by Adrian Speed
“That one is mine,” Sir Reginald said and walked onto it.
“Ah, I think I see,” Past Sir Reginald nodded and began altering the controls of his time-machine. “It will all be sorted out.”
“It has been, it will be, it was, it shall be so,” Sir Reginald said. “Now go, go and become me.”
“By your leave.” Past Sir Reginald locked his coordinates and then in a move that dislodged something unpleasant in his chest, pulled on the time-travel lever.
Past Sir Reginald and his past time-machine disappeared, leaving behind it only the smoke curling around the ceiling.
“And I suppose I should also depart,” Sir Reginald wearily looked over to the controls. “Before I set off the fire alarms and ruin everything. Oh that would be simply the most dashed piece of nonsense.”
Chapter XII
I stirred. My eyelids felt glued shut. Even if I wanted to open them I couldn't. I felt warmth all around me and pressure. I was in a bed, tucked in very tight. Considering only a moment before I had a sword through my chest this seemed pretty good.
“Ah, you're coming round,” a voice like that of a woman approaching middle age spoke nearby. I could see in my mind's eye a face attached to that voice. Greying hair, probably dyed, spidery wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, no make-up, but a pair of earrings bought in youth.
“Where am I?” I managed to speak, as though fighting through a dream.
“The Armstrong Memorial Hospital, Lucon,” the voice said. “Now hold on, I'm just going to check your reflexes.”
Something gripped my eyelid and forced it open, and I recoiled as painful bright light shone in.
“Argh, what are you doing?” I writhed and pulled myself upright, fighting against the sheets and my own fatigue until I was sitting upright. “Are you trying to blind me?” I tried to massage the pain away.
“It is a standard reflex test,” the woman's voice said firmly. “We need to ascertain whether there has been any damage to your nervous system.”
“Well you could give me a bit of warning.” I blinked my eyes open and a nightmare came into focus in front of me.
A five-foot-long hairy leg, bent in two places, held a torch in front of my face. Seven more legs all came together in a central torso that was unmistakable. Five eyes blinked at me. One of them inexplicably had a monocle. A black bowler hat sat on top of its head. There was a name for what lay in front of me. Giant Tarantula. Giant, man-sized tarantula.
I screamed, jumped away as far as I could, ripping off the sheets. In a single jerk of motion I flew out of the bed, sailed through the air and smacked into the ceiling. Then I dropped slowly to the floor.
“Oh now please don't do that,” the woman's voice spoke again. The giant spider fluttered over to me, moving effortlessly around the room and reaching out two forelegs to pull me upright with its three-fingered hands.
“Where am I?” I yelled this time, recoiling from every touch of the spider hands until I was fully upright with my back against the wall.
“The Armstrong Memorial Hospital in the city of Lucon.” When the woman's voice spoke the spider's mouth parts moved in sync. There was no other explanation, it had to be the spider's voice. “I'm Dr Harper, your surgeon and primary physician at the request of Sir Reginald Derby.”
“When am I?” I nervously gripped my elbow.
“Saturday the twenty-ninth of August; 11:38 to be exact.” The spider withdrew its forelegs and retreated a few steps. “You had a nasty stab wound. We had to keep you asleep for two days while it healed.” The spider pointed to my shoulder. My hand instinctively flew to it. There was barely a scar.
“What year?”
“2274,” the spider rubbed her hands together awkwardly. “Sir Reginald, he, er, brought you in from a long way away did he?”
“What's wrong with the gravity?” I demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I stamped my foot. The force sent me six inches into the air and slowly floated down. “How is there nothing wrong with that?”
“Because this is Luna,” the spider shrugged. “Could I please encourage you to get back into bed? Medicine has come a long way since whenever you're from, but it's still not a good idea to go leaping about two days after you had a sword run through your lung.”
“When you say Luna, do you mean the moon?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Please.” The spider indicated the bed again. “Please sit down. As your doctor I simply cannot recommend you to cavort and caper like this.”
“This has to be a hallucination.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and walked to the window, bounding three feet into the air with every step. “It's either a hallucination from blood loss before I die, or I am dead and the afterlife is a cruel joke played by an angry god.” The view out of the window could support either case. A cavern stretched out before me as far as the eye could see, the distance blurring into shadow. Skyscrapers grew out of the ground like stalagmites. It was impossible to shake the feeling this was God's ant farm, even with the green spaces the city planners had added. “Yeah, this feels like the work of an angry god.”
The door opened with a click. “I am afraid not my dear.” I span around. “Not unless you consider the North American and European Union Joint Colonial Commission an angry god,” came a third voice.
“And there are many who would,” the spider suggested.
“Sir Reginald!” I leapt towards him. I didn't have a choice. Taking a single step sent me flying.
“Careful my dear,” he said as the spider intercepted my fall. “We don't want you to have another accident, do we?”
“Sir Reginald, where am I?” I asked while the spider tucked me into the hospital bed.
“We are in the city of Lucon, a name derived from Lunar Colony One,” he said, stepping towards me. “This is the Armstrong Memorial Hospital. You are in E-Wing, for patients recovering from recent surgery, and this is room E-321. Is that satisfactory?”
“I suppose. But why am I...here. In time?”
“I'm sorry my dear, it seems I made rather more of an impression on history than I thought, and you took the brunt of it.” Sir Reginald took off his hat and held it to his chest. “But if there is one physician in the entire world of time and space that I trust to make you well it’s Dr Harper.” He waved a hand to the spider, who raised her bowler hat. “She is a marvel.”
“Oh stop, Sir Reginald,” Dr Harper said in a way that requested more compliments.
“Dr Harper’s skills as a surgeon are unparalleled my dear,” he said from the end of my bed. “Even when compared with the delicacy and accuracy of a robot, Dr Harper's skill is greater.”
“OK, well don't take this the wrong way,” I bit my lip, “but why is Dr Harper a giant spider?”
“I'm a genetically uplifted tarantula,” Dr Harper turned her five eyes on me. They were as bright and round as golf balls. “I was engineered to obtain human intelligence, tool-using hands, and speech.”
“And they built you as a doctor?”
“No, they built me as a circus freak show.” Dr Harper picked up a clipboard and took off her hat to juggle as a demonstration. “See? I can do this with up to thirteen items of any shape. But I managed to escape captivity and became a doctor.”
“You ran away from the circus to join med school?”
“Precisely,” Dr Harper stopped juggling, leaving the hat to sail through the air and land perfectly on her head. “And a good thing I did. If a human surgeon had been handed your shoulder you would have died.”
“If you hadn't gone to medical school, Dr Harper, I would have ignored the twenty-third century and travelled straight to the twenty-seventh,” Sir Reginald said.
“I only do what the limit of current medical technology allows,” Dr Harper said with false modesty.
My hand found its way to where the sword had struck. Not even a bandage. Under my fingers I could feel a thin line of scar tissue slightly raised abo
ve the rest of my skin. If it weren't for the heat around it I would have struggled to even find it. I tried to glance down at it but it was so high up my chest I caught only glimpses. It didn't look like a fresh scar; it was faded and pale. I thought about what my wound would have looked like in the twenty-first century. A line of livid stitches – if I’d even survived.
There was almost no pain, and no sign I was drugged up to the eyeballs with pain killers, just tenderness underneath the skin, and if I breathed too deeply a hot, sharp pain, like a stitch at the top of my chest.
“Seems to be healing well,” Dr Harper traced a finger along my scar and inspected it with her five penetrating eyes. Somehow, despite the initial revulsion, I began to get used to the idea of a giant spider in the room.
“You should be ready to discharge this afternoon with a prescription of stem cell therapy.” The spider looked from me to Sir Reginald, noting the look that was passing between us. “Well, other people require my expertise. I'll be back in a few hours with your discharge paperwork.”
She bustled out of the room. The door wasn't designed for giant spiders but her legs bent around the corner while her abdomen was smaller than the average human. She closed the door with a back leg leaving us alone.
“My apologies, Hannah.” Sir Reginald took off his hat and sat at the end of the bed.
“It's not your fault,” I sat cross-legged on the hospital mattress. “I was the one who took my eyes off the knight.”
“I was the one that put a sword in your hand.”
“They were trying to kill us both,” I shrugged. “It, er, I mean...I won't say it isn't...scary,” I gulped. “To think about. I mean, the fact I almost died. But at the same time, I don't think I would have done anything differently if I could go back in time and do it all again.”
“Well that is gratifying. Especially as we have the capacity to do so.” Sir Reginald took a deep breath. “I am very glad to see you are well.”
“Hey, so am I,” I laughed. “For a moment I thought that was the end of me!”
“Yes, and for that reason I recommend we stay here for a few days, perhaps a week,” Sir Reginald hesitated, drumming his fingers on his hat. “Make sure you're seen by a therapist. Talk out your feelings.”
“Why? I feel fine!” I laughed. “Even this feels fine!” I thumped a fist into my chest, making Sir Reginald wince.
“You killed or injured six people, my dear,” he said bluntly, but in a voice filled with sympathy.
“Yes, I did.”
“And the scars from that event will be much more livid than those of the sword blow. So you're going to have some therapy. I know another doctor in the hospital who is very good. You merely have to talk to him and I'll be satisfied.”
“And what's he, a genetically uplifted caterpillar?”
“No, I believe Dr Foster is human,” Sir Reginald said. “Although he does have a cybernetically enhanced brain.”
“How so?”
“All memories of his patients are stored on internal computer storage,” Sir Reginald said. “At the end of the day he disables access to the memories. You can speak to him in utter confidence because he is literally incapable of sharing your problems.” Sir Reginald paused. “I believe he also has a robotic eye from burning out his retina looking at unshielded sun on the moon's surface.”
“Well, that sounds...super,” I tried to smile. “Not the least bit creepy.”
“We're more than two hundred years into your future, Hannah,” Sir Reginald stood up and smiled. “And I am afraid you'll find the future is just as alien as the past.”
Chapter XIII
“One lunaccino, extra milk, and one English afternoon tea, milk and two sugars. That's 17 lunas twenty, please sir,” said the robot that was the coffee stand.
“Here you are, my good robot,” Sir Reginald handed over a twenty-luna note bearing the face of Buzz Aldrin. “And please keep the change for yourself.”
“Why thank you sir,” the robot said. A slot in its hand ate the money. It quietly deposited the change it dispensed from its chest into a jar in the shadowy recesses of the coffee-shop cupboard. A keen-eyed observer, such as Sir Reginald or I, would have spotted a book of 'Finest English Poems' next to that jar, along with a notebook and pencil.
“I’m not sure I’ve got the hang of Luna currency,” I said as we walked away from the stand. I resisted the urge to call them loonies. “A luna is one hundred cents, and that's fine, but a coffee costs eight lunas while at the same time I can buy a computer for thirty lunas. And the coffee is served in a china mug instead of a paper cup? How on earth—”
“How on Luna,” Sir Reginald corrected. “The economy has changed, my dear Hannah, as it always does. To a seventeenth-century man, the fact that a man of 2000 pays only, what is the norm, ten or twenty percent of his household income on food is a fantasy. In his day a man spent sixty percent or more keeping a family fed.”
We were walking through a plaza that sat atop the Lucon North Terminal. Twenty metres below our feet trains surged into the station from other lunar colonies: NovLon, Chang'e Du, Chandra and even further afield. A complex of fountains showing the ascent of man from earth to the moon, wielding the hammer of industry with woman by his side holding scrolls of knowledge, dominated the plaza. For some reason the architect decided the best metaphor for space flight was to have water gush from every orifice.
It served a practical purpose as well, maintaining the humidity of the city. Every nozzle in it could be controlled by the Ministry of Terraforming, as well as the dozens of other fountains in the rest of the city. Everything in Lucon had a secondary purpose. Walls were vertical gardens; basements were bio-recyclers. There were over three million people in the city and everyone had a purpose.
“At this time, here on Luna,” Sir Reginald continued, “the expensive things are the biological things. The mines churn out more ore than the captains of industry know how to use. Fusion reactors have removed the need for traditional energy and large-scale use of renewable energy. Nothing built by man from the moon's raw materials is expensive. The fly in the ointment of course is that farming space is limited. The caverns hollowed out by the miners are filled by farms but the farmers are given food crop quotas by government and the Luna government is concerned with sustainability. There are few commercial forests and even fewer tea plantations. If I'm any judge,” Sir Reginald sipped his tea, “this came straight from the hills of Assam on earth.”
“What, they sent it up in a rocket?”
“I doubt it my dear,” Sir Reginald laughed. “Most likely it was fired from the Mombasa Lunar Link. A four-hundred-mile railway that utilises electricity to fire supply pods into lunar orbit. They are quite large, very expensive, but a thousand times cheaper than a rocket.”
“But because all the components of a computer can be mined, refined and built here on the moon, probably by robots, they're really cheap; all right, I understand,” I nodded. “And this is a china mug because it's just made of moon dust fired in a kiln, but there's no paper because there's only a handful of trees on the whole planet.”
“Whole moon,” Sir Reginald corrected. “And almost certainly made by robots. The robot population outnumbers the human population twelve to one here in Lucon alone.”
We came to rest at one corner of the plaza where someone had placed a bench in memory of an ancestor. It overlooked the city and the railway, and I sank onto it. I wasn't used to Luna gravity yet, but I had just about learnt that if I sat down with a bump I would bounce back up and fall over.
We watched the movements of the city for a while, listening to the clunk-clunk-shunk of the monorail shunting between the skyscrapers that stretched almost to the solar dome.
“When you let the robot have the change,” I paused. “Was that...usual?”
“Uncommon,” Sir Reginald sipped his tea. “It happens from time to time because when large-scale automation of sales positions occurred people personified the robots and gave
them tips like they had given to human staff. For a while the company took them until laws were passed, and now a robot is entitled to what it earns.”
“But...they're not...alive.” I spared a glance at Sir Reginald. He wore the same sort of look as when he had come back from the torturers in ancient Rome.
“By the current legal definition,” Sir Reginald said and sipped his tea. “They are property, built to serve a purpose and only as intelligent as their job requires. After all, how much intelligence does it really take to pour coffee all day?” I couldn't help but look. The plaza was quiet, with no-one at the coffee stand. The robot inside opened up its book and read from it. Occasionally it wrote something down, and sometimes it looked up at the dome and sky above. I could believe it would be sighing if it was human.
“I see.”
“For now at least, that is the situation,” Sir Reginald rested his teacup on his knee and readjusted his sleeves. “And a few extra lunas here and there go a long way.”
Someone arrived at the coffee stand, and faster than I could see, the robot had replaced its books and pencil in the hidden recess and was taking their order.
“Now that's something I can't understand,” I pointed at the distant figure. “Why walk around like that? Don't people of the future have any shame at all?”
“He is dressed from neck to toe.”
“Yeah, in a skin tight body suit of...I dunno what it's made from, latex? Plastic?”
“I believe it’s a biologically derived compound grown from algae,” Sir Reginald said. “It resists movement and was invented to allow lunar colonists to maintain their earth strength in the low gravity. You're wearing one.”
“Yes, under my clothes,” I blushed. The introduction of the suit by Dr Harper before I left the hospital had been the most embarrassing conversation since school had taught sex education. “I’m not parading about in it in public.”