Hollow Moon (23 page)

“The Raja’s clone,” she murmured. “Why is it here?”

Miss Clymene, Endymion, Bellona and Philyra came over and
looked at the sleeping cyberclone. The straps to keep it safe within the casket
held the clone’s arms crossed upon its chest. It lay perfectly at peace, for
the clone had no need to breathe nor no heartbeat to maintain. Its dull
artificial skin bore a greyish tint in the dim light of the cargo bay.

“Is it dead?” asked Philyra. “It doesn’t look well.”

“Don’t you mean undead?” Ravana murmured. The scene
reminded her of the terrible holovid movies Zotz raved about during his
fleeting obsession with vampires.

“A cyberclone is supposed to be an exact copy of its
owner,” remarked Endymion. “At least we will recognise the Raja if we see him.”

“An exact copy?” retorted Bellona. “I’d like to see
someone try and replicate the wonderful odours that emanate from your body
after eating cabbage!”

“I think it’s just recharging itself,” said Zotz. “Shall
I wake it?”

“I think not,” Miss Clymene said firmly. “This ship is
crowded enough as it is. Back to your places, please. We have a long rehearsal
ahead of us!”

Grumbling noisily, Endymion, Bellona and Philyra returned
to the bench seat along the wall and entertained themselves for a while trying
to work out how to use cargo straps as improvised seatbelts. Ravana finally
located her case and went to join her new band mates, cornet in hand. Endymion
had earlier unfolded a music stand, then abandoned it after failing to find a
suitable anchorage on the floor and the metal stand was now drifting around the
bay with the contents of Zotz’s bag. In the end, Bellona had the bright idea of
running a couple of pieces of string between straps on opposite walls and
clipping the sheets of music to these. Miss Clymene had to make do with
floating before them as best as she could, though her expression betrayed a
sinking feeling that she would not stay in position for long once she started
waving her conductor’s baton about.

Zotz took the seat next to Ravana and fastened a strap
across his lap. In his hand was a curious metal box, from which emerged four
antennas sticking out at all angles, along with a tangle of cables that led to
a small speaker unit wedged under his seat.

“What have you got there?” asked Miss Clymene, giving the
box a dubious look.

“A quadraphonic autoharp theremin,” declared Zotz
proudly.

“There’s no such thing!” Miss Clymene retorted.

“I invented it!” he replied. “Ravana gave me the list of
music we had to learn and I thought
Alpha Centauri
would sound really good on theremin. Listen!”

He pressed a switch on the side of the box, flexed his
hands with a dramatic flourish, then slowly moved his fingers around the
protruding antennas. The most incredible sound erupted from the speaker; a plaintive,
almost ethereal tone that soared and swooped like the song of angels. Another
note joined the first, then a third and fourth, combining together to create a
cascade of wailing chords, sweet yet distressing enough to make a grown man
cry. When Zotz had finished, he saw that the others were looking at him with
expressions both stunned and not a little awestruck.

“Gosh,” murmured Bellona. “That was amazing! What were
you playing?”

Zotz blinked. “
Alpha Centauri
,” he said. Leaving the theremin to drift, he pressed
the touch screen on his wristpad and called up the message Ravana had sent him,
back at the hollow moon. “The list I have is
Jupiter
,
Woden Waltz
,
Aram Sunrise
,
Shennong
and
Alpha Centauri
theme. I wasn’t sure about the last one so I looked
it up on the net.”

“It should be
Theme from Gods of Avalon
by Sellman,” replied Miss Clymene. “Other than what’s
written for holovid shows, there’s precious little symphonic music coming out
of the Alpha Centauri system. The rest of the list should be
Shennong
by Bantoff,
Jupiter
by Holst,
Woden Waltz
by Scott and
Aram Sunrise
by Toitovna; something for each of the five systems.
What you were playing was interesting but did not sound like any of those!”

Zotz looked hurt. “It’s called
Alpha Centauri
,” he insisted. “I found a twentieth-century
recording by a band called Tangerine Dream. I must have listened to the wrong
thing.”

“Sorry,” said Ravana. “I should have made it clearer in
my message.”

“I actually prefer what you were playing,” remarked
Bellona. “The
Gods of Avalon
theme is,
well… a bit rubbish.”

“It is not!” retorted Philyra.

“Actually, I agree with Bellona,” said Miss Clymene. “I
never really liked it.”

“Could we play Zotz’s song instead?” asked Endymion. “The
sound from his theremin thing is so cool. The Bradbury Heights band has got
nothing like it, I’m sure!”

Miss Clymene looked thoughtful. Ravana had heard the
Newbrum students complain countless times that they had little chance of
winning the competition, but recognised the spark of optimism in the tutor’s
smile and an eagerness to try anything to give them an edge. The sound Zotz had
brought to the band was certainly different.

“Why not,” Miss Clymene declared. “Let’s see if we can
wipe the smug smiles from their faces!”

“Oh my!” murmured Ravana. She had no idea school bands
were this competitive.

Time went by and the
Platypus
crept ever closer to Shennong and its moons. There
were only four bunks in the carousel so passengers and crew slept in shifts,
with Quirinus, Ravana and Ostara taking it in turns to keep an eye on things on
the flight deck. The band managed two long rehearsals, both of which went a lot
better than anyone expected, leaving Miss Clymene very pleased with her
newly-expanded ensemble. Ravana was a capable musician who as long as she had
the music before her could play almost anything. Zotz’s inspired work on the
theremin was the icing on the cake.

During a lull when Quirinus and Ostara were alone on the
flight deck and Zotz, Endymion, Bellona and Philyra were asleep in the
carousel’s curtained bunks, Ravana found herself sharing the nearby couch with
Fenris, Miss Clymene and Surya’s cyberclone, which since it had been activated
never let Fenris out of its sight. Fenris sat at the far end of the couch,
quietly reading a paper-leafed book with a worn grey cover. In an age where
wristpads and other devices provided instant access to a vast library of
literature, digitally archived on every servermoon across the five systems,
old-fashioned tomes of bound paper were incredibly rare. Ravana realised she
had seen this particular book before.

“The
Isa-Sastra
,”
commented Miss Clymene, reading the name on the cover. Ravana could tell she
too was intrigued. “That sounds very mysterious!”

Much to Ravana’s surprise, Fenris did not mind being
interrupted.

“These are the sacred writings of the supreme,” he told
her. He placed a silver ribbon across the page and closed the book. “The holy
texts of the Dhusarian Church.”

“The Book of the Greys!” remarked Miss Clymene.

“Please do not refer to it as such,” replied Fenris,
looking pained.

“You’ve heard of it?” Ravana asked Miss Clymene.

Miss Clymene nodded. “I know one or two people who go to
the Dhusarian Church in Newbrum,” she told her. “They believe in alien gods, or
something crazy along those lines.”

Fenris was trying hard to maintain his composure. “It is
not quite like that.”

“We could ask the plastic prince what he thinks,” Miss
Clymene suggested.

Surya’s cyberclone looked at her. “I am not permitted to
talk of religion or politics.”

“Very wise,” said Miss Clymene. “So Fenris, what’s it all
about?”

“The greys?” asked Ravana.

“An ancient race, far older than mankind,” Fenris said
slowly, acknowledging both Ravana’s genuine interest and the obvious derision
in Miss Clymene’s words. “Interstellar travellers, bringing wisdom wherever it
was needed. Some say they had a home in Epsilon Eridani, others that they were
once regular visitors to Earth itself. They are beings of infinite insight who
have learned to live in harmony with the universe. It is these noble creatures,
the greys as we call them, who will one day show us our future.”

“Our future?” asked Ravana.

“For all our wondrous technology, mankind still clings to
his barbaric ancestry,” Fenris told her. “The greys have shown us there is another
way. The
Isa-Sastra
is a gift to
mankind, given to the first prophet Betty Hill over three hundred years ago and
which fate has now placed in the hands of our High Priest Taranis.”

Ravana smiled. “Betty is a funny name for a prophet.”

“History is full of people with strange names,” mused
Miss Clymene.

“Legend says Betty hid the book, for she knew the time to
reveal its teachings was not yet right,” continued Fenris. “It remained lost
for many generations, until fortune brought it to Taranis, who deciphered the
wisdom within the ancient script.”

Miss Clymene looked thoughtful. “So it was Taranis who
wrote your holy book?”

“He merely translated the original texts. The teachings
are those of the greys.”

“Aliens indeed! Has anyone else ever looked at Betty’s
book?”

“They are sacred writings!” Fenris retorted. “They are
not for mortal eyes.”

Miss Clymene smiled, her suspicious nature sensing a
scam. Ravana however was fascinated, for although she knew many people within
the hollow moon who were religious, the Dhusarian Church was not one she was
familiar with. It was the concept of mysterious alien beings, the benevolent
greys, that captivated her most. For the first time in years she found herself
thinking of a strange memory from her childhood, an incident that perhaps now
seemed a little more real.

“My dear Ravana,” Fenris said, addressing her softly.
“Would you care to know more about the Dhusarian Church?”

“Maybe later,” Ravana murmured.

In her mind she was once again six years old, out
exploring the woodland near Lanka on Yuanshi. It was a memory that would stay
with her forever; the vines across the entrance to the cave, the discarded and
crumpled spacesuit, the smell of burnt flesh in the air. Most of all she
remembered the bundle of blood-soaked rags that had suddenly become the
frightened stare of a strange grey creature she had found bleeding, dying and
hiding in fear from her, a small girl who had accidentally stumbled across a
broken traveller far from home.

The giant gas planet of Shennong grew closer by the hour
and soon the Tianzun moons of Lingbao, Yuanshi and Daode hove into view. Daode
hung in the black like a glittering turquoise jewel. As Quirinus looked out
upon the cloud-garlanded land and seas of the terraformed moon he could not help
but be reminded of his home planet of Earth.

The peace conference was creating a headache for Hemakuta
space traffic control, for most interstellar craft were designed for deep space
only and the small fleet of orbital shuttles plying back and forth from the
city could not unload the arriving ships fast enough. Endymion, Bellona and
Philyra were amused to learn that one such starcruiser now finally being met by
a shuttle was the
Fenghuang III
, aboard
which awaited Xuthus, Maia, Lodus and the rest of the Bradbury Heights
contingent. The
Platypus
had no
such problems and was granted permission to land shortly after establishing
orbit around Daode.

The carousel was brought to a halt for re-entry and
locked into position with the couch at the bottom to provide secure seating.
Surya’s cyberclone retreated to the safety of its recharging coffin, Ravana’s
cat to the nearest convenient cupboard. Once everyone else was securely
strapped to their seats, Quirinus fired the retro rockets, switched the sonic
shield to full power and the
Platypus
began
its final descent into Hemakuta.

The initial tumble through the upper atmosphere was in
many ways the most nerve-wracking part of the whole journey. Yet it was just a
matter of minutes before the ship slowed enough to deploy its wings and soon
their frantic dive to the surface became a gentle glide through the clouds,
high above the clear blue waters of Pampa Bay. Ahead lay the city of Hemakuta,
a vast metropolis of glass towers, parks and canals that had long outgrown the
site of the original domed settlement. The land beyond was a patchwork of
fields, forests and green valleys against a backdrop of dark mountains. Daode
was living proof of the power of human ingenuity and of mankind’s drive to
recreate Earth wherever it could.

The
Platypus
touched
down at an airstrip next to the small harbour, right in the heart of the city.
As they taxied to a halt, a long open-top ground car hove into view, looking
and moving like a river boat on wheels as it slipped from behind the sleek shuttle
parked nearby. When Ravana finally pushed open the cargo bay airlock to let in
the sweet sea air she was surprised to see a uniformed chauffeur waiting to
take them all to their hotel.

“The Maharani has arranged everything,” Fenris replied
simply.

“We made it,” whispered Miss Clymene, barely able to
believe it. “Daode!”

“Oh my,” murmured Bellona, looking through the door.
“It’s a whole new world.”

“I wonder what holovid channels they have here?” mused
Philyra.

“Did someone mention a hotel?” asked Ostara, putting an
arm around Ravana’s waist. “Only it’s been sixteen light years since I last had
a bath.”