‘What did you find in Phobos?’
‘A painting.’ She took a breath, feeling sweat prickle her forehead. ‘A mural. There was a mistake . . . an alteration. The peacock should have been a different bird. A crane, maybe an ibis.’
‘What brought you to Phobos?’
Had she passed the first test, or merely skipped to the next question having failed the first one? The suit gave no clue. ‘Pages from a book,’ Sunday said, swallowing hard. ‘
‘What led you to Pythagoras?’
‘A glove, which we found in a safe-deposit box, also on the Moon. The glove used to belong to Eunice Akinya. There were . . . gems in the glove. Plastic gems, three different colours. The numbers corresponded to a Pythagorean triple. Knowing Eunice’s history, we were able to pinpoint a crash site in the crater.’ She felt as if she was going to faint. ‘That’s all I’ve got. The existence of the safe-deposit box came from an audit of Eunice’s affairs, after her death.’
‘What was the significance of the coloured gems?’
‘The colours had . . . no significance.’ But why would the helmet have asked her that if the answer was so simple? ‘Except they had to be different colours so that we could count them.’
That was what Jitendra had said, at least – and she’d been more than ready to accept that explanation. But the gems had been stuffed into different fingers. Given the care they’d taken with the examination, they’d have been unlikely to muddle them up.
‘You have failed to pass all security questions,’ the helmet said. ‘Nonetheless, you are recognised as having the necessary authority. Please wait.’
‘Please wait for what?’
‘Please wait.’
Even through the fogging glass, Jitendra must have seen the doubt in her eyes. He pushed his face close to the visor. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, voice muffled as if many rooms away.
‘It asked me a bunch of questions!’ she shouted back, making herself feel lighter-headed in the process. ‘I failed at least one of them, but it’s accepting me anyway. Can you crank up the cooling on this thing? It’s like a Turkish bath in here.’
Jitendra and Jonathan exchanged words. Soya nodded and went to one side, out of Sunday’s field of view. A moment later she felt knocking and tapping as Soya fiddled with the suit’s backpack.
The faceplate continued to fog over, even as the air grew fractionally cooler than it had been before. Sunday wondered whether it was better to close her eyes than confront that misted-over glass only centimetres from her nose and mouth.
Then the mist began to clear. But just when the condensation had shrunk back almost completely around the faceplate’s borders, it greyed over again. Sunday was about to call out to Jitendra when she realised the greyness wasn’t more condensation; rather it had been caused by the head-up display obstructing her entire forward view. The head-up view was changing now, but the image that resolved wasn’t the room inside the Aggregate.
What she could see was a broken aeroplane.
It lay upside down, snapped wings scissored across its fuselage. Dust had gathered in its lee. The plane slumped on the crest of a gently sloping ridge, bone-white against a horizon of darkening butterscotch. More dust spilt from the ruptured eye of its bubble canopy. Sunday thought of her brother, that this was some dire vision of the Cessna, crashed and upended. But this was not Geoffrey’s aircraft.
To the right of the wreck, a hundred paces further up the shallow incline, sat a squat compound of pressure- tight huts. The huts’ rib-sided shells had been scoured to a grey metal sheen by dust storms. Dust had also built up in their wind-shadows. Faded almost to illegibility was a hammer-and-sickle flag. A wind gauge, its cups as large as washbasins, whirred atop the roof of the largest hut.
Sunday found her point of view moving towards the aircraft. Acting independently of her volition, her line of sight dipped as if she was kneeling to peer into the inverted bulge of the shattered canopy. The seat was upside down, the buckled harness dangling open where it had been released. The cockpit was empty.
Her point of view turned from the aircraft, again without her direction, and approached the cluster of huts. The significance of the weather station and the smashed aeroplane was unavoidable. It was here, on the slopes of Pavonis Mons, that Eunice had landed and then sought shelter during a particularly ferocious storm. The plane had been intact when she brought it down, but had subsequently been plucked from its moorings by the winds, upended and crushed like a paper toy.
The station and the plane were gone now, but the documented fact of this episode had been the only thing pointing to a specific part of the terrain around the Martian volcano. Sunday already knew this. She could not have found the helmet without already making this connection.
So what did Eunice want with her now?
Metal steps, the lower treads buried in dust, led to the airlock in the largest of the Russian huts. The outer door and its interior counterpart were both open. Sunday’s point of view ascended the steps.
Inside, it was brightly lit and wrong: physics and common sense were in dreamlike abeyance. It was not the interior of a Russian weather station on Mars but an annexe of the household. The light blazed in through square, thick-walled windows at a steep slant. It fell on recognisable furniture: chairs and tables, rugs and hangings, white-plastered walls. There were ornaments on the tables, dust-glints trembling in the air. In place of one wall, silk curtains billowed. Sunday would have been drawn to the curtains even if she’d had control of the suit’s point of view.
A gloved hand reached out and parted the curtains. She pushed on through.
