Their blank faces seem less inert. Halliday sees the subtle flinches of sleep.
*
Reverend Corstorphine makes a show of being engrossed in his book. Halliday enjoys the idea that perhaps he is reading the Bible for the first time. All of the clergy here are amateurs. They are only appropriating religion in response to market demands.
“You don’t believe it yourself,” Halliday says.
Corstorphine glances down at the book, for a moment misunderstanding what Halliday is referring to. He removes his spectacles, which have pinched craters into the bridge of his nose.
“I wouldn’t have returned,” Halliday says, “But I can’t let you go on like this. It’s a farce.” There are now only a handful of the team, including himself, who still do not attend Sunday services. From overheard conversations in the canteen it is clear that recent sermons have been filled with talk of the aye-aye’s souls.
The Reverend’s neat goatee is a dark smile beneath his lips. “I merely repeated what you yourself told me.”
They stand side by side to look through the scarred window. The chapel is at the highest point of Tharsis Primrose. They can see over the sculpted barriers to the crescent-shaped sand dunes that shuffle slowly across the Martian plains.
“And the trips to Tithonium Chasma?” Halliday speaks slowly to prevent his voice from cracking. “You encouraged the fools to take those pilgrimages, too?”
“Your colleagues have simply found meaning in an astounding phenomenon. It is comforting to know that God speaks to the aye-ayes as well as to us.”
Halliday’s shoulders slacken. “I think I understand. You assert that God rules the aye-ayes. So then, if we ever do find life out there, we can assume that God’s the boss of them too. Everyone and everything answers to Him. Right?”
He sees Corstorphine’s raised eyebrow reflected in the window.
“It’s blindness,” Halliday continues. “You’re showing God’s work where there is none, only engineering. You’re encouraging these people to ask the wrong questions and find the wrong answers, just to promote your faith.” Annoyed at his own lack of restraint, he changes tack. “When did you leave Earth? Ninety-seven, eight?”
“Yes. Ninety-eight.”
“And you’re smart enough to have read the small print during sign-up. We all donated. Straightforward scanning and uploading of our brain patterns for potential use in templating.” A hollow laugh. “I bet the idea appealed to you. Providing moral guidance to the aye-ayes.”
Like Corstorphine, Halliday had been at school in the eighties, back when ‘aye-aye’ equated to merely ‘vacuum cleaner’ or ‘cook’. Then there had been a miraculous leap in their capabilities at the end of the decade, due to the brain-pattern breakthrough. He remembers the TV shows. Aye-ayes on obstacles courses, aye-ayes flying planes. There was much talk about the march of technological progress. It was the stuff of dreams and school projects.
Halliday retrieves a screen from his jacket pocket and unrolls it on the lectern, ignoring Corstorphine’s protests. He pulls up an image browser and, after a minute’s search, turns the screen towards the Reverend. The screen shows a photo of a blunt, high-walled castle on top of a hillock that spirals upwards from the sea like a snail’s shell. “There. That’s the building I saw in Tithonium Chasma.”
“I know it,” Corstorphine says. He sounds fascinated, despite himself. “That’s Lindisfarne Castle.”
“It was,” Halliday says. “It’s just rubble now. Did you know that Elias Ransome died there during the war?” He shudders, remembering the news-report images of the firestorms after the bombs. Flames and flesh.
The Reverend’s face shows recognition of the name. “And the boy in the stream?”
“Felix Ransome, of course. All those things were his memories, expressed by the aye-ayes through the sculptors. They all share bandwidth. Felix Ransome witnessed his father’s death and then he relived it in his dreams. So the aye-ayes do too.”
Streaks glisten on Reverend Corstorphine’s cheeks. Embarrassed, Halliday busies himself rolling up the screen. “Tell me again that you believe the aye-ayes have souls.”
Corstorphine runs his fingers along the edges of the lectern. His hands stop shaking. When he looks up again, his eyes are cold. “We all require mysteries. The colonists do.”
“Not mysteries. Lies.”
*
In the days and weeks that follow, Halliday approaches nobody. Even once the enthusiasm for pilgrimages to Tithonium Chasma has diminished, the congregation accept the sculptures as proof of the all-encompassing purview of God. Halliday spends his free time alone in his cabin.
He does not only think of Felix Ransome. Halliday donated his own brain patterns twelve years ago, just like Felix, just like all the other would-be colonists. Aye-ayes inspired by his thoughts may still be in service, somewhere on Mars. And if they are, might they not dream his dreams, just like the Foxglove aye-ayes dreamt Felix’s?
Except Halliday doesn’t dream. This in itself makes the prospect more fascinating to him. What would his aye-ayes, if they exist, tell him about himself? He dredges his memories for moments that might hold up against Felix’s firestorms. The early death of Yvonne, his sister. The late death of Constable, his dog.
He must know which of his memories defines him.
Time passes. He makes some calls.
*
Four years later, a contact of a contact is finally able to help. Halliday is directed towards the remote outpost of Wigwam in the Iani Chaos region. His transfer request takes months to be processed and is met with incredulity by the authorities. While the Tharsis region is as bleak as anywhere on Mars, at least there are people there.
Not only does Iani Wigwam contain no human employees, the small base houses no humanoid aye-ayes either. In the workshop there are only rows of sculptors with their suction funnels neatly recessed into their blunt bodies. The single AI processing unit is a white, cuboid block that crouches in the centre of a tiny control room. It hums like a fridge. It has no auditory receptors and no input panel. Halliday stands before it and wonders whether this white box really does hold the blueprint of his brain pattern. Whether it thinks as he thinks. Whether it dreams his dreams.
His only function is to assess and repair the sculptors. It is the first such intervention in a decade and is barely needed; the sculptors are capable of performing many of the repair tasks themselves. He sleeps, reads novels, and maintains the sculptors and the exterior of the base. He waits.
After three weeks, without warning or ceremony, the processing unit sends a silent command to one of the sculptors. Halliday is asleep when it leaves through its low catflap door. Lacking a trundler, he pulls on his suit and follows on foot.
He wanders among the mesas and hillocks of Iani Chaos. Some of the flat-topped blocks are so tall and thin that they could be Earth skyscrapers.
While he walks he reviews the events of his life. He orders and ranks the images. He remembers the time he believed, for an hour or so, that one his girlfriends had shot herself. He remembers becoming lost in the forest near to his house and spending the night beneath the stars. He remembers another girlfriend and the loss of his virginity. He remembers his parents and his friends. He remembers deaths. Bodies piled upon bodies.
He heads away from the distant bump of Iani Wigwam. The terrain underfoot is hard rock so there is no evidence of the sculptor’s tracks. He chooses directions at random. He is prepared to explore the area all day in the hope of finding the sculptor.
At a sandy junction between mesas, he sees traces of tyre tracks. They continue south and meander from side to side between the rock outcrops. They are wandering just like he is wandering, as if pre-empting his steps.
They are his. The steps, the AI fridge, the sculptors. Perhaps he and they identify so strongly that they can even predict where he will walk.
