Penumbra

by Eric Brown

  ‘Is that why you . . . why you turned to religion? To get over the loss?’

  ‘Of course not. I always believed in the Path. My belief helped me, when he died.’

  ‘Have you had anyone since?’

  ‘Not a lover,’ she said. ‘A few casual encounters . . .’ She smiled at him. ‘I am passing even beyond that, now. I need nothing, only the peace that meditation brings. Here, I feel as though I need only to meditate to be close to the essence.’

  Bennett regarded her. She was still proffering the disc on the palm of her small hand. He thought of Ella, and then Julia, and then the other women he thought he had loved over the years.

  ‘I wish I could do without people, Ten. They seem only to bring me pain.’

  She shook her head. ‘Perhaps you seek too much in others, Joshua. Perhaps you seek that which they are not, instead of that which they are. Accept them for themselves, not that which you wish them to be.’ She stared at him. ‘Now take the disc and throw it as far as you can.’

  He realised that, if he hesitated any longer, he would disobey her command - and he knew that then he would hate himself.

  On impulse he snatched the disc and drew back his arm. He launched the disc high, watched it go spinning through the air and catch the light once or twice, then fall on a long, slow arc into the valley bottom.

  He thought of Ella, and felt a quick stab of guilt he knew to be irrational.

  Briefly, in a gesture valuable because of its rarity, Ten Lee reached out and touched his hand. Then she left him and walked back down the hillside to the dome.

  After a breakfast of coffee and fruit bread, taken outside the dome on the purple grass, they packed up and boarded the transporter on the final leg of the journey. Ten Lee drove and Bennett sat beside the open window next to Mackendrick.

  They made good time as Tenebrae moved from west to east. It seemed less to rise than to roll with vast majesty across the valley. When Bennett tipped his head and stared through the roof of the vehicle, the giant filled his field of vision, blotting out the starfield and provoking a stifled sense of claustrophobia. Great flashes of lightning pulsed within the gaseous bands, sending floods of opal illumination across the plain before them.

  They sighted more wildlife as the short day progressed. Ten Lee was the first to spot the flying creatures. She leaned forward, clasping the wheel in both hands, and peered through the windshield. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘There. Straight ahead.’

  At first they appeared as a flock of jet specks in the air at the far end of the plain. Seconds later they were overhead and silhouetted against the belly of the gas giant, creatures with sickle wings and great scythe-like beaks, not unlike pteranodons from the Cretaceous period. So vast was the flock that they took fully minutes to pass overhead.

  ‘We can safely say it’s looking a viable habitat for fauna at the top end of the food chain,’ Mackendrick commented. ‘I wonder what’s at the very top?’

  His words set Bennett to seriously contemplating the possibility that a sentient alien lifeform might inhabit Penumbra. Certainly the aerial video of the so-called settlement seemed to indicate that some form of intelligence had been at work on the planet. The thought that, if this intelligence still existed, then sooner or later they would come across it . . . Bennett laughed to himself. It was one of those concepts - like the apprehension of infinity - just too vast to grasp.

  Only three planets had been discovered to harbour sentient life from the hundreds so far explored on humankind’s expansion along the spiral arm. Bennett had seen the usual documentaries about the alien races, and read a couple of books and a few articles documenting the story of the first contact and subsequent relations.

  One race was humanoid, the Phalaan of Arcturus V, who were at a stage of evolution comparable to that of Neolithic man. After the discovery of these Stone Age people, and initial mutually incomprehensible contact, it was considered best for the future development of the Phalaan if they were spared relations with their more technologically sophisticated neighbours. The planet had been designated out of bounds for all but authorised scientific investigation teams.

  The Kreyn of Betelgeuse XVII were an ancient race of starfarers who discovered humankind when one of their ships landed on the colony world of Bethany. They were crab-like beings, and about as far in advance of humanity as humanity was in relation to the Phalaan. It was they, the Kreyn, who decided that for the good of humankind contact between the races should be kept to a minimum.

  The dominant lifeforms on Sirius were great sea-living cetaceans, and the jury was still undecided as to whether these aliens were sentient or not.

  Humankind had yet to discover a race with whom they were on an equal footing, beings with whom they might come to some understanding in the many realms of endeavour: cultural, scientific, philosophical. The chances were that such a race was unlikely to be found on Penumbra. The planet was not developed globally as was the Earth; there was no evidence of cities or roads or other signs of civilisation, as such. But, Bennett told himself, perhaps Penumbrians lived underground, and had no need of cities in the Terran sense. It would be rash to discount any possibility so early in their explorations. Still, the thought of encountering intelligent extraterrestrial life, at any stage of their evolution, seemed improbable to Bennett.

  They halted at midday to take a meal break, and it was shortly after they had finished their food trays - when Ten Lee slipped from the cab to stretch her legs - that she made the discovery.

  She was gone perhaps thirty seconds when Bennett heard a shout. ‘Joshua! Mack! Here!’

  Something about her tone, an uncharacteristic urgency, alerted Bennett. He jumped from the cab and looked about for her. She was twenty metres from the transporter, kneeling and reaching out to touch something in the short grass.

  She looked up as he approached at a run, an expression of surprise and delight on her face. ‘I’ve found something, Joshua, Mack. Look.’

  Bennett knelt beside her, joined by Mackendrick, and stared at the square, grey stone object in the grass. It was perhaps twenty centimetres high and a metre square, a slab of stone as dark as iron. It was not the uniformity of the object that was surprising, however, but the fact that inscribed into the surface of the stone was a series of neatly chiselled hieroglyphs.

  Mackendrick stood and hurried back to the transporter while Bennett ran a hand over the stone’s surface. The inscription was worn, and filled in places with lichen. A series of small circles, in various stages of completion, contained a number of dots, stars, squares and smaller circles. Each character was perhaps the size of a coin. Bennett counted a hundred such on the horizontal plane.

  Mackendrick returned, burdened with equipment. He unstrapped an analyser from his neck and placed it on the stone plinth, kneeling to get a closer look.

  Ten Lee was moving away, drawn like a somnambulist to something she had spotted a few metres away. Bennett watched her as she knelt, reached out and pushed aside the obscuring purple grass.

  She looked up. ‘Over here, Josh. Another one.’

  He ran across to her. This stone seemed identical to the first in dimensions, but instead bore a series of square hieroglyphs. The markings within these characters, so far as he could make out, were identical to those on the first stone: dots, stars, squares, small circles. He looked more closely at the stone, and noticed that it was not perfectly square. The top and bottom edges, as seen from above, sloped minimally towards the left. He returned to the first stone. The edges of this one, too, were angled in the same direction as the second.

  ‘A form of ironstone,’ Mackendrick told him. ‘Initial analysis measured the degree of wear of the various hieroglyphs - those in the middle and those at the southernmost edge, in the teeth of the prevailing winds. The read-out suggests they’ve been worn over a period of ten thousand years, so the stones in their chiselled state are that old at least.’

  ‘Measurements?’

  Mackendrick nodded and r
ead off the dimensions.

  ‘Could you do the same with the second?’ Bennett asked.

  They made their way to where Ten Lee was kneeling, and placed the analyser on the face of the stone.

  Mackendrick read out the results. ‘This one is smaller, but only slightly. It’s as if it’s cut out of the same length of receding block . . .’

  Bennett was already on his feet and striding to an irregularity he’d spotted in the grass five metres away. There was another stone. He looked up, across the plain, and made out a series of similar slabs marching away across the grassland. He guessed, then, that each one would be smaller than the last, diminishing like the head of a giant arrow, as if pointing . . .

  Only then did it occur to him to look up, all the way, to where the foothills began some two or three kilometres away.

  What he saw there made him laugh out loud. They were like short-sighted ants wondering at the footprints of an elephant, when all along the elephant itself was just metres away.

  ‘Ten Lee!’ he called. ‘Mack!’

  They hurried to his side, looking down at the grass for another stone block.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not down. Up. Take a look at that.’

  He pointed. In the distant valley, the great stone columns of a vast and ancient ruin brooded in the light of the gas giant overhead.

  * * * *

  12

  Ezekiel Klien ducked from the taxi, ignored the gaggle of beggars calling to him from the gutter, and crossed the monsoon-washed pavement. He made his way up the steps and into the police headquarters, then took the elevator to Commissioner Singh’s office on the tenth floor.

  Klien had known Singh for almost five years, at first seeking his acquaintance in a professional capacity, and then coming to appreciate a certain quality in the man’s make-up: his cynicism. Commissioner Singh was corrupt, and what Klien most liked about him was that he made no effort to conceal the fact from those he trusted; instead, he rationalised his corruption with the conceit that by judiciously apportioning his favours he could better control law and order in the city. There would always be corruption, he claimed; the real sin of corruption was when one accepted largesse from the wrong people. Klien liked that. He understood Commissioner Singh. To do good in this world, one was forced also to do a certain amount of what might be considered bad.

  Singh looked up when Klien knocked and entered the office. His face broke into a genuine smile of welcome. He stood and they shook hands.

  Singh gestured to a seat. He touched his com-screen. ‘Suran, two black coffees, please, and I don’t want to be disturbed for an hour.’

  They talked business for a while. The coffee arrived and Klien sipped the hot, bitter liquid. He told Singh the latest news on the smuggling ring he’d broken up after finding a tonne of high-grade slash in the hold of a Luna-Earth cargo ship.

  ‘It was manufactured legally enough on Luna, but stolen from the labs. We’ve arrested the people responsible at the Luna end, but not down here. I’ve reason to expect that the drug was to be distributed by known Calcutta dealers.’

  Singh gestured, ‘Is there any way I can help?’

  ‘I’d appreciate an hour looking through the files,’ Klien told him. ‘I have a list of people who might be linked, but nothing like as comprehensive as your records.’

  ‘By all means. I’ll have Suran take you down later.’

  ‘I owe you one.’

  Commissioner Singh’s chestnut eyes twinkled beneath the swathes of his turban. ‘When are you running your next training course?’ he asked.

  ‘Not for a couple of months, but as soon as it starts I’ll notify you.’

  For serviced rendered, Klien found places for Singh’s officers on the security courses he ran a couple of times a year. They were strictly for spaceport personnel, but Klien was well placed to bend the rules occasionally.

  ‘I have an officer who would benefit from a little training. Brilliant prospect. Young woman with a mind like a razor. In fact I’ll get her down here to meet you.’ He leaned towards the com-screen and got through to the eighth floor. ‘Vishy, is Lieutenant Rao available?’

  Klien sat back and wondered if this was another ploy by the commissioner to try and fix him up with a woman. Singh seemed overly concerned that Klien was over forty and still single. ‘You need a good woman,’ Singh had told him more than once. ‘You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the love of a good woman!’ Klien could debate the point, but for the sake of his relationship with the commissioner had declined to argue.

  Now Singh spread his hands. ‘Lieutenant Rao is out on a case,’ he said. ‘Perhaps some other time.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when the course is enrolling,’ Klien promised. He changed the subject. ‘Any luck lately with the crucifix killer case?’ He liked to keep abreast of how the investigations were going. He was always cheered by Homicide’s spectacular lack of success.

  Singh grunted. ‘Between you and me, Homicide is baffled. There was another killing last month bearing all the hallmarks of the same killer. I don’t know the full details, but Vishy will fill you in if you go up and see him.’

  Klien gestured that it was only a passing interest. ‘Another criminal victim?’ he asked.

  ‘As ever,’ Singh replied. ‘To be perfectly honest I’m not that worried. I know, they are murders all the same, and the press are shouting about the unacceptability of vigilante killings, which they seem to think they are, but the fact is that these people are known drug dealers and criminals. For the good of society they are better off dead. I’m treating the case as experience for some of my younger officers under Vishy’s tutelage.’

  ‘So you don’t hold out much hope of finding the killer?’

  Singh smiled. ‘Sooner or later we’ll get him.’

  Klien returned his smile. ‘I’m sure you will,’ he said. He finished his coffee and stood up. ‘Thanks for your time.’

  ‘I’ll get Suran to take you down to files.’

  Two minutes later Singh’s secretary - yet another available young woman the commissioner had tried to interest him in - escorted him down to the first floor and a private terminal booth. Klien accessed the files containing the pix and information of all known drug dealers and associated criminals in Calcutta’s teeming underworld. He appreciated the fine irony of Commissioner Singh’s allowing his access to these files. It was from here that Klien selected the criminals upon whom he would visit his retribution.

  To do good in this world, one had also to do a little bad.

  One hour later he copied the pix and personal details of half a dozen likely candidates. Over the next few weeks he would investigate these people, assess their undesirability and award them marks from one to ten on the scale of evil, and then chart their movements and security arrangements.

  He closed the file and accessed another containing the pix and details of everyone with a criminal record in the sub-continent of India. He entered in the vital statistics of the person he was seeking and waited until the program trawled through the file and assorted sub-files. It was a long shot, he knew. Sita Mackendrick had disappeared over thirteen years ago and not a trace of her had been seen since.

  For almost that long, Klien had built his career in Calcutta, and visited his vengeance upon those he judged deserving, but all the while he had worked at finding the girl. He had used the privileges of his position at the port to access files usually closed to the layman: government documents, business profiles and security records all of which contained pix of individuals, often without their knowledge. He had found nothing. It was as if Sita Mackendrick had disappeared from the face of the Earth. Which, of course, was entirely possible, but it would be a monumental task to look for her on every colony world in the Expansion. Of course, there was always the chance that she was dead, but Klien did not like to dwell on the consequences if this were so.

  At noon he closed the file and left the police headquarters. He dined at an expensive Japanese restaura
nt in the city centre, and after the meal sat back with a glass of sake. It was the one day away from the port that he allowed himself every week. This afternoon he had arranged to meet a nasty individual known as Raja Khan, supposedly to talk about a consignment of stolen gold that Khan wanted to offload. Klien was posing as an interested potential buyer. In fact he would be deciding if he would be victim number . . . what was it now? Nine? Ten?

  He ordered another sake, took the pix of Sita Mackendrick from his pocket and spread them on the table. They showed her as she was at the age of nine and as she would be now, a slight, intense woman with a pretty face and intelligent eyes. He wondered how many times he had looked upon these computer-generated images, dreaming of the day when he would at last find her.

  It seemed a very long time since he had started out on the trail that had brought him eventually to Earth. He thought back to when he had traced Quineau through space to the planet of Madrigal, all those years ago. He relived again his disappointment on discovering that his one-time colleague no longer possessed the softscreen. It was, according to Quineau, in the hands of one Charles Mackendrick, who had taken the screen to Calcutta, Earth.