‘Desperate times call for desperate measures,’ said
Razjosh.
It irritated Kaleem that he had come here and he had made a
point of telling the old man that. Kaleem had still not been able to go and
visit Maria. Every single Terrestran had been told to stay in their living
quarters. Kaleem had not minded too much at first. The Health Centre was in
constant touch. They were making sure that that particular channel was always
open for him. It was not as if there was all that much point in being there
either. Maria was making no sort of response to anything they did. Day after
day the same process had repeated itself. Kaleem would contact the centre and
talk to the medics. They would explain what else they had done to help Maria
out of the coma and would tell him of any other ideas they had had about what
had caused it, not that they had any, really. He would also give them a little
more information about the life that he and Maria led together. The medics
would look for clues in that, but usually found none. They were getting
nowhere.
Once a week he had been going to the medical Centre and
sitting with his mother for a short time, watching her breathing in and out
very gently, but otherwise not moving at all. It was as if she had been
switched off too soon, but that something was keeping her breathing. He would
talk to her about anything he could think of, but always at some time he would
come back to asking her about the book and where it came from, and then where
he had come from. Still, she did not move, did not seem to hear his voice. The
visits were beginning to seem pointless, anyway. It was the same nothingness
every time. They had told him he should keep on coming, though.
Now that he wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment he could
get more work done. It made him worry less about Maria, somehow. So that wasn’t
the problem really, even though that was more or less what he had said to
Razjosh.
He had worked like mad. Now, though, it felt as if the four
walls of his room were pressing together. It didn’t help going into the other
room of the apartment. They seemed to be
getting smaller as well. Using the indoor exerciser was not as good as getting
out.
But what was really making him angry was that Razjosh could
go against the rules whenever he pleased. Just because they had been elected by
other Elders didn’t really make them all that different from other people, did
it? Did they really know any better?
‘One rule for Elders and another for ordinary people,’ he
blurted out to Razjosh, after he had let him in. ‘You can go about as much as
you please and the rest of us have to drive ourselves mad being cooped up
inside all of the time.’
Kaleem felt his cheeks burning. Razjosh did not flinch. He
stared until Kaleem just had to turn away. He didn’t seem to be at all
disturbed at the way Kaleem had spoken to him. Kaleem almost wished the Elder
had become angry, too. That would have been easier to deal with.
‘It was best not to come in holographic form this time,’
said Razjosh at last. ‘It is too easy to spy into cyber information, even with
the security on our channels. And what I’m going to tell you now is a secret
from even some of the other Elders.’
Kaleem looked at the old man. He noticed the dark circles
round his eyes and that he was standing a little more stooped than normal.
Kaleem suddenly remembered his manners.
‘Would you like some cave water?’ he asked.
‘That would be very acceptable,’ said Razjosh, sitting down.
Kaleem called to the house robot. A few seconds later the
aging machine trundled noisily through the opening to the kitchen, carrying a
small tray with a beaker of liquid on it.
‘Cave water, for whom?’ it asked in its tinny voice.
Kaleem nodded towards Razjosh. He watched the old man take
the beaker and hold it up to his lips. Even as he sipped the liquid, some
colour seemed to come back into his cheeks and he seemed to sit up straighter.
‘Definitely one of the better inventions in the caves,’ said
Razjosh.
‘Thank you master,’ said the robot, and swivelled round on
the spot. It made its way noisily back to
the kitchen, muttering ‘These humanoids don’t know they’re born yet.
Cave water. Any machine worth its screws and chips can make cave water.’
‘Where did it learn that?’ asked Razjosh, beginning to
laugh.
‘Normal parrot program,’ said Kaleem, shrugging his
shoulders. Then he began to giggle. ‘I thought it was getting a bit stuffy not
long ago,’ he added, remembering how it had looked when the new dataserve had
arrived.
‘Well,’ said Razjosh. ‘The parrot programs do seem to work
quite well on these old machines. For all the fancy new technology, the newer
models lack the sense of humour of these original robots.’
Razjosh finished his water. He looked serious again, but not
as tired as before.
‘Well, Kaleem,’ he said. ‘It is all getting much more urgent
now. There are many more deaths
occurring than they are actually reporting.’
Kaleem felt himself go hot.
‘How many?’ he asked.
‘There have in fact been over seven hundred. But news about
the deaths has now been made into Golden Knowledge,’ said Razjosh. He seemed to
be staring at Kaleem. ‘As well as the deaths,’ he added, ‘there are now fifteen
other people in comas. Just like your mother.’
‘So,’ said Kaleem. ‘Is it the disease itself as well that is
causing the coma?’
‘It would seem so,’ replied Razjosh. ‘Those patients who go
into a coma incubate the disease for longer. It is very likely, therefore, that
your mother, and not you, introduced it to Terrestra.’
That can’t be right, thought
Kaleem. I’m sure she’s never been off the
planet.
Razjosh did not seem to notice Kaleem’s concern.
‘So,’ continued the Elder. ‘Some of us have agreed that the
time is right for me to make a journey some time soon. We’re forming an
Extraordinary Council and in a few days’ time, I’ll be leaving Terrestra.’
‘Where will you go?’ asked Kaleem. He could not imagine what
it would be like to leave Terrestra. Their schooling programme had never
mentioned travel to another planet as a possibility. Other planets had always
been treated as if they did not exist.
‘The scientists have identified one or two planets which
have experienced a similar disease to this one. We’ll be going to find out
more. Of course, this has to stay a secret. This really is Golden Knowledge,’
replied Razjosh.
‘So what about me?’ asked Kaleem. Why was he being brought
up as the Peace Child if he was not going to be allowed to help. Was all this
hard work for nothing?
Razjosh sighed.
‘Of course you’re impatient to help,’ he said. ‘That is only
natural, but we don’t think you’re quite ready yet.’
‘But I am!’ protested Kaleem. He’d worked really hard, hadn’t
he? He’d managed all right with the modified Spanish, hadn’t he?
‘No, you need to work more with the holoprogrammes. Your
language techniques are fine at the moment, but you don’t yet know enough about
being in the culture.
‘While I’m away, you can get some more done.’
‘But you were the one who pulled me back from Tarantet!’
cried Kaleem. This really was so unfair. ‘I was just beginning to understand.’
Razjosh was looking at him intently.
‘Yes, yes, yes, I know,’ he said. ‘But there is something
else as well.’ He paused and looked away from Kaleem. Then he looked at him
again.
‘We think,’ he said slowly, ‘that there is more to the Prophecy
than we had realised. We have to be careful with our Peace Child.’
He was staring at Kaleem, obviously waiting for a reaction.
Kaleem’s mouth had gone dry and he shivered.
‘Listen,’ said Razjosh. ‘I’m returning you to Tarantet. You’ll
pick up where you left off. And I shall come to you once more before I go.’
Razjosh turned and made his way out of the apartment. The
little house robot whirred along in front of him and opened the door. Even it
seemed to sense that this was a serious moment and it shouldn’t say anything.
Kaleem rubbed his head. What should he make of all of this?
The dataserve sprang into life again and the room gradually grew dark.
The smell told him that he was back in the fish dome before
the lights came back up. Then he saw Loretta waving to him. She looked even
more like Rozia this time.
‘Are you ready for lunch?’ she asked
He nodded. It was actually getting quite difficult to make
yourself heard. The air control was now working hard against the heat.
‘We’ll just have time to eat before the storms begin,’
shouted Loretta,
The cafeteria was full when they arrived. They took the last
two seats. Kaleem watched some of the others eating. They had what looked like
two pieces of card joined together with a sort of yellow paste. They were
drinking a pink liquid.
‘Mmm,’ said Loretta. ‘Homogenised pumpkin protein and
crushed loganberry juice. Not bad.’
A girl about the same age as Loretta deposited two packages
and two tumblers full of the pink liquid on their table.
They could get robots to do that, Kaleem found himself
thinking.
Loretta was already opening her packet.
‘Don’t drink the loganberry juice too fast,’ she warned. ‘It
contains a sleeping draught and you can feel a bit dizzy.’
The pumpkin spread was quite acceptable and the juice tasted
like some of the drinks he’d had on Terrestra. He missed the breakfast he’d had
earlier on Tarantet, though.
It was getting noisier and noisier in the cafeteria. People
were talking more and more loudly to drown out the sound of the air control.
And behind all that there was another noise, a faint rumbling.
‘Time to get down to the hammocks,’ said Loretta as he took
the last mouthful of the pumpkin sandwich. He was already beginning to feel a
bit sleepy.
‘Can you hear that clunking?’ asked Loretta as they queued
for the stairs which would lead them down to the hammock rooms.
Kaleem nodded.
‘They’re putting the covers on the domes,’ she said.
The walk down to the hammock rooms took twenty minutes.
Kaleem realised that it would be even
harder walking up later. By the time Loretta had shown him to a hammock and how
to get himself balanced in one, he could hardly keep his eyes open.
Once he was safely settled, he fell straight asleep without
even taking the time to dread having the usual dream.
He didn’t dream, but he did wake up several times to hear
the roaring and battering which was happening above their heads. One or two
other people stirred. They managed to turn themselves without falling out. He
didn’t dare move. He would be bound to drop to the floor, making a lot of noise
and waking those around him. Loretta was sleeping peacefully at his side. She
looked more and more like Rozia all the time.
The last time he woke it was to find Loretta shaking him
gently.
‘Come on,’ she was saying. ‘Time to go back to work.’
She looked straight into his eyes.
I can’t believe she’s
not real, thought Kaleem.
She blinked and looked down, holding the hammock for him as
he struggled out.
‘I will show you what I am doing to the plants,’ she said as
she led him to one of the outer domes. ‘Well, what do you think of the sand?’
she asked as they made their way along the linked passages.
Kaleem could scarcely believe what he saw. The landscape had
changed completely. There were now hills where the land had been completely
flat before, and in places it was flatter where there had been hills.
‘How will you find your way home?’ he asked.
Loretta grinned at him.
‘I’ll follow the sun, of course,’ she said.
Of course, thought
Kaleem. It was obvious, wasn’t it?
He found her work interesting. She was measuring the growth
on some of the plants, testing them for which nutrients they were lacking and
adjusting a mix of feed to accommodate their individual requirements.
‘It’s a bit like what our diastic monitors do to us,’ he said.
‘I’ve told you,’ said Loretta sharply. ‘We can’t afford to
run too many machines.’
But he hadn’t mean it as a criticism. He’d been trying to
say they were the same. And this wasn’t even for real. If it was this difficult
in a world operated by machines what was it going to be like in a real world?
Or might it be easier?
Kaleem decided to keep quiet. Besides, he was still finding
the language tiring to follow. It wasn’t all that difficult, but he did need to
concentrate. He walked beside her, handing her the tools she needed and helping
her to mix the feed. No one seemed to question his being there. But then they
wouldn’t, would they? This was all a set up.
‘You’re getting good at this,’ she said as they came to the
last plant in the dome. ‘We could give you a job here.’
That would be
something, thought Kaleem. Spend the rest of my life trapped in
artificial reality.
‘We’ll go now,’ said Loretta. ‘The cool starts soon.’
The journey back was much more pleasant. It was still quite
warm compared with Terrestra, but Kaleem noticed that the silkon was not
sticking to him so much. The sun had almost gone down completely when they
reached Loretta’s home. Kaleem recognised the house, but not where it was
standing. You could no longer see the sea, as it was hidden behind a mountain
of sand.
‘How come the house didn’t get covered?’ asked Kaleem.
‘It has automatic shields, like the ones over the domes,’
said Loretta. ‘They not only protect the building from the sand, but also have
a force field that keeps the sand a certain distance away.’
The temperature inside the house was quite pleasant now.
‘We’ll eat quickly,’ said Loretta, and then I’ll show you
what we do for entertainment on Tarantet.’
She quickly prepared some sandwiches like the ones they had
had at lunchtime and mixed a fruit juice.
‘All of this food is high in proteins and vitamins,’ she
said. ‘It should give you plenty of energy.’
What was he going to need energy for?
‘We’re going sand surfing,’ said Loretta. ‘We do that every
evening for two hours or so, then we usually meet up at some pear-juice bar for
a couple of drinks to make us sleepy. We ferment the juice of the prickly pear,
which grows on the sand wastes.’
Loretta showed him how to put on his sand suit and how to
use the big sand skis, which he had to slip on over his shoes and which made
his feet three times as long as usual. As they were almost as wide as they were
long, almost round in fact, he had to hold his legs quite wide apart just to
stand upright.
‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ said Loretta, as she showed
him how to hover up the slope of a dune and glide down the other side, ‘it’s
much easier to keep moving that to just stand still. ‘
Kaleem was surprised to find that she was right. In no time
at all, he had really got the sand skis working. He was actually managing to
keep up with Loretta as she made her way through the dunes. Soon, he was really
enjoying himself. He loved how the skis rushed down the side of the hill to
give you enough momentum to get up the next.
They met lots of Loretta’s friends. She introduced all of
them to him. She simply said ‘This is Kaleem.’ Never once did any of them ask
him who he was or what he was doing there. They just answered ‘Hi Kaleem.’
Something wrong with
the programming, there, thought Kaleem.
The time went very quickly and soon Loretta was showing him
into a pear-juice bar. It was out in the open, and it was actually very
pleasant sitting under the inky star-dotted sky, sipping the pear-juice, which
was beginning to make him mildly sleepy again - that and the chatter from the
rest of the people there. There were more and more people to meet, so he really
needed to concentrate. He didn’t know which were more tired - his head and his
brains or his legs. It would have felt quite cool by now if he hadn’t have been
rushing around so much before. He realised that he was stiffening up as he sat
there.
‘You’ll sleep well tonight,’ said Loretta. ‘Come on, I think
we’d better go home.’
It was quite a struggle getting back. The stiffness was
really kicking in now. Loretta did take them back by the most direct route,
though.
‘You can go to your bed,’ said Loretta. ‘But the programme
will finish soon after you lie down.’
Kaleem didn’t care. He was glad to stretch himself out in
the strange bed, and gradually feel the tiredness drift from his limbs as the
pear-juice carried on with its effect and soothed him towards sleep. He’d not
taken in much about the bed earlier. Now he noticed that the cover looked just
like ripon, but was softer, lighter and warmer at the same time.
He was right on the edge of sleep as he asked himself what Pierre would have made of
him spending all day with a girl. For goodness sake, he’d actually slept at her
home - that must be worth a few talking points. Then he heard his own voice
announce from the dataserve. ‘Programme completed. Message waiting.’
Kaleem groaned to himself as he felt the bed change back to
his own. There was a slight adjustment
to his clothing. The smooth silkon changed into the coarser but closer fitting
ripon. That woke him a little, but still all he really wanted to do was sleep.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Razjosh’s voice. ‘You can stay in bed.
And I apologise for appearing in holographic form. But there is so little time.
I am part of the new committee and it has already been decided that I shall go
tomorrow.’
Suddenly Kaleem was wide-awake again. He sat upright in bed.
‘Go where?’ he asked.
Kaleem could not stop the questions from tumbling out.
‘Probably to Zandra,’ replied Razjosh.
‘Well, where’s that?’ demanded Kaleem.
‘Two days’ journey by Supercraft,’ said Razjosh.
‘Why Zandra?’ asked Kaleem.
‘Our Head of Science believes they have had the same illness
there,’ said Razjosh. ‘We’re going on to talk to them.’
‘Who’s we?’ asked Kaleem.
‘Myself, the Head of Science, one or two other negotiators,
and of course the crew of the Supercraft.’
‘And this Supercraft …. is it safe ?’ he asked.
Razjosh’s hologram smiled.
‘If that can’t get us there, nothing will. There’s nothing
better.’
‘So what will you be doing exactly?’ asked Kaleem more
slowly now. This was the big question, he knew. Because whatever Razjosh was
going to do, it was something which he might have to do one day.
The hologram smiled again.
‘I shall be using all of my language skills, all of my
negotiating skills and all of my knowledge of their culture to help the
scientists find out more.’
Kaleem suddenly wished he wasn’t being trained to be a Peace
Child.
‘Whilst I’m gone, you will be completing more of the
programme, and visiting two more virtual cultures,’ said Razjosh. He paused. ‘You
can do it,’ he continued. ‘You will be the Peace Child. I’ll keep in
communication with you via the dataserve.’ Then he was gone.
Kaleem was too awake to contemplate going back to sleep. He
got out of bed and went into the main living area. Perhaps he would have
another drink. The house robot trundled over to him.
‘Does sir require anything?’ it asked. ‘Maybe some cave
water. It can be very soothing for the nerves, you know.’
Where does it get it
from? Kaleem asked himself. Then it struck him that this machine was doing
exactly what he was supposed to do. It had picked up the language of another
and was understanding perfectly when to use it.
No big deal, being a Peace Child, then, thought Kaleem. Even a machine can
manage
