The dark side of the sun - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,5

man to man. Heads rose in the lamplight and froze, watching him intently. Even the old woman lifted the pan from the stove and glanced up. There was something acute about the look in her eyes.

Dom heard one sound as he slowly climbed the steps towards the main Sabalos dome. Someone started to say: ‘Not like his father, then, whatever they—’ and was nudged into silence.

A Class Three robot stood by the door, armed with an antiquated sonic. It whirred into life as he approached and assumed a defiant stance.

‘Halt – who goes there? Enemy or Friend of Earth?’ it croaked, its somewhat corroded voice-box slurring the edges of the traditional Sadhimist challenge.

‘FOE, of course,’ said Dom, resisting the urge to give the wrong answer. He had done it once to see what would happen. The blast had left him temporarily deaf and the resonance had demolished a warehouse. Grandmother, who seldom smiled, had laughed quite a lot and then tanned his hide to make sure the lesson was doubly learned.

‘Pass, FOE,’ said the guard. As he passed, the communicator on its chest glowed into life.

‘Okay,’ said Korodore, ‘Dom, one day you will tell me how you got out without tripping an alarm.’

‘It took some studying.’

‘Step closer to the scanner. I see. That scar is new.’

‘Someone shot at me out in the marsh. I’m all right.’

Korodore’s reply came slowly, under admirable control.

‘Who?’

‘Chel, how should I know? Anyway, it was hours ago. I … uh …’

‘You will come inside, and in ten minutes you will come to my office and you will tell me the events of today in detail so minute you will be amazed. Do you understand?’

Dom looked up defiantly, and bit his lip.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Okay. And just maybe I will not get sent to scrape barnacles off a raft with my teeth and you will not get confined to dome for a month.’ Korodore’s voice softened marginally. ‘What’s that thing round your neck? It looks familiar.’

‘It’s a swamp ig.’

‘Rare, aren’t they?’

Dom glanced up at the planetary coat of arms over the door, where a blue flamingo and a bad representation of a swamp ig supported a Sadhimist logo on an azure field. Under it, incised deeply into the stone – far more deeply in fact than was necessary – was the One Commandment.

‘I used to know a smuggler who had one of those,’ Korodore went on. ‘There are one or two odd legends about them. I expect you know, of course. I guess it’s okay to bring it in.’

The communicator darkened. The robot stood aside.

Dom skirted the main living quarters. There was an uproar coming from the kitchens where preparations were being made for tomorrow’s banquet. He slipped in quietly, snatched a plate of kelp entrées from the table nearest the door, and ducked back into the corridor. A phnobic curseword followed him, but that was all, and he wandered on down to the corridor until it petered out in a maze of storerooms and pantries.

A small courtyard had been roofed over with smoked plastic that made it gloomy even under a See-Why noon, and the plastic itself was set with thin pipes that sprayed a constant fine mist.

In the middle of the yard a rath had been built of reeds. An attempt to grow fungi had been made on the patch of ground surrounding it. Dom pulled aside the drenched door-curtain and stooped inside.

Hrsh-Hgn was sitting in a shallow bath of tepid water, reading a cube by the light of a fish-oil lamp. He waved one double-jointed hand at Dom and swivelled one eye towards him.

‘Glad you’re here. Lissten to thiss: “A rock outcrop twenty kilometres south of Rampa, Third Eye, appearss to reveal fossil strata relating not to the passt but to the future, which …” ‘

The phnobe stopped reading and carefully placed the cube on the floor. He looked first at Dom’s expression, then at the scar, and finally at the ig which was still twined round his neck.

‘You’re acting,’ said Dom. ‘You are doing it very well, but you are acting. You’re certainly acting better than Korodore and the men on the jetty.’

‘We are naturally glad to see you ssafely back.’

‘You all look as though I’ve returned from the dead.’

The phnobe blinked.

‘Hrsh, tomorrow I shall be Chairman of the Board. It doesn’t mean much—’

‘It iss a very honourable position.’

‘—It doesn’t mean much because all the power, the real power, belongs to Grandmother. But I think the Chairman is entitled to know one or