‘So you’re saying that because he was never let in on the secret, I don’t have to share it with Lucas?’
‘I’m saying you don’t owe him anything. You didn’t drag Hector into this – it was the other way around. Later, you saved his neck.’
‘Didn’t do him any good, did it? I just postponed it.’
‘If Hector hadn’t died . . . it would probably have been one of us. So consider that score settled. Did you hate him at the end?’
Geoffrey had to search himself for the honest answer. The automatic reply was to say that no, he had forgiven Hector everything. But the reality was more complicated than that. ‘We saw things differently,’ he said, fingering the stem of his wine glass. ‘I believe there are absolutes. Rights and wrongs, lines in the sand. Moral certainties. I think Hector was wrong to go about things the way he did. He and Lucas shouldn’t have blackmailed me, they shouldn’t have used the elephants as a bargaining chip, and they shouldn’t have put the family name above all other considerations.’ He smiled at himself. ‘But I understand some of the cousins’ fears now. More so than I ever have. I thought we might end up uncovering something, but I had no idea it was going to be this momentous. And Eunice was right: it is dangerous, and this knowledge shouldn’t be shared until we’re absolutely sure it won’t rip humanity apart. Maybe we are ready for it, and maybe we’re not – just yet. Either way, we know about it – you and me, and soon Sunday and Lucas. That means it’s already out there, in a small way. And maybe Eunice was right about that but wrong about something else: that it’ll take an enormous amount of luck for someone to go from
He paused and gazed at the wine still in the glass. ‘Which means Hector and Lucas were right to be cautious, right to be concerned about something from the past upsetting the present. They couldn’t have known how potentially damaging it was all going to turn out to be, but their instincts were right. And if their instincts were right, then maybe their methods were as well. Maybe the means do sometimes justify the ends.’ He emptied the glass and waited for Jumai to pour him another measure from the bottle, which was a satisfying Patagonian red – shipped up from the inner system in 2129, if the label was to believed.
The year of his birth, not that he attached any significance to that.
‘So they were wrong,’ Jumai said, ‘but maybe they were right as well. And that line in the sand might not be as simple as it looks.’
‘I didn’t hate Hector,’ Geoffrey replied. ‘I used to, I won’t pretend that I didn’t. But not near the end. I can’t say I ever got close to liking him, but when all’s said and done . . .’
‘He was your cousin, and he did do one brave thing.’ Jumai raised her own glass. ‘To Hector, in that case.’
‘To Hector.’
‘Although Lucas will always be a prick.’
‘One we have to work with, unfortunately,’ Geoffrey said. He sipped the wine, placed the glass down and continued with his meal for a few mouthfuls. ‘Although it’s Sunday that worries me.’
‘I don’t see Sunday as the problem in this situation – especially as she already knows ninety per cent of the story.’
‘It’s the artilect,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Remember what Eunice told us, about how Memphis’s entire mission in life was undermined by the rock diagrams? That’s how it’s going to be with Sunday. She’s spent years creating the Eunice construct, and now I’m going to have to tell her it’s all been wasted effort. That there’s a simulation of Eunice in Lionheart that’s at least as believable as the one she’s created. How’s she going to take that?’
‘She won’t have to.’
It was not Jumai that had spoken, but the golem. It had arrived unbidden and was standing in the doorway to the kitchen area.
‘What do you want?’ Geoffrey asked, considering its uninvited arrival a violation of their privacy.
‘Sunday need never know about me. You haven’t mentioned me in your transmissions home. I’d know if you had, and . . . well, you couldn’t have, shall we say.’
‘Because you’d have doctored our messages?’ Jumai asked.
‘Better that than have the authorities know the artilect law was breached,’ Eunice said. ‘Things may have relaxed in recent years, but you can never be too careful. No: the world doesn’t need to know about me, and neither does Sunday.’
‘I’m not going to lie to my sister, if she asks a direct question,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Tell her that Lionheart was being run by machines, and that the machines had a figurehead. There’s no lie in any of that.’
He shook his head. ‘You’ll still exist.’
‘No, I won’t.’ The golem moved to their table, drew out a chair for itself, sat down. ‘I had a function, a very limited and specific one, which was to be here for you. I’ve done that now, and there’s no further reason for my existence. You know what you need to know. If you return to Lionheart, the other machines will take care of your needs. They are fully capable of running the experiment should you wish to see it reactivated. And I, for my part, will cease to exist. The routines emulating me will be erased. There will still be an artilect, but it won’t have a human face, or my memories. It won’t even remember being me.’
‘That’s suicide,’ Jumai said.
‘It would only be suicide if I had ever lived.’ Eunice hesitated. ‘Might I ask one indulgence, though?
‘We can’t mean anything to you,’ Geoffrey said. ‘You didn’t even exist before we arrived. You said so yourself.’
‘That’s true.’ Eunice looked at her hands, resting on the edge of the table. ‘I was only actualised at the moment when you proved your identity, in the airlock. Before that . . . I was a potential in the artilect, a set of dormant routines.’
