They came with their own barely smarter predators anyway but had, in addition, been exploited, hunted and slaughtered over time by those who might have known better, though they had been followed, revered and appreciated, too. The present day was a good time for them; they were seen as a part of a greater natural galactic ecology and a generally good thing, so there was civilisational credit to be garnered by being nice to them. Sponsored in this case by the Nariscene, the first or attic level of many a Shellworld was given over to Seedsail nursery space where the creatures could grow and flourish in their vacuum ground-growing phase under the relatively gentle light of the Fixstars and Rollstars before their magnetic coil-roots catapulted them upwards.
They still had to be helped on their way after that; caught and held before they could hit the ceiling above by specialist craft which took them to one of the few open Towers and then ejected them from there into the harsher environment of their true home: outer space.
Ferbin and Holse stood, a couple of metres back from the abrupt edge, looking out at the view while Djan Seriy and Hippinse busied themselves with a couple of the slender little craft sitting cradled on the wide balcony. Holse offered his hand to Ferbin, who clasped it. They were observing communications silence, but when the suits touched they could talk undetected. “Not really that much to see, eh, sir?”
“Just the stars,” Ferbin agreed. They gazed out over the emptiness.
They were beckoned over to the two small craft Djan Seriy and Hippinse had been working on. The dark, curved canopies of the craft, like sections cut from a huge seashell, stood raised. They were motioned to sit inside. The craft were built to carry six Nariscene rather than two humans but the suits made them as comfortable as possible, impersonating seats. Djan Seriy and Hippinse piloted one each. The craft rose silently from the balcony and darted straight out into the darkness, accelerating hard enough initially to take Ferbin’s breath away.
Djan Seriy reached back and touched his ankle with one finger.
“Are you all right, Ferbin?” she asked.
“Perfectly well, thank you,” he told her.
“So far so good, brother. We are still within the main sequence of our plan.”
“Delighted to hear it.”
The two little craft tore across the dark landscape far below, curving lazily round intervening Towers. Half an hour and a twelfth of the world away they slowed and dropped, approaching the base of a Tower. Ferbin was ready to get out but the two little craft sat hovering a metre above the Bare surface in front of a great dark ellipse inscribed on the fluted base at the Tower’s foot. They sat there for some time. Ferbin leaned forward to touch Djan Seriy’s shoulder and ask what they were waiting for, but she held one hand up flat to him without turning round, and just as she did so, the dark shape ahead fell away, revealing a still darker tunnel behind.
The twin craft went slowly, tentatively down it.
“This bit is fractionally dangerous,” Djan Seriy told her brother, reaching back to touch his suit with hers again as the two little craft dropped down one of the minor tubes within the Tower. “The ship will be working the Surface systems to keep us clear, but not everything is handled from there. Matrices further down and even on individual scendships might take it into their own little circuits to send something up or down here.” She paused. “Nothing so far,” she added.
The two craft flitted from one Tower to another over the next two levels. The next one down was Vacuum Baskers territory, the home of creatures of several different species-types which, like the Seedsails, absorbed sunlight directly. Unlike the Seedsails they were happy enough to stick roughly where they were all their lives rather than go sailing amongst the stars. Apart from the occasional surface glint, there wasn’t much to be seen there either. Another dark transition took them to another Tower and across the perfectly black and completely vacant vacuum-level below the Baskers.
“Still all right, brother?” Djan Seriy asked. Her touch on his ankle was oddly comforting in the utter darkness and near total silence.
“A little bored,” Ferbin told her.
“Talk to the suit. Get it to play you music or screen you something.”
He whispered to the suit; it played soothing music.
They ended up on another mid-level Tower balcony similar to the one they’d left from, abandoning the two little craft tipped on the floor beside some already occupied cradles. One corridor, several doors and many ghostly images later they stood by the curved wall of a scendship tube while Djan Seriy and Hippinse both carefully placed the palms of their hands on position after position on the wide wall, as though searching for something. Djan Seriy raised one hand. Hippinse stepped away from the wall. A short while later Anaplian also stepped back from the wall and a little later still the wall revealed a door which rolled up, releasing creamy purple light from beneath like a flood that lapped round feet, calves, thighs and torsos until it reached their masked faces and they could see that they were facing a scendship interior full of what looked like barely solidified glowing purple cloud-stuff. They stepped into it.
It was like walking through a curtain of syrup into a room full of thick air. The suit masks provided a view; the partially solidified cloud and the everywhere-purple light inside it made it impossible to see past the end of one’s nose on normal sight. Djan Seriy beckoned them all to stand together, hands resting on shoulders.
“Be glad you can’t smell this, gentlemen,” she told the two Sarl men. “This is an Aultridian scendship.”
Holse went rigid.
Ferbin nearly fainted.
It was not even to be a short journey, though it might be relatively quick. The scendship hurtled down the Tower past the level of the Cumuloforms, where Ferbin and Holse had been transported over the unending ocean by Expanded Version Five; Zourd, months before, past the level beneath where Pelagic Kites and Avians roamed the airs above a shallow ocean dotted with sunlit islands, past the one beneath that where Naiant Tendrils swarmed through a level pressured to the ceiling with an atmosphere from the upper levels of a gas giant, then past the one beneath that where the Vesiculars – Monthian megawhales – swam singing through a mineral-rich methane ocean that did not quite touch the ceiling above.
They went plunging past the Eighth.
They were sat on the floor by Djan Seriy, who stood. The feet or hands of their suits all touched.
“Home proper, we’re passing, sir,” Holse said to Ferbin when Djan Seriy relayed this information.
Ferbin heard him over some very loud but still soothing music he was having the suit play him. He had closed his eyes earlier but still could not keep out the unspeakable purple glow; then he’d thought to ask the suit to block it, which it did. He shivered with disgust every time he thought of that ghastly purple mass of Aultridian stuff stuck cloyingly all around them, infusing them with its hideous smell. He didn’t reply to Holse.
They kept going, flashing beneath their home level.
The Aultridian vessel didn’t even start to slow until it had fallen to a point level with the top of the atmosphere covering what had been the Deldeyn’s lands.
Still slowing gradually, it fell past the floor of that level too, coming to a halt adjacent to the matrix of Filigree immediately beneath. It jostled itself sideways, the floor tipping and the whole craft shuddering. Djan Seriy, one hand attached to a patch on the scendship’s wall near the door, was controlling its actions. Her knees flexed and her whole body moved with what looked like intensely practised ease as the craft shook and juddered beneath her. Then they felt the craft steady before starting to move smartly sideways and up, gradually levelling off.
“Moving into the Filigree now,” Hippinse told Ferbin and Holse.
“The Aultridia have spotted all is not well with one of their scendships,” Djan Seriy told them, sounding distracted.
“You mean this one, ma’am?” Holse asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“They’re following us,” H
ippinse confirmed.
“What?” Ferbin squeaked. He was imagining being captured and peeled from his suit by Aultridia.
“Precautionary,” Hippinse said, unworried. “They’ll try and block us off somewhere ahead too, once we’ve narrowed our options a bit, but we’ll be gone by then. Don’t worry.”
“If you say so, sir,” Holse said, though he did not sound unworried.
“This kind of thing happens all the time,” Hippinse reassured them. “Scendships have brains just smart enough to fool themselves. They take off on their own sometimes, or people get into them and borrow them for unauthorised excursions. There are separate safety systems that still prevent collisions so it isn’t a catastrophe when a scendship moves without orders; more of a nuisance.”
“Oh really?” Ferbin said tartly. “You are an expert on our homeworld now, are you?”
“Certainly am,” Hippinse said happily. “The ship and I have the best original specification overview, secondary structure plans, accrued morphology mappings, full geo, hydro, aero, bio and data system models and all the latest full-spectrum updates available. Right now I know more about Sursamen than the Nariscene do, and they know almost everything.”
“What do you know they don’t?” Holse asked.
“A few details the Oct and Aultridia haven’t told them.” Hippinse laughed. “They’ll find out eventually but they don’t know yet. I do.”
“Such as?” Ferbin asked.
“Well, where we’re going,” Hippinse said. “There’s an inordinate amount of Oct interest in these Falls. And the Aultridia are getting curious too. High degree of convergence; intriguing.” The avatoid sounded both bemused and fascinated. “Now there’s a pattern for you, don’t you think? Oct ships outside clustering round Sursamen and Oct inside focusing on the Hyeng-zhar. Hmm-hmm. Very interesting.” Ferbin got the impression that – inhuman avatar of a God-like Optimae super-spaceship or not – the being was basically talking to itself at this point.
“By the way, Mr Hippinse,” Holse said, “is it really all right to wet oneself in these things?”
“Absolutely!” Hippinse said, as though Holse had proposed a toast. “All gets used. Feel free.”
Ferbin rolled his eyes, though he was glad that Holse, probably, could not see.
“Oh, that’s better . . .”
“We’re here,” Djan Seriy said.
Ferbin had fallen asleep. The suit seemed to have reduced the volume of the music it had been playing; it swelled again now as he woke up. He told it to stop. They were still surrounded by the horrible purple glow.
“Good navigating,” Hippinse said.
“Thank you,” Djan Seriy replied.
“A drop, then?”
“So it would appear,” Anaplian agreed. “Brother, Mr Holse; we were unable to make the landfall we wanted to. Too many Aultridian scendships trying to block us and too many doors closed off.” She glanced at Hippinse, who had a blank expression on his face and seemed to have lost his earlier good humour. “Plus something alarmingly capable of procedural corruption and instruction manipulation appears to be loose in the data systems of this part of the world,” she added. She grinned in what was probably meant to be an encouraging manner. “So instead we’ve transited to another Tower, ascended it and then made off into its Filigree and come to a dead end; we’re in an Oversquare level so there’s no onward connections.”
“A dead end?” Ferbin said. Were they never to be released from this cloying purple filth?
“Yes. So we have to drop.”
“Drop?”
“Walk this way,” Djan Seriy said, turning. The scendship’s door rolled up, revealing darkness. They all got to their feet, pushed through the thick-feeling curtain at the entrance and were suddenly free of the glutinous purple stuff filling the scendship’s interior. Ferbin looked down at his arms, chest and legs, expecting to see some of the ghastly material still adhering to him but there was, happily, no trace. He doubted they’d shrugged off the notorious smell so easily.
They were standing on a narrow platform lit only by the purple glare from behind; the wall above curved up and over them, following the shape of the scendship’s hull. Djan Seriy looked at the bulge on her thigh. The drone Turminder Xuss detached itself and floated up to the dark line where the door had buried itself in the ship’s hull.
It twisted itself slowly into the material as though it was no more substantial than the glowing purple mass beneath. Long hanging strands of hull and other material worked their way out along the little machine’s body and drooped down, swaying. The drone – rosily glowing folds of light pulsing about its body – finished by stationing itself midway between the scendship’s hull and the wall of the chamber and floating there for a moment. There was an alarming groaning noise and the hull of the ship around the hole bulged inwards by about a hand’s span, exactly as though an invisible sphere a metre across was being pressed into it. The wall directly opposite made creaking, popping noises too.
“Try closing that,” Turminder Xuss said, with what sounded like relish.
Djan Seriy nodded. “This way.”
They passed through a small door into the closed-off end of the channel the scendship travelled within; a twenty-metre-diameter concavity at whose centre, up some complicated steps that were more like handrails, another small round door was set. They entered it and found themselves inside a spherical space three metres or so across, struggling to stand up all at once on its bowled floor. Djan Seriy closed the door they’d come through and pointed to a similar one set straight across from it.
“That one leads to the outside. That’s where we drop from. One at a time. Me first; Hippinse last.”
“This ‘drop’, ma’am . . .” Holse said.
“We’re fourteen hundred kilometres above the Deldeyn province of Sull,” Anaplian told him. “We ambient-drop, not using AG, through nearly a thousand klicks of near-vacuum and then hit the atmosphere. Then it’s an assisted glide to the Hyeng-zhar, again leaving suit antigravity off; it could show.” She looked at Ferbin and Holse. “You don’t have to do a thing; your suits will take care of everything. Just enjoy the view. We’re still in comms blackout, but don’t forget you can always talk to your suit if you need to ask any questions about what’s going on. Okay? Let’s go.”
There had not – Ferbin reflected as his sister swung open the circular door – really been enough time between the “Okay?” and the “Let’s go” bits of that last sentence for anybody to say very much at all.
Outside, it was dark until you looked down, then the landscape shone in great stripes separated by a central band of grey near-dark. No stars were visible, hidden by vanes and ceiling structures. Djan Seriy squatted on the sill, one hand holding on to the top edge of the inward-opening door. She turned to Ferbin and touched him with her other hand. “You come straight out after me, all right, brother? Don’t delay.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. His heart was hammering.
Djan Seriy looked at him for a moment longer. “Or you could just go limp and the suit will do it all for you; climbing up and out, I mean. With your eyes closed—”
“I shall do it myself, never fear,” Ferbin said, trying to sound braver and more certain than he felt.
She squeezed his shoulder. “See you down there.”
Then she threw herself out of the doorway.
Ferbin pulled himself up to squat where his sister had, feeling Holse’s hands helping to steady him, then he swallowed as he looked down at the impossible drop below him. He closed his eyes after all, but he flexed legs and arms and threw himself out, curling into a ball.
The view was tumbling about him when he opened his eyes again; light/dark, light/dark, light . . . then the flickering sequence started to slow as the suit whirred, gently teasing his limbs out. His breath sounded terribly loud in his head. After a few moments he was falling in an X shape, feeling almost relaxed as he lay looking back up at the shady mass of Filigree and vaning
hanging from the ceiling above. He tried to see where he had thrown himself from, but couldn’t. He thought he caught a glimpse of another tiny dark dot far above, also falling, but could not be sure.
“Can I turn over and look down?” he asked the suit.
“Yes. It will be advisable to return to this orientation for entry into the atmosphere,” the suit told him in its crisp, asexual voice. “Or it is possible to transmit the view downward to your eyes in your present orientation.”
“Is that better?”
“Yes.”
“Do that, then.”
Suddenly it was as though he was dropping down into the distant landscape beneath rather than falling away from the view above. He felt disoriented and dizzy for a moment, but soon adapted. He looked in vain for Djan Seriy, falling somewhere below, but could see no sign of her. “Can you see my sister?” he asked.
“She is probably within this area,” the suit said, creating a thin red circle over part of the view. “She is camouflaged,” it explained.
“How far have we fallen so far?”
“Six kilometres.”
“Oh. How long did that take?”
“Fifty seconds. Over the next fifty seconds we shall descend another twenty kilometres. We are still accelerating and will continue to do so until we encounter the atmosphere.”
“When does that happen?”
“In about ten minutes from now.”
Ferbin settled back and enjoyed the topsy-turvy view, trying to spot the Hyeng-zhar cataract, then attempting to trace the course of the Sulpitine river and finally settling for working out where the Upper and Lower Sulpine Seas might be. He wondered if it was all still frozen. They’d been told it would be, though he found that hard to believe.