Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle

  “You waited quite a long time before coming to see me,” Janya said instead of voicing any of these suspicions. “You must have investigated all the others already.”

  Thord half-turned towards Janya, and the lower bar of her light panel flickered again. She was, Janya reflected again, a rather jolly aki’Drednanth. Janya had met two other aki’Drednanth in the course of her studies, and Boréas and Arendelle had been possessed of dry senses of humour at best. “Most of the others came to visit me in my quarters,” Thord said. “I could not have avoided investigating them if I wished to.”

  “I regret you had to make this special house call,” Janya said, and Thord light-laughed again. “I don’t care for the cold if I can possibly avoid it.”

  “You came aboard The Warm.”

  “I was misled by the name,” she quipped, then shook her head. Aside from the thermals that basically nullified the cold entirely, the crew had inherited a set of niqis from The Warm’s supplies. They’d had more clothes and equipment than personnel, as Lou Bendis himself had pointed out at the time. “The truth is, I do not make a habit of imposing myself on others. Particularly by going to their quarters.”

  “An attitude I must applaud,” Thord said with another flash of amusement. “I too prefer solitude, and after the initial flurry of visits and gawking is done with I hope to continue our journey with – I am saying this too bluntly and I apologise – minimal intrusion. The company of Dunnkirk and Maladin is quite enough.”

  “I have no problem with that level of bluntness,” Janya assured her. “I imagine a week or two of drop-ins is enough to get to know us, if not get fed to the teeth with us.”

  “Not at all,” Thord said, “but this is to be a long flight, yes?”

  “Wynstone’s Attic, Gethsemane, Seven Widdershins,” Janya read easily off her organiser, “Prufrock, Þursheim, MundCorp Research Base, Standing Wave, Shosha Ranch Chemical Outpost, Zhraak Burns, Greentemple, Burned Heart, Declivitorion, and then the edge is another week from there. A long trip, most of it through very small and isolated settlements,” the final few stops with a distinctly back-woods zealot feel to them, she thought, with slight unease.

  “Yes,” Thord agreed. “I feel we can take things slowly. It is my hope that I will be able to move among you as I am now, in my suit, and reduce the need for you to venture into the farm ring. I know it is a delicate environment that has already suffered damage due to my intrusion and the renovations you performed. And there is my … luggage to consider.”

  The seed, Janya thought with an inner nod. “Is it vulnerable to interference?”

  “It is very sturdy,” Thord said, “but designed to drift through space. It can resist small impacts, and microthrusters connected to the pods that will be attached to it will help it to avoid larger bodies as much as possible. But it is the warmth, and the touch of warm-blooded creatures, that could possibly damage its crystals. It is a difficult thing to explain.”

  Stay out of my quarters, Janya translated mildly in her mind, point taken. Aki’Drednanth were known to be fiercely territorial in some cases, although that was usually only once you ventured closer to the Great Ice. “Of course.”

  “You must forgive me for imposing now,” Thord concluded.

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Janya said, “you are quite welcome,” she finished the tea, and carried it across to her chair while it was still steeping. “Was there anything specifically you wanted to talk about?”

  Thord shrugged massive shoulders in a very easily-translated gesture. “What do you think about this mission?”

  “It’s as good as any we’ve been on since I joined this crew,” Janya said, sitting back with a shrug of her own. “Better than most, because we’ve actually been helping people.”

  “You joined the crew from the Judon Research Outpost,” Thord said, “at the same time as Glomulus Cratch and Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed.”

  “Sally was already part of the crew,” Janya shook her head. “She’d separated from the ship, come to Judon, and rejoined them when Glomulus and I came aboard. But your timeline is close enough.”

  “Quite a large group of new crewmembers, when one considers the size of Judon,” Thord said. “And particularly when you consider those now left alive … three of the ten survivors, all from the same tiny place. Three, in fact, of the eight non-Corps crew.”

  “Three of the six, if you count Zeegon and Decay as Corps,” Janya said. “They’ve had some level of training but they’re not Academy-graduated AstroCorps. And Sally herself has had some military and police training but nothing from the Academy. And she was … washed out, I believe they call it. Or discharged on academic grounds. Or something,” she pulled the tea cage from her cup, left it on her plate, and sipped.

  Thord moved away from the shelves and settled into an easy crouch opposite Janya, legs bent and knuckles resting on the floor before her. “You have thought much, then, on the dynamic of those left behind by this ‘Accident’ that befell this ship.”

  “Yes,” Janya said coolly over her cup, “I think about a lot of things,” she took another sip. “It’s remarkable that you have taken such a detailed interest.”

  “Not so remarkable. This will be a long flight,” Thord said, “and even if I were not interested in getting to know my shipmates, Maladin and Dunnkirk are most curious.”

  “A long flight,” Janya said, “perhaps too long to risk opening some boxes best left closed.”

  “Perhaps too long to risk not opening them.”

  “Hmm,” Janya said, and put down her teacup. “Did you decide this after the three of you spoke to the Captain?”

  This time, Thord’s light-laugh was flickering and pronounced. “Maladin and Dunnkirk were certainly motivated by that encounter,” she said, “although I have dealt with a number of AstroCorps Captains and have always found them to be quite singular.”

  “Ours is nothing special, eh?” Janya asked in mild amusement. Thord raised a hand and tipped it back and forth uncertainly. “Very well. Do you really think the Cancer is not responsible for these attacks?”

  “I do not know,” Thord said simply. “Perhaps I wish to believe it is not so,” Janya gave the aki’Drednanth a curious glance, and she explained, “if Damorakind is behind this destruction, then we are all doomed.”

  “If Damorakind isn’t behind this, are we any less doomed?” Janya asked. “It would still appear to be something. And even if it isn’t the Cancer, how long do you think it will be before they sense weakness and decide to push out again? Our worlds don’t hide anywhere near as well as they used to, even if the Fleet is keeping itself undercover and mobile,” she shook her head. “And they’d have the help of the Fergunak,” she went on. “They’d turn on us at the first opportunity. They’ve already started. If the Damorakind came out of the Core in force – or if they already are – then the sharks would roll out the welcome wagon for them all across the Six Species.”

  “In that case,” Thord said, “what would the Six Species do?” she waved a hand. “Or the Five Species, as we would be in that case?”

  “We would die,” Janya said. “Damorakind, to my knowledge, did not alter or enslave Molren during the early years. They opted to eradicate them, since they possessed none of the traits that made the Fergunak or aki’Drednanth useful. Humanity wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “You sell your species short,” Thord said, “although I admit this is not very good reassurance, being as it is an assurance merely that you might prove worthy of subjugation.”

  “Your pep probably won’t be not out of place on this ship,” Janya remarked.

  “A crewmember who should perhaps remain nameless told me we like our inspiration the way we like our women,” Thord said. “Short and blunt and realistic.”

  “Who was flying the ship while you were talking to Zeegon?” Thord actually laughed at that one, a heavy, hollow woof from the depths of her envirosuit’s torso. At least, Janya assumed it was a laugh. “Do yo
u have any experience with Damorakind?” she went on. “In this lifetime, or your past ones? Have you been in the Core?”

  Thord shook her great head. “I became aki’Drednanth thirty-two years ago,” she said. “Before that, I had not been aki’Drednanth in over a million years. When I last walked the Great Ice, it was before Damorakind was born. Or, if not before their birth, then before their spread and before the agreement with the aki’Drednanth,” Thord shifted heavily on feet and knuckles before continuing self-effacingly. “I am as close to oona’aki’Drednanth as any aki’Drednanth among the Six Species worlds, I think.”

  Oona’aki’Drednanth, Janya thought. The New. This was something of an aki’Drednanth myth, if you could call it ‘myth’ when they presented it as unvarnished facts of life and most of the hard evidence tended to stack up in their favour. Occasionally, rather than an ancient Drednanth mind gestating a new body for herself and returning to life as a fresh reincarnation, an entirely new infant was allowed to grow and be born, to experience life and her surroundings for the first time, and then join the ranks of the Drednanth on her death. Every aki’Drednanth had a first incarnation, after all. The oona’aki’Drednanth incarnation was the aki’Drednanth equivalent of a childhood.

  “That’s an … unusually long time to be Drednanth,” Janya hazarded, “isn’t it?”

  “It is not unheard-of,” Thord replied. “There are many Drednanth whose Dreamscapes remain almost permanently bodiless. We all grow and learn and develop as one. It is complicated.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “Much has changed since I last trod the Great Ice,” Thord said. “There were other people – there, and in the Core, and throughout the galaxy. I watched them flourish and fade from my vantage point in the Dreamscape.”

  Janya decided that Thord was going to tell her a lot more about one-million-years-ago galactic inhabitants before she took a swan-dive out of their custom-made docking bay with her iceblock in eighteen months’ time.

  She’d heard and read innumerable historical accounts of the aki’Drednanth – or rather the Drednanth – story, of course. Almost as soon as academia had stopped scoffing at the idea of aki’Drednanth reincarnation, they’d started asking long and detailed questions of every aki’Drednanth they could get in an interview room. How early in your evolution did you become telepaths? How did you develop the Dreamscape? How did you transfer your consciousnesses into the Great Ice and how do you reintegrate yourselves into gestating embryos? Were there early iterations of the process? Where did you start and what parts of your brains were key? What were Damorakind like when you first met them? What built the relics we find drifting around the galaxy? What other races existed, and what killed them? Where did the Molren really come from?

  The answers, she knew, were either extremely prosaic or thickly layered with a myth-like set of aki’Drednanth interpretations that rendered them pretty useless for anyone trying to write a definitive history of the past fifty million years. And yes, she’d read all the big stories before. But now she could hear it firsthand. And each aki’Drednanth, regardless of their interconnected nature and their dependence on Drednanth mass knowledge to relate tales of the past, had different ways of seeing and understanding things.

  Thord, practically newborn and having spent so long as Drednanth, was a unique new voice.

  “So after a million years, you came back to the aki’Drednanth,” she said. “Was that just – forgive my ignorance, was it just the luck of the draw?”

  “The Drednanth does not rely on luck,” Thord proclaimed. “In a sense, though, remaining as Drednanth rather than taking a body granted me an increasing entitlement to become aki’Drednanth as time and opportunities passed by,” she went on. “I was still required to pass many tests, both here and in the Dreamscape, but the longer I was Drednanth, the higher I stood on … what you would understand as a … reincarnation ladder.”

  “Interesting,” Janya leaned forward. “And you came back now – or thirty-two years ago – for this? This quest with the seed? To my understanding, you mean to ride it out of this galaxy at subluminal speed, which will freeze even your body,” Thord nodded. “Which means, as you’ve said, that you will return once again to the Drednanth, probably before you turn thirty-five.”

  “Yes.”

  “The mission – the seed – it was that important?” Janya breathed. “I thought you said it was just a tradition, a precaution.”

  “Some traditions are important,” the aki’Drednanth replied, “and certainly some precautions are important – more important, perhaps, than we had assumed at the beginning.”

  “But … a million years, then thirty-five years with a body, then back to the Dreamscape, all for this one thing?” she noticed Thord’s panel was flickering again. “And you laugh?”

  “Life is amusing.”

  “Evidently,” Janya said, settling back in her chair.

  “I am aki’Drednanth,” Thord said. “This is what I do.”

  “Is it true that you can’t communicate with the rest of your kind when we’re in soft-space?” Janya asked.

  Thord’s panels shifted in hue and brightened a little. Sorrow, Janya identified from steadily-improving rote-memory, and not a little wariness. What did she think the monkeys were going to do, the little scientist wondered? “In a sense,” she said. “Should I die while I am at relative speed, my Dreamscape – my mind – would come to a standstill and return to the Drednanth. At this moment, however, I am no more in reality than any of us aboard this ship. I cannot reach the others, and my Dreamscape is alone.”

  “Except for Dunnkirk and Maladin,” Janya said, “and whatever communion you can get from the seed.”

  “Yes,” Thord replied with a happy shift of colours back to her baseline turquoise, “these things are a comfort to me. Aki’Drednanth do not enjoy extended travel at relative speed for this very reason. Dunnkirk and Maladin are therefore an essential part of my luggage, if you will.”

  “They’d probably be amused to hear themselves described that way.”

  “They would,” Thord replied. “I know this from firsthand experience.”

  “Still, it’s a long and lonely journey that you’re on.”

  “We stop from time to time, return to real space, and that is enough,” Thord said. “And at least…” she stopped, and flashed a red lower bar. Acute embarrassment.

  “At least you know there’s an end to your loneliness,” Janya finished for her simply, “either when we stop, or when you die. Unlike those of us without a Dreamscape.”

  “I did not wish to cause distress,” Thord said. “The difference between species is a complex thing and I am not equipped to discuss it without straining my diplomacy.”

  Janya waved it off. Thord’s diplomacy was as suited to the Tramp as her reassurances were. “If I believed the aki’Drednanth were immortal beings capable of reincarnation, I wouldn’t be distressed,” she said. “I would be reassured that something might survive all this, and a little envious that it will not be me,” she picked up her cup. “And yet, since you will presumably remember me, perhaps something of me will survive.”

  “If you believed,” Thord said. Janya inclined her head, and sipped her tea. “I will note, this time, that you did not say that you do not believe,” the aki’Drednanth went on. “I do wonder, however, why you would ask about my past time as aki’Drednanth, if you did not believe it.”

  “I’m a scientist,” Janya replied. “This is what I do.”

  BRUCE

  Watching organisms in their natural environment was interesting, but nowhere near as interesting as watching them in unnatural environments.

  The thing about organisms was, basically any environment was their natural one. Especially the big sentients of the Six Species. Once a life-form could adapt its surroundings to suit itself rather than adapt itself to its surroundings, it became really fun viewing. For a start, engineering was faster than evolution.

  You didn’t
get much more unnatural than soft-space. Watching organisms adjust – or fail to adjust – to the isolation and boredom and utter nothingness of relative speed unreality was really very interesting. For a synthetic intelligence. Of course, synths were fine with it, because the whole concept fitted quite easily into their data-as-sensory-input worldview. Soft-space was simply a temporary localised blackout.

  The flight, for Bruce, was a series of amusing cut-scenes and half-conversations, pieced-together reports and crew statements, interspersed with dips back into the real universe to stop at an assortment of settlements.

  - - - Eshret to Wynstone’s Attic + 5 weeks shipboard + total duration from The Warm 6 weeks shipboard + incident report - - -

  - - - HLCF + SAE + OOF + NJDI - - -

  Bruce did not usually go for the special report acronym-jargon. It was a synthetic intelligence and was able to effortlessly strip the important information out of the so-called dumb template, making its reports so much more interesting and streamlined.

  Still, in this case the classic HLCF + SAE + OOF + NJDI combination – Hardware Lapse Causing Fatality, Single Able Expired, One-Off Fault, No Janitorial Drone Involvement, or Hideous Lethal Cluster Fuck, Squashed An Eejit, Once Only, Fingers crossed, Just Cleaned It Up My God Damn Self As Usual according to Waffa’s colourful repurposing – promised an interesting report, and so Bruce let it stand.

  - - - Eejit [designation omitted] climbed inside Molranoid-intended medical isolation pod collected from Bayn Balro rescue site + 3 witnesses [all eejits] + Apparent intention, according to 3 witnesses: [1] Clean Molranoid-intended medical isolation pod interior; [2] Flee vessel under misapprehension that Molranoid-intended medical isolation pod was escape capsule; [3] Hide from “the dinosaur” [eejit witness {designation omitted} known to suffer from harmless delusions of prehistoric apex predators; Acting Chief Medical Officer GC0X [Glomulus] has dubbed the flaw “prehysteria”] - - -

  - - - Molranoid-intended medical isolation pod sealed, automatically activated + 1 or more witnesses may have attempted to deactivate or open Molranoid-intended medical isolation pod, accidentally starting medical procedure - - -