producing monsters like me than one where we understood all the rules, down to the last tedious footnote. I’m evidence that reality is still capable of tripping us up. As I said, I am not in pain. And recently we have made . . . I won’t call it “progress”, that’s too big a word. But there have been intimations, hints of the possibility of a modest therapeutic breakthrough. The game is not yet lost!’
‘I hope things work out for you, Mister Holroyd.’
‘I try to look on the bright side. That’s vital, don’t you think?’ The hand and arm sank beneath the surface of the fluid. The bed made a decisive clicking noise and the fluid began to bubble vigorously. ‘Well, to business, I suppose – and you’ll excuse the abrupt shift in tone, I hope. I’m delighted you’ve made it to Mars, and you have my assurance that the Initiative will do all in its power to facilitate your . . . enquiries. You will spend the next two nights in Crommelin Edge, and I hope you’ll take the time to see something of the city and the crater, get your Mars legs. After that, we’ve arranged transportation to Pavonis Mons, or as close as we can reasonably take you. We will of course assist with any further logistical requirements that might arise, within the limits of funds and resources, of course. I hardly need add that there must be some reciprocity, however crass that sounds.’
‘I understand, Mister Holroyd. I wouldn’t have been able to get to Mars without Pan sponsorship. I agreed to take on some commissions, and I’m ready and willing to fulfil that commitment.’
‘Very good, Sunday. I’ve been looking at some of your work, did you know?’
‘I didn’t, sir.’
‘I’m no expert, but I like what I see. There are visible and public ways that you can help the Initiative, and we’ll come to those in due course. But to begin with, I wonder if we might consider a more personal study, as a kind of warm-up exercise?’
‘I’m open to ideas.’
‘I never doubted it. But you may not . . .’ Holroyd faltered. ‘I appreciate that this may not be easy for you, but I wonder if you’d consider a piece that drew its inspiration . . . from me?’
‘As you were, sir, or as you’re meant to be?’
‘No,’ Holroyd corrected gently. ‘As I am, here and now. In all my splendid ugliness. A monument to ignorance and possibility. Hubris and hope. There: I’ve already given you a title. How can you possibly say no?’
Sunday had never felt less enthusiastic about a commission, or less bothered about the title. ‘I don’t suppose I can, sir.’
The door opened and one of the green-uniformed nurses came back in with a trolley. Gleaming chrome instruments rested on it, including something that looked very much like a pair of pruning shears.
‘I really need that drink now,’ Sunday said, when she’d come out of ching.
‘Difficult client?’
‘A prickly customer.’
They found a bar called the Red Menace, on the edge of a glassed-over mall filled with high-end boutiques and expensive souvenir shops. The Red Menace’s stock-in-trade was bad-taste Martian-invasion kitsch, from the slime- green cocktails to the skull-masked bartenders and clanking steam-actuated Wellsian tripods that brought the drinks, clutching glasses in their tentacles and carrying bar-snacks in baskets tucked under their bodies. Heat-rays pulsed through puffs of dry ice, while portentous military music throbbed from underfloor bass speakers.
Sunday should have been appalled, but in fact the bar suited her mood exactly. She was just wiping the salt off the rim of her second Silver Locust – Jitendra was on his third – when she became aware that someone was looking at them from the entrance, standing very still and peering through the scudding gouts of dry ice clouding the bar.
Studying the tall black-skinned man, a sense of profound wrongness washed over her in a clammy wave, as if her every waking assumption had just been annihilated. The shock stole her breath. The universe appeared to stall, stretching a moment into a lifetime.
The shape of his face, the light on the cheekbones, the wide imperial brow. It was one of the cousins.
She touched Jitendra’s hand, and although the effort was almost unbearable, forced herself to breathe and then to speak. ‘Look.’
Jitendra looked at the man and put down his drink. With a calm that felt far out of place, he said, ‘It’s not a person.’
She turned up her own aug threshold, letting the tag inform her that the figure was a golem.
‘Hello,’ it said, arriving at their table. ‘I’m glad you made it here safely. Do you mind if I take a seat?’ The golem tilted its face towards the third chair, the one nobody was sitting in.
‘What do you want with us?’ Sunday asked.
The golem lowered itself into the seat. ‘I am Lucas Akinya’s designated legal presence on Mars.’
‘It’s autonomous,’ Jitendra whispered. ‘Do you think it was here all along, or came with us on the same ship?’
‘Who knows? Lucas and Hector probably have thousands of the fucking things, all over the system, ready to pop up like a slice of toast whenever they need a legal presence.’ She glared at it. ‘I’ll ask you again: what do you want with us?’
‘This visit of yours,’ the golem said, ‘has raised a number of flags. We’ve spoken to Geoffrey. Keeping secrets is not one of his core skills.’
She could see the trap she was being steered into, of disclosing more than she needed to. ‘And what secrets would those be?’
The golem was keeping its voice very low, smiling all the while. ‘You claim to be here on Panspermian business.’
‘I don’t “claim” anything.’
