Deadshepherd (Tales of the Final Fall of Man Anthology Book 1)

by Andrew Hindle

  By this point, Gandicon Ghåål was already growing certain that he was not victim of a hoax perpetrated by local children. But the alternatives were slightly worrying, and so he wasted a bit more time hoping the whole thing would simply go away.

  It didn’t go away.

  III

  Later that afternoon he went outside and headed down the gently-sloping scrubby field behind his house, to the cliffs that gave Bonshoo Drop7 its name.

  The cliffs overlooked the ocean, and this made it Gandicon’s favourite place even though he didn’t swim and rarely descended the cliffs to walk on the narrow, rocky shore. The ocean rolled and crashed, blue and grey and white, to the misty horizon in front of him. To either side of his vantage point, the cliffs curved around into a bay, as though some monstrous sea creature had taken a bite out of the land. Beyond the two points, the ocean stretched out along gentler stretches of beach and tumbled rocks. Dreadsmith city a couple of hours’ travel in one direction, nothing at all for almost a day’s travel in the other, before the port town of Koi Beckons. Following the same line, the mag-chute coach that kept Koi Beckons alive stretched beneath the ocean to the planet’s largest continent, five high-speed hours distant. Gandicon had never been on the chute although he’d visited Koi Beckons on a few occasions, the last time almost two hundred years before.

  There was no fanciful denizen of the deeps risen to take another bite from the landscape today, although Bonshoo Drop had received a large aquatic visitor of a less fictitious kind. An adult carcassback was drifting lazily in the bay, adding its rich scent of rotting flesh to the salty sea breeze.

  Gandicon didn’t mind the smell of the huge cephaliths. It was definitely an unpleasant smell, and he couldn’t say he enjoyed it, but he knew it was ultimately harmless – a nature-smell, a food-chain-smell. It was another thing, he supposed, that made him something of an outcast. A symptom, perhaps, of his wider deep-seated differences. The other Molren of Bonshoo Drop pinched up their nostrils at the stink of a carcassback, muttering about its rankness, the decay and disease it carried.

  They didn’t really carry disease. You wouldn’t want to eat the meat from the creature’s shell, but Gandicon fancied you wouldn’t want to eat the fresh meat of its body or tentacles, either. Cephaliths were huge, and tough – tougher than regular squids or the polyp-based carnivorous aquatic plants they were distantly related to.

  Gandicon stood and watched the carcassback for a time, until its stink stopped registering to his nose. He watched its great mottled tentacles, one pair of which stretched out far longer than the cluster of others that hung down under the front of its shell. They were visible as two long, sinuous shadows winding under the choppy water, extending almost all the way across the bay. The carcassback’s primary tentacles had hooked filaments that extended from the suction cups. It was like a driftnet, catching small marine animals as they were enticed by the scents in the water, and caught by the tidal currents. The cephaliths migrated through here each year, and the Bonshoo Drop bay was a choice hunting ground to stop and refuel. When the weather grew chilly, it was more usual than not for the seaside air to be ripe.

  The carcassback was well-named. Its upper surface was almost always out of the water, the hump of fatty meat that grew over the top of the carapace perpetually growing from below, perpetually rotting from above, a great red-and-white marbled mass of putrefying flesh. The decomposition at once deterred large predators and attracted prey, as well as airborne and surface-swimming scavengers that contributed to the great beast’s little ecosystem in a multitude of interesting ways in return for mouthfuls of decaying meat.

  It was fascinating. Gandicon liked watching the big, smelly monsters. He was so pleasantly engrossed that he didn’t notice the boy showing back up.

  “Hello, Gandicon Ghåål.”

  He turned and looked at the child. The blue glow was less pronounced out here, in the rays of the setting sun, but it was still quite noticeable. The boy’s body, moreover, was faintly translucent or, if not translucent, then at least slightly washed-out, in a shifting series of pulses between full opacity and slightly-bleached dimness. This time, he was sure he hadn’t heard the child approaching. The land behind them was dry and brushy, and Molran hearing was good – no matter how old the Molran in question happened to be.

  “Hello,” he said mildly. “Now where did you come from?”

  “I’m afraid I still don’t understand the question,” the boy said. “I have not left where I am. I am in many places. I have been trying to make it so that you can see and hear me.”

  “Well, you’ve succeeded,” Gandicon said. “I can see and hear you loud and clear.”

  “I suppose, then, I came from a state of being unseen and unheard.”

  “Hah.”

  “They are coming, Gandicon.”

  “You said that before,” Gandicon remarked. “What do you mean? Who is coming, and when will they arrive?” he paused, then couldn’t resist adding, “I hope you understand the question.”

  “I understand, but I cannot answer,” the boy replied. “Their approach is without purpose or intent, a slow and natural spread. Perhaps they will be a hundred years. Perhaps they will be a thousand. If they learn you are here, though, they will be upon you tomorrow.”

  Gandicon studied the boy, then turned to look down at the carcassback drifting in the sun-kissed blue-grey water. Floating. Waiting patiently. Sending out its enticing scents for the scavengers that were its caretakers and the little creatures that were its food.

  Sometimes, there was a mishap. Sometimes, some mid-sized aquatic predators turned up, and began to attack the shoals of smaller animals, and the carcassback, and one another. It became a feeding frenzy and the water churned red with blood. All it took was the wrong chemical signal to be passed on to the wrong set of receptors. The wrong hunter to follow the wrong quarry.

  Slowly, Gandicon raised his face to the sky.

  IV

  “You’re talking about alien life,” he said, quite calmly. “Hostile sentients from beyond this star system.”

  It wasn’t of course, a preposterous idea. The Molren, after all, had come from space themselves, a long time ago. They’d come from unimaginably far away, and had arrived here when Gandicon’s mother had been a child. And Gandicon’s mother had produced him very late in her long, long life.

  It was unlikely, to be sure, because during their colonisation of this world the Molren had established that they were alone in this quadrant of the cosmos. There were no other sentient life-forms within light-millennia of here. There were barely even any non-sentient life-forms. Not that there were any real records or readings of any of this – not anymore – but it was one of the reasons the Molren had come here, historically. They’d wanted to be alone, to revert to a less dependent lifestyle, to live in peace and simplicity far from the great city.

  So was it impossible that some other life-form had begun encroaching on this region? No. Indeed, it wasn’t really particularly implausible.

  Was it impossible that it might detect them and be here tomorrow? Again, no. But it was rather implausible.

  “Is that what I’m talking about?” the boy asked, then seemed to answer himself. “Yes. I suppose I am.”

  “And I suppose the ‘silent wings of black steel’ you referred to last time is some sort of spacecraft,” Gandicon said. “Or am I interpreting too literally?”

  “I cannot say,” the boy replied. “There is much I cannot see, and there is much I cannot explain in terms that would be understandable to both of us. I am attempting to walk the narrow line between our worlds, and explain it in the elements of your language that exist on that line.”

  “Slap-up job, son,” Gandicon said without rancour.

  “I regret my limitations,” the child said quite earnestly. “Largely because time is critical. It may already be too late. Any delays caused by my failure to communicate could result in the death of your entire species.”

  “
I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Gandicon said airily. “We’re just a colony, you know. Plenty of Molren elsewhere. Fat, complacent citizens; wild and crazy dissidents; grey-faced Phobes and probably a few glowing blue fortune-teller kids as well. And a good solid helping of skinny, sour-faced Lawkeeps like me, I imagine.”

  “Oh,” the boy seemed a little lost at this news, as if he’d had his chair pulled out from under him. “I was not aware. My eyes do not see these things. I see only what is … very well,” he went on, appearing to shake himself, “if your colony is resigned to live or die as the vagaries of fate dictate, I will not interfere,” he looked distressed. “Perhaps this is why I had such trouble connecting…”

  “Well now, don’t be so hasty,” Gandicon said. “I’m pretty sure I’m speaking only for myself when I say I’ve lived the long years and won’t begrudge death all that much – but even I’m not quite ready to lie down and stop sucking air, you know. And there may be some wishy-washy Single Sigh nutcakes in Bonshoo Drop and all over this good green world, but I’m fairly sure there’s plenty as would want to fight back against a destiny like these wings of black steel things you’re describing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Gandicon laughed. “Yes,” he said, shaking his head, “that was rambly even by my low standards. What I mean is, no – we’re not resigned to live or die as the vagaries of fate dictate. I don’t know why you had trouble connecting, but if there’s a threat approaching our world, best know about it and defeat it, or escape it.”

  “There is no defeating them,” the boy said sadly. “Not as you are,” he brightened. “Escape, then,” he said. “Perhaps you can flee back to the Molren you mentioned, the ones that are elsewhere. Seek shelter among their numbers.”

  “That … seems like a long shot,” Gandicon admitted, “since I have absolutely no idea where they might be, and if I’m being honest I’m not even sure they still exist. For all I know, we came here to escape extinction, not just postpone it.”

  The child looked troubled. “But you said–”

  “I know what I said, sonny,” Gandicon chuckled. “But alright, it’s an option. Going back to wherever we came from, close to ten thousand years ago. It’s a long-term plan, to be sure, but … if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.”

  He was looking directly at the child this time, so he saw him flicker and vanish like a faulty comm-projection. For a moment there was nothing but empty scrubland, then the blue figure reappeared for a few more moments.

  “Find the hearts,” the boy said, his voice sounding faint and distant as a whisper.

  Then he vanished once again.

  V

  Gandicon’s mother, Thréu Ghåål, had been a mere child of fifty-five years when Molren had arrived upon the world now called Dema. When they’d arrived, or so she’d never tired of telling Gandicon, the world had been dubbed Grandis 459. Although whether this had been in honour of the great old ship that had borne the two million Molran settlers to their new home, or due to ancient astrological cartographic convention which in turn had dictated the name of the decommissioned ship, Gandicon was uncertain. His mother had herself been uncertain, he seemed to recall. She’d been old, her own Third and Final Prime behind her, when she’d related these tales to him.

  Gandicon was a product of his mother’s Third Prime, the last gasp of youth and fertility a Molran experienced before decline. He was also the last child she had produced in that Prime. He’d had siblings thousands of years his senior. He’d had nieces and nephews thousands of years his senior. Not that he ever saw any of them. Even before they’d all died of old age, he’d rarely seen them, and he never saw any of their offspring. Molren, particularly Lawkeeps, didn’t have that kind of familial relationship.

  By the time ‘Grandis 459’ had become ‘Dema’ in the cultural consciousness of the new world, the two million settlers had become a global civilisation of a hundred million.

  Today, Gandicon wasn’t sure but he thought Dema’s Molran population was somewhere in excess of three billion. Close to the biosphere’s comfortable and sustainable limit, and there it was likely to stay. It was a solid explosion in two Molran lifetimes, but the species was developed enough – biologically and culturally – to self-regulate its reproduction to suit the environment.

  It was still a whole Hell of a lot of people to try to relocate.

  And that was just the Molren. Would an exodus from Dema to some as-yet unknown safe location require the uprooting of more extensive biomass? Did they have the technological capacity to survive in space, or would they need to essentially mobilise the planet itself, if only in microcosm? Answering this question, let alone implementing said answer, was far beyond Gandicon’s logistical abilities.

  What he did know, however, was that the Grandis 459, or the building that had the old ship as its central spire, still stood in Koi-Jack city, the capital city of Dema’s primary continent on which the first landing and settlement had taken place. Just a chute-ride across the ocean from the port town of Koi Beckons, as a matter of fact.

  The settlement that had grown into Koi-Jack city had, in turn, originally been named Reimagined Mind by the Molren. It was a regrettably overblown title, and had promptly become the subject of playfully mocking nicknames like Little Mind, Narrow Mind and Tiny Mind thanks to the dissident factions of the wider settler community.

  Dissidents and Lo-Riders. Lawkeeps. Citizens of various stripes. Phobes. Three-Siders. The Wide-Eyed. The Lone. The New Worm. The more Gandicon thought about the civilisation his species had made on Dema, the more hopeless he realised the mission his glowing blue visitor had given him truly was.

  Find the hearts.

  The name of their world, Dema, was an exceedingly old word, predating even the literally prehistoric formulation of the Xidh language. It meant home. Not particularly inspired, perhaps, but that was the choice the settlers had made when they’d come here. They’d wanted to start again, far from the place from which they’d come – ideologically as well as physically. Theirs was a reimagining of the place from whence they’d come – as their lofty original name for their settlement had indicated.

  And what did Gandicon know about the place from whence they had come?

  Well. That was where it got really foggy, because not even his mother had been born when they’d set out. She had been born either en route, or shortly after their arrival while the majority of the population still lived on board the great ship. The journey itself had taken an unspecified amount of time. Probably less than a Molran lifespan – but only probably.

  The Centre. Universe unto itself, very different to the chill cosmos in which the Molren now lived. A reality entirely separated from the stellar void with its swirl of stars and planets. Immeasurably vast foundation to Capital Mind, the fabled city in the centre of the universe – indeed, the centre of the urverse, nexus of planes and spheres of physics beyond comprehension. A wondrous place, if even a tenth of the old stories about it were based in reality.

  Of course, that was probably wishful thinking. Part of the reason they’d come to Dema, or so most of the stories agreed, was to escape a place that couldn’t possibly have possessed the fairytale properties of The Centre. Why would anyone want to leave a place so marvellous?

  Regardless, left they indisputably had. They’d come to the planet they’d eventually come to call Dema, and they’d made a new life for themselves. And they’d come, all two million of them, on the great old Grandis 459, now decommissioned and folded into the landscape of Koi-Jack city.

  And the Grandis 459 had run on a core of Bharriom, a glowing purple crystal the size of a child’s fist, with the power to rewrite the laws of physics.

  It had been called the heart of the starship.

  VI

  After his latest vision of the blue boy, Gandicon Ghåål returned to his house and sat, troubled and deep in thought.

  Hearts.

  If the strange little prophet was t
alking about the crystal power core of the Grandis 459, then Gandicon was evidently missing something. Why the plural? Had the core been a single crystal constructed in multiple parts, with multiple active elements within it? Had there been more than one core? Had there been more than one ship? So much had been forgotten. Gandicon himself knew nothing about Bharriom, and he wasn’t sure if there was anyone in Koi-Jack city who did either. Not anymore. The time of the crystal was over. The Molren had found their home, and they didn’t need the trappings of interstellar travel. The heart of the starship – heart or hearts – could be left to moulder away in a basement, respected but ultimately forgotten.

  He pondered for a long time, asking himself what he was supposed to do next. Running through possible scenarios and seeing where they led him. Wondering if any of them were close to what the glowing child expected of him. Wondering whether the hostile aliens were on their way. Wondering if the hostile aliens even existed, and then running through more scenarios incorporating some method of ascertaining that.

  The sun went down and darkness crept into the house. The solar-gathered phosphorents came up in response, adding a convenient outline to the shadows even if they didn’t really light the place up. He didn’t need it to be bright as day. He could eat, read, and perform casual handicrafts by the phosphos, and that was enough.

  Gandicon rose, grimaced a little as he stretched – foolish old bones didn’t have the spring they once did – and went into the kitchen. His chatpad was there and, after enjoying a quiet chuckle at the fact that it was quite literally dusty with disuse, he tapped it with his lower left hand while he idly prepared himself a snack with his uppers. He skimmed to the transport offerings and booked a dart to Koi Beckons. There was one swinging through Bonshoo Drop on a regular cycle, and it was a short detour to Ghåål’s home.

  An hour later, the dart arrived in his front yard with a soft crump of unclenching air molecules and an unobtrusive ping on his chatpad. He was all packed, at least insofar as he’d thrown a few articles of clothing and other necessities into a scarred old travel-case that he suspected he might not have used since his last trip to the port. He’d been into Bonshoo Drop regularly, of course, and to Dreadsmith city a dozen or so times, but he hadn’t bothered to pack for those journeys.