Sunstone: A Steampunk Reality

by Holly Barbo

  The young man tidied the kitchen, wound the top key of the disc-shaped, copper-clad robo-cleaner and set it on the floor. With a beep, it began its whirring tour of the house, spinning away dirt and dust into a container deep within its housing. Kes disengaged the heating system and locked up the house, glad the isolated home was connected to the geothermal grid. He was planning on dropping off the samples and report from his survey later today so tomorrow he could travel directly to his next assignment. He’d completely enjoyed the Okamak but he loved diving in the Cradle Channel. That particular report would be the last before he earned his certification and could receive his rank as a doctor in marine biology. He was one of the youngest to have accomplished that goal.

  Donning his driving gloves and goggles, Kes climbed into his steam car and built up pressure in the boiler. Checking the gauges on the polished wood dash, he released the brake and with a hiss, started for the trip to Therad, the capital city. First on his list was turning in his report to his boss, Mitch. He spun the dials to set his destination on the vehicle’s nav bot and manually released steam into the car’s propulsion chamber. Once the gears engaged, he slowly circled his home, checking it and soaking up the peace of the place before changing his heading for the city. Since traffic was light, he placed the steam car into auto drive. It was a new invention that guided the vehicle by magnetic pulses in each intersection. With minimal attention on the car’s progress, Kes had time to review his article. Opening the phono pocket on the dash, he slipped the treated cylinder into the phonograph. The young man listened to the report one more time, making notes to expand on a couple of points. He needed to discuss his findings with Mitch, who was the moon’s leading marine micro-biologist. The record finished and, deep in thought, Kes watched the city come into view.

  The steam stacks on every building created low level rainbows as the morning light refracted in the moisture droplets. It was a sight he never grew tired of. As the car navigated closer to the city fringe, he heard the whistle from the steam plant indicating a shift change. Usually that meant a bustle of movement around the factories. There was some but he also noticed signs of decay: empty buildings with dirty broken windows that had been incompletely boarded up and people milling with tattered dun-colored clothing and looks of hopelessness on their begrimed faces and in their postures. Some were slumped against the ornate iron aether lamps that lined the streets. One individual had apparently passed out and lay senseless as two miscreants went through his pockets. Kes shook his head in concern. He’d not seen this level of blatant lawlessness before going to the Okamak.

  Kes found a parking place close to the office. Stashing his motoring togs in the car’s boot, he checked his pocket watch. Skipping the crowded pedestrian sidewalks, the young man shouldered his pack, lifted out the large box filled with carefully labeled sample bags and walked the short distance to Myrn’s Ecological Sciences Building. The Marine Biology division was located on the first floor, appropriately next to the large aquarium and reef-life exhibit. Kes strode into the office and logged in his report and sample box, but upon checking with Mitch’s staff, learned the man was still in a meeting. Kes waited by the walled aquarium and watched the sea life through the round viewing portals. The young scientist thoughtfully compared the vividly colored flora and fauna to that in the old caldera.

  Watching the beautiful marine life seemed to suspend time. When Mitch came out to greet him, Kes was surprised to learn that forty-five minutes had passed. His boss greeted him with a slap on the back and a comment about his lack of tan as they made their way into the inner office. Turning the crank on the door, Mitch engaged the locks.

  “Kes, you could have just dropped this off and spent your time getting a haircut.” He grinned. “But I’m glad to see you before you left for the Cradle tomorrow. I wanted to ask that you pick up some samples of Bryozoan bugula, blue-green algae and bluebell tunicates.” Though the room was secure, he lowered his voice and glanced toward the windows. The office was a beehive of activity as people rushed around collecting papers and dealt with messengers. “The lab team has been carefully bio-prospecting and has come up with some very promising compounds, but they need more specimens. You acquiring some in the process of doing your routine survey would not be unnatural. Just be nonchalant about it, okay?”

  Mitch covered his words by looking through the box of sample bags and pulling out the report. Speaking again at a normal volume level, he said, “I can listen to the record cylinder later, but give me the highlights.”

  Kes took off his newsy-cap and, resting it on his trousered knee, smoothed the tweed fabric of the bill. “I’ve some concerns. I’m not sure that the condition is serious yet, but there are some indicators that I don’t like. Some species of crustaceans don’t look healthy. Their color is off and I saw one who was losing his legs. I have to question why that’s happening. There are also a few orange-beaked fish that appeared to have a crusty growth near their gill openings. Neither occurrence is good. I took water and soil samples as well as scrapings from the rocks. At night, in the habitat, I ran tests. My mobile lab wasn’t detecting anything, but something isn’t right. Because it’s an ancient volcano, I wondered if some mineral was leaching out, though I couldn’t find evidence of that. We need a mass spectrometer down there because tests I could perform only looked at minerals, not all possible chemical changes. Anyway, I don’t have answers and suggest we get a team there with a full lab and figure out if this is serious or just an anomaly. Check the sea floor over the entire bay to see if vents are developing, warming some areas and leaching cobalt particles from the old magma. One of the things that occurred to me was to check with sea floor monitoring devices if perhaps the old Okamak Caldera was building some pressure. Readings taken now could be compared with the original mapping of the Okamak. I’d like to rule out if the bay floor has gotten higher from underground pressure lifting it. If the instruments indicate that there is a change, then we need to set the engineers in motion to try to work out a solution. It isn’t going to be easy as the stress to the crust is from very deep in the mantle and along a wrinkle in the western oceanic plate.”

  Kes shook his head and pushed back the hair from his eyes. “Perhaps I’m seeing phantom problems. It could be that there aren’t anything more than a few diseased fish. I just didn’t like seeing any anomalies.

  “When I was renting the boat to go in, Hank was telling me that there’s a company looking into using the water from the Okamak as the base ingredient for designer bottled water and medicinal sea salt. They’ve been flying a dirigible in and syphoning some surface water as they develop their distillation and product line. He thought it was pretty amusing, but that’s all the more reason we want to make sure everything’s okay, or we need to appeal to the Council of Elders and the company involved to stop their efforts.”

  “Hmm, I hadn’t heard of that. Did you see the dirigible?”

  Kes nodded. “I don’t know the frequency of the trips as I was mostly down in the habitat, but I went topside a few times to get more supplies from my boat and did see one. It didn’t take water near my location but from a spot about a third of the way from the west wall. Even from a distance on a twi-day, it was a funny looking craft with the black bladders underneath it and the retractable hoses.”

  Mitch picked up the waxed cylinder and placed it in the phonograph. “I’ll get the samples to the lab and listen to your report. We must have some strong evidence to justify the expense of sending a team in there. Meanwhile, enjoy your few days in the Cradle. We’ll talk more about this when you get back.” He grinned at the young man. “Now go get a haircut or the harlequin fish will think it a new source of sea grass!”

  The Cradle Channel

  Very early the next morning, Kes packed up his gear and equipment and left for the wide channel called the Cradle of Navora. It was a beautiful place to dive, with an ancient fossil reef and numerous bivalve beds. The place was awash with color from the magnificent banded Shac
ir above to the coral reefs in shades of gold, fuchsia and turquoise. The strait teemed with many forms of marine life in a cornucopia of bright cheerful colors, flitting around sea fans and grottos. Kes was there to look for any obvious abnormalities, particularly in the reefs. Where the work he had just finished in Okamak Bay had been pretty thorough, this would only be an overview. There had been an exhaustive study just two years before at the Cradle, so his task was more a cursory checking and only in the western reef area. The ancient coral ridges were extensive, so it would take a few days just to swim through them.

  Kes arrived just after nine o’clock. It didn’t take long to load the little steam boat his department had rented for him. He stored his scientific and dive gear in the tiny cabin away from the heat of the small boiler and vapor stack. By 9:30 he was motoring to the far end of the reef’s ridge. It was fair weather and he had two days before the twi-day schedule lowered the light level. By then he should be done or nearly so.

  He set his anchor five hundred yards before the end of the reef rib and out into the deeper water enough so his boat drift wouldn’t damage the coral with the chain, and then prepared to dive. Strapping on his air tanks, Kes paused briefly to admire huge Shacir before adjusting his water goggles and mouthpiece and slipping into the water. Under the waves he felt he was in another world. He swam up the west side of the reef toward its northern tip. There were small schools of harlequin fish darting among the sea fans, undulating anemones and sea worms at the reef edge. Tiny orange crustaceans moved among the different forms of coral as a sea turtle as big as Kes lazily swam past. It was easy to get distracted amongst so much diversely beautiful sea life, but he had a job to do. Studying the lifeforms as he slowly swam past, Kes kept his eyes out for abnormalities as well as potentially dangerous marine carnivores. He had a spring action spear gun if he needed it, but mostly he carried small sample bags and a marine data pad for notating species and information.

  He swam deeper into the Cradle ribs until he was surrounded by coral and reef life. It was a wondrous place filled with colorful fish gracefully moving about. Striped, spotted and solid-hued fish fed around the coral grottos, and by the time he had made it to the northern tail of the reef and started down the eastern side, he had recorded a number of the species he was watching for and had filled a dozen specimen bags. He was pleased to note that all life here had healthy color. Several large flat rays swam passed as they fed on schools of tiny shrimp, their wingspan three times his height. By the time he made the circuit back to his boat, more than half of the day had gone by. Kes checked the weather forecast, stored his samples and ate a late lunch. Just before preparing to dive again, Kes slipped a hard wax cylinder on the dictaphone, set the needle stylus and spoke into the small trumpet as he recorded his morning findings. Changing air tanks, he motored south to the next dive location.

  His wrist chronometer indicated it was late afternoon and he was losing light in the reef when he started on the slow swim back to the boat. He had just reached a spot in the reef that was full of grottos when a pod of giant behemoths swam into the Cradle Channel. They had been moving silently, so he hadn’t known of their approach until they were within two hundred yards. Kes was awed to see the magnificent creatures as they were not known to frequent the reefed area of the Cradle, though they loved to scratch their bellies on the gravel beds deposited by the currents at the far northern end of the strait. As they approached, they started their eerie vocalizations and the song filled the channel. The wake that their huge flippers and tails displaced forced him back into a hollow of brain and star coral, sea whips and bright orange tree sponges. He struggled to maintain his distance from the delicate lifeforms but the turbulence from the whales’ passing bumped him against a large section of the two corals. Staring at the pod, he put his hand out to brace himself as the giant creatures passed.

  It wasn’t until the behemoths were out of sight that Kes realized that his hand was touching something smooth and hard in a crevice of the coral. With the song of the giant sea mammals still audible, he reached down and picked up the object. It was a small navorite fossil that fit into the hollow of his palm. The diminutive stone at one time had been cut and polished on one face so the owner could see the fossilized chambers the ancient creature had created as it lived and grew. It was curious that it was so clean and unaffected by the sea life around it. In an environment where plants and microscopic animals attached themselves to anything stationary, everything became encrusted over time.

  The coral shelf, where it had sat, had taken on the little artifact’s shape so Kes knew that the piece had been at this spot for a very long time. It was peculiar that even though the rock ledge had grown like a glove around three-quarters of the fossil, the little navorite slipped free easily when he grasped it. Kes’s mind picked at the puzzle for a moment before he slipped the fossil into a small sample bag attached to his belt and continued on his task.

  During the day he had found very little of the Bryozoan bugula Mitch had asked him to collect. The sea slime grew in finger-sized columns on star coral, and just ahead Kes saw a large patch.

  By the time he pulled himself back onto his boat, he was tired and his muscles vibrated as they were required to take his weight unassisted by the water’s buoyancy. It had been a full day and he’d covered half of the western reef area, but he made sure that his data was recorded before he did anything else. He had the presence of mind to document the behemoth pod; it would be an interesting addition to his report. Slipping a fresh waxed cylinder into place, he recorded the day’s findings. He was tired enough that watching the little needle scratch his words into the turning wax cylinder was almost mesmerizing. Shaking his head, Kes concentrated on the last of the daily report and shut off the dictaphone. He ate dinner after checking his equipment and the weather printout he’d brought with him from the office. Turning in for the night, the gentle movement of the waves rocked him to sleep within minutes. If he was lucky, he would be able to complete his survey tomorrow.

  He got an early start, and after moving his boat farther south, he set his anchor. With a beautiful orange dawn lighting the sky and rivaling Shacir’s bands of color, Kes slipped beneath the waves. Again the health and vitality of the reef captivated him as he collected hours of data and filled more sample bags for Mitch. By the end of this second day, Kes had completed the cursory inspection of the western reef and, after updating his recording, motored back to the harbor. Stowing the equipment and samples in his car, he monitored the steam pressure gauges, and set the nav dials for Therad and the apartment he kept near the office. Usually he preferred to drive himself, but when he was really tired or preoccupied, the new system came in handy. As the craft traveled toward the city, he was able to finish the labeling of his specimen bags as he played back the recording on the phonograph. The little fossil didn’t figure into his scientific work so was not mentioned—an insignificant oddity. He had just begun to relax when the navigation clockworks beeped its alarm, indicating the proximity of his destination. His work was completed, and after parking his steam car at his apartment complex, he unloaded everything into his place. The samples and report were packed for delivery to the office tomorrow.

  Kes sat by his window studying the little fossil he had found in the reef as the twilight lengthened the shadows and the aether lights of the city came on. He studied the smooth, polished face where he could see the separate chambers with absolute clarity. On the back side there was an impression where another small navorite had lain against this one as time had hardened them into stone.

  His fingers drummed on his thigh as the gears of his thoughts slowly turned. Technically, Kes should sell it. The artifacts were so valued by the people of Myrn that collecting or hoarding the Goddess’s tokens was prohibited. To make it possible for all families to bless their home with one, a fossil acquired by gift, marriage or inheritance meant that any extras were sold through a specially licensed dealer. That was the only way a new one showed up on the m
arket. There was always a waiting list. The penalty of stealing one or selling it on the black market was very high and severe. He turned the little stone to catch the light from the window. Somehow finding this in the reef the way he did seemed very special, as if he was meant to have it. Yet the one in his home outside of Therad was his family’s and held so many memories for him. He slipped it into his pocket. He didn’t want to tell anyone of the little fossil’s existence. It just seemed… personal. This was his private decision. One of the navorites would have to go. He ran his hands through his shortened hair, rubbing his scalp as if to get his weary mind to reason through the puzzle and make a decision. He uncoiled his lean frame from the chair and stretched before stepping toward the bedroom. Perhaps sleep would help. After all, he didn’t need to decide right now. He had a few days.

  Navora’s Shrine

  The old man sat in the wheeled chair and absorbed the warmth of the last rays of sun. Tomorrow would be a twi-day and the lower light and cooler temperatures were harder on his gnarled arthritic joints. He closed his eyes and opened his senses to this place he loved. Bareed liked being outside as much as possible and favored this location near the Goddess’s gate. All his life he had lived at Navora’s shrine. He and his family had always been caretakers of the holy place. It was a hereditary position that was honored by Myrn’s people.