Chapter 5. Whilring Whirbles
Kate staggered out into the bedroom, feeling extremely clean and rather shattered by the whole experience.
‘I need a robe,’ she said firmly, and a section of the wall opened to reveal a large closet hung with a multicoloured selection of robes in all sizes. ‘I could get used to this,’ grinned Kate. ‘It would make you very lazy, though.’ She chose a soft pale pink robe shot through with silver and mauve and chose a plain silver belt from a rack at the side of the closet. There were no belts with buttons like the ones Angelica and Celeste had been wearing.
‘I’ll bet they weren’t supposed to have those either,’ thought Kate, remembering the way Angelica had quickly hidden her one when they arrived home. Kate was pleased to discover that the closet provided her with a soft undergarment to wear as well. It was a little like old-fashioned long underwear but it was very light and easy to move in.
Flopping down on a large squashy cushion that looked more like a bed than any of the others, Kate looked at the screens on the wall. There were only three of them and by the green colour Kate assumed they were all for entertainment.
‘Show me moon gliding,’ she said grandly, hoping it would work. The middle screen lit up with views of people sailing round the sky. Kate was happily watching and wishing she could try it when one of the end screens suddenly beeped to show Angelica’s impatient face.
‘Come on, it’s dinner time,’ she said.
With a last regretful look at the moon gliding, Kate walked to the archway and bounced back from the invisible door.
‘Ow,’ she said, rubbing her nose. ‘Open please.’ She put out a cautious hand then walked through into the corridor. Angelica was ahead of her going into the living area so Kate stepped through the archway after her. She turned towards the eating area then screamed in fright. A monstrous creature with a body like a deformed gorilla was advancing towards her.
‘Whirr, whirr,’ went the spinning discs on what looked like the head. Six glowing green eyes on stalks swiveled towards Kate. Six pair of tentacles covered in orange hair reached out as Kate gave high pitched screams of terror and desperately looked for somewhere to run to.
‘It’s all right. It’s only a whirble,’ said Angelica irritably. ‘It only wants to touch you so it knows who you are. Stand still then it will leave you alone.’
Kate whimpered, her breath coming in gasps as she forced her trembling legs to stand still. The whirble advanced with one tentacle delicately extended and touched her on the forehead.
‘Okay, that’s Kate. Now go away,’ instructed Angelica. The whirble turned its head towards Angelica. ‘Whirr, whirr,’ it went. It lumbered off on flat sucker like appendages through another doorway.
‘They are quite harmless,’ said Angelica scathingly, as Kate shakily followed her to the eating area.
‘They are harmless to people at this stage in their development,’ corrected her father, as he looked up from a small screen he was holding in his hand. ‘But in their own environment they are deadly. We’ve studied them and they devour all other life forms indiscriminately on their own planet.’
‘They seem stupid to me,’ protested Angelica.
‘That’s because our atmosphere is different. It slows down their thought processes. They are extremely cunning in their own surroundings.’
Kate shuddered. ‘It gave me a terrible fright,’ she admitted. ‘I’d hate to meet one of those on a dark night.’
Angelica looked at her strangely. ‘What’s a dark night?’
‘They have them from time to time in Lunar Circle,’ Jupiter explained. ‘They are caused by an eclipse of the sun by one of the moons, but we don’t see the effect because we are on the wrong side of it.’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ said Angelica impatiently as her father began what was to Kate a very interesting lecture on how the moons and stars moved around in relation to the planet.
‘What would you like to eat?’ Astrid asked her.
‘Oh, whatever you are having will be fine,’ said Kate politely. Thankfully this was a warm soup made from a vegetable not unlike pumpkin, served with more farinatas. This was followed by large globular fruits that glowed a deep purple.
‘Oh good. Drupes,’ squealed Angelica. ‘My favourite.’
Kate copied her as she bit into one. Sweet juicy flesh like watermelon crossed with strawberry melted into her mouth. There was a large green stone in the centre that Astrid carefully collected.
‘These go back for planting,’ she smiled. ‘We don’t want any waste.’
‘Now tell us what life is like in Lunar Circle,’ Jupiter asked Kate as the meal finished.
‘I guess it’s pretty much the same as here,’ ventured Kate, hoping that this was the right answer.
‘What talents does your family have?’ Astrid asked.
‘My father, Phillip, is an artist and Anna designs clothes.’
‘What about you?’
‘I haven’t really discovered my talent yet,’ admitted Kate.
‘Nor has Angela,’ Jupiter remarked sourly. ‘She has shown no talent at all so far.’
‘I’m interested in the work you do,’ put in Kate hastily. ‘Please can you tell me a bit about your work?’
Jupiter looked delighted to be asked. They moved into the living area where the cushions were more comfortable and Jupiter began his lecture.
‘What do you know about transducers?’
‘Practically nothing,’ Kate answered.
‘They change one form of energy to another. They draw a lot of heat from the atmosphere in the process so we usually do it inside a contained force field. A group of us are involved in discovering the life forms of all the different worlds we can reach with the transducers. We retrieve them to study them and keep records of them.’
‘How does it work?’ Kate asked in fascination. This was much more interesting that she had thought it would be.
‘It’s too complicated to explain simply. But it’s like pointing a beam of light at a distant place. When that beam of light strikes a life form it dematerializes it and reassembles it on the receptor plate.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’
‘We lose some specimens of course. They don’t manage the reassembly. Some of them die from shock before we can determine the atmosphere they require.
‘Have you ever collected people?’ Kate asked.
‘Oh no. There are no other planets or stars with life forms resembling ours in the galaxy. We’d have to go outside it to another galaxy to find them. Our transducers don’t have that range. They’d need to be boosted by extra power of some kind.’
‘What about sending the specimens back?’ Kate asked
‘Oh we don’t bother.’
‘But if you did, how would you do it?’ Angelica asked her father. Jupiter looked amused. ‘You’ve never shown much interest in this before Angelica. But to put a specimen back, in theory we would simply reverse the sequence we used to collect them.’
‘That sounds easy,’ breathed Kate in relief. ‘You could put things back exactly where they came from.’
‘Well, apart from the time difference,’ Jupiter pointed out.
‘What time difference?’
‘You would have to not only reverse the sequence but also wait for the planets to be in the exact same alignment. Otherwise your specimen would arrive back in a totally different place. It might not even make the planet but explode into space.’
Both girls looked horrified at this.
‘How long would it take for the planets to be in the same position again,’ Kate asked in dismay.
Jupiter shrugged. ‘Anything from a few chronocurds to a few centuries. That’s why we record the spatial planetary positions for each transduction. Not so we can send specimens back but so we can collect specimens from different times. Time passes at quite different speeds on different planets, depending on their position in the galaxy. And other galaxies of course could be completel
y different. We don’t know much about them at all.’
Kate blinked to stop the tears that were threatening to overflow. This was worse news than she had hoped for.
‘We are working on a transducer that can be reversed,’ Jupiter told her. ‘But unfortunately it is proving to be very difficult.’
‘That means we could be here forever,’ thought Kate dismally.
Angelica and Kate had a long discussion as they sat in Angelica’s bedroom after dinner.
‘Your father said there were no life forms like ours in your galaxy. That means we must have come from another galaxy.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Angelica said flatly.
‘It can’t be. There must be some explanation. I mean, we’re here, aren’t we? What if there was a power surge or something when you pushed the buttons on the transducer. Was there a lightning flash or anything like that?’
Angelica had never heard of lightning and gave Kate a disbelieving look as she tried to explain it. Kate stumbled through a description of clouds and thunderstorms.
‘But surely you must have rain?’ Kate cried in frustration.
Angelica shook her head in bewilderment. ‘What is rain?’ she asked.
‘It comes from the clouds. It’s water. Everything needs water. Otherwise how do your plants grow?’
‘We have water underground, of course,’ said Angelica kindly, as if Kate was four years old and half witted with it. ‘It comes up in spurls. Most of them are organised by the System but there are natural ones in most of the recreation areas. I’ll show you one tomorrow if you like.’
Kate had to be content with this and went to her room with her head bursting with information about this strange planet she appeared to be on. The room felt cold and empty and Kate felt very alone.
‘I don’t care what she says. The way we came here it must be something to do with Angelica and the way machines go crazy around her,’ she murmured to herself, before falling asleep in the middle of the warm soft cushion she had chosen for a bed.
The Glory Walk Page 5
