Terra's World (14 page)

3.3

-
T
erra! Wake up!

Terra’s eyes popped open. Fthfth was standing by her sleep-well. Or rather, Fthfth was hopping up and down excitedly by her sleep-well. Terra groaned.

- What time is it?

- Time to wake up!
said Fthfth happily.
Well, actually, no it isn’t, that’s not for ages, but wake up anyway!
She deactivated Terra’s sleep-well.

Terra descended gently to the floor. The evening had been spent in fruitless discussion of how to address the twin problems of the Gfjk-Hhh and the Black Planet, and everyone had turned in for the night tense and anxious. Terra’s sleep had been pretty restless, but she still felt like she needed more of it. -
What’s going on, Fthfth?
she asked testily.

- I couldn’t sleep!
said Fthfth.

Terra was about to say, -
I could
, and switch her sleep-well back on, but Fthfth continued.

- I’ve been running these problems round and round in my head, and I know what to do! Or at least I know who to ask what to do. Actually I know
WHAT
to ask what to do.

Before Fthfth had woken her, Terra had been having a dream in which she’d been feeding slices of configuration 9 to a massive robot hippopotamus which kept saying, ‘Where’s Keith?’ That dream had made a lot more sense to her than anything Fthfth had just said.

- Start again,
said Terra.
You’re babbling.
She shuffled off to the ArchRector’s servery to get some zff and a couple of slices of configuration 6. There was something slightly odd-tasting about the protein configurations here in Dskt, Terra thought. Like Dsktn protein manipulators didn’t quite manipulate proteins the same way the ones back home did. Fthfth followed her.

- The Extrapolator!
announced Fthfth, beaming.
Before we left Mlml,
w
e tried to ask it what to do about the Gfjk-Hhh, but we couldn’t seem to get it interested.

Terra wasn’t surprised. The Hrrng Preceptorate’s supercomputer, known as the Extrapolator because of its ability to collate and cross-reference all known data about the past and present to predict the future with a fair degree of accuracy, was notoriously uncooperative. Probably with good reason; were it to start granting any and all requests for knowledge of things to come, the laws of cause and effect would cease to apply and reality itself would be in serious trouble. Occasionally, the Extrapolator would take it upon itself to steer the course of events – such as the day it intervened in Lbbp’s disciplinary hearing and insisted that the baby Terra be allowed to stay with him – but by and large, requests for help – even for the slightest hint about the future – went ignored.

- The Extrapolator only gets involved when it suits the Extrapolator,
said Terra, chewing on a slice of what the protein manipulator insisted was configuration 6 but didn’t taste like it to her.

- Exactly!
beamed Fthfth.
And while it might not regard the Gfjk-Hhh as its problem – it doesn’t really matter to the Extrapolator who’s in charge, as long as he doesn’t switch it off, and I don’t think anyone even knows how – the Black Planet is
DEFINITELY
the Extrapolator’s problem. If it destroys the planet, the Extrapolator will be gone, same as everything else. We know it has the power of reason, or it wouldn’t keep doing things on its own initiative. So it
MUST
have the will to survive, the instinct to preserve its own existence. It
HAS
to take an interest.

Terra’s nose wrinkled.
- The Extrapolator’s processor centre and data banks are a long way underground in a massive bunker
(she remembered this from a Lyceum trip)
; and, thinking about those Black Planet legends, it only seems to be the surface of the planets that gets blackened. Maybe the Extrapolator reckons it can just sit it out.

Fthfth disagreed.
- The Extrapolator might be all-knowing, but it needs to be maintained, serviced, rebuilt occasionally. With no one to take care of it, it wouldn’t last more than a few orbits.

Terra pondered this as she finished her configuration 6 and made a mental note to try a different configuration next time.
- So why isn’t it doing anything?

Fthfth thought this over for a moment, then her eyes lit up.
- It doesn’t know!
she said.
All communications between the nations are down, apart from Pktk’s little radio-thing! We only know about the Black Planet because the Rrth soldier told us. If the information hasn’t passed through any system connected to the Source . . .

- . . . then the Extrapolator wouldn’t have seen it. It doesn’t know,
mused Terra.
Wow,
she went on,
we know something the Extrapolator doesn’t! How cool is that?

Fthfth was lost in thought, for a moment. Then she fixed Terra with a determined stare.

- We have to go back,
she said.
We have to go back to Hrrng. Run all the information about the Black Planet through a slate, an interface, a visualiser, anything, then get the Extrapolator to run a long-range scan in the direction the Black Planet’s coming from. Then it’ll know how much trouble it’s in!

Terra went pale.
- You haven’t been there for ages!
she said.
You don’t know how bad things have got over there. We’ll be lucky if we last a couple of days!

Fthfth’s stare became even more determined.
- Terra,
she said,
if we don’t go back,
this
PLANET
won’t last more than a couple of days.

3.4

-
S
o what do you suggest, Deceiver?

Even as the Gfjk-Hhh had swept out in fury at Lbbp’s suggestion that he might not be the real thing (despite moments earlier acknowledging that he wasn’t), Lbbp had known he’d be back soon enough.

And though the Gfjk’s displeasure was obvious (Lbbp noticed that his pitiful rations had shrunk even further) Lbbp knew that his curiosity, his fascination at the possibility that he might, in fact, BE the person he’d been claiming to be, would overrule his anger. He’d be back, and he’d want to talk.

And here he was.

- Well, Luminescence,
began Lbbp, using the ‘proper’ form of address for the first time,
what you need is . . . some sort of quest, a challenge, a mission, if you will. Some way to carve your
OWN
place in history. You don’t want to end up as nothing more than a footnote, an appendix to the accounts of the deeds of your former self.

The Gfjk smiled.
- You forget, Deceiver. I know your ways. I see through your tricks. You’re trying to get me to leave, aren’t you? To set out on some foolish adventure, abandoning my people, my homeland . . . Perhaps you think you might undo all I’ve done while I’m away, is that the idea?

Lbbp pulled as innocent a face as he could manage.
- Not at all, Luminescence. I’m just talking about the scale, the
SIZE
of the task you need to undertake. It wouldn’t have to involve going on a journey – who knows, the thing you seek could be right here, right at home. It only matters that it’s something
BIG
, something heroic, something
WORTHY
of the Gfjk-Hhh. You’ll work it out, Luminescence. Of course you will. I have . . . faith in you.

Lbbp watched a rapturous haze fall across the Gfjk’s eyes and laughed inwardly. Yes, he thought. That’s it. You’re starting to dream. Dream big, as big as you can.

Because unlike you, thought Lbbp, I actually paid attention at the Lyceum. I read about the rise and fall of tyrants and emperors, on this world and others. And every time one falls, it’s because the same thing happens.

He starts to believe his own legend, believe he’s invincible, that there’s nothing he can’t do, no one who can stop him. So one day he pushes his luck just that little bit too far. He invades a country that he can’t possibly hold, he extends the bounds of his empire further than he can maintain, he starves and humiliates his people while believing his own lie that they love him, and ends up looking on in astonishment as they storm his palace and burn it to the ground.

The Gfjk rose and turned to go.
- We will speak further on this, Deceiver.

Lbbp watched him leave. Off you go and dream some more, he thought. You’re going to – what was the Rrth expression? That was it – bite off more than you can chew. Because I’m going to feed it to you.

3.5

-
I
f it weren’t for the fact that we’re probably all going to be dead soon anyway, I’d say my parents were going to kill me,
complained Pktk.

They had stolen through the quiet streets of Lsh-Lff before dawn, the two young Fnrrns and two young humans, and now passed through the broken coastward gates. Looking behind them, they saw the highly convincing – and disturbing – sight of the burned-out, ruined city.

- Where are your parents, anyway?
asked Terra.

- Back there in Lsh-Lff,
muttered Pktk.

- They came with you?
said Terra, surprised. Fthfth grinned at this.

- You don’t think Pktk’s parents would let a little thing like exile in the face of tyranny and insurrection make them let him out of their sight, do you?
Pktk glowered at her, but Terra smiled. She’d known Pktk’s parents well. War hero he might be, but Pktk would always be their baby.

- Mine are okay, so far . . . probably,
Fthfth went on.
They’ve got a little house in the forest in Mntp. No one knows where it is but them. They’re hiding out there . . . I think.
Fthfth’s smile faded.

Billy interrupted the conversation.
- Erm . . . it’s not there, guys.

Strannit Zek’s dinghy, the luxurious well-appointed landing craft in which they’d escaped from Hrrng, and which they’d left parked outside the gates, was nowhere to be seen.

- Invisibility shield?
asked Pktk.

Terra frowned.
- Well, it has one, but it wasn’t switched on when we left it here.
She produced her comm from her rucksack and waved it towards where the dinghy wasn’t.
No,
she said,
it’s gone.

- They’ll have moved it inside,
said Billy.
Look closely and you can see the tracks in the grass. They’ve pulled it through the gates. I suppose if you want everyone to think that there’s no one alive in the city, having a spaceship parked right outside the gates is a bit of a giveaway. They’ve hidden it.

- So now what?
asked Terra, exhausted and discouraged.

- Come with me.
Pktk smiled. He marched off towards the shore.

Billy looked around him as they went. Were it not for the purple hues of the grass, just visible in the moonlight, and the fact that this moonlight came from three moons (the other three being below the horizon), he might have been on Earth, taking a stroll by the seaside. Suddenly, the very similarity of the landscape to a typical Earth vista made him feel even further from home. He put the thought from his mind and marched on, onto the dunes of the beach itself.

- Careful,
said Pktk,
you’re walking right towards—

Billy’s nose impacted hard against something cold, solid and quite invisible. He fell to the sand.

- —it
,
said Pktk.

Billy clutched his aching proboscis.
- Typical,
he said, his eyes streaming,
I’m the one who walks into it and I’m one of only two of us who’ve got noses. What is it, anyway?

- Just a moment.
Pktk smiled, feeling along the invisible surface. He found a gap in the shape, and vanished inside. I’m actually getting used to seeing people do that, thought Billy.

There was a crackle of energy, and the shape appeared in front of them. Terra gasped in horror.

It was a giant blue sphere. A G’grk battle sphere. She’d ridden in one before, a captive, being taken to what she’d feared would be – what, by any logic, should have been – certain death. She’d seen hundreds of similar spheres laying waste to her home city, hovering above the skyline, belching grav-rockets and pulse-cannon bursts, raining death. She shuddered violently.

Pktk’s head emerged from the hatch.
- Our own G’grk battle sphere! Isn’t it brilliant?

-
NOT
the word I would have used,
said Terra, beginning to recover a little. The very sight of Pktk emerging from the sphere, rather than ranks of armoured G’grk drones, immediately made it far less threatening a presence.

- I found it a couple of cycles ago,
said Pktk happily.
It must have been left behind during the retreat. It’s still powered up and everything. The controls are so simple – well, they were designed for G’grk to use.

Terra frowned. That sort of cheap disrespect for the G’grk was supposed to have ended with the peace treaty. It angered her to hear Pktk throwing it into conversation like that. She resolved to have words with him in due course but not right now.
- Can you fly it?
she asked instead.

- Oh yes, easily,
said Pktk airily.
Come on in!

They clambered through the hatch, first Terra, then Fthfth and finally Billy. Billy looked sadly at the sphere’s interior. Strannit’s dinghy had been full of padded, upholstered seats. This sphere didn’t seem to have anything to sit on at all. Even the pilot was meant to take a standing position at the controls, as Pktk now did.

- Invisibility shield back on!
reminded Fthfth.
We can’t let them see us coming.
Pktk looked at the battle-sphere console and tried to remember the intitialisation sequence. Simple though the controls were, he always found it hard to concentrate this early in the morning. If only he’d been able to make himself some FaZoon soup, he thought sadly. You just couldn’t get the ingredients in Lsh-Lff . . .

Pktk jabbed at the controls in what he thought was the right order; to his relief, the gravity engines started to grind away noisily and the sphere juddered into the air . . .

They might not see us coming, thought Terra, but they’ll probably hear us. She looked at Billy. He was sat cross-legged on the floor, and seemed to be chuckling quietly at some private joke. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked him.

Billy looked up, smiling. ‘I’m just thinking about my mum,’ he said. ‘Her big worry since I became a teenager is that I’ll start hanging out with the bad lads from off the estate and go round nicking cars all night. Always on about it, she is. “You come straight home from the pictures, our Billy; I don’t want you hanging out with the bad lads and going round nicking cars.” She was so pleased when she found out my best friend was a girl, she was like, “Well, she’s got daft hair, but at least it’ll mean he’s not off nicking cars with the bad lads off the estate.”’ Billy laughed out loud.

‘What?’ persisted Terra. Billy, hardly able to talk through his laughter, grinned at her.

‘In the past few days hanging out with you, I’ve nicked three spaceships and a battle sphere.’

And Terra laughed with him.