Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (35 page)

MALADIN

It was … warm. This, no matter how many times he visited, never failed to amaze him. His body was wrapped in thermals, sitting nestled for warmth with Dunnkirk’s body in the frigid cave of the oxygen farm, their slow breaths steaming while Thord, all claws and tusks and flying pelt, cantered easily along the curved length of the space, past the Bonshooni, past the seed, and on into the other farm galleries, all the way around the interior of the ship. The humans had built walls between the seed chamber and the rest of the farm ring in order to provide the passengers with a more ‘room-like’ setting and to protect the rest of the farm from too much interference. But at the same time they’d also constructed doors – big, heavy, well-sealed manual things like the one they’d installed between this room and the corridor beyond – to allow passage into the farm proper. They were actually surplus emergency blast doors from the smashed sectors of The Warm, Maladin remembered Waffa saying. Thord liked to open each of their quarters’ end-doors and just … run laps. She made the circuit in about six minutes, depending on her level of agitation, but today she was relatively stately. If he let his concentration shift just a little, Maladin could feel her go drumming regularly past, like some heavy freight carrier, even through the padding of crushed ice and slightly-grimy snow on the floor.

Their bodies were there, in the freezing cold. But
they
 …

They were here, and it was warm.

The sky, what little he could see through the foliage, was a deep blue-black. The constellations, the vast starry metaphor of the Drednanth Dreamscape, was wrenchingly absent while they were at relative speed. The glittering whorls and bands of intermingled Drednanth and aki’Drednanth minds, so distant and yet reachable at a single stride, were hidden from view. The only celestial bodies in this sky were those Thord had put there – the sun, the moons, the seven stars. It was all really just an analogy Thord had given form anyway, in order to help her beloveds reach the level of understanding they currently enjoyed.

The Drednanth knew, as of the
Tramp
’s stopover at Standing Wave, the thing that Thord had done. But for now, they were alone in the Dreamscape.

Some elements of the Drednanth world were crafted by Thord for the Bonshooni’s convenience. But the
world
, and the things in it, were entirely as she intended, and it was like nothing one would expect.

The trees were huge and lush, great red-brown trunks at once smooth, glossy and gnarled, like rich antique naturalist woodwork that had been polished and varnished by a thousand generations of loving, stroking hands. Their branches fanned high overhead, thick green leaves shading the verdant grass and the series of little pools and streams that etched the landscape. Birds, or small flying mammals, cooed and flitted from tree to tree.

Thord herself rose from the pond she had been soaking in, water cascading off her smooth, gorgeous mahogany body. She was almost, but not quite, Molranoid here, with four powerful arms emerging from a powerfully-muscled androgynous body and a wild, beautiful face of basically Bonshoon structure. Instead of webbed ears, though, Thord sported a heavy pair of curled horns. A third horn, short and gleaming, rose from between and slightly above her big green eyes, and this horn was carved with the markings that decorated one of her tusks in the world of flesh, denoting her values and the single burning will that guided her. In the same vein, her upper right shoulder was marked with the stripes and swirls that decorated the tongue of her aki’Drednanth body, the markings here etched and inlaid as though into the same rich wood that made up the trees of Thord’s forest.

Her legs were thick and furry, jointed in the aki’Drednanth manner rather than the Molranoid or humanoid, and terminated in splayed, shaggy-fur-ankled hooves. She was a wood Goddess, fierce and heartbreaking, and Maladin knew he was gazing at her now, but he couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d wanted to.

One of his first questions, on achieving the Dreamscape, had been
why, if you can dictate your body’s formation from the moment of fertilisation, do you not shape it to be the same in both worlds? Why keep the bestial aki’Drednanth form?

Thord had laughed.
Am I not bestial?
She’d asked, spreading her four great arms wide and engulfing him.
There is the aki’Drednanth form, and there is the Dreamscape, the Drednanth form
, she’d done her best to explain.
One ought not resemble the other any more than your brain ought resemble your body
.

He also knew that his own form in the Dreamscape was much the same as hers, but it didn’t have the same arresting effect when he caught sight of it, as did the forms of Thord or Dunnkirk.

As if thinking of him summoned him close – and in the Dreamscape this was not such a great leap – Dunnkirk dropped from the overhanging branch of a nearby tree with a laugh. His hooves slammed into the soft earth and kicked divots in the grass as he sat with uncomplicated joy. No damage to this world was permanent, and Dunnkirk delighted in throwing his weight around. Maladin smiled at him affectionately.

“Our friends in the starship are worried,” Thord said, passing by each of them and running loving hands over their heads and backs, before sitting down against a tree trunk equidistant from them both.

“Mm, the Fergunak and their silly games,” Dunnkirk said lazily. His lower hands dug and clenched in the soil on either side of his thick-pelted legs. “Such unhappy,
driven
creatures.”

“Driven, certainly,” Maladin said. “I don’t know if I’d call them unhappy.”

“I’d unfortunately have to agree with you on that one,” Dunnkirk sighed. “Did those smokeberries really come from Bayn Balro, do you think?”

“There doesn’t seem to be much doubt of that,” Maladin said regretfully. “Unfortunately…”

“Unfortunately, even if we could have picked out their minds and their ripples from the general shout,” Thord finished his thought for him, “they were in soft-space for most of their journey and now they’re in soft-space once more. And one vessel in soft-space might as well be in the subluminal universe for all its ability to contact another vessel in the grey.”

“We’re probably talking about more than one vessel here though, aren’t we?” Dunnkirk surmised.

“It seems likely,” Thord said. “The foreboding among our friends grows more tangible.”

“Still,” Maladin said, “perhaps they are happier worrying about the sharks than about the more serious enemies they might face.”

“Certainly they’re safer from the sharks,” Dunnkirk said stoutly. “With us to protect them.”

Thord looked troubled. “All we can do is wait and see what the next stop brings,” she paused, her eyes flicking a glance across between the two Bonshooni, and she smiled. “Look,” she said, “he’s back.”

Maladin and Dunnkirk turned carefully.

The mind – it wasn’t a full manifestation, let alone a complete Dreamscape form – bobbed and twisted in the air above a nearby stream. It could almost have passed as some product of Thord’s mind, except it had no really clear structure or logic. She would never consciously bring such an odd shape into her world. The mind was like a fat, fleshy worm, writhing and quivering and coiling in the air as though suspended from a branch by spiderwebs. It expanded and contracted in a slow, wet breathing motion. It seemed an unlovely little thing, Maladin thought kindly, until you fully appreciated what it was.

At first, Maladin had wondered if it might be Glomulus Cratch, experimenting in some way in an attempt to enter the Dreamscape premature and uninvited. But Thord had assured them this was not the case.

It was an eejit – specifically, one who’d been nicknamed Thorkhild – one of the twenty who were products of Thord’s, Maladin’s and Dunnkirk’s careful interference with the configuration process. Like the rest of the new eejits, Thorkhild was a much more coherent psychological specimen and quite good at his work. Unfortunately, he was also blind – a problem that seemed to be his only failing, but one they had not been able to fix with transplants, surgery or therapy. He’d learned his way around the consoles and maintenance equipment pretty quickly without the benefit of eyesight, and was still more effective than almost any of the eejits on board. He even gave the ables a run for their money sometimes, especially in the dark.

And he had proved strangely open to the Dreamscape. When he slept, as he was now, his consciousness actually slipped partway into Thord’s domain apparently without meaning to. It was by no means unheard-of, although it was rare in humans and
very
rare in ables. And it had never been satisfactorily studied, or developed in any way. It was just an aberration, and most of the time the Drednanth delicately eased the mind in question back into its correct place and made sure it could only come back again of its own volition.

This
had
, contrary to popular belief, happened on several controlled and clandestine occasions with human minds. Humans
were
capable of walking the Dreamscape, even though it could take decades – ideally a century or more – of acclimatisation and training, or a truly aberrant mental landscape, to make the transition. Or both. They’d been hesitant to expel Thorkhild’s mind because of the hand they’d had in his configuration, and out of concern for the exacerbating effect it might have on his psychology.

Whether it meant Thorkhild might have other perceptive abilities or hidden depths, they had yet to really explore.

As before, Thorkhild squirmed and bounced above the surface of the water for a few seconds, then silently popped like a soap bubble and was gone. Maladin turned back to Thord, and grinned.

“Is he lingering longer?”

“Probably wishful thinking,” Thord said, “but it
seemed
like he is.”

Maladin sighed in contentment, settled back and looked up through the leaves at the wedges and arcs of deep sky visible above their heads. None of Thord’s little contributions to that vault were currently visible from where he was lying.

“When … ?” he asked.

Thord smiled. That was another thing about the Dreamscape. You never really needed to complete a thought, explain a question, surround an idea with endless words.

“Not long now,” she replied.

It was nine weeks to Shosha Ranch Chemical Outpost, and the three spent most of that time happily in the oxygen farm, in the Dreamscape. Occasionally Maladin would go out into the artificial warmth of the ship and chat with the rest of the crew, and occasionally Dunnkirk would. They were interesting people.
Good
people, Thord insisted.

Once or twice the Bonshooni even test-ran their sleeper pods, making sure the power sources worked and the slow-down systems were smooth and incremental. The wake-up was a bit abrupt, because they either had to set it to wake them at a certain predetermined point or allow Thord to do it manually. Thord was far more capable, as a native, of navigating the flesh world and the Dreamscape simultaneously – Maladin could never have jogged in circles around the ship while immersed in the Dreamscape – so she was the only one who could do it. And as Dunnkirk said, as long as the wake-up
worked
, it didn’t need to be smooth. Ultimately, they were going to climb into the pods and float into space with Thord and the seed, and they wouldn’t
need
to wake up again after that.

Maladin also enjoyed reading the public-record report logs that found their way onto the computer’s data network.

- - - Standing Wave to Shosha Ranch Chemical Outpost + 2 days shore leave + 9 weeks shipboard + total duration from The Warm 43 weeks shipboard + incident report - - -

- - - Altercation between or involving helmsman HZPJ [Zeegon], 3 eejits [designations omitted], Automated Janitorial Drone 3 and Automated Janitorial Drone 9 + incident hereinafter designated “Astro Tramp Derby” + misuse of deck space for vehicle testing purposes - - -

- - - Helmsman HZPJ instigated high-level combination function testing of 2 new PIVs [Planetary Insertion Vehicles] + Helmsman HZPJ acted as operator of PIV#219 and eejit [designation omitted] acted as operator of PIV#220 + Automated Janitorial Drone 3 and Automated Janitorial Drone 9 were reprogrammed against regulations to act as “control” vehicles, piloted by eejit [designation omitted] and eejit [designation omitted] respectively + testing took place in the form of an “obstacle course”-style race through uninhabited and non-key areas of the ship, including habitats, secondary oxygen farm, exchange plane, upper officers’ quarters and recreation dome - - -

- - - Result + Commander XOZLC [Z-Lin] declared “Astro Tramp Derby” successfully concluded in perpetuity + Helmsman HZPJ charged with sole responsibility of repairing minimal damage to PIVs, Automated Janitorial Drone 3, Automated Janitorial Drone 9 and ship bulkheads + PIV#219, operated by Helmsman HZPJ, was declared victorious by way of obstacles most effectively overcome & time factor - - -

- - - Report ends - - -

Shosha Ranch Chemical Outpost was another space station, without even a scenic gas giant or unusual sun or ancient floating relic to make it more interesting. After joining the crew on the bridge long enough to establish that the big old deep-space factory was still there, still venting its waste particles into the interstellar gulf and still returning the hopeful comms signals of incoming modulars, Maladin returned to the farm and the Dreamscape. Shosha Ranch had not received much word and even fewer visitors in a long time and were simply pleased to get the raw materials the
Tramp
was delivering. The Molren and humans on board had not heard of any attacks, nor had they seen any Fergunak in recent weeks. But then, Shosha Ranch was relatively primitive and low-population, with only a couple of hundred sentients of either species – the majority of the life-forms aboard were ables, and not only were they useless for anything the
Tramp
might need, they also didn’t even originate from Shosha Ranch. There was no fabricator on the outpost, no technology of any really advanced kind with the possible exception of the gravity exchanges. The ables were delivered in bulk every twenty-five years or so as the previous batch began to burn through their fourth or fifth set of lungs and organ rejection became too difficult to counteract.