The Darkside Of The Sun

backwards and tried to throw his attacker, and had to jerk aside as a fist struck the Maze floor by his ear. The blow split the artificial skin. Ways turned the punch into a sideswipe, and a fingertip scored a cut across the boy’s head.
    Ig erupted straight for the eyes. Ways brushed him off lightly, and leapt back, flexing his fingers.
    ‘I refuse to believe in invulnerability,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to the real thing.’
    The matrix engine exploded. The Maze thumped.
    Ways was picked up like a doll and hurled at the wall, one flailing leg catching Dom across the chest.
    And a long way overhead a ship was coming in to land.

10
    ‘On Laoth they cultivate with a screwdriver.’
    Galactic Miscellany
    ‘Hark to the crash of
    the leaves in the autumn, the smash
    of the crystal leaves.’
    Charles Sub-Lunar, Planetary Haiku
     
    The bed was a relic, an ornate black affair that bore all the markings of the Taminic-P’ing Dynasty. Dom stared through thinning blue mists at the rest of the room.
    He was in a treasure house. Or it may have been a museum. Someone had ferried furniture and ornaments across the galaxy and dumped them there with no regard for style and period. Memory tapestries hung from two of the walls, where forgotten heroes re-enacted pages from history like an ever-repeating recording. A set of tstame men in ceremonial costume stood stiffly to attention on a board set in a giant cultured ruby. There was a water sculpture, inactive, which lay in a pool at the bottom of its tank, and an Early Chrome display case displaying several pieces of bootlegged Phnobic temple pottery. Where the walls were free of tapestries they were hung with purple drapes.
    Dom pictured the severely practical home domes on Widdershins. The only ornamentation really encouraged was the Sadhim logo and perhaps the One Commandment, suitably framed. Even electricity was allowed to come no further than the kitchen. And the Sabalos family was rich – so rich, in fact, that it could afford the simple life. Whoever owned this room was either poorer or would make them look like paupers.
    He felt something warm by his ear, and turned to find Ig curled up in the sleeping field. The creature opened one eye and purred.
    Dom swung himself clumsily out of the bed’s field and landed clumsily. The gravity was fractionally higher than Widdershins.
    He drew aside a curtain and saw a sun, flattened by refraction, dipping below a rugged horizon. It was an anaemic red. And something small flew jerkily past the window, found an open section and flittered in. Dom saw the metallic sheen of its wings as it hovered around the light, and the haze of its tiny airscrew. It was a Laoth moth. The sun out there was Tau Ceti, and it was setting pale because the atmosphere was almost dust-free. He felt pleased with himself.
    The bronze doors at the far end of the room swung open, and Isaac walked in.
    ‘Hi, boss,’ he said wearily. ‘How do you feel?’
    ‘My chest feels like someone’s been sticking pokers in it,’ said Dom, ruefully. ‘The last I remember I was on Minos.’
    ‘That’s right. We found you at the entrance to the Maze with your chest half caved in. That Ig was keening fit to bust.’
    Dom sat down. ‘At the entrance to the Maze? How did I get there? Hey – did you look in the centre?’
    The robot nodded. ‘Sure, but our centres, if you see what I mean. Another attempt, huh?’ Dom told him.
    Isaac said: ‘Your grandmother arrived not long after. Hrsh-Hgn and I thought well, you were dying, and the Drunk is a fast ship.’
    ‘Yes, okay. But this isn’t Widdershins.’
    ‘She stopped off here so you could get treatment. Those googoo bodies aren’t infinitely self-repairing.’
    ‘Of course, this is your home, isn’t it?’
    Isaac stiffened. ‘I am a citizen of the galaxy, boss. Yes, this is the old place. Workship Three, Factory Complex Nineteen, that’s where I sprang from.’ He looked round the room. ‘Mind you, we never got to see the inside of this place. Between ourselves, I don’t like it. Do you know I’m the only ‘bot in the place?’
    ‘Knock it off, there must be servants!’ said Dom, looking for some clothes.
    ‘Sure. Humans. I tell no lie, sahib.’
    Dom gaped at him.
    ‘And one of them called me “sir”! In my cube, any human who calls a robot “sir” is due for a bunch of knuckles.’
    ‘Cool down and find me some clothes. I want to see this place before it vanishes,’ said Dom.
    They