“It occurred to me,” Waffa said, taking another contemplative sip of his zolo, “and if they let us dock I think we should ask.”
“I will to ask Thord to put in a good word.”
“Thanks. MundCorp did check our exchange, though,” Waffa went on, “and there’s no problem, at least not anymore. Actually, the exchange is pretty much the only system that was thoroughly messed up in The Accident that has since received an official once-over from the builders. It wasn’t at the MundCorp base, it was just a Mundy flier, but they checked her over and cleaned her end to end, and gave her the stamp,” he shrugged. “Said she was clean. She still doesn’t feel clean, though. Cross the exchange plane outside the elevator, and you can feel the grease.”
“The … grease?” Dunnkirk frowned again, as far as a Molranoid could with their up-curled mouths. “Is also figure of speech?”
Waffa shook his head. “The remains went into the toruses, and across the plane, and we did what we could to clean them even before we met the Mundy guys. You know how much grease – condensed fat – there is in an average human? Enough to make seven blocks of soap. Decay told me. He likes those little facts,” he laughed shortly. “In his defence, he did also point out there was enough to make five in a Molran.”
“There is more in Bonshoon, I think so,” Dunnkirk said, then grew serious. “The grease stayed?”
“Janus says it’s just psychological,” Waffa shrugged.
“Oh, you get counselling for this.”
“Nah. He tries to slip a bit into conversation sometimes.”
“He is good counsellor.”
“You think so?” Waffa shrugged again. “He’s a nice bloke, but … wait, what – you? You’ve had counselling from Janus?”
“I try to slip into conversation,” Dunnkirk said, turning from the plant to Waffa and giving him a little wink.
“What do you need counselling for?”
“We are flying to the edge of space, to ride the Drednanth seed into the walls and perhaps beyond,” Dunnkirk said, eyes bright. “It is very for excitings, but also I am afeared.”
“Fair enough,” he was about to change the subject when the configuration conveniently ended, effectively doing it for him. “Okay,” he said, looking at his watch as the product aperture and the uniform port opened in a tasteful little waft of steam that smelled inoffensively of a hot shower room. “That was ninety-five minutes, almost the bare minimum, so let’s not get our hopes–”
The eejit, glossy from the innards of the machine and buck naked in the non-confrontational way animals and anatomically-correct mannequins tended to be, stepped out of the wreath of steam and stood, the slack waiting-face of the eejit on his face. He turned, saw Waffa and Dunnkirk rising to their feet in the alcove, and straightened to a semblance of attention.
“Howi howi,” he said.
Waffa almost fell back into his chair. The eejit’s voice was a little thick and confused, and he had that classic bovine non-expression … but he was nevertheless, unmistakably, delivering the intended AstroCorps-regulation phrase for a fresh-printed and successfully-configured able.
Able.
“Uh, howi, right,” Waffa said, and hurried forward to hand the eejit his still-warm uniform. “Hey. Uh … hey.”
“Is he alright?” Dunnkirk asked in concern.
“He seems fine,” Waffa said. “I’ve actually never heard one say ‘howi’ before. It’s what they’re supposed to say, when they’re printed and configured right. When they’re ables.”
“Is this then able?”
“Well, no,” Waffa went on, consulting the interface and looking at the sequence of cognitive tests and indicators that accompanied the configuration. This guy was definitely suffering a configuration problem – if you could configure an able in ninety-five minutes, why did it normally take five hundred on a working machine? – but it was unusually mild. This was a very decent-quality eejit. “No, but he’s a good print.”
“Ready to get to work,” the eejit said, quickly donning his uniform. “Ready to get to work.”
“That is good,” Dunnkirk said. “I am glad. I’m glad it worked, the … as we … the thing I tried.”
“What thing?”
“The…” the Bonshoon raised a hand to his ear, waggled his fingers obscurely, and then used the same hand to point and wiggle his fingers at the fabrication plant. “I … we tried this, this communion. Thord wants to kashraa … minimal … minimise … the printer mans. The eejits, the number of them,” Dunnkirk explained, sounding oddly shy.
“You made him configure better?” Waffa practically squeaked. “How the Hell did you do that?”
“I just, with Thord,” Dunnkirk said helplessly. “I just, just feel the mind. Feel the layers. Help them lay down right, one on top of the next. It is difficult.”
“Awaiting assignment and designation,” the eejit said. “Awaiting assignment and designation.”
Waffa shook himself and turned back to the interface. “Right. Uh, right, okay. We’ll call him Shaw,” he tapped on the console and assigned Shaw a basic identity and shipboard role. “First name, Tubby.”
Dunnkirk blinked. “Tubby?”
Waffa turned to the eejit. “What’s your name, chief?”
“Tubby Shaw, Tubby Shaw.”
“Classic,” Waffa grinned, then noticed Dunnkirk’s puzzlement. “Never mind. Can you do that mojo with the other nineteen boys we’ve got to print?”
“Yes, I think. We may need to stop, Thord will need to rest, she is…” Dunnkirk made another obscure gesture with his lower hands. “She will tire from the work.”
“No worries, we can rest, we can do them in shifts, just let me know when you guys need a break,” Waffa began to prepare the next print, and Tubby Shaw headed with convincing purposefulness towards his first shift. “If we’re going to get good eejits out of this, we can take our time.”
CONTRO
They reached MundCorp Research Base early one morning, although obviously it wasn’t morning morning, it was just the part of the day on board ship that everyone agreed was morning for some reason and when the night shift turned into the day shift. Contro wasn’t sure when they’d agreed this. He hadn’t been involved, that was for sure. Although he probably would have done it the same way, so he couldn’t very well complain. In fact you never really could tell which morning was the real thing, because most of the crew members were from different planets and they all had different mornings, didn’t they? So it was just as well they all used a made-up one on the ship, really. But it was confusing, too, because as far as Contro could tell it was always night outside. Honestly, that was space for you. In fact it wasn’t even night, it was soft-space so it was sort of grey and funny, like a very dense foggy morning.
Actually, when you thought about it, in soft-space it was morning all the time! So it didn’t really mean much to say it was morning when they got to MundCorp Research Base, and that just proved it.
Still, Controversial-To-The-End had gotten up, put on his trousers and shirt and socks and shoes and a good cardigan, not necessarily in that order, and made himself a cup of tea to have with his breakfast. While he ate his ‘ponic-grown cereal and protein-bar – the bar was printed, but he thought they were pretty yum – he read a few pages of a book he’d been trying to get through since … well, since before they’d met the Artist and gone hopping all over the galaxy, actually! He was a bit of a duffer when it came to books. Never could quite be sure if he’d read it before and just forgotten, or not read it at all, or read something else and was remembering that, or even why he was reading it. The words were in the book, and that was fine. Why did they need to be in his head too? If he needed them, he knew where they were. They weren’t going anywhere. It wasn’t as if they were going to vanish and he would be the only person with the words in his memory. Actually, the book would be in a bit of a pickle if that happened, because Contro was pretty sure he’d never seen this character ‘Mack’ before. If
the book vanished and he was left as the only person who knew the story, all he remembered clearly was the tea-stain on page thirty-two. And he was pretty sure that wasn’t important to the plot.
So why read it? It was basically doubling the information, and – he would be the first to admit – not doubling it very well! If it was meant to be for his own entertainment, it really needed to hold its plot together a bit more carefully.
And now he wanted a pickle.
He liked his cardigans. People thought it was odd, and he supposed it was in a way because thermals were warmer, but it was just a necessity in his line of work. And cardigans added a warm feeling, as well as actual warmth. Today, though, Contro remembered that he wasn’t going into the transpersion chamber, so he wouldn’t actually need the cardigan, most likely. Being in a starship at relative speed didn’t have the same feeling that being immersed in the soft-space in the heart of the ship’s engine did. You were protected by the hull and the atmosphere and the heating wossnames. It was different. Standing in that chamber with the core belt heavy on your hips, the chamber walls oscillating minutely at exactly ten thousand times light speed, and your own body oscillating to the precisely identical field harmonic from the belt so you could interact with the interior, and so the reactor could do all those things that it could never get away with doing in the hard-space universe … well, that got chilly!
It would be fair to say Contro didn’t actually remember that they were getting to MundCorp Research Base, per se, so much as finish his breakfast and the confusing half-page about Mack and his disagreement with the smugglers or what have you, and headed towards the engine room at a cheerful stroll. Then Waffa had pinged him on his organiser pad, asking him why he wasn’t answering his watch, and to remind him that Zeegon had sounded the one-hour-to-subluminal about fifty minutes ago and he could come to the bridge if he wanted. So yes, it was more like he had heard Zeegon’s announcement just as he was getting up, but had then forgotten the whole jolly thing, and had gotten dressed and had breakfast and headed to work just like always! Honestly, what a dope!
He did that sometimes. But he was sure, if anyone were to ask him about Mack and the travelling acrobat troupe, he’d be able to answer any question put to him.
Most of the gang had gathered on the bridge, as they seemed to habitually do these days whenever they were coming out of superluminal flight and entering ‘the universe’, as some of them called it. There was a bit of a sense of “righto, let’s see if everything’s tickety-boo here or if something’s a bit iffy” about it, like each new stop was a new crack at having the entire universe be back as it was. Funny, really.
Glomulus was in the medical bay as always, of course, and Janya was probably reading or some such, and Thord and the Bonshooni were hanging out in the farm ring. And the Captain, obviously, was off doing Captainy stuff in the Captain’s chambers. But the rest of the team – Z-Lin, Decay, Sally, Waffa, Zeegon and Janus – were all on deck. Everyone tensed up as the counter ran down and Zeegon dropped them back out of the formless grey and into the blackness of space. It was as if everyone was expecting a big sign with BOO written on it to appear in the window when they dropped out of soft-space. That was funny too.
There was no sign with BOO. There was just a big old red sun, a band of asteroids passing between it and the Tramp, and – even closer, slowly slipping in to fill the viewscreen and take a big pickle-shaped bite out of the bulging sun – MundCorp Research Base.
“Pickles again,” Contro chuckled. “They seem to be chasing me today!”
The others looked at him, but nobody said anything. They were probably all worried about whether the base was all in one piece.
It certainly seemed to be in one piece. The base really was just two Molran Worldships with their noses cut off and then pushed together end-to-end. The result was actually more like a giant peanut than a pickle – a great craggy bulbous shape hanging in space, with a slightly narrower point in the middle between the two bulges, and the massive rings that combined power stations, relative toruses, subluminal cruise engines and technician residences at either end of the peanut. It really did look quite amusing, and the only things that gave it away as an artificial structure were the lights in the terminus bands and the fact that no asteroid would ever accidentally get carved into such an odd shape. Probably.
Actual commissioned and active Worldships were smoother, since they went around with their hulls activated and received regular repairs. MundCorp Research Base was sheathed in rock and soil and crete and ice, and was pocked and cratered with debris from the meteor field that also acted as a ready-to-hand source of raw materials. The meteor field was also Fleet property, but held by a different division in mining and infrastructure, a consortium comprising political and commercial elements of …
Sally coughed. Contro looked up, and realised he was sitting at her console, reading a data feed about MundCorp Research Base. Honestly, now he couldn’t remember anything except the stuff about the meteor field he’d just been looking at. The part of the book he’d read at breakfast – gone! Had Mack been facing off against a Fleet mining consortium? That sounded about right.
“Thanks,” Sally said, as Contro chuckled and jumped to his feet. She pointed him towards the next station along. “Was just snooping on Decay’s panels, you can take that seat.”
“Now I’ll never know if Mack found out how the miners were smuggling bits of meteor into the circus,” Contro complained mildly.
“Uh, okay then.”
“No beacon here, but we’ve got a nodback,” Decay announced.
“They don’t have a beacon,” Waffa said. “At least they didn’t back in the day. Too secretive even for that. They’ll send out a tug, most likely.”
“Getting a full transmission,” Decay added.
“What the heck, put it up on the monitors,” Z-Lin said. A moment later, she let out a short, sharp laugh of shock. Contro had never heard such a sound from her. Usually he was the one laughing. He came back from the other station, which hadn’t lit up with the rest, and craned across Sally’s shoulder to see what was so funny. Z-Lin hardly ever laughed.
But then, Contro conceded, he’d never seen a Molran with a ropy mop of bright purple hair before, either.
“Hi,” the Molran said, his close-harmonic dual-windpipe voice sounding easy and casual. “Reading you loud and clear, modular.”
“Uh, um, uh,” Z-Lin coughed, and Contro noticed he wasn’t the only one looking up in mild concern, although everyone else looked like they understood completely. Z-Lin never hesitated at the comm. But then – as before – she never talked to Molren with hair, either. Contro looked back at Sally’s screen. The Molran was smiling, but that was pretty normal, for Molren. Sally’s shoulders were shaking with stifled laughter. “Read you, MundCorp Research Base, this is Commander Z-Lin Clue, official starship designation…” she cleared her throat one more time, and continued more firmly, “well, we usually shorten to Astro Tramp 400, or just ‘the Tramp’. Deep-space exploration and transportation, minimal crew, limited technical capabilities. We’re reading you loud and clear, MundCorp Research.”
“Yeah, you said,” the Molran outright grinned now. “Hi.”
“You said that, too,” Z-Lin was back in control, at least as far as Contro could see. “I wasn’t aware that this was a Blaran outfit.”
Ahh. Contro nodded to himself. Of course, it would be a Blaran. Contro had just realised why the hair looked so familiar – it was able hair. They all had pretty much the same haircut, although this was longer and tangled and dyed that funny colour. It was still clearly a grafted-on augmentation from an able, and Blaren were generally the ones that were into these shocking little cosmetic enhancements. Molren were by no means universally against it, Contro supposed, but they did tend to be the more straight-laced, wear-the-same-clothes-they-always-did-even-on-Funny-Shirt-Friday type of fellows.
“It is now,” the purple-haired Blaran said happily, “or what’s l
eft of it. I mean really. All that hard work and extraordinary luck,” he went on, his tone turning slightly mournful, “for nothing. Guess it had to be too good to be true, right? But yes – all ours, since the sourcats left,” he leaned back in his seat, tipping away from the screen a little, and spread all four arms, cheerful once more. Contro noticed he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The rest of his body was as hairless as every other Molranoid body Contro had seen, not that he’d seen all that many, except that one time Decay had made him look through his collection of pornography. Anyway, long story short, it looked like it was just the head-hair he’d added, which was probably good because Contro didn’t think ables had that much hair anywhere else. Not that he’d seen many of them naked either, except – again – on Decay’s organiser pad that time. “Now the shit-dancers rule Big Gravity.”
“I … see,” Z-Lin said calmly. “Well, hi then.”
The Blaran grinned again, fangs gleaming, and settled his upper hands behind his head, running his fingers into his peculiar mane. “And what brings a fine AstroCorps monkey-bowl all the way out to our humble little tanning salon?”
“Just passing through,” Z-Lin said. Decay tapped at his console, and Z-Lin glanced across at him and nodded, still looking as bemused as Contro felt. Decay took over the comm.
“And let’s have a bit less of the monkey-talk,” he advised smoothly, “you’re talking to a Commander of the AstroCorps fleet.”
The shaggy Blaran laughed aloud. “Oh, my apologies, passing-through Commander of the AstroCorps fleet,” he declared, leaning forward again and clasping his lower hands together. “I had no idea you were so sensitive.”
“Forget it,” Z-Lin said, giving Decay a little shrug before turning back to her console. “That’s a fine primate pelt you’re sporting yourself there … you didn’t give me your name.”
“Gila Rodel,” the Blaran said, “of the TransMundus. And it is handsome, isn’t it?” he ran his upper left hand through his hair again. “Itches like a son-of-a-whore, though. I don’t know how you m- … humans … do it. And flakes of skin come out of it. Is that normal?”
Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Page 23