Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (46 page)

The Molren had lots of different traditions and more sets of thawing-out instructions than they had Worldships. Most of those instructions had been lost in the sequence of disasters that had followed the Fleet diaspora almost from the beginning. And once the Fleet ventured too close to the Core … yes, there had been losses, and now the sleepers were brought out of their pods as necessity decreed.

They were almost always disappointed when they were thawed out.

Decay wondered whether Maladin was going to feel the same, if he ever
was
thawed out. Freefall on a chunk of ice was slower than a Worldship, yes – but when you’re talking about subluminal travel between galaxies … one might as well be the other, really. As far as ordinary sleepers reported, there was no consciousness, no brain activity at all. At least Maladin would have the Dreamscape to enjoy for the hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of years it would take for the seed to get to its destination. If it even
had
a destination. Heck, if there even
was
a ‘rest of the universe’ out there. Maybe it
was
just painted on sackcloth. And even then, he would need to encounter someone capable of correctly deactivating the sleeper pod …

Decay realised Thord was standing before him, Maladin by her side.

“Happy travels, Thord,” he said, giving the enormous aki’Drednanth, and then the smiling Bonshoon, a hand-clasp. “Maladin. It’s been an honour.”

“Thanks for the ride, General Moral Decay (Alcohol),” Maladin grinned. “Think of us.”

“Sleep well,” Decay said, “and dream of large…” he cast a meaningful glance at Dunnkirk. “You know, if you could train sleepers to enter the Dreamscape this way, the Fleet would probably make you a Commodore.”

Maladin grinned. “The Dreamscape has room to spare for four hundred billion Molren, my friend. You can spread the word.”

“Right,” Decay said, “they’ll listen to me.”

Thord, meanwhile, had moved on to Janya. She was the last of the crew to say her goodbyes, and they were standing by the door to the oxy farm. Thord rolled her shoulders and the envirosuit uncoupled and folded open in a rolling wave of frost-steam. She stepped out, hefted the empty suit easily to one side, and straightened, only the communicator’s sensor-netting over her hands remaining. For a time, the vast aki’Drednanth stood looking down at the tiny scientist, and Decay was momentarily charmed by the tableau.

“Do you know why
Molran
and
Bonshoon
are written with capital letters,” Thord eventually said, moving her huge fingers swiftly, “but
human
is not?”

“I think I read somewhere that it’s because Molren don’t accept human sentience,” Janya said. “They think we’re faking it, like parrots.”

“That may be what the Molren say,” Thord said in amusement, “but it is not necessarily the universal truth. I prefer to believe it is because human is not a species. It is a condition,” she reached out a massive paw and tapped Janya’s chest with a steaming black claw. “It is an
adjective
,” she said with her other hand. “Do you think the Molren say
aki’Drednanth
is the mark of a non-sentient?”

“From the essays, that’s precisely what they use as a justification,” Janya said. “Drednanth is your gestalt sentient entity. The aki’Drednanth are just living extensions, sensory and experience-gathering pseudopods, into the biological world, with no minds except those which exist in the Dreamscape,” she raised her eyebrows. “And the aki’Drednanth don’t seem to mind this.”

Thord gave a low
woof
of amusement. “Tell General Moral Decay (Alcohol),” she said, casting him a sidelong glance, “from now on the humans on board this ship wish to be known as
Humans
, with a capital ‘H’. They outnumber you eight to one, so you had best play along.”

“Nine to one,” Janya said lightly. “Everyone always forgets the Captain.”

“Yes,” Thord said, after a moment’s pause that perhaps only Decay noticed, “the Captain.”

“This grammar lesson,” Zeegon said, “is this really how librarians say goodbye? Because I’m misting up.”

“I, however, am beginning to drip,” Thord said, shifting on her feet with a slushy crunching sound. Decay couldn’t help but notice a faint, musty but extremely
distinctive
smell beginning to waft from the aki’Drednanth. They could survive for some time in warm conditions … but it was uncomfortable for everyone concerned. “So I shall take my leave,” she fell silent for a moment, as though hesitating. “You may write them,” she added, addressing Janya once more. “Those things we spoke of.”

Thord peeled away her sensor gloves in a hail of discoloured slush and clumps of increasingly-slimy hair. They had been a part of her, probably only coming off occasionally when she was on her own for extended periods, for her entire adult life. Now, as Thord had said, they would have to reverse-engineer more sets for the pups.

Or just wait
, Decay thought,
and give this pair to the last girl standing. As
Z-Lin
said
.

Thord laid the sensors down with the envirosuit, then pulled a pair of large scientific sample thermoses from the suit’s unfolded chest compartment. Silent now, she raised a thermos in each hand in a final salute, then stepped up to the door.

“Do I want to know what that is?” Z-Lin murmured as Waffa opened the door in another blast of cold and avalanche of frost-steam.

“
Gazz thrash
,” Maladin said with a smile. “Aki’Drednanth liquor, of sorts.”

“This is the stuff Glomulus has been brewing?” Z-Lin asked. “With the contraband Thord okayed for him?” Maladin grinned and nodded. “Well, that’s a load off.”

Thord followed Waffa into the seed chamber. Maladin, with a final wave and a long look at teary-eyed Dunnkirk, followed after. Decay supposed the two Bonshooni could act like they were aki’Drednanth, and that this wasn’t goodbye … but they knew better. Now, or a couple of thousand years down the line when Dunnkirk passed his Third Prime and Maladin was still sleeping peacefully on Thord’s seed, one way or another they were saying goodbye.

“Love,” Dunnkirk blurted.

“Love,” Maladin said, as the door closed.

A few minutes later – everyone was still hanging around in the corridor, not entirely sure what to do next – Waffa came back out. Dunnkirk had sat down serenely against the opposite wall and had his eyes closed, Decay supposed he was joining his friends in the Dreamscape for the launch. Making sure they were all still calibrated. Something.

“Right,” Waffa said, and tapped on his watch. “All sorted and good to go, the pod’s running fine,” like Z-Lin, he kept his face down as though deeply engrossed in the commands he was feeding into the workstation. Hiding. “Right.”

There was a long pause as the atmosphere vented from the seed chamber. The crew exchanged uncomfortable glances, all too aware that, beyond that door, Thord was dying. Call it what you want. She was dying. Dunnkirk was smiling, eyes closed – all seemed to be under control, despite what the Dreamscapally challenged might think. Then Waffa entered the next sequence of commands.

And the seed flew.

And maybe they lodged in the veil, and maybe they just kept on flying, through the vast emptiness between galaxies for untold ages, aki’Drednanth and Bonshoon dreaming together until the seed found some like mind to share its ancient knowledge. Impossible to say, really.

That’s life.

DUNNKIRK

When the sleeper pod was found destroyed, the humans had debated in the conference room. Humans liked to debate things. It gave them the illusion of control when they wrapped things up in words.

After a while, Thord had shifted and settled slightly between them, and Dunnkirk had known she was entering the Dreamscape. He’d closed his eyes and joined her. The warmth of the forest, the clean, sweet green, had washed away the table and the humans and their voices, and Dunnkirk had felt the grass beneath his hooves, and breathed a sigh of relief.

A few moments later, Maladin had been there too.

“It was you,” Maladin had said, hunkering down at the edge of the pond where Thord was lounging. “You destroyed the pod.”

“I destroyed the pod,” Thord had replied.

“You, or the young?”

“Me,” Thord had said. “The young. No matter. You still have much to learn.”

“But why?” Dunnkirk had splashed into the water and sat, heavily.

“We were worried, perhaps, that simply telling you would not be enough. Do you remember,” Thord had said, “when we came aboard? What we told the Captain?” both the Bonshooni had nodded, uncertainly. Thord had stretched out in the water, floating on her back. “We three were to travel together, but now…”

“Now one of us has to stay here,” Dunnkirk had concluded. There was much, in the Dreamscape, that was shared and did not need to be spoken aloud. Understanding came from the communion.

Thord had sat up. “One of you can come with me,” she’d said gently. “The other must stay here, on this ship. I will leave instructions with the Commander. Along with the young ones, one of you will remain. A connection.”

“If we are connected through the Dreamscape, why does one of us have to stay?” Dunnkirk had asked, his eyes tearful.

“Because it is important,” Thord had said. “Part of me, part of the Drednanth Dreamscape – even a small part such as the one we shared – must be here. Must … see. Must witness, and … we must have
hands
here, as well as eyes. You know as well as I do that the young we have left on the ship … will not follow the same path. They will be joined with us, joined with the Drednanth, but their rebellion is not ours. It
cannot
be. Our path is out there.”

“Your path,” Dunnkirk had said. Some things, indeed, did not need to be discussed. “Not mine.”

“Yours also,” Thord had explained, patient. She was always patient, explaining things that she had lived with for millions of years, to these infants who knew nothing. She’d risen from the water, crystalline droplets cascading down her furry legs, and crossed to him. “But your part of it is here.”

“You remember our meeting with the Captain,” Maladin had said. “He is looking for something. Maybe he should not be allowed to find it. Maybe he must find it. He must be watched. And Thord promised him he would be watched.”

“They trust me more readily, think less of me as a potential threat,” Dunnkirk had said, resigned. “My skills in the common languages of Fleet and AstroCorps are lacking, so they consider me simple.”

They’d returned to the conference room, and from there had made their way to the farm.

Dunnkirk had sat down after Maladin had stepped through the door, closed his eyes, and returned to the Dreamscape with Thord. Thord had continued to say her goodbyes and help Waffa prepare the seed – she could double-task this way, it was a skill the aki’Drednanth had mastered but which required too much concentration for a mere Bonshoon. In the meantime, she and Dunnkirk had sat in the sun-dappled woods and waited for Maladin to arrive.

Dunnkirk had looked up at the sky, which was visible from where they were sitting. They were at all-stop, so the brilliant glittering spangle of the Drednanth and aki’Drednanth mass-mind throughout the galaxy was scattered across the heavens, and they were a part of it. Was it friendly? Would it welcome them? One thing was for certain – it was watching. Waiting.

The celestial bodies of Thord’s Dreamscape had still been there, superimposed brilliantly over the rest. The seven stars were at once brighter and
farther
, somehow, more distant. Thord’s offspring were finding their feet, becoming full aki’Drednanth and rising away from the mind which had fed their gestation. Soon, whether they remained as aki’Drednanth or returned, they would just be part of the scatter. Would
they
watch? What would happen next?

“Will they invite us to visit their worlds?” Dunnkirk had asked.

“Theirs might not even
be
worlds, as you would recognise them,” Thord had said. “I’ve tried to explain this, my love. They are minds, they might not even be landscapes in any real sense. But perhaps, in time, you will be welcomed to their minds. It will not be due to any link with me, though – that time is passed, and the link was never more than an illusion. They are aki’Drednanth like all the rest.”

They’d sat in companionable silence for a time, and then Thord had raised her luminous green eyes.

“Here he comes.”

It was just as it had been when they were testing the pods. Maladin had stepped out of the trees, smiled at Thord and Dunnkirk, and sat himself down on the shore of the little pond. Dunnkirk had smiled back without rancour.

“It works.”

“It works,” Maladin had grinned. “You’re out in the corridor, I’m in the pod, Thord’s sitting…” his face had fallen slightly.

“Thord’s sitting on the seed with her claws buried in the ice,” Thord had said, with a smile. “Ready to fly.”

“What do I do next?” Dunnkirk had said, clenching his hands involuntarily in the wet soil.

“What is it the Mygonites say?” Thord had grinned. “Muddle through. Carry on. And keep watching.”

“The Captain does not mix with the crew,” Dunnkirk had said, “and none of them speak of him anymore. Sometimes, it’s like they think he does not even exist.”

“You’ll find a way,” Maladin had assured him. “And we can talk it through any time,” he’d spread his hands. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Until I hit relative speed,” Dunnkirk had sighed. “And then for weeks and weeks…”

“And then you’ll be back with us,” Maladin had said.

“Start with Glomulus Cratch,” Thord had continued. “He may be more likely to talk than the others.”

“And move on to the synthetic intelligence,” Maladin had added, “Bruce.”

“Yes,” Thord had said, “Bruce may prove to be a chatty one. Although it is also more likely to be in league with the Captain, and thus less trustworthy. The medic is more likely to speak, and – amusingly, given his history – more likely to speak frankly.”