“I see,” Fee subsided, still looking at the child with bright interest. “Have you manifested at this point to give us additional information, or just to demonstrate the fact that you exist? Or was it simply random?”
“I cannot control my presence in this plane,” the boy said, “not in the way you control your bodies – not in any way I think you will understand. It is difficult to explain. And I have no additional information. Your time is short. Your time is very short. The darkness is coming. You have built your world on the edge of an ancient and terrible empire, and the edge is advancing on you like a great wave. When it passes, there will be nothing left in its wake. Only the wave. Time is short.”
There was another considering silence following this.
“Very well,” Fee said, “there seems to be little more we can do but facilitate your passage to the shipyard. You’ll be able to communicate using the capsule when you get there, but like I say – you’ll be on your own. If there’s nothing out there, it’s going to take us a considerable time to ramp up the infrastructure down here–”
“The machine mind must still be active on the cargo section of the ship,” Bason said.
“The – excuse me?” Fee blinked politely.
“Have you asked yourself why it’s called a shipyard,” Bason asked rather than responding directly, “if there’s just the one ship floating out there with her lights out? If all the Lawkeeps or original crew or whoever all came down to Dema and retired ‘millennia ago’, what’s making it a shipyard?”
“I think you’re reading a bit much into a choice of words,” Gandicon suggested. “A shipyard can be packed up and deserted. And I would imagine that disconnecting the Grandis 459 from the cargo section, and ferrying the settlers down here, would have required some construction and habitat infrastructure on-site.”
“See, that’s another thing,” Bason said. “Did they really do the whole unpacking and settlement thing from all the way on the far side of the sun? Why so far away? Surely they could have constructed whatever infrastructure they needed, then come into a low orbit around Dema and made the settler-drops.”
“Maybe that’s what they did,” Gandicon said, frowning. “Maybe they arrived, found the debris field perfect for a staging area, then brought the Grandis 459 and her cargo section over here into orbit, delivered the settlers, then shunted the cargo section back into the ‘shipyard’ they’d built. Shut the whole thing down ready for later reactivation, then … retired, like you say.”
“Just be ready for me to say ‘I told you so’ when we get up there and find a bustling machine-mind-run manufactory,” Karturi said.
“Duly noted.”
“Good,” Fee said. “Now, since you thoughtfully brought it up again, can we go back to that ‘machine mind’ part, please?”
Bason sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Ghåål might be here because a glowing blue boy came to him and told him the world was about to be swept away by a wave of black-winged darkness and such, but I’m here because the parallel data node system in my house bounced a ‘conversion to normal signal = null’ alert into its normal running pattern…”
Fee, W’Tei, Jow and Go’sana sat and listened in solemn surprise as Bason Karturi told her story. Gandicon had already heard the pertinent points of it, and the rest was so much mystifying technobabble to the old Lawkeep, but he let her tell it in her own way. As he listened, the more he found himself admiring the methodical and well-planned way this woman – little more than a girl, really – had approached such a bizarre situation. She was a true product of a mixed Molran heritage, robust and adaptable and, although prone to some of the weaknesses of each of the cultures that made up her personality, also gifted with all of the advantages of those same cultures.
“So I came to the Grandix building because it seemed like the most logical place to start looking for traces of the machine mind on Dema,” she concluded, “and that’s where I ran into Ghåål and got dragged into this crazy prophetic vision quest thing of his,” she gave him an amused look. “Also, if it wasn’t for me he’d still be wringing his hands in the heart storage vault. Or cooling his heels in a Grandix holding cell.”
“Impressive,” Fee said admiringly. “As to your own quest, all I can do is reiterate what Gandicon has evidently already said, and what I assume you have already determined – there is no machine mind presence on Dema – or if there is, it is so low-key as to be practically indiscernible from the intercontinental computing cortex.”
“That is what I determined,” Bason confirmed. “Which is why I suppose my next step is also to get to the cargo section and see if I get further instructions. Otherwise, I probably would have left Ghåål to explain his visions to Grandix security.”
“Oh, you belittle your own generosity of spirit,” Fee said with a smile. Bason eyed him and gave one of the most sarcastic flares of her left ear that Gandicon had ever seen. Fee’s smile faltered. “Surely.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Gandicon said dryly.
“Oh.”
“Far more important than this,” Gandicon went on, “is that while we’re off on the far side of the solar system, you start the task of preparing two million Molren for storage and transportation to an as-yet undisclosed safe location,” he hesitated. “And possibly the rest of the population of the planet for annihilation.”
“Mmm,” Fee sat back and laced all four hands over his belly. “I get all the fun jobs.”
XVIII
The preparation of the transit capsule, and the unpacking and reactivation of the Old Enclave launch facility, took six days. Gandicon had honestly expected it to take longer, but at the same time he was chafing with impatience by the end of the second.
In the wholly-underground environment of the Old Enclave, the rather arbitrary division of day and night was upheld in only the most theoretical sense, in order to maintain synchrony with the city above. Otherwise, the Molran inhabitants paid little attention to the shift between night and day, and operated largely according to the same long-active and short-lull cycle the species had evolved with in its long-lost homeworld.
The assumption of a more ‘natural’ rhythm – just not necessarily natural for their current planet of residence – at once exacerbated Gandicon’s impatience and helped to make the day and night time-slots flick past quite satisfyingly.
The Bharriom phantom – who Polteus Fanak Fee had dubbed ‘Bharry’ and everybody else had taken to calling ‘the Hearts’ – returned only once in the ramp-up period, and didn’t have anything in particular to add. It still seemed as though time was short, but evidently the enemy had not stumbled upon the Grandis 459’s trail yet, and was not roaring towards Dema at anything more than its apparent baseline speed. Since the Hearts didn’t know what that baseline speed was, and couldn’t tell them exactly where the enemy was or whether or not it was on the verse of finding them, all the glowing blue child’s appearance achieved was ratcheting up the tension for no practical benefit.
Finally, however, the capsule was ready. And it was well-named – with minimal power and drive functions, it really was little more than a gleaming, featureless bullet designed to be fired along the Old Enclave mag-chute, accelerated to high subluminal registers and then ejected through the atmosphere with a blaze of disposable shielding and into Dema’s orbital wake. There was a tiny space where one passenger at a time could stretch out and do some light aerobics exercises, a space that doubled as waste reclamation and sanitation. There were two couches for the passengers to recline upon in the meantime, and the majority of the remaining space was taken up with food stores and equipment for the production of air and water.
“Cosy,” Bason declared the construction.
The Lawkeeps of the Old Enclave did not mess around with sentiment or ceremony. Only Councillor W’Tei, who had taken something of an adorable shine to Karturi, even showed up for the launch – and she didn’t have much in the way of speeches or advice for the would-be world saviours.
“Good luck,” she said calmly.
Gandicon and Bason settled into the couches, and the doors hissed closed. He glanced at the young woman – citizen? Lawkeep? Lo-Rider? – and she glanced back, with her habitual mixture of sardonic expectation and defiance on her face.
“It’s going to be a long flight, Ghåål,” she said, stretching out and lacing her upper hands behind her head, and pulling out her advanced interactive device with her lowers. “I trust you have something to occupy yourself with.”
“I’ve got a library band,” Gandicon said.
“Of course you do.”
He grinned, and settled back in his own seat. The first few minutes, according to the Old Enclave technicians who had never used the facility in their lives, were the most uncomfortable. The acceleration was acute – as acute, in fact, as it could be while keeping them alive.
It didn’t matter, he realised, what Bason Karturi was. Citizen or Lawkeep or Lo-Rider, she was what she was. And what that was, he saw with sudden strange clarity, was a symbol. She was what the Molren of Dema had to become.
They had to leave everything behind. All the old divisions, rivalries, little individualist luxuries that they’d mistakenly believed they could afford because they were living on the surface of this titanic rock, this vast open space with its immensity of biomass. They’d forgotten how tiny and fragile it really was, and now the stark reminder of that was … well, advancing upon them on silent wings of black steel. And everything had to change.
They were Dema’i, one species with many intricate and often contradictory parts, amidst the teeming native wildlife of this planet they called home. On Dema, they could afford to be intricate and contradictory. They could afford to be Dema’i. Perhaps, Gandicon mused, when the citizens went into the sleeping vessels they could take their distinctiveness with them. They could afford to be themselves, there in storage where it posed no danger. And then, once they were safe again, they could awaken to go on being Dema’i. But out there, in space, with the enemy hunting them implacably, those charged with seeing the species to safety had to be Molren.
Molren alone. Molren, or nothing. If they were not Molren, they were petulant children insisting on their individual importance until the day they died. And there was nothing in between.
As if summoned by these thoughts the Heart appeared, standing ankle-deep in the floor of the capsule. He smiled at Gandicon.
“I trust the–” he said.
The capsule launched.
Gandicon had time to feel a laugh bubble up in his chest as the sleek metal-composite bullet lunged forwards along the accelerator rail, pressing them back in their couches and leaving the Heart almost instantaneously behind. The boy vanished in a streak of blue and, with a mercilessly-intensifying crush of gravity that scarcely seemed lessened by the compensators, they hurtled into the city-spanning launch chute.
They accelerated, the dreadful heaviness increasing further and further, stopping the laugh in Gandicon’s throat. And then further, pressing his face against his skull and his ribs against his organs. It became frightening, then briefly panic-inducing – but only briefly, because it intensified beyond his nervous system’s ability to formulate survival-instinct reactions and process adrenaline.
Something hitched, parted, and collapsed in his chest, condensing into itself and smothering him like an excluding blanket. Blackness enveloped his senses as, for only the second time in his five millennia of life, Gandicon Ghåål lost consciousness.
XIX
“…old timer, come on back now, I don’t want to spend the next five days with a corpse.”
Gandicon’s eyes opened, and he winced in the light. It was muted, but still stabbed at his head painfully. He worked his mouth feebly for a few seconds before he was able to talk. “Ouch.”
“Yeah,” Bason rose lightly from where she’d been crouching next to him, and sat back on her own couch. “That was not pleasant. I estimate the acceleration pressure, the false weight, was almost double what they expected it to be,” she flexed slowly. “Someone down there really didn’t run enough tests and simulations.”
“Are you okay?” he rasped.
“I’m okay,” Bason replied. “I think I suffered some internal stresses and separations, but I’m healing. They included some stimulant packages and medical gear. I blacked out a little too,” she admitted. “When I came to, we were in space.”
Gandicon tried to prop himself up and look out through one of the capsule’s reinforced portholes, but the movement refreshed the ripping pain throughout his bruised innards, and he settled back with a low gasp. Bason looked as though she was about to return to his side, and he waved her off with a feeble hand. “So we made it off Dema, at least.”
“Right,” Karturi said. “We’re off on our little arc around the sun. If the aliens invade now, at least we might survive.”
She picked up the rounded beige shape of a medical kit and leaned off her couch to pass it to him. He accepted the kit but on fumbling it open realised there wasn’t much he could do externally. A stim pack would, he felt sure, finish the job of killing him. They were not recommended for Molren past Third Prime in any case, and certainly not for those chipping away at their sixth millennia.
“Do you know,” he said, closing the lid of the kit and concentrating on slowing down his bodily functions and shifting into a healing lull state, “that was only the second time in my life that I’d been unconscious – asleep, for want of a better word?”
“I think ‘unconscious’ is actually the better word for what we just did,” Karturi said, flexing again wearily. “But sure, I’ll take up the thread. It seems we’ve got time, and nothing else to do in it but heal. What was the first time you were unconscious?” she snorted. “And please don’t say it was when you were a baby or something, because you Lawkeeps have supreme powers of cognition and memory-retention.”
Gandicon laughed, then winced again at the stabbing pain it caused. “No,” he said, “Lawkeeps don’t have any particular gifts in that department. Certainly not Lawkeeps of my age. I’ve forgotten a lot about my life leading up to my First Prime.”
“You do remember your First Prime, though?” Bason seemed surprised. “Close to five thousand years ago?”
“Oh, First Prime isn’t the sort of thing you forget,” Gandicon said wistfully, “all those new hormones and synaptic connections, every day a new epiphany … even sinking back down out of it, a hundred years later, was an experience. And something of a relief, to be honest. You’ll see.”
“Can’t wait,” Bason’s face softened. “I never asked,” she said. “I assume you have children?”
Gandicon smiled. “Dozens,” he said, “from all three Primes. Only two from my Third, though. Sol Pur and Gosanatrix,” he shook his head weakly. “I haven’t seen either of them since…” he had to think about it. “Sol Pur was in Koi Beckons the last time I went there, and we caught up a little. That was almost two hundred years ago. Gosanatrix came to my five thousandth birthday since then. As a matter of fact, she was my five thousandth birthday. Nobody else came,” he looked down at the medical kit, inexplicably moved. “I haven’t seen any of my older children in longer than that.”
“This got maudlin much sooner than I was expecting,” Bason said.
Suppressing another grimace of discomfort, Gandicon lifted the kit off his lap and dropped it onto the floor. The capsule’s gravity was being provided by a low-power affector plate, so they weren’t quite floating but they were a lot lighter than they would have been under Dema’s gravity, let alone the awful pressure their acceleration down the rail-chute had bestowed. Gandicon felt queasy from the gravity drop, but he had to admit that it eased his discomfort. Under normal gravity, his injuries would probably never have healed. Whether they would do so now … well, that was still a matter of some doubt.
At the moment, the low-gravity nausea was overwhelmed by the dark, spreading numbness in his torso. His body would probably repair
itself, given time, but he would have to shut himself down into a lull very near to unconsciousness, to allow it to do its work.
“It was when I tried leap-surfing,” he said faintly.
“What was?” Bason asked.
“When I lost consciousness for the first time,” he explained. “It was when I tried leap-surfing for the first and last time.”
“You mean – the whole thing with a skim plate from an old dart engine,” Bason said, “which you stand on and lean forward and then…”
“Yes,” Gandicon smiled, “you just fall across the surface of the ocean, and use the waves as jumps. Damn fool thing to do … but I was a damn fool when I was fading out of my Second Prime. Second Prime is meant to be the sensible one, you know,” he smothered another laugh, but it still hurt. “I was boring through my First Prime, and boring through my Third. Truth be told I was boring through my Second as well, but at least as the last years of it trickled away, I made an ass of myself a few times.”
“I just can’t imagine you leap-surfing,” Bason admitted.
“I wasn’t very good at it,” Gandicon said. “That’s how I ended up impacting the water at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, and woke up in an isolation pod after getting a new spinal network installed.”
Bason laughed. “Now you in a med facility, groaning and grumbling and swearing you’ll never do anything fun again – that I can see.”
The journey was distinctly uneventful after their unexpectedly rough launch. The Old Enclave remained in contact with the capsule as it hurtled along Dema’s metaphorical wake around the sun, but there was nothing much the Lawkeeps could tell the travellers. There was still no sign of life – mechanical or otherwise – at the shipyard, and Bason concluded that they would just have to wait and see if they were met by any kind of reception when they arrived.
In the meantime, they recovered from their injuries. Karturi was back on her feet in a few hours, although she complained of occasional twinges of pain for a day or so. Gandicon, on another hand, was incapacitated on the acceleration couch for almost half of the five-day journey, much of it in and out of a therapeutic lull so deep it was almost unconsciousness again. He finally managed to rise, and the next day felt ready to use a half-dose of stimulant to accelerate the rebuilding effort taking place within him. The stim sent him trembling back to the couch for another half a day, but after that he began to feel almost like his old self. By the time they swept around to the far side of the system and entered the debris field, he was up and about and even using the exercise, waste and sanitation chamber for at least two of its three purposes. Exercise, for the time being, remained limited to regular and involuntary bodily motions.
Deadshepherd (Tales of the Final Fall of Man Anthology Book 1) Page 40
