from the Moon, they’d been well aware that he was keeping information from them, and that this deceit extended to Sunday. It was all to do with Eunice, so what better way to limit any further damage than by removing the one man who’d had more access to the old woman than any of them? Killing Memphis blocked Geoffrey’s investigations in that particular direction. It also meant that anything damaging that Memphis might have had cause to disclose was not now likely to come to light.
And yes,
But still. Murder wasn’t impossible, even in 2162. Even beyond the Descrutinised Zone, in the loving panoptic gaze of the Mechanism. Because the Mechanism wasn’t infallible, and even this tireless engineered god couldn’t be all places at once. The Mandatory Enhancements were supposed to weed out the worst criminal tendencies from developing minds before people reached adolescence . . . but those very tendencies were imprecise, and it was inevitable that someone, now and then, would slip through the mesh. Someone with the mental wiring necessary to premeditate. Someone capable of malintent.
And if you wanted to commit a crime like that, the Amboseli Basin was far from the worst place you could think of.
When had Memphis died? When Geoffrey was away, not keeping his eye on the old man.
Where had he died? Out in the sticks, where the aug was stretched thin, the Mechanism ineffectual. Memphis wasn’t even wearing his biomedical bracelet – although that could easily have been removed after his death.
Who’d found him? Hector and Lucas. The cousins.
Geoffrey closed his eyes, trying to derail his thoughts, to get them off this tramline. It didn’t work.
The cousins killed Memphis.
‘I’m sorry I dragged you into this,’ he said.
‘Dragged me into what? We’ve barely begun.’
‘Family,’ he said. ‘Memphis. Everything.’
‘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:
