‘How would you characterise your ongoing business relationship with these people?’
‘I’m an artist. The Pans need art to get their ideas across. Doesn’t mean I’ve bought the T-shirt’
The golem paused. Its cleverness was paper-thin. It could emit statements and responses that sounded plausible, but the swerves and hairpins of normal human conversation left it befuddled. ‘This visit to Mars comes hard on the heels of your brother’s visit to the Moon. Even the most casual observer might reasonably posit a causative link between the two developments.’
‘Conclude what you like. Not my problem.’
‘Geoffrey was tasked to investigate a matter on behalf of the family. Whatever he may have told you, visiting you was not the sole purpose of his trip.’
‘In which case you’ve just made a big fucking mistake in mentioning it now, haven’t you?’
The golem’s face became a death mask pulled too tight. ‘There is something else,’ it continued, after a pause. ‘An incident on the Chinese Lunar border, and a demonstrable Panspermian connection. Your associate Chama was arrested and then released, under terms of restraint.’
‘It was nothing to do with me.’
‘The incident took place near Eunice’s crash site.’ The golem leaned forwards and spoke with particular intensity. ‘What did Geoffrey find in the Central African Bank? Apart from the glove, which we know about.’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘It behoves you to show responsibility, Sunday. In these times of economic uncertainty, the continued good standing of the Akinya name must be paramount in our concerns.’
‘Good standing?’ She was thinking back to her treatment at immigration. ‘They hate our name, even here. You think I give a damn about preserving that?’
Again the golem appeared unsure how to respond. ‘Akinya Space is a building block,’ it declared. ‘Thousands depend on us directly for employment and welfare. Millions indirectly, through secondary contracts and business transactions. Billions more, by dint of our mere existence. Our machines bring valuable raw materials from across the system, from the main belt to the Trans-Neptunian iceteroids. Without that dependable flow, the entire infrastructure of human settlement and colonisation would falter.’
‘I’m not trying to bring down human civilisation, Lucas. That would imply that I give a shit about it.’
‘Our concern is that Eunice may have had self-destructive impulses. We worry that whatever was in that box was a metaphorical time bomb, planted under the family by a bitter, resentful old woman.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘Please do not doubt the seriousness of my concerns, or the lengths Hector and I will go to to protect this family.’
Sunday sat in silence, as if she was giving the golem’s words due consideration. Only when a suitable interval had passed did she allow herself to start speaking. ‘Cousin, we’re not in Africa any more. This is not the household. We’re on Mars now, a long way from home. I owe you nothing. This is my life and I do what I want with it. I do not want to speak to you again while I’m here. I do not even want to see you again. So please leave us alone, before I make exactly the kind of scene you’d really like to avoid.’
‘This may not be Africa,’ the golem said, ‘but nor is it the Descrutinised Zone. You’re in the Surveilled World now, Sunday.’ He moved to stand, rising from the stool with the oiled precision of a periscope. ‘And it runs on our rules, not yours.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She worked quickly, but not because she considered the commission beneath her. It was simply the way she always approached her art. Preparation, forethought, hours of meditation, then an explosion of swift and decisive action, like the quick and merciful descent of a sword. Execution, in every sense of the word.
The morning after her arrival in Crommelin, she had chinged back to the Pan lodge on the edge of Valles Marineris, into a proxy this time rather than the warmblood body of Holroyd’s nurse. She had made her preferences known, and the Pans had abided by them. Now Magdalena was free to do her chores, and Sunday was wearing a wasp-waisted black mechanical mannequin. It was a recent model, ornamented with pastel-glowing vines and limb-entwining daisy chains.
‘I meant to say that I’ve arranged a guide for you,’ Holroyd announced. ‘He has experience in the Evolvarium, which you’ll definitely need. Not many people go anywhere near that place without good reason, usually involving a commercial interest. You’re still certain you don’t want to subcontract this operation to . . . specialists?’
‘I came to Mars for a reason, Mister Holroyd.’
‘That was before you found out where your grandmother had buried the next item.’ Holroyd waited for Magdalena to snip away a thumbsized growth from one of his chest-spines, leaving a weeping milky wound. If there was pain, he was careful not to show it. ‘That development is . . . unfortunate,’ he went on, ‘but I suppose we can’t blame her for not seeing this far ahead.’
‘She could have saved us all a lot of bother and just put the first and last clue in the same place,’ Sunday said.
‘That obviously wasn’t her intention.’
The sculpture was nearing, if not completion, than at least the point where the probability of success or failure could rightly be judged. Sunday had begun with an upright cylinder of lustrous silver-grey material, mounted on a plinth. The material, which stood nearly as tall as Sunday herself, was active clay: an inert medium saturated with nanomachines at a density of five per cent by both weight and volume. The machines were programmed to respond to gestural and proximal cues from Sunday’s proxy-driven hands, moving not just their own bodies but the inert matrix in which they were embedded.
Sunday couldn’t see the machines themselves, but their effect on the material was obvious enough. She only had to skim her fingers near the working surface and the clay would repel, flinching back in channels or grooves or wide, scalloped curves depending on the precise orientation of her hand and fingers. As it deformed, the clay turned reflective. It obeyed pseudo fluid dynamics, knotted with eddies and turbulence, forming rippling, surflike sheets or bubbling globular mirrored extrusions, like mercury slowed down a thousand times. Once her hand was withdrawn, the active clay froze into its last configuration. By bringing in the other hand, creating opposing vectors of repulsion, Sunday could coax the matter into solid geometries of surprising complexity.
