Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle

  Whatever her reasons, the Commander ensured that none of the crew talked about Thord’s seed with the people of Greentemple. This made explaining where they were going and why a bit more problematic, but Janya had found that just saying ‘we have Bonshooni passengers’ was enough to make most Molren nod. The abiding Greentemple belief about walled space was not entirely mutually exclusive with generalised Bonshooni philosophy about the veil shrouding the galaxy, so there was no inconvenient need for explanation. An entire modular on a quest to the edge of the galaxy was unusual even in normal circumstances, but the addition of an aki’Drednanth to the mix dealt with that.

  Janya had to take everyone’s word for all that took place on the Tramp, however. She turned a page, smiling at the flawless transference of data.

  The Molren of Say Sorry (Claws) had been quite excited to meet an aki’Drednanth and were justifiably disappointed by her seclusion, but had assured the visitors that they understood. And there had been a happy end to the tale – Thord had emerged from her chambers and performed a lap of the oxygen farm as the specialists were preparing to leave, and had greeted everybody graciously. The added thrill of meeting her outside of her envirosuit had made up for the earlier snub.

  Aside from the algae surplus from the dwindling ships, there was no sign of attack and Greentemple was entirely unaffected by the whatever-it-was that might have been going on out there, and about which they still knew far too little.

  “Why, though?” Janya wondered aloud, looking up from her book as they breached atmosphere and rose smoothly into the darkness of space.

  “Why what?” Zeegon looked up from the controls.

  “Why hasn’t Greentemple been attacked? Is it just because they had no AstroCorps beacon?”

  Zeegon shrugged. “Little farming backworld like this? Population of a couple of million? Not exactly a big target.”

  “It sort of is, though,” Janya disagreed. “I read up on the Adderback Confederacy. Recent history isn’t exactly my forté, but I … took a break. For the brief time between meeting the Mary Wiig Chrysanthemum and the Adderbacks realising war with the Six Species was a spectacularly bad idea, they moved juggernauts into position to cut off supply lines to Greentemple and the other three big algae farm worlds. They didn’t even know what these planets were, they couldn’t find any of the traffic that was making transit at relative speed, it’s not like there were space convoys … but they figured out where the ships were coming and going. These worlds are the lungs of the Six Species,” Z-Lin was nodding. Janya reminded herself that the Commander had been involved more directly than most of them in the contact with and brief campaign against the Adderback Confederacy. “So now we have an enemy – theoretically – with coordination and foreknowledge, advanced weapons, fast ships, and basically every advantage the Adderbacks lacked. Why aren’t these worlds burned?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” Z-Lin said. “And I started to wonder if it didn’t come down to just that. These new guys have the advantages. They can take out little settlements like Bayn Balro, and big relic-bases like The Warm, right down to killing the actual relic inside it, all basically with the same level of effort. In short, none. The Warm was effectively taken out in a matter of hours.”

  “We’re still looking at a very small sample,” Janya said, “and half of that sample, Bayn Balro, should have been so small that the bad guys didn’t even bother with it. They had a beacon, but…”

  “They also had a couple of dozen schools of sharks in the ocean and the moon,” Waffa reminded her, “at three thousand sharks per school. Most of Bayn Balro was stuff we didn’t see.”

  “That’s true,” Janya conceded. “But even by either of those standards, Zhraak Burns and Greentemple are pretty big.”

  “Big and low-tech,” Sally said.

  “Big and no Fergies,” Waffa repeated.

  “You think it’s the sharks these guys are targeting?” Janya asked. Waffa shrugged.

  “That doesn’t make sense either,” Z-Lin said with a shake of her head. “From what we’ve seen, most of the Fergunak got away by just … turning off their tech. Would anyone actually looking for them be fooled by that?”

  “Maybe the first couple of times,” Sally said.

  “Or maybe the sharks were lying about how they got away,” Zeegon suggested, “and these new bad guys are killing the other five species out from underneath the Fergies.”

  “Didn’t seem to be the way it went for them at The Warm,” Waffa said. “Seemed they managed to save a couple of ships that way, and the rest of them got spaced in a bunch of ice blocks.”

  “Like I keep saying,” Janya said, “we can’t form an alien invasion theory based on just two attacks, on such different targets. I’m not saying I want more attacks to take place, but until we know more, all we can do is guess. And places like this, of strategic value … there are just so many ways to slice this cake, so many different criteria an enemy could be using. The two attacks could be completely unrelated. The Warm might have just been the relic dying of natural causes, or some experiment gone wrong. Bayn Balro could have just been an undersea earthquake scrambling the Fergunak gridnet and making them go all feeding-frenzy. The other destruction – that we haven’t even seen – could be nothing more than the Artist’s insane ravings. And the Fleet activity we’ve seen, the Worldship movements and Separatists and MundCorp relocating, it could all be basically anything. I take it the Molren on Bloji and Dark Brutan told you nothing at Standing Wave.”

  “Right,” Clue said, the memory of whatever interaction had taken place back in orbit around Devil-May-Care still putting a bitter twist in her mouth.

  “And Waffa said it himself,” Janya added. “Expecting a Fergunakil to tell the truth is a good way to get yourself burned,” she paused, and added judiciously, “bitten. Drowned?”

  “Nobody ever drowned in a body of water containing a Fergie,” Waffa smiled.

  “Well, maybe we can ask them for more information when we catch up with them,” Z-Lin said.

  “You think we will?” Janya asked.

  “Sure,” Clue replied, “when they’re ready to pull us down.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Sally remarked. “I hope you’ll let me go with my shoot-them-in-the-face approach when the time comes,” Z-Lin gave a short grunt of amusement.

  “You think that’s what they’re doing?” Waffa asked. “Circling us?”

  “I’ve been on the wrong side of Fergunak before, once or twice,” Clue said. “They don’t need to be behind us to chase us.”

  It was a mere – a mere – two weeks from Greentemple to Burned Heart. The journey seemed to be over almost before it began, and Janya spent most of that time reading.

  After about ten days in the grey of soft-space, she was visited by Thord.

  “There is an aki’Drednanth living on Burned Heart,” Thord said without preamble once Janya had invited her into the library and she’d eased her way in through the requisite doorways. “Her name is Rime.”

  “Yes,” Janya said, sitting back in her couch, “I’d heard. We weren’t sure if she was still there, but I suppose you can confirm … ?” Thord inclined her big round-cornered helmet slightly. “Does this … have some bearing on your mission?” Janya asked. “Is there something we ought to know about – for example – what Rime might do when we come out of soft-space?”

  “No,” Thord replied, although she seemed uncertain. It was nothing in her electronically-modulated voice, of course, and Janya was no closer to reading the aki’Drednanth’s body language … but her light panel had shifted to a pale pink hue, denoting uncertainty. She was bothered about something. Not for the first time, Janya found herself wishing everybody on board had one of the mood indicators. “There is nothing in my actions that is proscribed by general aki’Drednanth practice. The seed, and my training with Dunnkirk and Maladin, it is … perhaps unorthodox, and questioned by factions within the wider Dreamscape, but it is not what you would
consider criminal, in any way.”

  “I don’t think it had occurred to anyone on board that it was,” Janya said in puzzlement, she gestured at the books on her table. “I’ve been reading about aki’Drednanth interactions with the rest of the Six Species,” she said, “and Molran, Blaran and Bonshoon experiences attaining the Dreamscape. And a bit about the art of able configuration, and the way you affected it.”

  “I had noticed,” Thord said, her light shifting from pink to a warm yellow of pleasure, “that you had been studying the ways your new ables – your new eejits – had been interacting with the rest of the fabricated components on board.”

  “It’s interesting,” Janya shrugged. “A way to pass the time. But you’re saying Rime – and the rest of the aki’Drednanth and the Drednanth itself – won’t have a problem with it?”

  “Even if there was a conflict,” Thord said, “it would not manifest itself as an action against me, or against this crew. I would not be attacked, arrested–” here, her lower bar gave the faintest flicker, a shadow of her former amusement, “anything of the sort. This is not how we operate.”

  “I understand that any sanctions for rebellion would occur while you are Drednanth,” Janya said carefully, “when you’re back in the Dreamscape between incarnations,” she hesitated. “Maybe in the form of another million-year wait before being allowed to become aki’Drednanth again?”

  The pink shade of uncertainty – so much like a human blush, Janya thought, that it could hardly be a coincidence – returned. “Maybe,” she conceded. “In either case, I would not consider Rime an opponent to any … cause … I might be pursuing.”

  “She’s sympathetic to your quest, then,” Janya concluded. Thord nodded again, although she was still signalling doubt. “So, forgive me, but what’s the problem? We’re probably not even going to stop at Burned Heart for more than a few hours. There’s nothing we need to pick up or drop off there. We might take some shore leave, spend a night, since it’s another eleven-week leg out from Burned Heart to Declivitorion. But I think the only thing that would keep us there any longer would actually be you,” she spread her hands. “If you wanted to go and pay Rime a visit, we’d basically be obligated by AstroCorps regulations to honour your request – and more than that, of course, we’d happily do so out of friendship. You haven’t seen one of your own kind since … well, since Isaz,” she concluded delicately.

  Thord acknowledged this with a bow of her head. “But you know this does not matter,” she said.

  “Yes,” Janya agreed. “You’re as connected as you need to be with all of your kind, both aki’Drednanth in the flesh world and Drednanth in the Dreamscape, while we’re in normal space. I guess it’s a humanocentric question, but … isn’t there any benefit in meeting up with an aki’Drednanth face-to-face? Please don’t misunderstand – I’m not asking anything so crass as whether you’d want to take a shore leave excursion for physical companionship,” she said hastily, “but if there is any benefit in meeting Rime in person…” she shrugged. “I understand she lives in the polar region of Burned Heart,” she went on, “so it might just be a benefit as simple as getting out of that suit and having a run around in a slightly wider and more varied environment than the oxygen farm.”

  “I understand,” Thord assured her. “It might be enjoyable, but I am … I feel I am beyond such things. In a few short months we will be at the edge, and my journey will be over. There is nothing I need to say to Rime that we cannot do through the Dreamscape, while we are in orbit around Burned Heart.”

  “And that will only take a few seconds,” Janya said, “from what I’ve read, and heard. That Dreamscape communion takes place on a heavily-condensed speed-of-thought timescale.”

  “Yes.”

  “So … again, I guess I have to come back to ‘why are you telling me this?’,” Janya said. “Why have you paid me this visit, and why are you telling me about Rime?”

  “Because there is a chance that she might wish to visit the ship,” Thord said, the pensive pink glow returning to her light panel. “To see the seed. We enter a critical time now, this is why – it is one of the reasons I have been so insistent that my quarters are not intruded upon. We are a territorial species.”

  “We understand this,” Janya said. There had been a number of misunderstandings and minor incidents throughout the course of the trip, but they’d always cleared the air afterwards. “But … okay, wouldn’t Rime also understand that the seed needs to be left alone?”

  “Perhaps,” Thord said, then added more certainly, “probably. As I said, it is a chance. A chance only.”

  “And why are you bringing this to me?” Janya went on. “If it comes down to one aki’Drednanth wanting to come aboard, and another wanting to refuse her access, that’s a command decision way above my pay grade. Have you talked to Z-Lin?” she hesitated again. “Or the Captain?”

  The warm pink bars of light on Thord’s helmet brightened, and the uppermost bar went completely dark for a few seconds while she spoke. “I have not,” she admitted. “But … perhaps you understand, it is not their decision either.”

  “I suppose not,” Janya conceded. “It’s the proverbial rock and hard place, for an AstroCorps officer. Both you and Rime would fall under priority zero, and either one of you could scramble the minds of the sentients on board if it came down to either party getting insistent. You or Rime could probably make short work of the three-hundred-odd fabricants on board too, for that matter,” Thord inclined her head again. “Which still doesn’t explain … are you here to ask me for advice?” she blinked.

  “Yes.”

  Janya sighed, and sat for a moment. “You want to keep Rime off the ship, in the unlikely event of her wanting to come aboard,” she said. Thord nodded. “But if she turns up at our docking blister in her own ship – she has one, yes?” Thord nodded again. “If she turns up in orbit and asks to come aboard, there’s nothing any of us can do,” another nod. “And she knows you’re coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then here’s my suggestion,” Janya said briskly. “You, and Maladin and Dunnkirk if you like, get in a lander as soon as we’re about to hit normal space. As soon as we arrive, get into the Dreamscape and tell Rime that you’re on your way down. Zeegon or Decay will fly you down to the pole and you can catch up with Rime. Keep her on the surface. Say whatever you need to say to convince her that she shouldn’t come up here to poke at the seed with a stick,” Thord flickered her lights faintly in amusement. “I can’t advise you on how best to take care of that, but in my experience the best way to stop somebody from paying you an unwanted visit is to get the visit out of the way first, by dropping in on them.”

  “A strategy you failed to employ, when I first intruded on you here in your quarters,” Thord noted, this time with more pronounced amusement.

  “Well, exactly,” Janya said with a slight lift of her eyebrows. “I know what I’m talking about. Beyond that very simple trick, I really can’t suggest any actions here.”

  Thord rose smoothly to her feet with a soft clunk of her envirosuit. “I believe this will suffice,” she said. “Your original suggestion, that I take shore leave and pay my fellow aki’Drednanth a face-to-face visit, was a good one.”

  “It has the added benefit of being something nobody on board is likely to question,” Janya added, “as long as your more aki’Drednanth-accustomed companions don’t say anything.”

  “They will not,” Thord replied, then added in amusement, “humanocentric, yes?”

  Janya smiled faintly. “No offence intended to Decay,” she frowned slightly. “How did you make it?” she asked. “The seed. I’ve been reading and reading, and there’s only the most sidelong references to the process. Is it secret?”

  “No,” Thord said, “it is just … personal, unique to the Drednanth who craft each piece.”

  “I assume your use of the term Drednanth is intentional.”

  “A lot of the work is done from the Dream
scape,” Thord nodded, “before the aki’Drednanth crafter re-enters this sphere. You remember, no doubt, what I told you of my long wait as Drednanth?”

  “You passed up opportunities to return to the flesh,” Janya said, “in order to get some sort of preferential placement on the ladder when you returned thirty-something years ago.”

  “Essentially. Timing is critical,” Thord lowered herself back onto her haunches. “I could not begin the painstaking work of crafting the seed, if my bid to return to aki’Drednanth was likely to be refused. And so I waited. Once that obstacle at least was reduced as much as practical, I began the work. It is not entirely dissimilar to extending the Drednanth mind in the Great Ice – but it is a very difficult process to put to words, which is why literature on the subject is sparse.”

  “That’s one way of saying it,” Janya muttered good-naturedly. “But basically it’s an atomic-level rearrangement of ice crystals into an information-bearing lattice – construction of a giant brain, in grossly basic terms – and it happens in much the same way as Drednanth guide the formation of their aki’Drednanth forms in the womb, yes?” Thord nodded. “Drednanth consciousness infusing the cells on a tiny scale, via some sort of electrochemical reaction.”

  “Complex beyond complexity,” Thord said, “but the theory is sound. The mind works her way into the flesh world from the Drednanth to the aki’Drednanth, embodying herself in the aki’Drednanth brain and housing herself in the aki’Drednanth body. And so it is with the seed – only not with a Drednanth mind, so much as a cross-section, a snapshot of the Drednanth totality.”

  “No wonder it’s a hundred and fifty feet long,” Janya remarked.

  “Indeed.”

  “So you … you began to grow the seed before you became aki’Drednanth?”

  “Yes. In a sense. In purely physical terms, of course, a place was needed to house the ice while it grew.”

  “Isaz?”