Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (7 page)

“I like to explain it syllable by syllable,”
Decay had confided in Glomulus once, while chatting about the metaflux after a particularly hilarious feeding-time incident,
“and see how many syllables it takes before they interrupt me,”
he’d laughed.
“And then I say ‘let’s just call it
metaflux
’,”
he’d added, in tones suggesting this was the punchline.

Decay usually came during the night shifts and other irregular times. Because the poor sap didn’t need to sleep. If Glomulus had ever wondered what Molranoids did during the seven hours a day humans spent unconscious, he was at least reasonably sure ‘making up jokes’ didn’t top the list.

“Tell you again – you mean about the reality script?” the Blaran said now. “Well, it’s just something I’ve noticed that humans do particularly well. I’m learning to look at the positive side of things that I used to consider in a … perhaps over-negative light. And I found that when humans tell each other things, and tell themselves things, and most importantly when they
write and read
things, it imprints on what they believe is reality, and this in turn impacts their behaviour and their interaction with the universe.”

“Are humans the only species that alter their environment according to their perceptions, and their perceptions according to communication and learning?” Glomulus asked mildly. “How did the rest of you get into space?”

Decay blinked. “Well, there’s a distinction between developmental education and the sort of repetition-based perception of absolute truth that-”

“Although now that I think about it, you were sort of pushed into space when your solar system burned out, right?” Glomulus went on. “And filling up big hollowed-out bits of your planets with air and then just floating off, well – that doesn’t
really
count, does it? As for the Fergunak and the aki’Drednanth, they were basically carried into space by Damorakind, so…” he shrugged, then grinned. “I guess there’s a certain benefit to the philosophy of being a cork in the river, just bobbing along wherever the stream takes you. In my experience it’s not exactly the human way. So maybe you’re right. Maybe it
is
unique.”

“Of course, humans were ‘basically carried into space’ by the Fleet,” Decay pointed out.

“Fair to say, fair to say,” Glomulus said, “although there’s rather compelling evidence to suggest that we were already modestly spacefaring, and a lot of the big technological leaps actually came from us just before you got our homeworld blown up, and you gave us a ride out of combined guilt and gratitude.”

“Human reality script in action,” Decay said enthusiastically. “Communication has been such a huge factor in separating you from the lower orders of animals for so long, it occupies an extremely dominant part of the psychological make-up. So when a human communicates in these specialised ways, the communication in and of itself takes on such importance-”

“What factors separate
other
species from the lower orders?” Glomulus inquired. “I mean, if not spoken and written language? And aside from your amazing metaflux joke.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Decay replied. “I hear good things about the way Molranoids can agree with humans just to stop them from jabbering, and then calmly default to a rational system of beliefs and values,” he raised a hand to his ear. “Although the ability to balance an entire dinner service on the tops of our heads is also not to be sneezed at,” he added dryly.

“It does seem unfair that you can do that,” Glomulus conceded, “since you already have twice as many hands as we do,” he let his face grow serious. “I’m not sure how ignoring the input and experiences of others is much of an evolutionary trait.”

“You’re probably right.”

Glomulus grinned. “Well played, if – I have to say – somewhat formulaic.”

“Anyway, there are plenty of different markers,” Decay said, “it’s not really my department. I am strictly a keen but amateur enthusiast. And this isn’t to say that communication isn’t important at all – on the contrary. It’s the
response
to it that distinguishes the human condition. When a human writes something again and again and again, the words become nonsense … and at the same time, they subconsciously imprint as a
fact
, no matter how inapplicable or illogical, around which the human behavioural model will begin to shape itself. I call it
cerebral dysphasic credulosis
,” he gave a little laugh. “It’s just the name I gave to the mental state, it’s not medically valid in any way. And again, it’s intended constructively, not as any sort of criticism.”

“I doubt anybody would be particularly interested in seeing my reality script,” Glomulus remarked.

“Well, considering the general perception of your reality script among the crew…” General Moral Decay (Alcohol) spread his lower pair of hands in a little shrug. “I don’t usually go for this ‘birthday’ thing that humans put so much stock in,” he went on, “but when I’m asked if I want some sort of gift for my birthday, I have taken to asking people to try this writing experiment I was just telling you about.”

“I don’t go for birthdays either,” Glomulus commiserated, “although I do have this five-year anniversary coming up…”

“Hm,” Decay said, seeming – as far as Glomulus could really tell – a little uncomfortable at this reminder of his convict status. “So, anyway, that’s the nature of the experiment. I actually had fifty-odd crewmembers doing it, at its peak. A lot of my sample was lost, sadly, in The Accident. But it still has some-”

“Do you think I should try it?” Glomulus asked abruptly. “Do you think it would solve my problems?”

“I imagine being given a pen or scribing instrument would solve quite a few of your problems,” Decay said. Cratch smiled widely again in reply, and Decay pointed. “The flimsy should suffice.”

“Finger-painting is just so undignified,” Cratch mourned. “I feel like a toddler.”

“Brig rations will have to tide you over until we get more toddler.”

“You
are
funny for a Molran.”

Decay cleared his throat. “Blaran.”

“My mistake,” Doctor Cratch said, and rose to cross to his desk. “So can I tell you what I write?” he asked, picking up the flimsy. “Or is it like making a wish when you blow out birthday candles? Oh, that’s another traditional birthday thing, by the way,” he added, tapping the edge of the flimsy to stiffen it. He started swiping and jotting quickly with a slender fingertip. The senso-flimsy transcribed his touches into text, and could also store the information – if required – into its limited recall-memory. “If you tell people what you wish for, it won’t come true.”

“Yes, I’m aware of birthday candle wish etiquette,” Decay said.

“I just thought, maybe since you didn’t go for this ‘birthday’ thing that humans put so much stock in,” Doctor Cratch said, looking up fleetingly from the page. “I wonder if there’s a ‘five years in the brig’ cake tradition,” he continued whimsically.

“I’m sure the settings on the brig food printer can be adjusted to ‘cake’,” Decay remarked, and Glomulus allowed himself a shudder. “In this case it doesn’t matter if you tell or not,” the Blaran went on. “It’s the writing that’s important.”

“Good,” Glomulus nodded, writing busily. “I assume I can delete it again afterwards,” he asked, “or do I need to hold onto a record?”

“You can do what you like with it after it’s written down,” Decay said, “although you have to be aware by now that anything you write onto that flimsy is going straight into a tracking and supervisory database that Sally and the Commander scan for warning markers.”

“Oh Lordy Lord, you mean my secret love poetry and my famous brownie recipe have been pored over by prying eyes?” Glomulus lamented. “I may never learn to trust again,” he jotted a final line, nodded in satisfaction, and then held up the flimsy against the unyielding transparent smoothness of the metaflux. At least this time the special field-reinforced plating had been polarised so he could see out, as well as Decay seeing in. “Like this?”

Decay raised his hairless eyebrows. “You wrote it in Xidh,” he remarked. To his credit – although it was difficult to imagine what Glomulus could possibly
do
– he didn’t lean closer to read the delicate swirls and pictograms of the sentence Cratch had written three times on the senso-flimsy:

I will escape from the brig, decapitate the shit-dancing bat-head and fuck its nose-holes until its brain finally dies.

I will escape from the brig, decapitate the shit-dancing bat-head and fuck its nose-holes until its brain finally dies.

I will escape from the brig, decapitate the shit-dancing bat-head and fuck its nose-holes until its brain finally dies.

“That’s the idea,” Decay said coolly, “although ten times is probably more likely to get the concept firmly imprinted on your behavioural template. If that’s really what you want,” his ears flicked, and he glanced back up at the convict with a bright smile and a swift but clearly-deliberate stroke of his tongue down his elongated eye tooth. A Molranoid insult, albeit a mild and quite dated one. “I didn’t know you could write Xidh so fluently.”

“Well, now it’s a secret shared by you, me, and anyone who reads my tracking and supervisory database for warning markers,” Glomulus smiled.

Decay smiled back – although again, really, how could you tell? “I’m also pleased to see the ‘shit-dancer’ detail there,” he said, making a vague little gesture with his upper right hand. “It suggests that you
can
be taught the difference between a Molran and a Blaran, after all.”

“Oh yes, I have this excellent method for remembering,” Cratch replied. “I just remind myself that Steña Oyana MassKoi was a
Molran
, until she decided to take a ride on the wild child, and then she became a
Blaran
.”

“Yes,” Decay said equably, “that’s a sensible way of keeping it all straight,” he inclined his head infinitesimally, and turned to leave.

“Wait,” Cratch said, “I just meant to say…” Decay paused, and turned back, ears lowering. “I’m glad the female died,” he went on in an earnest, sincere voice. “The one that married you, I mean. Steña. It was fast. And her degradation is over. They might’ve even let her into
Molran
Heaven, right?”

“I’m glad too,” Decay replied, after a long pause.

Glomulus lifted his own pale eyebrows. “You don’t say.”

“It’s always good to have confirmation,” the Blaran noted, “that you and I are each on the right sides of this wall.”

He turned and strolled away along the corridor. He’d left the flux open, Glomulus mused, the plate solid but two-way transparent. He could have punished Cratch by leaving it transparent from the outside in but a solid wall from the prisoner’s perspective. A touch of the control panel would have done it.

This way there was still nothing to see, but it was a
dynamic
nothing. And his next inspector wouldn’t sneak up on him, except in the unlikely event of a remote polarity change from one of the bridge consoles. Which he wouldn’t put past Sally, for example, but still seemed unlikely.

“A miss,” he murmured contemplatively, looking down at his precious sheet of flimsy. “A very
palpable
miss.”

Z-LIN (NOW)

Commander Z-Lin Clue stood at the entrance to the oxygen farm arc that they’d all come to think of as ‘Thord’s room’, and would probably now have to start thinking of as ‘the rumpus room’. At least until such time as the juveniles within began to whittle down their own numbers and the idea of it being a rumpus room became too sad to tolerate.

She sighed. It felt like she spent a lot of her time sighing. The burden of command was one thing, but this was the death of a civilian. A
real
civilian, a
passenger
, not like the under-qualified, technically-uncertified but nevertheless active non-Corps crew under her charge. A passenger, no less, who had been companion – and perhaps much, much more – to an aki’Drednanth. Unless the seven pups in the farm decided to back them up over this, the information would most likely cascade through the Drednanth Dreamscape as soon as they returned to subluminal space. However that sort of information happened to cascade anywhere, which was a bit beyond Clue’s sphere of expertise.

And if the Drednanth got upset, then the
Molren
would be upset. And the last thing they needed at that time was the
Fleet
being pissed at them as well. They already had more than enough enemies … although Z-Lin accepted the fact that
she
, of all people, probably shouldn’t complain too loudly about that.

Frankly, the idea that at least five or six aki’Drednanth might soon
also
be dying on board her ship wasn’t something she wanted to focus on, even if that was a series of deaths the Drednanth would probably wholeheartedly approve of. It was almost easier to think of the very real possibility that the potential unfriendlies among AstroCorps and the Fleet had all been destroyed at this stage, by an unknown but possibly-Damorakind menace.

And it made her want to sigh all over again that she had just drawn a line between her civilian-but-non-Corps crew and
actual
civilians, with rights and identities and an existence outside this modular’s battered old hull.

All told, they had been flying for eight years. Eight years, two months, five days. It was an easy one to remember, because their launch had been at year’s turn. Although to call it a launch was missing an opportunity to say
that time we scrambled onto a modular in the middle of the night and sort of shot our way out of a chrysanthemum while being fired on by three separate governments, and everybody thought it was a year’s turn lightshow
.

They’d been celebrating their
fourth
year in space back when they had met up with the
Dark Glory Ascendant
. It was weird to think that
that
awkward series of incidents was now a halfway mark in their mission.