Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Read online

  Bonshoon

  Andrew Hindle

  Copyright © 2015 Andrew Hindle

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 978-1508841814

  ISBN-13: 1508841810

  For my brothers James, Fredrik and John

  PROLOGUE

  The famous first communication between Molren and humanity, back in the mists of history when the Fleet entered Earth’s region of space, was a story that had long since been repeated and retold until it had taken on the patina of mythology. The Six Species had gone on to make contact with enough so-called ‘dumbler-folk’ species over the intervening centuries, however, to lend a certain credence to the legends.

  “Be quiet,” the communications boffins had eventually deciphered from the coded transmission that later came to be known as the Rosetta. “Be quiet or they’ll hear you.”

  As it happened, they were right. And – as the subsequent centuries once again proved amply, to greater Molranity’s horrified incredulity and exquisite frustration – humans were not a species defined by their ability to shut their mouths.

  Humanity did at least seem to take the Fleet’s admonishment into consideration, for a while. They were bright-eyed and enthusiastic, excited by the new vistas opening up before them and eager to enjoy the cultural and technological riches offered by the new alien arrivals. And they were ready, after generations of xenophobia and isolation, to finally face the fact that they weren’t alone in the galaxy. Well, mostly ready.

  Part of the difficulty they faced, of course, was the reality that they very nearly were alone.

  This was a paradox that had confounded human observers for a very long time. The galaxy was unimaginably big, its planets innumerable, its age staggering. Even with access to faster-than-light technology that allowed a certain amount of skipping from place to place, the overwhelming majority of the galaxy was uncharted and was likely to remain that way for eternity. In purely statistical terms, over the billions of years the stars had been burning and spinning, a huge number of interstellar cultures should have flourished.

  So, as the diplomat and noted philosopher Gaius Modine asked on the occasion of the Fleet’s arrival, “Why has it taken so long, and why are you here now?” Or, as Enrico Fermi said long, long before Modine, not to mention somewhat more punchily, “Where is everybody?”

  The Five Species Fleet was impressive, with their vast starships that were home to billions of denizens and storage to tens of billions of sleeping passengers … but it wasn’t exactly the dizzying cultural patchwork of civilisations of all classifications and levels of development that ought to have been out there. Where were the omnipotent ancients who had begun their evolution when the galaxy was still accreting? The universe-spanning super-civilisations? The biomechanical hordes? The self-replicating machines that fed on stellar matter?

  Even at a slow crawl, not taking superluminal travel into account, the galaxy ought to have been completely colonised on a scale of tens of millions of years. Instead, the few hundred scattered sentients and the occasional weird relic floating around out there seemed to exist purely to highlight the terrifying emptiness, the silentium universi of classical cosmological philosophy. The Fleet’s opening message addressed at least a facet of this question. It was a dangerous universe out there, and it didn’t seem to pay to draw attention to yourself. But another defining characteristic of the human race was its inability to take an answer for an answer.

  Other facts of life, as delivered by the then-Five Species, covered the rest of the paradox. The Cancer in the Core, as mentioned, did account for the resounding silence from the densely-packed systems towards the centre of the galaxy. Damorakind by all reports spread slowly, tending to fill planets and solar systems before moving on. They occasionally expanded in spurts and prominences, as they encountered and hunted down and eradicated other spacefaring sentients, but the Cancer generally displayed an incremental ellipsoid growth that was stable and predictable.

  The occasional dusty relic found orbiting some forgotten sun or another promised to explain more of the paradox, but these finds invariably fell short. It seemed unlikely, given their distance from the Core, that any of the intelligences responsible for their creation would have met their ends at the hands of Damorakind. And their very age was also a problem. The Cancer was a newcomer, on the cosmological timescale. Had to be. Damorakind had been expanding outwards from their mysterious homeworld in the Core for hundreds of thousands of years, at the absolute outside. And the galaxy, as mentioned, was ancient. The galaxy, and many of the relics found floating in it.

  All in all, the scattered and tantalising remains of alien cultures raised more questions than they answered. The aki’Drednanth, older and stranger than the tattered history of the entire Molran super-species, had some answers about bygone eras and lost civilisations, but their opinions and explanations were unique to their mentality and viewpoint. For the most part, their descriptions were clouded by species-gap to the point of uselessness, just another set of creation mythology in an alliance of sentients which seemed to have three or four conflicting creation myths per head of population.

  The Molren, hard-bitten by Damorakind in the early days of their exploration of the galaxy, were silent and cautious far beyond the point of obsession, and their tireless efforts to shut up every “shouter” species they ever met tended to account for a large part of the paradox. The Fleet had learned from long and bitter experience the value of going unseen and unheard through the deadly dark. And the shouting dumblers of Earth, so soon after meeting and joining the alien alliance they’d dreamed of for so long, had a very hard time coming to terms with this reality. They had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that sometimes, there were no satisfactory answers. And that yelling the question louder and louder was not actually a solution.

  Humans had enough trouble learning from their own experiences. They considered the experiences of others to be a challenge.

  After Earth was destroyed, the remnants of humanity hitched a ride into space with the Molren, Blaren, Bonshooni, aki’Drednanth and Fergunak of the Fleet. The newly-minted Six Species, the shoots of what would one day become AstroCorps, fled into the stars and searched, shocked into silence for the first time in their deafening history, for a place of refuge. And in time, they found Aquilar.

  There were a lot of myths around the galaxy.

  It was an old galaxy.

  JANUS (NOW)

  “So.”

  The counsellor’s patient leaned forward, smiling, and Janus wished he hadn’t done either. “So.”

  This was, at least technically, a red-letter day for Janus Whye. His first session with a real live human patient. Although in the case of Doctor Glomulus Cratch, the Barnalk High Ripper, Janus conceded that perhaps the term ‘human’ should come with a few disclaimers.

  He’d chatted with the Bonshoon, Dunnkirk, from time to time, about his upcoming intergalactic adventure – now, sadly, cancelled in favour of a return trip of indefinite length on the Tramp – but they had not really been official counselling sessions, nor had they been sessions with a human. Not that counselling a Bonshoon was in any way less legitimate, he hastened to add to his inner critic. Janus had a Blaran under his theoretical wing and it looked like he would have the affable, oddly-spoken Bonshoon for the foreseeable future as well. At least Dunnkirk was willing to sit and talk to him without telling him every three minutes that this wasn’t a therapy session.

  Maybe he could provide grief counselling to the abandoned Dunnkirk. Perhaps even study the phenomenon of the Bonshoon’s connection to the aki’Drednanth Dreamscape. Once they came back out of relative speed and
got back into contact, of course. If they got back into contact. If they came out of relative speed.

  Hey, there was always a first time to get stuck in the grey. Laws of energy and dynamics be damned. The longer they spent in there, the more likely it had to be getting, right?

  He realised he’d been putting off actually starting a conversation with the doctor, and he had now been sitting and staring for far too long.

  The husky, quiet-natured former horticultural mood analyst and the skeletal, mass-murdering former doctor had been sitting in horrifically anxious and smilingly expectant silence, respectively, for about fifteen minutes now. About one minute ago, the quiet chime of maximum subluminal cruising speed had sounded and they had skipped without fanfare back into soft-space. Into the grey nothingness of superluminal physics, away from the edge of the galaxy and the frozen payload they’d left drifting out there, back towards the hopefully-still-extant bright lights and teeming settlements of the Six Species worlds. Away, it was to be fervently hoped, from further trouble. Although Janus expected there was still more of that in their path. There always was.

  Perhaps one minute in soft-space was too short a time to begin gestating pessimistic concerns of never returning to the real universe. Janus couldn’t help that. Just as he couldn’t help his nervousness around Glomulus. Nobody could help that, he told his inner critic. Okay, so about the first thing Cratch did after being released from the brig was save Janus’s life – that was a good sign. Janus was no less afraid because of it, because he’d balanced that particular ledger many times over. Not by saving the Rip’s life, it was true, but by having his own life threatened by Cratch? Sure. That had happened. All hilarious misunderstandings, to be sure, but…

  Well, whatever was to come, they also faced another interminable stretch of long-haul flights and another sequence of practically uninhabited stopover worlds where people called the modular things like “yon sky-waggon” and stuff. Good food, but also dust and bugs and having to remember to recite verses from the Book of Hoo Hah before you touched the cake. And after a while, it just started to seem like the grey was the more interesting option.

  It was late, but Janus wasn’t tired. It had been an emotional day, and when Z-Lin had contacted him with this request – more like an order, really, although they’d always had a pretty informal rapport – he hadn’t felt able to refuse. No matter how much he might briefly have wanted to. Counsellors did not sleep when their patients needed them.

  Janus reflected, again, that the term ‘patient’ might also need some disclaimers in this case. Then he realised he was still sitting and staring.

  “So,” he said again.

  “Here we are?” Glomulus added helpfully.

  “Exactly.”

  “Ah,” Glomulus’s smile widened, and Janus wished it hadn’t because it had already widened three or four times now, and every time it did Janus thought okay, that’s as wide as it goes and he was beginning to worry about what might happen if the Rip’s grin widened too far and the top of his head came off and the rest of his gaunt body peeled away like a banana skin, and everybody else on board was too far away to hear Whye’s screams and he had pushed himself too far back from his desk about six minutes ago in a moment of greater-than-usual social awkwardness and now he wouldn’t be able to reach the comms system or his pad before Doctor Cratch did.

  The subdermals, he said to himself in a glazed, cold-sweaty panic, remember the subdermals, you have the subdermals.

  He let his fingers curl closed and felt the reassuring firmness of the little signal tabs under the heels of his hands. At the same moment he became painfully aware that he was staring at the heavy bracelets on Glomulus’s long, bony wrists. And that Glomulus was still looking at him with a grin. And he remembered what Janya had said, back when they’d first put the bracelets on their would-be chief medic. I’m sure it’s something that you have looked at from a security and tactical point of view.

  Janus tore his gaze away from the bracelets and fixed it instead on the sturdy little chest-high hoco-nut tree in the pot in the corner of his office.

  “The Commander, for some reason, after all this time, suggested that I provide you with treatment,” he said smoothly, and congratulated himself for the unflappably professional segue even if the term ‘segue’ might not have been an appropriate one to use for a transition from nothing to babbling, “or some sort of preliminary sessions. You’re my first official patient,” he gestured to the desk where his pad lay, tantalisingly out of reach, with the blank file open and ready. Then he cursed to himself at the missed opportunity to roll himself back closer to comms and pad alike. “Congratulations.”

  “Why, thank you,” the Rip said with a little bow of his head. “Talk about right in at the deep end though, eh?” he waved a hand at the desk as well. “You have a file on me already?” he asked politely.

  “I have a file on each crewmember,” Janus said modestly, “but they’re all basically empty until I can add findings of my own, and that sort of has to wait for me to actually start counselling programs with each of the guys. I do also have some notes from Doctor Muldoon, part of the whole official emergency patient transfer thing, but I’m keeping them in separate folders. I don’t want to, you know, contaminate my own findings.”

  “Good thinking,” Glomulus approved. “You can pick it up, you know. The pad. If you want. It’s just that … no offence, but I know what it looks like when your hands are searching for something to keep them busy.”

  “Well, right,” Janus said with a nervous cough.

  He remembered the last time he’d set off Cratch’s incendiary charges, in a moment of confusion and panic. It had been two years ago, give or take a month. Just after they’d torn out of the Wormwood system, the system of the fallen star, way up at the far end of the barmy arm they had just traversed a second time, in fact. Uncertain whether the black hole cultists would see through their hasty and untried attempt to cloak the ship, whether they would give chase, or even whether any of the weirdos had actually managed to sneak aboard.

  Maybe Cratch had been about to take advantage of the confusion, and maybe he hadn’t. It was getting more and more difficult for Janus to envision what Glomulus might have tried to do anyway. What was his end-game? Murder everyone on the ship and assume command? After he’d put all of them back together again, at one time or another and to varying degrees, in the medical bay? Even after all that, he was just going to kill them? Fly the ship under eejit control to some predetermined location and resume his deep and super-creepy life’s work, whatever that happened to be? Or just get off the ship and vanish into the crowds on some handy inhabited planet? What?

  Well, Waffa had been quite certain Janus had saved his life even if it meant all their minor injuries and chemical-induced illness had to be dealt with by the eejits at the time. And even Glomulus had later magnanimously agreed that he probably had been up to no good. “Skulduggery runs right through me,” Janus remembered him saying. “Especially my skull, I suppose…”

  Janus coughed again. “Right,” he repeated, “well, that was – you know, no hard feelings, yeah?”

  “Perish the thought.”

  Whye pushed his chair back to the desk and picked up the pad with some relief. “How many psychiatrists and psychologists have tried to treat you?” he wasn’t actually sure what the difference was between a psychiatrist and a psychologist. All he knew was that he was neither.

  “Ooh, lots,” Glomulus said, spreading his hands. “Big famous swingers from Dome Med, all the way down to … well, you, I guess I have to say. Don’t take that the wrong way, though. You are the latest in a long and venerable line,” the Rip thrust out his narrow chest theatrically. “I am the subject of papers. I fill data cubes. Archdeacon Ptala Sim wrote his excommunication thesis on me. And in more recent years, the Tramp’s own Doctor Mays and old Feathers Muldoon had their turns, from the physical medical sciences and the behavioural sciences viewpoints respectively. You mentio
ned that you had Ellisandre’s notes.”

  “Yes,” Janus said, aware that this was like no counselling session he had ever simulated. “Yes, I do. They’re not very good, though. I mean, well, Doctor – Feathers and I … differed on many key points of psychoanalysis.”

  “You thought it had a place in ‘ponic horticulture, and she thought you were a flake,” Cratch smiled. “Sorry. Decay’s little package broadcasts of certain select parts of the personnel reports did eventually filter down to me, through my nurses.”

  Janus waved it off. “I read Muldoon’s file on me,” he said.

  “It couldn’t be worse than mine,” the Rip said reassuringly.

  “No,” Whye agreed. Evil. Evil. Evil incarnate. Do not attempt rehabilitation. Do not engage or connect. Return to Core from whence it came. Feathers Muldoon had really started to lose it towards the end, and her final few reports on Glomulus Cratch before The Accident had been little more than weird, superstitious ranting. The term ‘whence’ hadn’t been the worst of it. He reminded himself that Ellisandre Muldoon had been a hundred and seventy-seven years old at her death, and winding down towards retirement or incurable dementia or both. “No, it couldn’t,” he leaned back from his desk again. “But like I say, I don’t agree with the methods and conclusions drawn by Feathers. We’re here to chat, and form our own counsellor-patient relationship. Lucky number thirty-seven, right?”

  “So you knew how many headshrinkers tried to get in here,” Glomulus said jovially, tapping the pale blonde hair at his temple with a long finger.

  “Of course,” Janus replied. “Never said I didn’t,” Cratch gave a brief and entirely spontaneous-sounding laugh of delight and approval. “I’m pretty sure that’s only the official count on the AstroCorps medical logs, though,” he went on. “Only you would know the real number.”