Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

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.