Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (44 page)

“They’re…” Decay said, and his voice broke a little. “They’re…”

“
Adorabubble
!” Contro exclaimed.

Thord gave a deep, heavy
woof
, and reached out a thick, black-clawed finger to poke, roughly but playfully, at the head of another of the little pups, sending her rolling onto her fuzzy back with an indignant yip. “Did you hear that, you cantankerous old cuss?” she said with a wiggle of her other hand. “That human said you are adorable-bubbles.”

“Which of you is the proud father?” Contro asked, sticking his gloved hand out manfully towards the two Bonshooni. There was another one of those funny pauses that told Contro he had probably just said something daft, but he was never going to find out anything if he didn’t ask, was he?

“Unless you operate way faster than I thought, I’m guessing it was Isaz, and not Rime … ?” Z-Lin said. Thord nodded, and Z-Lin went on, “I’m sorry about the tasteless questions. We humans are just fascinated by biological functions.”

“The term doesn’t have ‘fun’ in it by mistake,” Zeegon remarked. “Also ‘logical’, for less readily-apparent reasons.”

“It was expected,” Thord said. “The gestation was in fact almost a year, the standard time it takes for Drednanth to rebuild their aki’Drednanth selves. It is a meticulous process. Oona’aki’Drednanth can gestate in six or seven months, because they are just direct genetic combinations of their two parents.”

Janus cleared his throat. “So you’re … sorry, but would it be insulting to say that you really were a for-reals ‘she’ all along, not just an aki’Drednanth convenience-‘she’? This is getting worse the more I talk, why has nobody stopped me yet?”

Thord’s enormous chest hitched a little, and Contro glanced across at her suit to see her lower light-bar flicker briefly. Evidently she was still connected up to the mood interface thingy as well as the typing gloves.

“Bit of an age difference, wasn’t there?” Zeegon said with exaggerated disapproval. “You thirty-something, Isaz five-hundred-and-change?”

“There
was
quite an age difference,” Thord agreed. “I was oona’aki’Drednanth some seven million years ago. Isaz has been fortunate to have been aki’Drednanth three times in her short life. She was oona’aki’Drednanth little over half a million years ago.”

“I – oh,” Zeegon deflated a little. “Seven million. Okay. Sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Z-Lin said. “That she returned, I mean.”

“You’ll be joining her soon, though,” Janus put in, desperately. “Right? That’s how it works.”

This time, Thord’s laugh was a little more pronounced, another low
woof
in her chest. “That is how it works,” she agreed. Another three of the puppies formed a mewling, yipping pyramid by her feet, and she tumbled them carelessly to the icy floor.

“I have to ask,” Z-Lin said, pointing down the chamber with her thumb, “was the seed a decoy all along? It seems like the perfect reason to set a good long stretch of the oxy farm aside, and keep anyone from coming in here.”

“No,” Thord said, turning towards Maladin and Dunnkirk. “The seed is the reason we are travelling to the edge, and its creation was very much intended – as was the creation of these,” she looked down at the pups. “It was, however, a perfect cover – just as you say.”

“And they – the seven of them, and the three of you – you were able to take out the entire school?” Z-Lin asked.

Thord nodded again. “Maladin and Dunnkirk were not involved,” she amended, “for their connection to the Dreamscape does not extend so deep. We eight, together, were more than enough to destroy the Fergunak minds.”

“Can I cuddle one?” Contro asked.

Surprisingly, about four of the pups stopped what they were doing and directed decidedly flat, unfriendly looks up at him.

“Do not be fooled by their appearance,” Thord advised. “These are mature – indeed, ancient – Drednanth minds given new flesh. All but two of them are older than I am. And I believe even at this age, each one is at least as strong as an able.”

“Golly,” Contro said. “Oh, speaking of ables, there’s a lot of eejits lying around. I tripped over one just now.”

Z-Lin glanced at Thord, who spread her great hands. “The blast was … uncontrolled,” she said, “untried. And the enemies were all around us. I kept it from hitting the bridge, but other areas … some of the more poorly-configured eejits will have succumbed. Some others may have temporary physical symptoms – headaches, mild hallucinations,” she lowered her shaggy head for a moment. “It is not a weapon without price.”

“It’ll do,” Z-Lin said, “it saved our bacon. We can pick up the pieces later.”

Thord had raised her head again, looking at Contro. “I trust you were unharmed.”

“Oh, I was in the engine core,” Contro waved a hand. “I usually miss a lot of stuff when I’m in there. Didn’t feel a thing!”

“Where there’s no sense,” Sally said fondly, pulling out her organiser and tapping it.

“Oi!”

“Doctor Cratch?” Sally said into the pad. “Are you still with us?”

“Still with you,” the doc’s voice said a moment later, sounding as jovial as ever. “We’re getting casualty reports from all over the ship and Nurse Wingus has a migraine, but I assume we’re out of shark-infested waters?”

“Yes,” Sally said, “Thord and her friends were able to pull a fast one on the Fergies.”

“By ‘friends’, do you mean our Bonshooni chums or Thord’s delightful little bundles of joy?”

Sally stared. “How did you … ?”

“Sally,” Glomulus said reprovingly. “A little simple observation. Honestly.”

“Are you all going to go out to the edge of the galaxy on this together?” Contro asked, pointing at the great slab of the seed. “One big happy family?”

“Bloody Hell,” Waffa said, “I didn’t even think of that.”

“They’re barely a year old,” Z-Lin said, “and they’ve spent their entire lives in this freezer. Not much point returning to the Drednanth already, surely. And – unless I’m mistaken – that’s what riding the seed into space is going to do to you, yes?” she waved towards the sleeper pods. “You’re not going into a sleeper.”

“No,” Thord said. “They will remain here. Within another six months, they will be able to talk with you as fluently as I, and pass on their own wishes under the AstroCorps priority zero protocol,” she looked down at her netting-clad hand. “You may need to construct more interface scribers,” she said, and turned to glance at her suit, crouching open nearby. “And, in time, more envirosuits. They are all formed of fairly common components and should be easy enough to fabricate and assemble – aside from the power supplies. Maladin and Dunnkirk picked up four of these from Standing Wave, surreptitiously. Two more should be easy enough to come by, and the seventh can remain in my own suit.”

“You’re not even taking the suit with you?” Janus asked.

“It would be something of a waste,” Thord said, “and would only delay the inevitable. The envirosuit is a refrigeration unit, not a spacesuit, despite its seals and its small emergency air supply. And returning to the Drednanth is, as you might imagine, not a pleasant experience for the mind within the aki’Drednanth flesh. Not something I would wish to prolong.”

“Not wanting to be all touchy-feely and human about it,” Z’Lin said, “but aren’t we more likely to only need one, maybe two suits?”

“It would be wise,” Thord agreed with equanimity, “to hold off on the effort of acquiring more suit components and constructing anything until you know how many adults you will be equipping.”

“Alright,” Z-Lin nodded, “that’s probably enough cooing and sighing over the adorabubble millions-of-years-old aki’Drednanth lil’uns. Thord can tell us whatever else we might need to know en route. Let’s mulch our dead eejits and get away from this tomb.”

DECAY

They spent about six hours in orbit around Declivitorion, gathering what information they could and fixing things up around the ship. The mental blast from Thord and her litter of pups had killed twenty-one of their lower-end eejits all told, and had given the rest – with the exception of the ables and the eejits brewed with Thord’s psychic guidance – splitting headaches. Thord agreed to help fabricate as many more eejits as they could before they reached the end of the line, in order to maximise eejit effectiveness and minimise the load on the oxygen farms. They would, after all, in all likelihood need to expand the frozen habitat still further as the aki’Drednanth grew, which would affect productivity before they reached whatever disembarkation point the juveniles chose.

This raised several other concerns, specifically one of aki’Drednanth upbringing.

The absence of Thord would make little difference to the year-old pups, since – well, for a start, they were already psychologically mature, and secondly because aki’Drednanth were usually left to fend for themselves shortly after birth. Thord’s presence in this litter’s life up to a year of age was practically smothering, and they most likely would not miss her when she spaced herself. What happened next, however, was that the seven juveniles would fight each other until at best one or two were left alive. They would eat the rest of their sisters, and after that they would be considered worthy of an aki’Drednanth existence.

For aki’Drednanth, infancy was the final reincarnation test. And nobody on board seemed to be entirely sure what – if anything – they should do about it.

Technically, they could designate resources enabling them to comfortably feed and shelter all seven of the litter. There was no
need
for them to fight. Since, however, these were already downright ancient aki’Drednanth in the bodies of pups they had essentially fabricated and configured for themselves in Thord’s womb, it was entirely likely that they would not
allow
a plentiful and sharing touchy-feely non-aki’Drednanth environment to affect their instincts. They would fight anyway, because that was what they did.

So, really, whether they approved or disapproved of the creatures’ way of life, it didn’t really matter. They were just giving the seven aki’Drednanth a lift to wherever they wanted to go, and if there was only one left when they got to their destination, that was the way it went. Besides, if they ever felt tempted to interfere against the will of the aki’Drednanth, there were five thousand dead Fergunak drifting around Declivitorion to suggest that it might just be a bad idea.

Decay’s own thoughts, as they concluded the sorrowful task of Declivitorion’s post mortem and accelerated back towards maximum cruise and the final week or so of their odyssey, were a little more abstract.

It was somehow sad, although the Blaran had to admit he was looking at it from the blinkered point of view of a species that nurtured its young and had a strong parental bond. Normal aki’Drednanth offspring, such as the seven in the
Tramp
’s oxygen farm, were entirely rebuilt versions of a Drednanth mind’s
previous
aki’Drednanth incarnation. There was no real connection to the parents at all, not even a genetic one – even from the moment of genesis, the Drednanth mind infused the cells and altered them on an atomic level the rest of the Six Species simply did not understand. No wonder the mother had no trouble walking away. She had essentially spent the past year growing a group of strange, fierce adult creatures in her body. Her biological material had been reduced to the level of carbon blocks in a printer.

The relationship between parent and oona’aki’Drednanth was a little stronger, but by necessity of the competitive juvenile instinct, she still couldn’t stay to protect her true-newborn. Decay had often wondered how it even worked. Was the entire litter born oona’aki’Drednanth and then fought for supremacy as normal? Surely a single oona’aki’Drednanth in a litter of wily old reincarnations would have no hope. Did the oona’aki’Drednanth get preferential treatment? It was a moot point, since there were apparently no oona’aki’Drednanth among Thord’s litter.

He’d read that there were rare cases of reincarnations being born to aki’Drednanth who had actually been their parents in a previous life, even when they had been born as oona’aki’Drednanth. Apparently the aki’Drednanth considered that a bit weird, but what exactly they said or did about it, if anything, nobody knew.

Decay realised, as they flitted back into the grey, that he was busying himself with the moral and logistical questions because he didn’t like the idea of sending Thord out into space without a suit. Even if she
was
going to return to a state of pure consciousness in the Great Ice to be reborn in some future time, it took some adjustment. And the pair of sweet but entirely nutty Bonshooni they were intending to strap to the seed and send with it, dreaming away a practical eternity in souped-up sleeper pods … the less said about
that
, the better.

He also didn’t like to think about the return trip that was looming in their immediate futures. And he wasn’t even a human with an optimal life-span of only a couple of hundred precious years. He was just easily bored.

“We could always just go ahead and separate them,” Clue said, during one of their informal debates that week. “We could give each one a segment of the oxygen farm without too much in the way of productivity loss. Even expand the farm rings if it came to that. Let each one grow as if all the others were already dead.”

“That might work,” Decay said, “if they weren’t, you know, telepaths.”

“I don’t mean really
fool
them,” Clue said, “I just mean, let them all grow to adulthood. They might be a bit weaker for it, in the unlikely event that millions-of-years-old Drednanth haven’t figured out how to stay in shape without murdering their siblings as puppies, but … we’re flying blind here, Decay. It’s not
nice
, it may be against their
instincts
, but a battery of seven aki’Drednanth mind-eaters might keep us alive. It kept us alive at Declivitorion. One survivor-type picking her sister’s bones clean in our freezer will not keep us alive.”