Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

Jones was a fully-interactive electronic cat Ravana had received for her sixth birthday, back on Yuanshi when her mother was still alive. The pet’s brain was an organic AI unit that enabled it to learn all the bad habits a real animal would have. It had long ago developed an annoying habit of wandering off without warning and a penchant for eating random electrical items, but over the last few months its behaviour had become more erratic still. Zotz knew that Ravana believed the growth hormones released by Taranis’ cloning experiments, having caused the AI unit of the Platypus to sprout strange tendrils, had also done something to her cat. When Zotz and Endymion secretly opened up the electric pet to fit a wristpad transceiver, they found Jones was indeed suffering from Woomerberg Syndrome, with wispy strands growing from the AI chip throughout the cat’s electronic innards.

Zotz sat engrossed as he encouraged the cat, via the VR link, to creep up on Momus aboard the Indra . Momus, having drawn the short straw, was preparing the tanker for a trip to Thunor and moaning more than usual. Zotz did not see his father enter the room and remained unaware until Wak leaned through the open door of the VR booth and tapped his shoulder. Startled, Zotz spun around on his seat, pulled off his headset and tried not to look guilty.

“I wasn’t doing anything!” Zotz protested.

The holovid relay monitor on the wall next to the booth showed a cat’s-eye view of the Indra ’s flight deck. The odd angle and shaky image was down to Jones chewing upon a power cable to the life-support unit. Wak looked at the screen, confused.

“Never mind all that,” he said, sounding flustered. “You can play your games later. I came to say something. Quirinus thinks that, err… I’ve been neglecting you somewhat. Actually, he told me off for hiding away here and forgetting I had a son.”

“I thought you stayed behind to fix the hollow moon,” said Zotz, not realising his father was trying to apologise. “I don’t mind living with Quirinus and Ravana.”

“I know,” replied Wak. “But I am your father. I shouldn’t be relying on others to look after you. Your mother was most concerned when I told her about the evacuation.”

“Mum called?” exclaimed Zotz. “When?”

“Three weeks ago,” the professor confessed. “That’s the other thing I came to tell you. She left you a message. I meant to forward it on to you but it totally slipped my mind.”

“A message?” cried Zotz.

He slipped from the booth in a chaotic blur of limbs and came to rest at a nearby computer terminal, disturbing a large goose hiding beneath the desk. Within seconds he had called up his account and located the waiting holovid message. His raven-haired mother, an astrophysicist from Welsh Patagonia, had been away on Earth for almost a year, dealing with the tangle of business interests left in limbo following the death of Zotz’s grandfather.

As the holovid began to play, it was clear she had expected to find Zotz aboard and ready to talk to her in person. Her message to him was one she had hastily recorded at the end of her conversation with his father. Zotz was surprised to see her speaking from an open-air holovid booth at a tropical coastal resort, for all the pictures he had previously seen of Patagonia were of a cold and dreary slice of South America that his father assured him was just like Zotz’s late grandfather’s homeland on Cardigan Bay.

“Hi mum,” said Zotz, knowing full well she could not hear him.

Wak shuffled away to give his son some privacy. Zotz missed his mother more than either of them would ever admit.

“Hello Zotz,” said the figure on the screen. Zotz smiled at the sound of her familiar Welsh lilt. “I’m sorry you weren’t here when I called. Your father told me all about what happened to the Dandridge Cole and I’m glad you’re safe and sound in Newbrum. As you can see, I’m no longer down on dad’s farm,” she continued, waving a dismissive hand at her tropical surroundings. “I’m in French Guiana, the other end of the continent, at the space centre. My old boss heard I was on Earth and asked for my help on a new type of engine they’re fitting to a test rocket, so I’m afraid I won’t be on my way home to Barnard’s Star just yet. Of course, you’re always welcome to come and join me here before then!”

“Go to Earth?” murmured Zotz, as he settled down to watch the rest of the message. He did not see the perturbed look of his father.

Back on Ascension, the display on the console in Fornax’s hotel room declared it to be well past midnight. The slowly rotating planet beneath her bed had other ideas and above the dome the bloated sun was high in the sky. Barnard’s Star was much smaller and dimmer than Sol, but Ascension orbited far closer to its star than did Earth and the crimson disc of the red dwarf loomed large above the kilometre-wide glass and steel dome. The scarlet glowing strips between the slats of Fornax’s window blind were eerie and irritating in equal measure and despite her weariness, the reporter had failed to get any sleep.

Philyra had long gone, though promised to return the next day. Fornax was reluctant to wander around Newbrum without a guide, but nonetheless found herself pulling a black-and-grey tunic and a pair of leggings out of her suitcase after deciding that an exploratory walk around the city was a better use of time than staring at the ceiling. Her slate had the latest guide and street map of Newbrum, which had the shortest tourist information section she had ever seen. Her finger paused upon a grey blob on the map along Curzon Street.

“BBC local office,” she mused. “Then find a café that serves a decent cup of coffee.”

Fornax slipped on her boots, grabbed her battered pseudo-leather jacket and bounded downstairs to the hotel foyer. Other than a lonely janitor robot, the reception was deserted. The multi-limbed wheeled robot scrubbed at a stain on the threadbare carpet, but judging by its heavy-clawed stance was probably doing more harm than good. Pushing open the door, Fornax skipped nimbly over a dead rat and into the street.

The local gravity took some getting used to, but she liked the weird sensation of being light on her feet. Her map revealed the street plan of Newbrum was pleasingly logical. The town inside the main dome was split into four quadrants by the main thoroughfares that emanated from Circle Park Road: Corporation Street, which ran north and on through the dome wall to the spaceport; Sherlock Street to the south; Broad Street to the west; and Curzon Street to the east. Four concentric routes linked these roads together; Circle Park Road being the innermost, followed by Paradise Circus, Queensway and then an unnamed service road that hugged the inside of the dome wall. Her hotel was on Paradise Circus in the centre of Colmore, the north-east quadrant, next to a dingy alleyway that offered a short cut to Queensway. Fornax looked at the broken-down hovertruck outside the hotel, the crumbling concrete walkway and the tatty apartment-block frontages along the road and decided that the Paradise Hotel was probably not in the best part of town.

The British Broadcasting Corporation’s office was in Digbeth, the south-east quadrant, on the south side of Curzon Street near where it intersected Paradise Circus. The streets were surprisingly busy given it was supposed to be nearly one o’clock in the morning, but Fornax guessed that those who lived with the lengthy Ascension days and nights had long decided to ignore what time it was supposed to be, or else gone mad. For this reason, she hoped to find someone at the BBC despite it technically being the middle of the night.

The buildings were a lot smarter on Curzon Street. The concrete apartment blocks were painted in elegant pastels, many with colourful floral hanging baskets alongside the numerous ultra-violet street lamps installed to boost the sun’s weak rays. Most of the shops at street level were open for business, the road looked freshly-swept and there was even the occasional anachronistic wrought-iron bench waiting to provide the weary with somewhere to rest. The people walking the street looked slightly less stressed than Fornax had seen at the spaceport and elsewhere, but she was struck by how no one looked truly content. There was a sign: ‘SORRY, NO CHOCOLATE’ in a nearby store window, which she considered a good enough reason for Newbrum’s malaise.