nowhere near any of the herds but that was intentional. Geoffrey did not want the elephants to associate him with the work that was about to be done.
One of the equipment boxes disclosed a delicate, translucent thing like a giant prehistoric dragonfly. Geoffrey held it carefully between his fingers, gripping it under the black keel of its carbon-fibre thorax. He tipped the dragonfly upside down, flipped open a cover and loaded six target-seeking darts from another box. The darts resembled miniature avatars of the same creature, down to the complex origami of their switchblade-folded wings.
‘Do you know why the cousins sent me to the Moon?’
‘A family matter.’ Memphis propped his left foot up on the undercarriage fairing and began to redo one of his laces. ‘That was as much as Hector and Lucas wished me to know, Geoffrey. For your sake, it might not be wise to tell me any more than that.’
‘Because you think they’d have a way of finding out?’
‘Because there is at least the chance of that. One also assumes that there was an incentive behind this errand?’
‘Yes, and there’s no harm in me telling you about that, at least. You know what kind of budget I work under, so you’d be the first to notice when more cash started flowing in.’
‘You may find this rather difficult to credit,’ Memphis said, swapping to the other shoe, ‘but your cousins mean well.’
‘That’s what I usually end up convincing myself.’ Geoffrey sealed the belly-door and turned the dragonfly the right way up. ‘They’re venal and manipulative, and their only real interest is profit margins, but they’re not actually evil. And I don’t think even they knew what they were getting me into.’ He gave the dragonfly a vigorous flick, causing its wings to deploy to their fullest extent. Save for a fine veining of whiskerlike supports, they were almost invisible. ‘If they’d known, they’d never have involved me.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if you said no more on the matter,’ Memphis replied.
Geoffrey touched a contact node on the dragonfly’s head and the wings began to beat the air, a leisurely pulse that gradually quickened to a steady clockwork whirr. ‘Memphis, did something happen to Eunice before she went into exile?’
‘Rather a lot of things,’ Memphis said.
‘I mean, apart from the stuff we already know about.’
Geoffrey let the dragonfly go, allowing it to hover away from his hand. A metre or so higher than his head, it halted and awaited further instructions. Squinting against the brightness of the sky, he could only just see it. The wings were a butterfly-shaped nimbus of flickering, and the elongated body – with its cargo of darts – just a smudgelike blemish on his vision.
‘I’m not talking about all the adventures and exploits already in the public record,’ Geoffrey went on.
‘I am not sure that I can help you.’
‘Eunice did something,’ Geoffrey said. ‘No need to go into details, but it’s as if she set something up, a series of clues that weren’t meant to come to light until after her death.’
‘Sunday’s trip to Mars,’ Memphis said thoughtfully. ‘Would that be related to this matter?’
‘Draw your own conclusions.’
‘I shall.’
‘The cousins sent me to the Moon to look into something, a detail they weren’t expecting to lead to anything significant.’
‘I take it you confided in your sister?’
‘What I found up there was . . . not what the cousins were expecting. I couldn’t keep it a secret from Sunday.’
‘Are you going to tell me what it was?’
‘I don’t want any of this to come back and hurt you, and if I tell you too much it might.’ Geoffrey paused to send the dragonfly on its way, in the direction where the herd had last been sighted. An aug window had already opened in his upper-centre visual field, showing the dragonfly’s view of things as it scudded over the terrain. ‘All I want to know, Memphis, is one thing. Before she came back from deep space in 2101 – days, months or years, I don’t know which – she must have gone around putting these clues in place. Either she did it all on her own, or she had help. Right now I’m not sure which. But if ever there was one person she’d have turned to for assistance, I’m talking to him now.’
‘You refer to these things as clues. Can you be certain that this is what they are?’
‘If they’re not, then we’re all imagining connections where none exist. Here’s what I think, though. The loose end, the thing the cousins sent me to investigate, didn’t come to light by accident. Eunice must have planned it this way. She’d have known there’d be a thorough audit of her assets after her death, conducted from inside the family.’
‘If she wished to convey a message beyond the grave . . . why not just convey that message directly?’
Geoffrey had sighted the herd, about a kilometre from the dragonfly. ‘Maybe things will be clearer when Sunday gets back from Mars.’
‘Until then, though, you are wondering whether I might be able to shed light on the matter.’
‘I’m sorry to do this to you, Memphis.’
‘And I wish I could be of more assistance.’
Geoffrey’s spirits dipped. Perhaps it had been unrealistic, but he’d been hoping for something more than that. Yet after all the years of service, how likely had it ever been that Memphis was just going to cave in at the first gentle interrogation?
