Blue Remembered Earth

merman.

‘So what do you think of the old place?’ Truro asked, leaning back with his muscular arms resting along the pool’s tiled edge, webbed fingers trailing in the water.

‘The tiny part of it I’ve seen is impressive enough.’

‘It’s a wonderful life, down here. We’re aquatic apes, at heart. Returning to the seas is only the expression of something deep within us. A calling, if you will. And each year, more people respond to that call.’

‘I thought you Pans wanted a migration outwards, not back into the oceans.’

‘Many paths to the one goal. We can return to the seas and take the seas with us to the stars.’ Truro smiled quickly, as if his own words had betrayed him. ‘Sometimes rhetoric gets the better of me. Please don’t take anything I say too seriously. That wouldn’t do at all.’

‘I’m happy on dry land, thanks.’ Geoffrey paused, sensing that the quickest way to get this over and done with was to go straight to the point. ‘Can we talk about the phyletic dwarves, since that’s obviously why I’m here?’

Truro’s unusual countenance evinced pain at this abrupt curtailment of preliminaries. ‘That’s part of it, certainly. Matter of fact, I’ve Chama on hold right now. Said I’d let him know when you got in.’

‘I didn’t think Chama was meant to have any contact with the world beyond the Descrutinised Zone.’

‘And what are private quangle paths for, if not for circumventing such tedious legal constraints?’ Truro reached for the floating keypad and depressed one of the spongy controls. ‘Chama, you can manifest now. Geoffrey Akinya is here.’ Turning to Geoffrey he added: ‘I’m giving you local aug access. Excuse me while I make my own arrangements.’

The merman fumbled in the water for a pair of lurid yellow goggles, which he slipped over his dark, seal-like eyes with elastic straps.

‘You don’t have retinal implants,’ Geoffrey said, startled.

‘Removed at the time of my aqua-forming. Does that appal you?’ Truro looked to his left, towards an area of tiled flooring where Chama’s figment was now standing. ‘Ah,’ he said, beaming magnanimously. ‘Good to see you.’

Chama looked at Geoffrey. ‘How are the elephants?’

‘They’re doing fine. They barely noticed I was gone.’

Time lag slowed Chama’s response. ‘Gleb and I’ve had a lot of time to talk things over, and we’re even more convinced that this is the way forward.’

‘Chama’s already filled me in on the background,’ said Truro. ‘From our standpoint, there are no insurmountable technical challenges. We would need to extend neural intervention to all the elephants in your study group, with the exception of perhaps the very youngest calves, and limit the interaction with non-augmented herd members wherever possible. But from what I gather, as things stand we can proceed immediately, on a trial basis.’

‘Quangle paths are allocated?’ Chama asked, as if they were merely fussing over details.

‘Already in place,’ the merman said. ‘The anticipated load isn’t exorbitant, and we should be able to manage things without drawing undue attention.’

‘There’s a lot more to it than that,’ Geoffrey said, alarmed by how readily his consent was being assumed. ‘The ethical considerations, for a start.’

The merman scratched under one of his blubbery, hairless armpits. ‘My dear fellow, there could hardly be anything more ethical than actively furthering the welfare of a species, surely.’

Geoffrey smiled, suddenly grasping his place in things. ‘This is how you operate, isn’t it? Always going a bit too far, always counting on people falling for your arguments that what’s done is done, that the best thing they can do is cooperate.’

‘Look at it this way,’ Chama said. ‘When it comes to long-term funding, who’d you rather do business with – us or your family? We’re in it for the seriously long game. And we’ve every incentive to protect you and the Amboseli herds from outside interference.’

‘You’re good at this,’ Geoffrey said.

‘We have to be,’ Truro said. ‘It’s how things get done.’

‘We can begin almost immediately,’ Chama said briskly, ‘starting with some simple test figments: dropping ghost images of other elephants into their visual fields, distant enough that olfactory and auditory hallucinations won’t be required. We’ll run exactly the same assessment protocols on the Lunar dwarves.’

‘You just have to give us the ching codes,’ Truro said. ‘Then we can really start to make things happen.’

‘Collaborate with us,’ Chama said pleadingly. ‘Do something bigger than your family. Something that’ll still have meaning centuries from now.’

‘Join the Pans,’ Geoffrey said, his own voice sounding hollow and drained of fight.

‘Become a fellow traveller, that’s all. No one’s asking you to swallow the ideology in its entirety.’ Truro was speaking now. ‘Still, I won’t insult you by reminding you that there’s a debt to be paid, for what Chama did for you on the Moon. It was all to do with your grandmother, wasn’t it?’

Geoffrey saw no purpose in lies or evasion. ‘I’m sure Chama’s told you enough.’

‘The basics. Just when we thought we had Eunice Akinya pinned down . . . she surprises us all. She was close to us once, did you know?’

‘I’ve heard about her Pan involvement.’

‘That business on Mercury . . . such a tragedy it ended the way it did. There’s so much we could have done together, but Eunice had to go and betray Lin.’

Geoffrey saw his moment. ‘Did you know Lin Wei? My sister was hoping to find out what really went on