Mariner Alistair Knimble arrived towards the end of the examination.
“Doctor, any idea what cured the boy? Maybe we can save the others.”
Doctor Chandrasar shrugged.
“No idea.”
“Ahem,” Zeke said, sitting up in bed. “I cured myself.”
Both adults raised their eyebrows in a sceptical expression.
“No, really,” he went on. “I woke from the coma by willpower. You see, there was no venom in my system. Never was. The whole thing is one of Crawley’s tricks. He uses that hypnotic talent to fool people into thinking they are ill. They’re so strongly convinced their minds start creating the symptoms.”
Doctor Chandrasar stepped back and pursed her lips.
“Psychotronic-induced sickness. That explains everything!” she exclaimed.
“Strewth, can you let me in on this?” Knimble remarked.
“Well, in pre-industrial cultures, shamans and witchdoctors would do something very similar. They employed the power of suggestion to trick their enemies into psychosomatic illness. You know, all those voodoo dolls and curses and rituals.”
“So, if you make someone believe they’re ill, they can actually become ill?”
The doctor nodded, “Faith can move mountains after all. What is it you mariners say? Thought is the most powerful force in the universe.”
“Then maybe I can save the three boys at Tithonium,” Knimble said. “If I open a telepathic link to their subconscious, enter their dreams, and talk them through it.”
“It’s a chance, but hurry, Alistair! The last medical report had them on the edge of death.”
No sooner had Chandrasar spoken then the Mariner mariner shimmered and disappeared.
Zeke stared into the Indian’s dark beautiful eyes and wondered about the way she flushed when she looked at Knimble.
“Oh and Zeke,” she said, handing him clean clothes. “Report to Lutz’s office.
“And look sharp, she’s hopping mad.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Principal’s Lutz’s Office
Zeke sat alone in the draughty office, feeling dwarfed by Lutz’s huge and shiny new desk. The price label, in Martian dollars, was still sticking to one of the hefty steel legs.
The once grey and cobwebby walls were now painted a pristine buttermilk.
Presumably, Zeke thought, to hide the scorch marks. The prehistoric engraving had been replaced by two small plainly framed holographs.
Zeke looked up, to the walkways and bookcases overhead. Everything above human height was as dusty and grimy as before. A century of dirt.
The school secretary barged through the door with all the grace of a bull. She marched up to the desk and placed a glass of steaming ginger at Lutz’s seat.
She glared at Zeke.
“Ach, this room was proper banjaxed. And a wee birdie tells me you had a hand in it.”
Zeke began to protest his innocence, realised that in a way she was right, and clammed up. She trooped out again.
An android. What better companion for an ageless clone? She made the perfect personal assistant!
The aroma of hot ginger tickled his nostrils.
How can anyone drink that stuff? He thought.
He stood up and crossed to the hanging pictures, as much to get away from the smell as curiosity.
The first showed an aerial view of Earth’s countryside, a flat mosaic of pastures, and a lake. Zeke frowned and studied the picture more closely. A thin yellowy ring ran under the fields. It had to be at least fifteen miles in circumference.
“I wonder what that is?” He remarked.
Someone had written in the bottom left corner ‘Large Hadron Collider 2020’.
Zeke had never heard of it.
For a moment, Zeke thought the second picture was of somewhere on Mars. An enormous crater scarred a barren plateau. Zeke, with his knowledge of all things cosmic, noticed how unusually smooth the crater was, as though scooped from the ground by a giant spoon.
The title of this photograph read, ‘Large Hadron Collider 2089’.
The door flew open. Lutz glided into the room, her feet a good six inches above the floor. As she hovered towards the desk her chair pulled itself out in readiness.
“Sit!” she barked as she lowered herself onto her own chair.
Zeke hastily obeyed.
The Principal seemed to have aged since their last meeting. She reminded Zeke of an ancient turtle, wise and inscrutable. She drew a deep breath.
“Seems I owe you an apology, mein jung.”
An apology? From Lutz? Help from Trixie Cutter and an apology from the principal? This was a day among days.
“When my mind cleared, after Crawley’s brain voodoo wore off, I assumed you had a hand in Trixie’s kidnapping. Luckily for you Trixie set the record straight.”
Zeke forced a smile.
“So now I have questions,” she said imperially.
“Questions Ma’am?”
“What on Mars is going on?”
“What did Cutter tell you?”
“Nothing, that fiend Crawley wiped her mind clean.”
Zeke cussed under his breath. Trixie knew as much as he did. She just didn’t want to incriminate herself. Still, Cutter’s guilt was of little importance now. Lutz tapped her desktop.
“I’m waiting,” she said, her eyebrows knitted.
“You’d never believe me. Not in a month of Martian Sundays.”
“Tell me what you know, this instant,” she replied in a louder voice.
Why would she accept the truth now? Zeke thought. How many times in the past had he tried and failed? She would dismiss the truth as delusions or lies and have him clapped in detention. And then a gleam of an idea dawned on him.
“Principal Lutz, what’s a mind purge?”
The clone’s mouth dropped. Then a rueful grin creased her broad cheeks.
“You heard? When I was discussing your case with the Doctor?”
Zeke nodded.
“And who are the Big Three?”
Lutz picked up her drink and stirred the chopped roots.
“The three men with most influence on Martian affairs. Men, typically, not women. The first is Duane Esterhazy—”
“Of course,” Zeke cried. “The Governor of Mars.”
“Yes, and secondly, the Chancellor of the Mariner’s Institute. And lastly, Vadim Babikov.”
“President of the UN?”
“Strictly speaking it’s UNACC.”
“Oh, I know that. United Nations and Associated Colonies and Conglomerates.”
“Precisely. I need their permission before I can purge a mind. It’s a serious business.”
As the principal’s words sank in Zeke gave a low wolf-whistle.
“You told three of the most powerful men in the solar system about me?”
“No, I told them about Crawley. You may have come up in passing. Crawley is a renegade. A psychic gone off the hover-rails. I know just from the way he tampered with my head that he’s dangerous.”
“Very Ma’am,” Zeke replied sadly. The anger in his heart melted and gave way to regret, a longing for the days when Fitch seemed his best pal forever. Zeke pushed the memories aside and focused hard on the hatred.
“So what’s a mind purge and why did you want to give me one?”
Lutz shifted uneasily in her seat.
“Not as scary as is sounds, just a way of entering your brain, psychically, and sifting for information. As you were in a coma it seemed the only way to learn what Crawley is up to. Now you have woken it is out of the—”
“Do it!”
The principal’s mouth dropped. She stared at Zeke’s determined face, the down-turned lips, the protruding chin.
“Warum? Pourquoi? Why?”
“It’s the only way I’ll ever convince you I’m not a liar or a lunatic.”
Lutz smiled gently. “Hailey, I know, from time to time, I have been a little hard on you. It’s the j
ob. You don’t run the most important school in the solar system by being a soft touch. That doesn’t mean to say I don’t trust you.”
“Even if I talk of Martians, monsters and demons?” Zeke folded his arms. The clone blinked.
“Hailey, don’t start with your games again.”
“That’s what I expected you to say, Ma’am. But if you read my thoughts, you’ll know what’s true, won’t you?”
She nodded, lost for words.
“Go on then, Ma’am. Let’s settle this once and for all.”
Lutz pursed her lips and made a clucking sound.
“A mind purge can be dangerous. Unpredictable side-effects.”
“I’m prepared for that.”
The principal raised her eyebrows in a moment of contemplation. Finally she waved a hand and said, “D’accord. Let’s do it.”
Zeke braced himself, waiting for the principal to move around to his side of the desk. He pictured her fingers on his skull as he succumbed to an overpowering trance. Instead she stared over his shoulder, wide-eyed and mouth gaping.
“Principal?”
She gestured behind him, her tongue paralysed.
Zeke felt his heart drop to his bowels. Slowly he swivelled in his seat. There, as he dreaded, towered the Failsafe. The enormous rock was blocking the doorway, its veins pumping fire into the white-hot core.
“No-o-o-o!”
Zeke leaped from the chair, up onto the desk. Exam papers scattered at his feet. He toppled off the other side, down onto his principal. He grabbed her in a bear hug as they fell backwards together. A flash of intense heat licked his spine. The smell of scorched cotton and singed hair filled the air.
Zeke opened his eyes to find himself and Principal Lutz pressed together like lovers. She shoved him away.
“Oh, not again,” she groaned at the black, sizzling hole in the wall. “The last time used up an entire term’s decorating budget!”
“We’ve got to get out!” Zeke screamed.
The Failsafe floated noiselessly away from the door and around the far edge of the desk. It’s inner fire was building up once again.
Lutz grabbed Zeke’s arm. The briefest of moments passed.
“It’s not working!” she gasped. “I just translocated us out of here. But it didn’t work.”
The door crashed open. Both Zeke and Principal Lutz popped their heads above the desk to see Marjorie Barnside swinging a fire extinguisher around her head.
“Damage to school property will not be tolerated!” she yelled.
She charged towards the Failsafe. Halfway across the room her eyes flickered and rolled back. She fainted.
“A magnetic field!” Lutz cried.
Of course! Zeke thought. That would not only cancel out their psychic powers but also the android’s magnodrive.
They were dead, or soon would be.
The Failsafe’s hum intensified. The marble seams glowed like lightning. Any moment now, any moment…
Zeke lifted himself up, off the floor. Throwing up his arms he shouted,
“Mnthanx!”
The Martian word for ‘stop’. It had worked on the Dust Devil. But the Failsafe’s inferno kept increasing. Zeke knew he was seconds away from incineration. Lutz stumbled to her feet, and, much to his surprise, took his hand in hers. He glanced at her dark face, forbidding and benign all at once. The face of authority. Authority? The word tingled in Zeke’s mind.
He summoned up enough breath for his final word.
“Mchx-dthfkii.”
Zeke closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see it coming. Seconds ticked away, painfully long seconds. He was still alive. Then he realised. The throbbing of the Failsafe was ebbing. He opened his eyes and glanced again at his principal. She threw him a wobbly smile, too terrified to speak. Their hands separated. The enormous boulder spoke in its booming voice.
“Do you know Mchx-dthfkii?”
“Is Mchx-dthfkii your maker?”
The boulder paused. “Yes. How did you know child-of-the-third-planet?”
Zeke drew himself up to his full height. “Promise you won’t kill us.”
“Machines do not promise. Answer my question.”
Thoughts raced around Zeke’s head, thoughts in English, thoughts in Hesperian.
Could the rockbot tell if he lied to it? Best not to take the chance.
“I don’t know how I know Mchx-dthfkii. I’m hoping you can help me find out.”
“Are you a Comet Rider?”
A shiver stabbed at Zeke’s heart. The Spiral had spoken of an age of comets. So too had the Dust Devil in the final moments before it blew itself up.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said slowly, concentrating on getting his Martian vocabulary correct.
“Neither do I,” replied the Failsafe. “My molecular circuits need gffthrshii.”
That last Hesperian word was beyond Zeke’s grasp.
Zeke opened his mouth to speak. He had a thousand questions. But the Failsafe was no longer there. He and Principal Lutz were alone in her smouldering office.
“Hailey. A mind purge won’t be necessary,” Lutz said in a faltering voice. “You just convinced me everything you ever told me is true.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Scuff’s Room
“You don’t really do dull afternoons, do you, bro?”
Scuff was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his holocube, a block-shaped hologram filling the room. His room looked as though a cyclone had blasted through, which for Scuff was quite usual. The bed, desks and floor were littered with smelly socks, candy wrappers, unscrewed computer circuits and comic books. The black orb lay in a corner, forgotten.
Zeke was sitting by the desk while Pin-mei perched uneasily on the edge of the bed. She had one disapproving eye on the sea of socks.
Scuff had inserted a chip of Battleships and Star Cruisers into his Laserlight console, transforming the holocube into a chunk of outer space. Planets, asteroids and comets streamed through a cube of inky blackness.
“It’s no laughing matter, Scuff,” Zeke replied after a moment’s contemplation.
“There!” Scuff bellowed and clicked his controller furiously. His battleship emerged from behind a small moon and blasted a humble asteroid. The rock exploded into fragments but revealed no cruiser. A zillion points zinged off Scuff’s score meter.
“Rats,” he cursed.
Pin-mei’s tiny face lit up like a sunrise. “At least you had a breakthrough with Principal Lutz. She knows the truth now.”
Zeke shot her a doubtful look. “Maybe, she disappeared after the incident, saying she needed a lie down.”
“There!” Scuff shrieked and fired. A comet melted, but no enemy ship. His score plummeted to minus one thousand. Scuff sighed, then turned to Zeke.
“So is that rockbot off your case now, bro?”
“I certainly hope so,” Zeke replied. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Just think what we could learn from it,” Pin-mei remarked, her eyes wide and sparkling. Zeke nodded.
“All the secrets of the Hesperians. But we have more pressing matters.”
“That one!” Scuff cried and blasted an unassuming moon. There, among the shards of debris, gleamed a shiny star cruiser. Scuff opened fire and blew the ship to smithereens. His score whizzed up to ten trillion and proclaimed him the winner. He puffed on his knuckles.
“Game over. So, to the business at hand.”
He aimed the controller and clicked. Battleships and Star Cruisers shrunk into a spot of white light, only to be replaced by a three dimensional map of Mariners Valley. The scene flew up, out of the five-mile-deep canyon, sped over the craters and rubble until an enormous volcano came into sight. The perspective began circling the gigantic cone.
Scuff scratched his nose.
“It’s going to take Crawley days to get to Ascraeus Mons. Question is, how do we get there sooner?”
The three friends exchanged glances, each
waiting for one of the others to speak.
Finally Zeke lost patience. “Well?”
Scuff sunk his double chin into the palm of his hand. “Couldn’t you translocate us there?”
Pin-mei leapt to her feet. “Scuff! You know that’s forbidden.”
“Yeah, yeah, until we’re fourth years, but—”
“Forbidden, because it’s dangerous.”
“But Zeke’s a dab hand at it.”
They both turned to Zeke. He took a deep swallow.
“I’ve only ever managed short distances. And only in emergencies. I don’t think I could translocate the odd thousand miles to Ascraeus.”
Scuff shifted uneasily. “You made it from Yuri-Gagarin Freetown all the way to the Beagle Research Station. That must be a two hundred mile journey.”
“No, that was Fitch,” Zeke replied with a frown. “He was using psychotronics to boost my confidence. He made me believe in myself.”
Scuff fixed his friend with a long, unblinking stare.
“Zeke, we believe in you too.”
“Thanks.”
“I knew the moment I met you, back on Earth, that you were something special.”
Zeke began to blush.
Pin-mei looked from Zeke to Scuff and back again. With a tone of reluctance she added, “Me too.”
“Hey!” Scuff cried with a gleam of inspiration in his eyes. “Why don’t you practice first?”
Zeke and Pin-mei stared blankly at the Canadian. Scuff pointed upwards.
“Translocate yourself five miles up, to the top of the canyon. That bit sticking out overhead.”
“The one they call Dizziness Point?”
“Got it in one.”
Zeke gulped. “You really think I should?”
Scuff hesitated. “Well, we’ve got to stop Fitch bringing back the Spiral. Surely it’s worth the risk.”
Zeke rolled his eyes. “Says you, who’s staying on terra firma, or whatever the Martian equivalent is. But you’re right.”
As he stood up Pin-mei grasped his forearm.
“Zeke—there has to be another way!”
He threw her a half-hearted, lopsided grin and pushed her hand away. Electricity crackled through his closed eyelids.
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