The Rise of the Iron Moon. Stephen Hunt

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СКАЧАТЬ stared up at the dish at the top of the tower, a polished silver shield like a giant’s porridge bowl turned on its side. ‘Maybe the rain last night knocked your dish out of kilter? It sounded like it was becoming quite a squall from my bedroom.’

      ‘That is what I had assumed too, but my mu-bodies have checked and rechecked the tower and my apparatus has not shifted by an inch. It is transmitting at exactly the same angle as it has always been, yet now my signals are passing by Kaliban and falling away into the void.’

      ‘Then if your tower hasn’t moved, the logical conclusion to draw would be that it is either the Earth or Kaliban that has shifted.’

      ‘Precisely, but as we both know, that is impossible. Celestial bodies do not jiggle around their orbits like fidgeting young children swapping desks in a classroom.’

      ‘Very odd,’ said Molly. A puzzle fit for one of her celestial fiction novels, certainly.

      ‘It gets worse,’ said Coppertracks. He indicated the constellation of the Windmill on his astronomy charts. ‘I have been checking the position of the stars from my observations the other night against the official charts and something is terribly wrong. While some of our stars are precisely where they should be, others have changed station, a couple of stars have vanished entirely, and I have even found a new star appeared as if from nowhere.’

      ‘Surely not? You always told me—’

      ‘Yes, I know,’ said Coppertracks ‘and I still hold to my people’s belief that the stars are celestial bodies similar to our own sun, but viewed from the vantage point of an incredible distance. Huge cosmic kilns many times larger than our own world, able to circulate heat with an efficiency that makes my own boiler heart look like a toy.’ Coppertracks tapped his charts. ‘But measuring against the astronomical record, the face of night above us has been transformed in a manner that should be impossible. Conventional science can offer no explanation for this. We might as well subscribe to the teachings of the old Quatérshiftian religion and assume that Furnace-breath Nick is flying through the sky on his demon steed, snuffing out the candles of the Child of Light and firing up his own wax lights in their stead.’

      Now Molly saw why Coppertracks was close to despair. Entire stars disappearing, while their neighbours twisted across the firmament to settle in new positions. It made even the problem of a new moon appearing in the sky appear like a mere distraction in the cosmic ordering of things. What if their sun should just disappear? It would be as if the boiler were turned off at Tock House in the dead of winter. No heat, no light. An eternal winter of such ferocity would make the coldtime look like a picnic in Goldhair Park on a balmy summer afternoon. The world would die, as would every creature that swam, walked, flew or crawled across its surface.

      ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ asked Molly. ‘Does King Steam know about this?’

      ‘I am certain he does,’ said Coppertracks, distractedly. ‘With our new array tracking Ashby’s Comet, King Steam’s astronomers would have to possess defective vision plates not to have noticed this.’

      Coppertracks’ mu-bodies began shinning up the tower, recalibrating the transmission dish and showering Molly with flecks of paint and dust from the girders as they scrambled about on high.

      ‘You’re continuing with your work on the tower?’ Molly was flabbergasted.

      ‘Dear mammal, the forward momentum of science must not be swayed off-course by an as-yet-undiagnosed disorder in celestial mechanics. I must press on with my transmissions.’

      Above their heads, the dish was ratcheted around to a new setting.

      ‘Even if you find someone on one of the other celestial spheres with a level of engineering as advanced as ours and willing to converse with you, what in the name of the Circle would you say to them now?’

      Coppertracks stopped for a second, as if this thought – of all the thousands he was capable of processing in parallel in his impressive mind – had only just occurred to him. ‘Say? In this instance, I believe I would say hello.’

      Pulling the lid off two drum-like chemical batteries, Coppertracks’ drones observed the mixture bubbling inside and pronounced themselves satisfied. It was always dangerous, using wild energy, the power electric, but nothing else would do for throwing a pulse across the heavens. Luckily for the inhabitants of Tock House, scanning the heavens for a reply didn’t require a discharge, or their orchard would soon resemble Lady Amazement’s Lightning Gardens down at Makeworth Park. As distant as Molly’s neighbours were behind the ground’s high walls, Tock House had already seen a number of petitions circulating in the village as a result of Coppertracks’ unorthodox scientific interests.

      A spectral moaning along the iron girders warned Molly that the pulse of exotic waves Coppertracks intended to direct towards Kaliban was about to be released. She moved back beyond her card table as emerald energy lit the girders, sparks raining down over the ruined gazebo. With a bacon-like sizzle the dish vibrated at the top of the tower, a couple of holding pins blowing out, followed by a dying whine as the apparatus powered down. Coppertracks’ mu-bodies were back over the tower instantly, like ants on a picnic basket, checking it for signs of damage and resetting it to its receiving configuration.

      ‘Excellent,’ said Coppertracks, checking the signal readings on a bank of dials at the foot of the tower. ‘A clean send with very little leakage this time. Tight and focused. Each time we do this, it gets easier to calibrate the tower for an optimal transmission.’

      Molly took a step back – the line of crystals running up the far side of the tower was starting to vibrate, the grass under her feet trembling with the force of it. Dials twitched violently across the board on Coppertracks’ instrument bank. ‘I think that might have been a pulse too far, old steamer. Should we start running and take cover now?’

      Coppertracks’ stacks whistled in excitement as he momentarily lost control of his boiler function. ‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, that is no feedback loop! It’s a signal. Molly softbody, someone is answering my communication!’

      His mu-bodies rushed to the tower from wherever they were standing in the glade in a fury of coordinated action, the steamman desperate that this message should not be lost. For all his practice in sending transmissions over the past year, he was a virgin at the art of receiving anything other than the occasional internal test.

      ‘This is odd,’ said Coppertracks, checking his equipment bank.

      To Molly the whole thing felt odd. She was actually present at the receipt of the first communication from another celestial body within their solar system. Who would believe that she hadn’t just invented the whole tale for publicity? ‘What is it?’

      ‘This can’t be a reply to my communication, it’s the same message repeating on a loop, over and over.’

      ‘A loop?’ said Molly. ‘Who would want to put a message on a loop?’

      ‘The logical inference would be someone who needs assistance, possibly someone who has long been deactivate and unable to switch their transmission off.’

      ‘How long do you think it will take you to translate it?’

      ‘No time at all,’ said Coppertracks. ‘The message is in binary mathematics and transmitted using something similar to crystalgrid code, dashes and dots that any station operator in the capital could understand. It carries a table key at the front based on the periodic СКАЧАТЬ