Free Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds

catch. He opened it and looked inside.
    The box contained a glove.
    A glove, from a spacesuit. Fabric layers interspersed with plastic or composite plating, lending flexibility and strength. The fabric was silvery or off-white – hard to judge in the vault’s sombre lighting – and the plates were beige or maybe pale yellow. At the cuff-end of the glove was an alloy connector ring, some kind of blue-tinted metal inset with complicated gold-plated contacts that would presumably lock into place when the glove was fixed to the suit sleeve. The glove had been cleaned because, despite its apparent grubbiness, his hands stayed unsoiled.
    That was all there was. Nothing clutched in the fingers, nothing marked on the exterior. He couldn’t see anything lodged inside. He tried pushing his hand into it, but couldn’t get his thumb-joint past the wristband.
    Geoffrey didn’t know whether he felt disappointed or relieved. A bit of both, maybe. Relieved that there was nothing here to taint Eunice’s memory – no incriminating document linking her to some long-dead tyrant or war criminal – but subtly let down that there wasn’t something more intriguing, some flourish from beyond the grave, the fitting capstone that her life demanded. It wasn’t enough just to retire to Lunar orbit, live out her remaining days in the Winter Palace and die.
    He started to put the glove back in the box, preparing to stow the box back in the cabinet.
    And stopped. He couldn’t say why, save the fact that the glove seemed to merit more attention than he had given it. The one constant of Eunice’s life was that she was practically minded, scathing of sentiment and pointless gesture. She wouldn’t have put that glove there unless it meant something – either to her, or to whoever was supposed to find it after her death.
    Geoffrey slipped the glove into his sports bag. He put an Ashanti FC sweatshirt on top, jammed his baseball cap on top of that, resealed the bag and placed the now-empty box back into the cabinet. He pressed the cabinet back into the wall, whereupon it clicked into place and the green light changed to red.
    He opened the external door and stepped out of the vault.
    ‘All done,’ Geoffrey told the bank woman. ‘For now, anyway. I take it there’ll be no difficulties gaining access again?’
    ‘None at all, sir,’ Marjorie Hu said. If she had any interest in what he had found in the box, she was doing a good job of hiding it. This is a big deal for me , Geoffrey thought: family secrets, clandestine errands to the Moon, safe-deposit boxes with mysterious contents. But she must bring a dozen people down here every week.
    With the glove still in his possession, he made his way to the underground railway station. Transparent vacuum tubes punched through the terminal’s walls at different levels, threading between platforms connected by spiral walkways and sinuous escalators. Everything was glassy and semitranslucent. There were shopping plazas and dining areas, huge multi-storey sculptures and banners, waterfalls, fountains and a kind of tinkling, cascading piano music that followed him around like a lost dog.
    He strolled to a quiet corner of the concourse and voked a call to Lucas. When a minute had passed without Lucas picking up, he diverted the request to Hector. Three seconds later Hector’s figment – dressed in riding boots, jodhpurs and polo shirt – was standing in front of him.
    ‘Good of you to check in, Geoffrey. How’s your journey been so far?’
    ‘Pretty uneventful. How’re things back home?’
    ‘You haven’t missed any excitement.’ Lunar time lag made it seem as if Hector had given the question deep consideration. ‘Now – concerning that small matter we asked you to look into? Have you by any chance—’
    ‘It’s done, Hector. You can pass the word to Lucas as well – I tried calling him, but he didn’t answer. Maybe his empathy shunt short-circuited.’
    ‘Lucas broke a leg this morning –