Blue Remembered Earth

‘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 I won’t throw you out of the household, not when you have a guest here, but consider all other privileges rescinded.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.

So he was in trouble, unquestionably. But he still had every reason to distrust the cousins, every reason to think that they would not waste a moment in erasing Eunice’s legacy.

Still in his room, with the door ajar, he used Truro’s secure quangle path to ching Tiamaat.

‘There’s been a development,’ Geoffrey said, when the smooth-faced merman had assumed form.

‘You’re referring to the disposal plans?’ Truro, who was half-submerged in pastel-blue lather, gave a vigorous blubbery nod. ‘I assumed that would have come to your attention as well. There’s no timescale for the operation, but we can safely assume it will be sooner rather than later, now that permission has been granted.’

‘There’s something else. I’ve just done something . . . impetuous. Or stupid.’ Geoffrey lowered his gaze, unable to look at the Pan directly. ‘I confronted the cousins.’

‘Perfectly understandable, given the circumstances.’

‘And I tried hitting one of them.’

‘Ah,’ Truro said, after a moment’s reflection. ‘I see. And this . . . act – was it—’

‘The Mechanism intervened.’