Eleven - Uncle Stylo At ElbowCanyon
Byron heard the wind, and,sheathed in his pressurized suit, made ready to fight it.
The radio was useless. He tumbledheadlong into the tank and looked around. There was a snowstorm, hefancied, whipping at his armour, flailing him with arrows. Thesealant-gun hovered like a speared fish on a long thread ofexoplastic, its dead eye the colour of iron. It was obvious what hadhappened. He set off for the tank's farther side.
Sal lay immersed, motionless, acorpse weighted into some river bottom. He tapped her visor.
She would hate him for this - butshe was alive.
Balding, frustrated, but alive.
Abdul drank all the water he couldfind. When there was no more to be had he followed the dampfootprints on the deck, their owner's toes sharply defined, acomic-book trail leading he didn't know where...but expected todiscover...
Sometime.
‘I told him not to move!’raved the engineer. ‘The fool!’
Sally flopped down on the bedamong her clothes. ‘He can't have gone far,’ she reasoned. ‘He'llcome back.’
‘Far enough,’ said Friendly.
Casually, she dressed.
‘You don't care?’ he quizzed.
She shrugged.‘He's not helpless. He can look out for himself.’
Byron rubbed his eyes. ‘How didI get into this?’
‘Fate,’ she replied.
‘What?’
‘Oh, relax, Byron. There's muchto do if we're to fly this thing. ..’
He nodded, dragged his shoes outfrom under the table, its top laden with instruments, a terminal,gauges. ‘You think it'll work okay?’
‘Sure; have faith.’
‘In you or me?’ he said icily.
She stood next to him, said, ‘Theengine.’
*
They handed her a thick coat asshe stepped ashore. The soft crunch of snow juddered under her boots.This was Bench 2. A mountain reached upward before her, the gradientapproaching its misty summit gradually increasing, framed in anillusion of vermilion sky.
There weresleds and reindeer. The animals' breath steamed like her own in thecold air. Nevertheless, Droover thought them constructs.
She climbedinto a sled and was driven ever faster toward a wall of fir trees,their fine branches heavy with white flakes and decorated inmultihued coronae of broken light. The crude vehicle bounced, theteam before it numbering four, hooves and runners cutting theunblemished snow. The trees, when she came among them, proved ablur...
Kate sat alone.
It wasn't so cold that shecouldn't smile, but her teeth hurt if she kept it up for long. Andthen the sled arrived at a clearing, the forest quiet and dense allround. A lone figure appeared, wading, stooped with age or tirednessas it, a man, greeted the reindeer each by name.
Kate watched him curiously. Heavoided her gaze and clambered onto the empty platform at the frontof the sled, where he found and gently whipped the loose reins.
She was thrown back in her seat,laughing.
The scenery confused her again.
Emerging from a high mountainpass, the sun at its zenith and the clouds dissolving, the buffetingof the runners abruptly ceased. The sled was airborne, gliding, itsteam vanished as if assimilated into the surrounding, ochre rock.Kate leaned over the side, caught a fleeting glimpse of the animalsas they retreated through a hazy veil of fresh snow, having propelledthe vehicle to the limits of their milieu.
She shucked off the coat as thetemperature climbed. A few metres below ranged the red-brown desert.It reminded her of old western movies; she might even be in awheel-less stagecoach, en route to some jerry-built town.
In the distance the sea was justvisible, pushed back by the land's deceit, its cunning.
‘Is this still Bench 2?’ sheasked her squat driver.
His shoulders bunched tighter, buthe said nothing.
They descended with the contours,on rails of stone, walls of it rising above them as the air sweptpast. Kate slumped in the seat and tried not to think. She washungry, she realized, and far from home.
‘Where ishome? Theship?’ In that case it moved, like she did, was never in the sameplace twice.
Deepening layers of shadeoverwhelmed her. The sled skidded to earth, to sand, plumes of orangedust.
The stooped man jumped down andoffered his hand. His face was swathed, despite the heat, in a scarf;like the rest of him, still dressed for the cold beyond the mountain.
Droover ignored him. He sidledoff, kicking stones. A second figure manifested itself on her blindside. He wore skin and cotton, khaki and white.
‘How was the trip?’ heinquired.
Did she know him? ‘Fine...’
‘Ernie's told me all about you,’he went on; ‘said you might need some help. Come on.’ He walkedbriskly from the grounded sled, a breeze in his stride, clutching hishat.
Kate stayed where she was.
He returned. ‘Something thematter?’
‘I...’ The breeze stole hervoice. It curled from the rocky walls that flanked her, theirvertical faces cracked, holed and leaning. She felt ill.
He put a foot on the sled's topstep and hauled himself up, sitting opposite her. In his palm resteda pebble, its surface curved, shaped by forgotten currents.
‘There's alot to talk about,’ he said. ‘I haven't heard from Ern in awhile, but I'm aware things are coming to a head. Your presencehere's a part of it. The rest...’
‘Ernie's dead.’
He tossed the pebble from hand tohand. ‘So - I thought that might be it. Anyway, he did all hecould.’
‘What do you mean?’ Kate wasmystified. ‘How did you know him? Who are you?’
He paused a moment. Then, ‘Stylo.Uncle Stylo they call me; and...’ he broke off. ‘It'd be easierif I showed you.’
Kate agreed. What else could shedo? Stylo led the way to a partly concealed entrance, a cave-mouth,lifted a lamp from a peg in the half-light and descended by its mutedglow the rough stair that wound to a large room below. It was full oflogs, cut and stacked, an axe resting upright against one pile. Thesmell of wood permeated her senses. He continued downward via a steelramp. She echoed his footsteps, and entered a series of hewnpassages, a variety of other rooms, some with plank or cloth doors,some open, to left and right as they moved deeper into the burrowedstone.
‘You're not alone here,’ sheobserved.
‘No,’ answered Stylo. ‘Notin terms of numbers. This is a place of many functions however, wheremany paths cross, as you'll see later.’
Kate didn't question him further.She got the impression they were leaving the main complex andpenetrating a more exclusive retreat, one linked to the surface byunrelated tunnels, its purpose equally removed from that of itsneighbours, if not necessarily at odds. But whatever the truth, itcouldn't have been very private.
Finally there was a steel hatch,circular and fastened into the surrounding rock.
Stylo pulled it wide and yellowlight flooded out...
‘What do you think?’ he asked- a request, once they were on the inside, behind the steel.
Blast-proof, Droover reckoned,quickly reappraising. ‘It's beautiful,’ she told him.
He grinned, a sign of approval.‘It serves,’ he said, false modesty in his tone.
She was cheered by the inflection.‘Where's the kitchen?’
‘There isn't one.’
‘No?’ Her stomach complained.
‘But if you're hungry,’ Styloadded, stemming her disappointment with what she imagined a practisedflourish, ‘I'll pop out and shoot a cow.’
That, she thought, would donicely.
*
‘What do you think they'redoing?’
‘Who?’ Byron quizzed.
Sally groaned, coughed as herthroat filled. ‘The Research Section,’ she clarified hoarsely.
The engineer, grimacing, handedher a lozenge. ‘Mot many left,’ he mumbled; then louder, ‘They'reprobably waiting to see what lunatic scheme we have in mind. I'vetaken out all the links, the visuals as well as the sonics. My guessis they'll sit on their hands until they think we're dead, or dying,and then come in and tidy up the pieces.’
‘How romantic,’ Sal commented,reclining.
‘Isn't it.’
‘Have we long, Byron, to live?’
‘I don't know about you andAbdul,’ he admitted, mimicking her facetiousness.
‘Hm...I never imagined it wouldbe like this. I wonder what Kate's doing now?’
‘Sunning herself on some beach,’he said.
‘Nah, that's not her thing atall. Sis is more the rucksack and thermos type.’
‘Yeah?’ He pushed a button anda light came on.
‘Does that mean it works?’asked Sally.
‘I'm not sure. That was only atest.’
She clacked the lozenge againsther teeth. A few were loose, bleeding. ‘What about the ship? Howare we going to disengage without tearing a hole in the engine?’
They'd been over this before.‘Explosive bolts, remember?’
‘Oh, right...’
Byron concentrated on his wiring,doubting the reliability of hers. Luke Farouke hadn't come back, notyet...
He'd slept.
On waking, blinking through thegarish cabin lights, he saw - or was convinced he'd seen - anostrich. Anyway, it had feathers, was blue, the sighting brief as itsped past the open door; feet like huge, misshaped, forks.
Fantastic.
index i - EUROPA
Ernie put pen to paper, thenumbness in his wrist irritating, and wrote...
Uncle Stylo showed her thepresses, the bacteria-tanks that produced the newsprint, and the manystages through which the cellular-based scrip went before it finishedup in a batch of original comics.
He had a framed cover-page fromissue 1.
Kate was astonished.
Morgan did his usual exercises.The bridge of his guppy was choked with pot-plants and cheeses. Hehad it from a reliable source that pot-plants and cheeses were allthe rage on Europa and Sarpendon, that people - starved of vegetablecompany and deprived of something to put on their crackers - wouldpay well over the odds for such ordinary items.
This was his chance to break intothe big league.
Interplanetary Spacelines, hethought gleefully, he comes Lumping Jack.
He hoped to make enough from theventure to put down a deposit on one of the new retrograde enginesjust now becoming available to the smaller operator. As it was he andothers like him were mostly restricted to in-system business, theroutine ferrying of low-profit-margin goods and services, evenresorting to the transport of passengers. But not any longer; thiswas it, the opportunity he'd been waiting for.
Eighty-seven hours it took to makethe crossing.
Morgan had heard some weird talesconcerning Jupiter's fourth moon and the pivotal station it carriedpiggyback, but was fully prepared, he believed, for everyeventuality.
The HappyMonkeynosed into Sarpendon's topside dock. All that stood between him andhis potential customers was six centimetres of amalgamated steel.
And a confiscation order...
‘Illegal?’
‘Yes; I'm sorry.’
Morgan was speechless.
‘All alien species are forbiddenwithin the precincts of the station. Rules.’ The man said this lastwith a shrug. ‘Anything you bring from your ship will be seized.’
Nonchalant, Lumping Jackinterpreted his attitude; the f*cking cunt; everything her owned,possessed or could lay his hands on had gone into getting here,loaded, and for what? Zilch...he was wiped out, washed up, fin.
‘Where can I get a job?’ hesaid.
The man changed hats.
Kate Droover punched the correcttime-date sequence into the lock and stepped back. The hatchscreeched open and the floor raised her out with the morning sun.From this airy vantage it was easy to see how the canyon got itsname.
To her left, subtly camouflaged,was a shady awning. She dumped her pile of comics on a stool and satcross-legged on the cool stone.
It was there to be read, Kateknew, the facts as expounded by Ernie and presented by Uncle Stylo,each separate panel hand-drawn, shades of black, blue, pink, crimson,green, white and purple.
He'd been duped, that much wasclear.
Pot-plants and cheeses...
Life for theforeseeablefuture was recycled and insulated, hermetically sealed and filtered.The job was glider pilot. He was, for the first time in his life,part of a team. They were twelve: himself, a mechanic and tendrillers, swept up in a bizarre half-light, tossed on undetectablewinds and immersed in miragelike contours, reflections from the gasgiant dominating the Europan sky. It was impossible to think in termsof day and night. The great red spot, God's thumbprint, ornamentedthe icy surface...almost as often as he did, waist-deep in the frozenillusions, stepping carefully to avoid the ephemeral pits andinterstices. Morgan's head floated. This was research at its mostbasic and raw.
And a synthetic version was stillnot perfected.
Rocket fuel, the insubstantialelement, the complex mutation of achromatic gases, lay in scatteredpockets beneath the moon's inhospitable crust.
And it was running out.
Did very strange things, the realstuff.
‘How right,’ Kate said. Sheturned the page, relaxed. The sun crept higher...lower.
Higher.
In a brashlyilluminated lab on Sarpendon, several kilometres above, Dr Henry Greyheated a syrupy mixture in a test-tube, eyes wide as the unfocussingliquid turned nasty, converting a globe of flesh, glass and air intoair alone, neatly severing his arm at the elbow.
You had to laugh - Stylo appeared,wearing his hat.
‘What I want to know,’ Drooverchallenged, folding the comic in her lap, ‘is how Ernie ever foundthis out. Really...I mean it can't have happened like this.’ Shegot to her feet, waving the issue she'd been reading.
‘Don't be so impatient,’ Stylotold her. ‘You're fighting it; stop. Let the colours, the picturesabsorb you.’
She huffed. ‘They scare me.’
He smiled.‘They're meant to. Ernie intended it. All I do is translate hisideas, his beliefs - warnings if you like - into a form accessible tothe subconscious.’ He stroked a long finger down her nose, liftedher chin. ‘Perhaps I shouldn't have let you in on the secret, eh?It would've been easier.’
Kate turned away, wandered to thecliff edge.
‘Thetechnophiles in Radio City understand the importance of escapism,’he said. ‘But there’re different kinds.’
‘Now you're gettingpretentious,’ she accused.
‘You'd rather be one of them?’
‘No!’
‘Then try, learn, let go, thinkof your sister and Amy Jones, what they've become.’
That hurt her. Kate had yet toaccept the captain's death. In her chest stirred a familiar, colddiscomfort. ‘You're confusing me,’ she said, feeling cornered,trapped between the man, his pervasive illustrations, on and off thepage, and the vacant drop before her.
She didn't knowin which direction to take the next step; either into the meltingworld, the capricious reality that was the burgeoning legacy ofartificial retrograde, or over the safe, reliable edge...
‘Why us?’ she questioned,suddenly bitter.
‘They needed guinea-pigs,’replied Uncle Stylo.
He'd moved closer, Kate felt. ‘AndErnie, the captain, they were just casualties, the first of many,perhaps.’
‘Right.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘You already know the answer tothat.’
Yes, she thought, I do. There isonly loneliness, the worst of all fates.
‘Hey.’ He touched her again,and this time she acknowledged the contact.
‘Give me the hat,’ she said.
'Droover K?'
‘Yeah...who is it?’
'The pink-people are takingover. The moon will be full in a few days. Make the most of it.'
Sound advice...
*
He peered intently at the coresample. It was twenty centimetres long and eight in diametre. Like acylindrical diamond, it shone, utterly beguiling.
And there was something trappedinside.
Morgan rubbed his eyes. Hecouldn't directly handle the frosty wonder, but with the help ofthick gloves, tongs and a hammer, he could break it open.
'Droover K?'
‘Yeah...who is it?’
'Lumping Jack.'
The somethingwasa dog. Frozen Hound, he called it.
She kissed him.
‘What was that for?’
‘Mothertug...’