And the huge ellipse of tailings surrounding the settlement, each one a translucent curved spike almost two kilometres from base to tip, each one set in a churned and boiling-looking misshapen mass of mordite and each one trailing strange curtains and spars of the apparently near-invincible stuff … were teeth. They could be seen, extending and thickening beneath the hard surface, until the depth and shadow rendered them invisible. Presumably, somewhere down there in the dark they connected to a jaw, and the jaw to a beast of prodigious size. Greyblade leaned back in his seat and stared at the formation. It was like a ring of warped mountains, a bizarre set of watchtowers surrounding the settlement and protecting it against the great empty plains beyond.
“So,” Greyblade said faintly, “this … Monster of Barthanq is inside the mordite? Preserved? And they built their settlement right inside its mouth?”
“Well like I say, nobody’s quite sure,” Çrom said as they curved into a final approach. They were landing on the outskirts of Barthanq, and Greyblade realised that they were actually headed for one of the enormous teeth. A great arching extrusion of mordite on its flank had been converted into a landing site for ships, and the curve of tooth above it was clustered with habitats. “But it’s even cooler than just a big preserved beastie. The Monster is still alive. She’s alive, and the mordite isn’t solid–”
“It’s a liquid,” Greyblade marvelled, “bumped down into a slower time register.”
“Exactly. This whole thing, it’s a sea. The whole Dimension might be ticking away on some super-geo timescale, or it might just be completely run-down and null because that’s what Beyond the Walls is like,” Çrom shrugged. “Although there is water and other matter-states out here, so it’s probably just how the Alien version of physics works in this Dimension. When people arrived through the Portals, they found this thing, this pretty gleaming lure, on the surface. They started playing around with it, and – oops – turns out the lure is inside this sod-off gigantic creature’s mouth, and now it’s closing on them.”
“Only it’s doing so … how slowly?”
“Extremely,” Çrom said. “Based on the increase in the peaks’ altitude, it’ll be another twenty or thirty thousand years – by our Firstmade scale, that is – until they even start getting close to shutting. Of course, it’s always possible that something will change tomorrow and the whole settlement and the Monster will vanish with a splash … or that the Monster herself is some unusual shape or configuration and the calculations are off … but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s in much of a hurry.”
“They’re just continuing to mine while the Monster’s mouth closes around them?”
“Yep,” Çrom said cheerfully. “Some of them – mostly the descendants of the religious nutters who first settled the area around the formation – intend to send their descendants into the Monster’s belly. Probably mining and praying all the way. But it’s really what you’d call a long-term sort of plan.”
“Can the teeth or the – the lure be carved up in the same way as the mordite?”
“Heck no,” Çrom said. “Even if the fundamentalists would allow it, she makes mordite look like cheese.”
The ship landed smoothly.
PLONJ
The data package they received at the landing area was far more professional and efficient than anything Greyblade had seen on the way into Snowhome. It was also a lot more relaxed, but that made sense on reflection. This was unregulated and deeply dangerous territory, a little oasis of vitality in Çrom’s ‘worlds without zaz’. The idea of trying to control who came and went was laughable, and the fact that they didn’t try was probably why the settlement had been around for so many thousands of listless years.
In Snowhome, there was nothing to be afraid of and the humans cowered and glared in hopeless defiance. Here, mortal danger was the universal constant, and it looked as though people just carried on.
Barthanq wasn’t accustomed to receiving visitors, but the ones they did receive were evidently far more diverse than the ones who routinely passed through the Void Dimension. The greeting package included a solid summary of the history and cultural background of the region, and of the all-important mordite sheeting collection and export trade. It provided some elegantly standardised guidelines for how visitors could replenish their stocks and partake in local hospitality by agreeing to carry shipments of mordite to a selection of trading posts. This, Çrom said, was ideal for them – especially since there was a small but noteworthy backlog of shipments that had not gone out in time due to lack of vessels, and had been written off as lapsed – but which the Highwayman, with her spectacular speed, could put back onto the roster. That, he said, was a very marketable asset.
The package also included an efficient little lexicon system that Dora patched into the Highwayman’s database and then made available for Greyblade’s communication suite as well as the portable translator Çrom used when Xidh and a couple of human languages failed to fit the bill.31 It enabled them to talk with the locals, and begin building a language family profile for the immediately surrounding potential stopovers.
The locals of Barthanq were of three separate sentient species, any internal distinctions practically indistinguishable to the casual eye. Sporting armoured isopod-analogous biology, the Aliens were of course impossible to classify according to any Corporate standards and categories. One was grey-shelled; another smooth and fleshy and pale pink but with a tough hide; and the third was a glossy black and segmented. None of them came much higher than the humanoids’ knees, except for the pink ones which could rear up on their multitude of hind legs to almost waist-height. Despite what Greyblade’s prejudice insisted was a primordial look, the people of Barthanq were technologically advanced, clearly intelligent, and skittered about purposefully through buildings and streets that literally crawled with life.
There were a few other assorted individuals and groups in the slow-mine nation, the majority of them – from what Greyblade could see – similarly resilient, compact, and many-limbed. It seemed to be a successful body-type for survival in the harsh environments that even energy-blessed realms seemed to have Beyond the Walls, although Greyblade admitted he was basing this on a tiny sample. Very few of the Barthanq-local species came close to Greyblade’s height, and he only ever saw one individual that was taller – but that one was decorated with a large twisted silvery spike that looked like a replica of the Monster of Barthanq’s lure, and so he tended to doubt it was part of the creature.
The locals referred to Greyblade and Çrom as gukané, which by context clues seemed like a blanket semi-derogatory term for outsiders, but the lexicon insisted was specifically in reference to humanoids. Of course, part of Greyblade had been waiting for the first Aliens he ran into to have a thing against humanoids – but the rest of him had insisted it couldn’t be that prevalent. Beyond the Walls was infinite, after all.
“Anti-human? These little guys?” Çrom waved a hand as they descended from the tooth and boarded a little rail-mounted wagon towards the city. They had to stand awkwardly on platforms on the side of the vehicle since the interior was small-scaled and filled with passengers to boot, but it was comfortable and efficient. Greyblade once again found himself comparing the service to the Eden Road transport, and the Snowhome service came up wanting. “Nah,” Çrom went on, and shuffled aside as a skittering parade of the creatures boarded and disembarked next to him. “These guys are cuddly.”
“Cuddly.”
“You’re probably thinking about the Worm Cult,” Çrom said, “and the whole anti-humanoid thing. It’s true, there’s a lot of that around. It’s fair to say the Worm is a major power out here, and even where it’s not a major power, its dogma carries a lot of weight.”
“Even after … ?” Greyblade knew better than to try to name names, or even talk in too much detail about events. It was entirely likely that the locals had translators of their own and were listening in – and the news, if it had even travelled this far
out, might not be the most welcome.
“Oh yeah,” Çrom waved a hand, then grabbed the railing as the wagon accelerated sharply, almost dislodging him. “I understand there was a bit of a power vacuum, but…” he shrugged, this time without letting go. “And besides,” he went on, “we are sort of following their back-trail directly from the Corporation to the Enclave, more or less. But the fact of the matter is, humanoid and even Molranoid species just aren’t that common out here. I mean, no species are really common out here, but you know. They just think we look weird.”
“To be fair,” Greyblade swivelled his helmet around, taking in the crowded wagon and its multitude of hunched, many-legged passengers, the majority of which were regarding the gukané with eyes like dusty little stones, “we do.”
“Oh yeah.”
There were two Portals in practical proximity to Barthanq, according to the info package: the sky Portal through which they’d arrived, and one further away along the plain. There was a secondary settlement there, which surprised Çrom when he found out about it because, presumably, it hadn’t existed last time he’d come Beyond the Walls. To be honest, Greyblade was surprised the only settlement wasn’t built around the Portal out on the mordite plain. They could have made a perfectly serviceable slow-mine there and shipped their material directly through the Portal, cutting out at least one step of the export process. And avoiding the whole ‘having a permanent settlement inside the closing mouth of a gigantic Alien monster’ issue. But then, he had to concede that he was probably failing to appreciate that issue’s rich and complex heritage.
They spent a pleasantly diverting twelve hours in the seething ring-city of the Barthanq slow-mine. Çrom managed to find and imbibe considerable food and drink without coming to undue medical harm despite the staggering anatomical gulf between human and Barthanq-kind. Their version of alcohol, he declared, was gritty and had an aftertaste like woodchips, but had a pleasant kick to it. Even more astonishing, he managed to acquire a hat. The tall, ludicrously-twisted crystalline thing was a replica of the Monster’s lure, and Greyblade remembered seeing one when they’d first arrived. Apparently it was the go-to souvenir for non-isopod tourists.
The locals were very generous, especially since – as they’d gathered from the greeting package – the Highwayman was able to offer a spectacularly fast and efficient delivery of mordite plates to a realm that Çrom assured Greyblade was on their way.
“And will the Highwayman be able to carry the plates?” Greyblade asked. “We don’t have a huge capacity for storage and hauling.”
“Actually we have a sling-field under the main hull,” Çrom said, “which will easily carry all the plates they need us to take. We could just put them inside the ship, but … well, they’d get a bit inconvenient underfoot. And mordite, while light, has about as much bend as … as you do.”
“I have plenty of bend,” Greyblade objected. “I haven’t chopped the tip off that silly hat of yours yet, have I?”
Çrom sucked air in through pursed lips. “Yeah, and I wouldn’t if I were you,” he advised. “These little blokes really don’t have a sense of humour about their holy uvula.”
“So this sling of yours,” Greyblade said, “it can carry a load of mordite plates?”
“Easily,” Çrom declared. “I don’t think it will add more than a couple of hours to our transit time, due to the field distortion. And that’s a couple of hours on a … I think it was a twelve-week leg. And twenty thousand one-micron-thick hull plates stack up to about yay-tall,” he held his fingers a couple of centimetres apart. “This will gain us a lot of markers for the next couple of spots we might want to land.”
“Alright,” Greyblade held his hands up, “it makes logistical sense, and you know the ship’s capacity better than I do, since the specs are–”
Çrom cackled. “That’s right!” he said gleefully. “You don’t have access to Dora’s deepest, darkest databases yet, do you?”
“I can’t actively damage the hat,” Greyblade mused, “but how offended do you think they’d be if I made you wear it slightly differently?”
The settlement surrounding the Portal was named Plonj, and it was an easy skim of ten minutes or so in the Highwayman at a considerate low-subluminal cruise. The actual distance was something like eighty thousand kilometres, and the most – indeed the only – fascinating thing about it was that they had to ascend to a mandated altitude so as not to disturb the ground traffic.
There was a rail-wagon system extending almost twenty thousand kilometres from Barthanq straight across the mordite plain, and where that came to an end … the natives seemed to be continuing on foot. More rail was being laid to extend the link, and numerous vehicles trundled along under the dull grey sky, but the majority of the traffic was simply a great ragged line of grey, pink and black isopods, skittering along in well-regimented rows inbound and outbound. The lines were as straight as the rail, as straight as the Highwayman’s navigational marker, and as they cruised past above them Greyblade gave an appreciative whistle through his fangs.
“Looks like a bunch of ants marching on the world’s biggest picnic,” Çrom noted, “doesn’t it?”
“How long does it take one of them to walk eighty thousand kilometres?” Greyblade wondered. At the same moment, of course, his helmet provided the estimates based on the speeds he’d seen the Aliens moving at over the past twelve hours. “A bit under a year,” he concluded, “by the Firstmade calendar. If they keep up a steady pace. The information package was a bit light on the details about how much they sleep.”
“I don’t think they do,” Çrom said, tilting his head at the dull grey sky. “This isn’t exactly a diurnal environment. And I’m pretty sure that if they do sleep, then they can keep on walking at the same time.”
When they were twenty thousand kilometres out of Plonj, the other end of the rail system appeared beneath them and continued along the same line. Sooner or later, Greyblade guessed, the two lines would meet up and travel between Barthanq and Plonj would be absolutely revolutionised. Until then … it was just as well these seemed to be creatures of truly astonishing patience and perseverance. You’d almost have to be, to operate a slow-mine and worship the lure of a submorditic behemoth that was going to swallow your home town in thirty thousand years’ time.
They slowed to a hover above downtown Plonj, where the habitats ended and a wide clear space surrounded the tiny grey spot of the Portal.
“All clear,” Dora told them a few minutes later, after she’d communicated with the greater Barthanq authorities and established their valued-exporter credentials. “There is steady vehicle traffic in and out of the Portal, which leads to what they call ‘screaming void’ but is actually a relatively harmless form of binary vacuum. Unsafe for pedestrian travel, of course. The next scheduled exchange is in a few minutes, so we have a go for transit before that wave arrives.”
“Next stop, Lonesome Ice,” Çrom said happily.
“Sounds lovely.”
“You’ve got twelve weeks to prepare for the disappointment.”
They dived, and briefly emerged into a featureless black gulf which the Highwayman’s sensors reported as extremely cold and extremely hot at the same time. They were only caught in the confusing phenomenon of the ‘screaming void’ for a moment, however, before the grey settled around them once more.
GRUNK
“Why are you doing this?” Çrom asked.
They were less than a day out of Barthanq, Çrom having slept once after which he had settled in his accustomed chair and eaten a breakfast of simple rations spiced up with some herbs he’d acquired from the slow-miners. The Highwayman was cruising at top sustainable relative register from soft-space to soft-space, soft-space to Highroads, Highroads to soft-space again, Portal after Portal in a shifting pulse that settled into the bones after a few transitions. They were leaping away from the light and heat of the Corporation, barrelling into the Alien wilderness with a yay-high stack of mordite pl
ates strapped to their belly. Greyblade was rather surprised to realise that he was having fun.
“What do you mean?” he asked in return. “I thought you didn’t want to know any of that.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking about the quest,” Çrom said. “But Gabe did make it clear that you were in this to save Earth. Like, when are the Burning Knights not in it for high stakes?” there didn’t seem to be much Greyblade could say to this, and it was apparent Çrom wasn’t finished anyway, so he waited for the human to continue. “Why?” he eventually asked. “Why save Earth? Why save us? After what we did?”
“Maybe Earth is still valuable real estate,” Greyblade suggested.
Çrom snorted. “Oh yeah, it’s a scenic paradise. If you’re not doing it for the Pinians, why are you doing it?” he persisted. “If you are doing it for the Pinians, why are they doing it?”
“The Pinians aren’t involved,” Greyblade said. “But if you’ve already been told that I’m saving Earth, do you really still need to ask why?”
“Ah,” Çrom said. “It’s because you’re a great big hero, right?”
“That,” Greyblade replied, “depends entirely on who you ask. If you ask some bartender in Axis Mundi who’s extended me infinite goodwill credit, then maybe. But if you ask me, then no.”
“Oh no?” Çrom said. “Modest too, then?”
Greyblade shook his head. “Modesty is for people who don’t walk around in shiny golden suits,” he said. Çrom chuckled. “A hero is someone who can do nothing, but does something instead,” Greyblade continued. “Someone who can ignore an unfolding injustice out of self-preservation, but doesn’t. Someone–”
“Should I be standing behind you, fluttering the Brotherhood banner?”
“Someone like you, Skelliglyph.”
Çrom’s chuckle swelled to a laugh. “Looks like we’ve both dramatically misread the situation.”
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