Nylthia harboured a large collection of the Opis plant. Its stringy purple tentacles were poisonous if digested. The release of poison was slow, too slow to kill a Citizen. There were orange flowers and blue bulbs that had not yet opened. Some of the plants grew in small life-chambers, others were in modified pots that gave them all the nourishment and artificial sunlight they needed. One of the plant life-chambers had been smashed.
Someone had been in here, but not recently. The smashed plant had withered. Its green liquid seeped across the floor, and it produced a putrid odour.
Is this where Amelia met her captor?
As he waded deeper into the glass house, he noticed more evidence of an intruder: smashed and empty life-chambers. Decomposing plants.
He found the wireless remote for the Gunan pod on the floor. He usually kept it inside his bedchamber cabinet. He clucked with annoyance. He had seen Amelia playing with the remote not more than two months ago. He had told her to return it to where she had found it. He picked up the device and stared around, slapping the remote against the palm of his hand. It could be that Amelia’s captors set her free when they learned the identity of their intended target. They must have assumed the risk of abducting her, in order to secure a ransom, was too great and returned her to the garden.
He went inside.
He ventured to his bedchamber and brought up the Gunan pod from beneath the floor. The floor panel slid back. The white egg-shaped pod rose on its dusty lectern. The antique from his youth had been in his home for as long as he could remember. He swept his hand over the pod’s centre and the door popped open. He stepped inside.
Her beauty mesmerised him. He had once harboured some sort of love for her. But the relationship would never work out. He touched her face and his hand went through her cheek: a solid holographic imprint. Who knew where her true home lay. All he knew was she never left her pod. He used to visit her almost every day as a child, but in adolescence he outgrew her. As he focused on his desire to become a scientist, she became a child’s toy and a dream. And she became an ancient heirloom forever bound to the House of Dorm. He believed her to be a cybernetic machine; a sophisticated memory bank. She certainly acted like one. She never blinked. Her hands sat frozen in her lap and she was dead behind the eyes. She seldom spoke. When she did she rarely made any sense, and her words were not directed at him.
She said she came from the planet Gunan in the Andromeda galaxy. The tiny planet had a population of less than two million Citizens. It had been destroyed many years ago by a thermonuclear blast. Some of the people who dwelled there fled to other planets within the galaxy, but most perished. Skelos liked to fancy that the woman, who he named Orel, was one of the survivors. Although he had never been able to find her. She had a mark on the palm of her left hand unlike his own. It was a symbol made up of circles and squares.
He knelt at the foot of the chair inside the cramped pod. He left the door ajar to let in some air. ‘How are you, Orel? My apologies for not coming sooner. I was busy – as it happens – with life. I’m a scientist now, though others would question it. I have got myself into some difficulty, Orel. My career is all but ruined. Those who are eager to supplant me shall make it so. There are assassins out there,’ he pointed to the open door, ‘trying to kill me.’
‘Fortification,’ said Orel.
It wasn’t the first time she had said that word. He had no idea what she meant. When he asked her, he received no reply.
‘We haven’t spoken in years and you can think of nothing more to say?’ He sighed. There were no projectors inside the pod or the remote device that could account for the hologram.
He rose from the floor and sat on chair, slipping through her transparency.
‘I don’t want to give up, Orel,’ he said. I won’t let the Establishment crush me. Any words of wisdom?’ He paused. Hopeful. He thought that in the twenty-one years since his last visit, she may have learned an extra word or two. ‘I guess not then,’ he said after several minutes had passed.
He slammed his eyes shut. The chair was comfortable. It was a shame it was rooted to the floor.
He fell asleep. He dreamt that Orel was real and that they lay together in the glass house. Caught within the dream threads, he felt his body growing hot. The heat drew him from his sleep. He opened his eyes. The pod door was shut. He kicked it open with his foot. He jumped up from the chair and spun round. She was gone. She had never disappeared from her chair in all the years he had visited her. He ran his hand under the chair in search of a power source. It wasn’t something he hadn’t done a thousand times before. Must everything be taken from me? He left the pod, slamming the door shut.
~
That night he slept in the house, for the first time in years, with no other Citizens for company. He had sentinel cyborgs posted at every entrance and exit and a tracker drone at the door. He lay on top of his bed too discontent and hot to climb under the covers. He noticed Orel was standing in the corner of the room, steeped in shadow and mystery. He swept his hand across the table on his wall to put on his night-light, afraid that if he used voice recognition, the noise would make her disappear.
She was still there. He climbed out of bed. He touched her face; his hand went straight through her cheek. Not real. But she seemed more real outside the pod than in. She had a long torso and a tiny waist. She did not blink, but her face looked as if it had shifted him some way. Her lips looked softer and eyelids more prominent. It was a slight shift, but it was there.
A hologram was not an entity. It did not move of its own free will. Someone was still controlling it after all these years, or they had only just started to control it again. Although as far as he could tell the hologram no longer held any real purpose than to amuse and torment him. He ran his hand across his mouth thoughtfully. Perhaps the real ‘Orel’ had created a droid in her form to act as some sort of decoy.
‘What made you leave your chair, Orel, after all these years?’
‘Fortification.’
‘Yes,we know fortification. What else? What else are you not telling me?’
He turned on the holographic table and pulled the Gunan files from Vega’s virtual database. The planet was destroyed by a meteorite. He flicked through the profiles of the known survivors. There were many, but none of them matched Orel’s description. His eyes ached. Hadn’t he checked these records two decades ago? He had not learnt anything then, and nothing would have changed since. No. This won’t work.
‘Fortification.’ He muttered the word under his breath several times. He saw that Orel had moved again. She stood at the foot of his bed of all places. Now this is getting sinister. He couldn’t undress in front of her, never mind sleep.
‘Index Eleven,’ she said.
This is new information. Words she had never uttered before.
Index Eleven? There were no constituencies in Gunan, only districts and none of them had an eleventh index. If Orel wasn’t standing in front of him like some immobile spectre from his dreams, he may have allowed himself to forget about her.
The thought of her moving about his home gave him cause for concern. Was this the ghost to which Amelia had referred? He knew he had the ability to make her disappear, to zap her where she stood, but then she would disappear from his life forever and he was not ready to lose her, especially when he had lost so much already.
He went into the kitchen. He took Osaphar’s advice and poured himself a glass of water as opposed to wine. He put on some relaxing music. The Establishment can’t get me to move, but that damned Orel just might. He hummed along to the rhythm, closed his eyes and swayed. The music stopped abruptly. He opened his eyes. Orel stood not an inch from his face, her eyes cemented to his. He dropped his glass.
A house droid zoomed into view. Skelos stepped out of its way to allow it do its work: mopping up the water and depositing the broken glass into its outer bin dispenser.
This is all too much. He called Denlor.
/> ~
He had never seen Denlor grin so widely as when he saw Orel’s hologram. Denlor had spent three years studying holography, dedicating much of his research to hologram classifications and illumination techniques.
‘She follows me everywhere,’ said Skelos.
Denlor crossed his arms. ‘Even to your bed. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not what I want. And don’t you dare tell anyone about this. It’s not what you think. It’s been here since my childhood, and now for some bizarre reason it has started moving around the house.’
‘Have you looked for a holographic port?’
Skelos slapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that? There is no holographic port,’ he hissed.
‘There’s always a holographic port. Show me where you found her.’
Skelos took him into bedchamber, and the smile disappeared from Denlor’s face.
‘You found her in a Hydro-Pod and you never reported it?’
‘Me? I was an infatuated child. I don’t know if my parents ever reported it. I never discussed it with them, and they never discussed with me.’
Orel reappeared in a corner of the bedchamber.
‘Well, you really are a master of secrets, aren’t you, Skelos?’
Denlor stepped inside the pod. He ran his hands over the walls and the chair. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t take it apart.’ He took out a small disc and placed it on the chair. It made a beeping sound.
‘I couldn’t detect any laser apparatus,’ said Skelos. ‘I assume it’s being controlled outside a visible range.’
Denlor picked up the device. ‘There’s no holographic port inside the pod. Did you open it up in here?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean the first time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it say anything to you?’
‘Nothing that made any sense. I know the pod came from Gunan. You ever heard of Index Eleven?’
‘No. Anything else?’
‘It wants protection. It keeps saying fortification.’
‘I don’t think it’s asking for protection.’
‘If fortification is not asking for protection, then what is?’
‘Fortification is a planet.’
Skelos watched Denlor flush with pleasure at announcing something that he had clearly misinterpreted. ‘Impossible. There are no known unidentified planets within the Andromeda galaxy.’ He had never claimed to be an astronomer, but if a planet had a name, Vega would have a record of it.
‘That’s the thing Fortification isn’t in the Andromeda galaxy.’ Denlor took the holographic detector out of the pod and laid it on the table. It went off. ‘Looks as if it’s inside your walls.’
CHAPTER NINE
Well, that was one mystery solved. Skelos had never thought to look for the holographic projector elsewhere. He was so embarrassed by his lack of foresight regarding its detection, he quickly steered Denlor back to the subject of Fortification.
‘Fortification lies within the Messier galaxy,’ said Denlor. ‘It’s tiny, has a population of about 50,000 Denizen hybrids with racial traits similar to our own. You, like many other Citizens, have spent years studying the Andromeda galaxy. You forget about the others.’
‘And how do you know about it?’
‘I worked in the landing port lounges when I was younger. A couple of ships from the Messier galaxy docked for repairs, refuelling, that sort of thing.’
‘I didn’t know ships from other galaxies were allowed to dock on Odisiris. I thought it was against Establishment policy.
‘I believe they were in desperate need.’ Denlor helped himself to a drink without being offered one. If it were anyone else, Skelos would have taken the glass from them and told them to leave.
‘You say you witnessed two ships dock?’
‘Only two ships from the Messier Galaxy have ever docked on Odisiris. Three years apart. None since.’ Denlor sat down on a chair, rocking the glass in his hand.
‘Did any of the crew ever leave the docking port?’
‘Now that is one thing we know the Establishment would never allow, but it doesn’t mean it’s not possible.’
‘She could be here.’ This thing of beauty.
Denlor sighed. ‘Considerably older, I would imagine.’
‘Not if she’s a cybernetic organism.’ Her beauty will be everlasting. ‘Can you get me a list of all those on board.’
Denlor retrieved the classified manifests from the Vega database.
There were two-hundred-twenty names in all. More than Skelos had expected. The crew on the The Zakota numbered just twenty-two, the rest were on the Luskel Suix.
Skelos examined the crew member’s profiles.
‘I’ll leave you with these,’ said Denlor. ‘Make sure you go offline within one hour or you could trigger an unauthorised access tracker. ‘Why bother looking into this?’ He said as he was leaving. ‘It’s meaningless.’
‘Nothing is meaningless,’ he informed Denlor. ‘Besides, I need to take my mind off the investigation.’
~
Skelos overrode the unauthorised access tracker and returned to perusing the profiles of all two-hundred-twenty names in The Zakota and Luskel Suix manifests. After three hours of searching, he found her: Lieutenant Elise Fisher of The Zakota, aged thirty-four.
The Zakota was the last ship from the Messier Galaxy to arrive on Odisiris all those years ago.
If she had stayed in Odisiris she could have changed her identity. If she were a lieutenant she may have joined the fleet, which meant she could anywhere.
He searched for Index Eleven, Fortification. He found no constituencies, only more districts, towns and cities.
He considered asking Nylthia about the pod. He chose his mother instead. She was the closest to him. She denied knowing anything about the Gunan pod as he suspected she would. But he could see the troubled look in her eye when she asked him if it was empty.
‘It was,’ he told her. ‘I’m just clearing out.’
He called Secure Homes to check on Amelia before he retired for the night. He couldn’t allow her to return with a hologram-spectre drifting about the house.
He drank himself to sleep. Hours later, he woke cradling an empty bottle of Zaskian and a sea-crab claw. Two pairs of eyes watched him. One set belonged to Orel, the other to Elise.
CHAPTER TEN
The woman had Orel’s eyes. Nothing more. She had lost her figure. She had once been beautiful, but the harshness of life must have made her age prematurely. She had lines on her face. Too many for a woman that, by his calculation, could not have been older than fifty-five. She was not the ‘Orel’ hologram he had seen in the Gunan pod, that was someone or something else.
Elise wore a tatty brown cloak and a long tunic made of hemp from a bygone era. Her hair was wiry and ruffled. Her nails were worn down to the tip. She looked like an Outsider: bedraggled and lost.
‘Please come with me,’ she said.
Inquisitive, he followed her without asking how she got into his home. She had docked a small dented warship next to one of his air shuttles.
The warship ramp-way lowered, and they went inside.
Elise piloted the ship. Its ascent was smooth.
For the longest time, Skelos sat in the co-pilot’s chair, gazing at her without saying a word. He felt as if he had been hypnotised. She left the cockpit, leaving the ship on auto-pilot. She returned shortly after with a cup in her hands. She handed it to him. ‘You look as if you need it.’
He took the cup from her. It contained a hot brew made from a bitter plant called Hyis. It was known to soothe headaches and rehydrate the body. He sipped it slowly. Its sharpness brought him some clarity. He had left his home in favour of the fathomless blue skies and beyond. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked.
She eased herself back into the pilot seat, her eyes on him. ‘Nowhere. We’re just circling.’
/>
‘I’ve been searching for you, lieutenant. Where have you been all this time?’
‘Brevons Beach.’
Skelos nodded. It explained her shabby appearance. Brevons Beach stripped you of all wealth and dignity. If you ever had any to begin with.
‘I don’t think it’s safe we land there, do you?’
If they landed on Brevons Beach, he would never see Pareus again. He would be ransomed off to the highest buyer or, worse, killed. ‘Are you abducting me?’
‘No.’
‘But you abducted my niece and wiped her memory.’
‘I’m sorry about that. We had to be certain that our mission had not been comprised that the House of Dorm residency had not changed hands since I was last there. I left the Hydro-pod behind when I landed. I’m from Gunan, but I grew up on Fortification. It was very hard for me to get out here and explain myself. The part-humanoid malfunctions. You received her message?’
So he was right about Orel. She was only part-human. An enigma. ‘All she tells me is that she comes from Gunan. She also says the words Fortification and Index Eleven.’
She pulled her ragged cloak around her. ‘That’s it? She says nothing more?’
‘No. Is she supposed to?’
She pinched her lips, frowning. ‘But you must have received the message. The signal went out.’
‘What signal?’
‘I received a signal from Fortification that the people were readying themselves for war.’
The poor woman was confused, and who could blame her, surviving on Brevons Beach for so long with mercenaries and other Citizen degenerates. He patted her hand. ‘How terrible to be thwarted with such delusions.’
Elise stared at his hand before gently brushing it away. ‘I don’t think you understand. I’ve been trying to get the part-humanoid to deliver the message to you for years. The time has finally come. The revolutionists are moving to overthrow President Tusan, our leader on Fortification. They have been patiently planning the coup for years. We have formed an alliance with a group of higher Citizens from your planet, dedicated to the cause. They said they will help us in our time of need. That time has now come. You are Skelos Dorm, are you not? Your house was on the list of trusted Citizens when the message was delivered. You need to contact Zatar, using the encrypted gateway 351310. He has organised the guerrilla forces. Can you tell me of your future plans?’