Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle

  The Warm was a so-called Mandelbrot array. The technical classification was ‘Mandelbrot class superhub array’, but the huge conglomerations were each generally unique and so tended to just go by the world-names people gave them. It was a little complicated, but it all came down to modular starships like their own Astro Tramp 400.

  The modulars were so named for their ability – indeed, their design – to link up to hubstations. A fully-loaded hub could carry up to thirty modulars, and was called a ‘Chrysanthemum class hubstation’. Chrysanthemums were run by a single hub, a synthetic intelligence computer mind synced with all of the computers on all of the modulars. And the hubstations were mobile, if unwieldy – the guiding synthetic intelligence linked up the relative drives and engines of all the component modulars and coordinated them into a single-vehicle convoy.

  Chrysanthemums in turn could link up into Mandelbrot class superhub arrays, also run by a synth but using the parallel hubs of each component Chrysanthemum. They were major self-sufficient space-based settlements, AstroCorps’s answer to the Worldships of the Molran Fleet but not as self-contained. They were too massive and complicated to move at more than a steady lumber in the low subluminal registers, lacking the titanic and technologically-inaccessible relative drives of the Worldships, and so tended to exist either in orbit or in free-drifting space. They were only relative-capable if they divided up into their component Chrysanthemums, flew to a new location, and then reassembled. And this generally never happened.

  The Warm was an atypical Mandelbrot array. It was bigger, more permanent, and one of the oldest settlements in the Six Species. It wasn’t a centre, not a major population by any stretch, but it was old. And it had a population in the region of two million, mostly humans. Technically, it wasn’t a Mandelbrot array at all, except insofar as it was a collection of Chrysanthemum class hubstations unified by a synthetic intelligence. It was also clustered and mortared together with long-established and completely flight-incapable habitats and the ancient, cannibalised remains of starships, hulks of the Molran Fleet craft that had brought the first settlers here, fleeing from the Cancer back before the foundation of Aquilar.

  The settlement’s foundation was The Warm proper, a strange relic that had an ambient temperature of about minus ten degrees – not warm, as such, but considerably warmer than space. It was alien, which was a rather arbitrary term that could either mean anything not human, or anything that isn’t human, Molran, Blaran, Bonshoon, Fergunakil, aki’Drednanth or Damorakind. The Warm was the latter.

  There were other species out there, for various definitions of sentience, technological and cultural advancement, enlightenment. None had yet signed on officially as the seventh species in the accords. Which was probably just as well, Janya always reflected – it would require rebranding on a massive scale, and probably a reset of the Molran Yeka Mogak calendar. The Warm had been built and left behind by some as-yet unknown civilisation.

  There were a few things like The Warm scattered around, needles in the impossibly vast haystack of space. Alien, unidentified, old and incredibly diverse. Due to their utter random alienness, in fact, it wasn’t possible to say whether they were all from the same originating culture or from a bunch of different ones. Some technologies had unifying threads, others not so much. Some relics could be dated, and spanned hundreds if not thousands of millions of years, and others – like The Warm – so far managed to evade classification based on age altogether.

  Janya called up one of the few publications in the Tramp’s database about The Warm.

  About eleven hundred miles long and three hundred miles thick, it was a solid geometric cylinder formed of some sort of metallic compound heated to a uniform minus ten degrees – considerably warmer than ambient space and thus clearly artificial even if its unnatural shape was not a giveaway. It had no atmosphere, no spin, and only the minimal gravity afforded to it by its mass, but it formed a solid foundation for the hubstations and other habitats encrusting its surface.

  And its heat, if you could call it that, was capable of generating power. Not as much as the reactors throughout the settlement and its numerous integrated modular starships, of course, but apparently fuelless and endless and without byproduct.

  Mostly, though, The Warm was a research community – researching The Warm.

  Lazy centuries of study had revealed -

  A Bonshoon, a weathered-looking female responsible for at least one of the juveniles in the young-but-mobile category – Janya didn’t even try to figure out what relationships the settlers had between each other anymore – came into the lab.

  “Hello,” the massive Molranoid said nervously when Janya looked up from her reading.

  “Hello,” Adeneo replied neutrally.

  “My name’s Oya,” the Bonshoon went on. There was a lengthy pause. Janya had already been introduced to all the settlers so there didn’t seem to be much point in repeating her name just to observe a pointless conversational ritual. “How are you?” the Bonshoon eventually asked.

  “A bit distracted,” Janya answered, moderating the pointedness of her tone in the vague awareness that it would somehow be considered rude even though Oya was the one who’d barged in uninvited. “I was reading up on our destination.”

  “The Warm?” the settler hurried forward and dropped into a seat next to Janya. Since she’d set all the furniture in the lab to her own tiny proportions, the seven-foot-six Bonshoon almost fell. She ended up sprawled in the low seat with her legs splayed awkwardly. “Fearfully sinful place, The Warm.”

  “‘Sinful’?”

  “Lots of humans – that’s not the sinful part, of course, it’s just that humans and Blaren and such don’t have the same belief structure as Bonshooni, and that’s fine,” Oya said, “it’s just that technically we define that, you know, the classification, it’s–”

  “Sin,” Janya said in amusement. “That’s really quite quaint.”

  To her credit, Oya didn’t get offended at this. “The Bonshooni believe that where there is a gate in space, there must be an enclosing wall,” she said, folding both thick pairs of arms and leaning back in her seat. The lab furniture was solidly designed with multi-species tolerances and so the chair didn’t even creak, although Janya couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to be the final straw.

  “I know,” she said. “Something about the galaxy having a veil cast over it and the rest of the universe being painted onto that veil.”

  “Nonsense, of course, if taken literally,” the Bonshoon said. “It’s simply a technological myth explaining the intergalactic gulf and the conundrum of relative travel in void regions.”

  “Bonshoon purists believe that anyone who reaches the outskirts of the galaxy simply lodges in the wall and is enfolded in the veil,” Janya said, “don’t they? Anyone who returns has falsified computer and sensory information, even their memories altered to convince them that they didn’t see anything out there and just came back because they ran out of resources. Any of the missions to actually go out and not return are apparently just stuck out there. Or, since the only rational way to travel out there is through soft-space, they are presumed out of contact due to being at relative speed, however they are making it work. Whether they are going to rematerialise in another galaxy and then take thousands – or millions – of years to communicate with us, or whether they’re just gone for good, lost in a general relative field collapse, is impossible to verify. The communications we actually still manage bounce back from some of the slow-drifting Fleet explorers are said to just be data ghosts, a forged signal intended to give the illusion of a wider universe that vessels are receding into.”

  “Again, literally such a concept is ludicrous,” Oya said.

  “I don’t know,” Janya said. “Philosophically, reality is bounded entirely by what external stimuli tell us. If those stimuli were being generated, even forged, by some outside element, how would any of us know for sure?”

  “Are you a believer?�
� the evacuee asked, intrigued.

  “I believe in what I see,” Janya shrugged, “and I accept that I don’t see even remotely close to everything. And if our recent experiences have illustrated nothing else, it’s just how malleable reality can be. It’s a moot point, though,” she went on, “since all we can do as organisms is perform actions based on the information provided by our senses.”

  “Well said,” Oya agreed. “This entire conversation might be in your mind, or mine, but lacking any concrete evidence common sense suggests we carry on as if it is really happening between two organisms.”

  “And that we carry on as if the rest of the universe actually exists, perhaps,” Janya said, “regardless of how sinful the idea might be?”

  “Well, quite,” the settler said a little uncomfortably. “I’d just heard that the Bonshooni on The Warm had turned entirely from any sort of veil interpretations in favour of human beliefs. Mygonism, things like that,” she gave an exaggerated shudder. “Zhraak stuff.”

  “The prevailing academic opinion seems to be that Zhraak was actually some sort of Molran bio-weapon intended to kill Damorakind,” Janya said idly, “that went haywire and killed a whole lot of people and in doing so accidentally became a figure first of folklore, and then religious superstition.”

  The Bonshoon paled under her mariner’s suntan. “Are you serious?”

  “Usually.”

  “You have scars,” Oya said abruptly.

  “What brings you up here?”

  “I need mozotane,” Oya admitted sheepishly.

  Janya frowned. Mozotane was the harmless fructose-based weaning chemical they were using to help the evacuees come down off the smoke. It had worked well enough so far – only a couple of what Janus Whye referred to as ‘freak-outs’. The counsellor was really in his element, she reflected.

  “Glomulus is handing out the mozotane,” she said. “You want the medical bay.”

  “The human in there – Glomulus?” Oya shuddered again. “It’s horrible.”

  “No argument from me,” Janya said, “but is there anything in particular … ?”

  “I’d rather go back to Bayn Balro and swim,” the Bonshoon said fervently.

  “If he does anything, you’ve been told that the crew will deal with it,” Janya said. “I’m pretty sure he’ll be friendly and cooperative.”

  “He looks at us strangely.”

  “Really?” Oya nodded, ears flat back against the sides of her head. “Specifically … ?”

  “Like he’s wearing a suit made out of human skin but couldn’t get the coloured glass eye lenses to work properly so he just cut a pair of holes instead.”

  “That’s pretty specific,” Janya conceded.

  “The young ones won’t go in there anymore.”

  “You really shouldn’t be afraid, but it probably is a good idea,” Janya said, “to limit his exposure to the young ones.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Usually,” Janya replied, and returned to her reading. This time, she let herself indulge in full pointedness, and after about thirty seconds Oya got the hint, rose, and shuffled back towards the door of the lab.

  Lazy centuries of study had revealed that there was a singularity of sorts, although the term was misleading, an atom-thin thread running along the axis of The Warm, and this was apparently responsible for its heat. It was not a heating element as such; it was the same uniform temperature as the rest of the massive cylinder. It just resonated with the local compound and made it warm somehow. And it may have been far less than an atom thin – current theories, at least as of the publication of the book Janya was reading, were that it was actually one-dimensional. It was difficult to study, on account of digs being strictly controlled and interaction with the filament being nearly impossible. Any sort of interaction, maybe even observation on a quantum level, might have broken the filament and shut down The Warm altogether. Its existence, let alone its characteristics, could only be theoretically verified.

  And this was ignoring the more farfetched theories that The Warm was actually alive.

  Waffa had been born and spent his childhood on Aquilar. His parents, he’d told Janya, had been a pair of wealthy old-family xenobiology enthusiasts who had landed one of the coveted research grants. They’d shipped the whole lot of them out to The Warm when Waffa had still been very young and his sister an infant. Things had been quite happy, from what Janya had gathered, but after Waffa’s father had passed away and his sister had returned to Aquilar, he had eventually decided there was nothing much left for him on The Warm. When the chance had come for him to join a modular crew for more than just mind-destroyingly monotonous milk-run supply jaunts, he’d said a fond farewell to his old mum and had taken it.

  “What happened to your ship?” Oya asked, jolting Janya out of her reflections. She’d thought the Bonshoon woman was gone.

  “The ship?” Janya looked up with a frown.

  “Nobody will tell me,” the settler complained. “Where have you been, why is there only a few of you who aren’t ables, why do you have so many ables and why are they so–”

  “All these questions are up to the Commander to answer, if she was going to,” Janya said. “You were told this already, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Oya replied unhappily, “but I just hoped you might…”

  “Sorry.”

  “At least your relative drive works.”

  “I suppose it would be a long ride otherwise.”

  Two weeks in the company of recovering drug addicts was more than long enough, of course, and Janya could only imagine how long it must have felt for the drug addicts themselves. Fortunately, Bonshooni were pacific by nature and responded to their withdrawals – aside from the handful of ‘freak-outs’ – by literally withdrawing, creeping into their makeshift quarters and sitting quietly. Which was for the best, because if nineteen adult Bonshooni, each well over seven feet tall and weighing in at a solid four hundred pounds, decided to go on a rampage it probably would have resulted in Sally having to blow the airlocks. They’d seen the damage a single insane Molran could do, after all.

  Still, the flight was uneventful. Sometimes, it was even enjoyable. Particularly towards the end, when the smoke began to loosen its hold and the evacuees began to return to their usual affable selves, they proved a lively and friendly bunch lacking the uptight superiority that seemed to characterise the Molren or the volatility of the average Blaran. The fellow in the isolation pod, arguably the one who had suffered the most due to going through his withdrawals in solitary confinement, recovered and was declared free of risk, and joined the others in the Contro Tangle.

  Bonshoon had, rather unfairly, become something of a byword over the years. It was synonymous, to Molran and Blaran alike, for fat of mind, fat of body. Some forms of the word were even used as insults – bonsh, bonsher, bonshy. In a physical sense it was accurate enough, of course. Due to the long-forgotten intricacies of their branching-off from the great Molran trunk and their persistent and now-age-old cultural leanings – the smokeberries were just one example of such indulgence – the Bonshooni were somewhat thicker-bodied than the other two Molranoid species.

  They weren’t really stupid, though, at least not in comparison to humans. All the species of Molranoid enjoyed an intelligence curve located somewhat further along the axis than humanity by dint of the complexity and utilisation of their brains. That was just a matter of pure computing power and nobody judged. Well, not really. Not in mixed company, certainly, and not out loud. Bonshooni were just … relaxed, and happy. Which was good news when spending two weeks cooped up with a bunch of Bonshooni passengers, and even better news when those passengers were coming down en masse off a moderately addictive narcotic.

  Janya didn’t have much to do with the settlers, aside from one or two similar drop-in conversations to the one she’d had with Oya and an equally brief series of semi-interviews with a few of the Bonshooni on the Commander’s request. She did as much ‘r
esearch’ as she could on the logs and computer data they’d evacuated with, and had done her best to establish what had happened to Bayn Balro. The logs were no more helpful than the smoked-out survivors: anyone who’d witnessed anything was either dead or an aquatic monster pathologically incapable of telling the truth when a discord-sowing psychotic fantasy would do.

  In the end, her findings were developed only a step or two beyond her initial guess – ultimately inconclusive. Something had happened, fast and overwhelming and utterly without warning, striking the floating settlement and apparently crippling the Fergunak gridnet close enough to simultaneously to make no difference. The sharks had survived the near-complete loss of their cybernetic infrastructure most likely because they were aquatic, and the only land-bound settlers to survive were the ones who had been cut off from Bayn Balro at the time. The rest had drowned when the settlement was demolished, or been eaten by the Fergies when they promptly turned on the vulnerable ‘flesh’. They had no idea what had happened, and – being drug addicts – had prioritised the preservation of their stash over conducting any sort of investigation. In their defence, of course, the settlement had been shattered and any activities that took them outside of armoured areas left them at risk from the marauding Fergunak.

  In short, it was a catastrophe and all Janya could really establish was that it hadn’t been a natural disaster. Nothing tectonic or atmospheric had caused Bayn Balro to sink, no asteroid impacts or other disruptions from the unstable planetary system. That still left a near-infinity of causes, starting with a Fergunakil cyber-virus or a smoke-addled Bonshoon hitting the self-destruct. A self-destruct that, admittedly, the settlers denied having … but drugs could turn an electronic calendar and a dozen seismic survey charges into a self-destruct.

  It was when Adeneo realised this bit of wisdom was a nugget of Glomulus Cratch’s gold that she decided her ‘research’ was over.

  After submitting her report to a grateful and commiserative Z-Lin Clue, Janya retired to her quarters and made herself comfortable in the modest library wing she had carved out for herself. Her library fortuitously did not share any walls with the noisy guests occupying a lot of Contro’s nearby wonky string of rooms, and so she was able to spend the final few days of their trip in reading and reflection.