‘Not less than ten weeks, even if I get right back on the ship as soon as we reach Mars. Which, obviously, isn’t the idea. It’ll probably be more like four months, realistically – the return trip will take longer, too. I’m not going all that way just to spend a few days down there, and if the Pans are footing the bill . . .’ She halted. ‘You’re all right with this, aren’t you?’
‘Like I have any choice.’
‘It’s only Mars. It’s not like I’m going Trans-Neptunian.’
‘There’s a difference between you being on the Moon and . . . whatever it is, twenty light-minutes away.’
‘I have to do this, Geoffrey. I’m thirty-five, and apart from a small coterie of admirers in the Zone, I’m virtually unknown. In two years I’ll be older than Van Gogh was when he died! I can’t live with that any longer: it’s now or never. This opportunity’s come up, and I have to take it. You understand, don’t you? If it was something about elephants, and it meant that much to you—’
‘Think I might have told you about it. Just in passing.’
It was a strange conversational dance they were engaged in. Geoffrey was rightly cross about her decision to go to Mars, but he was well aware of her real motivation, which had nothing to do with the Panspermian Initiative. On the faint chance that their conversation was being intercepted, though, he had to pretend that the whole thing was a massive shock, in no way related to the events in Pythagoras. And his questions about funding were perfectly sincere. Her own finances couldn’t possibly stretch to this.
But they hadn’t needed to. The right word to Chama and Gleb, and it hadn’t been long before Truro put in another appearance. That took care of her ticket, even if it put her deeper into hock with the Pans. Jitendra, similarly, had ramped up his debt to June Wing.
‘If I’d told you,’ she said, ‘we’d have ended up having exactly this conversation, only with the possibility of you talking me out of it.’
‘I’m not trying to be overprotective.’ He paused. ‘Well, maybe just a little. But Mars is a long way away. Stuff happens there.’
‘I’m not travelling alone, and I won’t be getting up to any mischief.’
Apart, she thought, from the kind of mischief she and her brother already knew about.
‘I know you meant well with the construct,’ Geoffrey said, ‘but she got me into a world of trouble.’
‘How so?’
‘Managed to screw up one of my exchanges with Matilda. Spooked the whole clan, and now I’m going to have to go back and start rebuilding trust.’
‘How . . .’ Sunday started asking, because she could not imagine how the construct could possibly have played any role in Geoffrey’s elephant studies. But her instincts told her to abort that line of enquiry. ‘If that’s the case, then I’m sorry. Genuinely. It’s my fault – I gave her enough volition to auto-invoke, based on your perceptual stimuli. Basically, if she sensed sufficient attentional focus, she was cued to appear.’
‘Even when I’d told her not to?’
‘She can be contrary like that. But you don’t have to put up with her – I’ll deactivate your copy. I can do it from here.’
‘Wait,’ Geoffrey said, letting out a sigh. ‘It’s not that I mind having Eunice on tap. I just don’t want her springing up like a jack-in-the-box and scaring me half to death. Can you just dial down that . . . volition, or whatever it was?’
Sunday smiled. ‘I’ll assign the necessary changes before they put me under.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re doing me a big favour with this, although I’m sure you know that.’
‘Just as long as we’re clear on one thing,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I’ll keep her until she drives me mad, or you get back from Mars. Whichever comes first.’
‘I’ll call you when I wake up. But be prepared for the time lag – we won’t be able to ching, so that’s going to feel . . . weird. Be like the days of steamships and telegrams.’
‘All else fails, send a postcard.’
‘I will. Meantime, give my regards to Memphis?’
‘We’re going out to the elephants tomorrow. We’ll be able to have a good old chat.’
‘Wish I could be there with you.’
Geoffrey smiled tightly. ‘Some other time.’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Some other time. Take care, brother.’
His response took longer than time lag could explain. ‘Take care, sister.’
Geoffrey closed the ching, saving her from having to do it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He dropped into what was obviously a departure lounge, bright and tree-lined, shops and restaurants hewn out of something resembling white stone, all irregular windows, semicircular doorways and rounded roofs, the floor and ceiling curving away out of sight, people walking around with the bouncy-heeled gait that he immediately recognised as signifying something close to Lunar gravity.
He had no physical embodiment. All local proxies and golems were assigned, and would remain so for at least the next hour. Still, the figment body he’d been allocated would suffice for his needs. When he made to walk, there was a lag of three seconds before anything happened, and then his point of view was gliding forwards, ghost arms swinging purposefully as ghost feet slid frictionlessly against the floor. The body was slightly transparent, but that was merely a mnemonic aid, to remind him that he wasn’t fully embodied and couldn’t (for instance) intervene in a medical emergency, or prevent an accident or crime by force. The other people in the lounge would either see him as a fully realised figment, a spectral presence, a hovering, sprite-like nimbus – simply a point of view – or, depending on how they had configured their aug settings, not at all.
