‘This is nothing to do with them. Or you, for that matter.’ Sunday stepped back from the edge, but took care not to break contact with the other woman. ‘OK, you’ve told me your name. But that means nothing. Who are you, Soya? What’s your agenda?’
‘Consider me a friend,’ Soya said. ‘That’s all you need to know for the moment.’ Using her other hand, the one that wasn’t resting on Sunday’s sleeve, she reached up and touched a stud in the side of her helmet. The visor de- mirrored instantaneously. Soya looked around, letting Sunday see her face behind the glass, and for a moment it was all she could do to keep her balance.
The face was her own.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They flew Geoffrey back to Africa early the next day. The sickle-shaped craft was supersonic, a gauche indulgence when even the fastest airpods didn’t break the sound barrier. Geoffrey was the flier’s only occupant, and for most of the journey he stood at the extravagant curve of the forward window, hand on the railing, Caesar surveying his Rome.
Once they were over open water, back into aug reach and outpacing every other flying thing for kilometres around, Eunice returned.
‘I’ve been worried about you. I hope no mischief occurred while I was absent.’
‘I’m capable of taking care of myself, Grandmother.’
‘Well, that’s a development, you calling me “grandmother”.’
‘It just slipped out.’
‘Evidently.’ She fell silent, Geoffrey hoping that was the last she had to say, but after a suitable interval she continued, ‘So what happened down there? Or are you not going to tell me?’
‘We talked about Lin Wei, the friend you duped.’
‘I don’t even know of any . . . oh, wait – you mentioned her already, didn’t you?’
‘What did you actually
‘Whatever anyone does: collected a few souvenirs, soaked up the local colour.’
He abandoned that line of enquiry, guessing how far it would get him. ‘Lin Wei came to you just before you died.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Because I think I might have met her. She didn’t “drown” at all. Or if she did, it was only a metaphorical drowning. Becoming one with the sea. Changing name and form. She’s a whale now, did you know? Calls herself Arethusa.’
‘Try to make at least
‘Ocular found something. You remember Ocular, don’t you? Or perhaps that’s another part of your past you’ve conveniently buried.’ He gave an uninterested shrug. ‘What does it matter? I’ll tell you anyway. Lin found evidence of alien intelligence, the Mandala structure, and she thought you ought to know about it. Obviously still felt she owed you that, despite whatever it was you did to her.’
Eunice was standing next to him at the window, with the African coast racing towards them. The off-white wall of the coastal barrage was like a sheer chalk cliff rising from the sea. Fishing boats and pleasure craft slammed by underneath. They were flying at scarcely more than sail height, but even at supersonic speed the Pan aircraft would have been all but silent.
‘My involvement with Ocular was no more than peripheral,’ Eunice’s figment said.
‘Maybe that’s what the public record says. But Lin must have known there was more to it than that. Reason she made a point of keeping her side of the bargain, by giving you this news. And then a little while later you go and die.’
‘And that sequence of events troubles you?’
‘Starting to feel like a bit too much of a coincidence. Lin must have felt the same way or she wouldn’t have told me. She came to your funeral, you realise. That little girl in a red dress, the one none of us knew? It was a ching proxy of Lin Wei, manifesting as a child. The way she’d have been when the two of you were friends.’ After a moment he added, ‘I’m going up to the Winter Palace. If there’s anything I need to know about it, now’s the time to tell me.’
‘What would I know?’
‘You lived there, Eunice. You created it.’
‘I wish I could help you, Geoffrey. I would if I could.’ She turned to face him. ‘I’ll say one thing: be very careful up there.’
He knew something was not quite right as soon as the Pan flier dropped subsonic and began circling over the study station, selecting its landing site. The Cessna was where he’d left it, pinned like a crucifix to the tawny earth. Parked a little distance from it – not too far from the station’s triad of stilt-mounted huts – stood a pair of clean, gleaming airpods. One was amber, the other a vivid, too-bright yellow. He could see figures on the ground, coming and going from the huts. People, robots and golems. Something on the ground like a foil-wrapped mummy, with a robot or golem bent over it.
‘Put me down,’ he snapped. ‘Anywhere.’
The flier VTOL’d onto the nearest patch of open ground. Geoffrey dropped out of the belly hatch before the landing manoeuvre was complete, flinging his bag ahead of him. He thumped to the hard-packed earth, pushed himself to his feet, grabbed the bag and started sprinting the remaining distance to the huts. A shadow passed over him as the Pan flier returned to the sky. Geoffrey barely registered it.
‘Geoffrey,’ Hector said, noticing his approach. ‘We tried calling you . . . tried chinging. You weren’t reachable. Where the hell have you been?’
‘I told you to keep away from here,’ Geoffrey said. He coughed as dust, stirred up by the flier, infiltrated his lungs.
