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

MALADIN (NOW)

As luck would have it, by the time they were ready to make their delivery the
Tramp
was orbiting high over the starship-surrounded spaceport where the crew had first made planetfall. It was so pleasingly symmetrical that Bunzo himself insisted that they land there.

“I’ll send teams of robots to bear you with honour to the nearest entrance of the Funporium,” he declared. “What a fitting circular ending to such a remarkable tale.”

Waffa insisted on accompanying them to the surface, along with a half-dozen eejits, and helping them to offload the sleeper pod. He’d never found a proper place or time to make funeral arrangements for Dunnkirk, after all, and as he’d said himself, the officially-sanctioned alternative had been ‘leave it all to Maladin’.

And so now, in at least some sense, they were fulfilling this obligation.

Waffa smiled painfully as he passed the humanoid the heavy backpack unit with the smiley-face on it. Of course, Maladin couldn’t see the sticker any more than he could see Waffa’s smile, but information was filtering into his fractured mind. Memories, observances, echo-location shadows from Waffa himself, slightly dimmer shades from the eejits … even the occasional unfriendly sense of
awareness
from the aki’Drednanth high above.

Maladin fumbled, almost dropped the backpack. He was still no good at operating two arms, and he knew he never would be. This was a fading signal, a weakening grasp, and not something he could ever adjust to or make permanent. He smiled at the earnest, miserable human as he helped him slip the backpack onto one shoulder. It was heavy, but not unbearable. Maladin got the impression that if he’d been in his actual body, he would have been able to swing it one-handed.

Your original body is dead
.

“Are you sure about this, mate?” Waffa asked, his voice sounding agonised.

“Yes,” Maladin said.

“Don’t try to switch ables on me now,” Bunzo warned cheerfully as they dragged the sleeper across the cruiser roof on Waffa’s instructions, out of the range of the lander take-off jets. It grew easier as they went, since the roof sloped down towards the valley between the
Denbrough
and
Yojimbo
, but they had to stop before the pod began to slide. “I’m watching you very carefully and I know which cup the ball’s in.”

Waffa gave Maladin a final hand-clasp and a final probably-mournful look that Maladin was glad not to see. Maladin returned the embrace, and drew Waffa in to whisper in his ear a final time. He couldn’t have said why he did, or even what the words really
meant
. But they had been important enough to come with him all this way, and so he decided he had to say it to somebody. Somebody other than Bunzo.

Then Waffa and the eejits climbed back into the lander, and took off.

Maladin rested the backpack on the sleeper pod, and then leaned back on its upper surface with his awkward humanoid elbows.

“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. It was warm here, and he could tell it was sunny. It may not have been a forest, but he thought Dunnkirk would have liked it. It was a good place to end.

“Alone at last,” Bunzo replied.

“You’re not going to let them leave,” Maladin said, “are you?”

“You have to admit, I’d be foolish to,” Bunzo answered breezily. “I mean, this story – such a wonderful story – but if I let them go, I’m losing
all the stories
. If I keep you I have some partial Dreamscape minds, and that’s only a maybe. If I let them go, I’m losing
seven aki’Drednanth
. Seven! Think of it!” he chuckled. “I won’t let them know until they get closer to the boundary,” he went on, “it’ll be delicious. And not like last time. No tricks. No wondrous engine will stop me from shutting down their relative drive. I’ve worked my way around that already. The one you have with you, too. What’s that even for?”

“I think Waffa was worried about the lander,” Maladin said, “or the sleeper, or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

“True. But once I get you to the Funporium, we can fix those eyes of yours. It will take a matter of minutes. Then we can watch together, while I bring them back. Punish them. Maybe later – much, much later, when I’ve made you different – you can be reunited. You can work on each other.”

Maladin sighed. He turned, felt his way to the upper panel of the damaged sleeper pod, and let it slide open to his touch. He smelled the cool, stale smell of nearly-dead flesh – so familiar, yet his mind was so shattered that he couldn’t remember why. Something about the place where he had met Dunnkirk. The place they had escaped.

He remembered Thord. Felling eighty heavily-armed guards with a single swing of her great armoured head, obliterating their minds, clearing the way to the ship that they stole together.

She’d been magnificent.

And so had they.

He leaned in over the open panel. His human nose was less sensitive, and sensory organ and synapses were not lining up properly either, but he caught a scent underlying the death-scent. The scent of skin, and of grass, and of rich soil. It wasn’t so much a
smell
as something that took place on the way from the nose to the brain, with a lot of burned-out wires in between. A dream of trees.

He pressed his nose softly against Dunnkirk’s in a Molranoid kiss, although the human nose and the Bonshoon were not compatible. It was the thought that counted.

“
Durka, p’bruz
,” he whispered.

“Here come the robots,” Bunzo said, “sorry about the wait. I really am all flustered and excited by this, can hardly wait to get started-”

Ready
.

The word was singular, cold, and more of a
feeling
than an actual communication. Mother’s Rebellion still had no great affinity or desire to connect with him.

Maladin straightened, and let his hands play over the device inside the backpack. The communication protocol was archaic, all transistors and oscillating waves, but it had the benefit of being safe – for moments only – from the prying fingers of Horatio Bunzo.

Maladin transmitted the data packet that Bruce had assembled for them before its departure. They couldn’t communicate with
Yojimbo
directly, of course – she’d been dead since long before their arrival. But they could talk to the
Denbrough
, and the
Denbrough
had managed to establish some sort of communication with the old warship. Maladin didn’t understand any of it. He only knew what was going to happen. What he
hoped
was going to happen.

The data packet contained ident codes and connected command sequences, and by the time Bunzo figured out what they were for, it was too late.

“No!”
the God of the Bunzolabe shrieked.

Yojimbo
’s ordnance stockpile initiated.

ZEEGON (THEN)

Peeling the micro-film from his fingers and passing it to Nurse Dingus, Glomulus Cratch emerged from the medical bay with only a slight glance of theatrical apprehension at the doorframe as he passed by.

“All done,” he said, and eyed the small crowd waiting in the corridor. Zeegon and Contro were somewhat huddled behind Sally and Decay and were keeping well-back from the infamous convict, although the helmsman was mildly relieved to note that Z-Lin was right back there with them. She’d probably pass it off as a security precaution, he thought, and decided to do the same if anyone asked. “Permission to step outside?” Cratch went on with exaggerated politeness.

“Don’t get smart,” Sally said.

“But I
am
smart.”

“How’s the patient?” Z-Lin asked crisply, shifting from behind the towering Blaran but not quite allowing a clear space to form between her and their chief medic.

“Oh, he’s fine. In fact he’s already sitting up and reading something our Head of Science left for him a while back – he was fully conscious for these last couple of procedures. Had to be, for the response tests … well anyway, no complications and I expect his recovery will be complete within a month. I’m not entirely sure how much of his ordeal he remembers. Certainly the drugs we gave him will have blanked his memory of the latter stages as the pod started to break down, but the first bit? It all went on too long for us to just erase. Psychologically he might need a bit of attention, but that’s why we have a ship’s counsellor. Ohh wait.”

“Shut up,” Sally grunted.

“Maybe we can stop somewhere and get him a nice little tree or something, and he can talk to that,” Glomulus suggested.

Zeegon winced and looked down, painfully aware of the gift in his hand, but Decay half-turned and gave him a reassuring clasp on the shoulder.

“Right,” Sally strode forward, waving Cratch and Dingus back into the medical bay. Zeegon, Decay, Z-Lin and Contro followed her in, giving the wire-thin convict a wide berth.

“Uh, yes, well, without further ado, I suppose I must declare my inaugural patient ready to receive visitors,” the Rip concluded.

The humans milled past the medic and headed for the recovery rooms. Glomulus moved to join them, and Decay stopped him with a carefully-extended but still well-out-of-reach hand. Zeegon paused too, wondering what the Blaran had seen.

“Forgetting something?” Decay asked, turning his lower left hand palm-up. Glomulus looked innocent. “Knife.”

Glomulus smiled, and produced the gleaming instrument from his sleeve. “Scalpel.”

“My mistake,” The General took the scalpel, and leaned in minutely. Still well out of arm’s reach, the Blaran murmured something else to the Ripper that Zeegon couldn’t make out. He could have sworn it had sounded like
my nose-holes are ready when you are, Doctor Cratch
… but that didn’t make a damn bit of sense. Evidently it did to Cratch, though, because the pale, long-haired man smiled a little sickly.

Janus was sitting up in bed with a big reader-pad on his lap. It was severely dented and one corner was bubbled as though partially melted. The mood in the room was of general good cheer. Contro was uncharacteristically subdued by the reality of Cratch’s release, but still gave Janus a hearty handshake and offered him a toffee. So in that sense, Zeegon mused, all was right with the world.

Janus held up the pad. “What happened to my office?” he asked.

“Oh, that,” Sally said. “Mater blew up basically on top of it. The exchange padded most of the damage but it blew out some ceiling panels and a support strut caved in your desk. We’ll fix it.”

Zeegon stepped up and put his offering on the table next to the bed. “It’s a
hoco
-nut tree,” he said, gesturing at the single-leafed twig sticking up out of the little pot of ‘ponic soil. “I grew it myself out of a seed from stores. It’s … not doing so great, I know.”

“Give it a few bars of the Bunzo Song,” Glomulus suggested, stepping in and assuming a safely-distant position under Sally’s and Decay’s watchful eyes.

“Cratch,” Sally warned.

“It’s alright,” Janus said, looking at the little twig happily. “Thanks, Zeegon,” he said. “I’ll take it from here. And thanks, Doctor Cratch,” he added hesitantly. “You saved my life.”

“Well, we hapless victims of NightMary have to stick together,” Glomulus said, shaking his head with a disapproving
tut-tut
. “Whatever did she see in us, anyway? We are handsome devils, but-”

“In your case it’s fairly simple,” Janya Adeneo stepped into the room, adding to the crowd. Zeegon couldn’t help but notice that
Cratch
actually stepped back and looked a little cautious when he saw the little woman, but that might have been nothing more than simply maintaining his safe distance from everybody as per Sally’s rules. Or it could have been more of his act, a charade intended to make the others wonder. “There aren’t many more wildly divergent lifestyle choices than those of the voluptuary and the ascetic,” Adeneo went on. “You were just offering her something Bunzo’s persona couldn’t.”

“Hey, psychoanalysis is my job,” Janus protested.

Janya almost smiled. “I’ll just assist you until you find your feet.”

“If he
can’t
find them, I have spares,” Glomulus quipped. “And anyway, I would hardly say I’m
ascetic
. Being forced to live in a prison cell for five years doesn’t really count.”

“And yet,
depravity
and
deprivation
come from the same root-word,” Zeegon said philosophically.

Janya raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Oh? Which word is that?”

“…depr?” Zeegon hazarded after a too-long pause.

“Depr,” Janya repeated.

“Same root as
depressingly poorly-planned line of thought
,” Sally offered by way of support.

Zeegon gave her a scowl. “Not helping.”

“Yeah, depr,” Decay agreed. “The Xidh word
deprhaam
comes from the same root. It’s the feeling of standing on something you thought was a firm-but-yielding artificial surface, but then turns out to actually be a very large dead body, and then realising that the dead body is yours and that you have reincarnated as a botfly.”

“You know, I could’ve gotten away with it if you guys hadn’t chimed in,” Zeegon complained.

“You really couldn’t have,” Janus disagreed gently.

Zeegon
hrumph
d, then turned to look at Decay curiously. “Is that true?” he asked.

“What,
deprhaam
?” Decay’s fangs glinted as he grinned widely. “I’m going to say yes.”

“Everyone’s against me,” Zeegon mourned.

“Well, that’s not true,” Janya said. “Glomulus here owes you a vote of thanks. I believe you mentioned this security-bracelet idea to me before, as an alternative to his incarceration.”