Hector offered his hand. Geoffrey looked at it, allowing the moment to stretch. He did not want to give the impression that this was an easy or casual reconciliation, or that there was not still a vast gulf of trust to be bridged. But Hector was right. They had to start somewhere, and now was as good a time as ever. They might not, after all, get another chance.
He shook.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was the morning of the nineteenth of March, another spring day dawning in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the sky as clean and pink as bottled plasma. Soya had driven Sunday and Jitendra back to Vishniac, traversing the Evolvarium at night in a tiny four-wheeled buggy with a bubble-top pressure cabin. They had come out of the Aggregate’s belly down a steel ramp which had folded back into the machine as soon as their wheels touched dirt. Jonathan had said that the journey was safe, that the other machines would keep their distance – none of them wished to provoke the Aggregate – but Sunday nonetheless sensed a constant low-level tension in Soya as they bounced and yawed across the endless high plains of the Tharsis Bulge. Now and then she’d bite her lower lip, clench her knuckles on the controls, glance nervously at the radar and sonar devices, or scan the horizon for the auroral flashes which signalled the death struggles of lesser machines. They had crossed the transponder boundary and put many kilometres between themselves and the technical limit of the Evolvarium before Soya allowed herself to relax. Even then, it was a twitching, high-strung sort of relaxation. She might be free of the machines, but Soya still wished to keep a low profile.
They had only been away from Vishniac for two full days, yet it felt like weeks to Sunday. And the little settlement, skewered by its railway line, so dismal and unprepossessing upon her arrival, now looked magnificent.
Soya parked the buggy in the same underground garage where Gribelin had kept his truck. ‘I should be going,’ she said, while Jitendra and Sunday grabbed their things. ‘Got jobs to do for my father.’
‘At least let us buy you a coffee,’ Sunday said.
Soya resisted, but Sunday pushed, and at last they were riding the elevator back up to the public levels. In the elevator’s unforgiving light, Soya looked older than before. Sunday began to appreciate the toll that her shadowy existence had enacted upon this woman. Then she caught her own reflection, and it was scarcely an improvement. Their genes were not so very different, she supposed. Both of them looked like they could use a few days off.
They found the same cafeteria where Gribelin had been waiting for them. While Jitendra was ordering drinks at the bar, Sunday held Soya’s hand. ‘I’m glad we got this chance to meet. Nothing’s going to be the same now. I’ll always know that you’re out here.’
‘I suppose we’re cousins,’ Soya said.
‘Something like that. Whatever we are, I’m happy there’s someone out here I didn’t know about. Not just because you’re a direct connection to my grandfather, although that’s part of it, but just because . . .’ Sunday faltered. ‘I think we could both use more friends, couldn’t we? And I meant what I said about coming back here. I will.’ Although that might be easier said than done, she thought. It wasn’t as if she could count on Pans for her expenses any more, was it?
‘I would like to travel. There are problems with that, though. My past is a fiction. It’s good enough to let me move around Mars, but I could never leave this planet.’
‘What’s the worst that could happen? They’d find out who you really are? I can’t see that you’ve done anything wrong, Soya, other than maintain a falsehood to protect Jonathan. And who wouldn’t do that? He seems like a good man.’
‘If the world finds out who I am, then it will discover what happened to him,’ Soya said.
‘Maybe it’s time. There’s no rule that says he has to hide away for the rest of his days, is there?’
‘I think he likes it better this way. Dropping out of history, like a deleted chapter.’
‘Fair enough, that’s his choice. But you don’t have to sacrifice your whole life to serve him, do you? You’ve already done more than enough.’
‘I’m not that old,’ Soya said. ‘There’s still a lot of time ahead.’ And she clearly meant a lot of time without her father, which was equally true, though Sunday had been careful not to voice that fact herself.
‘Like I said, I’m glad we met.’
Soya appeared to come to some private decision. She reached around her neck, undid a hidden fastening and lifted away one of the wooden charms. ‘This is yours now, Sunday. My father gave it to me. It used to belong to Eunice. It was a gift from her mother, Soya. Soya told her it was old, even then. I think it goes back a long way.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You will.’ Soya peeled apart Sunday’s fingers and forced the charm into her palm. ‘You have no say in this. No one ever does.’
Sunday stared down at the gift. Fastened onto a simple leather strand was a circular talisman, enclosing a more complex form that had been engraved and stained with fine geometric patterning. She allowed her fingers to curl around it, imagining her grandmother echoing the gesture, and Eunice’s mother before her, a lineage of closing hands, bound in this moment as if time itself was membrane-thin, easily breached.
‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
Jitendra was coming back with a tray and three steaming mugs of coffee. Sunday was debating whether or not to show him the gift – wondering if it ought to remain a secret, between her and Soya – when without warning a proxy arrived and took his seat.
It was not a golem; this was a purely mechanical-looking thing, shaped like an improbably skinny suit of armour, all silvers and chromes and burnished blues. It had a minimalist face: a slit of a mouth, two round eyes like double craters.
‘We need to talk,’ the proxy said.
Sunday slipped the talisman into her pocket for safekeeping. She recognised the voice, but requested an aug tag to be on the safe side. ‘Lucas,’ she said, with icy politeness. ‘Fancy seeing you here. The last thing I remember is my boot crushing your face. Didn’t you get the message?’
‘Shut up.’
