Gravity's Eye

by Ian C Douglas

  Trixie Cutter, the Chasm’s most feared bully, stood beside them with her hands on hips. Blonde, beautiful and a powerful psychokinetic, Cutter had worked as a spy for Professor Magma. Zeke hated her for that. Her number one informant Alonzo Caracol peeked over her shoulder. He was a small, wispy boy with greasy hair. A faint moustache ran across his upper lip like a slug trail. The school knew him as El Telepático, Mexico’s greatest living mind-reader. A skill Trixie Cutter found very useful in her illegal operations.

  “No!” Zeke and Fitch cried as they levitated, by the scruff of their collective necks, into the air. Struggling crazily, Zeke kicked an empty soda glass. Trixie caught it, not with her hands, but her mind. The glass floated back to the table while the two boys dangled halfway to the ceiling. And her eyes weren’t even aglow. Trixie was a most powerful psychic.

  “Two earthworms. Absent from class without permission,” she remarked.

  “We have Lutz’s full consent,” Fitch gasped.

  Trixie snorted. “You’re obviously new around here! I mean my permission. That’ll cost you twenty Martian dollars. Each.”

  “Okay, okay, let us down and we’ll cough up,” Fitch said. “Argh!”

  They fell back onto their chairs with a nasty thump. Trixie giggled. Fitch raised his fist swiftly, the index finger crooked with the knuckle pointing towards Trixie. For a moment, Zeke thought his buddy was about to make a stabbing motion. Instead Fitch drew a deep breath and hid his hand under the table. He beamed graciously at their tormentor.

  “My name is Fitch Crawly, and I am no threat to you. In fact, you won’t even waste your time with a shrimp like me. Rather, you just want us to clear off.”

  Trixie threw back her pretty head and guffawed. “That kind of brain voodoo won’t work on me, my dear.”

  Zeke stared at her dumbfounded, much to her irritation.

  “Psychotronics, Hailey! Telepathic hypnosis, mind-control. It’s one of the subjects not found on the mariner’s curriculum.” She turned back to Fitch.

  “Still, a nice try. I’ll waver the permission fees just this once.”

  “Well, in that case,” Fitch replied coolly, “allow me to offer my services.”

  Trixie pursed her cherry-red lips as she thought for moment.

  “Tempting, but no vacancies at the moment.”

  “Well, I’d still like to talk business.”

  “Alright.”

  Fitch winked in Zeke’s direction. Zeke took the hint.

  “Um, well, I can just make Precognition 101 if I get my skates on.”

  “Ciao baby,” Trixie said through an acid smile.

  As Zeke hurried off to the hover-lift, a steel basket operated by a small basic mac, he took one glance over his shoulder. Fitch and Trixie were laughing like old chums. But Alonzo, whose eyes had been shining throughout the entire exchange, looked deeply disturbed.

  ~~~

  Precognition class ended at 4:00pm, Standard Martian Time. With two hours to kill before dinner Zeke, Scuff and Pin-mei drifted idly around the outdoor sports area.

  “Let’s watch basketball,” Scuff suggested and they settled in the stalls beside the floodlit court. One by one, the team players bounced their ball up to the hoop, paused, lifted the ball, aimed and shot. Some scored while others missed. The remarkable thing was that not one player used his hands. Even sports were psychic at the Chasm.

  Zeke was talking faster than the speed of light. He wanted to share everything about his new friend with his old ones.

  “Sounds a bit off a show-off to me,” Scuff remarked, pulling the ring on a can of Craterade.

  “Why are you always so cynical? It isn’t cool, you know,” Zeke fired back.

  Scuff spilt his drink in surprise. “Excuse me, bro. Don’t you think you’ve got bigger fish to fry right now?”

  “Huh?”

  “The ancient rockbot that’s out to kill you.”

  “Oh him. There’s been no sign of him. Maybe he’s conked out for good. Scuff, do you know what transubstantiation is? Or Psychotronics?”

  “No and no.”

  Zeke sighed. Three months ago Scuff seemed to be a walking, talking encyclopaedia. Now Zeke felt a growing disillusionment in his best friend’s abilities. He turned to Pin-mei. “Pin, you predicted Fitch and I would become mates, didn’t you?”

  Pin-mei was sitting very still, her almond eyes filled with concern.

  “Did I? You know pre-cogs don’t remember their visions. You have to ask me at the time.”

  “Well, you highlighted his name. What else would it be?”

  “I guess so,” she replied. She didn’t sound very convinced. “Talking of pre-cogs,” she went on, “how about our homework?”

  She pulled three dice out of her pocket and began shaking them.

  “Six, three and, um, another six.” Scuff said.

  The dice rolled. Six, three and five. Scuff cursed.

  “My turn,” Pin-mei said, handing Scuff the dice.

  “Five, six and two.” Pin-mei said.

  The three cubes landed, five, six and two.

  “Just luck,” she chuckled, picking them up. “Your turn Zeke.”

  Zeke focused hard on the dice hidden within her fist.

  “One, three and four.”

  Two and a double five tumbled onto the stall.

  Sudden anger surged through Zeke’s veins. “Kids stuff!”

  Scuff and Pin-mei stared at him, mouths gaping. Zeke leapt to his feet, his cheeks burning red.

  “This is all kids’ stuff!” he cried again, before storming off into the glare of the floodlights.

  ~~~

  Zeke wasted a good hour walking around the courtyards, pausing regularly to kick the red stones. Thoughts danced through his head. Scuff was such a jerk at times. And Pin-mei was still a baby. They held him back. Maybe that was why he was so unpopular with the rest of the school. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault after all? Images from Fitch’s life on the Moon also crowded his mind. Zeke kept coming back to those two bullies braving the airlock without spacesuits. What morons! Zeke wondered what had happened to them. He’d have to ask Fitch.

  The dinner bell clanged through the school amplifiers. Zeke ambled over to the hover-lift. Pin-mei and Scuff were nowhere to be seen. Zeke climbed in with a handful of students he didn’t know. The mac clanged the wire gate shut and activated the anti-gravity cells. With a whoosh the basket rocketed up the cliff face. It came to a halt besides the precarious ledge leading to the Cranny’s entrance.

  Three figures were waiting to go down.

  “Out of the way! This is an emergency.”

  It was Mariner Chinook, along with a fifth year student. The two of them were supporting Alonzo Caracol, who could barely stand. He looked bedraggled and feverish. He stared wildly at Zeke without recognising him.

  “Es venenoso!” The boy spluttered and fainted.

  Chapter Eight

  Zeke’s Room

  The trouble with sulking was the boredom. Zeke passed the evening alone in his room, hoping for a call from Scuff or Pin. Of course, he could have contacted them, but he was in too much of a huff. Not that he knew why he was in a huff. He just was.

  The com buzzed. Zeke bounded for the door but hesitated as his finger met the unlock button. Presumably two-billion-year-old assassin robots didn’t bother to knock, but he thought he’d better check. He switched on the door cam. Fitch Crawley stood outside.

  “You find out who your real friends are,” Zeke muttered, opening up. Fitch breezed in, his arms full of Craterade cans and Iron chocolate bars. “Wow, thanks.” Zeke said, touched by the newbie’s thoughtfulness.

  Four cans and six bars later, Zeke remembered there were unanswered questions from the day.

  “So what was it with that stuff you mentioned? And what Trixie said?”

  Fitch fixed him with a long stare. There was the slightest light in his ice-blue eyes.

  “You know, you were talking about transubstantiation, and, and…�
�

  The words Trixie had used completely vanished from his mind, as though someone had erased it.

  Fitch leaned forward. “Transubstantiation. The word has several meanings, but the one of interest to me is the theory proposed by Doctor Kajakowski.”

  “Oh, we’ve studied him in translocation class. The father of psychic science.”

  “Well, translocation is the theory he’s famous for. But he also wrote a paper about transubstantiation. The power to alter atomic structure by willpower alone.”

  “Um, never heard of it.”

  “Probably because the scientists of the day laughed him out of the lab. All the experts concluded that the human brain would never be powerful enough to pull off such a stunt.”

  “It’s hard to imagine. What use would it be anyway?”

  “What use? Put your brain into hyper-drive.”

  “Um, I guess, if you could change the number of protons and neutrons in an atom, you could turn one element into another. Lead into gold, rock into chocolate, etcetera.”

  “I’m thinking a lot bigger than that, Zeke, mate. A selfish psychic might think of personal gain, but I’ve got saving civilisation on the agenda.”

  Zeke’s mouth dropped.

  “Growing up in a mining hub made me very aware of the energy crisis.”

  “Crisis? What crisis?”

  “It’s only a matter of time. Earth and every colony in the solar system depends on nuclear fusion, cheap and pollution-low. Nuclear fusion reactors are fuelled by Helium Three. The Moon’s natural reserves of Helium Three are running out. What happens after that?”

  Zeke shrugged his shoulders. Fitch began to stroke his left hand with his right.

  He did this a lot when he was excited. As nervous mannerisms went, Zeke found it rather endearing. Fitch drew a deep breath and continued.

  “A meltdown across the entire solar system. Just think! The terra-forming factories on Mars and Europa would shut down. Both worlds would revert back to the airless death traps they used to be. And Earth? Think of all the effort going into tackling Earth’s pollution problems. All that damage done by our environmentally-deranged ancestors. Without fusion reactors that work would come to a halt.”

  Zeke felt cold. “How bad is it really? Some students are saying Earth could be done for in a couple of centuries.”

  Fitch shook his blond head sadly. “Two centuries or two years? It’s only a matter of time. Why do you think the Mariners Institute is so hell-bent on cosmic migration? Moving as many settlers as possible out to the new worlds at breakneck speed?”

  Zeke shrugged again.

  “So,” he replied after a pause. “If we could master transubstantiation we could create endless supplies of Helium Three?”

  “Now you’re catching on, mate.”

  “But how? If it’s impossible?”

  “Impossible to us, but not to the Martians.”

  “Hesperians, not Martians,” Zeke interrupted in as polite a voice as he could muster. “Archaeologists named them after the Hesperian era, when water flowed on Mars’s surface. That’s when they lived.”

  “Gotcha, two billion years ago. They found a way to bend reality.”

  “That’s all classified. How come you know so much?”

  Fitch looked down, as though to hide his eyes. There was something sneaky about the gesture. But even as the suspicion crystallised in Zeke’s head, it crumbled away and was forgotten. When Fitch looked back up, he was the picture of innocence.

  “Three months ago I was exploring the far side of the Moon when I had a premonition. There I was, alone, surrounded by darkness. I was thinking about everything I’d read on transubstantiation, and, all of a sudden, a voice popped into my head.”

  “A voice?”

  “And it said, the Martians know how.”

  Zeke frowned. Fitch wiped his brow, sweating slightly.

  “You don’t believe me?” He sounded anxious.

  “So what if they could? They’re prehistory.”

  “Then let’s find out more. After all, a man may die, nations may fall, but ideas live on.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a quote, by a guy named John F. Kennedy.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind, ancient history. The important thing is that I’m here tonight to ask for your help.”

  “Me?”

  “I know about the Martian engraving in Lutz’s office. Some kind of fossilised alien computer. You know how to switch it on. Maybe it can answer my questions.”

  A spasm trembled in Zeke’s chest. “It seems like you’ve surfed every brainwave in my head.”

  Fitch gave a crafty smile. “Don’t you see? Destiny brought us together. Hailey and Crawly, saviours of the human race.”

  A vague image skipped through Zeke’s imagination. Lutz was grudgingly unveiling his statue in the Chasm’s grand entrance.

  Fitch licked his lips. He still had his ace to play.

  “In return for your help, I’m going to do something for you.”

  Zeke look bewildered.

  “Your father, Zeke, I’m going to find out where he is.”

  Zeke’s heart trembled.

  “Scuff has trawled every data network on Mars. All we know is the Mariners Institute sent him on a mission called the Flying Dutchman Project. Everything else is a mystery.”

  “Is it? I’m sure if I dig into Lutz’s memory deep enough I’ll find something. If she doesn’t know then there are other teachers, or even the politicians at Tithonium Central. Someone, somewhere, knows what happened to your dad. With my telepathy skills, I’ll drill it out of them.”

  Zeke’s breath caught in his windpipe. This was too good to be true.

  “Fitch, you’re the greatest!”

  “I am, aren’t I,” Fitch cackled. “Now come on, time for a little burglary.”

  Chapter Nine

  Outside

  Zeke shivered and pulled his collar up around his neck. He and Fitch were at the back of Lutz’s minaret. The five-mile-high cliffs of Mariners Valley soared behind them, smothering the stars.

  “What a stupid place an adult’s mind must be,” Fitch remarked idly, scanning the tower with his torchlight.

  “Huh?”

  “All that security on the inside but nothing on the outside of the building. And this, a school for psychics.”

  “Have you done this before?” Zeke asked, blowing on his hands to warm them.

  Fitch smiled gamely.

  “Er no, but have faith. Come on now, link arms.”

  The boys interlocked their arms as firmly as possible. Fitch took a deep breath. “I’m visualising a hover-lift under our feet, like the one at the Cranny.”

  Zeke felt an invisible force lift him from the ground. Instinctively he closed his eyes. When he plucked up his courage to open them, he saw bricks rushing past. He looked down, realised that was a mistake and shut them again. A hundred and fifty feet up they stopped, bobbing slightly in the icy air.

  Zeke peeped at his companion. Electric sparks were shooting from Fitch’s eyes, a sign of the strain on his psychic powers. The idea of looking down passed through Zeke’s mind, but he thought better of it. Instead he focussed on the window in front of them, which Fitch was mentally unlocking from the inside. It swung open. With a nudge from Fitch, Zeke clambered through as fast as possible. He fell to the concrete floor.

  “Ouch!”

  Fitch climbed in after him, pressing his boot down on Zeke’s shoulder.

  “Double ouch!”

  As Zeke stood up an icy dread ran through him and squeezed his heart as though it were about to pop. He began shaking like a leaf.

  “What’s up?” Fitch asked and ran his fingers across Zeke’s scalp, soaking up the brainwaves. Memories poured from Zeke’s synapses, images of his first ever night in Lutz’s office. Recollections of the Dust Devil, an unstoppable ancient machine made from sand and energy, and out to get him.

  “Wow! No wonder you’
re scared. But you’re safe now. You’re with me.”

  Fitch’s confident tone was reassuring. Yet in the half-light a strange expression flickered across his face, something like regret. The moment passed.

  Fitch crossed to Barnside’s desk and switched on a lamp. Zeke followed and picked up a framed hologram that showed Lutz and Barnside standing in a crowd.

  “What a funny pair those two old bats make,” Fitch said with a chuckle.

  “What do you make of Lutz then, you the great mind reader and all?” Zeke asked.

  Fitch rubbed the back of his hand.

  “Well you know, she keeps her long term memories protected behind a telepathic firewall. I just can’t see them.”

  “This was taken a hundred years ago. At the school’s inauguration,” Zeke said.

  Fitch let out a low whistle.

  “I heard people saying Lutz had been around forever. But I didn’t think it was actually a fact!”

  “Barnside’s an android.”

  “Never!”

  Zeke felt a little thrill. Fitch didn’t know all of his secrets.

  “That’s why I couldn’t penetrate her mind! There wasn’t one. But Lutz, she’s human enough.”

  “She’s got some kind of eternal-youth-thing going on. I think the rest of the teachers all know about it, but no one will say anything.”

  “Well,” Fitch began. “Add that to the mystery-to-do list. But we’ve got to focus on our current mission.”

  Fitch psychokinetically unlocked the door to Lutz’s inner sanctum and they were in. He aimed his torch at the ancient engraving, illuminating its intricate geometrical markings.

  “This is exciting! A genuine Martian artefact! We have nothing like this on the Moon. How does it work then?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Zeke smiled.

  “But it’s just a slab of old rock. So, where’s the power source and the memory files and, you know, all that stuff?”

  “I can only guess. We have to remember this is nearly two billion years old. I believe back then it looked very different. A kind of computer made out of liquid or possibly light. Over the eons it fossilised.”