Blue Remembered Earth

‘You don’t approve?’ Chama asked.

‘Colour me more than slightly sceptical.’

‘That’s my brother’s way of saying he thinks you’re all completely batshit insane,’ Sunday explained.

He shot her an exasperated glance. ‘Thanks.’

‘Best to get these things out in the open,’ Sunday said.

‘Quite,’ Chama agreed, cordially enough. ‘So yes – I’m a Panspermian. So’s Gleb. And yes, we believe in the movement. But that’s all it is – an idea, a driving imperative. It’s not some crackpot cult.’

The door at the far end of the room opened, allowing a figure to enter. It was another man, shorter and stockier than Chama, pushing a wheeled trolley laden with multicoloured plastic flasks and tubs.

‘This is my husband, Gleb,’ Chama said. ‘Gleb, we have visitors! Sunday’s brought along her brother.’

Gleb propelled the trolley to the wall and walked over to them, peeling gloves from his hands and stuffing them in the pockets of his long white labcoat. ‘The elephant man?’

‘The elephant man,’ Chama affirmed.

‘This is a great pleasure,’ Gleb said, offering his hand for Geoffrey to shake. ‘Gleb Ozerov. Have you seen the —’

‘Not yet,’ Chama said. ‘I was just breaking the bad news to him.’

‘What bad news?’

‘That we’re batshit insane.’

‘Oh. How’s he taking it?’

‘About as well as they usually do.’

Geoffrey shook Gleb’s hand. He could have crushed diamonds for a living.

‘He’ll get over it, eventually.’ Gleb studied him with particular attentiveness. ‘You look disappointed, Geoffrey. Is this not what you were expecting?’

‘It’s a room full of plants,’ Geoffrey said, ‘not the zoo I was promised.’

Gleb was a little older than Chama – a little older-looking, at least – with central-Asian features, Russian, maybe Mongolian. His hair was dark but cut very short, and he was clean-shaven. Under the white laboratory coat, Geoffrey had the impression of compact muscularity, a wrestler’s build.

‘Look,’ Gleb said, ‘you’re a citizen of the African Union, and the AU’s a transnational member entity of the United Surface Nations. That means you view things through a certain . . . ideological filter, shall we say.’

‘I think I can see my way past USN propaganda,’ Geoffrey said.

‘We’re Pans. Pans are bankrolled by the United Aqatic Nations, as you undoubtedly know, and the UAN’s at permanent loggerheads with the USN. That’s the way of the world. But we’re not at war, and it doesn’t mean that Pans are about to make a bid for global domination, on Earth or here on the Moon. It’s just that we believe in certain . . . unorthodox things.’ Gleb’s voice, coming in under the translation, was speaking a different language from Chama, something clipped and guttural, where Chama’s tongue was high and lyrical in intonation. He delivered this oratory with arms folded, muscles bulging under the white fabric of his sleeves. ‘Pans think that the human species has a duty, a moral obligation, to assist in the proliferation of living organisms into deep space. All living organisms, not just the handful that we happen to want to take with us, because they suit our immediate requirements.’

‘We’re doing our best,’ Geoffrey said. ‘It’s still early days.’

‘That’s one viewpoint,’ Gleb said cheerfully. ‘Especially if you’re trying to worm out of species-level responsibility.’

‘This is going really well,’ Sunday said.

‘Yes,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I’ve only been here five minutes and already I feel like I’m about to be hanged, drawn and quartered for my crimes against the biosphere.’

‘Chama and Gleb don’t mean it personally. Do you?’ Sunday asked.

‘We do, but we’ll gladly make an exception for your brother,’ Gleb said with a smile.

‘Very magnanimous of you,’ Geoffrey replied.

‘We have a window here,’ Chama said. ‘The human species is poised on the brink of something genuinely transformative. It could be wonderful: an explosion of life and vitality, a Green Efflorescence, pushing beyond the solar system into interstellar space. We’re on the cusp of being able to do that. But at the same time we could also be on the cusp of entrenchment, consolidation, even a kind of retreat.’

Geoffrey shook his head. ‘Why on Earth would we retreat when we’ve come this far?’

‘Because soon we won’t need to be here at all,’ Gleb said.

‘Soon, very soon,’ Chama continued, ‘machines will be clever enough to supplant humans throughout the system. Once that happens, what reason will people have to live out in those cold, lonely spaces, if they can ching there instead?’

‘Thinking machines won’t rise up and crush us,’ Gleb said. ‘But they will make us over-reliant, unadventurous, unwilling to put our own bodies at risk when machines can stand in for us.’

Geoffrey was beginning to wish they’d stayed in the park, with the ice-cream stands and battling kites.

‘I’m not seeing what machines have to do with any of this,’ he said, gesturing at the glass-fronted