The Golden Circuit (The Smith Chronicles) (14 page)

“Mikita.
Try to think clearly. This is important,” assured Gildan. “It is important to the universe that you come with us to learn; to be educated in the ways of the Guardians.”

“No, Vannerman, um, Gildan, whatever your name is.” Then it dawned on her - what he'd just said.
The universe?
“Wait. What did you say? ‘Important to the universe?’ Is that a joke? No, I’ve got to help Polo. I don’t know how, but I’ve got to try! I can’t just fly off to another planet and leave her in the hands of Sempre and his henchmen, now can I?”

“Well… you could -” began Gildan.

“Oh, fire! Everybody’s crazy!” she shouted.

There was a silence. Then Aldoorin spoke.

“Very well, Mikita. We cannot force you to come to Plaateux-5. It is not our way.” He said this looking at Gildan, who was staring guiltily at the ground in remembrance of the TTF agent. “We will try again at some future point. Until then Mikita, go gently in your quest.”

Aldoorin turned and went into the back room. Gildan and Florina followed, Mikita watching them as they went. She moved a few steps to one side so she could see into the bedroom.

The Oort Cloud leader stood in the middle of the room, with his eyes closed, while a glowing effulgence gradually appeared in front of him. The light extended itself downward to form a long oval shape that then turned into a scintillating, ultramarine blue. It looked like a vertical pool of water was hanging there, in the air. An emerald light framed the shape, pulsating rhythmically.

Aldoorin turned to face Gildan and Florina
, and said something in a language Mikita had never heard before: “Gildan, Florina. Seq’qu om tabluin. Oorten gradtuleen.” The three of them bowed to each other in mutual respect, then Aldoorin stepped forward into the oval and vanished. The shape grew smaller and smaller, until almost nothing was left - then it disappeared with a brief high-pitched popping sound.

Mikita was stunned.
If this was a trick, it was a draining good one
, she thought.

Florina and Gildan returned to the front room. “Ah, you have just seen your first portal,” said Florina, noticing Mikita’s expression. “It is astonishing the first time, isn’t it? Like so many things on Plaateux-5, Mikita. Are you sure you will not join us? You will learn so much.”

“No, Florina. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Very wel
l, Mikita. That is too bad. But, it is your decision.”

Florina went over to a large silver suitcase in the corner of the room and lifted it up onto a table. She flicked the electro-catches and the case sprung open revealing an assortment of weaponry: guns, blasters, grenades - a whole range of war-like paraphernalia.

Mikita suddenly became scared. What was Florina going to do? Shoot her?

“I thought you said your people were against violence, Florina?”
asked Mikita, her voice quavering.

“We are.”

“Then why do you have all those weapons?”

‘Self-defence,” said Florina, giving her a regretful look.
Then, she noticed Mikita’s fear. “I’m sorry, Mikita. Do not be afraid. You see, we must protect our gifts. There is an old Earth-based saying: ‘It is better to defend oneself than to live with cowardice’. You see, what you possess is an extraordinary talent. It must be preserved at all costs. We are against violence, that is true, but it does not mean that we won’t use it if we are provoked. So, these are for you – as I would imagine, that where you are going, you
will
be provoked.”

Mikita swallowed hard. “Yes,” she said, bravely. “So do I.”

10:01 - Sunday, July 29, 2187 (Cryonics Lecture Lab, Mu-U, Tapi-36)

“Smith?”

…

“Smith?”

…

“Miss Smith?”

…

A weary Dr. Tamashito looked up from his register. He didn’t like the once a month Sunday a.m. ‘catch-up’ lecture, it took him away from his laboratory work.

“Has anyone seen Mikita Smith this morning, class?” he said, pulling at his beard.

The room was silent.

“Nobody knows anything about Smith?”

…

“Miss Thorn, you’re quite friendly with
her, do you know of any reason why she’s not in today?”

“Dr. Tamashito, don’t you watch The Zip, or listen to the radio, sir?” asked
Elspeth Thorn, timidly.

“No, I most certainly do not, Miss Thorn. I’m a scientist. I have no time for idle gossip, chit-chat and such-like nonsense. And besides, I’ve been in my lab. I haven’t seen
or heard a soul.”

“Well, sir
. In that case you won’t know the news.”

“News? What news? Is there any news? Is it something to do with Smith?”

“Sir. She’s wanted by the TTF, sir,” Thorn said, looking around nervously at her classmates.

“She’s what? Did I hear you correctly? Wanted?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why? For what?
What has she done?”

“Um…
She’s wanted, sir.. for murder.”

“For murder? Look, is this some kind of joke? What’s the date? It’s not April 1
st
, is it?” Tamashito stopped and looked around for a calendar.

The class were all looking down at their desks.

“Surely this cannot be true?... Miss Thorn?”

“It is, sir,” said
Elspeth, her voice breaking with emotion. “It is true.”

Tamashito sunk down into his chair.

Mikita Smith. Well, I never. She was a surly girl, sometimes, yes, but very, very bright. And she perhaps needs to spend less with her protest group and more on her studies, that is true. But a murderer? It’s not possible!

Tamashito needed to think about this. He needed to think about a lot of things. He closed the attendance register.

“Class dismissed.”

Dr. Harry Tamashito was a genius. And not one of these geniuses that people go around saying are geniuses when really they’re not types of genius. No, Tamashito was a proper one. He would be the genius that would be put in charge of judging the levels of geniusosity in geniuses and awarding them their true genius status kind of genius - if there ever was such a thing. He was
that
clever.

He descended from a long line of scientists. His great-great-grandfather was part of the team from Japan that helped build the Earth starships that came to Tapi-36
- the bulk of their work being done in Tokyo, on the Starship Pan: the ‘museum piece’ on Reis-91.

He'd worked hard for TAPCON during his younger years. But
, eventually, he began to doubt Sashan’s philosophy. He suspected Sashan had ulterior motives, and sinister ones, at that. He felt that Sashan was using science as a means to dominate, not nature, or space, but mankind itself. In short, Tamashito figured Sashan as a fully crazed despot. And he was right, of course.

Tamashito and several like-minded individuals,
commenced an uprising against TAPCON, only to find it snuffed out quickly by the TTF. The walls had ears in the TAPCON buildings and his revolution never stood a chance.

However
, Sashan needed Tamashito to keep working for him. He needed his particular skills. There was no one like him on Tapi-36. There was no one like him anywhere. And, when Tamashito refused to begin work again, Sashan kidnapped his family (his wife Mary and his three children, Wind, Jay and Emm) and held them hostage - along with all the relatives of the other TAPCON dissenters - on Reis-91.

Despite his protests, Sashan told him
he should count his blessings: His family were
still alive, and he was allowed to visit them.

Once a year, for half an hour.

To Tamashito, those thirty minutes with his family were the most precious of his life.

When he would arrive at the basecamp, he would run down the hallway to their rooms, just to gain a few extra seconds with them. The children always looked different. They would have grown several inches from the last year, and it never failed to give Tamashito a surprise when he saw how much they’d changed since his last visit.

Wind, his daughter, was the eldest. She was now ten and had already been there for over half of her life. He shuddered when he thought that she must now think of Reis-91 as her home. The two boys, Jay and Emm, were 8 and 6, and they had never known any different. Their memories were of nothing else except the first moon. They were too young to remember their brief, happy life on Tapi-36.

He brought presents for the children from the Balmaha Centre toyshop, and, for Mary, expensive perfume from Stigvel’s and a large bouquet of flowers - beautiful lilies from the market sellers at Paradi Square - how she loved them. She had the flowers in a vase as soon as he arrived, removing the dry, year old ones before she did so.

It was a hurried half-hour
of tears, hugs and assurances, and when Tamashito had to leave, he often thought that he would rather walk straight out of the base-camp and into the moon’s poisonous atmosphere, so great was his pain.

How he longed to have his family back. How he yearned to see them returned safe and sound to their cosy home b
eside leafy Muhaze Parc. But, oh, how he wanted revenge on David Sempre. All those lost years that he would never, ever get back. All the love he'd missed out on, the giving and receiving, the experience of watching his children growing and learning. How the anger would swallow him up some days.

The horrific irony of his situation was how much he'd actually done for TAPCON and how little he'd received in return. Tamashito had not only created all the mutant update software, he’d also designed the technology that was used to preserve the head and brain of Christian Sashan. That had been a big part of his life’s work. The other was in Cryonics.

He taught the third year Cryonics course at Mu-U, which he enjoyed, to some extent. Some students were good, some bad, but all of them served as a constant reminder that, although he was a part of their lives as a mentor and motivator they, ultimately, belonged to someone else. They were not
his
children. His children were far away - on a moon with no breathable air and guarded by mutants around the clock.

Tamashito’s work in cryonics was concerned entirely with finding a feasible method of reviving Mayette Froome. At the crux of it all was the fact that Christian Sashan’s con
dition was slowly deteriorating. The Air Marshal wanted to know that the science would be available for his wife to be revived at some point in the future and, in turn, enable her to carry on with the technological hunt for Sashan. That being, a moving, workable body for his lonesome, quarantined head. Unfortunately, the technology was not yet ready, for any of those things - and time was running out.

David Sempre had also given Tamashito an ultimatum: If the Air Marshall kicked the bucket before the Doctor had found the solution to Mayette Froome’s regeneration, then he and his family would all die.

12:00 - Sunday, July 29, 2187 (Muhaze Airbase, Tapi-36)

“And here it is! The Starship Argon has returned! Let’s go and see if we can talk to the crew!” began Kendall Crisp, enthusiastically - then added, under his breath: “For what it’s worth.”

The crowds were back again at the airbase. Even more people had turned up than the previous night. However, they weren’t there for Jameson or the crew, they only
wanted to see Spoolu. “MUI-DOG! MUI-DOG! MUI-DOG!” they chanted.

The stairs that descended from the spacecraft came out directly into a circular press area that had been cordoned off
by TTF agents. Their presence was more notable this evening than on Friday night – given David Sempre’s concerns.

The crew left the starship to minimal applause. Crisp was waiting for them at the
bottom of the exit steps.

“Captain Jameson! Congratulations on your successful mission to Baal-500!” he bleated.

“Thank you, Kendall, thank you. But really, all is not what it seems.”

In front of his screen at TAPCON Towers, David Sempre flinched.

“Oh, what do you mean, Captain? Are you saying it’s not a muidog? Don’t tell me it’s a fujiwug? Oh, my Herra, it’s a fujiwug, ladies and gentleman!”

The crowd went wild! They liked fujiwugs even more than muidogs!

“No, no, Kendall,” corrected Jameson. “It
is
a muidog. And Zanthu, our Code comrade, risked his life to save her!”

The crowd booed at the mention of Zanthu’s name.

Sempre relaxed.

Immediately, Jameson realised he’d made a mistake. The Muhazians hated the Codes, no matter what he said in their favour. He quickly changed his course. He was improvising, again: “However, that’s not what I’m talking about here,” he managed.

Crisp was shaking his head. “So, what is it then, Captain? What have you found out?”

Sempre dialled a line through to the TTF at the airbase.

“We - the crew of the Argon and I - have found conclusive proof that the source of the slaughter of the animals on Baal-500 is right here, in Muhaze City.”

Sempre’s face went red in anger. He put the TTF on standby.

“Oh, really?” said Crisp, in complete disbelief. “You must be mistaken, Captain. Probably too much radiation out there in space, eh?” He made ‘he’s crazy’ circling motions with his finger, around his ear.

The crowd laughed loudly.

“No, no! Please, listen to me! Please!”

“Oh, we are, Captain,”
laughed Crisp. It was a manic, giddy little laugh, like an Earth-based hyaena arriving first to a carcass. “We are all ears, sir. Do carry on.”

Crisp smelt the blood of Starship-Crash TV.
At last he was going to get his media frenzy.

His eyes widened as
Jameson continued.

“The source of the slaughter on Baal-500… is…” The Captain hesitated, standing at the edge of the precipice - then he jumped, headfirst: “Is David Sempre, the CEO of TAPCON!” he pronounced, defiantly.

“Go!” shrieked Sempre
, down the line.

TTF agents were on top of Jameson and the others before you could shout ‘Blast the Crew’.

“Sorry, Crisp, no more interviews today,” said one of the men, bundling the reporter away.

“But the good people of Muhaze!” he warbled, infuriated to be missing his scoop. “They want to see the Muidoooooooog!” His voice tapered off as another agent grabbed the microphone away from him. There was the faint sound of whimpering and swearing from Crisp as the coverage abruptly went back to the studio.

But t
his time, Ignacio Phinn was ready. He was getting used to Crisp’s outside broadcasts ending in farce and Phinn was all set in the studio, waiting for him to mess up.
Kendall’s such a twerp, he’ll make me look fantastic in comparison,
he thought.

“Oh, hello there, viewers. Well, it seems that Kendall isn’t having much luck out at the Airbase this morning,” said the anchorman, with a big grin. “Now, it’s over to Harriet Honeste, who’s outside the Balmaha Centre with some local people. They’ve been giving her their personal views on the Codes and that lovely muidog.”

Ten minutes later TAPCON had sealed off the Argon and the entire hangar area. They’d started a search of the starship and found all the evidence that the crew had gathered to support their ‘ludicrous’ claims: the NIT, the electronic clipboard, the photos - everything. It was all taken away and destroyed.

The Zip informed the public that enquiries were being made into the mental health of all the crew and that Captain Jameson’s outburst was indeed caused by some form of radiation sickness. It was also mooted that something had happened to them when they were near the surface; that the Codes had secretly inflicted a ‘mindspell’ upon them, or a ‘incantation’ of some sort. Either way, nothing had been officially confirmed by TAPCON. And Sempre preferred it that way. He knew he could rely on the general public making up their own, even more incriminating, versions of the truth. As far as they were concerned, the muidog was still adorable, Zanthu was a villain and Jameson and his crew were all unintelligible, gun-shy misfits.

Unintelligible, gun-shy misfits or not, Sempre was currently informing Jameson of his new orders - the ones that Sashan had given him the previous evening - and either the Captain obeyed, or every single relative of the crew would be killed. Jameson had no choice.

“You are an evil, twisted little man, Sempre,” he said, with venom.

“Please, please. Less of the ‘little’, Jameson,” Sempre replied. But, really, he didn’t care about insults at this moment in time. Everything was going to plan, and he was feeling delirious with success.

Sempre’s line buzzed. It was Flugg.

“I’m in a meeting, Flugg!” he trounced. “Not now!”

“Yes, Mr. Sempre. I know that, sir. But you will have to take this call, sir. It’s the Codes, Mr. Sempre
– and they’re on screen one!”

The doors on Sempre’s wall opened, the screen popped out and there, on the video link, was Qaanhu X.

The screen was filled with his image: plaited blonde hair (slightly grey), long beard, black kilt, complex Celtic-style knot - the works. He spoke in a sonorous, gravitas-filled voice.

“Mr. Sempre. You must return Zanthu and Spoolu to us at precisely 20:30 tomorrow evening at the coordinates I will send shortly… or we will attack Tapi-36 and leave no one alive. That is all.”

The screen went blank.

Perfect
, thought Sempre.
They’re playing right into my hands
.