Andromeda Day and the Black Hole

by Charlie Jackson

  “Yes, Dad,” she said, knowing perfectly well that it would have to be she who stopped Deneb getting into trouble rather than the other way round.

  The elevator doors opened and out stepped Jack. It was an unusual, Old-Time name for someone who looked distinctly unlike an Earth person, but it was the best translation Andi could come up with for the guttural word that Jack had told her was his name in his own language. Jack was from a planet called Ocasta that the Antiquarian had passed only a few months after it had left Earth. Jack had jumped at the chance to become part of the crew. Andi had never asked him why he had to leave his home planet, although she was aware that Deneb knew, but she suspected it was something to do with a woman, because he carried a picture inside his pocket, and she often caught him staring at it when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  Jack was, like most of the species in the Galaxy, humanoid, but there the similarity to Earth people ended, because his skin was a nutty dark brown and wrinkled like a dried-up cloth, although Andi guessed he wasn’t much older than Deneb. He had short stubbly hair that stuck straight up like a hedgehog, and his eyes were a very odd color, a sort of light pinky-brown.

  He was a gentle man, very loyal to Deneb and Andi, and, being the member of the crew who had been with them the longest, had slipped easily into the role of Deneb’s second-in-command.

  “I’m here,” he announced unnecessarily, walking onto the bridge. Andi’s clip interpreted his deep, guttural voice, although she knew enough of his language to be able to understand him anyway, and often replied to him in his own tongue.

  Andi smiled at him. “Good morning.”

  Jack nodded. “Good morning, Andi. I see that Deneb’s getting us into another scrape.”

  “Of course,” she said wryly. “But this time I’m going down to the planet to keep an eye on him.”

  “We weren’t being fired on,” Deneb stated. “It was stray fire from the planet. Look, Jack, we’re going to go down and see what we can find. I’ve programmed the Antiquarian to orbit round Thoume. Keep communications open will you, in case we need you?”

  “Of course.” He caught Deneb’s arm as he passed, his wrinkled skin like a gnarled branch lying across Deneb’s sleeve. “Don’t take any chances. Especially not with Andi there.”

  “Do I ever?” Deneb left the question unanswered and grabbed his daughter’s hand. His face was alight with the excitement he felt at going down to the planet’s surface, and Andi found herself comparing him to the explorers that formed their own display in their museum: Old-Time ones like Marco Polo, Columbus, and Cook, who had provided the early knowledge of the landmasses on Earth, and New-Time ones like Alkaid, who’d made the first Anti-Matter Drive space flight, and Spica, who’d been the first woman to leave the solar system. Andi imagined that their faces, too, had held the same spark of excitement and absence of fear.

  Or was it absence of sense? Certainly her father seemed to lack the inner caution that most people had. But then perhaps if everyone were afraid to take the first step, Earth people would never have gone anywhere.

  After crossing the bridge, Deneb pulled Andi with him into the elevator. “Quarters, first level,” he directed the Waiter.

  “Yes, Deneb.” The elevator started to descend.

  Deneb turned and smiled at her. “So, are you ready for your first big adventure?” His eyes seemed to spark with excitement, like lightning across a dusky sky. “Remember, don’t go getting into any trouble.”

  She grinned at him. “I think it’s me that should be saying that to you, if your past expeditions are anything to go by.”

  He pulled a face at her, and she stuck out her tongue as they made their way out of the elevator and along the green corridor to their quarters. They had a suite of rooms next to each other and, leaving him at his door, she jogged along to her own quarters.

  She pressed her thumb against the pad on the door panel and, after a few seconds, the door slid aside silently. “Lights, please,” she requested as she entered, and the Waiter raised the lighting to her specified daytime level.

  Her suite consisted of four rooms. To the left was a day room which housed the Virtual Reality pad where she attended class and enjoyed the occasional hour on the Playdeck. It also had her main computer station, an exercise bike, books, and other recreational items. The central room was a lounge, with a large sofa and two comfy chairs, and an LCD screen on which she could watch any of the hundreds of micro-discs of films and documentaries in the Antiquarian archives. There was also a fridge and a small heating unit so she could prepare her own food if she didn’t want to go down to the mess. The third room was her bedroom, smaller than the main room but still a fair size, with a large closet containing her relatively meager selection of clothes. Off this was her bathroom, with a shower and drying unit.

  Andi now walked through the center room and bedroom to the closet and proceeded to get dressed for the forthcoming journey. She chose a nondescript dark blue top and trousers, firm boots, and a warm navy jacket, as the temperature reading on the bridge had said it was only ten degrees Celsius on the surface of the continent they were heading for. She took a bag and put in it her Wordbox, on which she made corrections and additions to the interpreter clip, her sonar gun, which had enough power to stun, although not to kill, and some chocolate in case she got hungry. She lifted the strap over her head, putting the bag on her hip. Then she went to meet Deneb outside his quarters.

  When he came out he was dressed much the same as her, although his suit was dark green, and his jacket was black. He pulled a black hat down over and almost hiding his hair, and then winked at her before grabbing her hand and pulling her along the corridor to the elevators once again.

  “Ready for adventure?” he asked, going into the pod and requesting the cargo bay.

  “I suppose so.” Andi sighed inwardly. Should she tell him that she had a bad feeling about this trip? Possibly not, or he definitely wouldn’t let her go with him. She thought about what Merak had said, that she couldn’t think or feel things properly because she had a metal brain and heart. She wondered about this as the elevator sank slowly through the floors. What was it in one’s body that gave you feelings? Was it something other than electrical impulses and muscle contractions, which she still had, albeit triggered by metal rather than organic organs? Or was it something more than that, something that resided in a human heart, which she no longer possessed?

  “Are you all right?” Deneb frowned, touching her hair lightly.

  “I’m fine.” She shrugged off his hand, deciding not to tell him about her forebodings. It wouldn’t make any difference anyway. Whether it was to their victory or to their doom, they were going to Thoume, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  The elevator descended slowly through the upper cube to the middle section. Actually there was no real ‘up’ or ‘down’ on the ship, as the computer-controlled gravity which operated through the floors meant that a person could be standing ‘upright’ on the top cube while another person stood ‘upside-down’ on the bottom. The lack of old-fashioned rocket thrusters after the invention of the Anti-Matter Drive also meant that the ship had no real forward or aft and could as easily fly ‘sideways’ as ‘forwards’. However, Andi liked to think of the bridge as being at the top of the Antiquarian, and considered a trip to the cargo bay as a descent through the ship.

  The elevator passed through the main section doors into the middle levels, and she and Deneb admired the view of the exhibits as they descended the floors in companionable silence. They were both extremely proud of their museum, and although the middle section was under the control of Ioto, the museum curator, they both took a walk through it together every morning, just enjoying being amongst the artifacts.

  There was a great variety of exhibits. The Earth section was the largest, naturally, and the eclectic collection ranged from Old-Time prehistoric African tools fresh from the cradle of mankind, through medieval Crusader swords supposedly held by Saladin
himself, to full-size Terracotta Warriors from China that Deneb had somehow ‘acquired’. There were also objects that had played a part in the exploration of space, such as one of the cups used by the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, and a complete suit worn by Spica as her spaceship passed through the Kuiper Belt, past Neptune’s orbit. Deneb was especially proud of the exhibit that described Earth’s first colony on Mars, including a handwritten diary by one of the original colonists—Andi didn’t like to think how he had come by that valuable artifact.

  But there were also a great many items from other species and cultures throughout the Galaxy. He was most fond of the exhibit illustrating the first alien species that Earth people had encountered, on a planet circling the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri. The artifacts there included household objects and weapons of that slightly more primitive society, as well as a whole skeleton curled in the fetal position inside their distinctive elaborate circular coffins, complete with fantastic jewelry and precious metal artifacts. The dignified Proximian generals had donated them so that others in the Galaxy would know how wealthy and important they were.

  Andi, however, was most proud of the Kachinas art exhibit. The people of that planet had learned how to project and record their emotions, and had given Andi and Deneb a breathtaking collection of pieces of glass displaying the swirls and colorful patterns of their innermost thoughts. These glass pictures were hung from rafters in one section of the museum, and Andi spent hours there, staring up at the swirling designs and trying to imagine which emotion they depicted.

  In all it was a wonderful collection, Andi thought as the elevator slid past the levels, most of which were darkened until the museum opened to visitors, and it was a wonderful place to exhibit them. She didn’t know which was most awe-inspiring: the thousands of artifacts, or the array of white and colored stars that wheeled above the museum’s transparent roof like fireworks.

  Gradually the elevator descended into the bottom cube, through the hotter, smellier engineering sections, until eventually it arrived at the cargo bay. When the elevator doors slid back, Andi and Deneb crossed the large floor to where the Sparrowhawk waited impatiently to take flight. The Waiter had already contacted the cargo technician to inform him of their impending departure, and he’d started the Anti-Matter Drive of the small flight shuttle. The Sparrowhawk vibrated impatiently on the tiled surface, eager to stretch its wings.

  They settled themselves on board and then Deneb navigated the shuttle carefully out of the Antiquarian where it dropped into space like the bird after which it was named. He turned it around skillfully and then headed down towards the planet.

  Andi looked at the LCD screen in front of her as the shuttle passed through the cloud layer and Thoume became visible. She could see clearly the devastation that had been wrought on two of the continents, which were presumably fighting each other. “What sort of weapons are they using?” she asked Deneb, who was carefully inputting co-ordinates for landing.

  “Well they’re post-industrial and have warp capabilities, according to the Coalition notes. But they don’t appear to be using atomic weapons. Thank goodness. That really would put an end to trade.”

  “And millions of lives,” she reminded him.

  “Well, of course, that as well.”

  She knew that he wasn’t really heartless—he was single-minded, that was all. She watched him fondly as he worked on the controls, thinking how handsome he looked, and how proud of him she was. “Am I more like you or like Mum?” she asked suddenly.

  He looked up at her, surprised. Andi rarely asked questions about her mother, as she knew that thinking about her upset him, but suddenly it seemed important for her to know.

  Deneb said nothing for a moment, studying her thoughtfully. His lips had a pinched, painful look about them. Then his gaze fell back to the control panel and he continued to input the figures. “She was dark-haired,” he said eventually. Andi waited a moment, but he clearly wasn’t going to elaborate.

  “I know that,” she said wryly. “I’ve seen a laser print. I mean character-wise.”

  Deneb’s fingers paused on the keys. “You are very like her,” he said. He looked up then at the LCD, but Andi knew that he wasn’t seeing the view of Thoume before him. He was seeing her mother. She recognized the sad look that came over him, the faraway gaze in his eyes, the way his jaw tightened, as if he was angry. He glanced over at her then, and a glint appeared in his eye. “She was a pain in the neck too. Always trying to stop me doing things.”

  Andi laughed, pleased she hadn’t upset him too much. “In this case I’m glad I’m like her. You need someone to keep an eye on you or you’d be getting yourself into all sorts of trouble.”

  He grinned at her, then checked the controls as the Sparrowhawk beeped that they had reached the targeted area.

  Andi looked at the LCD and saw that Deneb was setting them down some miles behind the war front, just outside a town that had clearly taken some damage. “Where are we?”

  “The Plions said there are two main races on this continent: the Ruvalians, and the Hoshaens. They said we should steer well clear of the Hoshaens in the east, and make sure all our contact is with the Ruvalians in the west. The Ruvalians are the people who own the land where the Indigo Quartz runs in veins through the rock only meters below the surface, whereas on the east of the continent it’s much deeper, several kilometers underground. The Hoshaens are the people in the east who are trying to take over the Ruvalian land.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “The Ruvalians are holding at the moment, but the Plions said it’s not going to be long before they’re overrun. I’m setting us down just outside the city wall of the main Ruvalian capital.”

  As soon as the Sparrowhawk had settled and the Anti-Matter Drive was taken offline, Deneb was out of his seat. “Now remember,” he warned her, “no fancy business. Do as I do, and be careful.”

  “Yes, Dad.” She was determined not to give him cause to refuse her a trip again. Together they exited the shuttle, and stepped down into a field of a bright yellow plant that looked like extra-large sweetcorn cobs, the earth beneath sucking at their boots as they walked across it.

  “Let’s go for the gate in the wall there,” Deneb said.

  “Will they let us in? What if they think we’re Hoshaens or something?”

  “Trust me,” said Deneb. “It’ll be okay.”

  He marched over to the gate, Andi following behind him, and rapped loudly on a small shutter at head height. Immediately it slid to one side and he found himself looking down the barrel of a laser rifle.

  “Hey, hey,” he yelled, “friends! Tell them Andi!”

  Andi rolled her eyes and ran up next to him. “We come in peace,” she said in Ruvalian. She had managed to put together a basic language pattern from the few words that the Plions had known.

  The gun disappeared from the slit and a pair of eyes replaced it. Andi started—the skin of the Ruvalian sentry glowed a warm grass-green, and his eyes were the dark green of river water.

  “It’s the phosphorus in the soil,” murmured Deneb. “It’s unusually high. It must be what makes them that color.”

  The face disappeared and there was the sound of latches being pulled, and then suddenly the gate opened and the rifle appeared again, this time in the hands of the Ruvalian whose eyes had shone through the gap. He was tall, almost as tall as Deneb, and painfully thin, his elbows sharp beneath his dark brown jacket, his trousers bunched at his waist where they had been belted.

  “Come with me,” the interpreter said in Andi’s ear as the sentry spoke, and the rifle twitched to show them which way they should walk. Deneb followed obediently, raising his hands to show that he held no weapons as they entered the city walls. Andi found herself fingering the pocket of her bag, wishing she were holding her sonar pistol in her hand, but she raised her hands slowly as the rifle twitched again.

  “You’re going to get us killed one day,” s
he hissed to Deneb as they began to walk away from the city wall. They were in a street lined on either side by low round-roofed houses built of a light colored brick. Andi stared at them silently as they walked. The glass in the windows of the houses was mostly broken, and there were gaping holes in the walls. Huge caverns yawned in the middle of the roads, marked out by bits of red tape that flapped forlornly in the wind. Debris lay scattered where it had fallen, perhaps to make it difficult for Hoshaen vehicles to maneuver when they came. The streets were empty, however, and Andi wondered if the city was deserted apart from their guard. It must be. How could anyone live in a place like this?

  They turned a corner, and Andi gasped at the sight before them. They were in a large, open space, perhaps once a marketplace, although there were no traders now, no hawkers touting their wares, or people buying food. Now, the flagstones were covered with line upon line of bodies. Their faces were obscured with white sheets, but here and there Andi could see an arm or a leg poking out, and they were all green. Here the Ruvalians laid out their casualties of the war, unable to find the time or the space to bury them. Deneb dropped his raised arms to hold Andi’s hand and she clutched it, grateful that the guard didn’t complain. Never had she seen so many dead in one place.

  “What’s that sharp smell?” she whispered. “Like iron?”

  “It’s blood,” Deneb said.

  “Oh.” Nausea rose in her throat, and she had to fight to stop it overwhelming her.

  The sentry walked past the bodies as if he hadn’t even seen them, heading for the large civic building in front of them. Andi saw him step over one of the corpses to cross the square, puzzled that he didn’t seem to flinch. The war must have been going on for a long time, she thought, for him to appear so blasé about the amount of dead.

  In front of the large town building, for the first time Andi saw more living Ruvalians, all of whom carried weapons, and all of whose skin had the same, distinctive green glow. Their shoulder-length hair varied in shade from light apple to dark river-green. They looked at Deneb and Andi suspiciously, fingering the triggers of their rifles.