Blue Remembered Earth

‘I guess it worked.’

‘No – rescue came sooner than I anticipated. The storm cleared, and my people were able to get me out. As for the robots . . . I forgot about them. But they were still out there, running with my lashed-up programming. They were supposed to take care of themselves, and to act competitively if the need arose. Do you think . . . ?’

‘Do I think you inadvertently created the Evolvarium? I’d say yes, if I wasn’t worried that your ego might already be on the point of stellar collapse.’

Eunice dislodged a fly from her brow. ‘I’ve achieved enough by intent, without dwelling on the things I made happen by accident. Regardless, I’m truly sorry if circumstances were more complicated than I envisaged, but it appears you weathered the adversity. Congratulations, Sunday. You’ve come through very well.’

‘My brother and I have been sharing the burden.’

‘And does that mean you have the full authority of the family behind you?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, no.’

‘I never counted on it. The important thing is that you’ve demonstrated the necessary insight and determination to make it this far.’ Eunice lifted her head to study the sun. ‘My internal clock tells me that more than sixty years have passed since the burial. Is that really the case?’

‘Yes,’ Sunday said. ‘And you’ve only just died. The reason I’m here is because of an audit the household ran just after your death.’

‘A long time in anyone’s book. How have things been, while I was gone?’

‘With the family?’

‘Everything. The world, the flesh and the devil. Us. Have we managed not to screw things up completely?’

‘I’m here,’ Sunday said. ‘That should tell you something, shouldn’t it?’

‘I was born in 2030,’ Eunice said. ‘People told me it was the best and worst of times. To me it just seemed like the way of the world. Whether you’re born with famine in your belly or a silver spoon in your mouth – it’s always just the way things are, isn’t it? You know no different. Later, I realised I was fortunate, extraordinarily so. Fortunate to have been born African, for one thing, in the right place at the right time. My mother and father always said we should make the best of things, so that’s what we did. The world still had some catching up to do, mind. I grew up with the last wars ever fought on Earth. They never touched me directly, but no one could entirely escape their influence. Please tell me they were the last wars. I couldn’t bear to think we’d slipped back to our bad old ways.’

‘There haven’t been any more wars, which is not to say things are perfect back on Earth. I tease my brother about it often enough. They still have police, armies and peacekeeping forces, the occasional border incident. But it’s not like it used to be.’

‘The Resource and Relocation crisis taught us to grow up,’ Eunice said. ‘We were like a house full of squabbling children for most of our history. And then the house started burning down. We had to grow up fast or burn with it.’

‘We did.’

‘What is it like out there now? Have you seen much of the system?’

‘Not much. I was born on Earth, but I’ve spent most of my adult life on the Moon. This is the first time I’ve ever been anywhere else.’

‘You never had the means?’

‘It’s . . . complicated.’ Sunday nodded at the book her interlocutor was holding. ‘Is that Gulliver’s Travels?’

Eunice glanced absent-mindedly at the title. ‘Finnegans Wake,’ she said. ‘I liked Swift when I was little. Maybe Gulliver turned me into an explorer. But this is . . . denser. I still haven’t got the bottom of it. So many questions. You could spend a lifetime on it and still not understand it.’ She flicked open a random page, frowned at something written there. ‘Who was Muster Mark? What do you suppose he wanted with three quarks?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sunday was ready to leave the suit now. ‘What’s this all about, Eunice? Why did you bury the helmet? Why are you asking me these things?’

‘You disappoint me, Sunday. To have so much of the world ready for the taking, and to have seen so little of it. I thought wanderlust ran in our blood. I thought it was the fire that made us Akinyas.’

‘You saw it all, and then you came back, a sad old woman with no interest in anything except money and power and lording it over the rest of us. Doesn’t that suggest all that exploring was really just a waste of time?’

‘It would, if it hadn’t changed me.’ The book’s leather binding offered a creak of complaint as she shut it. ‘I’ve seen marvellous things, Sunday. I’ve looked back from the edge of the system and seen this planet, this Earth, reduced to a tiny dot of pale blue. I know what that feels like. To think that dot is where we came from, where we evolved out of the chaos and the dirt . . . to think that Africa is only a part of that dot, that the dot contains not just Africa, but all the other continents, the oceans and ice caps . . . under a kiss of atmosphere, like morning dew, soon to be boiled off in the day’s heat. And I know what it feels like to imagine going further. To hold that incredible, dangerous thought in my mind, if only for an instant. To think: what if I don’t go home? What if I just keep on travelling? Watching that pale-blue dot fall ever further away, until the darkness swallowed it and there was no turning back. Until Earth was just a blue memory.’

Sunday’s scorn was overwhelming. ‘You never had the nerve.’

‘Maybe not. But at least,’ Eunice answered mildly, ‘I’ve stood on the edge of that cliff and thought about jumping.’

‘I came to Mars. Isn’t that adventurous enough for you?’

‘You’ve only taken baby steps, child. But I can’t fault your determination. After all, you found me.’

‘Yes. And where has that got me?’