‘Good evening, Eunice,’ they chorused.
‘How are you enjoying your stay?’ Eunice asked, pointedly directing her question at Geoffrey.
‘Very much, thank you,’ he said, but with an edge of nervousness, as if he did not quite trust that Eunice’s working memory had been scrubbed after their last exchange. ‘Sunday and Jitendra are first-rate hosts.’
‘Excellent. I trust that the remainder of your visit will be just as enjoyable.’ She turned her imperious regard onto Sunday. ‘May I be of assistance?’
‘We have a question,’ Sunday said.
‘If it’s about the glove, I’m afraid I have told you all that I am able to.’
‘It’s not exactly about the glove. Well, it sort of is, but we have something different to ask you now.’ Sunday looked at Jitendra, inviting him to speak.
‘I discovered a pattern,’ Jitendra said. ‘Three numbers. They relate to Pythagoras.’
‘Where was this pattern?’ Eunice queried sharply, as if addressing a small boy who had mumbled something out of turn in class.
‘There were gemstones in the glove,’ Jitendra said, ‘red, green and blue ones. The numbers form a Pythagorean triple: eight, fifteen, seventeen.’
‘I see.’
‘It took me a while to make the connection,’ Jitendra went on. ‘It was almost there, but I couldn’t quite bring it out. Then I saw the Meta Presence logo on the side of the other robot . . . the triangle . . . and it was like a key turning in my head. It wasn’t a Pythagorean triangle, of course, but it was enough.’
‘Question is, why Pythagoras?’ Sunday asked. ‘Could mean several things. But seeing as we’re on the Moon, and seeing as there’s a good chance that glove came from a Moon suit . . . I wondered if it might have something to do with Pythagoras itself.’ She swallowed and added, ‘As in the crater, on the Earth-facing side.’
Eunice cogitated for many agonising seconds, her expression perfectly unchanging. Sunday had taken pains to imbue the construct with Eunice’s own speech patterns and mannerisms, and this kind of hiatus was one of them.
‘Something did happen to me there,’ she said, breaking her own silence. ‘Systems failure, coming in to land at the Chinese station in Anaximenes. Lost thrust authority and hard-landed in Pythagoras.’ She smacked her fist into her palm, making a loud, meaty clap. ‘Ship was toast, but I managed to suit-up and bail out before she lost hull pressure. Chinese knew where I’d come down. Problem was, their one rover was out on an excursion and if I sat tight waiting for them to get a rescue party to me, I’d be toast as well. My only option was to walk, and try to meet them two-thirds of the way, on the other side of the crater wall. So that’s what I did: I walked – actually hopped, most of the way – and climbed, and I was down to three hours of useful consumables when I saw their rover cresting the horizon.’ She shrugged, profoundly unimpressed by her own story. ‘It was a close thing, but there were close things all the time in those days.’
‘So that’s it?’ Sunday said, doubtfully. ‘That’s all that ever happened to you in Pythagoras?’
‘If you would rather I hadn’t made it, dear child, then I can only apologise.’
‘I didn’t mean to downplay what happened,’ Sunday said. ‘It’s just, well, another Eunice story. In any other life it would be the most amazing thing, but in yours . . . it’s not even a chapter. Just an anecdote.’
‘I have had my share of adventure,’ Eunice conceded.
‘When did this happen?’ Jitendra asked.
‘The year would have been . . .’ Eunice made a show of remembering. ‘Fifty-nine, I believe. Back when Jonathan and I were still married. It was a different Moon then, of course. Still a wilderness, in many respects. A lot changed in the next two or three decades. That was why we decided to move on again.’
‘To Mars. With the Indians,’ Sunday said. ‘But even Mars wasn’t enough of a wilderness to keep you happy.’
‘Living out the rest of his life there suited Jonathan. Didn’t suit me. I came back to the Moon eventually, but only when the rest of the system had exhausted its ability to astonish.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t come all the way back, to Africa,’ Geoffrey said.
‘And cripple myself under a gee of gravity again? I’d barely set foot on Earth in forty years, boy. I missed the household; I missed the acacia trees and the sunsets. But I did not miss the crush of all that dumb matter under my feet, pinning me to the earth under a sky that felt like a heavy blanket on a warm night.’ She jabbed a finger against the side of her head. ‘Space changed me; I could never go home again. Space will do that to you. If that bothers you, best stay home.’
‘Excuse me for having an opinion,’ Geoffrey said.
She eyed him, then nodded once. Eunice had always placed a much higher premium on those who dared to stand up to the monstrous force of her personality than those who gave in without a fight.
‘I should not blame you for living later than I did,’ Eunice said, adopting a tone that was as close to conciliatory as she ever got. ‘You did not choose to be born in this century, any more than I chose to be born in mine.’
‘And that was a long time ago,’ Jitendra said.
‘You think so?’ the construct replied. ‘There are rocks out there, still sitting on the Lunar surface, that haven’t moved since the Late Heavy Bombardment.’
‘She might be right,’ Sunday said. ‘If Eunice crashed somewhere out of the way like Pythagoras, there’s a good chance her tracks are still there, from the landing site all the way out of the crater, to wherever the Chinese rescued her.’
‘Just so long as Pythagoras hasn’t been chewed over for water or helium,’ Jitendra said. ‘Or had casinos plastered all over it.’
