Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (7 page)

“Usually.”

“You have scars,” Oya said abruptly.

“What brings you up here?”

“I need mozotane,” Oya admitted sheepishly.

Janya frowned. Mozotane was the harmless fructose-based weaning chemical they were using to help the evacuees come down off the smoke. It had worked well enough so far – only a couple of what Janus Whye referred to as ‘freak-outs’. The counsellor was really in his element, she reflected.

“Glomulus is handing out the mozotane,” she said. “You want the medical bay.”

“The human in there – Glomulus?” Oya shuddered again. “It’s horrible.”

“No argument from me,” Janya said, “but is there anything in particular … ?”

“I’d rather go back to Bayn Balro and swim,” the Bonshoon said fervently.

“If he does anything, you’ve been told that the crew will deal with it,” Janya said. “I’m pretty sure he’ll be friendly and cooperative.”

“He looks at us strangely.”

“Really?” Oya nodded, ears flat back against the sides of her head. “Specifically … ?”

“Like he’s wearing a suit made out of human skin but couldn’t get the coloured glass eye lenses to work properly so he just cut a pair of holes instead.”

“That’s pretty specific,” Janya conceded.

“The young ones won’t go in there anymore.”

“You really shouldn’t be afraid, but it probably is a good idea,” Janya said, “to limit his exposure to the young ones.”

“Do you think?”

“Usually,” Janya replied, and returned to her reading. This time, she let herself indulge in full pointedness, and after about thirty seconds Oya got the hint, rose, and shuffled back towards the door of the lab.

Lazy centuries of study had revealed that there was a singularity of sorts, although the term was misleading, an atom-thin thread running along the axis of The Warm, and this was apparently responsible for its heat. It was not a heating element as such; it was the same uniform temperature as the rest of the massive cylinder. It just resonated with the local compound and
made it warm
somehow. And it may have been far less than an atom thin – current theories, at least as of the publication of the book Janya was reading, were that it was actually
one-dimensional
. It was difficult to study, on account of digs being strictly controlled and interaction with the filament being nearly impossible. Any sort of interaction, maybe even
observation
on a quantum level, might have broken the filament and shut down The Warm altogether. Its existence, let alone its characteristics, could only be theoretically verified.

And this was ignoring the more farfetched theories that The Warm was actually alive.

Waffa had been born and spent his childhood on Aquilar. His parents, he’d told Janya, had been a pair of wealthy old-family xenobiology enthusiasts who had landed one of the coveted research grants. They’d shipped the whole lot of them out to The Warm when Waffa had still been very young and his sister an infant. Things had been quite happy, from what Janya had gathered, but after Waffa’s father had passed away and his sister had returned to Aquilar, he had eventually decided there was nothing much left for him on The Warm. When the chance had come for him to join a modular crew for more than just mind-destroyingly monotonous milk-run supply jaunts, he’d said a fond farewell to his old mum and had taken it.

“What happened to your ship?” Oya asked, jolting Janya out of her reflections. She’d thought the Bonshoon woman was gone.

“The ship?” Janya looked up with a frown.

“Nobody will tell me,” the settler complained. “Where have you been, why is there only a few of you who aren’t ables, why do you have so
many
ables and why are they so–”

“All these questions are up to the Commander to answer, if she was going to,” Janya said. “You were told this already, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Oya replied unhappily, “but I just hoped you might…”

“Sorry.”

“At least your relative drive works.”

“I suppose it would be a long ride otherwise.”

Two weeks in the company of recovering drug addicts was more than long enough, of course, and Janya could only imagine how long it must have felt for the drug addicts themselves. Fortunately, Bonshooni were pacific by nature and responded to their withdrawals – aside from the handful of ‘freak-outs’ – by literally withdrawing, creeping into their makeshift quarters and sitting quietly. Which was for the best, because if nineteen adult Bonshooni, each well over seven feet tall and weighing in at a solid four hundred pounds, decided to go on a rampage it probably would have resulted in Sally having to blow the airlocks. They’d seen the damage a single insane Molran could do, after all.

Still, the flight was uneventful. Sometimes, it was even enjoyable. Particularly towards the end, when the smoke began to loosen its hold and the evacuees began to return to their usual affable selves, they proved a lively and friendly bunch lacking the uptight superiority that seemed to characterise the Molren or the volatility of the average Blaran. The fellow in the isolation pod, arguably the one who had suffered the most due to going through his withdrawals in solitary confinement, recovered and was declared free of risk, and joined the others in the Contro Tangle.

Bonshoon
had, rather unfairly, become something of a byword over the years. It was synonymous, to Molran and Blaran alike, for
fat of mind, fat of body
. Some forms of the word were even used as insults –
bonsh
,
bonsher
,
bonshy
. In a physical sense it was accurate enough, of course. Due to the long-forgotten intricacies of their branching-off from the great Molran trunk and their persistent and now-age-old cultural leanings – the smokeberries were just one example of such indulgence – the Bonshooni
were
somewhat thicker-bodied than the other two Molranoid species.

They weren’t really stupid, though, at least not in comparison to humans. All the species of Molranoid enjoyed an intelligence curve located somewhat further along the axis than humanity by dint of the complexity and utilisation of their brains. That was just a matter of pure computing power and nobody judged. Well, not
really
. Not in mixed company, certainly, and not
out loud
. Bonshooni were just … relaxed, and happy. Which was good news when spending two weeks cooped up with a bunch of Bonshooni passengers, and even better news when those passengers were coming down
en masse
off a moderately addictive narcotic.

Janya didn’t have much to do with the settlers, aside from one or two similar drop-in conversations to the one she’d had with Oya and an equally brief series of semi-interviews with a few of the Bonshooni on the Commander’s request. She did as much ‘research’ as she could on the logs and computer data they’d evacuated with, and had done her best to establish what had happened to Bayn Balro. The logs were no more helpful than the smoked-out survivors: anyone who’d witnessed anything was either dead or an aquatic monster pathologically incapable of telling the truth when a discord-sowing psychotic fantasy would do.

In the end, her findings were developed only a step or two beyond her initial guess – ultimately inconclusive. Something had happened, fast and overwhelming and utterly without warning, striking the floating settlement and apparently crippling the Fergunak gridnet close enough to simultaneously to make no difference. The sharks had survived the near-complete loss of their cybernetic infrastructure most likely because they were aquatic, and the only land-bound settlers to survive were the ones who had been cut off from Bayn Balro at the time. The rest had drowned when the settlement was demolished, or been eaten by the Fergies when they promptly turned on the vulnerable ‘flesh’. They had no idea what had happened, and – being drug addicts – had prioritised the preservation of their stash over conducting any sort of investigation. In their defence, of course, the settlement had been shattered and any activities that took them outside of armoured areas left them at risk from the marauding Fergunak.

In short, it was a catastrophe and all Janya could really establish was that it hadn’t been a natural disaster. Nothing tectonic or atmospheric had caused Bayn Balro to sink, no asteroid impacts or other disruptions from the unstable planetary system. That still left a near-infinity of causes, starting with a Fergunakil cyber-virus or a smoke-addled Bonshoon hitting the self-destruct. A self-destruct that, admittedly, the settlers denied having … but drugs could turn an electronic calendar and a dozen seismic survey charges into a self-destruct.

It was when Adeneo realised this bit of wisdom was a nugget of Glomulus Cratch’s gold that she decided her ‘research’ was over.

After submitting her report to a grateful and commiserative Z-Lin Clue, Janya retired to her quarters and made herself comfortable in the modest library wing she had carved out for herself. Her library fortuitously did not share any walls with the noisy guests occupying a lot of Contro’s nearby wonky string of rooms, and so she was able to spend the final few days of their trip in reading and reflection.

Unlike their approach to Bayn Balro, which had been tense but optimistic as the crew realised that they were back in charted Six Species space and that the beacons were still lit, the mood on board the
Tramp
this time when the destination counter shifted to orange was more subdued. One small settlement demolished in apparent accordance with a mad Molran’s proclamation could be coincidence. A settlement – a world, really, in its own right – like The Warm would be far more difficult to discount. The tension was thicker, the optimism replaced with a grim sense of wanting to get the waiting over with.

Even Janya, usually fairly indifferent to community feeling, came to the bridge when Zeegon announced their return to normal space was approaching. Z-Lin didn’t allow the evacuees to join them, and Contro and Cratch were instructed to remain at their posts, but the rest of the
Tramp
’s tiny crew were there. Waffa probably
should
have been keeping an eye on Contro, but nothing short of force would have kept him off that bridge.

They dropped out of soft-space and decelerated into the lower registers of subluminal cruise, gliding into the otherwise-inhospitable system The Warm called home.

This time there was no beacon. There were no ships, no hails, no traffic. There was no chatter on the general AstroCorps comms.

The Warm was dead.

Z-LIN

Clue didn’t allow herself to sigh, although she could have let one through unnoticed in the gusty lungful Zeegon let out and permitted to evolve into a protracted groan.

“Alright,” she said, “we all know what to do. Sally, let’s have full battle stations this time.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Decay, let’s see what’s lit up down there. Zeegon, take us in.”

They sidled in towards The Warm, slowly decelerating from maximum cruising subluminal, and the crew’s initial alarm began to fade. First of all, while the AstroCorps orbital approach beacon was out, there
were
some energy signatures and communications transmissions from the surface, albeit worryingly minimalist ones. Decay cautiously identified and reported them as auxiliary power generators and emergency comm relays –
old
ones.

“Most of them are buried deep in the cylinder,” the Blaran explained, “masked by the native mineral. A couple of them are in the modular clusters, but those seem to have been hardest hit. It looks as though the oldest established habitats, and the deepest holes, the film-bubbles, are the places where people managed to ride it out. It’s making it difficult to pick out a coherent signal and establish communications. Looks like they’re delaying that anyway, until we get closer and they know whether or not we’re friendly.”

“Smart,” Clue conceded.

“Like Bayn Balro,” Waffa said, and Z-Lin was pleased to note the professional calm in his voice even though he was leaning forward and staring into the window panels as though he could make out surface details with the naked eye. “The only people not to get hit were the ones who missed the whole thing because they were under the surface somewhere.”

“I’m not seeing much sign of an actual
battle
,” Z-Lin said, “or any sort of impact or debris. Just a lot of collapsed or missing Chrysanthemum superstructure, and the rest. Even mini-whorls would scatter more rubble than this, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes,” Sally replied. “Matter splashback would cause a whole lot of mess, even if most of it got swallowed. This looks more like most of the modulars disconnected and flew out of here, carrying the hubs and Mandelbrot pylons with them.”

“We can hope that’s what
did
happen,” Zeegon suggested.

“Nope,” Waffa answered before Clue could. “Most of those ships were grafted in and completely gutted, there was no way they’d be able to fly. The Warm’s a … a … a
trailer park
. A four-thousand-year-old trailer park, in space. Unless an intact Worldship came by and loaded…” he trailed off, and pointed. “Ships.”

Zeegon leaned forward and squinted. “Holy crap,” he said, “I think he’s right.”

“You’ll all be delighted to hear they’re
Fergunakil
ships,” Decay told everyone.

“Shit,” Clue spat. “Sally–”

“We’re ready to rock, Commander.”

The Warm, by its nature, did not have a large Fergunak presence. It did, however, have a rather spectacular habitat nestled into one end amidst all the structures and modulars. The Chalice was a huge bowl-shaped segment of an old Molran Worldship hull and some wide crescents of its interior decks, and the majority of its atmosphere- and gravity-controlled levels were aquatic.

The Chalice seemed untouched, although it was difficult to be sure from this side. Z-Lin had been impressed by it on their last visit to The Warm, approximately a trillion years ago, and it seemed equally stupendous now. A Worldship flying in space was amazing, but your brain tended to zoom back and tell you
it’s just a very big starship, nothing to panic about
. When the same Worldship was broken into a huge arc of melon-peel and gummed to the end of a thousand-mile-long alien artefact with its levels spanning the arc like baleen, your brain said
no, I don’t think so
.