Kaleem called up all seventy-nine channels, one
after the other. It was the same story over and over. Every single one of them
reported an attack by the Supercraft Excelsior. They all claimed that Terrestra’s
aggression was just an act of self-defence. The same images were shown over and
over again. The flash of light from the Terrestran Scout, and the silent
shattering of the right wing of the Supercraft Excelsior.
‘We have to show them that no approach will be tolerated,’
said one of the Head of Diplomacy’s officials on all seventy-nine channels. ‘The
attack was meant to shock, not to maim. We shall not accept infringement of our
orbital space from aliens.’
So much for diplomacy, thought Kaleem.
He called up several of the two hundred non-news channels.
But each time, just as they started to load, they would flip to the nearest
news channel.
‘Terrestrans are requested to keep movement to a minimum,’
said one of the robot newsreaders. ‘Emergency alert code five is implemented.
Movement is allowed only for personnel who need to report to work stations.’
Kaleem wondered for a moment whether he could use this to
get over to the medical centre to see Maria. Surely the droid guards would be
too busy directing people to the correct muster stations to be bothered with
him? It might be worth a try.
‘There will still be severe punishments for Terrestrans
found away from home without need,’ continued the robot. ‘Minimum fine, seven
thousand Terrestran credits.’
Better not then, thought Kaleem. Maria barely earned
seven thousand credits in a year. He shuddered as he remembered his recent
narrow escape.
He continued his search for anything other than news.
‘Broadcast group seven
twenty-three,’ he mumbled. The familiar music of the fitness
channel’s hourly change of programme started up. The screen flickered and
changed for a few seconds to the standard news broadcast. Then there was a
whoosh and crackle and suddenly a very clear picture on the screen.
There was no sound except a very gentle tinkling, like small
wind chimes on a breezy summer afternoon. Unusual figures were moving across
the screen. They were recognisably human, but they were somehow flat and
two-dimensional, and they were wearing strange clothes. There was something
very familiar about the colours though - those rich blues, golds and silvers.
Some Wordtext appeared across the bottom of the screen.
Kaleem could read it easily now. The picture it made in his
head was as clear as the picture he could see on the screen. Clearer in fact -
because the movie in his head had real people in it. He watched them building
the tower and making their way up it. Then he saw the flashes of lightning and
the people running down the outside staircase. They were shouting and couldn’t
understand each other. Kaleem recognised some of the words, though.
That was Canadian French, he thought, as he heard one
man shouting abuse at someone who had punched him on the steps. The man replied
in Swiss German.
Yet no sound came from the dataserve. There were just the
soft chimes of the tubular bells. The flat pictures and the Wordtext rolled on.
Then more Wordtext rolled over the screen. There was a list of names and jobs
next to each other. That faded.
Then there were real, three-dimensional people - two women
and a man. They, too, were wearing odd clothes - certainly not the normal
tunics worn on Terrestra, though what the women had on looked almost like a
tunic.
‘So, how exactly does this story fit in with the Peace Child
Prophecy?’ said the man. ‘And what do you understand the role of the Mother to
be?’
Now the sound was actually coming from the dataserve’s sound
card.
Kaleem felt a rush of blood come to his head. He was aware
that his heart was beating rapidly now and his mouth was going dry.
‘Well, I’m not exactly sure that the three things do fit
together as an absolute truth,’ began the first woman. ‘They are often
associated, because of the concept of mother - the idea that the female who
nurtures - and that may not even be a
human mother - it could even be a series of events - will be the one who
produces a person capable of sorting out the misunderstandings that arise when
people just can’t understand each other because of different languages and
perhaps, more importantly, because of different cultures, different ways of
life.’
‘But that is precisely how prophecy works,’ said the other
woman. ‘It creates a set of symbols which can be applied to help us rationalise
a set of events.’
The sound and the pictures on the dataserve screen wobbled a
little. Then it went silent. There was now only a soft green light coming from
the screen.
No, thought
Kaleem. Don’t let this go. I really want
to find out about this.
He tried to think about what he’d heard. Yes, it made sense.
Why not use the Peace Child Prophecy to explain about bringing harmony back?
But it was so peculiar how similar those pictures on the dataserve had been to
the ones in the book he had found. He shivered.
He had no more time to think. A dazzling white light came
from the screen suddenly and then Razjosh was standing there in a hologram.
‘We have to move on,’ said Razjosh’s holo. ‘You need to
experience the other worlds through the holoprogrammes. It’s not ideal, but it’s
the best we can do at the moment.’
Kaleem wanted to ask him about the movie he had just seen.
Somehow, though, it was difficult to ask a holo such questions. If Razjosh had
really come here, it would be so much easier. Or was that just an excuse he was
making? He almost hoped that the Elder would bring up the question himself.
‘We’re sending you to Polynket,’ said the Elder. The
hologram was beginning to disintegrate. ‘I’m sure you will find that
interesting. The picture of Razjosh faded in and out of view. Suddenly, though,
it steadied, and it was hard to believe that the Elder wasn’t actually in the
room. ‘They are different from us in a most remarkable way,’ said Razjosh.
‘Razjosh,’ began Kaleem. He wanted to talk about the Prophecy.
‘Do you think…?
The now clear holo of the Elder looked at him. It was that
all-knowing stare again. Surely, even in a holo, Razjosh could tell exactly
what he was thinking. Kaleem lost his nerve.
‘Will the holos be more stable than this?’ he said. ‘I mean,
it’s hardly going to seem realistic if things keep fading in and out, is it?’
The holo stared at him for a few seconds.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Razjosh. ‘You will have full power for
your programme. We’re only saving power on non-urgent messages. Your training
has been given number one priority.’
The holo snapped out. There were a few seconds of complete
darkness. Then Kaleem could hear his dataserve humming faintly. The room
gradually lit up again.
Except that it wasn’t his room. He was outside, standing
next to a round, vibrating vehicle. It
hovered slightly above the ground and it seemed to be in queue of similar
machines. There were about ten in front and they stretched out behind as far as
he could see.
‘It’s such a waste of time,’ said a voice next to him.
New Middle German! It would be. That was the one language he
found really difficult. It still had all the inflections and standard new
spelling from the German of the 21st century, but only on the old
words. Ones they borrowed from other cultures had no inflections. He was bound
to make mistakes all the time. It was a good job this was just a holo exercise
and not the real thing.
‘Energy shortage again on Polynket and everybody panics.
Everybody’s queuing and they know they’ve got to pay at least 50 universal
credits or ten Polynket rupels even if they can only load a couple of
unicharges. Madness!’
The speaker was a boy about his own age. He had dark hair
and looked almost exactly like a white Terrestran, except that his skin was a
shade darker. The other people standing nearby all looked similar. And no one
was wearing a tunic. Everyone was wearing the same tight fitting leggings and
jacket, though there were a variety of colours.
Kaleem felt almost naked at first, though as they moved
slowly forward towards the building, he began to enjoy the feeling of freedom
these new clothes gave him.
‘I’m Carlton,
by the way,’ said the boy.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Kaleem. ‘I’m Kaleem.’
Carlton
grinned. ‘I know,’ he said.
Obviously!
‘I bet they’ve hardly any room for any more charge,’ said Carlton. ‘Whereas I’m
genuinely down to street charge only. This baby will just about manage to limp
in on the residual power from the walkways.’
He pushed the strange-looking vehicle forward to the space
left by the one in front. It was beginning to make a strange whirring noise.
‘She’s really struggling now,’ said Carlton. ‘We may have to go on to wheels and
run her along the ground soon.’
They were moved forward again.
‘You see?’ said Carlton.
‘That idiot only took thirty seconds. A full charge should take at least two
minutes.’ He sighed. Then he grinned. ‘Still, I suppose it’s good for the
economy. He’s paying the energy company far more than his recharge is worth.
That should eventually make it cheaper for the rest of us. And eventually
people will get fed up of all this queuing and will only recharge when they
really need to.’
‘So how much energy does … -erm?’ Kaleem started to say.
‘Ten rupels or 50 universal credits,’ Carlton continued for him. ‘Almost a full
recharge.’
The vehicle made a loud clunking noise. Two wheels dropped
beneath it. It sank to the floor.
‘Good job you’re here,’ said Carlton. ‘It takes two to wheel an Autoflieg.’
There were now only two Autofliegs in front of them. Kaleem
helped Carlton
to wheel the broken down vehicle along towards the entrance of the building. It
wasn’t heavy. It was just slightly awkward to steer.
The two vehicles in front only took a few seconds each to
recharge.
‘Typical,’ muttered Carton.
The driver of the second Autoflieg looked annoyed.
‘I’m not doing this anymore,’ she said to Carlton. ‘I think I’ll use a bit of your
sense. It’s stupid, wasting all this time and all these credits.’ She got back
into her Autoflieg. There was a loud whoosh and the vehicle sprang into the air
and rushed forward and out of the building.
Carlton
grinned at Kaleem.
‘Not a bad idea from the Oberrat,’ he said. ‘Better than
restricting the amount of recharge you can buy.’
Kaleem remembered seeing something in an archive clip about
energy shortages on Terrestra. The vehicles had queued for hours, in the days
of the old fossil fuels, burning more fuel as they did so, to buy the small
amount allowed. This was a better idea here, and it was already beginning to
work.
The droids were already hooking up a thick wire to the power
socket on the Autoflieg as Carlton
looked at the small camera which scanned his eyes in order to process the
credits. The small craft lit up straight away and then hovered above the
ground. Two minutes later the recharge was complete.
‘Full power restored,’ announced one of the droids. ‘Fifty-two
universal credits deducted. Value in rupels, ten point four’.
‘Get in,’ said Carlton.
‘You’re going to enjoy this.’
The doors on both sides of the craft slid open. Kaleem found
he almost had to lie down in the seat. A set of straps and restraints moulded
itself around him. The craft sped forward out of the building and began to
climb upwards. Then it rotated through
ninety degrees, so that Kaleem thought he was almost standing upright. They
carried on upwards.
‘Levelling off,’ said the Autoflieg’s dataserve. Now it
tilted them forward another forty-five degrees, which gave Kaleem the sensation
that he was flying through the air. He could look down and see Polynket’s
surface.
‘What do you think?’ asked Carlton.
‘It’s brilliant,’ said Kaleem. Below him Kaleem could see blue-capped
mountains and green lakes. Every now and then there was a city with buildings
pointing into the air. Between them were stretches of green and brown land. It
was very much as he would expect Terrestra to look - except that he’d never
been in a flying transporter on Terrestra.
They seemed to be flying very close to other Autofliegs.
‘What stops us from crashing into them?’ he asked Carlton.
‘Force field buffers,’ replied Carlton. ‘It’s impossible for them to touch
each other. So when we drive them we just point them where we want to go and
they do the rest. In fact, we don’t really have to drive at all.’ He took his
hands off what Kaleem had assumed was the controls of the craft.
Kaleem shrieked. Carlton
laughed. Another Autoflieg seemed to come right up to them, hovered for a few seconds,
and then sped backwards from them. The occupants waved wildly.
‘You don’t need to be scared,’ said Carlton. ‘It’s all under control.’
Kaleem kept quiet for the rest of the journey. It was hard
enough, following everything Carlton
was saying. Replying was just impossible. He listened carefully to what the
other boy said, trying to get clues as to which words needed inflections and
which ones didn’t. But it was such a puzzle. Carlton had been programmed not to answer if
Kaleem used the words wrongly. He was getting too used to Carlton’s blank stare. So he contented
himself with just looking out of the window.
‘Nearly there,’ said Carlton
after another twenty-five minutes. The Autoflieg flipped into the upright
position and began to descend.
‘We’re going to the Denta Mill engineering works,’ Carlton explained. ‘The
mill-wheel has seized up and I’m helping to free it.’
The Autoflieg hovered for a few seconds in the upright
position and then gently rotated so that they were almost lying on their backs.
It made its way slowly forwards and then came to rest, hovering a metre above
the ground next to a stone platform. The seats tilted forward slightly so that
they were almost upright again and the doors sprang open.
‘Park,’ commanded Carlton.
The craft extended its wheels again and all the motor sounds
stopped. As soon as the two boys had got out of the craft, a couple of droids
wheeled it into a garage slot.
‘Come on then,’ said Carlton.
‘Let’s go and look at this big wheel.’
Kaleem followed him out into the open air. It was just like
Terrestra on a Spring afternoon.
‘We face two suns,’ explained Carlton. ‘So there is no day and night. As
soon as one sun sinks the other rises. It’s always light, so there is no
natural night. We all have different living cycles. We belong to the blue time
zone - hence the blue suits.’
It was true. All the other people around them were wearing
blue - exactly the same shade of blue as Carlton
and himself.
‘Our day runs from three Uva time to seven Zena time,’
explained Carlton.
‘Uva has been up three hours. Zena will come up in another five hours. Oh, by
the way, we measure our hours exactly like sixty Terrestran minutes.’
It sort of made sense.
‘So what’s happened to the mill wheel?’ asked Kaleem. He
suddenly felt bold with his words. He must have got the inflections right
because Carlton
turned to answer him.
‘Silted up,’ explained Carlton.
‘Won’t turn.’
Soon they were looking into a deep well at the gigantic
stuck wheel.
‘So what does it do?’ asked Kaleem pointing to the mill wheel.
Carlton
did not seem to have heard him. He started talking to one of the other
engineers there. Kaleem found it quite difficult to follow what they were
saying, but he did hear them mention water.
‘So what does it do?’ he asked again, after Carlton had finished talking to the others.
This time he had remembered the inflected word for ‘it’ when he referred to the
mill wheel.
‘This is what generates most of our energy,’ Carlton explained. ‘It’s
because this has seized up that we’re short of energy at the moment.’
Kaleem could see what the engineers were doing. They seemed
to be just putting more and more water into the wheel pit. Black liquid mud was
pouring out.
Kaleem wanted to ask about that. He remembered that the word
for water came from the old language and therefore had to be inflected.
‘Are they really just pouring water into it?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t they take out the wheel
and dig out the mud?’ Kaleem felt rather pleased with his effort this time. He
must have got it right again, because Carlton
replied straight away.
‘Well, we could have done that,’ he said, ‘but that is
rather a big job and the wheel could get broken in the process. This way we are
loosening up the silt and cleaning the wheel at the same time.’
Kaleem helped Carlton
all day, with just a short break to drink some fruit juice and eat something
which was a bit like a sandwich. It tasted good because he was so hungry. The
rest of the time, they helped to pour in the water. There were droids working
there as well, but all too often they got soaked and stopped working. Some of
the engineers shovelled out the now softened silt. The wheel was beginning to
move a little.
‘It’s four of Zena,’ said
Carlton
suddenly. ‘The end of our shift. The reds will be coming in soon. Let’s go and
get cleaned up.’
Kaleem enjoyed the shower.
‘The company will take care of our laundry,’ said Carlton. ‘That’s your
locker there.’ He handed Kaleem a disk key.
Kaleem pressed the disk and the beam hit the door of the
locker, which opened immediately. Inside was a blue uniform, identical to the
one he just taken off.
‘Let’s go and relax,’ said Carlton.
Kaleem didn’t jump every time another Autoflieg came right
up to them this time. He actually enjoyed trying to work out which vehicle
would back off first. He noticed as well that all the Fliegs travelling in the
same direction as them were blue, and the ones going towards the engineering
site were red.
‘Is everything colour-coded then?’ he asked Carlton.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That way we know who’s doing what.’
‘Well, can people from different colour bands mix?’ asked
Kaleem.
‘Of course,’ replied Carlton.
‘I used to be a yellow.’
‘So why did you become a blue?’ asked Kaleem.
‘Because I got the job with Denta engineering,’ replied Carlton. ‘It’s no big
deal. You just have to alter your eating, working and sleeping patterns.’
It all seemed so very logical. Perhaps a bit too logical for
Kaleem. It was all so neat and tidy. He didn’t think he ought to comment about
that, though, and anyway, he’d begun to find it a bit difficult to talk again.
This language was a really tricky one, and words from other ones kept popping
into his head.
It must be dreary,
though, he thought, having to wear
the same colour all the time.
Carlton,
of course, knew what he was thinking. Well, of course he did, he was all part
of the programme, wasn’t he? These holoprogrammes were all very good, but that’s
all they were - programmes.
‘We have to wear our colours when we’re out and about,’ said
Carlton ‘So that other people can respect our time zone. But once we’re in
private space, we can please ourselves.’
‘So what do you do during your time off?’ asked Kaleem.
‘Exercise, virtual outings, drinking in the bars, visiting
the dataserve simulations,’ he replied. He was slowing the Autoflieg right down
now. It was tilting into the upright position, ready to land.
‘I thought we might go to juice joint,’ he said. The
Autoflieg was near the ground. Kaleem heard the wheels drop and the machine
tilted them back into the sitting position.
‘You’ll need a jacket,’ said Carlton. ‘The air’s cooled inside.’
A jacket seemed the last thing that he’d need as he stepped
out into the heat of Zena’s mid-day.
‘Believe me, it will be cool in there,’ said Carlton, handing Kaleem a
pale blue jacket.
Kaleem noticed that Carlton
was jiggling something in his top left pocket. He took a small glass ball from
the pocket and transferred it to his right pocket.
‘Three down, two to go,’ said Carlton.
‘What?’ said Kaleem. There seemed to be a strange way of
thinking on this planet - minimum amount of refuelling when there was an energy crisis, throwing water at muck
rather than digging it out, and wearing jackets indoors. But moving marbles
around was just the limit.
‘We’re learning to think sideways,’ said Carlton. ‘The marbles help us to make sure we
do it at least five times a day. You transfer a marble from one pocket to the
other every time you manage to think laterally. Vertical thinking has stopped
working.’
Yeah, right, thought Kaleem.
He just about had time to catch a glimpse of the juice
joint. Not that different form a nectar bar. And there were colours here - in
fact, shafts of rainbow lights illuminated groups of drinkers - though they
were mainly blues, because of the time. He realised he was thirsty and looked
forward to trying the juice.
But then the bar and its occupants started breaking up. He
could hear the faint whir of his own dataserve.
‘Yeah, okay, I get it,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘but I would
have liked to stay a bit longer and try at least one juice. I could have tried
my New Middle German a bit more.’
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ said Razjosh. ‘I’ve brought you back
early again. But we have to go. You must pack at once.’
It was actually Razjosh this time, not a hologram.
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