Blue Remembered Earth

just don’t want me finding anything that might hurt Eunice’s reputation or endanger the business.’ He adjusted one of the restraints where it was starting to chafe. ‘They’ll be planning to scuttle it, one way or another. They already have the paperwork in place.’

Jumai asked, ‘Reckon they brought bombs with them?’

‘Plenty of stuff in a ship that can be used to make a bang,’ Gilbert said. ‘That’s before we even get to the fact that there’s a whole other ship stuck inside the Winter Palace.’

Geoffrey tensed at the arrival of a ching request. It was Hector, and the ching coordinates placed him near the Moon.

‘I don’t think we have much to say to each other,’ he said, opting to keep the conversation strictly voice- only.

‘You took the call,’ Hector said, his reply bouncing back from the Kinyeti almost immediately, ‘which suggests you think there’s something worth discussing.’

‘Is it just you, or did Lucas come along for the ride?’

‘Only room for one of us, Geoffrey – I came up in a cargo shot, not the crewed capsule. Stress wouldn’t have been good for Lucas, not after what he did to his leg.’ He emitted a brief, humourless laugh. ‘It was quite a trip. You should try it sometime.’

‘I did it once,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Not this way, with no cushioning and the safety margins dialled to zero. The kick when I hit the bend at the base of the mountain . . . that was something. The view, though . . . once the pusher lasers had me and I was sailing into orbit. Glorious.’

‘Glad it was worthwhile. You’re brave or stupid, one of the two.’

Hector let slip another laugh. ‘It’s still not too late to make this good, Geoffrey. Whatever you think you’re going to achieve in the Winter Palace, you don’t have to go through with it.’

‘So I should just leave you to destroy it?’

‘We have a good life here, cousin, everything we need. Why are you so anxious to ruin things?’

‘If Eunice wanted to screw the family, she had her whole life to do it.’

‘You have a touching faith in human nature. I’d say she’s perfectly capable of screwing us from the afterlife, if that’s what she wanted.’

‘Hector, trust my sister on this. Sunday knew Eunice inside out. Eunice didn’t do pointless, spiteful gestures. And why the hell would she have something against us, anyway?’

‘She lost her mind, cousin. Out there, on the edge of the system. From that point on, she wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘I don’t think she lost her mind. I think she saw something out there, had some kind of experience . . . something that made her look back on everything she’d achieved up to that point and realise it wasn’t necessarily worth all the blood and toil she’d put into it. But that’s not going mad. It’s called getting a sense of perspective.’

After an interval Hector said, ‘Love to think you were right, but we can’t take any chances here. Too much depends on us.’

‘At least let me see what’s inside the Winter Palace.’

‘And if it’s something that hurts us? Something we can’t recover from?’

‘I’m not going to destroy the business,’ Geoffrey said, exhaustedly. ‘I don’t give enough of a damn about it.’

‘And if we’d done something bad? Some crime only she knew about? If you found out that your own flesh and blood had done something unspeakable? Could your conscience allow you to keep the secret then, cousin?’ He imagined Hector shaking his head, tutting beneath his breath. ‘You wouldn’t be able to live with that kind of secret.’

Softly Geoffrey asked, ‘What kind of crime?’

‘How the fuck should I know? Artilects, genetics, weapons: who knows what she got up to a hundred years ago? Who knows what anyone got up to back then?’

‘This doesn’t make any sense, Hector. We’re almost talking like equals now. Why couldn’t we have had this conversation weeks ago?’

Hector sighed, as if it bored him to have to explain something that should have been obvious. ‘Weeks ago you were still family, Geoffrey. Now you’re not. You’ve defected, turned traitor. Now you’re a business adversary. Now you’re an equal. That changes everything. I feel I can almost respect you.’

‘Please turn around.’

‘Kinyeti’s locked on, cousin. I’d maintain a safe distance, I were you.’

‘What are you planning?’

‘What I came here to do,’ Hector said. ‘Demolition.’

Rather than completing its approach, the Kinyeti came to a station-keeping halt fifty kilometres out, following almost the same orbit as the Winter Palace. Geoffrey wondered, optimistically, if Hector had had second thoughts. Perhaps, after all, he had begun to get through to his cousin, making him see sense.

But no. After ten minutes, a much smaller vehicle detached from the head of the mining ship and resumed the original approach vector. They studied the tiny ball-shaped craft at high-mag via the Quaynor’s own cameras. It was the kind of short-range ship-to-ship ferry that could also serve as an escape capsule or single-use re-entry vehicle.