couldn’t remember which shoe Memphis had started with. Details, ordinary quotidian details, beginning to slip out of focus. And no more than a day had passed.

He put the shoe back in the drawer, slid it shut. No idea why he had been moved to pick it up, as Memphis’s chrysalis-bound body was being loaded into the medical transport. Hector and Lucas might even have seen him do it, he wasn’t sure.

He moved to his desk, settled into the chair and voked a request to the United Orbital Nations for information relating to the status of asset GGFX13419/785G, aka the Winter Palace. The data was open and public, but even if it hadn’t been, his request was coming through Akinya channels.

Text floated before him:

‘What’s troubling you?’ Eunice asked.

He thought about not answering her for a moment, before giving in. ‘They’re going to tear down the Winter Palace.’

‘Let them,’ she said, shrugging with blunt indifference. ‘I don’t live there any more, Geoffrey. Last thing anyone needs is more junk cluttering up Lunar orbit.’

‘It’s not junk. It’s history, part of us. Part of what’s made us the way we are. The cousins can’t just trash it.’

‘Evidently they can.’ She was looking at the text, accessing the same data.

‘Unless someone stops them,’ Geoffrey said.

‘You wouldn’t be planning anything foolhardy, would you?’

‘I’ll get back to you on that one.’

Geoffrey voked the text away and went outside to find the cousins. He encountered Hector first. He was coming back from the tennis court, sweat-damp towel padded around his neck. A proxy strode alongside him, swinging a racquet. Geoffrey blocked the path of the two opponents.

‘Whoever you are,’ he told the proxy, ‘you can ching right back home.’

‘This is unfortunate, Geoffrey,’ Hector said, staring him down. ‘I’m used to your rudeness, but there’s absolutely no need to inflict it on my guests.’

‘I was going anyway,’ the proxy said. ‘Nice game, Hector. Let’s do it again sometime.’ The proxy became slump-shouldered and loll-headed as soon as the ching was broken, the racquet dangling from one limp hand.

Hector took the racquet, clacking it against his own, then told the proxy to store itself.

‘There was no need for that, cousin.’

‘You’ll get over it.’

The proxy scooted away, walking like a person in a speeded-up movie. Hector dredged up a pained smile. ‘And there was me, thinking we were all getting on so well yesterday.’

‘That was then,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Anything in particular I can help you with?’

‘You can start by telling me what really happened out there.’

‘Out
where
, cousin?’ Hector unwrapped the towel and began rubbing his hair with it.

‘Memphis dying. That was so convenient, wasn’t it? Solved all your problems in one stroke. No wonder you’re in the mood for a game of tennis.’

‘Go back inside, take a deep breath and start again. We’ll both pretend this conversation didn’t happen.’

‘I’m not saying you killed him,’ Geoffrey blurted. He’d gone too far, he realised immediately, let his temper get the better of him. Off in the distance, Eunice was shaking her head.

Hector gave him an appraising nod. ‘Good. Because if you were—’

‘But it works for you, doesn’t it? You can’t wait to bury Eunice and everything she did. You just want to get on with running things, and not have any nasty surprises jump out at you from the past.’

Hector flung his towel onto the path, knowing a household robot would be along to tidy it away. ‘I think you and I need to have a little chat. You’ve been acting very strange since you came back from the Moon. Strang
er
, I should say. What were you doing in Tiamaat?’

Geoffrey stared at him blankly.

‘What, you think an aircraft can’t be tracked?’ Hector pushed. ‘We knew where you were. Cosying up to the Pans now, are you? Well, they’ve got money, I’ll give you that. Comes at a price, though. I wouldn’t trust them any further than I’d trust
us
, if I wasn’t already an Akinya.’

‘Man has a point,’ Eunice commented.

‘I’ll choose my own loyalties, thanks,’ Geoffrey said.

‘No one’s stopping you,’ Hector said. ‘Big mistake, though, thinking you can make the Pans work for you. What have you got that they want, exactly? Because it isn’t money, and if it’s charm and diplomacy they’re after . . .’ Hector tapped the doubled racquets against his forehead. ‘Oh, wait. It’s one of two things, isn’t it? Elephants or elephant dung.’ He lowered the racquets. ‘You think you’re ahead of them, Geoffrey? Able to make them work for you, not the other way around? You’re more naive than I thought, and that’s saying something.’ He paused, his voice turning earnest. ‘Lucas and I didn’t give a fuck about Memphis either way, I’ll be honest with you. He was old and past his best. But whatever happened out there, you had better get it into your head that we had nothing to do with it. Whereas you sent an old man to do your dirty work, when you had better things to do. It’s not me who needs to take a good hard look at his conscience.’

‘I won’t let you take down the Winter Palace.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘I don’t need to spell it out. Eunice is gone, Memphis is gone. Now the only link to the past is . . . that
thing
up there. And you can’t let it stand.’

‘Lucas was right – he did warn me it was a mistake to ask you to do anything useful. I should have listened.’ He pinched sweat from the corners of his eyes. ‘You enjoy certain benefits, cousin. You think yourself to be above the rest of us, but you’re always willing to scuttle back to the household when the need suits you. A room you don’t pay for? Free meals and transportation? Dropping the family name when it helps open doors?’

Geoffrey glared. ‘I’ve never done that.’

‘You need a dose of reality, I think. I won’t throw you out of the household, not when you have a guest here, but consider all other privileges rescinded. Forthwith. I’ll arrange a train ticket for Jumai and an airpod back to the railway station, but it’ll be at my discretion, not yours. You’ve shamed yourself, Geoffrey. Stop before you do any more harm.’

He moved to punch Hector.

It was a stupid, unpremeditated impulse, not something he’d been planning. If he’d thought about it for more than the instant it took the fury to overcome him, he’d have known how utterly pointless the gesture was going to prove.

Hector didn’t even flinch; barely raised the racquets in involuntary self-defence. He simply took a step backwards while the Mechanism assessed Geoffrey’s intent and intervened to prevent the completion of a violent act. It had been different out at the study station, when Geoffrey had clashed with the cousins: there, the aug had been thin, the Mechanism’s omniscience imperfect.

No so here, in the well-ordered environs of the household. A million viewpoints tracked him from instant to instant, an audience of unblinking sensors wired to the tireless peacekeeping web of the Surveilled World. In the dirt under his feet, in the granite glint of a wall, in the air itself, were more public eyes than he could imagine. His movements had been modelled and forward-projected. Algorithms had triggered, escalating in severity. From that nodal point in equatorial East Africa, a seismic ripple had troubled the Mechanism. At its epicentre, one calamitous truth:
A human being was attempting to perpetrate harm against another.

The algorithms debated. Expert systems polled each other. Decision-branches cascaded. Prior case histories were sifted for best intervention practice. There was no time to consult human specialists; they’d only be alerted when the Mechanism had acted.

Geoffrey had barely begun to initiate the punch when something axed his head in two.

It was ‘just’ a headache, but so sudden, so agonising, that the effect was as instant and debilitating as if he’d been struck by lightning. He froze into paralysis, not even able to scream his pain. Eunice broke up like a jammed signal. Unbalanced by the momentum he’d already put into his swing, Geoffrey toppled past Hector and hit the ground hard, stiff as a statue.

The paralysis ebbed. He lay helpless, quivering in the aftershock of the intervention, dust and gravel in his mouth, his palms stinging, his trousers wet where he had lost bladder control.

The intervention was over as suddenly as it had arrived. The headache was gone, leaving only an endless migraine afterchime.

‘That was . . . silly,’ Hector said, stepping over him, stooping to tap him on the thigh with the racquets. ‘Very,
very
silly. Now there’ll have to be an inquiry, and you know what that will mean. Psychologists will be involved. Neuropractors. Our name dragged through more dirt. All because you couldn’t act like a responsible adult.’

Geoffrey pushed himself to his feet. Through the shock of what had happened, the fury remained. Absurd as it was, he still wanted to hit Hector. Still wanted to punch that smile away.

Eunice hadn’t reappeared.

‘This isn’t over,’ he said.

Hector averted his gaze from the sorry spectacle before him. ‘Go and make yourself presentable.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Geoffrey was still shaking, still doing his best not to think through the consequences of what had just transpired, as he tossed his soiled garments into the wash and changed into fresh clothes. His instinct was to blame Hector.

But even if Hector was responsible for him committing the violent act, he could not be held accountable for the intervention. That was the
point
of the Mechanism: it was oblivious to persuasion, supremely immune to influence. Nor was it done with him. It might take hours, it might take days, but he would be called to account, by shrinks and ’practors, subjected to exhaustive profiling: not just to make sure he was suitably repentant, but to satisfy the Mechanism’s human consultants that the impulse had been an aberration, not the manifestation of some deeper psychological malaise that required further surgical intervention.