Hollow Moon (25 page)

Fenris slipped quickly into the vacated booth and
instructed the computer to make the connection. After several agonising
moments, the grotesque grimace of Taranis’ twisted features appeared on the
screen. The priest’s grey skin glistened as if covered by a thin sheen of
sweat. The holovid cameras revealed little of his surroundings but a noticeable
haze hung in the air, one alive with wispy tendrils of steam.

“Fenris!” snarled Taranis. “You have something to
report?”

“I am in Hemakuta,” replied Fenris, a little perturbed.
“I have made contact with Agent Dana and hope to be on my way to Yuanshi before
the day is out.”

“About time! I can no longer trust Kartikeya and his
incompetent rebels to do my bidding. He is firm in his belief that the Raja is
the key that will unlock Yuanshi, but the people will not find the spiritual
guidance they need in the hands of young Surya.”

“Only the Dhusarian Church can provide the true light.”

“Pah!” retorted Taranis. “True belief does not need
bricks and mortar to contain it. Those who need the trappings of organised
religion will never understand that true enlightenment must come from within.
My messengers of faith are growing stronger by the day and soon will be ready
to show humanity its future!”

Fenris thought about how he first came to the church,
finding solace in the routine and beliefs at a time when his own life was
chaotic and grim. He decided to ignore the priest’s forceful rejection of an
institution he himself held dear.

“Your activities are going to plan?” he enquired.

“My work is proceeding flawlessly. It is that of others
which has misfired,” Taranis snapped. “From what Kartikeya tells me, you have
done a sterling job with the Raja and he seems more pliable than I expected.
The fact remains that those idiots took him from the Maharani before the
mind-probe programme was complete. It is vital you reach Surya before his
appearance at the conference, to establish whether what you have done is
enough.”

Fenris bowed in acquiescence. “The Maharani has found the
device and spoken of it to Quirinus,” he reported. “She may yet choose to
reveal your whereabouts.”

“Then you must act before she does so,” Taranis told him
icily. “Preferably sooner than later. The
Sun Wukong
is on its way to Hemakuta as I speak, delivering the
equipment necessary to make the Raja’s conference appearance go the way we
desire. Unless you can find a quicker way of getting to Yuanshi, I suggest you
make sure your business on Daode is concluded and you are aboard when it
returns!”

“I have a plan in mind that will wrap up all loose ends
in one go.”

“Excellent. Any news on Que Qiao intelligence? An
oxymoron though that is!”

It was rare for Taranis to attempt a joke and Fenris
permitted himself a smile.

“My sources tell me that Atman and his government remain
blissfully unaware of our plans,” he said. “Jaggarneth of course knows of
Kartikeya’s scheme and is looking to use the resulting chaos at the peace
conference to denounce Atman and demand that the governorship of both Daode and
Yuanshi comes to him. Jaggarneth’s political ambitions are well known. He has
many powerful allies within Que Qiao on both Taotie and Earth.”

“Kartikeya and his rebels would not stand a chance if
this came to all-out war,” Taranis observed. “Jaggarneth has been stringing
them along for years, happy to use the threat of terrorism to keep control. The
time has come for these falsehoods to cease! My disciples will show them that
true faith is mightier than the missiles and gunships of Que Qiao. Together the
children of Shennong will rise to greet the dawn of the greys!”

“It is an honour to be here at the beginning,” said
Fenris. “In your head be it.”

“And be it in yours,” Taranis replied. “Go! There is
still much work to be done!”

Abruptly, the screen went blank, leaving Fenris alone
with his thoughts. Praise from Taranis was unexpected and he relished the warm
glow of self-assurance spreading through him from within. This truly was the
beginning. Fate had conspired so many times to thwart the priest’s plans but
Fenris now truly believed they were finally on the cusp of bringing his beloved
Dhusarian Church out from the shadows. Yuanshi was just the beginning. Soon,
all five systems would bow to the one true law. His mind whirring, he left the
holovid booth and almost collided with Surya’s cyberclone, which was waiting
for him outside.

“Spying on me again?” Fenris remarked. “Never mind. I
have a job for you.”

In a room upstairs, Ostara, Endymion and Zotz sat huddled
around the tiny speaker of Endymion’s wristpad, listening to the relayed audio
signal with wide-eyed expressions. They had been lucky in that the hotel’s
holovid booth had connected to the Ascension servermoon, making accessing
Endymion’s stored hacking programs so much easier, but missed Quirinus’
exchange with the Maharani.

Yet Fenris’ conversation with Taranis had more than
captivated their attention, for even though the wristpad had only been able to
give them sound and not vision, the priest’s cruel tone had left its mark upon
their imaginations. As the audio signal faded, Ostara looked up, shocked.

“Politics, religion and a madman,” she murmured. “Never a
good combination.”

RAVANA AWOKE to find the room deserted and her headache
gone. Her slumber had been deep enough for her to momentarily forget where she
was and it was not until she climbed out of bed and found herself staggering
erratically in the low gravity that she remembered the yellow sunlight
streaming through the window was that of Epsilon Eridani.

Yawning, she stumbled to the open window and gazed out
upon the golden sands and picturesque harbour of Pampa Bay. The moon of Daode
was as big as Mercury or Ganymede, but a lot smaller than Ascension and the
curve of the close horizon was disconcerting. The sun hung low on the eastern
horizon and looked tiny compared to the bloated sun of Ascension, appearing no
bigger than Sol would from Mars. Nevertheless, it was pleasantly warm outside,
for the cocktail of gases introduced into the atmosphere by terraforming
retained the heat as effectively as any greenhouse.

The time it took for the tiny sun to cross the sky
surpassed even that of Ascension; like its sister moons of Yuanshi and Lingbao,
Daode rotated just once every orbit, keeping the same face to Shennong as it
did so. Here in Hemakuta it would be another four Terran days before the sun
dipped below the skyline to the west, at which time the city would be flooded
with artificial light, allowing life to continue unabated. Shennong itself was
on the far side of the moon and so never graced the skies of Hemakuta; nor did
either Yuanshi or Lingbao, for Daode was the outermost of the three giant
moons.

The room was unnaturally quiet. Ravana tried to bring up
the tracker utility on her wristpad but the touch screen had not worked
properly ever since her fall down the airlock shaft. Their suite at the hotel had
connecting doors between the different rooms and after cautiously moving from
one to the next she quickly established why it was so quiet. Apart from Fenris,
who lay fast asleep in the room he was reluctantly sharing with her father, the
only other person around was Miss Clymene, who was sharing a chamber with
Ostara. Ravana found the teacher sitting on her balcony, enjoying a glass of
wine and reading the chapter on Hemakuta in
The Amateur Astronaut’s Guide to
the Five Systems
on her slate. Upon seeing
Ravana, Miss Clymene smiled and lowered the slate to her lap.

“Do you know where everyone has gone?” asked Ravana.

“Bellona and Philyra went to the floating market,” Miss
Clymene replied. “I do hope they and the boys have not forgotten we have a
rehearsal later! Your father said he had a few errands to run in town and asked
if you could contact him once you were awake.”

“Okay, I will. The floating market?”

“It’s not far from the hotel. You can’t miss it,
apparently.”

Intrigued, Ravana headed downstairs to the hotel foyer.
After she had coaxed her battered wristpad into sending a message to her
father, she went and stood before the large tourist information display near
the reception desk. She was flicking through the interactive holovid
advertisement for the floating market when a sudden tap on her shoulder made
her jump. She turned to see Endymion grinning inanely at her, who having just
come from an unnecessarily-lengthy holovid call with his parents back in
Newbrum was now bored and looking for something to do.

“Don’t do that!” Ravana retorted. “You scared the life
out of me!”

“Sorry,” he apologised. “Where are you off to?”

“I thought I’d take a look at the market,” she said. She
pointed to where the display played a holovid of happy shoppers being hassled
by market vendors, a scene set somewhat bizarrely in a giant open-air tree
house. “Miss Clymene said Bellona and Philyra are there. It’s only a short walk
away.”

Endymion pressed a symbol at the corner of the display
and quickly absorbed the satellite image map that now replaced the holovid.
“Okay if I come with you?”

Ravana gave a nod, though in the end it was Endymion who
took the lead as they made their way past the crowd outside. A large car had
just pulled up and a group of short, pale-skinned executives were stepping out
and blinking uncertainly in the sun, their movements clumsy and heavy.

“Probably from Earth,” said Endymion. “Not used to the
low gravity.”

Ravana smiled. People who lived most of their lives on
larger worlds tended to stay short and muscular, especially those born on
Taotie where gravity was one and a half times that of Earth. It seemed to her
that humanity was dividing into two distinct races, for colonists born and
raised in low-gravity environments such as on Daode found it difficult and
often painful to live anywhere else. The larger spaceports and shipyards were
also found on low-gravity moons and planets, which in turn meant that it was
the people of these worlds who became the next generation of explorers and
settlers, eagerly searching for somewhere just like home. It was telling that
the planet of Aram in Tau Ceti, with its Earth-like conditions, had not tempted
many settlers to move on from their new low-gravity worlds.

Endymion led her along the harbour boulevard and up a wide
street heading away from the seafront, keeping the twisted towers of the hotel
to their right. The road was lined with an array of ornate and imposing shop
fronts, while beyond the moving walkway electric ground cars hissed by every
few seconds, their occupants hidden behind mirrored windows. Holographic
billboards were everywhere, the more determined of which would follow them for
some distance before latching on to a new target, all advertising an amazing
variety of stores and services. The holograms were transparent to their
movements but the path was still far too crowded for Ravana’s liking, thronged
as it was with tall and skinny Asians of all ages. Most were on foot, though
many of the elderly rode in hoverchairs or in curious single-seat contraptions
that shuffled along on spindly mechanical legs.

“Spider walkers,” noted Endymion. “All-terrain mobility
chairs. Seems a bit silly to use them in a city, though I did know of a
disabled pilot who used one at Newbrum.”

“Why would anyone want to ride a giant robot spider?”
asked Ravana, frowning.

Local fashions varied wildly. Some wore corporate suits
but many were dressed in flamboyant unisex clothing with vague hints of
traditional Indian styles, to which many added the local bizarre fashion of
ornate gold neck braces to emphasise their height. Even without the gold
collars the younger people towered over Ravana and Endymion, some reaching two
and half metres tall. From the looks some of the lanky youngsters gave to the
utilitarian flight suits worn by herself and Endymion she got the impression
they were looking down on them in more ways than one.

Ravana found the street chatter in the local dialect of
Hinglish a little difficult to follow. Endymion made her laugh by showing her
the enhanced-reality projection of his wristpad. This revealed holographic
butterflies and birds fluttering around people’s heads amidst hazy floating
clouds of pictures and text, all generated by the data streams from devices
held by those around them. To off-worlders like Ravana and Endymion, the
concept of proudly broadcasting how many friends you have and what you ate in
which trendy restaurant an hour ago came across as highly superficial.

Beyond the final few shops ahead they saw a park filled
with trees of truly gigantic proportions. As they neared the entrance they
began to make out the large platforms hanging from the sturdier branches and
the wooden walkways crossing from one tree to another, all entwined within an
intricate web of wire rigging.

“I know a secret about Fenris,” Endymion confided as they
walked.

“He’s really a lizard in disguise?” suggested Ravana.

Endymion laughed. “Not quite. He’s been brain-washing the
kidnapped Raja. Ostara said it was all to do with politics and religion and
stuff.”

“What?” exclaimed Ravana. “Where did you hear that?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he replied, somewhat
infuriatingly. “When we find the others.”

They passed through the park gates and followed a young
Indian family across the gravel courtyard beyond. It did not take them long to
find the broad moving staircase that led to the tree-house deck above. In a
grassy part of the park ahead, a brass band performed to a small crowd and they
paused to listen.