and me, we have to be open with each other. Always used to be, didn’t we? You and me against the household, from the moment we worked out how to make nuisances of ourselves. How dear Memphis didn’t strangle us, I won’t ever know.’
‘Different back then, though. Being rebellious didn’t cost us anything except maybe being banished to our bedrooms before supper. Now we’ve got people and things that depend on us.’
‘Doesn’t mean we can’t be honest with each other, though, does it?’
‘The cousins didn’t want you to know. They’ll spit teeth if they find out I told you.’
Sunday moved the sculpture by its base and positioned it under a cluster of blue-tinged lights. ‘Then we’d better make damn sure they don’t.’
Children flew kites and balloons in the park. Others were preoccupied with enormous dragon-like flying contraptions not much smaller than the Cessna, the chief function of which appeared to be battling with other dragon-like flying contraptions. They had glittering foil plumage, bannered tails and marvellous anatomically precise wings that beat the air with the awesome slowness of a whale’s heart. Elsewhere there were amorous couples, outbreaks of public theatre or oratory, ice-cream stands, puppet shows and a great many fabulously costumed stilt-walkers. Geoffrey stared in wonder at an astonishingly beautiful stilt-walking girl covered with leaves and green face paint, like a tree spirit made carnal.
‘Do you think,’ Sunday asked, ‘that the cousins had any idea what you might find in the bank?’
‘If they did, they hid it well.’
‘Big risk, though, sending you up to look into the vault.’
‘Less of a risk than bringing an outsider into it.’ He tongued the ice cream Sunday had bought him from one of the stands. ‘Ideally, Hector and Lucas would have come up here in person, but then people would have started wondering why they needed to visit the Moon. Before you know it, the whole system would be poking its nose into Akinya business.’
‘You think Memphis knows about the vault?’
‘If he does, he’s said nothing to me.’ Geoffrey dripped some of the ice cream onto his sleeve. He lifted the fabric to his mouth and licked off the spillage. ‘Still, he knows
‘Memphis had more contact with Eunice near the end than any of us.’
‘She might have told him things then, I suppose,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Or at any point during the exile. She was up here for more than sixty years.’
‘Maybe the simplest thing would be to ask him directly, in that case. See if he knows anything about the glove and the gemstones, and a possible connection to Pythagoras.’
‘If you’d like me to.’
They navigated the edge of a small civic pond where children splashed in the shallows and little pastel-sailed boats bobbed and battled further out. On the far bank, Geoffrey caught the flash of something small and mammalian emerging from the water before vanishing immediately into tufts of grass. An otter, or maybe a rat, its fur silvery with water.
‘You’re not at all curious about any of this, are you?’ Sunday said, not bothering to hide her disapproval. ‘When you head home to Africa, it’s straight back to your old life.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘Just do that one thing for me – find out what Memphis knows.’
‘Look, before you dig any deeper into this – are you absolutely sure this is something you really want to mess with? You won’t be able to do a five-minute scrub on your own working memory.’
‘I know a good neuropractor.’
‘Not my point.’
‘She wasn’t a monster, Geoffrey. A less-than-perfect human being, maybe. And there’s another thing:
‘I hope you’re right about that.’
After leaving the park they walked through into the next cavern and eventually stopped at the restaurant where Sunday’s commissioned sculptures would be installed. The place was closed for business, dusty from the renovation work. Sunday talked to the interior designer, going over a few details she needed to check before completing the project. She came out shaking her head, exasperated and befuddled. ‘Now they want them black,’ she said. ‘First it was white, now it’s black. I’ll have to redo them from scratch.’
‘What will you do with the white ones?’
‘Destroy them, probably. Too kitsch to sell.’
‘Please don’t destroy them,’ Geoffrey said urgently.
‘No use to me. Just clutter up my workplace.’
‘I’ll buy them or something. Ship them home. But don’t destroy them.’
She looked touched and surprised. ‘You’d do that for me, brother?’
He nodded solemnly. ‘Unless you’ve priced yourself out of my range.’
Then they were on their way again, crossing a few more blocks before arriving at what appeared to be – at least by the Zone’s standards – an entirely nondescript commercial or residential building. Its bulging sides were a mosaic of mirror-bright scales, suggestive of reptilian integument. They went inside and rode an elevator down into its basement levels.
