Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (33 page)

A moment later, dim red-tinted emergency lights illuminated the cell, and Glomulus relaxed a little. He could still hear Sally grunting and clattering outside, wrestling with the clearly-deactivated janitorial. The sounds were apparently being transmitted through the molecular filament of the brig security bumpers, and he was quite glad of it.

“Sally?” he said, not sure at this point if the sound would be bi-directional.

“Still alive,” the Chief Tactical Officer grunted. There was a clatter, a clank, and a muttered curse. “Damn it, I hate the smell of burning hair. Especially when it’s mine.”

“Was that a cluster-gauss grenade?”

“We called ‘em maxwells,” she said. “Figures
you’d
recognise it. I always knew you’d started out as a university rabble-rouser. Why else would you go to ground on a pisshole in the snow like Judon?”

“At least
I
wasn’t expelled.”

“Fair,” there was a sliding, scraping sound, a loud bang as the drone crashed into a wall, and more muttering. “The blast cut the power to the systems, fried a lot of the computer connections, but she’ll be back. Even with burned relays she can get back in – if she didn’t upload buffered kill-instructions in the last nanosecond anyway. I need to take this drone apart before it reinitialises.”

“Why do you even have a – a maxwell in your pocket?”

“We’re going up against a hostile intelligence housed inside a dispersed machine infrastructure,” Sally grunted. There were more clatters. “And you need to ask?”

“Are you-”

He winced slightly as the sudden, bone-vibrating
THRAA-THRAA-THRAA
of the thresh-blaster echoed through the cell. It was drowned out almost immediately by the sound of the janitorial being violently scattered across the brig’s interior aisle.

“Bitch,” Sally muttered.

“Everything hunky-dory?” he called.

“Oh yeah.”

“Did you hear what she was saying about there being extra people on board?”

Sally snorted. “I’ll log it, but it’s pretty amateur-level mind-gaming for people on long-term deep space missions,” she said. “Get into the ship, get into the crew. I seem to recall you did a bit of that yourself, on our first leg out of Judon.”

“True,” Glomulus reminisced, then grew serious again. “And – your injuries – will you be able to-”

“Relax, Cratch,” Sally growled, and he heard her stumping away. There was the occasional clatter as she kicked a piece of janitorial out of her path. “I can reattach a hand.”

The shuffling and crashing faded, and Sally was gone. A couple of silent minutes after that, the emergency lights went out in his cell.

Well
, he thought,
I guess that addresses the question of NightMary’s knowledge of my file
.

It wasn’t that Glomulus was
afraid
of the dark. On the contrary, he rather liked it. If anything, he liked it
too
much. It heightened his senses, brought him into a more perfect awareness of himself. Especially in an environment like the brig, where it was just his body, his mind, the universe bounded and bordered by his extremities. It was like being placed in his natural environment, a Fergunakil taken from an aquatic channel and dropped into the ocean.

It made him want to
work
.

After another few minutes of silence, the cell monitoring bumper spoke again, in NightMary’s voice. She sounded calm again. Serene, even.

“You’ll be free,” she promised. “Whether or not your mind is in one piece when you emerge … I leave that up to you. Now, I have work to do. Please excuse me.”

He
felt
her presence withdraw from the cell. At the same moment, the pitch blackness was pierced with light. Whether from the illumination system or the bumper itself, or directly through the metaflux panel from some outside mechanism, Glomulus couldn’t be sure.

In flashes, subliminally brief and separated by stretches of silent darkness at first, the walls began to light up with images. They seemed to be scenes from the early days of Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World, images from Bunzolabe Incorporated stories. Clowns and pixies and mythical creatures predominated.

There were children.

And then, scene by scene, flash by flash, instant by instant, the clowns turned.

Glomulus settled in to enjoy the show.

CONTRO (NOW)

Despite everyone having a good old grumble about it, Contro really rather liked the old miners. They were funny. There were about sixty of them bundled into his string of quarters, which he was sure was more than his share but Waffa and Zeegon and Decay had all explained it to him so patiently and so many times, he didn’t have the heart to tell them he still didn’t understand. And besides, as Decay had also said, Contro had provided hospitality for the Bonshooni from Bayn Balro that time, so he was far more skilled and experienced than them. And the more the merrier, if you asked Contro.

One of the four affable old geezers sharing Contro’s main bedroom was named Tiny Clarence. Even Contro could figure out this was one of those given-in-irony types of name deals, though, because Tiny Clarence would have been almost as tall as Decay if he’d been standing up. He didn’t stand up, because his legs didn’t work. He’d lost his original legs when the collider maintenance pneumatorail he’d been in had been lifted right out of the ice around him while he was running for the exit. Then the habitat’s main medical printer, a big ancient limb stew-pot even older and more dodgy than the ones they had on the
Tramp
, had failed to connect the new ones up properly, so they just dangled. As a result, Tiny Clarence was restricted to a massive wheeled contraption that looked like it belonged in a museum. With Tiny Clarence in it, no less!

This all seemed jolly careless to Contro, who would have thought that when you were rushing to escape from a place the last thing you’d want to lose would be your legs, but Tiny Clarence
was
an elderly and absent-minded fellow. And Contro would be the last person to criticise anyone for absent-mindedness, wouldn’t he?

Tiny Clarence was very decent about the whole thing, though.

“It’s my hundred and sixtieth birthday in a couple months,” he said, “and that’s crash-bam miner retirement plus ten years. So I was well due. If my ol’ legs got to retire before me, good luck to them.”

The rest of the crew, in peaceful moments when they were in a room not full of miners complaining about their gammy necks and tiny bladders, were already discussing their return visit to Bunzo’s.

It was funny to note that, the first time they had ventured into the Bunzolabe and taken a lander down to Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World, it had been Z-Lin, Decay, Zeegon and Janus – and maybe the Captain, but nobody was quite sure – who had gone down to the planet. Doctor Cratch, Sally, Waffa, Janya, and Contro himself had all stayed on the ship. This time, he couldn’t help but notice the general feeling was that the order should be completely reversed. Decay, Zeegon, Janus, and even the Commander had all voiced opinions to the effect that they would prefer to stay in orbit, while Sally, Waffa and Janya had all stated the intention of making planetfall and under no circumstances remaining on board. Glomulus, of course, would prefer to be out in the fresh air than cooped up on board and Contro couldn’t say he blamed him.

As for Contro, well, he
certainly
didn’t want to stay on the ship this time, if he had a choice. It had been horrible.

He wondered if Bunzo had missed them. Maybe he’d throw a party for them when they returned. That would be something out of the wreckage, wouldn’t it?

After about a week in transit between Alr’Wady and Ursos, the miners sharing Contro’s quarters had stopped complaining about their various ailments and had stopped visiting the medical bay. Even when their necks and bladders were clearly still bothering them! It hardly made any sense to Contro, but he had to admit he wasn’t the best fellow when it came to reading people. In the end, though, it became really very noticeable. A couple of the old ladies in the next room over had a nasty case of slurry lung, which apparently some elderly folks got from breathing the spores and algae and whatnot from the vaporised ice caps. It was only really a problem of any kind for people close to two hundred years of age, according to Tiny Clarence.

Contro asked him why they weren’t going to the medical bay. Honestly, there was a little splooshey inhaler thing that would fix them right up.

“Well, Dori and O-Mae just don’t like the look of that doctor of yours,” Tiny Clarence said. “He’s ghoulish and false and generally creepy. Me, I tend to agree but to me he feels more of an old school sadist. I know the look.”

“Well, he may be a bit of a strange one but he can certainly help you all!” Contro persisted. “We don’t have the doodads to properly do limbs and things anymore – they got broken, I think – but Doctor Cratch did figure out a work-around that seems to work just as well, even if it’s a bit of a job! He’s terribly clever, you know. And the new limbs and organs and stuff work just as well with the new method. Better than what was done to your legs, I dare say! Although aw, I’m sure they did the best they could and it will all turn out fine! I just mean we might be able to fix you up at the same time!”

“I’m happy rolling for the time being,” Tiny Clarence said, “and will just hope for the best upstream. To be honest, I’d rather get patched up by those ables of yours, what did you call them?”

“Wingus and Dingus!” Contro said. “Although we call them eejits, not ables, because well, they’re a bit daft. And actually it’s Wingus Junior, technically, because something happened to Wingus Senior! He wasn’t Wingus Junior’s father though, just in case you were wondering! I thought he must have been, because of the name, and I was really very confused about how that would be possible, with the way eejits are-”

“Stop talking now,” Tiny Clarence said kindly. That was what Contro liked about Tiny Clarence. He told him when he should stop. “I’d rather get patched up by your eejits, and they don’t seem to know one end of a scalpel from another. You know something else?” he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Young Ptolemy Jones, the surveyor,
he
says he’s seen this Crinch’s face before.”

“It’s actually Cratch!”

“Right, Cratch. Jonesy, see, he’s a bit of an odd duck,” Tiny Clarence said. “Always listening to outsiders’ stories, tuning in on the gossip, always ready to hook up to a visiting ship’s cortex and see what’s what. And
he
says your sawbones is a real big-name crook, ‘least he was ten years back or so. Memorable face he’s got, see. Jonesy says he was involved in a bunch of murders over in the Barnalks.”

“Jonesy was?” Contro exclaimed.

“No, your
Doctor Cratch
was,” Tiny Clarence said patiently.

“Oh! Ha ha ha!” Contro laughed. “It was just the way you phrased that, it was a little confusing!”

“I understand. Classic grammatical mix-up,” Tiny Clarence said sombrely. “Dangling participle or something, I expect.”

“It would be a weird coincidence if Jonesy had been doing murders on Barnalk High as well!” Contro chortled.

Tiny Clarence looked at him oddly, and Contro recognised it as a look that meant he had probably just said something daft again. “Yes,” Tiny Clarence said mildly, “I suppose it would, wouldn’t it?” his expression cleared. “Still, I don’t suppose we can believe too much of what Ptolemy says. A few years ago he was swearing up and down that Aquilar had been invaded by aliens. What do you think of that?”

“Gosh, I don’t know!” Contro laughed. “We’ve heard a lot of rumours too but Z-Lin says it’s like a cat in a box!”

“Aquilar
is
a bit like a cat in a box,” Tiny Clarence conceded. “Not that I’ve ever been there. Never been further than Ursos and Arctos, matter of fact. But try getting reliable information about anything more than a thousand or so light years away. Even with computers and records and the holy damn synth, it’s like Hargo’s whispers. Take the alien invasion of the inner systems as an example,” he waved a big, gnarled hand. “Might be the nobs on Aquilar made contact with a new dumbler race. Maybe not even a hostile one. So then the traders out of Radagast tell this story of a first contact misunderstanding, warning shots fired across bows, no harm done, everyone’s laughing about it. By the time the freelancers get the story as far as The Undercroft, it’s become a full-blown shooting war. When the info gets updated to a little AstroCorps ranging-and-haulage Chrys outside Hubris, it’s an invasion from mysterious aliens, and at levels of destructiveness that has to imply the Cancer is involved. And by the time a merchant brings the info to the only old coot in Chalcedony who’ll listen to it, it’s Aquilar destroyed, settlements wiped out without a trace, new Damorakind super-fleet, bad guys able to cut fleeing ships straight out of Ol’ Drabby. And don’t think they don’t use exactly the same problem to pull shit like they just pulled back on the ‘Wady. It’s the dark side of the old Molran ‘keep quiet’ coin,” he concluded grimly. “Except now, it means ‘no witnesses’.”

All Contro could really think of to say to that was, “Golly!”

“We don’t get news first-hand,” Tiny Clarence went on, his tone turning more genial. “And we certainly don’t get anything from the Big A-Hole. They don’t dirty their hands with raw materials. All the news, along with all the ore, goes through the middlemen in Hubris. They’re the ones who come out here, and pass word out and back.”

“But surely if these Damorakind-or-whatever-they-are chaps have been at large and destroying things for that long – since even before the Artist told us about it – then some word would have come to us!” Contro exclaimed. “Otherwise, how do we know how much is actually left out there?”

“Well I don’t know who this artist fellow is that you’re talkin’ about,” Tiny Clarence said, “but don’t bet on news travelling far, or fast. Not even
big
news. Maybe the invasion is over and the Cancer super-fleet is just cruisin’ around clearing up the last scraps,” he shrugged. “How’d your artist buddy get his information anyway?”