ELUNA

 

STEPHEN PALMER

 

Stephen Palmer first came to the attention of the SF world in 1996 with his debut novel Memory Seed, followed by its sequel Glass, both published by Orbit in the UK. Further novels followed, including the critically lauded Muezzinland. His most recent novel is Urbis Morpheos, the reading of which was described by one reviewer as “…the obtuse gift it is, to wallow in this utterly striking universe that Palmer has created... a supremely odd yet deeply rewarding experience.” Stephen lives and works in Shropshire.

 

“You are looking at ancient laser sail starships circling a distant cloud of interstellar gas backlit by young, hot stars. Can you see how the cloud seems to be brown and green ink in water? Look more closely. The starships appear as tiny glittering dots.”

“Are they what people call spiderwebs?” I asked.

“They used to. You can see them now?”

“There are about thirty. Do they orbit a common focus?”

“No. Don’t forget, the objects you see now are not what left the solar system. The starships have evolved over many centuries. Every now and again they come together to mate, pass on their artificial genes, then give birth to new starships.”

“But we’re seeing them as they were a few centuries ago. Anything could have happened in that time.”

“Indeed! A good point, child. But this is always the problem with self-replicating machines. Ancient records suggest that many of the starships have left the region of interstellar space you are observing. We cannot say where they are. You observe today those that remain.”

“And you don’t know how many new spiderwebs have been born, do you?”

“No.”

After a pause I said, “Why are they attracted to the clouds of gas?”

“They need raw materials and energy to survive – and to evolve. They circle it like marsh-crows circling a kill.”

I shuddered. “But there aren’t any spiderwebs any more, are there?”

“We use more advanced techniques now, aided by the alien races.”

“In Eluna!”

“Yes, child.”

“I’d like to work at the starport. It sounds interesting.”

“Your family will help, of course. You know they will. But at the moment you are naught but a student. In a hundred years or so, when you grow up…”

“Then?”

“Perhaps.”

 

The exnoo was the size of a cat, the shape of a wart and the colour of coffee, and its keening voice began to worry Freosanrai. Her alien companion was forbidden in the swamps of Eluna. And her father was about to arrive.

Freosanrai glanced around the cubicle in which she had set up her workshop. With the flick of a hand she made opaque the plexi-wall, dropping the exnoo into an aluminium bin.

“No, no, not darkness!” came the whine of the alien.

“Shush! Just while my father is here, then we’ll leave. I told you before, you’re not allowed here.”

“Darkness...”

“Quiet, now!”

Freosanrai stood straight and checked her appearance in a roll-on mirror: short blue hair, large dark eyes, thin mouth. Clothes of wispy silk and plastic knee boots. There came the sound of footsteps outside, a tap on the cubicle door, and then her father walked in.

As usual, he frowned. “What are you doing here?”

Freosanrai was for a moment perplexed by the question. “I’m meant to be here –”

“Oh, yes... the chemtree recreating the xmech mining ship, isn’t it?”

Freosanrai nodded. Her father must have much on his mind to make such a simple mistake.

Osanagai muttered, “You placed this cubicle too far from the chemtrees. I’ve told you before about that.”

He opened the door and looked out. The music of the Elunan swamp became audible, and Freosanrai detected its methanous smell. She saw dozens of chemtrees, their grey trunks like elephant skin, roots sunk in black water, their leaves red and purple, the size of blankets; the ends of their branches suspending pale flowers like wet papers.

Without looking at his daughter, Osanagai said, “This time I shan’t tell Zebenunai. But please learn from your mistake. Too far from the chemtrees and you will miss the development of the seed. Too close and you will interfere with the pollination. Get it just right. You are a member of the Artisans now, and you have to get it right.”

Freosanrai glanced at her father and murmured, “Yes.”

Osanagai frowned. “Is there no work that you can apply yourself to?”

“I am working. Here.”

Osanagai took a few steps out of the cubicle. He turned and said, “Will you stay here tonight?”

Freosanrai nodded. “I think a multifigur will come tonight to pollinate the xmech mining ship flower. I saw one the last two nights, a big one like a silver dragonfly, but the flower wasn’t fully developed. Anyway, the fruit should be ripe this time tomorrow if the flower is pollinated tonight.”

“Make sure you eat it immediately.”

“Yes, father...”

“Then bury your excrement to a depth of ten centimetres. That allows the seed to develop into the ship –”

“Without hindrance or delay, yet without exposing the undeveloped machine to danger.”

Osanagai shook his head. “I suppose you think you know it all because you are no longer a student.”

Freosanrai shrugged. “I know the basics, which is what you were just telling me.”

“Don’t fail on this one like you have before. The xmech are unable to forget a mistake. Zebenunai will lose respect if the mining ship is not delivered to the Ruby Faction – he has known them for three centuries or more.”

Freosanrai raised her eyebrows. “The who?”

“Oh... the Ruby Faction – one of the sections of the xmech populace. Zebenunai has been trying to trace their origin by extrapolating from the positions of stars they transmit data from. Nothing you need to know about. Goodbye.”

Osanagai walked away, his cloak leaving a trail in the damp grass of the chemtree clearing. Freosanrai sighed as she walked out of the cubicle. Around her the dense chemtrees of Eluna moaned as the wind gusted over them. She glanced up to see the outer barrier of Luna translucent white, like the cirrus clouds of the original Earth; below that barrier, more than a kilometre above her, a column of butterflies flew, their myriad wings reflecting sunlight like a cloud of tinsel.

“Get me out of here. I want to be inside your backpack again.”

Freosanrai entered the cubicle and pulled the exnoo from the bin, putting it inside her rucksack and letting the flap fall over the leathery face of the alien. “Is that too dark for you?”

“No, I am comfortable. Have I assisted you enough here? Can we leave?”

Freosanrai hesitated. She only had an hour before evening fell over Ministrator – not enough time to return the exnoo to its hide in the Marshy Sector and then return. But her private task was done, using the exnoo to memorise chemtree types in preparation for later examinations. Yet if the exnoo were discovered she would be expelled from the Artisans, to the eternal shame of her father, and of his father.

“I’m going to keep you here until tomorrow,” she decided. “I can’t risk missing the multifigur.”

“It will come tonight?”

“I’m sure the xmech flower is ready.”

Decision made, Freosanrai lifted the rucksack and carried it across the clearing to the nearest chemtrees, which she clambered across, slipping on their moss-covered roots, until she found a hole in the ground. Into this she placed the rucksack. She glanced around. This part of Eluna, close to the Marshy Sector and Mount Black, was little used. She could see only one hologram marking the position of a growing seed, a golden spiral fifty metres away. The rucksack would be safe.

“Goodbye,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll return to pick you up.”

“Very well.”

Freosanrai returned to the cubicle, checked the monitor computers, then settled into a yoga position on the grass outside.

Gloom fell over Eluna. Many of the chemtrees relaxed, their boles creaking, their branches drooping. Evening multifigur flitted between the chemtrees, catching final beams of light as the sun descended, but as time passed Freosanrai began to worry that the silver dragonfly would not reappear. This hour was the usual time for scent-directed pollinations to occur. She put on her image enhancing spectacles. Nothing.

Night fell, and still nothing. Freosanrai began to fret.

 

The Mercantile Sector, positioned between the Marshy Sector and the edge of the sector upon which Ministrator is built, is usually quiet at night. An intricate collection of shops and businesses spread out over fifty square kilometres, it is required by law to shut down when the sun sets. But the border with the Olive Sector is leaky, unpatrolled, and the hedonists of that region will on occasion use its broad streets as their lavatories, bordellos and drug dens.

Tonight, a man totters along Point Zero Street, a thoroughfare close to the edge of Eluna. Though he is drunk he can hear the whirrs, screeches and bellows of Elunan technology, incomprehensible to him – a commoner, a voter – yet recognisable, and somehow comforting. He knows where he is. He stops, injects another few millilitres into his veins, and stumbles on.

The stars are invisible beyond the great Lunan barrier, the sphere that is tonight dark and swirling. Alien computers control with precision the amount of solar energy reaching the environment within. Today they increased Luna’s albedo by a fraction of a per cent, responding to innumerable data sent by botanic sensors.

The man leans into a dark doorway. Behind the plexi at his side he sees goods from lower sectors: gene therapy kits, portable microbe generators, auxiliary eyes. At his feet a number of black automechs work, digging miniature trenches so that optical cables can be laid. He is tempted to kick them aside, but even in his inebriated state he will not ignore the taboo.

He staggers out into the street. Something shiny and as large as a child flies towards him. He stops.

He has never seen anything like it. Though it is silver metal, reflective as a new mirror, it is shaped like an insect. It hovers a few metres away from him, its wings creating pseudo-patterns from reflected light. There is a chittering noise. Then it strikes.

The insect’s face clamps to his own and tries to mould itself to that form. Blood spurts out from the wounds created. The man tries to scream, but the insect is suffocating him in its effort to replicate the form of his face, and his cries cannot be heard. He falls to the ground. His eyes burst. Still the insect tries to copy. But now it is confused. This is not how it is supposed to be. This is something other, something with a face that is mobile, plastic, weak.

It flies off. Perplexed, it tries to locate its resting branch. It cannot. There is something inside its head that is stopping it from thinking straight. An itch that it cannot scratch. So it finds an emergency shelter beneath a series of stone blocks. It must wait. It must become calm. It must decide what to do.

The man is dead, his face crushed and bloody. He lies in a red pool.

 

Freosanrai realised that something had gone wrong with the pollination. There would be no xmech mining ship. Frightened of what her father would say, she considered her options.

The obvious thing to do was to ask for help. But she could not; it was essential that she display her skills whenever possible. Besides, she was not naturally inclined to ask for assistance. That left the option of a private investigation.

It was easy for her to check the overnight monitors, and soon she spotted something unusual, a multifigur that had missed its trajectory and departed Eluna. She sat alone by a chemtree and considered the implications of this. Eluna and the multifigur were a symbiotic system, so there was nothing for a multifigur outside the starport. Why, then, had this happened?

In moments she was adjusting the motion track record so that the multifigur error was lost to the Artisan system: a simple deception. Then she grabbed the exnoo and headed for the gateway.

“Where are we going?” came a plaintive voice from the rucksack on her back.

“Returning to Ministrator. You’ll like that.”

“Yes! Luna. Interesting people and no horrid trees.”

“I told you before, they’re not trees.”

“You’ll tell me again, you will!” chanted the exnoo.

“Quiet. I’ll need your help out there on the streets. Away from Eluna I’m like an oyster out of its shell.”

“I know. I’ve seen you. But you said you are allowed out.”

“I’m allowed out… but the Artisans don’t like it. We’re supposed to live apart from the populace.”

“I will be quiet now, you’re approaching the gateway.”

The gateway was a solid mass of rock with a tunnel through it. Realising that technological fixes would generate technological opponents, the Artisans had decided to use the most rudimentary force possible to keep Eluna secure: brute force. This plan had worked for over a millennium. Freosanrai ducked as she entered the tunnel, the sound of her soft boots echoing in a series of reverberated thuds.

A dozen green-clad women sat beside a plastic table at the outer end of the tunnel. One stood up and said, “Where are you going?”

“Into Ministrator.”

“For what reason?”

“Private business.”

The woman hesitated for just long enough to indicate that she thought Freosanrai was lying, then let her pass. Freosanrai did not care. Records were kept of Artisan movements but they were almost never checked, an advantage to living in so exclusive a hierarchy.

She found herself in a dark street. Though it was day, the height of the buildings to either side of her blocked out what little sunlight penetrated the outer sphere, today as white as snow. She was in Show, the administrative heart of Ministrator. She hurried on.

“Where should I go?” she asked the exnoo.

“Don’t run,” came the reply. “You will stand out if you appear anxious. Walk slowly. Don’t stare at people and buildings like an outsider. Now, what exactly needs to be done?”

“We need to find traces of the multifigur. I can’t imagine what it was doing out here. What was it thinking?”

“What type of trace are we looking for?”

“Anything unusual that happened last night.”

“That will be a wide search,” said the exnoo. “Ministrator is well over a thousand square kilometres. Please narrow it down.”

Freosanrai began to feel frustration creeping over her. “How can I? No multifigur has ever escaped before, how should I know what to look for?”

The exnoo said nothing. Freosanrai sat in a shadowed doorway and took it out of her rucksack, placing it on her lap as if it were a babe. The creased, leathery face peered up at her: saucer eyes, hairy mouth, black external gills like whiskers.

“Haven’t you got any ideas?” she asked. “You were human imprinted, you must have some idea where to begin.”

“I’m thinking,” said the exnoo.

It shut its eyes and began whimpering to itself. Freosanrai waited.

“The chemtree that you hoped would create the xmech vehicle fruit, that was on the Mercantile Sector side of Eluna, wasn’t it?”

Freosanrai shrugged. “Closer to the Olive Sector, I think.”

“We should go there. The border between the two sectors is insecure. We could check the overnight records of the Mercantile cameras.”

“Cameras?”

“Merchants don’t like drunkards and junkies spoiling their territory,” said the exnoo. “You’ve got detectors that will locate the multifigur metal?”

“A kit, yes.”

“Then we need transport. An airship, an airship!”

Freosanrai muttered, “Just tell me where to go.”

Guided by the exnoo’s memorised map Freosanrai walked two kilometres deeper into Show, until she arrived at an airfield, where sat a number of indigo-coloured airships. Downloading timetables into her handset, she chose the ship that would soonest reach the Olivean border, a journey of fifteen kilometres. From her pocket she took her faked docu-card. She paid, then walked into the airfield.

The airship rose fifteen minutes later. Freosanrai sat in the extended basket beneath the dirigible, relaxing in a window-seat. As the airship rose she saw the Xiix Sector, which lay beneath her like a vast pincushion; then she was floating over Mount Black and the Marshy Sector. The sky shimmered as the two-mol boundary containing Ministrator’s air split asunder, grew and reformed under the pressure of external weather.

At the border of the Mercantile and Olive Sectors the exnoo directed Freosanrai to a camera battery. It was easy to use her docu-card to access overnight records.

Six merchants group together to form anti-muzik society. Muzik users form opposing society. Talks to broker peace expected by nightfall.

Nooling threads choke stream, cause floods. Automechs brought in to redirect stream – nooling threads all safe.

Raids made on Olivean choke-dens. Six kilogrammes of choke confiscated.

Man killed by having face ground off. Unknown assailant thought to be hiding nearby. Investigators reviewing local information.

Miles Fayne nominated leader of mercantile forum currency group. Says, “Major change to occur.”

Freosanrai shrugged. “Is this of any use?” she asked the exnoo.

The exnoo remained silent for a few moments before saying, “We can discount the first, third and fifth reports, as they’re about ongoing events. Expand the fourth report.”

Freosanrai did as she was told.

A man was last night killed by an unknown assailant in Point Zero Street –

“Where’s that?” Freosanrai asked.

“Close to the Elunan border.”

“Ah!”

– when during an apparently motiveless attack his face was ground off by an unknown device. Found dead at the scene, he has been taken to the Reusing Sector, where his family have said goodbye. Investigators from the Mercantile Lobby are analysing local infos in the hope that a picture of the assailant can be created. An investigator said, “There was a faint blood trail, but it was impossible to follow further than Zil Square. We are preparing noses, which we hope will be able to detect blood molecules further afield.”

“Would the multifigur have killed a man?” asked the exnoo.

“It’s as likely to do that as it is to write poetry,” Freosanrai grumbled. “Can we get along to Zil Square?”

Soon Freosanrai was studying Zil Square, a paved area surrounded by low buildings. Mercantile investigators, distinguished by their grey hats, walked around the further reaches of the square.

“We had better wait until they leave,” said the exnoo. “If they suspect you are from the Artisans they might get suspicious.”

“Why should they? I’ve got my docu-card. They’ve no reason to suspect me.”

“Experienced investigators make intuitive guesses. You are foolish to think you cannot be touched! A man may guess where you come from by your speech.”

“Be quiet. People might hear you. Besides, I’ve had an idea.”

The exnoo did not ask what the idea was. Two hours passed. Freosanrai sat outside a vin-shop and waited for the investigators to depart. The square was quiet, more of an administrative centre than a place of mercantilism, with the hum of computers audible amidst the chatter of distant children. At length the investigators departed and Freosanrai was free to act.

First, she walked around the square. With no idea what had happened during the night she let her mind remain open to any clue, however subtle, however strange. After a few minutes she noticed a new crack in a paving slab.

“What is it?” said the exnoo.

Freosanrai said nothing as from her rucksack she pulled out a detection kit. From it she extracted a box of magnetic ants. Opening the lid, she stood back, then dispersed the ants in a sweeping arc, so that they were strewn over the slabs in their thousands. She leaped back, defocusing her eyes a little so that she could see patterns of movement as the ants went into defence mode and tried to locate their home. But they had no home here, their motion was random, and because of that she could see a shape emerging as a multitude of ant lanes were guided by metal beneath the slabs.

A winged shape. Her guess had been correct.

“It’s hiding, or inactive,” she said. She glanced around the square. A few people had seen her throw the ants, but nobody approached her. This was as good a time as any to perform the recapture. In seconds she had grabbed the broken corner of the slab nearest the concealed multifigur and lifted it, to see a single silver leg. She grabbed it and pulled. Like mirrored cellophane the defunct multifigur emerged, and Freosanrai was able to drop it into a bag, then into her rucksack.

“Will it hurt me?” asked the exnoo.

“No. It’s not dead, but it isn’t going to move until it’s reactivated.”

“What next?”

“Strange… there’s bamboo here, beneath the slabs. Fresh bamboo. I wonder…”

 

From her podium Suzan Cnasis gazed out over the rustling greenery of Bambooine. Far to the north she saw the grey silhouette of the Siggurat, stepped and pyramidic in form, with pale blue mist floating around its flat summit. Its base was lost in a billowing mass of bamboo.

She turned back to the archaeological dig that lay around her. The dig team had removed two hundred square metres of bamboo, revealing chocolate brown topsoil peppered with stones. She checked her fingerwatch. Lackshmi Devatasive, her colleague, was late for work. Again.

Suzan sighed.

An hour later she heard a familiar belch, then voices amidst the rustle of the bamboo, then the sound of metal shod boots clacking on a board path. Moments later Lackshmi stood beside her on the podium.

Lackshmi smiled. “You’re early, Su!”

Suzan ignored the remark.

Lackshmi stretched like a cat emerging from deep sleep. “Weather’s looking bad. The forecast was for storms.”

Suzan glanced at the sky, pale with faux-cirrus. “Perhaps,” she said. Glancing at Lackshmi’s long white hair she said, “What’s that stuck in your...?”

Lackshmi pulled what appeared to be a lump of toffee from her hair. “Oh, just some stuff. We were at Moosha’s place in Olivea last night, drinking muzik.”

“Drinking... what?”

“Muzik. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it. A new drug synthesized by kids in Vin. It leaves your sight alone but gives you amazing sonic hallucinations.” She laughed, then stretched again. “I could get addicted to it, easy!”

Suzan turned away. She had heard enough.

“To work,” said Lackshmi. She glanced over the revealed earth, then pointed to the northern corner. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

Lackshmi pointed again. “That dark patch in the corner.”

Suzan was annoyed to discover Lackshmi had spotted a feature that she had missed. “I don’t know,” she said. But before she could tell her colleague about the pre-dig survey Lackshmi had jumped off the podium and was running over the earth.

Suzan followed. Together, they studied the earth in the corner. “That might be new,” Suzan said.

“Yeah, I agree. But this place hasn’t been touched for decades. Centuries, I’m guessing.”

Suzan bent down to check the surface of the earth. “You don’t know for certain that it’s not been touched for decades,” she said. “Call the diggers.”

A few minutes later a bot-mole dig team arrived. Suzan downloaded their logs into her handset and studied what they had done, but was disappointed to find a set of normal statistics. She took a trowel and began scratching at the dark patch of earth. It led directly into the uncut topsoil at the edge of the new site.

“Are you going to be long?” Lackshmi said.

“This needs to be done layer by layer,” Suzan replied. “I think this is very recent. There’s no archaeology here, this is the edge of a new pit, and it goes on beneath the bamboo.”

Lackshmi shrugged. “Pull up a few more metres of bamboo.”

Suzan considered this suggestion. The borders of the site were undefined. Bot-moles were on hand. “Very well,” she said. “Just a few more square metres.”

Lackshmi drank O-lime tonic water while the bot-moles dug. Suzan dragged her hand through her bobbed black hair and watched. She was nervous. Nerves struck her every time a new site opened. From her flask she sipped rose tea.

After half an hour they stood facing the top of a fresh pit. “It’s no more than five years old,” said Lackshmi. “Five months, even.”

“We do not know that yet,” Suzan replied. “It will be difficult to date –”

“Get digging. This is just building work or something, we need to get it out of the way and reach the interesting stuff.”

“But there has been no building work here for a century. You said so yourself.”

“Oh, give it a rest! It’s obviously new. Dig an exploratory trench and find out what’s in there. I’m getting bored with this already.”

Suzan cleaned her spectacles while the bot-moles removed layers of earth, their multiple legs a blur.

Then, “Stop!”

Lackshmi had yelled. She spat green water.

“All stop.” The bot-moles froze.

“What’s the matter?” asked Suzan.

Lackshmi did not answer. Like a gymnast she bounded over the bot-moles, to kneel down in the earth and with her bare hands pull clods away. Then she sat up. “Su, come look!”

There in the earth lay the top of a metal box.

Lackshmi dug more. Suzan bit her lip. This was unorthodox.

Within a minute Lackshmi had revealed a steel box, less than a metre long on each side. “I told you it was new,” she said. “Somebody buried this recently.” She glanced at the bamboo surrounding her. “They chose this spot because it was quiet and out of the way, even for this quarter.” Then she shivered. “I wonder if there’s a body in there?”

“Must be a small one if there is. A child. Shall I call Show –”

“No! We’ll just open it ourselves. It’s probably nothing.”

Suzan recognised the signs – Lackshmi was unstoppable in this mood. It had on previous occasions led to bitter struggles: the artist versus the scientist. Yet they both needed the other.

The bot-moles were not suited to intricate work, so Suzan summoned a sentient. It arrived, brown and hairy with twenty eyes, and like a gothic clockmaker it fiddled with the edges of the seal, the ticking and tapping of its mechanisms contrasting with the nearby voices of the human dig team. After ten minutes it stopped, paused, adjusted its position, then used its front leg to force open the lid in one sudden motion. It scuttled away, leaving Suzan and Lackshmi to peer into the box.

A chaotic jumble: computer memory, data disks, electromagnetic equipment, ancient paper. Even books, real books, like the ones Suzan had seen in museums.

“Oh, my,” said Lackshmi. “Oh... no!”

“What?”

“You know what this is, don’t you?”

Astonished, then annoyed, Suzan stared at her colleague. “No, I do not know what this is,” she said.

“It’s an information burial.”

None the wiser, Suzan frowned and looked again into the box.

“This box was buried by xmech,” said Lackshmi. “This is information, knowledge, pertaining to somebody or something.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The complete obliteration of facts. If it was deliberate, it’s the equivalent of murder. We need to locate a bounty hunter.”

“A what?”

“Hah! I studied the xmech decades ago, when I was an archaeology student in the Philosophers’ Sector.”

“The xmech?” asked Suzan. This was news to her. “Why not human?”

“An ex-lover got me interested. Human archaeology isn’t everything.”

Suzan nodded. “Yes, I understand that, but –”

“Anyway, I know something of their ways. Not much, of course, they’re impossible to deconstruct because of the way they interact.”

Suzan shrugged.

“There’s a fixed number of xmech personalities. Lots of jostling to get the best identities, which are always the oldest – the wisest, you see. Xmech individuals are recreations of past public identities. They change, ever so slowly, as the years pass.”

“What has this to do with our information burial?”

“Well, with the xmech being entirely artificial, and alien, they don’t see information the way we do. Su, I’ve seen reconstructions of information burials before. What puzzles me though is why xmech would bury information in the human zone… normally they’d only bury in their own territory.”

A thought struck Suzan at once. “Perhaps a human asked xmech to arrange and perform the burial.”

Lackshmi stared at her. “Of course!” Clapping her on the shoulder she said, “Well done! Yes, somebody wanted an obliteration of facts. Now, I wonder who? And why?”

 

The weather turned as the sun set. Rain began to patter over the Lunan sectors, reducing visibility, soaking everything. As evening fell, Lackshmi returned with a young woman at her side.

“This is Freosanrai,” said Lackshmi. “She’s going to analyse the burial.”

Freosanrai nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Where’s the box?”

Suzan hesitated. The voice came from the rucksack on the woman’s back.

Indicating the rucksack, Freosanrai said, “No vocal cords – pulled out by muzik assassins. I speak through a leather machine.”

Suzan had instructed one of the diggers to carry the box to the rear of the makeshift tent, where it lay concealed by chitin scales. Freosanrai pulled off the cover, carried the box to the table and set it down. Then she opened it and began taking out the contents one by one. Each object she studied for a few seconds, sniffing on occasion, once shaking a tube, riffling through the books, then investigating more. After half an hour she was done. Over a hundred objects lay scattered around the box.

“There does not seem enough here to guarantee information death,” Suzan observed.

Lackshmi nodded. To Freosanrai she said, “Suzan thinks a human requested this to be done.”

Suzan smiled. Generosity was one of Lackshmi’s many faults.

Freosanrai drawled, “The lady’s right. The mechoes, they never bury outside their zones unless for another race. A guy did this, probably one who lives in this sector.”

“A man or a woman,” Suzan remarked.

Freosanrai shook her head. “No, ‘twas a guy. I know. I sense the pattern of male friendship here. You realise there’s religion in this box?”

“How do you know?”

“I know the way mechoes view our stuff. See, they have their own view, that we don’t understand. But they see us distinctly, which I recognise. I see clues here. Check out the books. Old. I can tell you what all this is about. Me, I think it was a small fact that was excised and buried – you were right, lady. With computers everywhere we live in a big big network. It’s not easy to untangle information. But a small fact… that you can untangle and excise.”

“Is this what you would call an information murder?” asked Lackshmi.

“Depends on the context. I’ll tell you more after you pay me.”

Suzan handed over an e-note.

Pocketing the note, Freosanrai said, “This burial was made recently. I’m able to tease out the threads of information that the mechoes had to cut. See, they do that good. They cut and cut and cut, until a network is isolated. Very clever. And a network, it can be any shape, see? Not just a circle or a square. Can be looped in three-dee space. But the mechoes are able to isolate everything pertaining to a fact, and bury. This what we have here. The burial of just one thing.” She nodded and smiled, as if pleased with her analysis.

“But what is the fact?” Suzan asked.

“That I can’t tell you, not exactly, not yet.”

“What?”

“Shush,” Lackshmi said. “There’s more Su, if you’ll listen.”

“As I suspected,” Freosanrai continued, “this is to do with religion. You know the Jules guy?”

“The who?” Suzan asked.

“Jules Aonnarron,” Lackshmi said, “the cultist at the Temple of Stela.”

Suzan had heard this name. “Yes,” she said, “his reputation is bad.”

“I think he’s the man that buried this information,” said Freosanrai. “With these finds I’ll go to the Temple of Stela and interrogate Jules Aonnarron. Reckon he deliberately buried an idea. Then I’ll come back.”

“You’d better go now,” said Suzan. “Download your report into my handset before you leave.”

 

Freosanrai took the retrieved information away as fast as she could. She congratulated the exnoo on its mimicry. “You spoke well,” she said.

“Once we knew the burial was real,” the exnoo replied, “it was easy. But now you have to discover from Jules Aonnarron why he buried the xmech idea.”

“Let me make a guess,” Freosanrai replied. “There is no such person as Jules Aonnarron. It will be one of the Artisans – somebody is trying to frame me. Somebody is trying to force me out of Eluna, but I’m not going to let them succeed. I have one advantage. I found the multifigur.”

“Without it you’d have no evidence,” agreed the exnoo. “But the might of the Artisans opposes you, and you are just one woman –”

“I’ll succeed! Back into the rucksack, quickly. I want this over with.”

The Temple of Stela was a tall, dark building made of stone. Ivy grew over its upper half, while the lower half was covered with damp, brown moss. Freosanrai opened the main door and walked into a long, narrow chamber whose ceiling was so high she could not see it.

“The xmech will take over Luna,” said a voice.

“Grandfather!” Freosanrai gasped.

Zebenunai walked out of the shadows to her side. “But do you have evidence?” he asked.

Freosanrai frowned. “Evidence?”

“Come, child!”

“Oh… you mean the multifigur. Er, yes, I found it. And of course I recognised your handwriting on the objects in the box you had the xmech bury.”

“This is a great shame. I would have succeeded, otherwise.”

“Succeeded?”

Zebenunai nodded. “The xmech mining ship is not an xmech mining ship. It is the first of the spiderwebs returned to Sol – the vanguard of the coming colonisation. But, you see, the Earth is not alive anymore. Many things are not as they were millennia ago when the spiderwebs departed. And so the spiderwebs are jostling for knowledge of us, of Luna, of Eluna.”

“Then that’s why the multifigur didn’t pollinate –”

“I assumed it would remain within Eluna. There, I made a mistake. Then events developed beyond my control. And now I will have you kill you.”

“Me? No! Why?”

“You know too much. You have asserted your freedom from the Artisans by uncovering knowledge – you have effectively become a commoner. And no commoner can know what you now know.”

“But… grandfather, no! You can’t kill me!”

Zebenunai hesitated. “There is one way out,” he said.

Freosanrai trembled. “What?”

Zebenunai walked over to Freosanrai and took her rucksack, lifting it up and shaking it so that the exnoo fell out. He stamped on it, squashing it with the heel of his boot. Freosanrai stared, too shocked to cry.

“That is the first part,” Zebenunai said. “And now for you –”

“But you said you wouldn’t –”

“I’m not going to kill you! I’m going to properly make you part of the family. The family of Artisans. Unfortunately, in becoming part of the family you will lose your freedom. But you are almost an adult now, and I think the time is right. Do you know what we are?”

“The rulers of Luna. The elite, the long-lived. The marsh people of Eluna.”

“We are not exactly human, child. But our makers were. Have you not wondered why we alone live and work in Eluna? It is because we are symbiotic with the chemtrees. Once, they were human. But such distinctions are no longer relevant. Life has become smudged now it is off the Earth. Alas that I had to tell you this so early in your life.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

Zebenunai replied, “My mistake means the time has come for you to assume a new identity. I am not just Jules Aonnarron, I am many others in Luna. Come to me, child. Let me show you who else you will be.”

Freosanrai nodded. “You don’t want me to be independent, do you? You framed me –”

“To teach you.” Zebenunai shook his head. “I am sorry it had to be this way. But the family is more important than the individual. This, you have learned.”

Freosanrai nodded again. She had been crushed, she had been moulded. With a sinking heart she realised her fate. There was no escape. She would no longer be Freosanrai.