Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2)

Within the vast liquid spaces of the Profundity of Depth (as Helena has haltingly translated its name), a crew of octopuses are listening in on a time-delayed argument that started off as just the usual name-calling between two factions, but has now mushroomed into something rare and strange. There are aliens involved in it. There are fragments of narrative comprehensible to an octopus Crown, and a great many fragments that are not, but that can be rearranged and pieced together to make any number of fascinating cognitive patterns, like shells set out on the sand.

Ultimate command is fluid, but the current most influential crewmember’s designation is Ahab. He has spent most of his life in space on business like this. Not the resource wars of the outer system, because they fill him with a tentacle-curling fury over the waste of materiel and lives, but here, watching Nod and trying to find a solution to the problem it presents. He is a scientist, although not in the same manner as the science party themselves. He wants to use science to close Pandora’s Box somehow, and science has failed to provide him with the answers. His Crown is caught in a constant cycle of thwarted ambition, his Reach endlessly loops through failed equations and hypotheses, looking for the answers he believes are there, elusive and fleeting. This in turn makes him an angry tyrant to his crew, who tend to keep out of his way. His skin is utterly without deceit. Any of his peers can see the turmoil within him, and they respect it. To care, to be deeply emotionally invested, is a cardinal cultural virtue, after all.

Ahab has come very close to destroying the old human orbital on several occasions, the gyre of his decision-making spinning out to within seconds of ordering the strike, then wheeling back away. The irrevocable annihilation of something will not cure his frustrations, and he fears that, with it gone, he might discover a use for it.

And then the aliens came. The Profundity of Depth was caught unawares by their sudden arrival, and he wasted valuable hours talking to his fellows and catching up on emotional feedback from the Damascus orbitals. Aliens! Humans! How were they supposed to feel about such things? A whole new emotional dictionary was being written, and Ahab is not the quickest to adapt to the changes of others.

By that time, the Profundity had come around the planet to find the alien vessel beside the old orbital, and Ahab’s Reach and Crown came together to launch a pinpoint attack to remove the immediate threat.

He has maintained his lunar orbit since, because to actually orbit Nod is to feel himself somehow within reach of the monstrous infection. Part of him is constantly twitching towards an attack on the crash site, as apparently the aliens have survived down there. They cannot get out of Nod’s gravity well, though, and so he has the luxury of time.

And now there is all this to and fro with the science faction, Noah’s people. They are full of great enthusiasm about new ways to solve the Nod problem. They want what he wants, effectively, but they have very different means to reach that end. They want the orbital undamaged. Some of them feel protective towards the aliens, despite the fact that all the aliens have done since they arrived is try to open up Nod like a clam so that more of its poison can escape.

And now this weird piecemeal story, the thoughts of a human translated and retranslated until what comes through to Ahab is something like a tone poem, a sequence of triumph and sadness, joy and fear. Emotions of another species that are yet (mostly, sometimes) comprehensible. Ahab floats within the cavernous chambers of the Profundity and feels the emotive tides lift and move him, knowing that this is what he will destroy when the time comes: these things like and not-like him.

He links back to the warship accompanying the science faction, the Shell That Echoes Only. Across the millions of kilometres, he and the commander of that vessel share a communion, exchanging emotional poetry back and forth, making the delay a feature to give each of them time to appreciate the many meanings of the other. The human is speaking of old and new homes. A sense of home is an emotion in its own right, another commonality between species. This ship, after all, was meant as a home when it was built, and although it has become an implement of destruction, it has still been Ahab’s home for most of his life. In the same way, this constant fear and stress is a home, like a shell grown too cramped for the crab that resides in it, pressuring and deforming him with its grasp. He spells all this out, knowing it to be his most elegant moment. His opposite number responds, deeply moved, echoing and adding to the sentiments. They share a moment of perfect beauty.

And by then the moon has added its own contribution to the equation by bringing itself past the obscuring rim of Nod so that shortly the Profundity of Depth will be able to unleash its weapons on the planet’s surface or the orbital or both and obliterate all trace of this entire episode in their species’ history. And that in itself will be poetry and beautiful, because art is ephemeral, after all, and cannot last.

****

We’re still trying to get through to them, is all Portia can say. Helena has been speaking for a long time now, but the warship stills seems extremely angry.

With us, Fabian clarifies.

You’re part of it. You must get clear of the crash site, as far as possible. They could launch a new strike at any moment.

Tell them we strongly respect their antipathy to our current surroundings and do not wish to expose ourselves either, Fabian says. Besides, we couldn’t shift Zaine any distance.

Viola looms behind him, dictating for him to transmit: And anyway, if you cannot win them over, there’s no point in any of it. We need rescue, not just their military forebearance. And even if you were free to come to us, we couldn’t survive that long outside the Lightfoot.

Right now, I don’t see any kind of rescue happening, I’m sorry. Portia is silent a while, perhaps listening to Helena continue to spin her tale. I didn’t think the mission would go this way.

None of us did, as evidenced by our respective predicaments now, Fabian confirms. He doesn’t want Portia getting mawkish on him, partly because he has lived his whole life being taught that when things get tough, active females like Portia always rise to the challenge, even if they have to break the rules. Not a trope he ever wanted to have to fall back on, but he has a moment of vertigo discovering it isn’t there for him.

We have achieved some great things here, the first of our kind to travel so far and see so much, Viola speaks, and for once he is happy to simply tap out the words. A shame it will be lost with us, but the loss is posterity’s, not ours.

A wordless shout echoes to them through the deck: it is Zaine, kicking her heels to draw their attention. Artifabian has been waiting politely, like a good male. It wants to show them something outside.

Fabian scuttles over, hoping against hope that it is good news.

It is not good news.

A new day broke two hours ago, but the starfish creatures are folding up again, closing into fists at their lethargic pace. The smallest seem to be inching away from something.

A predator is coming. Something they know to be scared of. Fabian activates the drone, which has been recharging atop the crashed ship. Its battery is still alarmingly low, suggesting that Viola’s repair work has a definite use-by date. Fabian casts the device into the air and has it wobble over the altiplano, spiralling out from the ship to see what behemoth of the alien world is approaching. Perhaps it is bad news only for starfish.

The starfish, of course, have not evolved any long-range senses. If they are reacting it is because they have detected something very close by. A wave of clasped arms is radiating out from the cliff-edge, and even as the drone lurches that way, Fabian sees their visitor crest the rise and push itself upright on the plateau. Upright, bipedal, or close enough. He has seen this thing before. The drone was reflected in the polished stone it used for a faceplate. Now there is a whorled shell there, something like a mussel, with a long twitching strand of leathery flesh dangling from it that is probably the shell’s original owner, still alive after being wrested from its natural home. The rest of the body’s caddis-larvae containment is built from other detritus, mostly the hard parts of animals but also just dust, stone shards and a single curved piece of metal, extraordinarily corroded and brittle-looking, that must be a relic of the terraformers’ original camp, carried here over so many years and kilometres like a lucky charm.

He wonders how it sees, knowing what he does about the creature. The parasitic entity is just a froth of cells, each of them contributing somehow to the whole. It holds Understandings that include enough of poor Lante to raise her ghost to direct it, to let it feign a human shape; to have it carve out fake human places over however many centuries were required. But it is just an ooze, a slime-mould. It must have other living things within it, infested local fauna helplessly lending it their eyes and ears or whatever other senses this world furnishes its children with. And it saw the drone, and it has been coming ever since, slowly mounting the plateau because it wants…

What does it want? he demands. Kern, help us, it’s here. What does it want with us? He is retreating from the drone controls, watching the machine’s images veer as it tries and fails to correct its course.

Adventure, comes the word from Kern, and then no more, all the computer’s attention elsewhere.

The drone pitches downwards and Fabian hurriedly rescues it from shattering on the ground, drawing it back to the ship to act as their outside eye.

The thing, the human-like thing, has already taken three slumping steps towards them, without rhythm or joints, just an oleaginous mass within a makeshift casing, reinventing the hydrostatic skeleton to make its shell move through the greater world. Just Lante, come to say hello to the neighbours, so keen to meet them.

Can we burn it? Viola suggests. Fabian is not hopeful. The outside oxygen content is low and the resources available to them few.

Can it get in? Artifabian translating for Zaine.

Fabian knows it can. Fabian knows as much about this entity as anyone ever did, even Lante. He strongly suspects that there is nothing it cannot do, given sufficient opportunity. He begins to back away from the wall of the ship, keeping eyes fixed on the drone camera’s view, seeing that figure shambling indefatigably on. In its wake the starfish are opening up again, and he has a horrible feeling it is because they are no longer themselves.