Blue Remembered Earth (32 page)

By then the quicksilver rush of nanomachinery had commenced, a liquid army of submicroscopic medical engines invading foreign territory. The machines knew their way around a brain, even an elephant brain. They began to replicate, spinning a web of glistening connectivity.

All this took time. Although the seed population had been established within seconds, it would be weeks before complete neural integration had been achieved. Even then, only a thousandth part of Melissa’s brain volume would have been co-opted into the new network. That was all it took to give Geoffrey a window – and a door – into her mind.

Less than five seconds after its arrival, the dart’s work was done. It withdrew its self-cauterizing probes, unmoored itself from the elephant’s skin and returned to the sky. Melissa stopped trumpeting and lowered her trunk in a distracted manner, as if not quite sure what had been bothering her. The other elephants, momentarily troubled, returned to their own concerns. Melissa wandered back to her mother, one of the high-ranking females. Memphis sent a command authorising the dart to dismantle itself.

There were four more elephants to inject, but Geoffrey had no doubt that Memphis was up to the task. He was relieved that his old friend and mentor hadn’t taken obvious offence at the questions posed to him. At least, he didn’t think he had.

Memphis had told the truth, too. Geoffrey had never been more certain of anything in his life.

When the last of the elephants had been nanoculated and the aug had confirmed that the seed populations were establishing satisfactorily, Geoffrey and Memphis took the Cessna north and overflew some of the other Amboseli herds, making slow turns so that Geoffrey could see the elephants from all angles.

‘I know a few hundred of these animals by sight,’ he told Memphis. ‘Maybe two hundred I can recognise instantly, without having to think about it. I can identify maybe five hundred from the ear charts.’

‘I doubt that anyone else has your facility,’ Memphis said.

‘It’s nothing. Compared to some of the old researchers, the people who were out here a hundred or two hundred years ago, I’m barely starting.’

‘I am not sure that I could identify five hundred people, let alone elephants.’

‘I’m sure you’d do just as well as me, if you spent all day working out here.’

‘Perhaps when I was a young man. Now I am much too old to learn such things.’

‘You’re not old, Memphis. You’re just overworked and taken for granted. There’s no reason you couldn’t live as long as Eunice, and then some. A hundred and fifty years, no problem. You just have to take better care of yourself, and not let the family dominate your life.’

‘The family
is
my life, Geoffrey. It is all I have.’

‘But you don’t owe it anything, not now. The cousins don’t need you, Memphis. They treat the proxies better than they treat you.’

‘I gave my word to Eunice that I would be there for the Akinyas when she could not. Come what may.’

After a moment, Geoffrey said, ‘When did you give your word, Memphis? And why did she ask it of you? She may not have been here physically, but she was always there for us, looking down from the Winter Palace.’

‘I gave my word,’ Memphis said. ‘That is all.’

Geoffrey was visited by his father the next day. Kenneth Cho’s golem was running autonomously, as well it needed to given the fact that the organic aspect of Kenneth was presently on Titan, supervising Akinya Space hydrocarbon operations on the shore of Kraken Lake. It was a very good golem, too – not a claybot, but the best money could buy, and even with the ching tag reminding Geoffrey that the proxy was being driven from halfway across the solar system, across hours of time lag, it was difficult to shake the sense that his father was here in all his living, breathing, bludgeoning actuality.

‘Your mother and I,’ Kenneth declared as they walked together through the household, ‘are gravely concerned by this turn of events, Geoffrey. You and your sister have always been wayward, but we have come to accept this, as one accepts any regrettable situation that one cannot influence. But at the same time we have always trusted that you would act as a moderating factor, guiding Sunday against her wilder impulses.’

‘I’m not Sunday’s—’ Geoffrey started to protest.

‘She turned her back on responsibility years ago,’ Kenneth steamrollered on. He was a thin, elegant-looking man with precise symmetrical features and the hushed, disapproving manner of a senior librarian. ‘Preferring a life of self-indulgence and hedonism instead of bearing her familial obligations. You have been little better, but at least in you we still see glimmerings of decency. You waste time with elephants when you could be applying that useful mind to better purpose. But at least you put the animals before your own welfare, as the rest of us have put the family ahead of our own.’

‘You live in luxury, Father, and you gallivant around the solar system at the drop of a hat. In what sense are you putting anything before your own welfare?’ Geoffrey was listless and in the mood for an argument. He’d just been contacted by another research team, complaining about his near-exclusive access to the M-group. The last thing he needed was someone else poking around inside Matilda’s head, or for that matter any of her herd members. He could hold them off if necessary but the fact that he had to defend his research corner at all made him prickly.

The golem processed his answer. ‘You were with her on the Moon recently – this much we know from Hector and Lucas. Something you did or said must have prompted this bizarre action of hers.’

‘I can’t imagine what.’ He shrugged. ‘If you doubt me, play back that last ching conversation between me and Sunday, the one you were undoubtedly listening in on. Did I sound like I approved of or even knew about her trip to Mars in advance?’

In the same hushed, unperturbed tone that characterised most of his statements, Kenneth replied, ‘I am entirely unaware of this conversation.’

‘Right. And there are pigs circling Kilimanjaro even as we speak. Look, take it up with my sister. She wouldn’t listen to me even if I gave enough of a shit about what you think to try arguing her out of it.’

‘Sunday is frozen now, as you are well aware. Her ship is on its way. Nothing can stop her arrival at Mars.’

‘So you may as well start dealing with it.’

‘This troubles us, Geoffrey. Quite aside from the “why”,
how
has Sunday found the wherewithal to suddenly fund a trip to Mars?’

He thought of his parents, of Kenneth and Miriam, and wondered what exactly was going through their heads now, at this exact moment, on faraway Titan. He very much doubted that the outcome of this conversation was uppermost in Kenneth’s concerns. Kenneth projected versions of himself wherever they were required, sometimes more than one at a time. The fact that this version gave the impression of being bothered about Sunday didn’t mean that she was more than a passing concern to the real Kenneth.

‘As difficult as it is for you to grasp, maybe she made some money out of her art,’ Geoffrey said.

Kenneth looked sympathetic, as if he had unwelcome, even dire news to impart. ‘In the last two years, Sunday has made exactly two large sales, both to anonymous off-world buyers. The rest has been demeaning piecework. A job here, a job there. Barely enough to keep a roof over her head. Do you want the honest truth of it?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Sunday is a competent artist, nothing more. She has her moments, her flashes. But that won’t buy her fame and fortune, and it certainly won’t buy her posterity.’

‘You don’t know anything about her,’ Geoffrey told the golem. ‘There’s not a single piece of my sister’s life that you’re even capable of understanding.’ But the idea that Kenneth had knowledge of Sunday’s finances struck him as entirely too plausible.

‘Listen to me very carefully, Geoffrey. When Sunday arrives at her destination, the onus will be on you to reason with her. Whatever hole she is intent on digging for herself, you must talk her out of it. She may think she’s a free agent, able to do as she wishes, but that’s an unfortunate misconception. I won’t stand back and watch her drag our name through mud.’

‘She’s your daughter. Why not try treating her like a human being instead of a company asset that isn’t returning on its investment?’

‘She is my daughter, yes,’ the golem affirmed. ‘But above all else she is an Akinya, and that name carries expectations.’

‘Give my regards to Mother,’ Geoffrey said, turning away from the golem.

Later that afternoon he was lying back in his hammock at the study station, browsing a paper for peer review – it was long-winded and broke no obvious new ground – when the perimeter defence alarm sounded. Geoffrey rolled out of the hammock and slipped on his shoes. Sometimes Maasai came and talked, trading chai and gossip, but not usually at this time of the day. Nor had the aug picked up any human presences within walking distance during his approach overflight.

He walked to the door and unclipped the pistol from its alloy storage cabinet to the right of the doorframe, situated just below the first-aid kit. Around the weapon’s lightweight frame were bolted a variety of stun/disorientation devices, ranging from laser/acoustic projectors to electrical and rapid-effect anaesthetic darts.

Geoffrey flicked the arming stud and opened the door, cupping the other hand over his eyes against the afternoon glare. He scanned his surroundings, looking for something – anything – that might have tripped the alarm.

He saw what it was. The cousins were walking towards him, approaching along the side of the zebra-striped truck. Off in the distance, where it had come down far enough away not to have disturbed him, was an airpod, glinting chrome-green amid dry brush.

‘. . . the fuck,’ Geoffrey started saying.

‘Put that thing away,’ Hector said. ‘Wouldn’t want it going off by accident, would we?’

Still holding the pistol, Geoffrey came down the stairs from the research shack. ‘You’ve got no business coming here, Hector.’ He turned his gaze on the other cousin. ‘Same goes for you, Lucas. This is my work, nothing to do with you.’

‘As welcomes go,’ Lucas said, ‘it must be said that there is more than a little scope for improvement.’

Both cousins were dressed in lightweight slacks, business shoes and patterned shirts. Hector wore sunglasses, a form-fitting type that made it look, disturbingly enough, as if an oblong of black plastic had been inserted into a slot cut into his face. Lucas was holding a blue and yellow parasol; there was a bulge in his slacks where the centipede was still clamped to his leg. He also wore sunglasses; his were mirrored, although oddly the view they were reflecting wasn’t what Lucas was actually looking at.

‘The pistol, please,’ Hector said. ‘Put it down, Geoffrey.’

Geoffrey was on the verge of complying when he changed his mind and held the pistol by the barrel instead, his fingers around the multiply clustered cylinders of the various pacification devices. ‘You don’t come here,’ he said. ‘Not without my agreement.’

‘Hostility and defensiveness have their place in the modern business environment,’ Lucas said, folding the parasol, ‘but if family can’t drop by on a whim, who can?’

‘Don’t pretend you’ve ever given a shit about my work, Lucas.’

‘That’s a significant investment sitting in your account,’ Hector said. ‘You didn’t honestly think we were going to wash our hands of further involvement?’

‘We want oversight,’ Lucas said. ‘Checks and balances. Due diligence with regard to allocated funds.’

Geoffrey aimed the gun’s stock at Hector. ‘You never said anything about becoming more involved.’

‘In such circumstances,’ Lucas said, employing the parasol as a kind of walking stick, ‘it’s always prudent to consult the fine print.’

‘We had an arrangement,’ Geoffrey said. Hector and Lucas were nearly at his doorstep now. ‘I did your stupid errand, you gave me the money. There were no strings.’

‘Explain to me why your sister is aboard a Maersk Intersolar spacecraft, headed for Mars,’ Hector said.

‘She’s my sister, not my subordinate. What she does is her own business.’

‘If only it were that simple,’ Lucas said, his sunglasses disclosing a night-lit scene, some ritzy neon-washed club or function full of beautiful, glamorous people. ‘As a rule, your sister doesn’t just go to Mars at the drop of a . . .’ He faltered.

‘Hat,’ Hector said. ‘And we’re wondering what might have prompted this decision of hers.’

‘Ask her yourselves,’ said Geoffrey.

‘She’s frozen,’ Lucas said. ‘That does somewhat hamper the free and efficient exchange of information.’

‘In any case, Sunday being Sunday,’ Hector said, ‘she wouldn’t give us the time of day even if we managed to get through to her. You, on the other hand . . . well, you’ll talk to us whether you want to or not. Especially now those funds are in your account. They can be rescinded, you know.’

‘Fiscal reimbursement procedures are in place,’ Lucas said.

‘Fuck your procedures, Lucas.’

Slowly, his eyes on Geoffrey, Hector began to reach for the pistol. ‘Let’s not go down that route, cousin. We were all friends the night you came back from the Moon. There’s no need for this antagonism between us.’

Geoffrey yanked the pistol out of Hector’s reach. ‘We’ve
never
been friends. Let’s be absolutely clear on that. And what Sunday does is up to her.’