Blue Remembered Earth

location is known, and there haven’t been any geological changes since she last visited.’

‘We’re about two hundred kays out,’ Gribelin said. ‘We can be there in two hours, maybe three if we have to run around any big players.’

‘By which time it’ll be dark,’ Dorcas said. ‘Not much you’ll be able to do then.’

‘At least we’ll be there first.’

Dorcas considered this at length before responding, taking whispered asides from her crew while she contemplated her answer. ‘We’ve always had a good working arrangement, haven’t we, Grib?’

‘It’s had its ups and downs,’ Gribelin said.

‘Neither of us is a philanthropist. But over the years we’ve mostly managed not to tread on each other’s tails.’

‘Fair assessment.’

‘Even, some might say, helped each other when the situation demands it.’

‘Which it does now.’

‘Indeed. In that spirit, I’m going to make you an offer. I’ll get you closer to the landing site in much less than three hours. We’ll use the full resources of Lady Disdain to search for your object, and I’ll hand it to you intact when – if – we locate it. In return, you’ll give me twenty-five per cent of whatever you’re being paid. Whether or not we find anything.’

‘I’m not made of money,’ Gribelin said.

‘But someone else is. One way or the other, I’ll find out who’s involved and what they’re paying you.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of fobbing you off, Dorcas.’ For a moment, Gribelin looked paralysed with indecision, before deciding that honesty was the only viable option. ‘It’s the Pans,’ he said, letting out a small audible sigh. ‘You’d have figured that out sooner or later, based on the comms trickery.’

Dorcas sneered. ‘Why are you letting the Pans yank your chain?’

‘They pay well. Amazingly well. And my clients—’

‘We’re not Pans,’ Sunday said emphatically. ‘We’ve just got mixed up with them. What I want, and what they want . . . they coincide, up to a point. That’s why they’ve paid for me to be here, and why they’re helping slow down the golem. But we’re not Pans.’

‘Yes.’ Dorcas allowed herself the thinnest of smiles. ‘Think I got that the first time.’

It was teatime on the Lady Disdain. They knelt around a table while one of Dorcas’s underlings attended to their white porcelain Marsware cups. Tactical status maps, vastly more complicated than Gribelin’s simple readout, jostled for attention on the table’s slablike surface. These real-time summaries of the Evolvarium were accompanied by a constant low murmur of field analysis from the crew. Around the walls, systemwide stock exchange summaries tracked technologies commodities from Mercury to the Kuiper belt. Histograms danced to hidden music. Market analysis curves rose and fell in regular sinus rhythms like the Fourier components of some awesome alien heartbeat. Newsfeeds dribbled updates. Outside, the sun was beetling towards the horizon as if it had work to be getting on with.

The chai was watery but sweet – infused with jasmine, Sunday decided. She and Jitendra were kneeling on one side of the table, Gribelin and Dorcas on the other. Kneeling was very nearly as comfortable in Martian gravity as it was on the Moon, which was to say a lot easier on the knees than on Earth.

The conversation was flowing in at least two directions, maybe three. Jitendra relished the chance to learn as much as he could about the history and organisation of the Evolvarium, and his questions were divided equally between Dorcas and Gribelin. Dorcas, for her part, appeared willing to humour him . . . but she had her own interrogative agenda, too, with her probing directed mostly at Sunday. She wanted to know more about this buried secret, and why it might be of interest to more than one party.

‘I can’t tell you what she buried there,’ Sunday said. ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t have had to come all this way. I can’t even be sure this is where she meant me to go.’

‘And the Pans?’ Dorcas asked. ‘What’s their angle?’

Remembering Soya’s warning, Sunday wondered how much she was at liberty to discuss. ‘They have an interest in my grandmother,’ she said, circumspectly. ‘She knew Lin Wei, who’s as close to being the Pans’ founder as anyone.’

‘And that’s all it is – mere historical interest?’

‘I suppose they can’t help being curious now,’ Sunday said.

One of Dorcas’s staff approached, leaned down and whispered something in her ear. She nodded, danced her fingers above the table. The positions of some of the Evolvarium players shifted around. ‘Revised intel,’ she explained. ‘Increased sifter activity in sector eight, and two new hunter-killer subspecies out in three. Meanwhile, the Aggregate’s been unusually active these last few days.’

‘The Aggregate?’ Jitendra asked, beaming like a kid who was getting all his presents at once. ‘Have you encountered it?’

‘Grib’s had his share of run-ins with it, haven’t you?’ Dorcas said.

‘I keep out of its way, best as I’m able.’

Dorcas gave a knowing nod. ‘Sensible man.’

‘What is it?’ Sunday asked.

‘What happens when a bunch of machines get together and decide to act in unison, rather than fighting for scraps,’ Jitendra said. ‘A kind of emergent proto-civilisation. A quasi-autonomous motile city-state made up of hundreds of cooperating machine elements.’

‘A nuisance to some,’ Dorcas said. ‘An incipient Martian god to others. Isn’t that right, Grib? Or is that