Blue Remembered Earth

the fucking time? And stop trying to always see the good in everyone, because sometimes it just isn’t there. Sometimes people are just arseholes. Evil fucking arseholes.’

Jitendra dragged a piece of rover panelling next to Sunday and jammed it into the ground like a windbreak. ‘We’re going to be the hottest things for miles around. The more thermal screening we can arrange, the better our chances.’

‘Our chances are zero, Jitendra. But if it makes you feel better . . .’ She blinked hard. Her eyes stung with tears, but there was nothing she could do about that now.

‘It would make me feel better if you helped a bit,’ he said. ‘Some of these pieces are too big for me to manage on my own.’

Anything to please Jitendra. And he was right. Better to be doing something. Better to be doing something, no matter how stupid and pointless, than nothing at all.

While the universe surveyed their ramshackle plans and laughed.

They made a crude shelter, open to the skies but offering some cover from anything approaching on or near the ground. Sunday doubted that it would make much difference – their heat was going to bleed out whatever they did – but if it made them slightly less visible then she supposed the effort was not entirely wasted. They had depleted some more of their suits’ power and oxygen, but they had not surrendered. And when the work was done, the shelter fashioned to the best of their abilities and the sun lower still, they sat next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, maintaining tactile contact so they could talk.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sunday said finally.

‘Sorry for being tricked and cheated?’

‘Sorry for what I got you into. Sorry for what I got Gribelin into.’

‘I’m sorry for him as well. But he was an old man, in a dangerous line of work. You didn’t kill him; his job did.’

‘Maybe we’d have been better staying together.’

‘We’re still alive,’ Jitendra said. He tightened his hand around hers in emphasis. ‘He isn’t. That has to be the better outcome, doesn’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sunday said, and the words surprised her because they seemed to come unbidden.

‘I do,’ Jitendra said. ‘And while there’s a second more of living to be had, I’ll always choose life over death. Because anything at all could happen in that second.’

‘Since when did you start believing in miracles?’ Sunday asked.

‘I don’t,’ he answered. ‘But I do believe in . . .’ Jitendra fell silent, long enough that she began to wonder if the tactile link had stopped working. She followed his line of sight, out through the narrow vertical gap where two of the wreck’s pieces didn’t quite meet.

‘Jitendra?’

‘I haven’t moved since we sat down,’ he said. ‘My line of sight’s still the same. And I definitely couldn’t see that hill an hour ago.’

Sunday adjusted her position and saw what he meant. She’d have seen it herself, had she been sitting a little to her left. It was no hill, she knew. The topography here was clear: other than the volcanoes and some ancient craters, there were no sharp protrusions in the terrain.

More than that, Jitendra was right. The hill hadn’t been there while they made the shelter.

‘The Aggregate,’ Sunday said, and when Jitendra didn’t answer, she knew it was because he had nothing better to offer.

And the Aggregate was coming closer.

CHAPTER TWENTY- EIGHT

Geoffrey checked his restraints. The Quaynor was burning fuel again, continuing with orbital insertion and approach/rendezvous with the Winter Palace. Up in the forward command blister – the nearest thing the ship had to a bridge – Jumai and Mira Gilbert were tethered either side of him, secured within a messy cat’s cradle of bungee cords and buckle-on harnesses. The command blister was a metal-framed cupola set with impact-resistant glass and furnished with quaintly old-fashioned controls and readouts.

‘Your family are still ahead of us,’ Gilbert said, confirming the news that Geoffrey had been half-expecting. ‘We had some delta-vee in reserve. Unfortunately, so did the Kinyeti.’ She tapped at a fold- down instrument panel, muttering some dark aquatic oath. Reaction motors popped and stuttered, finessing the Quaynor’s course. ‘Going to be a nail-biter, I’m afraid. We’ll meet them on the same orbit. Unfortunately it looks like they’ll make dock before we do.’

‘How many docking slots?’ Jumai asked.

‘Close-ups show one at either pole. Anyone’s guess as to whether both are serviceable.’

‘Been a long while since there was any need for two ships to be docked at the same time,’ Geoffrey said. ‘If ever.’

The Quaynor wasn’t new – Geoffrey could tell that much just from the rank mustiness of his living quarters – but he doubted that it dated from much before the turn of the century. Rather it had been tailored to Pan ideological specifications, which dictated a strict minimum of aug-generated contrivances. Glass windows, so that the universe might be apprehended photon by photon, on its own blazing terms, rather than through layers of distorting mediation. Control and navigation systems that required physical interaction, so that a person had to be present, in body as well as mind. Decision-making abdicated to fallible, slow-witted human pilots, rather than suites of swift and tireless expert systems.

‘What are Hector and Lucas hoping to gain here?’ Jumai asked.

Geoffrey scratched a nugget of crystal-hard dust from his eye. The period of unconsciousness in the rocket hadn’t done anything to take the edge off his exhaustion.

‘The cousins couldn’t give two shits about what’s inside the Winter Palace. Not for themselves, anyway. They