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

by Andrew Hindle

  “You know a lot about Bharriom,” Gandicon said. He wanted to say he’d done some sort of study when he’d made the deduction about the heart of the starship, but the truth was he’d gone with his gut and knew only what he’d absorbed from the cultural consciousness over the past five thousand years. “Its power and the overwhelming plurality of its unknown properties are widely known, but its consciousness, and this whole phantom thing…”

  “I did some research,” Bason said. “When the machine mind told me about the ship’s superluminal trail and the effects it might have, I read up on the power source just in case that might have been the underlying cause. Turns out it wasn’t – Bharriom energy is pretty exotic, and it may or may not be capable of projecting some form of consciousness into the sensory sphere of a compatible sentient … I mean, this seems to be what’s happened to you … but for all that, the energy is clean. The same can’t be said for the engines they powered with it.”

  “Superluminal engines.”

  “Much faster than light,” Karturi agreed. “I’m not sure how much faster. Fast enough that the superluminal effects – the impact differentials, the time dilation, all of it – sort of … cancels out. The ship went so fast, she left all those issues behind in the luminal universe. It seems the only way to travel faster than light with any degree of success is to bypass accelerating to actual light speed and just go straight to surpassing it by multiples of thousands.”

  “But the residue from the engines is still trackable in the luminal universe,” Gandicon said.

  “Well, we don’t know that. For all we know, it might have left superluminal residue, and the enemy species picked it up in the course of their own superluminal exploration. That’s just a guess, though. Up until the moment you told me about the aliens, I was operating on the assumption that the residue was going to spark off something in the sphere of superluminal physics that would just have destructive mirror-consequences in the luminal.”

  “Sounds like you did a lot of research,” Gandicon said admiringly. “All I did was get in a dart and came straight here.”

  Bason shrugged her upper shoulders insouciantly. “I guess I was working under different conditions,” she said, “according to different data and with a different set of obligations and expectations.”

  “Fair to say,” Gandicon said. “I really had nothing more to go on, and nothing preventing me from just…”

  “Getting in a dart.”

  “Right,” Gandicon picked up the last dumpling and chewed, ruminating figuratively and literally. “The tour guide didn’t mention superluminal engines,” he remarked.

  Karturi leaned forward bright-eyed. “Well,” she said, “it was there, if you read between the lines. The cargo section has no engines or drive at all. The drive was provided by some sort of field, that surrounded the ship and then projected it into superluminal-state physics, or more precisely unphysics – and that field was generated by the engines on the Grandis 459. But those generators burned out, or were only designed for a one-way trip. They got us here, then the field burned out its own roots and the whole system broke down. The machinery doesn’t even exist anymore – just the auxiliary engines and generators that we saw on the tour.”

  “It may have been part of the condition of our journey,” Gandicon mused. Bason looked at him curiously. “No way back,” he explained. “No temptation to change your mind. Only the people who were absolutely certain they wanted to make the trip–”

  “No time-wasters,” Karturi said.

  “No time-wasters,” Gandicon chuckled and nodded. “So there’s no superluminal drive,” he concluded, “anywhere.”

  “Right.”

  “Wherever we’re going, we’re going there at subluminal speeds.”

  “Apparently,” Bason replied, “unless the machine mind or your Bharriom buddy has any advice for building a new drive.”

  “How are we supposed to flee an enemy capable of tracking us down and travelling here in a day,” Gandicon asked his fruit juice, “without superluminal capacity?”

  “Are you asking me?” Bason asked wryly.

  Gandicon shook his head. “Nothing much for it,” he said. “We will need to find the hearts, like my little blue friend said. After I’ve hopefully gotten some more information from the Bharriom, we’ll need to get to the Grandis 459’s cargo section and get you in touch with the machine mind. Then,” he took a deep breath. “We find some way of loading those two million storage pods full of citizens again, and get to crawling very, very slowly out of harm’s way.”

  “And do you know how to do any of that?” Karturi asked dryly. “Because the Grandix building is never going to fly. Her systems have been decommissioned for millennia. Most of the parts we toured through are only nominally functional for the look of the thing. She’s built into the city blocks on either side and even if the neighbouring buildings were demolished, attempting to launch would just cause her to melt down.”

  “I can get us to the asteroid belt,” Gandicon said.

  Karturi blinked at him in astonishment. “Wait – really?”

  “Pretty sure,” Gandicon smiled and poured himself another glass of juice. He thought she was right after all – it was artificial. Still tasty, though. “The difficult part for me is going to be finding those Bharriom hearts.”

  XII

  Bason, evidently eager to contribute after Gandicon’s bold claim of being able to get them off-planet, said she could get them into the basements.

  “It’s not exactly something I planned, since the heart of the starship wasn’t my objective,” she said, “but the lower levels aren’t restricted. You can probably get a guide to take you to see the heart, at least. Whether the backups are stored in the same place, and whether you’d be allowed to touch any of them – that’s another question. I should be able to help you there, but no promises. I have no idea what sort of security they have.”

  Gandicon was already fairly sure there were just regular, if highly-trained, civilians in charge of running the Grandix building. Certainly there were none of the hallmarks that might suggest Lawkeep involvement, and he would have been surprised if there were. Lawkeeps were strictly a fringe-neutral culture, if indeed you could call them a culture, and it was unusual for any major government or civilian agency to be placed under their control. Despite the name, they were not a policing or peacekeeping force within Dema’i society. Gandicon was actually more concerned about the next steps than he was about Grandix security, but he shrugged.

  “Just get me close,” he said. “Then we’ll see.”

  He wasn’t sure what Karturi did, with her interface gadgets and her triangulation nodes, but she led him unerringly into the basements that were the aft sections of the old Grandis 459, then into the sub-basements that were built into the city foundations underneath the old ship. They were stopped once by a Grandix building official, and Gandicon got them past her by showing her his chatpad and asking, in his most venerable and age-slumped voice, whether an old man might see the heart of the starship – the real one – before he died.

  “My mother was born on the Grandis 459,” he said to the politely-smiling official, “she used to tell me about the heart, and how it shone. She was only a youngster when she disembarked, of course, and when she told me about it she was already very old, but I remember the way she talked about it. The replica was very nice, but just not the same. I came all the way from Bonshoo Drop, did you know? It’s mostly Single Sigh out there, mine was about the only Lawkeep family in the area, not that you could really call it a family. Took a dart to Koi Beckons, it’s really more of a suburb of Junkdump these days, Junkdump used to be an offshore refinery but there’s a mag-chute and everything now, and Blueblubbers all over the place…”

  In the end, Gandicon was fairly sure the official gave them special tour passes and directions to the heart storage vault just to stop him talking.

  “You devious old insect,” Karturi said in admiration, after the offic
ial had left them alone again. “Was that all true?”

  “Of course,” Gandicon said, trying to suppress the automatic stiffness that came to his voice. “Lawkeeps don’t tell lies.”

  “Your mother was a settler?”

  “She was born on the ship,” Gandicon clarified. “She was very young when they arrived here, and very old when she told me about any of it. Like I said. I can’t say how much of it was even accurate. She did mention the heart a time or two, but I got the impression she never saw it in person. She was only describing someone else’s memories of the thing. And she never said anything about ferrying passengers down to the surface, a cargo section, storage pods, spare crystals…” he shook his head. “She was probably unaware of any of that.”

  They descended further, and found their way to a small, nondescript storeroom with only a category tag and numerical sequence on the door. The heart of the starship sat in a display case, forgotten, filling the room with a lovely purple glow.

  “There you go,” Bason said with a spread of her upper hands. “The heart of the starship.”

  It was indeed smaller than the replica upstairs, an angular little lump about the size of one of the dumplings they’d eaten for lunch. Its glow was steady, and bright, but it was unevenly dispersed throughout the crystal, like a series of tiny lamps of various intensities scattered inside the little stone.

  “Looks like it’s on its last beats,” Gandicon said, and looked around the room, then under the display case. “I don’t see any containers that might hold the spare hearts.”

  “Maybe your personal hallucination will show up to help,” Bason suggested.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  “Then you’re going to have to touch that one,” Bason pointed, “and see if it shakes anything loose.”

  Gandicon squinted at the case. “Sealed,” he said.

  “Of course it is.”

  “Lawkeep,” he reminded her with some asperity.

  “Were you expecting to just walk in here and have the Grandix people give you the heart?” Karturi rolled her eyes and pulled out her interface device. “Look, this security system isn’t particularly sophisticated considering the power these crystals are supposed to have–”

  “They’re probably counting on the general honesty and decency of the local citizens and visitors.”

  Bason gave a short, horribly cynical laugh. “That’s nice, Ghåål. I can give you a few seconds to jimmy it open, touch the crystal and get new instructions, then close it up again without any alarms going off, and no harm done. But you’re going to have to close the case again, pretty fast, or be prepared to answer to Grandix security.”

  “Fine,” he growled, examining the case. It was sturdily built but not impossibly so. He’d be able to force the access latch easily enough, and he could offer to repair the damage if it came to that. There were probably consequence and recompense systems in place in the city that he was unaware of, since the rather simplistic Single Sigh practices of a backwater like Bonshoo Drop might be difficult to apply. “If we’re caught, I’ll explain the whole thing and let the authorities deal with it.”

  “That seems … pretty irresponsible,” Karturi said, looking up narrowly at him from her interface. “Considering we know what’s coming and they’re not in possession of all the facts,” he opened his mouth to reply – two people thinking they were in possession of the facts could still be disastrously misinformed or delusional – but she didn’t give him time. “Clear,” she said. “Do it.”

  Gandicon leaned over the case, braced his lower hands around it and took the access hatch edges in his upper fingers. He clenched, and twisted, and the hatch snapped open. Not allowing himself to hesitate, he reached out and plucked up the Bharriom crystal.

  He’d expected it to be heavier than it looked, so his initial impression was that it was unnaturally light. It was, on a moment’s reflection, a perfectly normal weight for a stone that size. It was cool to the touch, and didn’t seem to be vibrating or radiating in any way from the evident energy that was shining out of it. Nevertheless, as he picked up the heart of the starship he felt its power in a way that was purely imagined and at the same time entirely real.

  “Alright,” he said, “now what do I–”

  “Vortex’s tits,” Bason Karturi blurted, her voice cracking. Gandicon turned and saw, without much surprise, that she was staring at the softly-glowing blue shape of a young boy.

  The boy beamed at Gandicon.

  “You came,” he said happily. “You found us.”

  “Bason Karturi,” Gandicon was unable to avoid a certain feeling of satisfied vindication, “meet the heart of the starship.”

  XIII

  Bason was stunned, but she recovered quickly.

  “I owe you an apology, Ghåål,” she said. “I believed you’d been contacted, but I thought it had been some adaptation of the machine mind’s – that it was presenting itself to you in a relatable way. I didn’t believe you’d actually seen a Bharriom phantom.”

  “A Bharriom phantom,” the boy said, turning his smile on Bason. “Yes, that’s what we’ve been called in the past. Extensions of the crystal heart, into the mortal sphere. Yes.”

  “Apology entirely accepted,” Gandicon said, although he was once again unable to entirely suppress his satisfaction. “I wouldn’t have believed it either. To be honest, I’m surprised you can see him now, just because I touched the stone.”

  “We can reach more fully into your world using you as a context,” the boy said. “This extends to those you interact with, and to some of the cultural consciousness your awareness touches. I’m sorry it was this difficult, but your people are so disconnected now. You have forgotten so much.”

  “Speaking of forgetting, if you want to avoid security…” Bason said, gesturing at the case.

  Gandicon closed the case, but kept the heart in his hand for the moment. He wasn’t sure if the case had a sensor that would detect the difference once it was sealed again, and at that point he didn’t really care. “Our blue friend here will facilitate explanations,” he said, “now that security will be able to see him as well.”

  Bason frowned. “But–”

  “You said we, earlier,” Gandicon went on, turning to look at the boy, “and you sent me to find the hearts, plural. I assume you’re talking about the spare crystals?”

  “We – I – have trouble differentiating ourselves as singular or gestalt entities,” the boy said. “I understand that I am manifesting before you as a single individual, and my communicative model adheres to that wherever practical, but my consciousness is … more complex. Yes, there are three Bharriom crystals in this room.”

  “Can you point them out?” Gandicon asked.

  “I hope the spares are livelier than the original,” Bason, quick to recover her scepticism, said in an undertone.

  “Why?” the boy asked her, craning his neck. “What’s wrong with it?”

  He sounded so defensive, as though Bason had criticised some very personal aspect of his appearance or comportment, that Gandicon struggled to hide a sympathetic smile. Perhaps Karturi had insulted the entity, at that.

  “Nothing,” Bason replied quickly, “it’s very nice.”

  “Excellent recovery,” Gandicon muttered.

  She spared him a withering look, then turned back to the Bharriom phantom, who was still looking worried. “I didn’t mean to cast aspersions,” she said. “It’s just that the original heart of the starship was used to get us here. It’s … seen some expenditure. I’m just hoping that the spare hearts haven’t been used … look, why do you care?” she suddenly interrupted herself, just as defensive as the phantom. “You’re all one gestalt entity, one with the crystal.”

  “Still,” the boy said, “I would not like to think there were imperfections…” he crossed to the wall, and pointed his upper right hand at one of the polished panels. His finger actually dipped into the metal. “They are in here.”

 
Gandicon and Bason joined him – Bason gave the figure a wide berth, but Gandicon stepped up beside him with the Bharriom tucked into his palm – and examined the wall. There didn’t seem to be any openings or catches. Gandicon tapped on the panel, then pressed, to no avail. He looked at Karturi, who shook her head.

  “No idea,” she said. “There’s no further security for me to access. They may have just sealed the wall up over the top of them.”

  No, Gandicon said to himself, but it was more than just wishful thinking. He remembered something from back in his more active days, operating for Bonshoo Drop’s minimal haul-and-stow administration. This was ancient and outmoded tech – as ancient and outmoded as he was.

  “It’s a slap-catch,” he said, patting at the almost-invisible seam along the top of the panel into which the boy had thrust his hand. “It’ll have a gene-reader or just a pressure-sensor with a set code … a sequence of taps and holds … and if they haven’t reprogrammed it, it’ll still be using the default security setting…”

  He patted, swiped, patted … and the panel popped open. The purple glow, which had vanished after he’d taken the heart in his hand, returned as a little padded shelf slid out and revealed two more Bharriom crystals.

  These were larger than the heart of the starship, although still not as large or as evenly-shaped as the replica upstairs. They were also brighter than the original, with a steadier glow that had uniform intensity within the crystal lattice. These hearts were untouched. Undrained. Beyond that, the three were not noticeably different. He picked up one of the spare hearts. It was no warmer, its only additional weight came from its slight size differential, and the psychological-level hum of power was not noticeably stronger than it was in the ancient heart of the Grandis 459.