Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (44 page)

“None of the ones that did get out ever came back, either!” Contro said.

“No, this is true,” Bunzo agreed. “I’m so glad you did, by the way. Did I mention that?”

“Once or twice,” Waffa replied.

“So, yes. Yes, you can decide to be noble, and
try
to be clever, and stay here forever. Or you can pay the tithe, and
maybe
leave. Although now I have you back, I’m really not inclined to let you go…”

“So, let’s leave Cratch and call it good,” Waffa suggested. “Isn’t that what we brought him down here for? It’s sounding like Clue and the Cap had already known about this tithe bullplop, so-”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” Sally said firmly. “Cratch and The Bun might belong together, but we’re not about to start throwing our lawfully-arrested prisoners to the wolves and walk away.”

“Very well said,” Bunzo approved. “I’m not sure I like that implication about
wolves
, but very noble and very worthy, indeed.”

“Besides,” Glomulus said, “I don’t think The Bun would want to keep me around. His wife has a thing for me,” there was a sudden, horrified silence, and Glomulus examined his fingernails. “Of course, I can’t blame her,” he went on. “She’s only human, the poor old dear.”

The silence stretched another five seonds, then Bunzo laughed.

“Well done!” he exclaimed. “Well done indeed! A bit cheeky, but well done!”

And Glomulus’s hands exploded with a
pop-pop
.

Contro couldn’t help laughing, even though he got some burnt crunchies on his shirt and everyone else looked shocked. It just made such a funny noise! It wasn’t his fault! Anyway, Glomulus made an even funnier squawking sound and fell down unconscious with his stumps curled to his chest, so he wasn’t going to be bothered by it. Sally stared down, then looked up very angrily indeed.

“Yes, a bit cheeky, a bit cheeky indeed!” Bunzo continued. “And now, please step into the Funporium,” they’d arrived at a big colourful arch, and standing under the arch was something horrible. “And please ignore Bilo,” Bunzo added.

“I’d love to ignore Bilo,” Sally said weakly, “but I’m also worried about Bilo then being somewhere behind me where I can’t see him.”

Bilo was a human, or a human
oid
, anyway, with a body almost as pale and skinny as Glomulus’s and only a pair of shorts to his name. He also had a lot of funny lines and scars on his arms, legs and torso, and his head appeared to be a jenkiball. That is, it was big and round and a sort of maroon colour, and stitched vertically down the middle with rough cord. It looked far too big for Bilo’s pointy shoulders, and was such a funny proportion to the rest of him that from a distance he looked like a child.

The ball, of course, had no eyes or nose or mouth. Bilo was really quite ghastly.

“Hello,” Bilo said in a muffled voice.

“Oh,” Contro said in relief, “so you’re just wearing a mask! I didn’t realise you had a sort of a scary section here as well! I just thought the Funporium would be all the cheerful happy stuff!”

“I’m very sorry about this,” Bunzo said. “There are different schools of thought about the whole clowning issue. Bilo was actually – well, I have been planning this, like I said. Not necessarily for
you
to come back, but for
someone
to come back. And Bilo was meant to meet and greet and hand out gifts. Weren’t you, Bilo?”

“I still can,” Bilo snuffled. “You can take
me
with you if you like.”

“Uh, no,” Sally replied.

“Aw.”

“You do realise you’re just Bunzo pretending to be a robot with a jenkiball for a head, right?” Waffa said. “And I am very much aware that the weirdest thing I have ever said might end up being the last if you take exception to it.”

“It’s alright,” Bilo said. “I know I’m rather ill-conceived. But preparing coming-back surprises for people who leave us … it’s not the sort of thing we’ve had much call to do. Not that many people even
leave
us, let alone come back.”

“Remember the
Moritania
?” Bunzo said fondly.

“Wait – the
Moritania
came here?” Sally demanded.

“Sure,” Bilo extended a skeletal hand, ushering them deeper into the Funporium. “Would you like to see the crewmember
they
left behind as tithe?”

“Will it give us all nightmares for the rest of our lives?” Waffa asked.

“Maybe,” Bilo admitted.

“Depends how long you live,” Bunzo added.

“And how much of a Tilly Tinkle-Tears you are,” Bilo concluded. “You’re not a Tilly Tinkle-Tears, are you?”

“I’m a bit of a Tilly Tinkle-Tears,” Waffa confessed.

“Actually we do have one surprise I think you’ll really like,” Bunzo said. “Bilo, bring Glomulus. You’ll see, Sally, there’s method in my madness. Please bear with me.”

Sally looked as though she would prefer to darn well shoot somebody, and Waffa looked the same, and Contro was more than a little tempted to pull out his Tonsil Job and start laying about him too, but they stepped back and let Bilo lurch over to Glomulus. He picked the skinny doctor up easily, and carried him across to a big upright box just inside the arch. It was colourful and decorated with stars and crescent moons. Bilo propped Glomulus into the box and closed the door.

“What-” Sally asked, mystified.

“This is something I have been perfecting since you were last here,” Bunzo said. “I was lucky enough to have access to excellent fabrication technology, and my knowledge and aptitude make exponential leaps from time to time. Behold!”

There was a chugging sound, and then a scream. Sally swore, lunged forward and hip-and-shouldered Bilo out of the way. She hauled the door open and Glomulus fell out, toppled to his knees and retched, raising a hand to his mouth. Then he retched again, raising the other hand. Then Contro realised he had hands!

“My word!” Contro exclaimed. “What an amazing trick!”

“High-speed printing and cohesion,” Bunzo said modestly, “nothing more.”

“And the bracelets,” Bilo said, pointing. “Don’t forget them.”

“Oh yes,” Bunzo added idly, and as Sally helped Glomulus up Contro noticed the doctor did indeed once again have the heavy exploding bracelets around his wrists. “With a sufficient sample I can reconstitute and integrate ‘most anything you like. Even complex stuff like the security bracelets. This is far more than just a medical printer – it’s a one-stop matter manipulator.”

“You alright, Cratch?” Sally asked, stepping back and eyeing Glomulus cautiously.

“I’m fine,” he said shakily. “A little bit of a shock, the way it suddenly … yes, I think I’m fine,” he opened and closed his hands, looking stunned. “They’re just like they were five minutes ago,” he marvelled. “Like they hadn’t been blown off at all.”

“They
are
like they were five minutes ago,” Bunzo said indulgently. “The real-time molecular imaging was performed when you entered the spaceport. Pretty fancy, no?”

“Very fancy,” Glomulus said, and coughed. “Although self-preservation, if not honesty, compels me to add that these bracelets seem to have been reprinted without the actual sensor and the explosive charge,” he raised his hands and clanked the bracelets together apologetically. “Also, as you can see from the light panels, they’re inactive – probably because of the missing charge.”

“Oh,” Bunzo said idly, “that’s odd … but you can surely replace the charges when you get back to your ship. And get back you shall! With this new fabricator as a prize – yes, that’s right, it’s yours!”

“Ours?” Sally squinted.

“Help me bring the Levelled Blade down here to the surface,” Bunzo said, “and you and your crew can leave. With the printer.”

“What?” Sally frowned. “How do you know that name? I could swear it’s not on any of our official records. Did you dig it up from somewhere on board?”

“Oh, we hear things,” Bunzo said. Bilo stopped trying to lead them into the cavernous Funporium – now that Contro really stopped and looked, it seemed as though the space beyond the miraculous magic fabricator just sort of sloped away under the floor like a cave, and was dusty and filled with funny draped objects he really wasn’t all that keen on seeing close up – and stepped back towards them again. “Just leave Mother’s Rebellion to me and Bilo, and you’ll be free.”

In a flash, Sally had a gun in one hand and her organiser in the other.

“Commander, do you read?”

“Loud and clear,” Z-Lin’s voice said.

“He’s definitely making a move for the pups. Keep your eyes open up there.”

“Right.”

“Come now-” Bunzo said, as Sally pocketed the pad.

“Fall back to the lander,” Sally said, and shot Bilo in the head.

WAFFA (THEN)

“He mustn’t have seen it coming,” Zeegon said. “He thought the whole Sally-Forth Engine thing was a lot of fun until he was caught by it.”

“Let’s try not to gloat for a moment,” Z-Lin advised from her seat at an auxiliary console. “Do we know where this jump is taking us? What were the coordinates?”

“Not far from here,” Zeegon said blithely. “And not into a sun as far as I can tell.”

“How far
can
you tell?” Decay asked.

“Shut up, that’s how.”

There was a chime, and Westchester’s voice came from the comm. “This is the medical bay, Westchester on behalf of Nurse Wingus. Um, there’s been an … accident?”

“Janus?” Z-Lin leaned forward.

“The patient is stable,” Westchester reported, “Nurse Dingus says he’s fine … it’s the medic who has hurt himself.”

Waffa, Sally and Z-Lin hurried to the medical bay, where they found Glomulus lying in the corridor just outside. He’d stepped out through the door, setting off his explosive wrist and ankle bracelets. The special charge capsules had gone off in a fierce but controlled blast, removing his hands at the wrists and feet at the ankles, and cauterising the wounds while the bracelet base-plates remained behind and tightened over the stumps. Still, the shock had knocked him unconscious and he couldn’t survive indefinitely without proper surgical replacement.

The nurses, Wingus and Dingus, were standing over the prone body, looking as worried as blank-faced eejits could. Janya’s assistants, recognising this as something completely outside their sphere of expertise, were standing further along the corridor. Janya herself was also there, standing between them, arms folded and with a cool look on her face that was too calm to be I-told-you-so … but it was close enough.

Sally took over. “Alright,” she said, “Wingus, Dingus, get him up and take him through to the main room and get him on a table. I’ll go and prep the printers. Waffa, you go and get authorisation from Clue to run off four more security bracelets. Remember, they’re the G-17 model with the proximity trigger. Otherwise our implants won’t set them off.”

“I remember,” Waffa said. Even amidst the panic of their escape and the bustle of activity around getting Cratch installed in the medical bay and ready to do the rebuilding work on Janus, they’d found time to do a crash course on the bracelets and how they worked. The set of four was unique – you couldn’t print more of them until the first four were destroyed, and even that required command clearance. There had been a lot of rules and details and warnings, but Waffa had only really paid attention to the subdermal activation code. They’d all had some fun with test simulations, although Waffa had his doubts as to whether any of them would actually be willing to detonate them once they were installed on a man’s arms and legs. Even if that man
was
the Barnalk High Ripper.

As for Janus, at the moment he seemed to be okay. Waffa stopped by the recovery ward on his way back with the new bracelets.

Janus still wasn’t a pretty sight. He’d only been
prepped
at this stage. Glomulus had extracted the counsellor’s mangled body from the disintegrating pod, installed him on an operating table, sedated him and repaired the most immediately life-threatening issues. His organ damage was being compensated by machinery for the time being, and he would be able to survive for a while.

Long enough for Cratch to test his house arrest system, apparently
, Waffa thought with a growl.

The bracelets made Waffa a little bit nervous. They were keyed to the subdermal implants they’d all had installed, and there was practically no way an accidental bump could set them off, and of course they were inactive until installed and initialised. Otherwise Sally couldn’t rig them to blow when they passed outside of the medical bay. He’d just feel better once they were all safely clamped back around the Rip’s arms and legs, that was all.

The reprinting and bonding process went smoothly, at least until the end. Glomulus woke up just as Sally was tight-lippedly fastening the final bracelet and disposing of the original ash-smudged base-plate.

“Ooh,” he murmured, raising a hand to wipe at his face, then figgling his fingers dazedly in front of his eyes. “Did you give me more of that horrible sedative?”

“Yes,” Sally said with deceptive calm. “And we don’t want to have to dose you again, because you have surgery to perform.”

“I’ll be fine,” Glomulus pushed himself up on his elbows. “It was stabilising him that was the difficult part. The rest is just drag and drop, putting all the bits back together again.”

“Really?” Sally’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Just drag and drop, no problem?”

“Sure. So I felt a little bit of a stretch of the legs was in order. Oh, I
know
you told me about the house arrest limits, but imagine my surprise when I stepped outside-”

“
How about with no molecular bonding stimulator, you jackass
?” Sally suddenly roared. Glomulus blinked, turning from Sally to Waffa to Z-Lin to Janya.

“Wingus was clearing up after your replacement surgery,” Janya said, “and he … fused himself to an autopsy table. We’re not sure how he managed to take it so far, but by the time the medical alerts went off, he was already dead.”