Eejit: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (28 page)

“You know what they say,” Doctor Cratch wiggled his fingers again. “It’s amazing how difficult it is to concentrate when your hands and feet have been blown off.”

“You let them
put those on you
?”

“Not exactly,” he replied easily. “It was a condition of my release. Plus, I was goofballed out of my mind on tranks that would have floored a wacky-wacky-Drednanth. So much for that illusory solidarity and shared common cause, right?” he grinned. “So much for the crimes of the past being forgotten and all of us getting down on the ol’ common oar.”

“I admit,” the Artist said, “even with the evident underestimation I have fallen victim to with these creatures, I am surprised.”

“Of course, it hasn’t stopped me from trying to get out of them,” he went on. “They make a move, then I make a move, see? You might help me with my next one.”

The Artist ignored this offer, at least for the moment. “It’s all very well to take a precaution,” he mused, “but calling the bluff is quite another matter. Do you think they’d actually
do
it?”

“I have the luxury of not needing to hypothesise,” Cratch wiggled his fingers. “This must be my sixty-fifth set.”

The Artist actually blanched. “You’re serious.”

“The first nine sets were my own doing, so I kept good count of those,” Glomulus smiled. “They decided to try out an informal little house arrest system at the start, an arrangement where I’d stay in the medical bay and if I went outside the detonators would trigger. I went out nine times before they agreed to turn off the boundary sensors. I agreed in turn to not go out without permission or notification. Principle of the thing.”

“You blew off your own hands and feet?” the Artist whispered. “
Eight more times
after you knew they weren’t bluffing?”

“I think personally that the only reason they opened the boundary after those nine times was because they needed me to do that surgery on Janus Whye,” Glomulus shrugged. “They can always detonate without question if I show up outside without agreement and warning.”

“I would have imagined a human would bleed out if it lost its hands and feet,” the Artist rallied. “You don’t have the arterial control to shut off bleeding.”

“Well, the charges are pretty hot,” Glomulus said, giving his hands another shake, “so I estimate a certain amount of cauterisation comes into the equation. They’re also shaped, so they don’t blast me ragged to the knees and elbows. My
guess
is that they separate, and the bits that don’t blow up just tighten and act like tourniquets. As for the rest, so far I have been lucky to get prompt treatment – but again, I can only guess. Sorry to say I’ve passed out every time so far, like a big wimp.”

“And they
all
have charges?

“Yep. Like I said. Subdermal.”

“
She
has charges?”

“Funnily enough,
she
is the only one who hasn’t popped off the occasional set just for a laugh,” Cratch said whimsically. “Her and the Captain. As far as I know, anyway, since there’s hardly a broadcast when it happens. Usually the others make their culpability quite clear, verbally or by amusing pantomime. Sometimes they might have been covering for each other, but in this case I doubt it,” he spread his long hands. “No secrets here.”

The Artist laughed, loudly and abruptly. “No secrets? Glomulus Cratch, secrets are all you people have left. Ask your precious merciful Captain about that. Do you even know who’s leading your intrepid band?”

Molren were fast and the Artist, while old, was in that phase that left him strong and fast even for a Molran. As Cratch opened his mouth to answer, the blood-drenched alien slid fluidly forward onto his knees. His lower left arm snaked to one side into the half-open door of a nearby cabinet, and he rose to a crouch with a scalpel curled in his fingers. The scalpel swept up through the empty space where Glomulus’s groin had been a split-second before. The Artist missed Doctor Cratch’s femoral artery by a fraction of an inch.

Because as fast as the Molran was, Glomulus Cratch was faster.

The Artist skidded on the bloody tiles and puffed out his final breath as the pale human sidestepped and dipped his long thumbs into the junction of his flat-topped skull plates.

Doctor Cratch tightened his grip in a smooth flexing of super-dense tendons and adrenaline-fed muscles, cracking the heavy bone down the middle like an egg.

“Space weasel,” Zeegon yelped, spinning and flailing desperately in zero gravity while Sally pulled herself across and shone a lamp into the wiring behind the panel. “Space weasel, space weasel, space weasel.”

“Stop saying ‘space weasel’,” Z-Lin said.

“Just as soon as you stop there from being one on my head!”

“Hold still.”

“Very difficult in zero gee and
with a space weasel on my head
!”

Clue grabbed the chittering mossy creature and pulled it free. This sent the Commander somersaulting backwards and a few globules of Zeegon’s blood floating in the other direction, while he continued to spin in place. Clue righted herself easily with her feet and let the weasel float loose while she ducked for a sample container. Utterly unaccustomed to freefall conditions and no longer connected to the leverage of the wiring access slot, the weasel twisted and revolved in place much like Zeegon was doing. Unlike Zeegon, the weasel also managed to wee vindictively into the air, sending an arc of ammonia-reeking piss-globs flying into the only part of the cabin not already occupied by bodies or fluids therefrom.

Zeegon may or may not have similarly lost bladder control when the weasel had leapt on him, actually, but Sally knew from firsthand experience that the AstroCorps uniform – even the non-Corps crew variants worn by pretty much everyone except Z-Lin – was up to the task of containing at least minor leaks.

Z-Lin scooped the weasel into the sample box and sealed the lid before it could propel itself out. “See if there are more,” she said.

“I looked,” Sally reported, “not seeing any signs. But there’s wiring and cluster ducts and all sorts of shooey back there, they could have crawled into any of them. If this one got up here, others could have gone other ways.”

“How did they get in?” Zeegon demanded, wrestling himself into the pilot’s seat with admirable resilience and a minimum of bitching. “No, wait, scratch that, even if Bruce didn’t just open the doors or release the bioseals on the landing struts for shits and giggles, the lander was open for a few minutes when we were on approach in Methuselah,” he dabbed at his scalp with a piece of gauze Z-Lin had handed him, and grimaced at the blood oozing from his stiff black hair. “Little bastards were probably ready to climb into anything after those mini-whorls went off. What I want to know
now
is, how royally screwed are the lander controls?”

“Not entirely,” Sally reported, “just looks like a connector was cut and that locked the autopilot out too … don’t worry,” she went on, “I’ve got a procedure for getting rid of excess biological buildup – you know, critters in the lander’s junk.”

“Is it another unnecessarily ultra-violent procedure?” Zeegon asked.

“What do you mean,
another
one?” Sally squinted at the helmsman.

“Sorry,” Zeegon conceded. “I’m just feeling a bit of a schmuck sitting here at the controls when I know they’re not actually capable of doing anything. Also a bit worried about space rabies.”

“Stop putting the word ‘space’ in front of things and presenting them as viable possibilities just because we’re in space,” Clue said in exasperation.

“How is that in any way an invalid practice?” Zeegon inquired.

“Space whales,” Waffa said from the hatch.

Zeegon grunted. “Point.”

“Looks like there’s just a couple of chewed bits, and only one of them’s actually severed, and there’s also some crap pellets in here,” Sally reported, “I’ll splat the rest of the weasels, if there are any, and–”

“Hang on, ‘splat’?” Z-Lin interrupted.

“Figure of speech,” Sally replied stoutly. “It’s really going to be more of a ‘scrunch’.”

“That’s not better.”

“I’m hyper-pressurising the internal conduits and wallspace with a blowback from the atmosphere scrubbers,” Sally said, “easy. You may get a slight case of ear-pop but most of the pressure will be localised. We did it that one time we got a bat up in there, you remember?”

“That was the weirdest,” Waffa reminisced.

“Alright, then let’s see about getting back on course and back to the
Tramp
,” Z-Lin nodded.

“How long do we have before we suffocate, freeze, starve or die of thirst?” Zeegon asked.

“Forget it,” Clue said. “We’ve got power to keep us warm for a couple of years, food printer-blocks to gorge ourselves sick on for about eighteen months, air for a decade and, with the condenser, functionally infinite water. We could power down the engines and
hose
our way back to the
Tramp
. We’re more at risk from cabin fever,” she pointed at Zeegon, “or a crewmember succumbing to space rabies and space-murdering us all in our space beds.”

“I suppose you think that’s funny,” Zeegon grumbled, dabbing at his head.

Clue shrugged. “I know comedy.”

“Don’t worry,” Decay said, sounding a little more like his usual lackadaisical self, “I’ll keep an eye on you all while you’re unconscious.”

“You’re probably better off out here anyway,” Bruce suddenly spoke up. “The Artist is super-mad at you.”

“No doubt if we were back on board, he’d come up with some wonderful villainous death for us all that would be so much more tortuous than dying in interplanetary space adrift in a lander,” Sally said, and then remembered the underspace drive and wished she hadn’t spoken.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bruce went on. “Even if you fly off and try to dive into the sun, the Artist has a guided drive now. And he has me. He’ll be able to come out here and grab the entire lander just as soon as he gets up.”

“So reassuring,” Zeegon muttered.

“What do you mean, ‘gets up’?” Sally asked.

“He seems to be lying down right now,” Bruce said blithely.

“Growing boys need their rest,” Waffa remarked.

“Molren don’t sleep,” Decay reminded them quietly.

“You
do
lie down, though,” Clue said uncomfortably. “I mean, you know, Molranoids – you lie down to relax and meditate, I’ve seen you.”

“He went from screaming vengeful rage to Zen Gróbi meditation in twenty minutes?” Waffa asked.

“Nothing would surprise me at this point,” Clue said.

“You’ll get tired too,” Bruce said defensively, “once they start filling you.”

There was another uncomfortable pause at this.

“Really trying to figure out what part of that sentence I hate most,” Zeegon said.

“Well, the inaccuracy for one,” Bruce said jovially. “There is no ‘they’, there is no concept of singular or plural or even of conscious entities as we know them–”

“Sally,” Z-Lin said brightly, “how’s that ‘scrunch’ coming along?”

“I did it already.”

“Really? I didn’t hear it,” Z-Lin blinked. “I’m a little disappointed now.”

Sally shrugged. “I guess there was just the one weasel.”

“Space weasel,” Zeegon corrected her.

“Bullplop. It came from the planet surface, so it’s a jungle weasel at best.”

“If it’d been a space weasel, it totally would’ve taken you,” Clue agreed.

“Hey.”

“Alright,” the Commander went on, “so what about the controls? Zeegon’s feeling like a schmuck.”

“
Hey
.”

“You said it, not me.”

“Give me a minute,” Sally growled.

“You have forty-five seconds,” Clue replied. “Sorry, but I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“You’re in a mood,” Decay remarked.

“Crazy space adventure does that to me.”

“Stop putting the word ‘space’ in front of things and presenting them as viable possibilities just because we’re in space,” Zeegon said triumphantly.

“Alright, I’ll let you have that round,” Clue admitted.

“About time.”

“Alright,” Sally said, closing the panel. “Try it now.”

“Holy crap,” Zeegon said, sliding a hand over the controls. The faint starscape in the viewer tilted and Jauren Silva – and the
Tramp
floating above it – revolved back into view. “Setting autopilot. Good stuff, Sal.”

“Seriously,” Clue said, eyebrows raised. “I think that was
less
than thirty seconds.”

“Well come on,” Sally said, “it was just a
weasel
. It wasn’t a professional saboteur from the Zhraaki Domestic Resistance or anything. It bit through one relay, and they’re modular replaceables. The whole thing’s designed
not
to break down when a piece gets chewed by a weasel.”

“She’s right,” Waffa said. “I think I saw that in a schematic somewhere.”

“Maybe we can get back to what Bruce was telling us about ‘they’ and ‘filling us’,” Decay suggested.

“Maybe once you get in closer, I can just show you,” Bruce replied.

“Um–”

“I’m only
kidding
,” Bruce said, sounding amused and exasperated. “It’s up to the Artist where we go and when, and what we show you. He’s the only one who knows how the drive works. He knows its secrets.”

“He’s got ‘them’ inside him?” Decay asked.

“And ‘they’ make him want to have a little lie-down in the middle of a homicidal rampage sometimes?” Clue added.

“I don’t know,” Bruce snapped. “It’s not like he goes on homicidal rampages
all
the time. This is the first time someone’s destroyed his life’s work. I don’t know how that’s likely to make him behave but if it happened to one of you, you’d be reasonably justified in a bit of anger and lethargy, wouldn’t you?”

“‘Anger and lethargy’,” Zeegon said.

“Yes, that is quite the understatement,” Decay agreed.

“I was just thinking we named our ship the wrong thing,” Zeegon replied.

They slid without further mishap into the
Tramp
’s shadow and from there into the docking blister that stuck out of her otherwise smooth – if battered – ovoid shape like a die lodged in the hull. The slot they revolved into was reserved for the lander bay and launch chute, and Bruce didn’t interfere with the autopilot as it brought them in.