Blue Remembered Earth

by Alastair Reynolds

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.’

  ‘Geoffrey,’ Hector said, ‘please try to see things from our point of view. You must have said or done something that has put her on this course. What we would like to know is exactly what that was.’ He smiled, but there was no warmth in it, only a cryogenic chill. ‘So. Shall we discuss this like adults, or are you going to continue insulting our intelligence?’

  ‘I couldn’t if I tried,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘Well, it’s good to establish a basis for further negotiations,’ Lucas said. He was still two metres from Geoffrey, standing further away than his brother, but in a single swift motion he brought up the shaft of the parasol and whipped the end of it hard against the stock of the pistol, the impact knocking the weapon out of Geoffrey’s hand, sending it careening into the dirt. Geoffrey jerked back his hand in shock, half-expecting to find his fingers broken by the jolt.

  Hector knelt down and picked up the fallen pistol. ‘My brother has very fast reflexes,’ he explained. ‘Squid axon nerve shunts – it’s the latest thing. Long-fibre muscle augmentation, too – he could wrestle a chimp and win. It’s all really rather unsporting of him.’

  ‘My surgeon offers very favourable terms to family,’ Lucas said, adjusting his shirtsleeve. ‘I should put you in touch, Hector. No point being at such a miserable disadvantage in life.’

  Hector was still holding the pistol. He looked at it distastefully, worked the mode selector and fired one of the tranquilliser darts into the ground. Then he passed it back to Geoffrey as if it was a toy he’d been deemed big enough to play with.

  ‘Best put it away, I think,’ Hector said confidingly.

  Geoffrey was still shaking. He had witnessed very few violent acts in his life, much less been on the wrong end of one.

  ‘Have a think,’ Lucas said, ‘about what you said to Sunday, and how much this work really means to you. You’ll schedule some time for that, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course he will,’ Hector said. ‘Geoffrey’s close to his sister, and we can’t fault him for that. But ultimately he knows what’s best for him, and for his elephants. Don’t you, old fellow?’

  ‘Pass on our best regards to the herd,’ Lucas said.

  The two cousins turned away and walked back towards their airpod. Geoffrey stood at the door, pistol quivering in his hand, heart racing, lungs heaving with each breath. He could still feel the sweat on his back as the airpod lifted into the sky, tumbled like a thrown egg and aimed itself at the household.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sunday’s state of mind as she returned to consciousness was one of supreme ease and contentment. With all worldly concerns on hold, she nonetheless retained sufficient detachment to appreciate that the cause of this euphoria was rooted in profound biochemical and transcranial intervention. That understanding, however, in no way undermined the bliss. Something joyous lay in that very realisation, too, for the machines would not be waking her unless the journey had been successful; she would not be waking unless the swiftship had crossed space to its destination. Mars.

  She had reached Mars – or was at least close enough that it made no difference now. And that in itself was astonishing. It bordered on the miraculous that she had gone to sleep around the Moon and was now . . . here, around that baleful pinprick of golden light she had sometimes seen in the sky. In a flash she understood herself for what she was: an exceedingly smart monkey. She was a smart monkey who had travelled across interplanetary space in a thing made by other smart monkeys. And the fact of this was enough to make her laugh out loud, as if she had suddenly, belatedly, grasped the punchline to a very involved joke.

  I’m the punchline, Sunday thought. I’m the period, the full stop at the end of an immensely long and convoluted argument, a rambling chain of happenstance and contingency stretching from the d
iscovery of fire down in the Olduvai Gorge, through the inventions of language and paper and the wheel, through all the unremembered centuries to . . . this. This condition. Being brought out of hibernation aboard a spaceship orbiting another planet. Being alive in the twenty-second century. Being a thing with a central nervous system complex enough to understand the concept of being a thing with a central nervous system. Simply being.

  Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unthinking galaxies and superclusters, wheeling through the oblivious time-haunted megaparsecs of the cosmic supervoid. In all that immensity, she had somehow contrived to be a human being, a microscopically tiny, cosmically insignificant bundle of information-processing systems, wired to a mind more structurally complex than the Milky Way itself, maybe even more complex than the rest of the whole damned universe.

  She had threaded the needle of creation and stabbed the cosmic bullseye.

  That, she thought, was some fucking achievement.

  ‘Good morning, Sunday Akinya,’ said an automated but soothing voice. ‘I am pleased to inform you that your hibernation phase has proceeded without incident. You have reached Mars administrative airspace and are now under observation in the Maersk Intersolar postrevival facility in Phobos. For your comfort and convenience, voluntary muscular control is currently suspended while final medical checkout is completed. This is a necessary step in the revival process and is no cause for distress. Please also be aware that you may experience altered emotional states while your neurochemistry is stabilising. Some of these states may manifest as religious or spiritual insights, including feelings of exaggerated significance. Again, this is no cause for distress.’

  She couldn’t move any part of her body, including her eyes, but the aug was active and able to supply a fully coherent visual stream in whatever direction she intended to look. She was resting on a couch, held there by a pull heavier than Lunar gravity but not nearly as strong as Earth’s.