Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle

  “That is not important right now.”

  “On the contrary. It’s extremely important. If Janus Whye used to counsel plants, and now he’s counselling this crew, that’s the funniest thing that’s happened today,” he waved a hand, taking in the janitorial and the struggling, bleeding Chief Tactical Officer. “And today has been funny.”

  “So, this is how you wish to play,” NightMary said.

  Sally, Glomulus noted with admiration, was using the blood from the hand she’d sliced on the applicator nozzle to lubricate her forearm slowly forwards along the arm of the janitorial ‘couch’, through the assortment of clamps and appendages. He couldn’t see what her end-game might be – but then, he had to admit, if he’d been in the habit of seeing through Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed, he probably wouldn’t have been caught by her. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “How has she made you so meek?” NightMary asked in frustration. “Has she broken you? The terrible Glomulus Cratch?”

  “Not sure I ever qualified as a ‘the terrible’,” he demurred, “although ‘broken’ was probably a given from the start … but mostly, I suppose it’s a matter of leverage,” he thought, in spite of himself, about the darkness in the early days of his imprisonment, those first few attempts to talk his way into his jailers’ heads. He wondered why NightMary wasn’t playing any of those cards. Could it be that her omniscience didn’t stretch that far?

  Probably not something worth betting on.

  Sally had worked her arm forward until she could reach a pocket near her knee, which was raised up now because of the still-tightening clamp. He wondered if her kneecap was broken yet. Probably severely fractured, at the very least. Sweat was trickling down her round, pleasant face as heavily as blood. She had a small, smooth object in her hand.

  “As I have said,” NightMary was continuing, “you will walk free. You will do it to save your jailer, or she will die in the next two minutes. Or you will watch her die, and perhaps some part of you will enjoy that, and then your little rebellion will be for nothing, because you will still walk free. I know this.”

  It was some sort of weaponised data scrambling device, he thought, trying not to peer at it too obviously and yet just as aware that NightMary’s senses would detect his line of sight anyway. Evidently, she didn’t consider it a threat – or she didn’t recognise it. He reminded himself that NightMary had been around for a long time, but had only experienced things actually brought into the Bunzolabe. She couldn’t read his experiences from his mind. Probably.

  He’d seen such devices in use at student rallies, back during his misspent, activist youth. The L’Guara Barricade had fallen because the cops had brought the hammer down so hard. It had succeeded, in the eyes of the idealists, for much the same reason, and the outcry the police action had led to … but so much knowledge had been lost.

  The cluster-gauss grenade set off a specialised feedback pulse of electromag energy. Danged if Glomulus actually understood the mechanism, but the upshot was that it wiped electronics and took out control-and-info relays with devastating effectiveness. A half-dozen of them had dismantled the entire L’Guara communications and coordination structure, and essentially ended the rebellion.

  And if this was the same sort of thing, he thought, Sally would be insane to let it go off in her fist. The physical explosion was small, contained, and extremely hot. On the other hand, she didn’t have the leverage to throw it, and it would – at best – end up in her lap. A grenade going off in your hand wasn’t nice, but the same grenade going off in your lap was probably high on the list of less preferable alternatives.

  “Step out, Glomulus Cratch,” NightMary cajoled. “What stays your hand? What could possibly motivate-”

  “If I leave the brig, I’ll kill them all,” he allowed himself to blurt. “I’ll start with the bat-head, then take it from there.”

  Yes, he thought. Read my vitals. Tell me if that’s a lie.

  “I’ll make it simple for you,” NightMary said after a moment’s apparent thought. “I’ll take the choice away from you. I will cause such damage, such unspeakable hurt, only you will have the skill-set to fix it. Your crew is in such a state, such an expertise vacuum, they’ve been very lucky to last as long as they have with no medic. You will do what is right. Oh, and I am adding to my requirements, since you are being so obstinate. I also want you to tell me about the Molran.”

  “I told you, he insists on there being a difference between Molren and Blaren-”

  “I don’t care about the fucking Blaran!” NightMary shrieked, her vehemence making Glomulus blink in surprise.

  Sally had the grenade in her hand, teeth bared. She was clearly steeling herself, not listening to a word of the mystifying banter going on between convict and robot. Not even Glomulus could guess whether she was actually going to ‑

  The grenade went off with a flash, and a wash of warmth that Glomulus felt on his face from where he was sitting. He had time to realise, with a silly feeling of victory, that the warmth meant NightMary had reversed his cell panels. If he’d attempted to leave, he would have come up against a solid wall.

  The blast also blackened the blood on Sally’s face and body, scorched her uniform, frizzled her hair and left a hilarious blast-mark across the floor and over the blood-streaked white carapace of the janitorial. Glomulus didn’t have more than a split-second to enjoy the amusing sight, however, or his flush of triumph over winning this round of NightMary’s game, because the lights went out and his cell panels flash-polarised back into the opaque solidity of full lockdown.

  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,” Sall
y 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 yea
rs 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’.”