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

  “Indeed,” Glomulus said in a gloating tone, “and none of them ever learned the truth about me.”

  “The truth?”

  Cratch looked surprised. “The truth. It’s really very simple, the answer to why I did the things I did, why I ended up on Barnalk High, all of it. They just never put it together.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Janus said. “That’s why we’re here, after all. I mean, I’m not going to kid myself that I can treat you in any way, but if we can develop some sort of a-”

  “I was raised in a hive-town called Slemm,” Glomulus said, “which was essentially a single giant communal brothel for xenophile extremists. My mother would perform sexual acts on Molranoids for the entertainment of others, and when I was deemed old enough I, too, was forced to participate in the performances. It instilled me with a deep and instinctive loathing of the three species, and my childhood there also forever marked me in the greater Molran socio-cultural categorisation scheme. It put black marks next to my identity, assumptions about my character and qualifications. Really very similar to the way Molren label Blaren for the purposes of distinguishing them as an essentially criminal subclass, you see, except more informal. It still cast a pall over my medical studies, limited my options and my support, closed doors to me throughout AstroCorps and across the Six Species. I wandered, an unlicensed and often outright rogue surgeon for hire, until I washed up on Barnalk High. It was there, in the city of Maiaya on the Silver Coast, that I encountered cell-members of the shadow organisation responsible for the founding and continued running of Slemm’s flesh-pits, and the slave-trade and mental conditioning of humans that led my mother to be a prisoner there. Through careful infiltration and submission to further degrading treatment, I learned more about the group and the different interests each cell represented. Naturally, it is difficult – impossible, even – to be sure how much of this was real and how much a product of my abuse-fuelled psychosis, but the deeper I dug the more I became aware that the cells infiltrated every aspect of Six Species culture where human and Molran ostensibly cooperated. And in every case, the driving agenda was one of subjugation, domestication, alteration – the transformation of the human species into a semi-sentient-at-best form of livestock. Even the fabrication of ables, so publicly frowned-upon and tut-tutted about by official Molran Fleet bodies, was a technology sponsored and developed by these anti-human cells.

  “Well, the rest you know. The head of the snake had to be removed, both the Molranoid masters and their vile human collaborators, and a message sent to the other cells in accordance with the ritual signs and symbols of the organisation’s philosophy. A series of murders, surgically precise – and indeed, who better than a skilled physician with a knowledge of Molranoid anatomy ingrained by a lifetime of medical training and unthinkable physical violation? There’s only one problem, of course.”

  “That entire horrible story was just something you made up on the spot,” Janus said, “to mess with my head and poke fun at my attempts to psychoanalyse you?”

  Glomulus smiled, and gave him a double-point of approval. “Damn skippy,” he grew momentarily serious. “Sorry.”

  “No biggie,” Janus looked down at his still-blank pad. “Is there a hive-town called Slemm?”

  “Actually, there is,” Glomulus replied with a chuckle. “It’s on Hermes. It’s not a brothel,” he winked solemnly and tapped the side of his nose with a long, slender finger. “At least, they say it’s not.”

  “Right.”

  “You know, of course, that this whole counselling session is just a little bit of devilry dreamed up by Z-Lin and Sally,” Glomulus went on. “I can only assume it’s intended as some sort of payback over the unpleasant incident with Nurse Bethel.”

  “You mean when he died?” Janus said. “But that was … it was an accident, right? Sally said it looked like he ate a Molran trank. Plus, it was, like … what, Zhraak Burns? Six months ago? Why haven’t they sent you here before now, if that was their plan?”

  “Maybe they didn’t want to make a big deal of it in front of Thord,” Glomulus said, “since she sort of helped to make Bethel. Same with Maladin and Dunnkirk, I suppose. They were invested in the configuration of our Midwich Eejits. But since Dunnkirk is staying with us now, maybe they decided to just go ahead with my treatment. See what happens next,” the doctor shrugged. “And besides,” he continued ruefully, “even if Sally really believes it was an accident – and I don’t think she does – it was my fault. I was negligent. I left dangerous materials lying around in my medical bay, with an eejit on staff who I knew tended to swallow things on tactile contact.”

  “Hey, look, we’ve all had guilt-inducing accidents with the eejits,” Janus said. “Remember Jocko, Sticky, Bumfluff? Operation Payback? We don’t feel guilty about it for long. Not really guilty. I mean, we can’t. The main source of guilt is the unconscious association between, say, getting an eejit killed through some negligence or encouragement or inaction, and getting a mentally sub-standard human killed by the same method. We feel responsible because he doesn’t know better but we should, and for some reason it’s different to us being responsible for a recycling unit going haywire and digesting a janitorial, or an oxy block thawing into sludge, because eejits look so much like humans and that’s what we’re hard-wired to respond to.”

  “Except you know perfectly well that my profile would suggest I am immune to such anthropomorphic empathy,” Cratch remarked.

  “Yes,” Whye admitted uncomfortably, “but you were talking about Z-Lin’s and Sally’s reasons for blaming you for the incident, and you mentioned that you were technically responsible.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “They’re defective biological components,” Janus concluded firmly.

  “Z-Lin and Sally?”

  “The eejits,” Whye sighed, “that’s how we have to think of them. You want to know what I think?”

  “Desperately.”

  “I think, if murdering an eejit from time to time was enough to keep the homicidal psychotic impulses of our chief medic at bay – no offence, but I’m talking about you-”

  “I was on the verge of piecing that together.”

  “-I think it would be an easy prescription for the Commander to sign off on. Objectively, it should be – and Z-Lin’s usually pretty objective. It’d be an easier substance to fabricate than some of the more complex psych meds, none of which worked on you even before we lost most of our fine printing capacity. Eejits come out of the plant, not a medical printer. They’re easy. And if you killed one every couple of months, we’d be able to print more and keep on improving our stock by letting you pick off the weaklings in the herd. The eejit herd,” he specified quickly. “You see what I’m saying? Self-regulated eejit accidents at no risk to the ship. Therapeutic murder of able stock. You know what the only problem is?”

  Glomulus looked fascinated, although Janus reminded himself that the doctor was a consummate impersonator of human emotion. “It doesn’t work.”

  “Exactly,” Whye said, leaning forward again, animatedly. “There have actually been studies on it. Like … weaning murderers away from killing, using surrogates and replacement acts. They don’t go for it. They can tell it’s not real, same as any animatronic or simulated violence. It doesn’t have the emotional value, for whatever definition of ‘emotion’ you want to use. True pathological issues can be treated, maybe even cured, but they can’t be fooled into thinking they’re being indulged,” he paused. “Why does Sally think Bethel wasn’t an accident?”

  “Oh,” Cratch spread his hands, “I take very good care of all my equipment, and am far too careful to leave things lying around. And even if I was a slob, Sally and Z-Lin are far too careful to leave Molran anaesthetic or any other dangerous medical equipment lying around anywhere near me. They check every inch of the medical bay every time anything happens there and every time anything or anyone new shows up, because they know I’m a relentless collector and squirre
ller,” he smiled. “Sally can’t believe I would miss something like that, so if it was there, lying around for Bethel to pop in his mouth, it had to have been on purpose. It’s a reasonable suspicion. I just don’t know why therapy was what they decided on doing about it. I just keep coming back to the fact that it’s this or the brig, and the crew sort of needs me slightly more at-large than the brig.”

  “They could keep you in the brig and only pull you out for emergencies,” Janus said. “It worked for me, when you patched me up after Bunzo’s,” he was quite pleased with the way he managed to say the name without hesitating.

  “Yes,” the Rip said earnestly, “and that was when they decided to keep me in the medical bay full-time. Remember before that? Never mind The Accident, nobody was prepared for that … but that asteroid you stopped at, with the tomb? The scarabs? It was lucky nobody died. Even simple things, like the MundCorp flier we ran into and the little fistfight Waffa got into, it didn’t go that smoothly with me in the hole. I needed to acclimatise. A doctor – or medic, I should probably specify – needs to know his bay. His equipment. His nurses. Otherwise he has to get up to speed and go through the same start-up problems every time, and your average medical emergency is defined by time and efficiency being of the essence.

  “Now, I have that familiarity, which is good for everyone. And no,” he concluded, still quite serious, “I wouldn’t risk that for an eejit. Because I also know that therapeutic murder of quasi-sentients doesn’t work.”

  “I can sort of see them doing this to mess with you,” Janus said, “but I’m also pretty sure they’d be as aware as I am that it wouldn’t bother you in the slightest. Nor would it have any beneficial healing effect, unless they know something about my methods that I don’t … so this could really only be about messing with me,” he tapped at his pad. “Which is weird at best, and putting me alone in a room with an extremely resourceful and unpredictable mass-murderer at worst.”

  “Wait – me again, right?”

  “It’s also possible that they might be hoping for some sign-off on your rehabilitation, some check in the shrink-box that will give you a bit more freedom around the ship,” Janus said. “For medical emergencies, and also maybe so you can help out a bit with our new passengers. Except…”

  “Except?”

  “Well, you’d help with the aki’Drednanth anyway, because you’re interested in them.”

  “You can say it,” Cratch said comfortably, “I’m an aki’Drednanth fanboy.”

  “Well, right. Plus, Dunnkirk can probably act as a go-between for us with the seven pups. In fact, it’s more likely that Z-Lin got you to agree to counselling sessions in return for maybe being allowed to come out and meet and greet with the aki’Drednanth.”

  “Clever fellow,” Glomulus said, still comfortable and casual in his seat in the centre of the room, well out of reach of every shelf, wall, article of furniture and piece of equipment. Not to mention Whye himself. “It doesn’t explain why the inestimable Commander Clue would make this the price I pay. Which was why I had assumed Z-Lin and Sally planned it as a way of … messing with me, in so many words. But then, like you say, it’s going to bother you more than it bothers me.”

  Janus shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t think of that.”

  Doctor Cratch gave him a dubious look. At that moment, the medical alert began to sound.

  “Hmm,” Glomulus said, after they’d both sat listening to the mild, inoffensive counsellor’s-office version of the noise for almost thirty seconds, “or perhaps the powers that be decided in their infinite wisdom to provide me with some sort of an official alibi.”

  SALLY (NOW)

  By therapist-patient confidentiality agreement there was no sound permitted on the monitoring bumper in Janus’s office, except by special command security override in the event of an investigation after the fact. This was another way of saying Sally could watch Glomulus Cratch undergoing counselling, but not listen to what was being said.

  She was also authorised to flood the entire office with harmless but incapacitating nerve gas if the Rip so much as lifted his nonexistent buttocks off that chair, and she was sitting with her hand hovering over the button awaiting just that eventuality … but so far, he had behaved himself to an extreme she had to admit was a little disappointing. The silent conversation made for dull viewing, and the bridge – particularly after they’d reached full subluminal and skipped back into relative speed – wasn’t especially exciting either, so Sally was sitting at her station, watching the monitor and listening to Bastards of Punditry. The two-singer exchange, rising from ominously-growled opening statements into howl-out-loud degeneration to ad hominem, was a rather fitting soundtrack to the unheard conversation.

  Sally watched Janus with a certain amount of sympathy as he struggled, quite visibly, to maintain a comfortable and casual demeanour in spite of all-too-obvious fear of his patient.

  Damn it, Clue, she thought to herself grimly, taking her eyes off the monitor just long enough to cast a glance at the Commander at her auxiliary console, I hope I know what you’re doing.

  When the medical emergency alarm went off a few seconds later, Sally almost hit the gas button by reflex.

  “Shit,” she growled, when she saw Glomulus sitting inoffensive and still in his seat, Janus rigid and wide-eyed in his own. The tall, skinny blonde-haired ghoul actually turned his head carefully and made direct eye contact with the monitors, as if to illustrate his cooperation and lack of suspicious movement. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “I’ll handle the emergency,” Z-Lin said, rising to her feet and pointing at Sally. “You go and get Cratch. Decay, with me.”

  Sally spared the monitor a final frustrated glance, debated for a split-second whether or not to knock counsellor and patient out anyway, then decided against it and hurried for the corridor.

  Janus’s office was off the secondary bridge, just on the other side of the exchange plane but unfortunately all the way across the Tramp’s equal-largest deck. If Sally could have been outside Janus’s door through the entire session – or, ideally, inside the office with a gun trained on the good doctor – she would have been. Still, it was easier to jog past the main engineering block and then drop through the exchange using a service duct than it was to detour to one of the ship’s elevators, and no more than five minutes later she was at the counsellor’s door. By then, she had received word from Z-Lin about what had apparently happened.

  “Sally,” Janus said as she stepped into the room, “is there a problem?”

  “It’s Dunnkirk,” she said, watching Glomulus closely, “he’s had some sort of an accident or breakdown in the medical bay. Z-Lin’s checking it out. She wants us all back in the bridge conference room five minutes ago.”

  She still had to check Cratch over, reassure herself that he wasn’t carrying anything extra out of the office and had not left anything behind in it, and then delay for a few inwardly agonising minutes while she just watched him. This, she had learned from experience, was a far more effective technique against almost any other criminal she had ever dealt with aside from the Rip, particularly if said criminal was attempting some sort of escape or other covert crime. Timing was usually critical to such endeavours. It was a rare bad guy indeed who factored an indefinite lag, while a five-foot woman in a topknot gave him the stinkeye, into his plans.

  Glomulus Cratch usually didn’t operate that way and usually seemed to have all the time in the world to stand innocuously and let Sally glare at him, but it was still a useful technique and she saw no reason not to give the man a good old-fashioned big-picture stare-down. It was funny sometimes, the things you missed … although perhaps ‘funny’ wasn’t the word, when you could see the damage Cratch could do with his own torn-off shirt-sleeve.

  And moving with him was a meticulous business too. He stayed in the middle of the corridor and kept his hands in sight, but they still moved slowly – and this time, they took the elevator.

  By the time
they got to the conference room, Clue and Decay were already back and the rest of the crew were seated along either side of the table. The spot at the end, habitually occupied by the massive armoured shape of Thord and her two husky Bonshoon companions, was stark in its unaccustomed emptiness.

  Z-Lin barely waited for Sally to get Glomulus seated in his well-separated and accessory-stripped chair. “About twenty minutes ago, shortly after we entered soft-space,” she said, “Dunnkirk was attacked in the medical bay. The emergency systems activated but there was no clear footage captured of the actual attack, which was already well underway by the time his vital signs dipped sufficiently to register a problem. We’re estimating that the attack took less than fifteen minutes from beginning to end. We’re probably looking at a window closer to ten minutes,” she consulted her pad – unnecessarily, Sally judged – and gave a little sigh. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Zeegon blurted. Everyone, predictably enough, was looking at Cratch. “Dead how?”

  “One guess,” Waffa said.

  “Our medic was not in the area,” Z-Lin said grudgingly, and Janus nodded confirmation while Glomulus himself contrived to look as wide-eyed and innocent as possible, although when Glomulus Cratch opened his eyes too wide he tended to look a bit like one of those deep-sea fish trying to absorb as much light into its pupils as possible in order to bite its prey in the dark. “He was in the counsellor’s office, undergoing therapy.”

  “Therapy,” Zeegon said flatly. “Seriously?”

  “I was watching him on the monitor throughout the session,” Sally confirmed, knowing her voice sounded as grudging as Clue’s had, “and Janus was in the room with him. He was there since just after we sent Thord and Maladin off, right through to the medical alert.”

  “You were watching us?” Glomulus said mildly. “I feel so violated … and yet strangely fulfilled.”

  “Shut it,” Sally advised through clenched teeth.