Crystal Venom

by Steve Wheeler

  Marko nodded, looking serious. ‘Spike, do you still have comms with the Chrysops?’

  The little spider gave a sharp nod. ‘Yes. I think that they are tapping into the feeds but there is no attempt to block anything so far.’

  Marko looked at his ACE friends. ‘OK. Test the water, please, guys. I need to think.’

  He looked out the ellipse-shaped window onto the valley floor, which was still being hit by occasional lightning bolts. The rain had eased off and the sun could be seen through the clouds of the midafternoon sky. He stared upwards, missing the counsel of his friends, and then almost without thinking brought up the suit controls in his head and told it to open the helmet. The visor slid up and he sniffed cautiously, detecting air that smelt as if it was from a high forest — it was quite delicious to his ancient human senses.

  He allowed himself an optimistic smile as Glint flashed another message across. ‘Water is perfect, Marko, so clean it is frightening. Spike is attaching himself to the shower head to test it for you, anyway. There is even soap … as in a cake of soap. I tasted it, seems fine to me if you are into eating soap.’

  Marko barked out a short laugh and patted Glint on his head. ‘Ta. A shower sounds like a good idea.’

  He instructed the suit to strip itself from his body and as the last of the shunts popped out, Marko walked into the shower. Glint had turned it on for him and Spike had taken up a position looking down from above. He luxuriated under it for a few minutes, then stepped out and took a long woven cloth towel from Glint.

  ‘You have a problem,’ Glint told him.

  ‘What!’

  The dragon smiled mischievously. ‘No clothes to wear and it might be rude to walk out in the suit again.’

  ‘Bugger! Spare clothes are not the sort of thing you pack in a combat flier, eh? Go out and ask, will you, please? No, before you do that, how about you open that wardrobe?’

  Glint looked and laughed and Flint joined in with a tiny chuckle. ‘Yup! Like I thought, a monk’s outfit. And sandals! Funny. And no underwear! Now that is even funnier. We can call you Friar Marko!’

  *

  Five

  As Marko towelled himself off, Glint walked in on his two rear legs carrying a burnt-orange-coloured soutane of a very fine weave. Marko shrugged and put it on, finding the cloth beautifully soft against his skin, and started buttoning it from the top with its stiff collar, eventually reaching the hem. Glint gave him a thumbs up as Spike climbed up to perch on his shoulder. Marko looked down at his cobalt-blue hand, which seemed totally out of keeping, but decided against altering its colour, and walked out into the main area. There were smiles and nods exchanged between the family members, and Tomas came across to lead him to his backless seat.

  There was a sudden flurry of activity as no one had expected Glint to sit with them, let alone want to eat the same food, so another seat and setting was found. The ACE cheerfully announced that he would say grace, and that he wanted to sample everything as it all looked delicious.

  Marko inwardly groaned, wondering what would come next as Glint spoke: ‘We gather in this place of peace to eat this food lovingly prepared by our friends. We give thanks to one and all for this and for the pleasure of their company. Amen. Let’s eat!’

  Everyone smiled broadly, and Tomas patted Glint’s head from his vantage point of a high chair. As they took what they wanted from the bowls, Glint would take a small mouthful then bounce an ‘OK’ laser message off whatever piece of crockery he could use straight into Marko’s eyes. Marko judged the entire meal to be derived from vegetable mass with no animal protein used. Most of the tastes were familiar, although there were some exotic ones that he knew, recognising them as frighteningly expensive spices and he flashed a message to Glint querying a few of them. Glint answered that he was one hundred per cent certain they were grown locally.

  It was the wine that startled him the most. He likened it to a semi-sweet rosé, but with a complexity that he had never experienced before. His mind spent several minutes carefully working through the structures, but there were still fragments of the taste he could not fathom.

  *

  The remainder of the afternoon and evening were spent with the family, taking a tour of what Marko could only think of as a township living in and around a luminous mountain. Marko had discovered that the soutane was considerably higher tech than he previously thought. As they were about to leave his rooms, the cowl unfurled up over his head and a lower face mask sealed across his nose and mouth. He touched the mask and found that it was the same soft, finely woven cloth as the rest of the garment. He breathed normally, the oxygen levels in the air being adjusted for him by the cloth, and he altered his bioware back to normal. When he later commented on it, everyone just nodded and smiled.

  The higher they went up through the galleries and promenades, and even larger cathedral-spaces than the room he had previously seen — the stone carved into flowing shapes reaching up and down hundreds of metres — the more Marko sensed that the Avians were just the latest in a series of sentient occupants.

  ‘Ant. This place? How many types of sentient beings do you think lived here before you?’

  Ant looked at Marko for some time before answering. ‘That is indeed a most interesting question, Marko. We do not really know much, apart from the fact that size-wise they were similar to us. Indeed, we sometimes wonder if there is something here that we have overlooked. Come a little further before we can show you a most interesting object.’

  After climbing yet another set of stairs, regarding which Marko was starting to feel a little jaded, they entered a huge fan-shaped amphitheatre, at the end of which was a gigantic pipe organ.

  Marko stood for a few moments, overwhelmed, even though his head had already been overwhelmed by the things he had seen and dealt with throughout the long day.

  He shook his head in wonder. ‘Well, that’s something you do not see every day. One enormous kick-arse organ. Does it work?’

  Momo, who was standing beside Marko, replied, ‘No one knows how to properly play it. Some of us have tried, with what can only be described as “mixed” outcomes. The various Haulers who have visited it have all said that they would send us instructions, but it would seem such is low on their priorities as none of them has delivered.’

  Marko laughed and with a huge smile said, ‘Fritz. Yeah, Fritz could play it, I know. Oh, that reminds me. I have a lot of Fritz’s music with me. I know he’d want to share it with you. I can upload the files to you any time.’

  The Avians all started talking at once in acceptance of the gift, so Marko had Glint send the files from the Chrysops to the Avian data stores. A few minutes later Christa quietly approached Marko. ‘Marko, may we have a word with you in private?’

  He turned to see the gently smiling faces of Christa and Jamie. He nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Glint, take Spike and Jim and go have a look at the organ, please. See if it is in order, so Fritz can play it when the crew come down.’

  Glint raised an eyebrow at him, before moving away. Jamie took Marko’s hands in hers and looked into his eyes. ‘Marko, you are a life-former and we have followed some of your creations with great pleasure over the years. We wonder if we can formally ask your permission to father some of our offspring. I know that it is a common custom among your large families to father bloodlines for other clans, and we ask if you would do us this great honour.’

  Marko looked at the three women: two full-blood Avians and the other a standard human. He then looked around the great space they stood in, knowing that it had been designed and made specifically for the organ and the music it could produce, then he thought of his children being a part of the place and also having the choice of actually flying themselves.

  ‘It would be my honour,’ he said. ‘My thanks. Yes. So I presume you have a medical facility where I could donate sperm for the township’s use?’

  All three women smiled. ‘We were thinking of keeping it a little more in the family, Mark
o. Our daughters, Jema and Henrieta, asked us to ask you if they can spend tonight with you? For this we are most grateful. We shall tell them to go ahead and ovulate.’

  *

  The next morning, a still tired Marko awoke to find the two young women had left, so he took a long shower before instructing the Tux suit to envelop him. He decided that Glint must have cleaned it as it seemed in better order than when he had left it in the wardrobe. His hand weapons fitted nicely in the bag which had contained the fruit, so he stowed them, and then went out into the common room to find it deserted. He found a note suggesting what he could have for breakfast and explaining that they would be back for morning tea.

  He looked at and tasted the various cereals, dark heavy breads, spreads and juices before making himself a tasty breakfast. On a whim he opened a channel to the Chrysops, instructing it to power up its main communications systems, then sent Basalt a brief message saying that all was well. The data connection was poor, but he was able to upload a series of images directly from his cybernetics showing what he had seen and learnt. Minutes later the major tried to establish voice communications, but gave up as the two-way reception through the still scrambled magnetosphere was bad.

  The data feeds took Marko by surprise; their implications were grim.

  He linked the information into Spike’s data feeds from the Chrysops and asked him, wherever he was, to feed them on to Glint. The message came back that they were in another part of the mountain, talking with a large group of children at a local school, and would be returning soon. Marko reviewed the information concerning events high above them and wondered what to do next. He finished his breakfast, concluding that nothing good would come of him telling his hosts, so put on a smile and waited for their return.

  A message arrived from Glint. ‘Marko, are we going to get off this moon any time soon? I really like it here, but it is even better on Basalt.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure we will be OK, Glint. Stephine and Veg are back on board Basalt. Seems the whole trip to the other planets to check them out was bullshit to get them out of the way while Rick, the bastard, did the deed. Yeah, will know more late tomorrow. They are keen to meet the Avians and see the carvings and the habitat. Did you see the bit about Fritz and the latest compositions?’

  ‘Yes, Jim is expressing great interest in that. Shall I go prep the Chrysops?’

  Marko shook his head. ‘No, let’s have a drink with our hosts and go look for the dirigible and the surviving Rick proxy after that. Looking at the information about the crash site, it is only thirty-five kilometres from here.’

  Marko was enjoying another glass of juice when the family arrived, along with the Jim monitor, Spike riding on his carapace and Glint following. One by one the family members gleefully shook Marko by the hand and patted him on the back, telling him what a splendid sentient he was. Tomas gave the final confirmation: ‘My da, he says you Uncle Marko now, Marko.’

  Glint looked sideways at him, grinned, reached out and punched him on the shoulder. ‘So you have been breeding again, Father. Biologically this time! Imagine the AV on this, hey, Jim. Another scoop for you!’

  Marko groaned, then smiled, and was hugged by everybody. There were special hugs, long kisses and sensual suggestions from Henrieta and Jema that they would love to share his bed for as long as he stayed. The much younger Teri glowered jealously at her two older sisters.

  *

  The next morning, as they were flying down the long valley, Marko asked, ‘What’s our fuel status, Glint?’

  ‘Down to fifty-five per cent. Plenty of water to be had though, so no real concerns. And looking at the maps we are only thirty kilometres from the monastery anyway. Only need two per cent of the fuel load, at the current speed, to get back there.’

  Marko looked down at the steaming fungal forest below them and marvelled at the explosion of life that existed here.

  Earlier in the day they had flown the Chrysops up to the wreck of the Games Board lander to recover the bodies of Sirius and Ivana. On the way there they saw one of the huge starfish-like creatures laboriously fighting its way up under the waterfall and moving towards the creek where the wreck was. Glint, who had asked why it would be doing so, had been told by the family that the creatures craved metal. They could taste it in the water and would go to any length to obtain it. Marko had done a little calculation that the mass of the lander would represent three per cent of the mass of the giant animal, and when he had passed that fact to the Avians they had responded that it would make the creature extremely desirable for mating purposes. Marko shook his head in wonder and mused at the things creatures did to get laid!

  The senior members of the habitat had asked Marko what he wanted done with the bodies of Ivana and Sirius. He requested a simple burial, or disposal in the communal gardens, but he was refused because that was not the local custom. They asked if the people concerned were of good character, which gave Marko and Glint pause until Marko decided that at the end they had been good people and that the crew had cared for them. The elders bowed formally to him, then to Glint, saying that they would take care of it.

  They had helped Marko and Glint lift the bodies out of the lander and wrapped them in soft white cloth bags, face down, with arms extended as if in flight, and attached long ropes for lifting the bodies. One of the female elders had carefully exposed the faces of the women, cleaned them, then gently pried the eyelids open, sliding pearl-white pieces of stone under the eyelids so their eyes would stay open during their final flight. Five adult Avians lifted each body and other members of the village joined them as they flew high into the mountains towards a great vertical slab of black rock, on which could be seen many hundreds of cave entrances. The weather was calm, and high above them the cloud cover had shredded, allowing them to see the bulk of the ringed gas giant which Glint informed them was 1.3875 million kilometres away. Marko smiled, thinking that Glint just loved information of any kind.

  They landed at one of the lower caves, where the two dead women were placed in stone coffins carved into the rock. Before the bodies were sealed in behind rock lids, the female elder folded the arms of the corpses across their chests, slipped the little pieces of stone from their eyes and closed them, finally pulling the hoods of the wraps over their faces. She bowed to each of the dead, then slowly walked over to Marko, bowed to him and placed the stones in his hand. He looked and saw exquisite, wafer thin carvings of a white bird in flight on their surface. He bowed and thanked her then passed them to Glint who activated and opened a pocket on his flank and carefully slid them in with Marko’s money cards.

  All the time Jim had been silent, carefully recording everything. For the first time that day he spoke. ‘My gratitude and thanks to everyone for the honour shown my fallen colleagues. As you are aware, they will probably live again and I know that they will be deeply moved by your ceremony. I do not know what to say for them, except to declare that they would have enjoyed this very much.’

  Marko looked curiously at the monitor, who had assembled himself into a sphere and was hovering beside the graves. He wondered what was happening in its brain and if it actually comprehended death in any form … Jim had been effectively lobotomised by the producer; had the guys got all of Jim’s mind back when they rebuilt him? He reached across and patted the matt black machine and nodded at each of the Avians.

  ‘On behalf of my crew,’ Marko began, ‘I give thanks to you and yours, to your history, to your love of life and flight, to your caring attitude and dignity in the face of death. You have honoured people we cared for. I believe that the last thing to do today is to fly in honour of our friends.’

  He formally bowed to the assembled Avians, noting that Glint and little Spike did the same, then climbed into the Chrysops and led the Avians high into the sky to circle two times around the burial mountain.

  Marko then headed south to look for the downed dirigible. Most of the Avians had headed back to the village, except Dana and Dane, who were perched
on the small wings of the Chrysops holding onto the cockpit sides.

  Dana leant into the cockpit, loudly saying, ‘We are in the search area. I see broken trees at two o’clock, six hundred metres, Marko.’

  ‘A good place to start looking, Dane.’

  ‘Marko, the ship entity called Rick,’ Dane said. ‘Do you trust him? It is just that we have had dealings with him in the past, and we have always wondered as to his agenda.’

  Marko hesitated briefly, before replying truthfully. ‘Trust? Nope. Respect? Yes. The Haulers are an odd mix of biological and technological. They control the navigation points of this part of the Milky Way and they play games of great importance over very long time scales. No, I do not trust Rick. I like parts of him, but I also know that he would kill us in an instant if he believed that it would do humankind good. Actually, I think that he would kill this planet.’

  Dane’s eyes narrowed. ‘So, this is why he is using us as weapons?’

  A cold shudder went through Marko. ‘Weapons, Dane?’

  The Avian’s shoulders straightened. ‘We believe he has infected the refugees, who were the initial group taken off world, with a group of biological weapons tailored against the octopoids. We believe that this action is to kill octopoids on planets that they currently occupy — we of course as a subspecies have little interest in what lives below the waves. They naturally have no interest in what lives in the hills and mountains either. We wonder if this is a justifiable thing he has done. You are aware that this visit is the fourth he has made? He brings wonderful images of everything that we aspire to and the messages that come back from our kin are very encouraging … in particular to the young or dispossessed. The previous two times he brought some of our people back with him, but while we could see and talk to them they were not brought down to the surface.’