Blue Remembered Earth (60 page)

But no. After ten minutes, a much smaller vehicle detached from the head of the mining ship and resumed the original approach vector. They studied the tiny ball-shaped craft at high-mag via the
Quaynor
’s own cameras. It was the kind of short-range ship-to-ship ferry that could also serve as an escape capsule or single-use re-entry vehicle.

‘Should have seen this coming,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Hector doesn’t want the
Kinyeti
’s crew getting any closer to the Winter Palace than necessary. Still playing family secrets close to his chest.’

‘
Kinyeti
is withdrawing,’ Arethusa said as the bigger ship fired a string of steering motors along its spine. ‘Guess they’ll be returning to collect Hector, but for the moment he’s told them to keep the hell away.’

‘They’ll be paid well enough not to ask awkward questions,’ Geoffrey said.

Once he was on his way, it only took Hector twenty minutes to complete the crossing to the Winter Palace. Using the capsule’s micro-thrusters, he executed one inspection pass, spiralling around the station’s cylinder from end to end before closing in for final docking. If the Winter Palace had queried the little ship’s approach authorisation – and then given clearance to commence final docking manoeuvres – there was no practical way to intercept that tight-beamed comms traffic from the
Quaynor
. Geoffrey could only presume that they would be challenged on their own approach.

‘Synching for dock,’ Gilbert said as Hector’s ship went into a slow roll, matching the station’s centrifugal spin rate. ‘Contact and capture in five . . . four . . . three . . .’

The capsule docked. Clamp arms folded down to secure it. Two or three minutes passed and then there was an exhalation of silvery glitter from the airlock collar. A gasp of escaping pressure, held there since the last time the lock was activated, and then the seals locked tight. The tiny capsule was almost lost in the details of the station’s endcap docking and service structures.

‘Lining us up for the other pole,’ Gilbert said, tapping commands into one of the fold-down keypads. ‘Think we can pass through the entire structure?’

‘It’s just a big hollow tube, with
Winter Queen
running down the middle,’ Geoffrey said. ‘We shouldn’t have any problems, especially as Arethusa already chinged aboard not so long ago.’

‘I only saw what she let me see,’ Arethusa warned.

Hector’s transfer into the smaller ship had eaten into his lead over the
Quaynor
, but they were still thirty minutes from docking. Geoffrey drummed his fingertips, the seconds crawling by with agonising slowness. He couldn’t see Hector taking his time inside, no matter the novelty value of being able to roam at will through Eunice’s private kingdom.

They were fifty kilometres out when the first challenge came: shrill and automated, fully in keeping with Eunice’s general policy of not extending a magnanimous welcome to visitors. ‘Unidentified vehicle on approach heading one-one-nine, three-one-seven: you do not have docking or fly-by authorisation. Please adjust your vector to comply with our mandatory exclusion volume.’ The voice, which was speaking Swahili, could easily have passed for his grandmother’s. ‘If you do not adjust your vector, we cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by our anti-collision systems.’

‘Hold the course,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Let her – it – know we mean business. Eunice: are you listening to me?’

‘I’m here,’ the construct said, deigning not to project a figment into what was already a cramped space.

‘Make yourself heard by everyone present, including Arethusa. No reason for them not to listen in on our conversation.’

‘Sunday wouldn’t like that.’

‘Do it anyway. I’m ordering you.’

There was a barely measurable pause. ‘It’s done. They can hear me now.’

‘Good.’ Geoffrey looked around at his companions, trusting that they’d settle for asking questions later. ‘I’m afraid there’s no time to bring you up to speed right now, Eunice, but we need docking permission for the Winter Palace.’

‘Tell it you’re on Akinya business.’

There was little point seeking the construct’s guidance if he was not willing to give her suggestions the benefit of the doubt. ‘Mira – am I patched through?’

‘Say your piece,’ Gilbert said.

‘This is Geoffrey Akinya, grandson of Eunice. I am aboard the deep-space vehicle
Quaynor
, requesting approach and docking authorisation.’ He waited a moment, then, for all that it sounded pompous, added, ‘I am on important family business.’

‘Approach approval has already been assigned to Hector Akinya. No further docking slots are available.’

Geoffrey ground his teeth. ‘Hector is docked at one pole; we can come in at the other.’

‘No further docking slots are available,’ the voice repeated, but this time with an edge of menace.

‘I have the right to come in,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Disarm your anti-collision systems and give me clearance for the unoccupied dock. You have no choice but to comply with a family instruction.’

‘Your identity is not verified. Desist approach and adjust your vector.’

‘It doesn’t believe you’re you,’ Eunice said.

Geoffrey bit off a sarcastic response before it left his mouth. ‘Why did it accept Hector, and not me?’

‘Hector came in on an Akinya vehicle, showing Akinya registration – the same way Memphis would have done. The Winter Palace had no reason not to let him through.’

He grimaced. ‘Mira – can we fake a civil registration?’

‘Not infallibly, not legally and most certainly not now, given that the habitat already has us pegged as being under different ownership.’ Gilbert shot him an apologetic glance. ‘You’re just going to have to talk your way through this one, Geoffrey. Even Jumai can’t help us until we’re docked.’

‘Need some ideas here, Eunice,’ he said.

‘If the habitat recognises the notion of family visiting rights, if it grasps that Hector is an Akinya and it therefore has an obligation to let him dock – then it
may
be running something a little bit like me. Much less sophisticated, of course – but a model of Eunice, all the same, and with an attempt at an embedded knowledge base.’

‘All well and good, but I’m not sure that gets us anywhere,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Talk to it. Explain that you are Geoffrey Akinya, and that you’re prepared to submit to questioning to prove it.’

‘Think that’s going to work?’ Jumai asked him.

‘Don’t know. Any other bright ideas, short of fighting our way past anti-collision systems? Those are basically
guns
, in case you missed the briefing.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘I do get the fact that there are real risks here.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Geoffrey said. And he meant it, too: of all the people he knew, it was hard to think of anyone less risk-averse than Jumai.

‘Look,’ she said, giving him a conciliatory look, ‘if the construct says this is our best shot—’

‘Are we still on air?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘Say your piece,’ Gilbert confirmed.

He cleared his throat. ‘This is Geoffrey Akinya speaking again. I have no formal means of establishing my identity, not at this range. But I’m willing to talk. Eunice knew me. Maybe not well, but as well as she knew anyone in our family. If there’s something, anything, that I can say to prove myself . . . please ask. I will do my best to answer.’

There was silence. Jumai opened her mouth to speak, but she had not even begun to draw breath when the habitat answered again.

‘Disengage all external comms except for this tight-beam link. Any attempt to query the aug will be detected.’

‘It’s done,’ Arethusa said.

After a moment the Winter Palace said, ‘Wooden elephants, a birthday present. How many were there, and how old would Geoffrey Akinya have been when he received them?’

He looked around at his fellow travellers. ‘I would have been five, six,’ he mouthed, keeping his words low enough not to be picked up on the ship-to-station channel. ‘I don’t remember!’

‘I saw those elephants,’ Jumai said, in the same hushed voice. ‘You told me you didn’t even think they’d come from Eunice.’

‘There was a nanny from Djibouti looking after Sunday and at the time . . . I thought maybe she’d got them, or maybe Memphis.’

‘Ask the construct,’ Gilbert said.

‘Can’t. There’s a copy of her assigned to me, like a cloud hovering around me in data-space, but she’s not inside my skull. Without the aug she can’t tell me anything.’

‘I must have an answer,’ the habitat said. ‘How old was Geoffrey Akinya?’

‘Six,’ he said. ‘Six elephants, and . . . I was six at the time. My sixth birthday.’

Silence again, and then, ‘Approach authorisation granted. Proceed for docking at the trailing pole.’

Geoffrey let out a gasp of bottled-up tension. ‘We’re in. Or at least allowed a little closer.’

‘How’d you figure it out, five or six?’ Jumai asked.

‘I didn’t! It was a guess.’

‘Lucky fucking guess.’

‘She knew about the elephants,’ Geoffrey said, as much to himself as anyone present. ‘She may not have bought them . . . but I didn’t even think she cared enough to know—’

‘Enough to make it the billion-yuan question,’ Jumai said.

‘We’re lined up,’ Mira Gilbert said. ‘Still off-aug, and we’ll stay that way for the time being.’ Then her tone changed. ‘Wait. Something’s happening with the
Kinyeti
. Thruster activity.’

‘Where’s she headed?’ Geoffrey asked.

‘Give me a few seconds to nail the vector.’ Gilbert watched and waited, tapping commands into her fold-out keyboard and studying the complex multicoloured readouts as they squirmed through various scenarios. ‘Resumed her approach for the Winter Palace,’ she said, sounding doubtful of her own analysis. ‘That can’t be right, can it? He’s only been in there, what, twenty minutes?’

‘Maybe that’s all he needs,’ Jumai said.

‘He still wouldn’t want to call in the
Kinyeti
,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Not when he has his own means of getting back. So maybe there’s a problem with the ferry, or he’s told the
Kinyeti
to block our approach to the other dock.’

‘We have approach authorisation,’ Arethusa said. ‘If he blocks us, this becomes an interjurisdictional incident.’

‘I think it already became one the moment I signed up for citizenship,’ Geoffrey said.

‘I’m slowing our own approach,’ Gilbert said. ‘Want to see what the
Kinyeti
’s aiming for, before we get in any closer.’

Geoffrey reminded himself that he wasn’t chinging here, his flesh and blood body safely back in Africa. He was physically present, aboard a huge, ponderous, fragile-as-gossamer machine, something that could no more tolerate a collision with another of its kind than it could execute dogfight course changes. And with two delicate ships being drawn to the candleflame of the Winter Palace, the chances of an accident, let alone a deliberate obstructional act, could only increase.

‘
Kinyeti
is ten kays out,’ Gilbert said, a few minutes later. ‘Looks as if they’re lining up for . . . the docking node where Hector’s already clamped on. That make sense to anyone?’

‘Might be the only entry point they trust,’ Jumai said.

Geoffrey nodded. ‘Let’s wait and see what their intentions are.’

A second or so later, Arethusa said, ‘Pirates.’

She had seen it an instant before the rest of them: an eruption of pinprick light from either end of the habitat’s cylinder, the bright spillage of magnetic and optical collision-avoidance devices as they directed mass and energy against whatever the Winter Palace’s autonomous defence systems had identified as an incoming threat. Not an enemy, because the notion of ‘enemy’ required the supposition of intent, of directed sentience, but rather something dumb and non-negotiable, space debris or a marauding chunk of primeval rock and ice, sailing too close for comfort.

It took Geoffrey a moment to interpret Arethusa’s statement. There were no pirates. But there were
proximal impact ranging and target eradication systems
, and in English the acronym was precisely the word Arethusa had uttered. Guns, basically, but rigorously fail-safed, incapable of being directed at anything other than a real, imminent collision hazard.

Non-weapons.

They had stood down upon Hector’s approach, but they had not shown the
Kinyeti
the same courtesy. A moment after he grasped what was happening, Geoffrey saw the flowering of multiple impact points along the
Kinyeti
’s hull, attended by puffs of sudden silver brightness as metal and ceramics underwent instantaneous vaporisation. The best the pirates could do was subject her to a continuous disruptive assault, aiming to break up her mass into smaller parts that could be individually bulldozed out of harm’s way using further kinetic-energy volleys.

Most of the ship remained. One of her centrifuge arms had been ripped loose, cartwheeling away on its own new orbit, and all up and down her hull lay a peppering of craters and voids where she had been struck. One of her fuel tanks had been punctured and was now venting furiously, while there was evidence of systemic pressure loss from three or four rupture points in the forward module. The view was clouded by the debris and gases expanding away from the ship itself, cloaking her injuries.