‘I know a few hundred of these animals by sight,’ he told Memphis. ‘Maybe two hundred I can recognise instantly, without having to think about it. I can identify maybe five hundred from the ear charts.’
‘I doubt that anyone else has your facility,’ Memphis said.
‘It’s nothing. Compared to some of the old researchers, the people who were out here a hundred or two hundred years ago, I’m barely starting.’
‘I am not sure that I could identify five hundred people, let alone elephants.’
‘I’m sure you’d do just as well as me, if you spent all day working out here.’
‘Perhaps when I was a young man. Now I am much too old to learn such things.’
‘You’re not old, Memphis. You’re just overworked and taken for granted. There’s no reason you couldn’t live as long as Eunice, and then some. A hundred and fifty years, no problem. You just have to take better care of yourself, and not let the family dominate your life.’
‘The family
‘But you don’t owe it anything, not now. The cousins don’t need you, Memphis. They treat the proxies better than they treat you.’
‘I gave my word to Eunice that I would be there for the Akinyas when she could not. Come what may.’
After a moment, Geoffrey said, ‘When did you give your word, Memphis? And why did she ask it of you? She may not have been here physically, but she was always there for us, looking down from the Winter Palace.’
‘I gave my word,’ Memphis said. ‘That is all.’
Geoffrey was visited by his father the next day. Kenneth Cho’s golem was running autonomously, as well it needed to given the fact that the organic aspect of Kenneth was presently on Titan, supervising Akinya Space hydrocarbon operations on the shore of Kraken Lake. It was a very good golem, too – not a claybot, but the best money could buy, and even with the ching tag reminding Geoffrey that the proxy was being driven from halfway across the solar system, across hours of time lag, it was difficult to shake the sense that his father was here in all his living, breathing, bludgeoning actuality.
‘Your mother and I,’ Kenneth declared as they walked together through the household, ‘are gravely concerned by this turn of events, Geoffrey. You and your sister have always been wayward, but we have come to accept this, as one accepts any regrettable situation that one cannot influence. But at the same time we have always trusted that you would act as a moderating factor, guiding Sunday against her wilder impulses.’
‘I’m not Sunday’s—’ Geoffrey started to protest.
‘She turned her back on responsibility years ago,’ Kenneth steamrollered on. He was a thin, elegant-looking man with precise symmetrical features and the hushed, disapproving manner of a senior librarian. ‘Preferring a life of self-indulgence and hedonism instead of bearing her familial obligations. You have been little better, but at least in you we still see glimmerings of decency. You waste time with elephants when you could be applying that useful mind to better purpose. But at least you put the animals before your own welfare, as the rest of us have put the family ahead of our own.’
‘You live in luxury, Father, and you gallivant around the solar system at the drop of a hat. In what sense are you putting anything before your own welfare?’ Geoffrey was listless and in the mood for an argument. He’d just been contacted by another research team, complaining about his near-exclusive access to the M-group. The last thing he needed was someone else poking around inside Matilda’s head, or for that matter any of her herd members. He could hold them off if necessary but the fact that he had to defend his research corner at all made him prickly.
The golem processed his answer. ‘You were with her on the Moon recently – this much we know from Hector and Lucas. Something you did or said must have prompted this bizarre action of hers.’
‘I can’t imagine what.’ He shrugged. ‘If you doubt me, play back that last ching conversation between me and Sunday, the one you were undoubtedly listening in on. Did I sound like I approved of or even knew about her trip to Mars in advance?’
In the same hushed, unperturbed tone that characterised most of his statements, Kenneth replied, ‘I am entirely unaware of this conversation.’
‘Right. And there are pigs circling Kilimanjaro even as we speak. Look, take it up with my sister. She wouldn’t listen to me even if I gave enough of a shit about what you think to try arguing her out of it.’
‘Sunday is frozen now, as you are well aware. Her ship is on its way. Nothing can stop her arrival at Mars.’
‘So you may as well start dealing with it.’
‘This troubles us, Geoffrey. Quite aside from the “why”,
He thought of his parents, of Kenneth and Miriam, and wondered what exactly was going through their heads now, at this exact moment, on faraway Titan. He very much doubted that the outcome of this conversation was uppermost in Kenneth’s concerns. Kenneth projected versions of himself wherever they were required, sometimes more than one at a time. The fact that this version gave the impression of being bothered about Sunday didn’t mean that she was more than a passing concern to the real Kenneth.
‘As difficult as it is for you to grasp, maybe she made some money out of her art,’ Geoffrey said.
Kenneth looked sympathetic, as if he had unwelcome, even dire news to impart. ‘In the last two years, Sunday has made exactly two large sales, both to anonymous off-world buyers. The rest has been demeaning piecework. A job here, a job there. Barely enough to keep a roof over her head. Do you want the honest truth of it?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Sunday is a competent artist, nothing more. She has her moments, her flashes. But that won’t buy her fame and fortune, and it certainly won’t buy her posterity.’
‘You don’t know anything about her,’ Geoffrey told the golem. ‘There’s not a single piece of my sister’s life that you’re even capable of understanding.’ But the idea that Kenneth had knowledge of Sunday’s finances struck him as entirely too plausible.
