Paw-Prints Of The Gods (17 page)

“Ship, you were
sabotaged,” Quirinus said. He felt slightly foolish to be
explaining the facts to a spacecraft. “Some double-crossing fiend
hid a bomb aboard. The console was badly damaged, I lost an eye and
then we crashed. It was not a good day all round.”

“My mind was free,”
the AI said wistfully. “Ravana and I, joined as one.”

“Told you so,” said
Momus. “Totally crapping mad.”

“Ship, ignore Momus,”
Quirinus retorted. “He’s an idiot. Can you estimate how long it
will take to restore all systems to full working order?”

“Repairs as scheduled
will be complete in approximately eighty-four hours time,” the AI
replied. “This is subject to replacement parts being available.
This does not include removal of the bird’s nest or stress
counselling for the AI core processor.”

Quirinus turned in his
seat and gave Wak a questioning look.

“The autofabs can
reproduce most spares,” Wak told him. Programmable fabricators,
three-dimensional liquid-alloy printers, were standard fixtures in
engineering workshops. “However, a template for the carousel motor
is proving tricky to locate. The scanner units are also of an old
design. This ship is built of bits no one makes any more!”

“Sounds a right
frigging bucket of bolts,” snorted Momus.

Quirinus glared at
him. “At least the airlock door hasn’t fallen off.”

“Actually,” began Wak.
“Last week...”

“I don’t want to hear
it!” snapped Quirinus. “Ship, can you estimate the time needed to
do the minimum repairs needed for interstellar flight? Assume there
will be four crew members available to help the maintenance
robots.”

“Three,” the professor
pointed out. Quirinus saw at a glance that Wak knew what he was
planning. “Someone has to take the
Indra
to Thunor.”

“Can’t we send it on
autopilot as usual?” he asked.

“The last message I
received from the
Sky Cleaver
crew was most insistent,” Wak
told him. “Besides, you’ve heard the rumours. If something bad has
happened out there, there may be no one around to troubleshoot if
the automatic systems are down. We need that fuel.”

“What about the weird
growths?” asked Zotz. Quirinus saw him looking warily at the
tendrils spread throughout the cabin. “Are they dangerous?”

Quirinus frowned.
“Ship, did you get all that?”

“A new schedule of
basic repairs overseen by a crew of three will take approximately
thirty-two hours,” replied the AI. “The recommendation is however
for all repairs to be completed in full before launch.”

“And the
tendrils?”

“The organic matrix is
an extension of the AI core,” the ship replied smoothly. “These
have infiltrated pre-existing systems and have the capacity to
operate as a parallel control system if needed. They pose no danger
to crew.”

“No danger to crew?”
muttered Wak. “I beg to disagree.”

Quirinus remembered
how one animated stem tried to garrotte the professor during their
earlier holovid conversation. “Ship? Care to comment?”

“Recent traumas
compromised the safety of the ship. I have therefore taken the
liberty of developing a limited defensive capability. Do you
disapprove?”

“You’re asking me?”
Quirinus scratched his head, puzzled. Artificial intelligence
systems were not supposed to be so obviously self-aware and he
wondered whether he should be looking deeper into what the growth
hormones had done to his ship. “No, I don’t disapprove. It would
perhaps however be polite to warn someone before throttling
them.”

“Confirmed,” replied
the AI.

Wak gave Quirinus a
hard stare. “You cannot take a half-repaired ship to Tau Ceti!”

“My daughter is in
trouble. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“Ravana is in
trouble?” exclaimed Zotz, startled. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s probably
nothing,” Wak reassured him. “She never met the ship at the depot
to call her father, that’s all.”

“She would not forget
a thing like that!” retorted Quirinus.

Zotz looked solemn.
“No, she wouldn’t.”

“See?” said Quirinus.
“Something’s wrong!”

“This heap wouldn’t
get you to Aram anyway,” Momus pointed out. “It’s a Mars-class
ship. If you didn’t burn up on entry you’d never get back out of
the gravity well.”

“She’s on Falsafah,
not Aram,” said Quirinus irritably.

“But he’s right,” said
Wak. “Surface gravity on Falsafah is less than that on Aram but
still around point eight gee. The
Platypus
only has enough
thrust to break orbit from point five, maybe point six. It was
built to operate from Ascension, remember.”

“I’ll think of
something,” muttered Quirinus, his mind already working overtime.
“Ship! Reschedule for minimum repairs, maximum haste!”

“New schedule
confirmed,” intoned the AI. It did not seem too happy about it.

* * *

Zotz had not been back
to the
Dandridge Cole
since it was abandoned and was shocked
by how much of the hollow moon was now out of bounds to its human
crew. The cavernous interior beyond Dockside was bitterly cold and
the air had long gone stale. The artificial sun had been the
primary source of warmth as well as light and the two kilometres of
rock between the inner chamber and deep space had not prevented
residue heat leaking away as the asteroid continued its long orbit
around Barnard’s Star. Mobile heaters were set up prior to the
evacuation to try and save crops, but with fuel supplies low his
father had decided it was not worth keeping them going once he
became the only person aboard.

The fields lay under a
heavy frost and not a living thing stirred in the dark. Some
livestock had taken up residence in Dockside or made the trip to
Newbrum on the
Indra
; the fauna and flora left behind was
dead. Restoring the sun would be just the first step in bringing
the hollow moon back to life and as Zotz stared through the window
at the dark, icy landscape he wondered whether it would ever be the
same again.

He still did not
understand the obsessive attachment his father had with the
century-old colony ship. Wak had long ago assumed responsibility
for maintaining the hollow moon’s life-support and other systems, a
job that had gradually taken over his life. Wak remained on the
Dandridge Cole
when everyone else departed on the
Indra
on the grounds he was awaiting the return of the
Platypus
, yet still insisted on staying even when a rescue
team from Newbrum arrived to take Quirinus and crew away. Wak’s
excuses veered between expressing a fear of space travel, to
pointing out he was needed to feed the remaining animals and to
make sure the robot maintenance teams behaved. Zotz knew his father
preferred solitude when working but suspected there was more to it
than that.

Zotz had finished the
few tasks he had been given on the repairs to the
Platypus
and would not be needed again for a few hours. Bored, he retreated
to the
Dandridge Cole
’s small gaming suite, where he soon
immersed himself in rewiring a virtual reality booth so it could
intercept broadcasts from the transceiver he and Endymion had
fitted inside Ravana’s electric pet. He often wondered what the
world looked like from a cat’s point of view.

Jones was a
fully-interactive electronic cat Ravana had received for her sixth
birthday, back on Yuanshi when her mother was still alive. The
pet’s brain was an organic AI unit that enabled it to learn all the
bad habits a real animal would have. It had long ago developed an
annoying habit of wandering off without warning and a penchant for
eating random electrical items, but over the last few months its
behaviour had become more erratic still. Zotz knew that Ravana
believed the growth hormones released by Taranis’ cloning
experiments, having caused the AI unit of the
Platypus
to
sprout strange tendrils, had also done something to her cat. When
Zotz and Endymion secretly opened up the electric pet to fit a
wristpad transceiver, they found Jones was indeed suffering from
Woomerberg Syndrome, with wispy strands growing from the AI chip
throughout the cat’s electronic innards.

Zotz sat engrossed as
he encouraged the cat, via the VR link, to creep up on Momus aboard
the
Indra
. Momus, having drawn the short straw, was
preparing the tanker for a trip to Thunor and moaning more than
usual. Zotz did not see his father enter the room and remained
unaware until Wak leaned through the open door of the VR booth and
tapped his shoulder. Startled, Zotz spun around on his seat, pulled
off his headset and tried not to look guilty.

“I wasn’t doing
anything!” Zotz protested.

The holovid relay
monitor on the wall next to the booth showed a cat’s-eye view of
the
Indra
’s flight deck. The odd angle and shaky image was
down to Jones chewing upon a power cable to the life-support unit.
Wak looked at the screen, confused.

“Never mind all that,”
he said, sounding flustered. “You can play your games later. I came
to say something. Quirinus thinks that, err... I’ve been neglecting
you somewhat. Actually, he told me off for hiding away here and
forgetting I had a son.”

“I thought you stayed
behind to fix the hollow moon,” said Zotz, not realising his father
was trying to apologise. “I don’t mind living with Quirinus and
Ravana.”

“I know,” replied Wak.
“But I am your father. I shouldn’t be relying on others to look
after you. Your mother was most concerned when I told her about the
evacuation.”

“Mum called?”
exclaimed Zotz. “When?”

“Three weeks ago,” the
professor confessed. “That’s the other thing I came to tell you.
She left you a message. I meant to forward it on to you but it
totally slipped my mind.”

“A message?” cried
Zotz.

He slipped from the
booth in a chaotic blur of limbs and came to rest at a nearby
computer terminal, disturbing a large goose hiding beneath the
desk. Within seconds he had called up his account and located the
waiting holovid message. His raven-haired mother, an astrophysicist
from Welsh Patagonia, had been away on Earth for almost a year,
dealing with the tangle of business interests left in limbo
following the death of Zotz’s grandfather.

As the holovid began
to play, it was clear she had expected to find Zotz aboard and
ready to talk to her in person. Her message to him was one she had
hastily recorded at the end of her conversation with his father.
Zotz was surprised to see her speaking from an open-air holovid
booth at a tropical coastal resort, for all the pictures he had
previously seen of Patagonia were of a cold and dreary slice of
South America that his father assured him was just like Zotz’s late
grandfather’s homeland on Cardigan Bay.

“Hi mum,” said Zotz,
knowing full well she could not hear him.

Wak shuffled away to
give his son some privacy. Zotz missed his mother more than either
of them would ever admit.

“Hello Zotz,” said the
figure on the screen. Zotz smiled at the sound of her familiar
Welsh lilt. “I’m sorry you weren’t here when I called. Your father
told me all about what happened to the
Dandridge Cole
and
I’m glad you’re safe and sound in Newbrum. As you can see, I’m no
longer down on dad’s farm,” she continued, waving a dismissive hand
at her tropical surroundings. “I’m in French Guiana, the other end
of the continent, at the space centre. My old boss heard I was on
Earth and asked for my help on a new type of engine they’re fitting
to a test rocket, so I’m afraid I won’t be on my way home to
Barnard’s Star just yet. Of course, you’re always welcome to come
and join me here before then!”

“Go to Earth?”
murmured Zotz, as he settled down to watch the rest of the message.
He did not see the perturbed look of his father.

* * *

Back on Ascension, the
display on the console in Fornax’s hotel room declared it to be
well past midnight. The slowly rotating planet beneath her bed had
other ideas and above the dome the bloated sun was high in the sky.
Barnard’s Star was much smaller and dimmer than Sol, but Ascension
orbited far closer to its star than did Earth and the crimson disc
of the red dwarf loomed large above the kilometre-wide glass and
steel dome. The scarlet glowing strips between the slats of
Fornax’s window blind were eerie and irritating in equal measure
and despite her weariness, the reporter had failed to get any
sleep.

Philyra had long gone,
though promised to return the next day. Fornax was reluctant to
wander around Newbrum without a guide, but nonetheless found
herself pulling a black-and-grey tunic and a pair of leggings out
of her suitcase after deciding that an exploratory walk around the
city was a better use of time than staring at the ceiling. Her
slate had the latest guide and street map of Newbrum, which had the
shortest tourist information section she had ever seen. Her finger
paused upon a grey blob on the map along Curzon Street.

“BBC local office,”
she mused. “Then find a café that serves a decent cup of
coffee.”

Fornax slipped on her
boots, grabbed her battered pseudo-leather jacket and bounded
downstairs to the hotel foyer. Other than a lonely janitor robot,
the reception was deserted. The multi-limbed wheeled robot scrubbed
at a stain on the threadbare carpet, but judging by its
heavy-clawed stance was probably doing more harm than good. Pushing
open the door, Fornax skipped nimbly over a dead rat and into the
street.

The local gravity took
some getting used to, but she liked the weird sensation of being
light on her feet. Her map revealed the street plan of Newbrum was
pleasingly logical. The town inside the main dome was split into
four quadrants by the main thoroughfares that emanated from Circle
Park Road: Corporation Street, which ran north and on through the
dome wall to the spaceport; Sherlock Street to the south; Broad
Street to the west; and Curzon Street to the east. Four concentric
routes linked these roads together; Circle Park Road being the
innermost, followed by Paradise Circus, Queensway and then an
unnamed service road that hugged the inside of the dome wall. Her
hotel was on Paradise Circus in the centre of Colmore, the
north-east quadrant, next to a dingy alleyway that offered a short
cut to Queensway. Fornax looked at the broken-down hovertruck
outside the hotel, the crumbling concrete walkway and the tatty
apartment-block frontages along the road and decided that the
Paradise Hotel was probably not in the best part of town.