Ravana did not reply. Behind her words was the frustration of someone rapidly outgrowing all that life on the hollow moon could offer her. Her father had hoped that co-piloting the Platypus would offer a respite, but their trip to Newbrum had awakened her to the reality that Ascension was not just a place to trade but also a world of cities where people felt part of the interstellar spread of humanity. In contrast, the inhabitants of the Dandridge Cole were outcasts who used the hollow asteroid to hide from civilisation. She wondered if this was what her father wanted for his daughter.
“We need to talk about your future,” Quirinus said suddenly, surprising Ravana. It was as if he had read her mind. “I think it would do you good to see more of the five systems. How do you feel about leaving to study in Newbrum or Bradbury Heights? Or further afield even,” he added. “There’s a fantastic engineering academy in Hellas.”
“Go to university on Mars?” Ravana’s dark eyes shone. “Or maybe even Earth!”
“If you don’t mind carrying twice your weight around, why not!” Quirinus smiled. “You complained about your aches and pains for months after we came to live here and the hollow moon’s gravity is only a bit more than that on Yuanshi.”
“Don’t you want me to stay here and help you crew the Platypus?”
“You’re old enough now to think about making plans of your own.”
“Yes, but to leave here,” murmured Ravana. “To leave you…?”
“My life is not your life,” Quirinus told her. “You have your own future to think of.”
They were interrupted by the sound of hands and feet scampering along the crawl tunnel. Moments later, Zotz’s ginger mop bobbed through the hatch to herald his arrival at the flight deck, his progress hampered by the bundle of cloth he held in his hands. While Ravana and her father still wore the flight suits they had donned for the trip to Newbrum, Zotz wore one of his father’s laboratory coats with the sleeves rolled back. It was clearly too big for him, but what drew Ravana’s eye was that he seemed to be once again wearing part of a birdsuit beneath, though she could not recall ever seeing him fly. Zotz was a strange boy who took after his Canadian father in many ways. His mother was away on family business in Welsh Patagonia and Ravana knew he was missing her dearly, not that he would ever admit it.
“I’ve found it!” Zotz declared. He dropped what he held to the floor. Ravana’s cat awoke with a start and went to sniff cautiously at the smelly bundle.
“That was quick,” remarked Quirinus.
“He can move like lightning when he wants to,” said Ravana, smiling. “He reminds me of the big bats you see flitting through the trees by the lake.”
“The flying foxes?” Zotz grinned. “They are pretty cool.”
He carefully peeled back the layers of cloth to reveal the untidy ball of wires and components within, then stood back in triumph. Ravana got up from her chair and regarded the mangled mess with some bemusement.
“What exactly are we supposed to be looking at?” she asked.
“It’s the AI circuit from a toy spider my dad gave me years ago,” said Zotz. “It was made in Peng Lai, Taotie. I took it apart to have a look at its brain.”
“A toy spider?” Ravana shuddered. “I can’t think of anything worse.”
Zotz drew their attention to a small metal capsule, no more than three centimetres square, at the centre of the nest of cables. The lid of the capsule had been crudely prised free and inside they could see a blob of what looked like green mould.
Quirinus peered at the circuit. “So you have a destructive streak. Don’t all boys?”
“The organic AI chip,” Zotz said irritably, pointing at the blob. “See? It’s all squidgy, just like the weird growth infecting your ship.”
“My ship is not infected!” retorted Quirinus.
“It does look similar,” Ravana admitted. “Is it really organic? Alive, I mean.”
“Not exactly,” said Zotz. “It’s a cluster of vat-grown brain cells on a semiconductor base. These chips are a lot cheaper than quantum processors but are smart enough to control simple things like AI toys, food molecularisors and the like.”
“And the Platypus?” asked Quirinus thoughtfully, glancing towards the console.
“Where was the ship built?” asked Zotz. “Dad told me this sort of technology is common in the Epsilon Eridani system.”
“She came from the Lan-Tlanto shipyards,” Quirinus told him, giving the console an affectionate pat. “That was back when they actually built spacecraft on Ascension. However, she’s had a whole load of repairs and upgrades over the years and I think the AI unit did come from an old Taotie-class interstellar tug that had been broken up for spares. We took the ED drive from the same ship, as I recall.”
“So the Platypus AI unit is also a green blobby thing?” asked Ravana, wonderingly.
Quirinus plucked a screwdriver from the tool box. “Let’s see, shall we?”
Turning to the console, he reached into the mass of wiring behind the facia and pulled the green tendrils away from where they were wrapped around the metal case of the AI unit, a box half a metre square and almost the same in depth. The screws securing the cover came free easily and moments later he was gazing intently into the unit’s metal skull.
“Odd,” he said at last. “Very odd indeed.”
Leaving the cat to eat the dismantled remains of the toy spider, Ravana and Zotz peered over Quirinus’ shoulders to look for themselves. The AI’s metal case was filled by a spherical green mass that had a texture not unlike that of a plant, yet with brown streaks that looked eerily like veins. Like the writhing snakes upon the head of Medusa, a dozen or more thick stems sprouted out of the AI brain and on through the cable outlet, before splitting into the tendrils they had seen reaching throughout the ship. The swollen central green pod had grown across the surrounding circuit boards, swamping the row of data sockets where the ship’s wiring loom connected with the AI unit.
“Is it supposed to look like that?” asked Ravana.
“Err, no,” Quirinus admitted. “Definitely not.”
“The brain has grown tentacles!” Zotz gasped in awe.
Quirinus put down the screwdriver and took a small pair of cutters from the top of the tool box. He reached behind the console again, positioned the blades around a small tendril offshoot, then squeezed the cutters closed.
Ravana suddenly screamed and fell to the floor, holding her head in her hands. At the same instant, her cat let loose an unholy electronic shriek and leapt away down the hatch as if its tail was on fire. Startled, Quirinus dropped the cutters. Zotz knelt beside her, a look of panic etched across his young features. Ravana felt sick and ready to faint, as if all the blood had suddenly rushed from her head.
“Ravana!” cried Quirinus. “Are you okay?”
“What happened?” asked Zotz, looking quite pale himself.
Ravana slowly lowered her hands. “I’m… I’m not sure,” she murmured. She stared wide-eyed at the fallen cutters, beside which lay the piece of severed tendril. “I felt the pain. It was as if the cutters were biting into my own flesh!”
“What?” exclaimed Quirinus. “I don’t understand.”
“How could you feel it?” asked Zotz.
“The pain,” Ravana protested weakly. “I felt the pain of the ship.”
*
“Amazing,” murmured Miss Clymene, quite taken aback at the view. The ornamental pagoda in the palace garden in which they stood was on a slight rise, offering an unique vista of the whole of the hollow moon. “Totally amazing.”
“Freaky,” remarked Philyra, looking up from her wristpad.
Bellona had to agree. The long cavern was on a scale somewhat reminiscent of the huge canyons of the Eden Ravines, but seeing the ground on either side curve up and above them like it did was extremely disconcerting, especially when the landscape and its people high above somehow gave the impression they were looking both up and down at the same time. Of everything they had seen o
f the hollow moon so far, the only thing that seemed normal was the pseudo-gravity, which they learned deliberately mimicked that of Ascension in order to acclimatise the original colonists of the Dandridge Cole.
Only Endymion seemed underwhelmed by the experience. He had expected to find the asteroid crammed full of inbred and radiation-mutated recluses, kept alive by antiquated technology and eager to welcome the travellers from Newbrum as their saviours. Instead, the few residents they had met were perfectly normal people who were if anything slightly annoyed that strangers had been invited into their close-knit community.
“It’s different,” he conceded. “A lot of space. The new bio-dome at Bradbury Heights has parks and trees but it’s nowhere near as big as this.”
“But there’s no sky,” murmured Bellona. “Nowhere to look up and see the stars.”
A silence descended upon the pagoda as each contemplated the view before them.
“These people are living in a cave,” remarked Philyra.
“One flying through space,” Endymion pointed out.
“But a cave nonetheless,” mused Miss Clymene. “It is a little weird.”
“The freighter that brought us here was odd too,” said Endymion. “A real mongrel. Everywhere I looked there were bits from other ships that had been modified to fit. I’ve never known a spacecraft that small to have a centrifugal passenger cabin.”
“The girl with the scar on her face was flying it part of the way,” said Bellona with a tinge of jealousy. “She can’t be much older than me.”
“It’s a shame the pilot is so dead against going to Epsilon Eridani,” said Miss Clymene and sighed. Somewhat optimistically she and her students had come prepared for a week-long trip to Daode, even going so far as to say their farewells to friends and family on Ascension, but after broaching the subject to Quirinus during their flight to the Dandridge Cole she was not hopeful. “For a moment I thought we’d found us a ship. The man Fenris was very interested in the peace conference and wished us all the best in the competition.”
“If we ever get there,” murmured Philyra gloomily.
“Don’t give up hope!” exclaimed Miss Clymene. “I have a feeling the people of this strange world brought us here for a reason.”
“They did mention an invite to dinner,” Bellona reminded her.
“Perhaps we’re the main course,” said Endymion. “They may all be cannibals.”
He grinned. Philyra and Bellona had gone wide-eyed in fright.
*
Maharani Uma settled into the velvet cushions of her chair and regarded the object upon the table before her with suspicion. Fenris stood at her side, momentarily distracted by the faint sound of voices coming from the palace gardens outside the window. Professor Wak was close to finding the other end of the tunnel the Raja’s kidnappers had used in their escape and had brought a couple of maintenance robots to the courtyard, though as yet they had only succeeded in breaking the trunk off the stone elephant plugging the hole.
Their visitors from Newbrum had been encouraged to walk the grounds ahead of dinner. The Maharani had an important call to make and was not in the mood for exchanging social pleasantries.
Upon the table was a small flat case, the lid of which was open so that the Maharani could directly face the holovid screen concealed within. The Dandridge Cole boasted its own low-power extra-dimensional transceiver array, liberated from the disused emergency communications centre at Lan-Tlanto, which provided the hollow moon with a link to the Ascension servermoon and thus the interstellar network. The screen relayed the image of a neatly-dressed bureaucrat with pale skin, dark thinning hair and clean-shaven features. The man’s sumptuous surroundings reflected that despite his innocuous appearance, he was one of the most powerful people in the Epsilon Eridani system. The Maharani was rather annoyed to see that the man was in fact sitting at the desk that used to be hers in her old home, the Palace of Sumitra in Ayodhya.
“How dare he use my office!” she hissed to Fenris. “The cheek of the man!”
Fenris leant forward and addressed her in a low voice. “He can hear you, Maharani.”
“Indeed I can,” said the man on the screen, his Eastern European tones not unlike Fenris’ own. He allowed himself a small triumphant smile. “To what do I owe this honour, my exiled queen? It is good to see that you have not entirely abandoned the modern world.”
“I have no time for pleasantries, Jaggarneth,” snapped the Maharani. “What have you done with my son? What sort of game are you and your Que Qiao minions playing this time?”
Jaggarneth’s smile faded. “Are you accusing me, the governor of Yuanshi, of kidnap? This relationship is a three-way orbit and I do not take kindly to slander.”
“I was told you had news,” retorted the Maharani. “If not about my son, then what?”
“I have made enquiries on your behalf,” Jaggarneth told her. His manner had softened in recognition of the Maharani’s genuine concern. “My sources suggest the young Raja has been taken by terrorist agents working for Kartikeya and is being held in Lanka, possibly in an attempt to derail the peace conference. You may rest assured that Que Qiao in Ayodhya are giving it one hundred and ten per cent to bring your son to safety.”
“I am sorry I accused you so,” said the Maharani, a little subdued. “My son means everything to me. It was fated that he would one day return to Yuanshi, but not like this.”
“Your desire to see an end to your exile is well known,” Jaggarneth acknowledged. “Though should I choose to turn my telescope to new worlds, my superiors remain far from convinced that my successor should be the deposed prince and his regent.”
The Maharani glanced at Fenris. “This man is starting to annoy me.”
“I heard that!” retorted Jaggarneth. Fenris smirked.
“Whatever,” snapped the Maharani. “As for your ‘telescope’, my sources tell me you’ve had your eye on the governorship of Daode for some time.”
Jaggarneth shot her a knowing glance. “Let’s move that off the launch pad for a moment. All I will say is if the peace conference was in anyway disrupted it would have unfortunate political consequences for both Yuanshi and Daode.”
“And you would not want the governor of Daode to look bad, would you?” the Maharani suggested slyly. “I do not approve of my son being used as a political pawn.”
“It is Kartikeya’s limited ambition that has made him reach for the low-hanging fruit,” Jaggarneth retaliated. “I am sorry it is your son that is caught up in all of this, for I suspect you would otherwise approve most heartily.”
The Maharani glared at him. “Find my son,” she snapped. “Your politics disgust me.”
Without waiting for a response, she got up out of her chair and walked to the window, leaving Fenris to close the holovid connection.
“Odious man!” she muttered, gazing out at the gardens beyond.
“I can still hear you!” came Jaggarneth’s voice from the holovid unit.
“Not for much longer,” muttered Fenris, reaching for the power switch. Closing the case, he joined the Maharani at the window and awaited her instructions.
“You must go to Yuanshi,” she told him. “I do not trust Jaggarneth to do my bidding, let alone understand half the phrases he uses. How dare he call my son a low-hanging fruit!”
“The only interstellar ship to hand is the Platypus and Quirinus refuses to go,” remarked Fenris. “He made that quite clear.”
“So you said,” mused the Maharani. “Tell me your plan.”
“After I left Quirinus and that idiot security officer, I spoke to a few people at the spaceport. The teacher and her pupils have been invited to the peace conference to take part in the school band competition, which Governor Atman is running to show how the five systems ‘can join together in harmony’,” said Fenris. His scornful tone suggested he was not exactly enthralled with the concept himself. “I also learned that as yet they have been unable to find a ship to take them to Epsilon Eri
dani. That is when I invited them to meet with you.”
“And here they are, stomping on my flowerbeds. How does that help us?”
“If we can persuade Quirinus to take the Newbrum school band to Daode, I can easily accompany them,” replied Fenris. “From there it is but a short hop to Yuanshi.”
“Quirinus is hardly likely to be so charitable to total strangers.”
“Ravana, his daughter, is musical. If she were to be invited to join the band…?”
The Maharani regarded Fenris cautiously. His suggestion was unusually devious and for a moment she found herself wondering if he had planned it this way from the start.
“Send me Surya’s clone,” she said. “I should see to our visitors. The clone will hopefully keep the children amused while I talk to the tutor.”
Fenris took this as his cue to leave and after collecting his case, left her alone in the room. The Maharani remained by the window for a few more moments, then upon hearing the sound of shuffling footsteps turned to see Surya’s cyberclone walking stiffly into view. With barely a glance at the clone, she moved to a nearby wall mirror and scrutinised her reflection, deep in thought as she pushed a length of hair behind her ear. Satisfied, she stepped lightly across the room and paused near where the cyberclone waited by the door.
“You are not my son,” she said sadly. “No matter how much you look like him.”
*
Unbeknown to either the Maharani or Fenris, Miss Clymene had decided the Newbrum band were duty-bound to serenade their host with a segment of their planned conference performance as a thank-you for her hospitality. The Maharani and the cyberclone thus arrived at the palace dining hall to find Endymion, Bellona and Philyra sat in a semicircle, clutching their instruments and staring in tense anticipation at the conductor’s baton Miss Clymene held in her outstretched hand. Upon seeing the Maharani enter, Miss Clymene nodded to her students and began to count them in.
“One, two, three! Two, two, three…!”
Maharani Uma reeled as the first discordant wail of trombone, clarinet and flute rolled across the room. The hall quickly filled with a cacophony of hoots, parps and squeaks as Endymion, Bellona and Philyra put their half-hearted life and soul into a performance that whilst lacking in finesse, was certainly loud and fast. Incredibly, somewhere within the maelstrom of notes, the Maharani almost recognised what they were playing and as the band’s confidence grew the piece did start to quiver with genuine signs of life. Yet it was clear there were too few players to plug the huge gaps in the aural canvas and it most definitely was not something she wanted to listen to any longer than necessary. When the performance came to a close after several excruciating minutes she was momentarily too stunned to clap.
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