Paw-Prints Of The Gods (16 page)

“A holovid star?”
Fornax smiled. Newbrum was more of a backwater than she thought if
they bestowed celebrity status upon someone like her, an
ex-presenter of
Cosmic Cooking
and reporter for the equally
obscure
Weird Universe
. Now she saw her visitor properly she
was struck by how much the girl reminded her of a younger version
of herself. With a sweep of her hand she invited Philyra inside.
“Fine by me, kid. Make yourself at home.”

Philyra entered the
room and hesitantly looked for somewhere to sit. Fornax reached for
a panel by the door and pressed the control to convert the bed into
seating. The bed began to retract upon itself, gave an almighty
groan and shuddered to a halt. Philyra looked at her, shrugged and
gave the bed a good solid kick with her boot. The bed lurched into
motion again and collapsed into the reassuring shape of a sofa.

“Newbrum’s like that,”
Philyra said, sitting down. “Nothing works properly.”

“So I see,” murmured
Fornax. “Care for a drink?”

She felt Philyra’s
eyes follow her as she retrieved the bottle from the sink, cracked
it open and poured two generous measures. Fornax had brought a few
bottles of Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir with her from Los Angeles,
having been warned off Ascension local brew.

“I am only fifteen,”
Philyra pointed out, but took the offered glass.

“In this business,
being young is an asset, not a crime,” replied Fornax. She sat down
beside her. “So you’re a reporter? And you want to interview me for
your school paper. That’s very sweet.”

Philyra blushed.
“Actually, no. I want your help.”

“My help?”

“I want to be a
holovid presenter, just like you,” Philyra confessed. Fornax smiled
and waited for the pre-prepared speech, for the girl was trying her
best to stop the words coming out in a mad rush. “It’s the only
thing I’ve ever wanted to do! I’m here because I’d like you to take
me on as your assistant while you’re in Newbrum. I’m quick to
learn, really keen and don’t expect you to pay me. Unless you
really want to,” she added hopefully.

Fornax smiled and let
the moment drift into silence with a lingering sip of wine.

“That’s quite a
pitch,” she said, as Philyra began to fidget. “The answer’s
no.”

“I could get inside
information,” offered Philyra. “I know students at the dig.”

“The answer’s still
no, kid.”

“I’m not totally
clueless. I have broadcast experience!”

“Really?” Fornax
raised a surprised eyebrow. “That’s cool. What exactly?”

“I was at the Epsilon
Eridani peace conference on Daode late last year,” Philyra told
her. “I did an undercover report on the plot to brainwash Raja
Surya.”

“That was you?” Fornax
remembered a political journalist friend of hers getting quite
excited at the time. “Maybe you do have what it takes. You say you
know people on site?”

Philyra nodded. “A
girl named Ravana,” she said, then blushed. “And a boy called
Xuthus. He’s from Bradbury Heights.”

“A boy, eh?” Fornax
smiled, seeing the girl’s sudden coy expression. “Not that I’ve
been directed anywhere near the dig itself. I’m down to interview
some professor at Bradbury Heights and maybe do a bit of digging of
my own into these black-market artefacts. I don’t think you can
help me with that. Do you know anyone at the university?”

Philyra pulled a face.
“That bunch of fat heads? They’re all rich, stuck-up Americans who
think they’re the centre of the Universe,” she retorted, speaking
with venom that took Fornax by surprise. “Xuthus is the only one
who speaks to me as if I’m human.”

“And he’s on
Falsafah,” reflected Fornax. “So you don’t have any useful
contacts?”

“I have a friend at
the spaceport,” Philyra suggested cautiously. “One of the ground
crew. If there’s any strange deliveries coming into Newbrum, he
would know.”

“Is that so?”

Philyra shrugged.
Fornax was pleased with the information, albeit unaware Philyra was
thinking of Endymion, who would probably be the last person to
notice anything odd happening around him and so laid-back he could
fall asleep pushing a broom.

“A spy in the
spaceport,” Fornax mused and smiled. A spot of investigative
journalism was just what she needed to restart her stalled career.
“If there’s one thing I could teach you, it’s that this business is
not about what you know, but who you know.”

“Is that a yes?” asked
Philyra excitedly. “Can I be your assistant?”

“Hell, why not.”
Fornax took another sip of wine. “If nothing else, you can help me
make sense of life in this crazy dome.”

* * *

The
Dandridge
Cole
was the second of two asteroid colony ships launched
towards the Barnard’s Star system a century ago and the only one to
arrive. The oblong lump of detritus from the birth of the Solar
System was ten kilometres long and half as much wide, inside which
had been hewn a vast cylindrical chamber five kilometres long and a
kilometre in diameter. At the centre of this cavern sat the
artificial sun, suspended upon three five-hundred-metre radial
pylons, which had the freighter
Platypus
not crashed into it
several months before would now be shining upon a concave country
landscape of farms and villages. The affectionately-known hollow
moon had been Quirinus’ and Ravana’s home for over nine years. Now
the pilot was back, he found it a cold, grim place in more ways
than one.

Quirinus stared at the
holovid screen, his heart thumping harder with each passing second.
Ravana had never let him down like this before. Behind him,
Professor Wak nervously pretended to be busy with various pieces of
workshop equipment, with the air of someone dreading the cue to say
something reassuring. Wak had spent the last few months virtually
alone on the
Dandridge Cole
and social conventions were
easily forgotten when the only regular company kept was with
maintenance robots.

“Are you quite sure?”
asked Quirinus. On the screen before him was the pilot of the
Sir Bedivere
, a rather surly man who did not seem at all
pleased that Quirinus had called during a complicated orbital
insertion. “She wasn’t at Arallu Depot?”

“Not as far as I’m
aware,” the pilot said wearily.

“Did anyone from the
excavation come to meet you?”

“Doctor Jones and
three of his students,” he replied. “Professor Cadmus stayed behind
at the dig for some reason. Probably because he owes me a drink,
the tight little...”

“Hey, that kid was
asking after the Indian girl,” interrupted a voice off screen, the
owner of which Quirinus assumed was the ship’s co-pilot. “They
thought she’d come back with us last time. The boy was down with
some seriously bad vibes.”

“She didn’t,”
reiterated the pilot before Quirinus could ask the question again.
“I’m sure your daughter is fine, but if you’re worried I suggest
you contact the authorities on Aram. They can put a message through
to Que Qiao police on Falsafah.”

“Yes, but...” began
Quirinus.

“I can’t help you,”
said the pilot. “Please don’t call me again.”

“Charming,” muttered
Quirinus. The screen went blank.

With a heavy sigh, he
rose from his seat and walked to the window. There was little to
see, for the cavern in the heart of the spinning asteroid was in
darkness, as it had been ever since the evacuation of the hollow
moon some months before. The light streaming from the windows of
Dockside was enough to show the heavy frost upon the barren ground
outside, but the streets of the deserted hamlets beyond were unlit;
with fuel supplies low, Wak was running the remaining fusion plant
at minimum power and doing all he could to conserve power. The only
lights visible outside were the faint electric flares of welding
torches high within the frame of the artificial sun, where robots
were busy fitting new energy coils and reflectors to replace those
damaged by the crash of the
Platypus
.

“Perhaps she’s busy,”
Wak suggested, breaking the silence.

“Busy?” exclaimed
Quirinus. “Too busy to bother with the once-a-fortnight chance to
call her father? No, something’s wrong.”

He whirled away from
the window. With a determined grimace, he strode across the
workshop towards the door, a bemused Wak not far behind.

Dockside completely
encircled the inner front end of the hollow moon, in a curious
strip of ramshackle buildings wedged together in a loop over three
kilometres long. As it was currently the only part of the
Dandridge Cole
with heat and light, many of the abandoned
family cabins now housed pigs, chickens and other asylum seekers
from the hollow moon’s frozen farms. The smell of hay and animal
sweat mingled with that of hot oil and ozone in an uneasy alliance
between nature and machine.

Quirinus stormed
through the party of ducks outside the Dockside canteen, through a
labyrinth of narrow corridors and into one of the two shuttle
maintenance bays built into the rock of the asteroid. It was here
his ship the
Platypus
had been docked ever since being
pulled from the wreckage of the sun many months before. From its
broken nose to the dented rear fins, the freighter had seen better
days. The ship’s cylindrical purple and white hull was deep in
dust, its undercarriage tyres were badly in need of air and
maintenance hatches hung open all along the lower half of the
fuselage. The beak-like sonic shield generator at the bow of the
craft was encased in scaffolding, upon which a multi-limbed robot
brandished its screwdriver and soldering-iron fingers, busy with
repairs.

Quirinus crossed the
graffiti-strewn concrete hangar to the spacecraft’s open port-side
airlock, strode up the cargo bay ramp and entered the ship’s hold.
The
Platypus
began life as a standard Mars-class
interplanetary freighter, but its carrying capacity had long since
been drastically reduced by the addition of an extra-dimensional
drive, a centrifugal passenger carousel and additional fuel tanks,
leaving the cargo bay somewhat cramped even when empty. Yet
something was present, for the strange tendril-like growths that
had taken over the ship were growing thick and fast inside the
hold. Quirinus was not sure it was right that the cargo bay felt
more like a cave made by the roots of a huge tree.

He warily dodged a
swaying tendril and crossed to the ladder running up the front wall
of the hold. Halfway up was the metre-wide crawl tunnel that led to
the flight deck through the centre of the carousel, the latter
being a narrow barrel-like passenger cabin that spun like a
miniature version of the hollow moon to generate the illusion of
gravity against its inner wall. The voices drifting through from
the flight deck were not, as Quirinus expected, the customary
heated argument between Momus and the ship’s onboard computer.

“Zotz?” he called. “Is
that you up there?”

“We both are!” Zotz’s
voice replied.

Quirinus scrambled up
the ladder and deftly passed through the tunnel to the flight deck,
taking care to not fall through the open hatch to the stationary
carousel on the way. He emerged to find Momus and Zotz idly
standing and staring into an open ceiling maintenance hatch, not
looking at all busy. Ravana’s electric cat lay curled upon the
co-pilot’s seat, idly playing with a long piece of tendril emerging
from a nearby control panel. Quirinus dropped into the pilot’s seat
and heard the muffled clangs of Wak’s mangled prosthetic left hand
upon the cargo bay ladder, interspersed by various muttered
curses.

“It’s easier in zero
gravity,” Zotz remarked. He cringed at the thud of a head upon the
crawl tunnel roof. “Dad hates spaceships.”

“It’s hard to love
this frigging heap,” muttered Momus.

Quirinus gave him a
steely glare. Wak emerged from the tunnel wearing a scowl and
sullenly took a seat. With a sigh, Quirinus turned his attention to
the console.

“Ship!” he called.
“Report status. Just the headlines, mind.”

“System breakdown as
follows.” The measured female tones of the
Platypus’
artificial intelligence unit sounded far too calm, given the state
of the ship. “Life-support systems are on standby and functioning
normally. Port and starboard main drive turbines, fuel pumps and
intercoolers show signs of wear beyond safe tolerances, as do the
shattered nerves of the abused AI unit. Upper and lower plasma
drive injector assemblies require manual inspection and possibly
complete overhaul. Main fuel tanks are empty, devoid of purpose and
symbolic of the universe at large. Radiation shield plasma pump
requires recharging; sonic shield generator is currently under
repair. Faults remain on carousel drive unit, forward radar
detector module, forward visual scanners, flight-deck
air-conditioning unit and maintenance pod door. Gaps remain in my
memory banks and I am continuing to run checks on my sanity.
Sensors detect a bird’s nest in the rear port undercarriage
housing, damage to the starboard tailfin that requires immediate
attention, a faulty light unit in the washroom, a...”

“That’s enough,” said
Quirinus, with another sigh. “More than enough.”

“Why do AIs always
speak with a frigging woman’s voice?” asked Momus, frowning.
“Sexist, that is. And how come it refers to itself like that?”

“What’s wrong with the
way the
Platypus
talks?” asked Zotz.

“A spacecraft should
talk like a man!” said Momus. “And not sound insane!”

Wak peered cautiously
into the blackened space behind an open maintenance hatch. “The
bomb maybe did more damage than we thought,” he suggested.

Quirinus heard a
squeak of fear over the cabin speakers. The ship would not normally
depart from standard scripts, or enter a conversation uninvited
except to issue a warning, but it sounded almost as if the AI was
tempted to ask a question.