Synthesis

by Rexx Deane

  ***

  Aryx sped towards the lift. He was finally off the station!

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘I thought you were going to stay on the ship.’

  ‘Not if there’s an opportunity to get out and about. I’m sick of being stuck indoors. I need some different air.’ He pressed the Down button before Sebastian could protest.

  Sebastian mumbled something before climbing down the ladder after him.

  ‘I heard that.’

  He sneered and mouthed something as he walked past, and Aryx slapped his leg, making him yelp.

  ‘I’ll come back to finish the analysis on the evidence once I’ve had a change of scenery,’ Aryx said.

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Since the beginning of the investigation Sebastian had seemed more and more irritated – perhaps he was worried they might not find the evidence they needed.

  Sebastian waited at the airlock for the ship to confirm external atmosphere. The door opened and he walked down the ramp. Aryx followed in his wheelchair and skidded at the bottom in a plume of dust that billowed up from the docking cowl floor. Stale, metallic dusty air hit his face. His eyes watered and he choked on the gritty stuff – you could barely call it air; it was like breathing in sand.

  ‘Wait a sec,’ he rasped, and wheeled back up the ramp to grab a pair of respiration filters from the pressure suit locker. He handed one of the masks to Sebastian, who quickly strapped it to his face, covering his nose, mouth and chin. Aryx put his on. At least he could breathe again without his lungs being stripped bare.

  ‘That’s better, thanks,’ Sebastian said with a smile in his eyes. He probably hadn’t wanted to be the first to complain.

  Aryx wheeled along behind as he approached the airlock at the end of the cowl.

  ‘Why are you staying back there?’

  ‘It’s your mission. You lead!’ Aryx said, grinning beneath the mask.

  Sebastian activated the control on the airlock and Aryx’s ears popped as the door behind them closed and another opened at the other end, revealing a dark space beyond.

  ‘The floor’s level here, come on,’ Sebastian said, stepping out.

  Aryx wheeled over the lip of the airlock and the floor beneath his wheels became rough and loose.

  ‘Why aren’t there any guards or customs officers?’ Sebastian asked. ‘They must be quite trusting.’

  ‘Or they don’t care.’

  He shrugged and continued into the darkness, his footsteps throwing up puffs of white dust in his wake.

  Lights came on in the darkened tunnel, creating a series of light and dark bands on the arched ceiling that extended into the distance. Several feet away, a pair of rail tracks formed a large U-shape, and in the middle of the bend sat a short, open-topped train of passenger trucks and lidded cargo hoppers.

  Sebastian approached the cart at the front of the queue and sat down on the farthest of the rudimentary seats.

  Aryx wheeled up the ground that sloped to the level of the truck floor and frowned. ‘There’s no way to get my chair in. The opening’s not wide enough.’

  ‘Do you want me to lift you in?’

  He gritted his teeth. ‘No.’ He had his dignity to think about, after all. The urge to go back to the ship and get the mobipack came and went; he had no desire to reveal the design before he’d registered the patent. He wheeled back down the slope and farther along the queue to the cargo hopper behind. ‘I think I can ride in this.’ He pressed a button on the side of the hopper and the panel hinged down to form a ramp. Once he had safely clamped his chair to the floor, he activated the control and the side panel closed. ‘Right, let’s go!’

  The train accelerated into the dark tunnel and wind rushed through Aryx’s hair, bending his Mohawk back. The breeze carried particles of grit that flicked painfully into his eyes and, as he closed them, lights flashed through his eyelids and he tried not to imagine the tracks leading off into a dark, bottomless chasm.

  The tunnel seemed longer than the three miles he’d guessed it to be from above, and it took four long minutes of skin-abrading and bone-shaking travel before they finally came to a stop at the far end.

  Aryx opened his eyes and blinked several times to clear the grit.

  The train had stopped in a well-lit area where the tunnel terminated in a dark, rocky wall with a large cargo airlock set in the centre. Sebastian got off and helped him out, but the ramp wobbled on the uneven floor as Aryx wheeled down it. The floor in the colony had better not be the same.

  After a few moments of decontaminant spray in the airlock, the doors to the colony opened.

  Chapter 8

  Motes of dust sparkled on the air as blinding sunlight streamed in through the open door, forcing Aryx to look down at the ground while his eyes adjusted. He rolled over the lip of the airlock on to a dusty, concrete-like floor covered in dark footprints.

  ‘Wow, that’s impressive,’ Sebastian said beside him.

  Aryx shielded his eyes and looked up, following the rocky slope of the jagged crater wall to where the dome began at the top, nearly a hundred metres above. Its triangular panels each held an internal mirror that focussed sunlight on a spot in the middle of the dome. His gaze followed the path of the dusty beams as they passed over the roofs of nearby buildings. The structures were all made of smooth, grey blocks, similar in colour to the floor, and blended an ancient flat-roofed architectural style with contemporary metal fittings and windows. People moved to and fro between the buildings, apparently ignoring the visitors.

  ‘What, no welcoming committee?’ he said.

  Sebastian didn’t respond; his attention was set on the dome.

  ‘I wonder if they mined the stone for these buildings from this rock,’ Aryx asked. ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘What?’ Sebastian blinked and pointed over the buildings. ‘Possibly. I guess the cylinder over there might be a solar generator. Those mirrors seem to be moving ever so slowly to track the sun.’

  From his vantage point, Aryx did his best to follow the line of Sebastian’s finger. The buildings surrounded a large, vertical capsule-shaped drum that stood in the centre of the dome. He pushed towards the nearest building. ‘The glazing is really thin. I bet they’re just to let in light. The doors don’t even look like they’re sealed against vacuum.’

  ‘I suppose they’ve got other defences in case the dome gets hit by an asteroid. That’s got to be a constant worry.’

  The air warmed as they approached the cylinder. The narrow streets between the buildings led towards it, creating a focal point of sorts, and small groups of people congregated in the vicinity, chatting.

  A small, dried-up tree stood forlornly on the withered lawn at the base of the support struts. Aryx made a face in disgust.

  Sebastian approached a passer-by. Her clothes, like those of the other inhabitants, seemed simple and practical, dusty and unadorned with fashion accessories. Her long, straight hair was tinged with a dusty blue-grey sheen. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘could you help us? We’re new here.’

  She eyed him up and down, and gave him a withering look. ‘That’s obvious. You can take the mask off, the air’s fine in here,’ she said, folding her arms and shifting her weight to one side. ‘What d’you want help with?’

  Aryx pulled his mask down and allowed it to hang loosely around his neck. The air was better, not by much, but he decided to keep the mask off rather than appear rude.

  Sebastian loosened his mask. ‘I’m looking for whoever is responsible for trade and commerce.’

  ‘Garvin Havlor. You can find him over there,’ she said, pointing at a building to the right of the square. ‘In the civic office.’

  ‘Thank you. Before we go – what’s the correct spelling of Sollers Hope? There seem to be a few variations on our maps.’

  She sighed sharply. ‘It’s Sollers Hope with an “e”!’ With a toss of her ha
ir, she spun away.

  ‘What the hell’s her problem?’ Aryx asked.

  ‘Maybe they have a thing about the misspelling? I guess it must be a sore point.’

  They made their way across the square to the civic building – an imposing edifice built in regency style. Four fluted columns stood in front of a pair of double doors at the top of a set of stone steps, supporting a shallow triangular pediment.

  Aryx huffed. Not a single ramp led up to the door of the pretentious building. ‘I’m going to explore for a bit – I can’t get in there,’ he said, and wheeled off, leaving Sebastian to go in on his own.

  ***

  Coloured shafts of light struck in through stained-glass windows set high up in the walls of the civic office. Rows of bookcases lined with hundreds of dusty tomes and file-boxes stood either side of the main walkway, and the cool air carried with it the odour of damp and decay. Sebastian ran his finger along one of the shelves, ploughing a furrow in the dense grey substrate. This place was a hall of records of some kind – the kind that got ignored.

  A rotund man in a dirty red velvet jacket stood at the far end of the room by a heavy wooden desk, sorting through papers. His lank, shoulder-length grey hair and goatee only added to the air of neglect. Was this how an old-fashioned mop would look if it were trimmed and had glasses put on it?

  Sebastian cleared his throat.

  The man looked up over his tiny gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘Can I help you?’ His Galac was tainted with a distinctly South-Western English accent.

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ Sebastian said, trying to get the image of the mop out of his head. ‘I’m looking for a Mr Havlor.’

  ‘You’ve found him.’ Havlor tossed the papers onto the pile on the desk and approached smiling, hand extended. ‘Please, call me Garvin.’

  Sebastian shook the offered hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Garvin. I am Sebastian Thorsson, attached to Tenebrae station. I’m on assignment for Special Projects and Operations.’

  ‘Never heard of it. So, what can Garvin Havlor do for Special Projects and Operations?’

  ‘I was told you oversaw the trading arrangements around here.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m also the town mayor. Welcome to my office,’ Garvin said, gesturing at the surroundings. ‘And how can I help you as Minister of Trade?’

  ‘I’m trying to track down an unusual mineral.’

  Garvin sat down behind the desk. He rested his chin in one hand, propped up by an elbow, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you indeed? What sort of unusual mineral are we talkin’ about?’

  How many unusual minerals did they have? The man could prove difficult if Sebastian gave him the run-around. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Garvin. There was a recent attack on the station and we have very few leads – I’m investigating the incident on behalf of SpecOps.’ He waited to gauge his reaction.

  ‘Go on,’ Garvin said, his expression giving nothing away.

  ‘We found trace evidence of a mineral that appears to evaporate in atmosphere, has a very low atomic weight given the size of the particles, and seems to be inert. We don’t think it was used to cause the explosion, as we found no trace at the scene itself, only leading to it. A Bronadi commodities broker said that you might be able to supply such a mineral.’

  ‘I see.’ Garvin tapped his chin. ‘We do have such a thing. Our geologist thought it was a short-lived reactive intermediate, a carbyne, as she thought it was reacting with other compounds during testing, but you’re right, we later found that it was inert and the name had already stuck. It’s useless due to the way that it just fizzles away. We’ve done tests and it looks like the subatomic instability means the bonds between the atoms break down, evaporating it. That makes it useless, even as a nanolubricant. That said, we still have two clients that buy it for a modest fee.’

  Finally, the investigation was going somewhere. ‘Do you have their details on file?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We don’t see a need for recording the transactions as they’re only buying a useless by-product. It wouldn’t be cost-effective in admin time. It would be like keepin’ accounts for dumpin’ trash into the sun, an’ one man’s cash is as good as anyone else’s.’

  What a rubbish excuse. Sebastian narrowed his eyes. ‘So … you have no way of knowing where the shipments go?’

  ‘Not a clue. One of ’em pays us to leave a hopper in an empty system, where I s’pose they collect it, and the other sends someone to get it. I get the feeling they’re a bit paranoid.’

  He folded his arms. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Their courier goes over the shipment with a scanner before leaving. God knows what they’re worried about.’

  Sebastian rubbed the back of his neck. How was he going to bypass a scanner?

  Garvin waved a finger at him. ‘Don’t you think about trying to sneak bleedin’ trackers in – we got our reputation to think about!’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll have to pursue other avenues.’

  The man’s features softened. ‘There anything else I can help with?’

  Sebastian relaxed a little at the shift in Garvin’s tone. Perhaps he ought to change the subject to something less sensitive. ‘Actually, I was curious how this place copes with the possibility of asteroids from the field impacting the dome. You’re bound to have more than a few pieces of rock hitting something of this size.’

  Garvin grinned. ‘It posed an interesting problem for them when the colony was founded.’ He leaned back and touched his fingertips together in a triangle. ‘Warren Soller solved the problem over ’undred years ago when he designed the dome. The mirrors we use to aim sunlight onto our generator not only provide heat and power for the town, but to protect the town from asteroid impacts they also snap shut in the event of a panel break. In addition to that, we track all the asteroid bodies and can destroy, divert, or capture anything that risks the integrity of the dome.’

  Sebastian nodded. ‘Warren Soller was the colony’s founder?’

  ‘Indeed he was. He was one of the great space pioneers before we encountered the nodes. In fact, he was probably the first person to encounter one.’

  Garvin swelled as he continued his anecdote. ‘Warren searched thousands of systems with the early survey telescopes. This field seemed promising, but everyone said he was mad for attempting to come here. Before we’d found the nodes, the trip would have taken him decades, but he brought his family here anyway in the hope of finding rich mineral deposits.

  ‘He set out in a near-lightspeed ship and started off by building a small dome outside the crater, near the mast, where he set up the mine. He found several minerals that were rare on Earth and, after a few years, he headed back to let people know what he’d found and to get resources to expand the operation. On his way he encountered a node, and luckily he was heading in exactly the right direction to get back to Earth.’

  There was no way it was accurate of course – it had taken Humans thirty-two years to find out about the acceleration nodes after the first colonists had left, and Quintoc was at least eighty light years away from Earth. Sebastian simply nodded and cupped his chin with his right hand while holding his elbow with the other.

  It would have been an incredible coincidence if it had been anything other than propaganda: the probability of passing a node on the correct vector by accident was infinitesimal.

  Garvin’s stare flattened but he continued, undeterred. ‘When he got back, he found Earth had moved on and they’d already discovered the nodes in the decades since he’d left. It had only been a few years to him, of course. He brought back resources and a crew, expanded the colony, and discovered the deposits of ore we now export.’

  ‘And what is the main export?’

  ‘It has an unpronounceable alien name, but we call it false peacock ore, or false bornite because it basically looks the same, but isn’t found anywhere else. The false bornite is used to repair the struts on the acceleration nod
es, you know. Warren must have been led here by the hand of God, finding it and then encounterin’ the node like that.’

  Sebastian raised his eyebrows and nodded. ‘I’m sure. If the other mineral, carbyne, is so useless, why do these clients of yours buy it?’

  ‘For some reason, it’s found in a pure form in deposits on this rock, alongside the false bornite. The carbyne deposits themselves aren’t useful, as I explained, and because the compound is so unstable, it’s very difficult to keep. Why they want it, I got no idea – that’s their business. But because the stuff only survives for extended periods in a vacuum, we’re the best place to get it.’

  How odd it was to be travelling down a path that led right to the source of the minerals that kept space travel alive. Could there be some bigger significance to this carbyne? What on Earth was it doing on the station, and why would people want it if it was useless? Sebastian had to stop thinking about it; it was threatening to bring up too many unanswerable questions. ‘What’s the deal with the Galactic maps having the wrong names and location for this place?’

  Garvin’s face reddened to match his jacket. ‘We been lobbyin’ for years to get the name changed on the maps.’ Spit flew from his mouth as his voice accelerated, his accent becoming even more rural. ‘They kip telling us that “it ’ent possible” or “there ’ent no central map, so we can’t change it”. If that was true, then who the fuck is responsible for changin’ it?’

  Sebastian’s skin prickled; the tension in the air was almost tangible.

  Garvin took a deep breath. ‘Obviously, we don’t know the reason. Maybe the locations were wrong because Warren logged the position before leaving, and the system had moved during his time at near lightspeed, or perhaps additional records were added later. Who knows? It’s probably the same with the namin’. The spelling may have been interpreted wrong.’ His chest was heaving rapidly again – there was no longer any doubt as to whether it was a touchy subject.

  ‘Well, I must be going,’ Sebastian said. ‘Thank you for your help. I’m sure I’ve taken up more than enough of your time already. I’ll let you get back to your duties.’ He gestured at the heap of paperwork. ‘I’ve got plenty of that to do, myself.’