Geoffrey didn’t need to think through the technical implications. Chama and Gleb had undoubtedly considered every possible wrinkle. He shook his head sadly.
‘Even if it could be done . . . it wouldn’t work. My elephants have never encountered dwarves, and your elephants have never encountered fully grown adults. They wouldn’t know what to make of each other.’
‘The size differential doesn’t matter,’ Chama said. ‘It can be edited out via the ching, along with the morphological differences between the two populations. Each group would perceive the other as being perfectly normal. This can be done, Geoffrey. It’s
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s taken me years to establish a bond of trust with Matilda and her family. I can’t betray that trust by manipulating their basic experience of reality.’
Chama wasn’t giving up. ‘From Matilda’s point of view – from the point of view of her whole family – it would be a minor detail in the scheme of things. Three new elephants, that’s all. Orphans are routinely adopted by families, aren’t they?’
‘And sometimes left to die,’ Geoffrey said.
‘But it does happen – it’s not something strange and alien by elephant standards,’ Gleb said. ‘Meanwhile, all the other complex herd interactions would proceed perfectly normally. The benefit to the orphans, however, would be incalculable. Having grown up in a stabilising framework, the orphans would then be in a position to mentor a second generation of Lunar dwarves through to adulthood. Before very long, we would have the basis of an entirely independent and self-perpetuating elephant society, here on the Moon.’
‘By assisting us,’ Chama said, ‘you can be part of something heroic.’
‘The Green Efflorescence?’
‘Put that aside for now,’ Gleb said. ‘Just think of these elephants, and what they could become. What wonders. What companionship.’
‘Companionship?’ Geoffrey did his best not to sneer. ‘As pets, you mean?’
Chama shook his head. ‘As cognitive equals. Think of all the crimes we’ve committed against their kind, down all the blood-red centuries. The atrocities, the injustices. The carnage and the cruelty. Now think of us giving them the stars in return.’
‘As what? Recompense?’
‘It wouldn’t begin to balance our misdeeds,’ Chama said. Then a softness entered his voice. ‘But it would be something.’
The old place, Sunday was relieved to see, wasn’t as busy as she had feared. ‘Any chance of a table in the Japanese module?’ she asked as they stooped into the dingy, angular, off-white interior of the International Space Station.
‘Follow me,’ said a blue-boiler-suited staffer, shoulders embroidered with the patches of various barely remembered space agencies.
It had been Sunday’s idea for them all to meet up again, Chama and Gleb included, when they were done with their day’s work. The zookeepers could be overwhelming until you built up sufficient exposure tolerance. Sunday had passed that point years ago: the wilder excesses of their starry-eyed idealism now ghosted through her like a flux of neutrinos.
Besides, it was about time she broke something else to Geoffrey: the Akinyas were already embroiled.
‘So,’ she said, when they were on the first round of drinks, ‘what did you think of Chama and Gleb?’
‘They’ve achieved a lot,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I don’t necessarily approve of all of it, but I can’t deny the trouble they’ve gone to, or the risks they’ve taken.’
‘But you’re still uneasy about the whole Pan thing,’ Jitendra said, cradling a huge stein of beer.
‘I’m not big on cults or cultists, I’m afraid.’
‘Look,’ Sunday said, ‘there’s something that might put things in a different light. Like it or not, we’re already involved.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Us. The family. I’m talking ancient history now, but it’s the truth. Have you heard of a woman called Lin Wei?’
Geoffrey made no visible effort to search his memory. ‘Can’t say I have.’
‘She’s the Prime Pan, the woman who started the whole movement way back when. Lot of radical thinkers around then. Extropians. Transhumanists. Long-lifers. The Clock of the Long Now. The Mars Society. A dozen other space-advocacy types, with – on the face of it – not a lot to agree on. Lin Wei still got them all to sit down and agree on common ground. Some of them said no thanks and went their own way. But Lin found points of agreement with others, shared objectives. She was very charismatic. Out of that came the Panspermian Initiative, and the basis for the UAN.’
Geoffrey smiled nicely. ‘And your point is?’
‘Lin Wei and Eunice were best friends. That’s my point.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Eunice was never a Pan, not on any formal level, but the connection was there right through her career. The Pans were heavy backers in something called Ocular.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘You heard of it?’
‘Remind me.’
‘Ocular was the first step towards exoplanet colonisation. A telescope big enough to image surface features on an Earthlike planet beyond our solar system. Well, they built it – nearly. The project fell to pieces halfway through, and that was the start of the big falling out between Lin and Eunice.’
Geoffrey’s interest appeared to be perking up. ‘What happened?’
