by Neal Asher
“I guess they’ve eaten enough,” said Shardelle.
There was nothing solid left, only fluids spattered on ground that looked as if it had been ploughed.
“Bones as well-everything,” said Jonas. “But then that is probably their purpose.”
She looked at him, sharp, annoyed. He stood and headed for the door and she followed.
“You want to know what The Gabble is?” he asked, standing at the edge of the churned ground.
“Of course I do.”
He gestured to the mess before them. “Something made the hooders and the tricones.
The hooders were most certainly a weapon in some war and the tricones made to digest the physical remnants of a civilization.”
“But why?”
“We’ll probably never know the answer to that. Tricones and hooders possess the same planetary genome as the gabbleducks, which means the gabbleducks probably made them. But their final purpose might not be the gabbleduck’s own.”
“You hinted that you knew what The Gabble is,” said Shardelle stubbornly.
“Maybe it’s a language of non-meaning: words spoken by a race that has given up, withdrawn, even chosen to forego intelligence. A race become so self-effacing it has made tricones to wipe out every trace of its civilization, and turned its own war machines to the purpose of destroying even the remains of its own devolved descendents. Or perhaps it’s even worse than that.”
“How could it possibly be worse?”
“Perhaps they lost some war, and this was done to them by the victors: their civilization erased, their creatures turned upon them-just enough mind remaining to them so they always remember what happened, that scrap of intelligence just enough for them to know how to hold off the hooders until they die.”
Shardelle shivered. Jonas felt an immense sadness at the core of which grew the seed of new purpose. Calypse hung above the far horizon, etched out by the setting sun, and, silhouetted, came the ECS transport. Tragedy here, or choice-he did not know. He swore to himself, in that moment, that one day he would.
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Document ID: fbd-588d60-b60d-1c48-6a93-e3c0-6fa1-8b9756
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Document creation date: 06.07.2011
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