“I’m just glad you were in shutdown,” Bason said as they sat together eating high-nutrient rations and looking out of the fore porthole. “I am not ready to help a quinmillennial defecate.”
Gandicon chuckled. The expulsion of air still pained him, but the discomfort was no longer accompanied by that awful shifting-and-parting sensation in his torso. “We quinmillennials count ourselves lucky if we defecate ten times a year,” he said. “And anything more than a puff of dust is cause for concern.”
“Nice.”
The capsule, which for the past few days had seemed to hang in the dark with the ferocious spark of the sun on their right-hands-side, now let its velocity be known as they dived into the mass of shattered rock and ice that formed a sort of moonlet-studded lens on this side of the system. Whether or not it would eventually accrete back into a planet was uncertain – there was no sign of increasing density or combustion at the thickest part of the lens, and Gandicon judged that the whole field’s collapse was being prolonged by the mass of the larger bodies. He was by no means an expert on planetary accretion, however. Dema didn’t really have any of those anymore.
“How responsive are the collision sensors and manoeuvring engines on this thing?” he felt obliged to ask on the tail of this thought. Bason replied with a shrug. “I’m just wondering whether they misjudged the density of the debris over here as severely as they misjudged the acceleration of the rail launch.”
“Oh, the sensors and engines are short-range, basically no good for anything but final braking and docking at whatever there is to dock with out here,” Karturi said casually. “If there’s a rock in our path, we’ll be dead before we even notice it.”
“That’s a relief.”
“But the chances of that are actually pretty slim. The debris field looks far more tightly-packed from our perspective than it really is. Most of the rocks are wide-spaced enough to allow several hundred thousand of these capsules between them, abreast.”
“You don’t say.”
“And we’re not flying right into the centre of the field,” she went on. “We’re only passing through the edge of it. The shipyard, if that’s what we’re calling it, is somewhere on the side farthest from the sun.”
“Where the machine mind can keep an eye open for the alien hordes,” Gandicon suggested.
“Maybe,” Bason chewed on her rations. “Besides,” she went on, “I’m almost certain that there’s been a path cleared for us.”
“What?”
She gestured with her half-eaten protein block. “Even given the actual emptiness of this field,” she said, “there’s fewer rocks in the area immediately defined by our flight pattern. Part of that is because the Old Enclave boffins programmed our flight pattern to correspond to this channel … but I’m convinced it’s not a natural gap.”
“Dragged clear by larger bodies on their way out of the collision zone?” Gandicon hazarded.
Bason shrugged again. “Maybe,” she repeated.
They cruised silently through the debris field for an extended period of time without being killed before noticing it, which Gandicon supposed was a relief. When the shipyard finally slid into view, it took them both a while to realise what they were seeing.
The only recognisably artificial structure was a long, fragile-looking spar extending like a thread across their path, with a series of even thinner rails stretching off it. Only one or two of the pylons were visible at a time, as the sunlight caught them through the oppressive cloud of the debris lens. The slender rails, themselves a trio of massive composite columns, speared into the dark towards the craggy shapes of three dusty-looking moonlets. The bulbous, uneven shapes, like enormous examples of the tubers Gandicon grew in his yard at home, seemed to be tethered to the central spar.
Three of them.
And then, as they dived closer and their perspective shifted to reveal the angular junction of rail and rock, Gandicon hissed a sharp intake of breath through his teeth.
Not moonlets. Vessels.
You must take the hearts and awaken the vessels that will carry your people to safety.
“Vortex’s balls,” Gandicon breathed.
“I told you so,” Bason said quietly.
XX
The capsule decelerated with a far gentler but still alarming wrench of false weight, and angled itself almost delicately towards the spar. The technicians at the Old Enclave had fitted the capsule with airlocks according to the old Grandis 459 locks, but had no real way of knowing whether the shipyard sported the same design. They’d simply hoped, with a fair degree of confidence, that there had been no major structural changes in the intervening millennia that would make docking impossible.
Whatever agency was responsible for the ongoing work at the shipyard, however, had apparently gone a step further and assumed there would be some manner of design shift, and had taken this into account by simply creating a sealed dock large enough for a vessel some three times the size of the capsule. The spar itself was dotted at regular intervals with pods comprising dock and – they discovered only after an ear-stiffening moment of decompression – minimal but workable life support. The dock enclosed the capsule, sealed, and cycled atmosphere before Bason declared it safe for them to disembark. It was cold, and the air was thin, but it was survivable. Gandicon wasn’t sure he wanted to know what might have happened if they’d come in a considerably larger capsule – or, for that matter, how they were supposed to transport larger numbers of Molren to the shipyard, if indeed that was going to be the plan.
The pods also doubled as transportation nodes, or such was Gandicon’s guess. They didn’t get a very good look at the overall design as they approached, but he thought the spar and its adjoining rails were connected to the docking-and-habitation pods in such a way as to allow access to some sort of transportation or maintenance shaft inside the larger structure. Perhaps a mag-chute coach or similar vehicle. If it was a launching rail, he just hoped it was more forgiving than the capsule in which he and Bason had arrived.
It was with some relief that Gandicon stepped from the capsule and into the chilly dock chamber, still limping slightly but feeling good despite his lingering discomfort. The spar turned out to have artificial gravity closer to that of Dema, and although this exacerbated his injury it was somehow restorative to be his own weight once more. Bason, on another hand, looked troubled.
“Well, we’re obviously expected,” Gandicon said in an attempt to reassure her, “and there’s something out here. Those ships – or whatever they are – didn’t build themselves.”
“Actually, I’m beginning to worry that they might have,” Karturi said, but didn’t elaborate on this alarming proclamation. “And we haven’t heard anything from the machine mind yet. Not even another densely coded alteration of the capsule’s data nodes.”
“Did you try just … raising it on the communication system?”
“Yes,” Bason replied, “all I could get was a scratchy line to the Old Enclave – enough to tell them that we’d arrived in one piece – and a dead-air recorded message from whatever’s keeping the air and heat on in this superstructure.”
“So there’s a message, at least.”
“Okay, ‘message’ is the wrong term for me to use,” Bason said dryly. “There’s a test-pattern repeating – you know, operational status, awaiting instructions … and before you ask, no,” she added, “there’s no sign of what sort of instructions it’s waiting for and how we might provide them. And there doesn’t seem to be any sort of comms setup in this thing,” she gestured around the spacious, featureless chamber they’d stepped into.
“Let’s maintain a bit of optimism,” Gandicon said, feeling profoundly unnatural in the role but seeing its necessity. “We got here alive, although it was a close call – and like I say, we were clearly expected. We’ve been here all of twenty seconds so it’s not too late for a controlling intellect to contact us and even if it doesn’t, things appear to be operational so we might be a
ble to figure out the next step. Even more importantly…” he reached into a pocket and lifted out one of the softly-glowing spare hearts, “…there are three vessels out here, and three Bharriom crystals to power them. So there’s communication happening at some level, even if we’re not involved.”
“I wouldn’t call them vessels,” Bason said. “They might just be hollowed-out rocks.”
“Artificially hollowed-out rocks,” Gandicon amended.
She glanced at him as they crossed the dock to the only Molran-sized door they could see. “You really think the machine mind and the Bharriom phantom are in this together?” she asked, and turned to study the door. It was featureless apart from a panel on one side of its frame, and when she put her fingertips to it the door slid silently open to reveal a much smaller but just-as-featureless chamber. The parts of the structure they’d seen so far had a construction-and-packing-material dustiness and a general just-finished look about them, but now they were leaving the dock Gandicon could almost smell the centuries in the air.
“I don’t know about that,” he answered. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious to me that the Grandis 459 arrived here with a Bharriom crystal in her engine and two more spares in hand, and if the machine mind stayed behind with the cargo section after the settlers disembarked, and if it started to oversee the construction we saw on our way in, it stands to reason that it would make three ships – one for each heart that it found reference to in the ship manifest, to maximize the potential evacuation volume.”
“Makes sense,” Bason admitted. The next room had two doors, one of which had a simple blue symbol on it that obviously indicated it was some sort of elevator. That made sense, since – if Gandicon’s spatial estimation was correct – the door intersected with the main spar body. Karturi frowned at the door, then the patterned panel next to it. Unlike the door-opening panels, this one seemed more convoluted. “Depending on what those things look like inside, they’re … quite a lot more than five times the size of the Grandix building.”
“I’d say so,” Gandicon said, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Remember what the Grandix guide said?” Bason replied, and flicked her interface device out into a lower hand.
“…cargo section was five times the size of the ship we’re currently touring,” the device recited in the guide’s voice, “and dedicated to high-density storage capsules for close to two million Molren, with highly-contained power distribution and maintenance space and very little else…”
Gandicon whistled through his teeth. “Right,” he said, “if that information was correct, and the Grandis 459’s cargo hold could carry two million … I’d estimate those structures out there are maybe a hundred, and hundred and fifty times as long as Grandix was tall … just going by length alone, they might hold a hundred times as much cargo, or more.”
“A quarter of a billion Molren,” Bason said, and shook her head. “As if we had any way of getting even two million people up here, let alone two hundred million,” she gestured at the panel. “Does this mean anything to you?” she asked. “No offence, but you’re probably closer to its design era than I am.”
Gandicon grunted in amusement, and pointed at the design. “Those three points are probably representative of the three rails and the ship at the end of each,” he said, “and that line across the lower section represents our location on the spar. You’re right, now that you mention it – it’s an old picture-form they used to use in architectural schematics for the standardisation and archiving–”
“That fluffery was used as a standardised information format?” Karturi snorted.
“It was a more artistic time,” Gandicon replied, putting on a tone of injured dignity. He reached out and tapped the icon representing the closer of the three vessels. “Maybe if we get to one of the ships, the machine mind will register our arrival.”
“It already contacted me from across the Cath Hell oh damnit.”
Bason skipped back with an oath as the elevator door opened and the Heart smiled up at them both. His glowing presence turned the inside of the cylindrical elevator chamber blue.
“Hello,” he said.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Gandicon stepped past the Heart and waited for Bason to join him in the chamber. She did so, still looking at the Bharriom phantom narrowly. “We were just discussing whether you were in contact with the guiding intelligence of this construction site.”
“I–”
“–don’t understand?” Karturi guessed a little abrasively.
“Yes,” the boy smiled at her. “I don’t think I have talked with anyone – I have spoken only with Gandicon Ghåål, at least until I was able to talk to those in his presence – but no, not in this place. I may be in communion with them, able to access information … but I do not know how. I do not know if there is even an applicable process in your terms.”
“You knew there were three vessels up here,” Gandicon said. “When you mentioned vessels, I took you to mean the sleeper pods, and you didn’t contradict me. Perhaps you didn’t know enough to contradict me. But you meant the three cargo craft that have been built up here.”
“Did the people in the Old Enclave say that this was a shipyard?” the Heart asked innocently.
“He’s got you there,” Bason said, and looked around. “Do we need to press anything else? There aren’t any controls in here.”
The doors had closed, and the elevator now seemed to be waiting. Gandicon looked around, but even his ancient artistic sensibility failed to detect any more decorative panels. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the Heart. The Heart smiled trustingly up at him.
“I think I kept up with you this time,” the child said, “didn’t I, Gandicon?”
“What–” Gandicon said.
The door opened on a dark stone corridor.
XXI
The corridor, that appeared to have been cut into solid grey-black rock, was illuminated by a grimy strip of phosphorent in the ceiling. It looked like the phosphos in Gandicon’s home back in Bonshoo Drop, only this one couldn’t be solar-fuelled.
They were looking into the interior of the closest cargo ship. Into an airlock-tunnel that bored through her outer hull. It was thick – there was no way of saying how thick, as the strip of phospho dwindled into darkness before the far end of the passage became visible – but Gandicon got the impression that it was just a shell.
It was misleading, he thought, to keep calling them cargo ships. They were something more than that.
“Worldships,” he murmured.
“What?” Bason said, her voice also hushed.
“These ships are going to carry the Molran world to safety,” he said. “As much of it as we can take,” he looked down at the Heart. “Once we wake them up.”
“We look forward to it,” the Heart said. “Time is short.”
Bason took a few steps into the tunnel, then stopped and turned, rising and falling on the balls of her feet. “The same gravity as the spar,” she said. “I think they’re reactive density plates. There were sections in the Grandix building that had obviously been fitted out in the same way.”
“I’m just impressed that the elevator carried us here without us even feeling the movement,” Gandicon said, rubbing his chest idly at a lingering deep-down twinge. The capsule launch had, he knew on some almost-subconscious level, ended him – but he would last a little longer. He had to. “That’s some impressive inertial cancellation.”
“Also related to the artificial gravity,” Bason nodded, “I just don’t–”
“Standard neutral welcome.”
Karturi hissed, biting off another curse and looking at the ceiling. The voice had come from the phospho strip.
“Is that the machine mind?” Gandicon asked.
“Query recognised,” the voice said. “Context necessary for determination.”
“It might be,” Bason said, “but its interaction processes are basic. Limited – perhaps even more so than our comput
ers on Dema. It might be conscious, but incapable of imitating organics,” she started tapping and flicking away on her interface. “Just as our computers are communication-compatible, but non-sentient.”
“As soon as any of this makes sense to you, just be sure to share it with the mystic Bharriom phantom delegation,” Gandicon said, gesturing at the Heart and himself wryly.
“Data flow established,” the voice intoned. “Context loading.”
“I’ve created an uplink to my interface,” Bason said, “and it might even connect through the capsule to allow some sort of data transmission from Dema. If the system needs context, we’ll give it some context.”
“Isn’t that a little risky?” Gandicon said. The three travellers moved deeper into the tunnel, although Gandicon for one was hesitant to get too far from the welcoming light of the elevator and the safety it represented. That safety was an illusion, he knew. There was nothing back in the capsule, and the only slim chance they had of returning to Dema lay ahead of them, not behind … but it was a slim chance. The shipyard, the Worldships, struck Gandicon as a destination. Once here, there was no going back.
Bason turned and frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“I just mean, offering a potentially sentient artificial entity access to … you know what?” he ran a hand over his face. “Never mind me. If whatever is running the shipyard sent you a warning about the threat to Dema, it’s safe to assume it’s not as dangerous as the actual threat.”
Deadshepherd (Tales of the Final Fall of Man Anthology Book 1) Page 41
