Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  Moskin nodded. “And Blacknettle is helping with that somehow?”

  “Let me show you,” Bayn said. “Have you finished eating?”

  “Yes, but I also need to…” he wormed a finger illustratively, before realising Bayn probably had no idea what he meant. “Pass waste,” he concluded.

  “Ah, of course,” Bayn said, “please – I have implemented a chamber design from my schematics database. I could obviously have rerouted the recycling systems and altered the chair you’re sitting on to be a receptacle, but assumed you might find this in poor taste.”

  “We organisms do have an ingrained issue with shitting where we eat,” Moskin agreed with a smile, and grabbed a couple more of the panashta pastries before standing. Damn fool. “Thank you.”

  The leftover food slowly slid back into the gastroclave’s maw, and another passageway moulded open in the side of the dining chamber. Moskin followed it along a short forest-patterned passage and stepped into a pleasant and apparently-functional toilet shaded with clinical-yet-warm beiges and yellows, and a ceiling like stormclouds. It was one of the more dramatic toilets he’d ever been in, and the appliance itself was almost sumptuous with its padding and rich maroon colouring. After the hard white dining chair, it was enough to make Moskin wonder whether Bayn was being just a little bit sarcastic. He lowered his trousers and sat, noticing as he did so that the room also incorporated what looked like bathing facilities. He waited a while, but the Flesh-Eater remained silent.

  “You can go on talking if you like,” he said. “I’m not particularly squeamish about privacy while I pass waste. And I’m assuming you’re not either.”

  “Ah,” Bayn said, sounding relieved. Moskin wondered just how much privacy was really possible in the ship that was Bayn’s flesh and bones. Evidently she’d been listening in some way, ready to respond. “I wasn’t sure. Humans and Molren have some hang-ups. I’m not offended by you expelling nutrients into my recycling system through the waste receptacle, any more than you should be by me expelling nutrients into yours through the gastroclave.”

  “There’s a comparison I wouldn’t have thought of,” Moskin chuckled. “So … is there anything else you can tell me about your studies at the moment? Are we going back to Blacknettle’s chamber after this?”

  “Actually, the observation deck,” Bayn replied. “But it touches on my study of the Angel.”

  “How malleable is your interior?” Moskin asked. “And your exterior, for that matter?”

  “My interior structure is loosely restricted,” Bayn said, “with some fixed decks and functions, some bulkheads and distribution pylons … but I do have a certain amount of internal adjustability. Cyclical systems, life support, gravity, weapons, as well as most of the superficial stuff, I can move a lot of it around and fabricate a lot of simple functions, as you see.”

  “Indeed,” Moskin finished his business and rose. “Impressive.”

  “I was initially designed to accommodate humanoids and Molranoids in comfort,” Bayn went on, “which has provided an acceptable internal scale for the Áea physiology as well, with only a minor adjustment upwards in size from the Molran average. I implemented this as you were leaping across to enter my primary access hatch.”

  “I haven’t been banging my head on doorways,” Moskin allowed.

  “I can also expand my hull, at need, to a length of approximately thirty thousand cubits,” she continued, “although field generation and maintenance requirements take a hand at that stage and my other dimensions can only be a fraction of the length as expressed by a standard field dynamics calculation … well, never mind. It’s unnecessarily complicated.”

  Moskin shook his head, smiling. “But the observation deck is more or less locked,” he summarised, “and Blacknettle has to remain in your … in your laboratory.”

  “Oh,” Bayn non-laughed again. “It’s not a laboratory, Moskin. It’s a chapel.”

  “It is?” Moskin was surprised. “Is that just because it has an Angel in it, some sort of official terminology thing or–”

  “No no, nothing like that. It is actually a chapel,” the Flesh-Eater explained as Moskin washed up, then followed the passageway back towards the observation deck. “Blacknettle’s chamber is my officially-designated and consecrated place of worship. All Category 9 Convoy Defence Platforms and their subsidiary vessels were designed with chapels. It’s not that she needs it – Angels, you see, have trouble functioning in some situations if they’re not on consecrated ground – but it seemed to make the interface work better. Out here in the gulf, Angels tend not to come – but it is not out of concern that they might go dormant.”

  “That Angel back in Fade seemed pretty insistent,” he noted.

  “Foolishness,” Bayn said. “The Angels would not act – not in a military sense – against established Brotherhood orders such as my mandate. All they can do is yap about the Archangelic court, and make empty threats. It’s actually rather outrageous.”

  “Outrageous?”

  “One of the primary functions of the Angelic Chorus is to save face for the governments of Heaven,” Bayn said. “Coming down with a trumpet and a bunch of official huffing and puffing to blow into it – then failing to back up any of the hot air – is ultimately detrimental to their image. Half of Fade saw me murder a citizen in front of that Angel, and tell her to come and get Blacknettle back, and they saw her blink.”

  “I’m not sure undermining the authority of Heaven is something we should be aspiring to,” Moskin suggested, making a note of that murder. So Bayn did have some grasp of the acts she was committing, even if they didn’t seem to be of the slightest concern to her.

  “If that authority is becoming dangerously self-dependent, ponderous and weak, it is our duty to undermine it,” Bayn said, but she sounded playful again rather than rebellious. “But you’re right, of course – I would never dream of actually defying the great wingèd servants of God. Now,” she went on, “as I mentioned, I have been working on a way to make Blacknettle, well, work…”

  Moskin stepped back into the observation deck, which aside from a bit of pleasant texturing was more or less the same as it had been before. Its function, he supposed, was not particularly well-served by unnecessary decorations.

  The room darkened and the ballworld Earth, shining spherical map-wraparound of mortality, reappeared above the display platform. This time, the masses of winking lights were muted, rendering the globe into a soft background frame. Onto that frame, in a stuttering series of blinks and streaks, a new set of lights appeared.

  “What is this?” Moskin asked, studying the tiny flecks of light as they circled, jagged across landmasses, settled, vanished and reappeared.

  “It’s another guesswork-based composite,” Bayn said, “but there are six distinct clusters of … probability, one might call them – although that is a gross oversimplification of the concept. I will once again tell you as plainly as I can. These, I believe, represent Angels currently active on the exiled Earth.”

  Moskin stared, although he had already suspected that was what he was looking at. “Only six?”

  “Only six,” Bayn said, “but there’s more to it than that. Of these six, only one was actually confirmed as having been there all along, so to speak. The other five have turned up over the past few hundred years.”

  Moskin squinted. “Turned up?”

  “It was one of the initial clues that led us in,” Bayn explained. “We knew that Angels are occasionally … promoted out of the ranks, as it were. It’s a specialised process. When a human dies, it is occasionally reconstituted as an Angel.”

  “And you tracked them as they turned up,” Moskin said, trying to follow the baffling sequence.

  “Yes. And from those new arrivals, we found the one that was already there, for a total of six. These – thanks to Blacknettle – have taught me quite a lot about Earth. But … yes. There should be more. Records are hard to come by because of that damnable secrecy of theirs,
but as near as I can estimate there ought to have been over eighty Angels active on Earth alone at the time of the exile. Including the Archangel Gabriel – who is missing from Heaven, but nobody’s talking about it. We suspect that his was the signal we found already in place.”

  “Eighty,” Moskin breathed, watching the little wheeling flecks of light.

  “And another twenty or more in Hell,” Bayn added, “under the Archangel Lucifer38 of course. And half a dozen in Cursèd, although they were temporary caretakers and I’m fairly certain they made it back up to Heaven. Now, as I mentioned, the thing about Angels is that they won’t function in the daylight, outside of consecrated ground. Based on that alone, I rather expected there to be none left at all – not awake, anyway. Even one is more than I expected to find, and I’m frankly surprised that the ones to have shown up since fared any better.”

  “Perhaps the lone survivor in there helped them find some consecrated ground?” Moskin guessed.

  “That shouldn’t have been hard,” Bayn said grumpily. “Humans are the most superstitious creatures I’ve ever encountered, and Earth was riddled with holy ground. What must have caught them was the way day and night happen on a planet. I envisioned a rather chaotic time as the exile began and the new reality dawned on the banished populations – and, in the case of the Angels, I imagine that was also accompanied by almost every single one of them being caught unawares by the planet rolling over into the rays of a vast nuclear furnace three hundred billion cubits away. They must have been dropping from the sky,” she didn’t sound as though she was necessarily gloating about this, but she didn’t sound entirely unhappy, either. “But then … well, watch this accelerated amalgamation.”

  Moskin stepped back and squinted at the strange glowing ball as it began to spin more and more swiftly, then slowed and stopped, but with a little spinning disc of light above it to represent continuing rotation. At those speeds the etched light-patterns of the six Angels would have blurred into rings, Moskin realised.

  Instead, he watched the winking lights fall into a strange pattern. They were still incomplete, sometimes splitting and scattering into numerous probability-motes, sometimes vanishing entirely, but over time they were relatively stable. And when you knew what was happening, it was easy to see the significance of the movements. They shifted, and then stopped, and then shifted, and then stopped…

  “Active at night,” Moskin said, “holed up on consecrated ground during the day.”

  “Exactly,” Bayn congratulated him. “So it seems as though these six, at least, escaped the early days of the exile by the simple expedient of not being Angels at the time, and were fortunate enough to figure out the system – or have it taught to them – before they succumbed. And watch this.”

  Moskin had already seen it, as the spinning continued on the representative disc above the ballworld and the Angels went about their new routines. Abruptly – although that may have been a function of the accelerated timeline the Flesh-Eater was replaying – at least three of the Angels began to hop-freeze their way from one half of the ball to the other.

  “They migrate?” he asked.

  “Yes!” Bayn said excitedly. “Exactly! They migrate. Like birds. I think this planet simulates seasons – or generates them, I should say – by axial tilt,” she concluded proudly. “Do you see? As it orbits the sun…”

  “A ballworld would have less daylight in these areas,” Moskin said after a moment’s frowning conceptualisation, “as the ball went around the sun, these parts would face away from the sun for longer periods – making shorter stretches of daylight. Does it work that way?”

  “That’s my theory,” Bayn said. “It not only explains why some of these Angels flit from side to side of the planet – following the long nights, where presumably they can get more done – but it would almost perfectly replicate the seasonal variation of the flatworld Earth, fitting warm and cold, dark and light, growth and slumber into the course of a Firstmade year. All of it achieved with nothing but a combination of a spinning planet, its orbit around the sun, and the way the planet is leaning as it orbits. It’s incredible.”

  “That would mean…” Moskin frowned again. “For the rest of the rolled-up flatworlds to keep the same cycles, their distance from the sun would have to be…” he shook his head. “No idea,” he apologised. “I’m afraid I don’t have the head for it.”

  Bayn chuckled indulgently. “Spherical planets are an adjustment,” she conceded in a forgiving tone, as she had before. “Well,” she went on, “the climates and seasons of Hell and Cursèd do differ from Earth’s, and of course Cursèd has no day and night cycle as such … but they keep the same calendar and there are also those missing parts of Earth to consider. As far as I have been able to figure out, the four or five planets would almost have to be the same distance from the sun, perhaps equidistantly spaced along this single orbital path, give or take a couple of million cubits. Their sizes, atmospheres and axial tilts would dictate their seasons, their conditions … and there’s gravity to consider.”

  “Gravity?” Moskin said, then blinked. “Of course,” he said, “they couldn’t be subject to Castle Void’s gravity the way they were before, could they?”

  “No indeed,” Bayn replied. “In order to operate like a proper spherical planetary solar system, they would have to be completely independent of Castle Void’s gravity – they would, in short, have to exist in a set of physical laws similar or identical to the stellar vacuum above the Pinian realms.”

  “Where gravity comes from…” Moskin fumbled, feeling stupid. “The mass of the objects, possibly with a component of their velocity relative to each other. Something like that, wasn’t it?”

  “Something of the sort,” Bayn replied. “In fact, that was one of my starting points for the estimations of the size of this solar system.

  “As a result of the relative elevation of each flatworld above the Rooftop, and some other factors related to the fused physical laws of The Face of the Deep, gravity increased as one descended. Earth’s gravity was Centre-normal, and a little higher than Heaven’s. Hell’s gravity was higher than Earth’s, and Cursèd’s higher than Hell’s. The reason almost all the humans were gathered on Earth was not just because of atmospheric conditions – they would have found the gravity on the lower realms hard to live with. Even Cursèd’s gravity was slightly less than that of Castle Void itself, the average gravity of Castle Void being π-times-Centre-normal … but still, it would have been difficult for humans to adjust to.”

  “So any ballworlds – planets – formed from Hell and Cursèd would have to be larger, in order to keep the same gravity,” Moskin said.

  “Or denser,” Bayn agreed.

  “Alright. And what does that tell us? And what about the missing parts of Earth?”

  “This is precisely the difficulty,” Bayn said. “It’s possible that there are lots of smaller worlds, with different compositions giving them greater mass. I have made a starting assumption that the planet we have found has Centre-normal gravity to permit the humans to live on it comfortably, and from that we get the calculation of size.”

  “And from that, the size of the solar system,” Moskin said.

  “Yes. The length of the year could still be dictated by the planets’ orbit of the central star, but if they occupy different orbits then they would have to orbit at different speeds, as well as being different in size and composition … with the guesswork necessitated by the missing data, it’s quite bogglingly complex – even for me,” she added without false modesty. “I’ve tried to search along the equivalent of this planet’s orbital path for best-probability locations for the rest of the missing realms, but as I have said, space is folded from our perspective so it isn’t simply a matter of pretending the whole system is miniaturised, and then mapping an orbital path equivalent directly into the gulf.”

  “Even so,” Moskin shook his head as the revolution-disc winked out and the ballworld returned to its stately twinkle
. “I’m left even more at a loss as to what I can possibly add to such an enormous collection of data and processing power.”

  “Perhaps I can help you with that,” Bayn said, her voice filled with suppressed excitement – even glee. “Do you want to see what happened to the data when you performed the Ceremony of the Fire of Barnalk?”

  THE LOST DISCIPLES, PROBABILITY THRESHOLDS NOTWITHSTANDING

  “Now,” the globe shifted, the deathlights brightening and the Angel-probability patterns fading until they were all approximately the same shade. “This is the Earth-planet as it was twenty-odd years ago.”

  “When I performed the threefold sacrifice.”

  “Yes. Watch.”

  At first, Moskin thought it was the Angels on the move. But these lights were different, separate from the six faint Angel-signs.

  They were strange tangled scribbles, more like lines or clumps of thread than actual discrete points of light. One cluster was bunched inside a bright mass of deathlights that Moskin guessed was a city. Two others zagged and coiled across a region on the other side of the ball altogether, bunching and straightening, separated from the tangled and from one another by considerable distance.

  Then, a moment later, they were gone again. The seething mass of most-likely-human mortality went on, and the faint etching of the Angels highlighted the Lost Realm’s various nations.

  “It was fleeting,” Bayn said, “only a few seconds, and it was impossible to establish how much compressed time I was picking up and how much of it was a sensor artefact, but there were definitely three distinct patterns – you saw them. And it was definitely the revered Firstmades.”