Penumbra (30 page)

Rana watched the collection of odd shapes appear in the dust, a series of almost semi-circular cowlings. It was not exactly an architect’s scale drawing, but she recognised the shape. In the rich suburbs it was fashionable to have one’s house styled in polycarbon after famous world buildings.

This one, she knew, was the old Sydney Opera House.

She felt her stomach tighten in excitement. From her breast pocket, along with the rupee notes, Rana took the dozen pix of the computer-aged Madrigal laser killer.

‘Ahmed, did the man look anything like any of these men?’

She showed him the pix one by one.

Ahmed frowned and shook his head. ‘I think he had a thin face, and silver hair.’ He stopped, realising his mistake, and looked up at Rana. ‘I won’t be arrested?’ he pleaded.

‘Ahmed . . .’ She took his fingers and kissed them. ‘I promise you that nothing will happen, ah-cha? Look, here are the hundred rupees.’

He reached out, slowly, and took the red notes. He held them before his eyes as if disbelieving his luck. Then he darted back inside the ship, chattering excitedly to his friends.

Rana slipped the pix back into her pocket. So the killer was thin-faced, with silver hair. It could still be the Madrigal killer, she realised, though prematurely aged. He might even have been in disguise.

She resolved to go immediately to the house on Allahabad Marg that looked like the old Sydney Opera House. She would claim that she was conducting routine enquiries, question the man about the recent killing in the area, and assess his reaction.

As she left the scrapyard and made her way to the spaceport taxi rank, she wondered whether correct procedure would be to contact Vishwanath first. But, she reasoned with herself, he had given her permission to follow her own initiative. For the past two weeks she had conducted her own interviews, followed her own hunches. Why should this case be any different?

As she climbed into the taxi and gave her destination, she found it hard to believe that soon she might be confronting the man known as the crucifix killer.

* * * *

16

Bennett woke by degrees, his memory returning in disordered fragments. For some reason he recalled the ruin of the alien temple first, and then the crash-landed starship. Only then were these images superseded by the events of the night before: Ten Lee and Mackendrick’s capture, the blow to his head and what he had overheard before passing out.

He opened his eyes, expecting a renewal of the pain, but he felt only a dull throbbing where he’d been struck. He was in a wood-panelled room, fragrant with a scent like that of pine. He was no longer lying on the floor but in a comfortable bed. He sat up and stared down the length of his body. He was wearing clean undergarments, not his own. His flight-suit was folded over the back of a chair next to the bed.

There was no guard in the room with him, no interrogator.

He swung himself out of bed and pulled on his flight-suit. He stood and walked to the end of the room and stared through the floor-to-ceiling picture window.

The view was spectacular in its alien beauty. Tenebrae was half risen, its equatorial diameter spanning the entire length of the near horizon. Its opal light spilled over the terraces that marked the various levels of the valley like contour lines. A hundred domes sparkled like beads of dew made monstrous. Above them, lining the far side of the valley, was a forest of wind turbines. As he absorbed the scene he made out the tiny figures of people working on the narrow, stepped fields, and vehicles making their slow way up the switchback track that climbed from the valley bottom.

Only then, as if in reaction to the idyllic scene before him, did he recall what he had heard the night before. He recollected the voice that had wanted them dead, the other, patriarchal voice that counselled less severe measures. Well, he was relieved that the patriarch had won the day, but something was not right on Penumbra. They had matters they clearly wanted to keep hidden, and would even consider murder to do so.

He turned at the sound of a door opening, expecting a colonist. Ten Lee peered through, her face brightening when she saw him. She padded across to Bennett, pressed her head to his chest and held him in an uncharacteristic embrace.

‘Joshua, we didn’t know what happened to you! The attack was so sudden.’

She pulled her head away and looked up at him, frowning at the bruise on the side of his head.

‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘I followed you here.’ He smiled. ‘So much for my attempt to free you.’

She looked up at him like a frightened child. ‘They were human, Joshua. I’m sure they were human.’

‘Colonists,’ he said. ‘They crash-landed.’

‘They told you?’

‘I . . .’ He paused and considered telling her about his discovery of the liner. ‘Later, Ten. Where’s Mackendrick? We need to talk over what happened.’

‘In the middle room, along the passage.’

She took his hand and pulled him from the room and along a corridor. She knocked on the next door and pushed it open.

Mackendrick was in the process of zipping his flight-suit. He looked up as Bennett and Ten Lee entered, came forward without a word and embraced him. He felt the wiry old man in his arms, emotion constricting his throat.

‘Thank Christ you’re okay, Josh!’

‘The feeling’s mutual,’ Bennett said.

Mackendrick saw his bruised head. ‘What happened, Josh?’

Bennett sat on the bed between Ten Lee and Mack. ‘I followed you here. Someone saw me and gave me this.’ He fingered the bruise. ‘Before I passed out I heard them talking. They didn’t know who we were, or rather they thought we were terrorists.’ He looked from Mack to Ten. ‘Something’s going on here. They talked about killing us, but decided against it. Instead they’re going to destroy the ship and keep us here - they said they need scientists. They’ll offer us places in their community.’ He told them what he’d overheard, the mention of people called Quineau and Klien, the cryptic line about their not finding out.

‘Who are Quineau and Klien?’ Ten Lee asked.

‘I’ve no idea. They didn’t say. I got the impression that Quineau had left Penumbra to tell Earth what was happening here, and that Klien had tried to follow and kill him. I think they assumed we came here because of Quineau.’

Mackendrick was staring through the picture window at the bulk of the gas giant lifting itself through the morning sky.

‘We’ll tell them we crash-landed in the mountains north of here, okay?’ he said. ‘We’ll say the ship was destroyed. That way they might not look for it. We’ll make no mention of trying to get away from here.’

‘And what is our story when they ask why we came to Penumbra?’ Ten Lee asked. ‘They might be suspicious. If they think that this fellow Quineau sent us . . .’

Mackendrick considered, and said at last, ‘We’ll tell them a version of the truth, that we were on a survey/exploratory mission, charting the arm. They should have no reason not to believe us.’

‘And then?’ Bennett asked.

‘Then we try to find out what’s going on.’ He looked from Bennett to Ten Lee. ‘You don’t want to run back to the ship at the first opportunity, do you?’

Bennett was the first to reply. ‘I don’t want to be stranded here, Mack. The longer we hang on, the more likely they are to locate the Cobra.’

‘Not if we tell them that we crashed in the mountains,’ Ten Lee said.

‘But the grass of the plain shows our tracks. All they have to do is follow them back to the ship.’

‘There was a storm last night,’ Mackendrick told him. ‘Our tracks would’ve been obliterated. I say we hang on, find out what’s going on here. Ten Lee?’

She nodded, her expression serious. ‘I too think we should wait and investigate this place.’

Bennett said, ‘Okay. But we’ve got to be careful. Some of these people would gladly kill us without a second thought.’

‘That’s settled, then,’ Mackendrick said. ‘We play the innocent, stranded scientists. We accept their invitation to become part of their society. All the time, we keep our eyes and ears open.’

They talked on, going over what Bennett had overheard, trying to piece together a view of this society from mere fragments of arbitrary information.

Perhaps an hour later they heard a door open in the corridor.

‘This is it,’ Mackendrick reminded them. ‘From now on we play dumb.’

They stood and faced the door, Bennett unsure what to expect.

A woman knocked and entered the room. She was in her fifties or sixties and wore a simple brown frock, belted at the waist, and sandals. Bennett noticed that affixed to the collar of her frock was a metal brooch in the shape of a cross.

She smiled disarmingly. ‘Here you are.’ She looked at them each in turn. ‘Sabine Deauchamps, representing the Council of Elders. I’d normally extend a warm welcome to our planet of Homefall, but after your treatment last night I suspect any overtures of hospitality would fall on deaf ears.’

‘You can say that again,’ Bennett said.

The woman adopted a pained expression. ‘Please, allow me to explain. A terrible mistake was made. We’ve been suffering an increasing frequency of attacks from ... I suppose you would call them terrorists. They are a faction who oppose the governing body of Homefall. We are a peaceable community, averse to violence, but when our opponents resort to criminal tactics we find ourselves in the position of having to defend ourselves.’

‘Hence our arrest and detention,’ Mackendrick said.

Deauchamps gestured. ‘Please, if you would look at the situation from our point of view,’ she said, with a reasonableness that Bennett found almost convincing. ‘Our patrol came across armed strangers who we knew were not of our community. What was the likelihood of these strangers having arrived from off-world, after we’ve endured almost a hundred years of seclusion? The patrol did what it had been trained to do: detain these armed strangers who they assumed, wrongly in the circumstances, could only be terrorists. It was not long before the mistake was realised.’ She looked at Bennett. ‘I can only apologise on behalf of the guard who attacked you.’

She paused, then went on. ‘We don’t know the reason for your arrival on Homefall, of course - we assume you are an exploration team - but we’ll aid your stay here however we can. There’s just one precaution we must take. We’re concerned for the safety of your ship. The terrorists will take the first opportunity to attack and disable it as their cause wouldn’t be helped if we established trading links with the rest of the Expansion. If you could tell me of its present whereabouts, I’ll immediately despatch a patrol to ensure its safety.’

Bennett glanced at Mackendrick.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be necessary,’ the old man said. ‘We were caught in a storm on entry and came down in the mountains to the north. Our ship was irreparably disabled. We managed to salvage supplies and the transporter, but little else.’

Deauchamps considered his words, nodding with concerned understanding. ‘I’ll tell the council,’ she said. ‘We’ll be convening a meeting this afternoon. My fellow elders would like to question you about your mission, and your long-term plans. I hope you don’t consider this an imposition. We’ve been isolated for so long, and suddenly to have visitors from our homeworld . . .

‘You must be hungry. You’ll find a meal prepared in the dining room. In one hour I’ll send someone to escort you to the council chambers. Until then . . .’ She inclined her head in farewell and left the room.

‘I can see why they elected Madame Deauchamps to make the overtures,’ Mackendrick declared. ‘One smooth operator. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve swallowed her little speech whole.’

‘She gave the game away by asking about the ship,’ Bennett said. ‘You could almost smell her need to get her hands on it.’