“That’s uncharitable.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Çrom grinned. “Their word jabu, for me, is basically the same sort of thing, except organic. Like a real life-form that has failed to be real, but isn’t good enough at pretending to be abreal to make it as one of them either.”
“And jaka?”
Çrom shrugged. “Near as I could figure out, I think it just means someone who pleasures themselves sexually with their own mouths.”
It took a few minutes for Jank to reach the tempestuous surface, at which point the overlay winked out.
“Visual lost,” Dora reported.
“Bye, Jank,” Çrom said. “Starting transmission of token.”
Greyblade looked at the back of Çrom’s head. “One day I’m going to get you drunk and find out what exactly that was all about,” he said, “between you and Jank,” he remembered saying the same thing to the Drake and Çrom’s ‘brother’. The thought jolted him back on-mission, and he leaned forward in his couch with a new sense of purpose. It was pointless, he knew, because they still had a series of long and featureless jumps ahead of them. But the feeling persisted.
“You,” Çrom snorted, “get me drunk?”
He waved his hand and they swept into soft-space.
The drab grey void barely had time to coalesce around them before it shifted into something else entirely. Something Greyblade had never seen before – certainly not when all his ship’s instruments and his own sensors were telling him they were travelling at relative speed.
When a ship was inside a relative field, all you could really see outside was dictated by the laws of unphysics. It wasn’t as if light, after all, was really travelling through from whatever was out there and hitting your eyes – the minimum required speed for a relative shift was ten thousand times the speed of light, rendering the whole question of visibility meaningless. But there were really only two alternatives: the grey, soft-space, which you got when you travelled through Dimensional space at relative speed; and the Highroads, which you got when you travelled through extra-Dimensional space at relative speed. There were minor variants, at least in soft-space, depending on an assortment of exotic physical deformities that could echo in unreality.
This … this was not a minor variant. He stared.
The Hellpath looked solid. More solid than the blue ribbon of the Highroads, as solid as the cave they’d descended through to meet Jank. If an intestine could be made out of molten rock, with great intruding spikes of tarnished silver, and be large enough to admit a starship … that was what the Hellpath looked like. Even at the lofty registers of relative speed at which they were travelling, the features swept by as though they were cruising at a few hundred kilometres per hour.
“This is … really something,” he said, trying to keep his voice clinical.
“Yeah,” Çrom steered them easily around the silver-black spires, sometimes diving close to the surface of the boiling tube, at others soaring up towards its relatively empty centreline. “I try not to think about it. And it’s even worse at normal speeds. There’s plenty of reasons we can’t come back this way with the Godfangs, but the main one is this. They’d never make it through without hitting something, and I don’t know if the Hellpath would just spit them out, or try to destroy them … or try to make friends with them.”
“So those are actual physical obstacles at relative speed,” Greyblade said. “Like the Highroads strip.”
Çrom nodded. “The spikes are bad,” he said tensely. “The sores are worse.”
Greyblade looked at the surface, and saw that it wasn’t exactly molten rock. Of course, he’d known from the start that it couldn’t be anything with a parallel in the physical world. The angry red-orange walls of the Hellpath were fleshy as well as burning, and long strands of the surface were discoloured and seemed to be weeping some kind of fluid that was pooling in irrationally-placed folds and hollows.
Just as he was rising to his feet for a better view out of the control console windows, the sight was gone. They were back in the grey, and another three seconds later the Highroads appeared outside the ship. The normal, erratic grey-white-grey pulse of their journey resumed.
“That was it?” Greyblade asked blankly.
Çrom looked back at him. “We can double back and do it again if you want.”
“No, that’s … that’s fine,” Greyblade sat back down. “I just thought it would take longer.”
“It scrunched itself up for us,” Çrom said. “Got us out of there in the shortest possible time. Takes even more fancy flying when it’s like that, of course. You’re welcome.”
Their next stop, Blackleaf, was fifteen weeks’ flight away.
BLACKLEAF
Çrom was no more forthcoming about their shortcut, except to say that they were getting close to it now and the next couple of stops were just rest and relaxation ports before the main event. There didn’t seem to be anything Greyblade needed to prepare for, but he decided they wouldn’t be leaving their next stopover before Çrom had told him what they were getting into. The most frustrating part of it was, of course, that it was too late to double back and the two-year outward trip was the best shot they had.
They had, of course, talked about their route right from the start. It had been a seven week journey to the Boundary alone, which had left them plenty of time for discussion and debate. The amount of time they had wasn’t really the issue, of course – the issue was the amount of discussion and debate that was possible. Çrom had told him from the outset that there were only a few different routes to where they were going. That was the nature of Portal and Highroad travel. And the second-shortest route had been unacceptable, especially since the way back had to be by that route which essentially doubled the duration of the voyage.
The shortest route, however, had included this damnable shortcut. Which Çrom had insistently not talked about, and when pressed – as he had been, numerous times – he had become actively worried and even gone so far as to ask Greyblade not to talk or even think about it. And to take it on trust that this was essential to the success of the trip.
Greyblade wasn’t accustomed to taking things on trust. But he was adept at reading human hormonal and physiological states, and he could tell that Çrom was being quite genuine. And so, lacking any real alternative, he had trusted to this strange guide that Gabriel had sent him.
“Blackleaf used to be a world called Mershlag,” Çrom said, “but I don’t remember ever being there. I just got this from the memorial package. We’ll probably get another one when we arrive.”
One day, the Portal over Mershlag – a nondescript spacebound Portal that led to an inhospitable but innocuous vacuum through which the Mershlagi and their allies had to fly for some distance to get to another Portal – began to disgorge black leaves. They were difficult to quantify, as most things Beyond the Walls were and most Aliens didn’t bother anyway since it wasn’t part of their investigative toolkit. The leaves were organic, but inert. Inanimate, yet capable of mass-motion. Apparently non-hostile, but inimical to life as the Mershlagi knew it. The leaves poured from the Portal and fell on Mershlag, first swamping its cities and then smothering its biosphere, and finally crushing the world outright under their gentle mass.
Mershlag, its population fled or buried, was renamed Blackleaf.
“But it’s not where we’re stopping,” Greyblade said, studying the flight plan.
“No,” Çrom agreed. “‘Blackleaf’ is more of a zone than a single world, and we’re stopping on the far side. The thing is, they eventually figured out that someone, somewhere in the Dimension the black leaves came from, had done something stupid.”
“Stupid,” Greyblade echoed.
“Something like you or I, as good law-abiding Corporate kids, would never be able to comprehend,” Çrom said. “Something the Vultures would stop anyone in the Corporation from doing.”
“But the Relth don’t fly out here.”
“Bingo,” Çrom
said grimly. “So some Alien dumb-dumb did something in the Blackleaf origin Dimension that systematically – and in exponential succession, and finally in infinite spontaneity – turned all the matter in that entire universe into black leaves. They finally spread to the Portals known in this area, and came through.”
The good news, at least for everywhere outside the Blackleaf zone, was that the process that had essentially deleted an entire Dimension and left nothing behind but a vault full of strange black leaves didn’t seem to be contagious. The physical properties of the other Dimensions didn’t seem to carry the same necessary conditions for black leaf propagation and transmutation. So while Mershlag had perished, the leaves had not spread. And after Mershlag’s collapse and the Portal’s blockading, the leaves had stopped coming through.
Even so, they were dangerous. That was why Mershlag had not been reclaimed.
“The whole region is quarantined,” Çrom concluded, “just in case even studying the leaves provides some sort of catalyst for their spread into neighbouring Dimensions. Some people say they’re just dormant until they adapt – you know, to the physical laws, such as they are out here – and then they’ll start again. But from what I’m told it’s been a few thousand years with no sign of resumed spread. So it’s probably fine. Still, nobody’s allowed down onto Blackleaf and there are suppressors set up at every known Blackleaf Portal. They’ll check us thoroughly at the exit and put us in lockdown for a few days. It’s actually very comfortable – that’s our next stopover.”
“Wait – on the other side of Blackleaf space?” Greyblade exclaimed. Çrom nodded. “Our shortcut is through the Blackleaf origin Dimension?”
“Not our shortcut, our route,” Çrom clarified. “Although like I keep telling you, you wanted the shortest and quickest route so if you think about it, this whole thing is a shortcut,” he must have noticed Greyblade’s stare through the visor, because he smiled confidently. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s a few hours in soft-space and unlike the Hellpath, Blackleaf territory is completely safe and completely normal at relative speed. They’ll grab us on the far side and just make sure we didn’t stop in there, and that we’re not trying to smuggle leaves out,” he glanced at Greyblade sidelong. “Not going to indignantly demand why would anyone even do that?” he asked.
“No, I can see it would be extremely tempting to use as a weapon,” Greyblade said. “By … not particularly advanced minds.”
“Right,” Çrom said, and squinted at Greyblade. “Right. Well, in we go.”
As he’d promised, the flight through the Blackleaf origin Dimension was an uneventful few hours in the grey, and they emerged to a polite crash-stop in a great glittering web of relative field suppressors. At least that was what Greyblade assumed they were, since they stopped the Highwayman in her tracks. Also as Çrom had promised, they were redirected to a docking needle and offered refreshments and entertainment as the Blackleaf authorities checked over their ship and relative drive profile.
This lasted a couple of days, and even Greyblade found himself having fun. The Blackleaf settlement was surprisingly vibrant, and the closest he’d seen to a Corporate institution since crossing the Boundary. The Aliens were still strange and hardy and difficult to classify – almost everything that clawed out an existence Beyond the Walls was considerably tougher and more formidable than Corporate threats Greyblade had faced – but were also quite friendly. And they, like the denizens of The Falling Damned, didn’t seem to care about the two newcomers being humanoid. In fact, some of the Aliens practically were humanoid.
This seemed strange to Greyblade, considering that – Dimensional physics, as always, notwithstanding – they were closer to the Enclave of the Worm Cult than they’d ever been.
“Ah, true,” Çrom said, “in a manner of speaking. But we’re also getting closer to the place where we’re going to be taking our shortcut, and, well…”
“Oh Jalah,” Greyblade said. “Even the Worm doesn’t mess with this thing?” Çrom looked apologetic. “Okay,” Greyblade laid his gauntlets on the table of the weird but fun interactive eatery they were sitting in. “Time to talk.”
“Not yet,” Çrom pleaded. “Not yet. Not here. Just another leg, and then I’ll tell you everything. And you’ll see why I’ve held it back. Just … from here, we go to Tomberland Mighty. Then from there it’s a twenty-one-week marathon to Gateway. I can probably risk telling you more then.”
“Alright,” Greyblade said. “Fine. Gateway. Then you tell me. Not more. Everything.”
Çrom raised his hands earnestly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The troubling thing about this, Greyblade reflected as they continued their Blackleaf luxury quarantine vacation, was that by all available measures he was still certain Çrom was being absolutely sincere.
THE ALIENS OF TOMBERLAND MIGHTY
The flight to Tomberland Mighty was uneventful, except for a brief stopover in the Liminal as a small group of would-be Highroads bandits intercepted them with a crude relative field-disrupting device. Greyblade checked their quarantine logs after the fact and found that it was the work of an independent organisation, in league with the Blackleaf zone authorities but at a sufficient disconnect to allow deniability.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar risk to long-distance travellers who favoured out-of-the-way stopovers and outposts. Low visibility meant low visibility for everyone. The only real differences in this case were in the exotically vast distance from The Centre at which they were currently operating, and the configurations of the ships involved. The attackers had isolated the Highwayman’s relative field signature and found a way of tagging them. A second team out on the Highroads had then caught their signature, duplicated it and had attempted to come along for the ride. It was a variation on an approach used by Corporate scavengers, at once more sophisticated and lacking in a couple of major technological considerations.
The main thing they’d failed to take into account in this case was how fast the Highwayman was going. Instead of pulling the hopeful corsairs into their wake and leaving the Highwayman vulnerable to attack, it had dragged everyone to a discordant crash-stop in the Liminal. Greyblade had fired a quick barrage of recursion-frag shells into what he hoped were the enemy sensors, and Çrom had ‘re-tuned’ the song in the Highwayman’s heart. They’d jumped back into relative speed and almost instantly out of the bandits’ range, with a realigned relative field they couldn’t hope to pick out of the background again even if they did have another group of accomplices waiting down the line.
“Don’t try to highway-rob a highwayman,” Çrom crowed.
Greyblade had been wondering where the benefit was for the Blackleaf authorities, when it came to all the facilities and hospitality and resources they offered in their quarantine facility. Aside from preventing idiots from carrying potential Dimension-killing matter across the urverse, there hadn’t seemed to be much profit in it. The clever little casing and tagging side-business answered some, but not all of his questions in that regard. And he supposed that was more logic than he had a right to expect.
The ship was undamaged by her exciting little run-in with Alien pirates, although Dora reported that a ‘harmony fluctuation’ that had started sometime around their dash through the Hellpath had spiked momentarily when they’d crash-stopped. It was now – and had been for a little while – making them fractionally less efficient, albeit well within tolerances. Greyblade went back to check on the utter mystery that was the Highwayman’s engine and related decorations, but aside from winding up a little weirded out by the whole atmosphere of the place could find nothing out of the ordinary or damaged.
Çrom was equally nonplussed by the report, but waved it off as temperament on the ship’s part. If it progressed to the point of actually interfering with their speed or the renewability of their power output, he assured Greyblade confidently, it would definitely become a recognisable and diagnosable flaw. Whether or not they would then be able to fix said
flaw, the human cheerfully glossed over – which Greyblade took to mean they wouldn’t be able to, and there wasn’t a damn thing either of them could do about it except hope that the ‘harmony fluctuation’ stopped happening.
And – aside from the occasional mild murmur when the ship underwent some unusual manoeuvre or experienced a shift in her power consumption patterns – that’s exactly what it did. Greyblade delved into those parts of the Highwayman’s systems to which he was allowed access and read up on what he could, but it mostly amounted to recreational reading. The ship was a remarkable antique, its components fascinatingly overblown, and its user manuals florid to the point of resembling obscure verse … but it was something to pass the time.
They arrived at Tomberland Mighty about nine weeks later.
Tomberland, according to the existing data Greyblade had studied en route, was another classically strange piece of Beyond the Walls null-physics nonsense. It drifted in a lightless gulf that was almost but not quite an acceptable stellar vacuum, cold and airless and devoid of prevailing gravity, except where bodies of a certain mass registered on the gravitational landscape, and coalesced atmospheric envelopes. These bodies were mostly uninhabited or uninhabitable or both, owing to their composition and distance from anything. Tomberland, however, was lucky enough to be close to a Portal, and made of a substance into which a civilisation had been able to dig its claws and, if not flourish, then at least get a good solid grip and bare its teeth.
Greyblade found it easiest to conceptualise Tomberland as an Attempted Solar System. While Dûl had been some sort of pre-fused galactic cluster of colossal size, Tomberland was smaller, and roughly disc-shaped. It consisted of a huge ruddy-brown35 globe in the centre, and a scattering of different-sized globes extending outwards from this ‘sun’. Each of the globes were different sizes and slightly different shades of red or brown depending on their respective compositions. And between the ‘sun’ and each of the ‘planets’ were arcs and spars and huge flat thoroughfares of more red-brown stone.
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