by Mark Roman
“Serious, Dad,” said Tarquin with a slight frown.
Brian made an odd noise at the back of his throat, sounding like, “Gung!” and then looked doubtfully at his boy. “Now then, Tarq. Come on. You know very well that extraordinary claims ...”
“... require extraordinary evidence. I know that, Daddy. And I have that evidence.”
Brian Brush gave his boy the most sceptical look in his quite extensive repertoire of sceptical expressions. “OK. So, you’ve made a discovery.”
“I have.”
“And you’re excited.”
“Very.”
“Well, I’m excited for you, Tarq. I’m buzzing, I really am. Because I know what the excitement of discovery feels like. The thrill, the quivers, the tingling sensation up and down the spine. There’s no feeling better. But ...”
“But what, Dad?”
“... it can all go pear-shaped if you don’t have absolute, definitive, incontrovertible proof that the discovery is correct.”
“I have that proof! I have it. In fact, two bits of proof.”
“Gung!” Brian’s smile faded and a serious, but tolerant, look replaced it. “Listen, son, I have made many, many discoveries in my time.” He used finger-quotes around the word ‘discoveries’. “But occasionally those discoveries have turned out not to be true. The evidence just didn’t hold water.”
“I have evidence, Dad.”
“Extraordinary evidence, son?”
“Extraordinary.”
Brian sighed and prodded his badly repaired glasses up with a finger. “Very well, then,” he said. “Let’s see that evidence.” He sat back in his chair, as though by distancing himself from his son he would be able to provide a more objective assessment. “But I will be strict in my judgement of your evidence. Harsh, even. I will evaluate it just like a panel of my scientific peers would. Better to dismiss your claims here in private, in our quarters, than be publicly shamed later. For I know what that feels like.”
Tarquin wasn’t sure what his father was referring to, but felt this not to be the time to probe. Instead, he turned to Mr Snuggles and swiped a finger across the touch-screen embedded in the robot’s chest, causing an image to appear on it.
“What do we have here?” asked the scientist, leaning closer to peer at the small screen.
“It’s a black obelisk, Dad. We found it on a hilltop. It’s a sentinel, left millions of years ago by a supremely advanced alien civilization. Its purpose is to send a signal when humans touch it – to let the aliens know we have developed enough intelligence for spaceflight. Just like in that movie – 2001. We may have already triggered the signal, and they may be on their way ...”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” cried Brian, holding up both hands. “Whoa. Not so fast, my little runaway hypothesizer. We’ve all been there – making unwarranted assumptions and drawing unjustifiable conclusions – but we need to be super-careful in situations like this, Tarqster. Super. Careful. Go slowly.”
Tarquin blinked at him.
“A step at a time,” urged his father. “What’s Step One?”
“The facts.”
“Correct. Continue.”
“A black obelisk. Flat faces. Clearly not natural. Embedded vertically in the Martian ground. Unlikely to have got there by ordinary geological or meteorological means.”
“Good, good, very good,” said Brian, beaming. “That’s more like it.”
“With alien writing on one face.”
“Gung!” Brian’s jaw dropped. “What? Where?”
Tarquin zoomed the image onto some engraved marks near the top of the black slab.
“Can you sharpen those up a bit?”
Tarquin pulled up a menu and played with the contrast, brightness and colour settings until the marks were clearer and sharper.
Brian was nodding his head and grinning.
Tarquin grinned, too, feeling he had managed to win his father over.
“Can you transmit that image to HarVard?” asked Brian.
Tarquin made the appropriate swipes and taps.
“Translate, please, HarVard,” requested Brian. He sat back, the grin still plastered across his face.
HarVard’s voice responded from a loudspeaker on the wall. “It’s in Polish,” it said.
“The aliens speak Polish?” asked Tarquin, astonished. “In films they always speak English. Anyway, the writing can’t be Polish; it’s all dots and lines and squiggles.”
“Gung!”
“Robot Polish,” explained HarVard. “It says, ‘Dedicated to our fallen Comrades’ – in Polish, of course.”
“Interesting,” said Brian.
“My guess is it’s a monument erected by the Polish robotniki to commemorate robot comrades lost during the construction of Botany Base. The space below is for the names of the fallen. But it’s blank as we haven’t lost any – with the possible exception of Zilli, missing in action. So it may need updating.”
Brian nodded and grinned at his son. “And the ‘obelisk’ itself? Is it of alien construction or materials?”
“A granite kitchen worktop. Presumably surplus to requirements,” said HarVard.
Tarquin closed his eyes and the corners of his mouth drooped and twitched.
“Embarrassing, eh,” said his dad. “Humiliating, even. That’s the way it is in Science, my son. One day, when you become a scientist, you’ll ...”
“I don’t want to be a scientist, Daddy. Never. Ever!”
Brian’s grin was replaced by an expression of horror which, in turn, melted at the sight of his son’s crushed demeanour. “Oh, Tarq,” he said, opening his arms to give the boy a hug. “Don’t take it so hard, matey.”
Tarquin allowed his father’s thick arms to envelop him in a firm hug. They stayed like that for a long time until Brian asked, “So, what was your second piece of evidence?”
“Huh?”
“You said you had two bits of proof.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Brian ruffled the boy’s hair. “Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”
Tarquin remained silent, so his father tried more gentle persuasion. “Come on, son. I’ll be upset if you don’t tell me.”
The boy’s lips tightened and then relaxed. He turned to his robot and plucked the fluffy white object from behind Mr Snuggles’s back. It had a long white stalk, with the fluffy tendrils radiating out of it, like a giant, white, downy feather, but nearly a metre in length.
“Gung!”
Tarquin turned to return the feather to Mr Snuggles, but his father urged him to hand it over. “What, pray, is this?”
“It’s a giant feather, Dad.”
“It is indeed. It is indeed.” The scientist examined the feather this way and that. “Is it one of Miss Leach’s feather boas, perhaps?”
“No, Dad. I found it outside. Behind the obelisk.”
“You mean the kitchen worktop.”
“Er, yes, the kitchen worktop.”
Brian nodded sagely as he examined the object. “Hmm, looks like a downy feather to me, son. Just like pigeons have under their wings. But it’s about ten times the size of any pigeon.”
“An ostrich, perhaps?”
“Too big, even for an ostrich.”
Tarquin bit his lip. “A giant alien bird, perhaps?”
This time his father didn’t say “Gung!” He was too busy examining the feather.
Finally, he turned to his son. “Crikey,” he said. “You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking you might be right.”
14. Brokk, Paper, Schisms
Flushed with excitement from his adventure, Oberon returned to the Faerydae quarters only to have his joy quenched. Slumped over her dressing table, shoulders heaving with heavy sobs, was his mother, Adorabella. In one of her hands she held a sheet of paper.
“Yo, Mumza,” said Oberon closing the door. “What’s wiv the waterworks?”
“He’s gone!” blurted out Adorabella. “He’s left me.”
“Your step-father.”
“Brokk? Gone? What do you mean gone? Where’s he gone?”
“He left me this note!” Adorabella raised her head with a monumental sniff before shaking the piece of paper at her son. Her face was streaked with tears, her mascara running in rivulets down her cheeks. “He didn’t even have the decency to mail me, or send me a text message, but wrote me ... a letter! By hand!”
Oberon watched the note being shaken in front of him. “I is still not getting it, Ma,” he said at last. “Dis is Mars, man. It’s, like, all desert and rocks and stuff. Where could he go? Is not like he can go off to a seedy hotel and have his wicked way wiv his assistant. Innit.”
“Miss Lovelace? What do you know about Miss Lovelace?”
Oberon raised his hands in surrender and took a step back, realizing he might have said too much. “Nuffing, Ma, I know nuffing. I is staying well out of this shit.”
Adorabella allowed her head to collapse onto her arms again and resumed her sobbing. “Oh, why did he go? After all the things I’ve put up with from that man. He can’t leave me now.”
Oberon shrugged. “’Spect it is written in da letter. Have you akshully read it?”
Adorabella turned to face her son. “Have I been a bad wife? Tell me? Have I? Have I been too demanding? Too bossy?”
“Well, yeah, since you aks. You is well bossy. Like when you is telling him to fix that shelf. The one the robots made a pig’s ear of.” He pointed at the wonky item on the wall.
Adorabella’s tears welled up once more. “I feel I’ve been used. I feel like he only married me to get a seat on this trip to Mars.”
Oberon considered laying a consoling hand on her shoulder, but then decided against it. “Look, think about it, Mumza. He can’t have gone far, like, innit. We jus’ need to send out a search party. Use the helibot or a robot drone or shit like that. We’ll find him. He won’t survive long on his own out there, will he?”
At this, his mother burst into tears.
“Oh, man,” said Oberon to himself. He turned back to the door. Now was not the time to tell his mum about obelisks and alien zombies. But he did think it odd that Brokk had disappeared.
15. Who Ate All the Pies?
The urgent knocking on his door ripped Flint from a terrible nightmare. He had dreamt he’d inadvertently killed all the other colonists and gone to bed with a cleaning-bot dressed up to look like a girl. As he sat bolt upright he sent Disa, the ladybot, tumbling out of bed and onto the floor. She self-righted and adjusted her pink nightie; her lipstick-smudged plunger lips pouted a smile in Flint’s direction.
“Oh bugger,” said Dugdale, realizing his dream was not, in fact, a dream. He gripped his head in his hands.
Disa chirped plaintively, her short stature making it impossible for her to get back into the bed. Dugdale could not bear to look at her as shameful memories replayed in his head, making him utter a tortured groan.
The knocking on the door repeated. Dugdale looked around for his clothes before remembering he didn’t have any. His undersized spacesuit lay on the floor, discarded during the frenzied foreplay of the previous night. Again the memory made him shudder and moan.
Another knock.
“All right, all right, keep yer kegs on,” he grumbled, rolling out of bed and pulling the sheet around his corpulent frame. Stretching himself to his full height he whacked his head against the ceiling and spent a second or two rubbing the sore spot that was getting ever more sore.
Expecting to find more robots, or HarVard in one of his many disguises, he went to open the door.
Standing outside were Emily Leach and Harry Fortune. Dugdale’s jaw dropped with a wobble of his many chins.
“Yer alive!” he said, looking for any tell-tale signs of holographic projection.
“So are you,” pointed out Harry Fortune.
Emily’s eyes had strayed into the commander’s bedroom and caught sight of Disa preening herself in front of a mirror.
“You have company, Commander?” she asked.
“Yeah … well …’appen t’robot’s cleanin’ me room.” He gave a weak smile as he shifted his position to obscure the view.
A crooked grin appeared on Harry’s mean mouth. “Perhaps you could ask her ... it ... to clean the lipstick off your face.”
“Not lipstick,” mumbled Dugdale, rubbing his face with a hand. “Any road, what d’yer want?”
“I want to go home. We can’t stay here.”
“Quit mitherin’, man. Yer’ve only bin ‘ere five minutes!”
“There’s not enough food, Commander,” put in Emily. “There’s nothing growing in the BioDome apart from some small carrots and a rather disgusting looking parsnip. And young Gavin Brush ate one of the carrots.”
Dugdale shrugged, vegetables never having played a significant role in his diet. “What about all t’frozen and canned grub sent from Earth?”
“All gone,” sighed Emily.
“Any pies?”
“Nothing.”
Flint was flabbergasted. “What? Who ate all the pies?”
Emily shrugged while Harry gave him a don’t-look-at-me look.
Then she brightened and started rummaging around in her handbag. “There was something ... at last night’s reception. Mostly inedible stuff like screws, but there was a rather lovely loaf of German pumpernickel bread. We’ve no idea where it came from.” She fished two dark objects from out of the bag. “Here, I saved a couple of slices.”
She started picking bits of fluff and fragments of old tissues from them. Dugdale watched for as long as his patience allowed – around two seconds – before snatching the bread from her and stuffing both slices in his mouth.
Emily reeled back, startled. “I expect you’re quite hungry, Mr Flint. But I was saving those to share round later.”
Dugdale nodded, his mouth too full to speak. There was a long silence as he continued to chew. Then, when he had swallowed enough to speak, he said, “Right, get Zak to send t’lift back up to Wobbler for ‘im to load up with supplies and send it down.”
She shook her head. “The lift’s all broken. It’s going to take weeks for the robots to fix it. Possibly months.”
Flint peered closely at her. “‘Ow d’yer know all this?”
“That nice Mr Mandela told me.”
“Who?”
“Nelson Mandela.”
Dugdale stared at her as though she’d finally lost the last of her marbles, but then a bell sounded in his head. “Ah, HarVey.”
“HarVard.”
“I might ‘ave friggin’ guessed,” he said. “Right, I’ll sort this out.” He left his room, closing the door behind him. A panicked squeak issued from inside. “Which way t’Food Store?”
Emily and Harry both pointed down the corridor. Dugdale turned his head as he became aware of distant hammering and drilling. “What the ‘eck is that racket?”
“Builder bots,” said Harry. “Still building.”
Wrapping the bedsheet more tightly round him, and with the lipstick smudges still prominent on his face, Dugdale stormed down the passage towards the Food Store, pausing only briefly to read the sign written in large red letters: “NO ADMITTANCE! No builder bots, no humans, no dogs, no Martians. NO ONE. THAT MEANS YOU!” He burst into the large warehouse structure and stared at the rows and rows of empty shelves. Then he noticed, sitting alone at the far end of one of them, a single jar of pickled gherkins.
Fuming, Dugdale steamed into the centre of the vast room, looking for someone to speak to. Spotting two robots at the far end, he turned and headed towards them.
But as he came closer he realized the robots were playing a game. Not just any game, but his favourite: darts. The sight of the dartboard made his fury ebb step by step, until by the time he had reached the robots he had completely forgotten about the missing food.
The moment Stan and Olli became aware of the approaching intr
uder they turned around and started beeping and squeaking and shooing him away with their appendages. Dugdale ignored them and headed for the board. He removed the three darts from the wall around it and retired to the oche – or rather the wiggly groove that had been gouged into the concrete floor. He took aim with the first, judging its weight and the distance to the board. When he threw the dart the robots became silent.
On the second and the third, Stan and Olli electronically gasped.
Although the throw had been terrible – a one, a seven and a double three – the very fact that all three darts had speared the board left the robots gobsmacked.
Dugdale removed the darts and handed them to Olli. Olli looked up at Dugdale, tweeted something to Stan, and went to the oche. The challenge had been accepted.
16. The Qualm Before the Storm
A beep indicated that the response from NAFA had arrived. Trembling with anticipation, Willie clicked the button. He felt time was running out for the colonists on the planet below. With a serial killer on the loose and the possibility of large hostile Martian birds down there, speed was of the essence.
The screen cleared to reveal the cheery and toothy image of Nigel Langston.
“What-ho, William. Got your message, thank you. Always a pleasure to hear from you. We’ve all had a look at it. What you have to say about Dugdale and the ‘Martians’ is very interesting. What did you say they were? Giant killer birds, or something? Very interesting, indeed.” Nigel’s eyes flicked first to the left and then to the right. “We understand it must be a very stressful time for you, William. Left alone on the ship, while the others are enjoying fame and glory and the Good Life down below. Mayflower III must seem a very empty and forlorn place. We understand. We really understand. Which is why our space psychologist, Dr Ruth Wagamama, is here to help guide you through this difficult period.” Nigel turned to his right. “Dr Ruth,” he said.
Even before the image had switched to the space psychologist Willie had stabbed the Off button while uttering the sort of howl that a werewolf would have been proud of.
17. The Printer of Our Discontent