Eejit: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (31 page)

Then, apparently without any assistance from either the Artist’s broken-up body or any of the gadgets he had been carrying, the
Tramp
had begun to swim back up towards the real universe once more. As an afterthought, Cratch had hit Contro’s watch and contacted the rest of the crew.

“What have you got?” Janya stepped into the room, Wingus Jr. and Westchester in her wake.

“Where have you been?” Cratch asked Wingus. “It doesn’t matter. Pass me the calipers.”

“Calipers,” Wingus said excitedly, hurrying forward and opening the instrument panel. He turned, gleaming tool in hand, and looked troubled. “Wait,” he said, “is this the Doing A Surgery Operation game? Only it looks more like the Soggy Jigsaw Puzzle We Don’t–”

“It’s alright,” Cratch said hurriedly, and gave Janya a winning smile. “I think we could all do with a good Doing A Surgery Operation game right now.”

“He was upstairs in the lab when the alert came in,” Janya replied to Glomulus’s earlier question, crossing to the autopsy table and looking down at the partially-dismembered remains. “It took us a while to clear the elevator, and then there was a bit of confusion when we went into the underspace again and blobs started showing up … you didn’t bite him, did you?”

Glomulus chuckled. “I suppose that would have been fair play,” he said, “but most of this was just to stop him from moving. You think
you
experienced a bit of confusion when we went into the underspace, let me tell you…” he shook his head. “Whatever made us go back into the underspace, it started when our Artist buddy here went down, and it seems to be concentrated inside him. Look,” he lifted out the Molran’s tertiary liver node with the calipers and held it up. Darkerness dripped from it, vanishing before it hit the table.

“I admit that to say I am working with an incomplete sample when it comes to this phenomenon is a ludicrous understatement,” Adeneo said, “but that is not something we have seen darkerness do before, on board ship.”

“My immediate guess would be that we are looking at the result of long-term exposure,” Cratch said, “something like tumours caused by radiation. Now, like you, I am working on a basically nonexistent sample so everything here is new … but it should be fairly easy to tell if anything like this were happening inside us. Call it a hunch, but this seems severe. Some of his organs almost seem to have been
replaced
with this stuff.”

“If there was a lot being lost in translation between our universe and the underspace, the Artist seems to have been taking a good shot at getting the two to meet halfway,” Janya mused. Glomulus looked at her in puzzlement. “How much have you heard of the discussion between the crew and Bruce?” she asked, having the good taste not to look too pointedly at the blood-spattered piece of forbidden communications equipment on the desk across from the autopsy table.

“None,” he replied, honestly enough. “I was a little busy, hadn’t realised they’d gotten back before we went under again. I just talked with them though – they should be on their way up,” he held out a hand. “Clamp.”

“Clamp,” Wingus said importantly, and handed over the tool.

“Contro left his watch here earlier,” Glomulus went on idly, cutting off and opening the Artist’s windpipes and upper lung reservoir. “I grabbed it and used it to talk to the lander bay. Lucky for me.”

“Mm,’ Janya said disapprovingly.

“Where’s his ship, or scooter-suit or whatever he was using?” Cratch asked. “And where’s the actual drive? Oh, and where are we now?”

“Don’t ask me,” Adeneo said, “although at a casual glance from the window when I came in, we seem to have arrived in orbit around another planet.”

“Not quite orbit,” Z-Lin said in her extra-loud Commander-voice as she strode into the room. “It’s a gas – holy
crap
.”

“Sorry,” Glomulus said ruefully as the crew filed into the medical bay and bunched up in the entrance, staring in horror at the smeared puddles of blood on the tiles and the butchered carcass on the autopsy table. “It was sort of starting to look like a zombie situation for a few minutes there, so I–”

“He’s done it again,” Waffa boomed. “The God damn Rip’s at it again.”

“Stow it, Waffa,” Sally said with a sharp hand gesture, “he obviously defended himself when the Artist came rampaging in here, and the Artist underestimated him,” she stepped forward. “Right, doc?”

“Right,” Cratch said, “thank you, Sally,” the Chief Tactical Officer rolled her eyes ever so slightly. “Why are they all yelling?” he went on, then snapped his fingers. “Oh right, the whorl guns.”

“You’re a perceptive son of a bitch,” Zeegon thundered.

“So I’m told,” Cratch peeled off his membranes and crossed to wash his hands and apply a second film. “The loss of hearing should be temporary,” he went on, increasing his own volume a little, “just try to talk normally. I’ll check you out and see if any of you need grafts or treatment,” he turned and glanced at Decay, who was staring flat-eared at the remains of the Artist. “I guess the biggest damage was to our Blaran friend,” he went on, “but unless it was
really
critical damage I think the best I can do is give you some stim, gauze your flappers up good, and let them get better on their own,” he paused. “It may also be worth noting that before he threw Nurse Dingus against the wall, the Artist was after our gonazine,” Glomulus went on, already dealing out a prescription of repair-response stimulant and a roll of gauze. “He also wanted a molecular bonding stimulator, but ours had that … mishap a while ago. May the Gods rest poor Wingus Senior’s confused, troubled soul,” he smothered a smile. “And whatever soul-bearing elements of the autopsy table he happened to take along for the ride when he departed this humble sphere.”

“Cratch,” Z-Lin reproved, lowering her voice.

“I’ve already had all the bad visions I’m going to have,” Decay said, “and I don’t want gonazine to take away any I might have left. But thank you for killing him,” he nodded towards the table.

“Welcome.”

“Did he say anything about why, or how?” Decay pressed. “Was he just trying to depopulate and steal the ship? Was it as simple and as stupid as that?”

“He said a lot of crazy stuff,” Glomulus said, keeping his tone careful and neutral. “We may never know for sure.”

“It’s possible that he was targeting us specifically for the eejits we have on board,” Janya spoke up smoothly, then went on when the landing party crew looked at her in puzzlement. “Whye made an odd discovery,” she said, “about the eejits on board. They seem to be able to feel the presence of darkerness, or the underspace, even when we’re between dives. Either when we’re about to dive, or a lingering feeling afterwards.”

“Really?”

“It’s subtle, mostly,” Janya said, “but interesting. It’s actually most visible if you look at an eejit who’s not doing anything in particular. It’s in their faces.”

Glomulus had, after hearing a few of Janus’s comments, started noticing the change himself. “It’s a bit chilling, actually,” he confirmed, then gave Janya an apologetic little bow of the head.

“The placid eejit standing-face has changed,” Janya went on, “in a lot of cases. We’re guessing it’s to do with their sensitivity, which in turn might be to do with their configuration flaws. But they’ve all started to look wary. Scared.”

“Eejits never look scared,” Clue said, apprehensively.

“That’s true, Commander. It’s possible that this is all related to the damage to the fabrication plant and the unique configurations we’ve been getting out of it since The Accident, like I said,” Janya replied. “It may mean something to the Artist – may
have meant
something to him – something he could use, or study. Any sort of sensitivity or ability to detect the stuff would be a step ahead of the computer and sensors. Not to mention our own senses.”

“You think he caused The Accident in order to make broken ables – eejits – that are capable of sensing the underspace?” Decay asked. “Maybe navigating it, or acting as foundations for more of the crazy hybrid
bonsh
we saw on the
Boonie
?”

“I think he might have come here intentionally
because
of it,” Janya hedged. “His motives, like Glomulus says, will probably remain a mystery to us.”

“Along with almost everything there is to learn about the underspace itself,” Glomulus added. “We were just discussing the finer points of … what would you call the study of a completely unfamiliar phenomenon and drafting of theories based on once-off data points, Janya?”

“‘Research’,” Janya said, almost – but not quite – too quietly for the partially-deafened crewmembers to make out.

“Right,” Glomulus said innocently. “We’ve done some research. But we haven’t been left with much to go on.”

“Leaving us with speculation,” Clue grumbled in a ear-damaged
sotto voce
. “Again.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t buy it,” Sally frowned. “If he wants eejits, why’d he just kill a whole mess of them just now?”

“There’s still over six hundred of them left,” Janya pointed out, “and he was clearly berserk … but still, it’s just a theory. Eejits aside, though, the fact that he wanted those tools might mean that
we’ll
be wanting them,” she went on, “if we dive too many more times. Should we get the drones to take another crack at repairing the bonding stimulator?”

“No harm in trying,” Clue concurred, “although they failed miserably last time. It might be more important to look at the things he might have
used
the stimulator for, and what problems that might mean coming our way.”

“Pity we can’t ask him,” Waffa muttered, although – like Clue – thanks to his ringing ears the mutter was quite audible.

“Not really,” Janya disagreed before Glomulus could speak. “The Artist killed twelve eejits on his rampage, and would almost certainly have killed more, and I am quite certain that would have included humans, since we were ultimately the targets of his anger. Sedating a Molran is a tall order, especially with the tools available.”

“Actually
killing
him was tricky too,” Cratch added, “although I concede that you might not want to know about that. But the important point is, if the Artist was dissolving into darkerness and he thought the bonding stimulator was going to fix him, that gives us a framework at least, for the problems we might be facing,” he glanced at Clue. “Speaking of problems we’re facing,” he went on, “were you saying something about us
not
being in orbit?”

“Potentially not in orbit at all,” Z-Lin said, “but rather a fatal atmospheric insertion trajectory … but Waffa’s got the engines cycling up and we’ll be pulling out of the planet’s gravity well soon,” she glanced at Waffa, who nodded.

“If we were even in it to start with,” he confirmed.

“My shoulder-blade
is
beginning to settle down again,” Zeegon allowed.

“More or less irrelevant unless we can stop ourselves from diving into the underspace again, of course,” Clue added. “We might come out a few miles above the surface of a star next time.”

“Didn’t the Artist say that life sort of showed up somehow in the darkerness?” Zeegon spoke up again. “And he could aim for it even if he didn’t have a synth helping?”

“He said something about it,” Z-Lin agreed, “although now it seems as though neither he nor Bruce are actually guiding us so whether that’s still the case with this dive, and any future dives – which Bruce suggested might be pending – we just don’t know.”

“We also have this,” Sally said, not quite managing to drop below a military bark, and held up a sample box with a hissing, scratching shadow squirming furiously behind its translucent walls. “It came on the lander from Jauren Silva,” she said, setting it on the desk next to Contro’s watch, where it promptly began to rattle and bounce. “And it just slipped into a blob of darkerness so it might be worth studying. Something tells me we’re not likely to get back to its home planet any time soon.”

“If the Artist really came here in a suit and a modified scooter,” Clue said, “and that’s where the underspace drive is still operating from, we didn’t see it in the lander bay. He must have entered somewhere else.”

“From what I could tell, the casualties began near the recycling station,” Glomulus said helpfully. “There’s docking blister access there. Or he could have come in from any of a dozen airlocks, as long as Bruce was helping him.”

“The main docking blister locks, along with life support and the exchange, were enabled but rerouted so Bruce couldn’t shut them down or open them all up and kill us,” Sally said, “but if it was telling the truth about not really wanting to do that in the first place, it might easily have regained control of them sometime without telling us, and allowed the Artist to get inside pretty much anywhere. Or the Artist could have manually overridden the docking bay doors. Bruce seems to have some blind spots, particularly when it comes to the Artist,” she gestured at the meat on the table. “It might have tried to stop him from getting in when he turned violent, or it might have just helped him anyway because it just didn’t understand the violence it was performing when it was in the zone with the Artist.”

“He was over four thousand years old,” Cratch remarked. “The Artist,” he added, when the crewmembers looked at him.

“How did you figure
that
out?” Zeegon demanded, turning from Glomulus to the ruined Molran on the table. “Did you count the rings?”

“Third Prime,” Decay said, pointing. “You can see from the patterning on the ears, and the sheen on the fingernails. You don’t see many Third Prime Molren anymore, not after
Big Shooey
. This crazy mass-murdering
bonsh
er was older than the Zhraak Dome on Aquilar.”

“That’s…” Z-Lin said quietly, pulled out of her businesslike tactical ruminations by the magnitude of the thought, “you know that means … if he was born when his parents were in
their
Third Primes…”

“Yes,” Decay said. “His parents may actually have walked on the Earth.”

“This is all great,” Sally said into the reflective silence, “but what do we
do
? What does any of this even
mean
?”