Finding Gilchrist

We started looking for the black bunny. We knew time was tight. The trial was due to start in just three weeks time and, if we - well if I - wanted to save my entire race I knew we'd need to work fast.

We went through the ships log; looking for all the places where we'd met Fader and his less-armoured friend. The first planet we translated to, we found just a slag heap; the planet had been bombarded and the crust broken.

The second planet, no multi-cellular life forms; it looked like a virus had devastated the population.

The third planet... was worse. There was a debris in orbit, along with clouds of radioactive dust. There were life forms. But the life forms were, to a beast, emaciated and listless; they were just lying down, a few sitting down, but mindless, totally incapable of doing anything for themselves. It caused a shiver or two to pass down my spine, then back up again to make my head tingle. This could be the after effects of the black bunny's mind control devices.

"Captain!" I heard as I walked up the docking slope into the ship. "You've got a message!" I smiled. It's nice to be captain, and it makes you feel good being called so.

It was interesting, a simple text message that stated a date and time; three days in the future. I tried to track the message, but it appeared to have been sent via a plethora of anonymous servers on a massive web of planets.

I filed it and we took leave and searched for another planet he'd touched.

The next planet opened fire on us as soon as we came in range; actually a little before we came into range. A few evasive manoeuvres later we skedaddled. We couldn't tell if the attack was an automated defence system or whether it was controlled by sentient life - no one responded to our hails and we decided it would be more sensible to run in one piece than try to negotiate with heavy ordnance.

Another message turned up.

This one simply held a vector - a direction and a speed. Now it was getting weird.

Again, I tried to trace it. Again I met brick wall after brick wall. But a completely different set of bricks - wherever this message had come from it had taken a completely different route.

We translated into deep space and took a moment to think.

"It's him." Richard insisted. "Any minute now we'll get the whole message and be able to get him. He'll have an attack force ready and some of those wonderful weapons of his and we'll dive in and rescue the bunny."

"Spam." Vestock insisted. "Next message will explain that we can attend a seminar about genital enhancement technologies, provided we send a booking fee."

"Spam." Kurl stated with force.

"Spam." Bov agreed.

"I dunno." I said, "If these were spam they'd have been less well protected, and would have had a bigger, more meaningful message.

"Like this one?" Marko said, handing me a smart-sheet tied into the ship's in-box.

Another short message, this one said "Have Cargo". Again, we couldn't trace it.

We debated its meaning. Then we debated stopping somewhere nice for dinner. We settled for reprocessed protein from the auto-kitchen.

Finally a deep-bass "BING!" roused me from a fitful sleep. "YOU'VE GOT MAIL!" The computer intoned.

"And," the computer continued, "It's a set of co-ordinates!"

We debated the sense of adding these messages together. We had a set of co-ordinates, a vector and a time which, in essence, gave us an unequivocal point in space-time.

"I'd like to quibble the sense of this." Vestock said, "Just because we have co-ordinates doesn't mean we should land there." He held his palms up, "You know that it'll be that convention I mentioned. And I don't need any more of those enhancement tablets."

"He'll be there." Richard said, a little starry-eyed for my liking.

"At least," I said with a small slap of paw on table, "We'll be there." Acquiescence ruled. "Can we do that in one translation, T.B.?" I asked the ceiling.

"It's quite a distance." The ship responded, I couldn't guarantee that Q3 time-dilation wouldn't come into effect. I'd rather do it in three jumps; smaller ones that give us less chance of spending six months in limbo."

"Works for me." I said. "Can you do the first two whilst we sleep?"

"Sla-mumble-mumble" the ship replied.

I coughed, "Did you call me a 'Slave driver'?" I asked, incredulous. "I think you're getting me confused with someone else!"

"Do we..." Malcolm spoke hesitantly. He seemed in pain as the words came out. "Do we have to?" I realised that was the first words (I couldn't call anything he said a 'Sentence') I'd heard him speak without the word "Lunch" in for a long time.

"Yes." I said, looking him solidly in the eyes. "It's not for his benefit - it's for ours and our families back home."

---*---

"Engage!" I said with a smile, waving my finger space-wards. With the slightest of shudders we made the final translation.

Alarms rang out, piercing my mind. Lights flashed across all the control boards. Through the view screen was a milky whiteness.

"Have we jumped into a nebula?" I called, followed immediately by, "And shut those alarms off!"

"That's not a nebula," Kurl said from his pilots chair at the front. "That's a cloud. We've translated into fog." He sounded a little shocked. I had to say that I was a little shocked to hear that too.

"I'm a little shocked to hear that." I said.

"Hellfire!" Kurl continued. "We're only 50 metres above ground." He turned round, "We were only 50 metres away from translating into solid... ground..."

I spoke a short, rude word.

Kurl tapped at his controls like Rick Wakeman on acid. "The ground's clear below," he said, "in fact it's a clearing below us in a weird forest." He turned to me again, "We could land... directly below where we translated to." He looked up at the ship in amazement. "You are one mutha of a ship, do you know that?"

Somehow, the ship made a noise that sounded exactly like someone polishing nails their nails on their shoulder.

I smiled, "Take us down please, Mr Kurl."

We landed.

"Interestingly," Vestock said from his console, "This fog appears to be planet-wide."

Out of the view-screen we could make out tall shadowy shapes at the edge of the clearing.

"Strange trees." Vestock commented.

"I'm picking up life signs at the edge of the clearing." Vestock said. "The air looks breathable, if a little damp."

"Come on Vestock." I said, "I'll get Malcolm from his cabin and we'll go see what this planet's got to offer. Rest of you: stay here and look menacing."

Malcolm had stayed in stasis in his cabin since the first jump, rather than bring him up and down it seemed safer to just rest him the once.

He seemed agitated as we stood by the air-lock ready for our first taste of this alien planet.

"It's going to smell like a week-old lunch" He said. I raised an eyebrow, I know that had "Lunch" in the sentence but it felt more like he meant "Lunch" than "Love". Was he getting better?

The air lock opened.

He was wrong. It actually smelled like dirty socks.

"Wrong." I said, smiling at him. "Although I wish you hadn't been."

We stepped out into the fog and into what we had thought was grass. I felt the thick stalks; they were squidgy beneath my fingers. More 'frond' than 'blade', not so much grass as fungus.

"Watch out for bogeymen." I said quietly to myself.

It took a couple of minutes to cross to the edge of the clearing. The fronds were a good six inches tall and, as they were thicker than grass, it was quite hard going. I resisted the urge to see what they tasted like. We reached the trees, clearer now we were on top of them, the fog nearly obscuring T.B. behind us.

My eyes opened wide and I reached out to touch the "trunk'. It gave way in a slightly disturbing way beneath my fingers. It felt, fleshy and damp.

"It's a mushroom!" I said, amazed, "It's a five, or more, metre tall mushroom!"

I turned round to the others, "It's a forest of mushrooms!" Then to the ship, "Any sign of when this fog is going to lift?"

From inside, over the comms, I could just make our Kurl's voice, "Ther**tt**fear*ss**"

Great. Interference over the comms. "Try to make a daisy-chain of 'sects?" I shouted back. The fog seemed to swallow my words as easily as it'd swallowed the ship.

"There's a light, over at the Frankenstein place." Malcolm was singing, I looked askance at him, no mention of lunch at all. He was pointing. Yes, a few hundred yards, past where the fog thickened so much we couldn't see the mushrooms, there was a glow like a small lantern.

"Looks like a small lantern." Vestock said; his eyes always did seem quite sensitive.

"C'mon," I said to the other two, "Let's see who's come to meet us. I hope they brought cake."

Vestock, Malcolm and I walked warily towards the glow.

Across the comms came a message, "I thought you said something about chains and I decided to send out some 'sects to act as comms bridges." Kurl spoke. "It seems we're able to cut through the interference like this yes?"

I responded in the positive, then asked "Exactly how many 'sects are you using to keep in contact now?"

"I've got sixteen in a web around the ship. If you leave the clearing I'll have to put more out. Wonder what's causing the interference?"

"Search me." I replied, "We're nearly at the lantern now. Keep an eye on us."

Out of the fog the shade resolved into a looming, robed, creature holding a dim, flickering, lantern. Around the figure's neck hung a box. The box spoke, "The great master will see you now." It had been a while since I'd seen a temporary translator. It seemed so long since I'd shucked my own in favour of implants.

"Er. Hello." I said, then, with tongue firmly in cheek, "Take me to your leader!"

The figure nodded and motioned for us to follow. He turned from us, swinging the lantern at a large roughly rectangular shape in the fog.

The creature was at least twice my height and easily five or six times my weight. I couldn't catch any sight of his flesh; his hood would have shrouded his face in daylight, let alone this muggy foglight we were in. His long sleeves covered his arms and hands (or paws, or claws, or...somethings...) completely.

The large shape resolved into an open wagon.

The creature jumped up at the front. I helped Malcolm and Vestock into the back and then climbed up beside our host.

I got the fright of my life when I realised that the beasts of burden that would be pulling us were some form of cockroach. Insects, well insects that size (enormous), make me shiver at the best of times and this wasn't the best of times.

I decided to try to calm myself by questioning our new friend.

"This 'Great Master' you mentioned." I asked, "Is he like me? But blacker?"

"That is correct," our driver said, or rather his translator did, "The dark one who will bring us light!" He sounded reverent in his adulation. I was pretty sure I caught a glimmer of a pale face beneath his hood, something white and unnatural looking.

"Why do you say it like that?" I has to ask, "'the Dark One who will bring you Light'? He's not known for his sunny nature round our way you know."

"It was prophesied. A hundred generations ago. A mad poet wrote about the black one who would fall from the fog to lead us and to and bring his people back into the light."

"Ah." I said, "That explains that then."

"We have been in the shade for so long we've forgotten what light truly is. The rest of the creatures here, the plants: none can remember the sun."

I felt my hackles raise - he was talking literally - they hadn't seen the sun for ages. My eyes widened as I realised that this fog must be permanent. It couldn't be natural. I gulped. It had been foggy enough that this creature had been born pale and long enough for five metre tall mushrooms to evolve. Suddenly the fog seemed alive in my mind - it was now a sinister presence rather than just an inconvenient spell of weather. So Gilchrist was their "dark one" - well in a society without direct sunlight of any kind you'd all end up looking like albinos, so a black bunny would stand out like a sore thumb in a shoe.

Rhythmic noises started to pulse through the fog. It sounded like hammering. A normal sound like that was a comfort in this strange world.

I whispered to the ship, "Boys, see if you can find out whether the fog does cover the entire world or not. See if you can find any sign of something that might be making the fog."

In my ear Kurl sounded like he thought I was going insane. "Are you going insane?" He said, "You can't make Fog?"

"Send a daisy chain of 'sects up and out of the atmosphere and see what you can see, anyway. Please." I asked quietly.

I was looking at this figure beside me out of the side of my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of him under the cloak.

So I wasn't really paying attention when he pulled at the reins and the wagon stopped. I nearly fell off my seat, luckily just grabbing it at the last moment to stop me.

I turned forward and fell out of my seat in surprise.

In front of us was a sheer flat wall, with no markings or colouration other than a pale grey, stretching up as far as the eye could see, stretching to one side and another like a cliff-face.

Admittedly, in this fog 'as far as the eye can see' wasn't measured in miles but yards. Whatever, it was still big.

"My apologies," Our driver said, "I'd lost track of where we were for a minute." Then he raised his left hand to his head and slid it under his hood - I saw his hand. Or rather, I should say, his hoof. It was cloven. What little I saw of his wrist was a sickly white colour.

He pulled at the reins and we turned to drive alongside the wall.

"We must look strange to you." I looked down at my paws. "How we look, the colours we wear. The colours we are, our paws."

"Colour?" He spoke, "What is this word?"

I opened my mouth to speak then closed it again. How the hell could I explain colours?

---*---

The everlasting wall on our right came to a sharp end and we turned with it. Lights flickered in front of us and our driver brought the wagon to a halt besides a large crate.

He didn't seem too worried that I'd not been able to explain colours. He couldn't understand the importance I put into the concept.

A dark shape stepped towards us and resolved into the familiar, if unpleasant, form of Gilchrist. I jumped down to meet him.

He didn't start off with "hello" or "heya" or "hi".

"How far off the landing spot did you translate?"

"Pleased to see you too."

"No you're not." He said, fixing me with those penetrating eyes of his, "How far from the clearing were you?"

I shook my head at my attempt to treat him like a sane animal. "We were fifty metres up."

He smiled. "That accuracy over that distance," In fact he grinned, "We'll need that to rescue my brother."

He slapped the crate. I realised that the hammering has stopped and looked at it. "Mushroom wood?"

I turned back to him, but I looked beyond him. This side of the wall wasn't featureless. There were a number of hoppers on the side, with robed ones pouring things into them, and one large gateway.

"What exactly is that building?" I had to ask.

"You had to ask." Gilchrist said, rolling his eyes. "It's a Manufactory. A completely automated manufacturing device. You make a blueprint up, that includes details instructions on the cellular nature of your item. You pour in enough raw materials into the hoppers, and it builds it."

A robed figure turned up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. The figure said something in a language I couldn't understand. Gilchrist responded in the same language nodded and pointed at the hoppers.

I tapped my ear, confused.

"Omega." Gilchrist said as he turned back to me. "The translator is programmed not to know it."

Gulp. "Are these?" I didn't want to ask, I didn't want to say 'Omega' - they had been exterminated by galactic decree. The same sort of decree the Galactic Court wanted to throw on us.

"No, these aren't Omega. These were their servants." He waved his paw towards the manufactory, "These were their machines." He smiled, looking more than a little smug, "The Galactic Court thought they'd eradicated all the Omega's machines." He looked a little too smug in fact, "But they missed this one, and all the blueprints it already had programmed in." He waved Vestock and Malcolm down from the wagon. "I crash landed here after leaving Earth. The people took me in and I learned to speak their language."

"You used their prophecy."

He laughed, "Hah, I used them." accent on the 'them'. "They let me use the manufactory." Again with the smug smile, "With a little tweaking here and there I was able to build a few useful items." He pointed to the crate. "We need to take this with us."

"What's in it?" Malcolm was now beginning to scare me; I should have been pleased that he was so lucid, but it just unnerved me.

"Nothing you need worry about."

Malcolm snarled and looked around, he picked something up from the ground. It was a tool of some kind, long, round, thin and metallic. He started attacking the crate. Gilchrist tried to stop him.

"I'm all out of lunch!" Malcolm snarled as he and Gilchrist wrestled.

"He's right." I said. No one listened. I motioned to Vestock. I grabbed Malcolm and he grabbed Gilchrist. "He's right." I said, a little louder this time, "Not about lunch; about the crate. We need to see what's in it before we let it on the ship." I looked Gilchrist in the eyes, it was my turn to be piercing. "We know you."

By this time a handful of robed figures had noticed our manhandling of their beloved dark one and they rushed over looking menacing. I didn't fancy the odds. Three of us against a planet's worth. "Let him go." I told Vestock.

Gilchrist did that shrug that people do when they want to tell you how much they objected to being held.

"We need the contents of the crate." He said. "It has to leave here with me." He turned to the natives and spoke to them. They backed off slowly, more than one of them glancing back at us as they went back to work at the hoppers.

I shook my head and waved at Malcolm. He picked up the tool again and with a few hard yanks, pried the front off the crate.

"For Bugs sake!" I said, holding my head in my hands as the side end flopped to the ground to reveal the contents, "Don't you ever stop?" The crate held a large cylindrical item. I'd seen things like this before. It was one of Gilchrist's mind control satellites.

He glared at me. "I can't leave this here for anyone to find." He said, "Think of the harm this could do in the wrong hands!"

"Yours are the wrong hands!" I shouted back at him. "We should wreck it then." I motioned to Malcolm and Vestock, they both nodded and made for the inside of the crate.

"DON'T!" Gilchrist wailed. "You can't!"

"Watch us."

"You don't understand." He started talking very fast, "I designed these to be fool-proof-tamper-proof."

"So?"

"They are nuclear powered yes?"

I nodded. I had no idea but I wanted him to get to the point.

"If you try to break one then it detonates."

Malcolm was just about to swing the tool at the satellite. He stopped mid-swing and looked back.

"Detonates?" I asked, "You mean like a nuclear detonation?"

"No: like a balloon." He said, sarcasm dripping from his voice like wet paint, "YES: like a nuclear detonation. You fools."

I said a short, rude word that my mother would have boxed my ears for using.

I wrung my face in my hands, then, looked up sharply.

"We'd better get it on the wagon then."

---*---

"Hey boss!" Kurl said as we loaded the crate into the cargo hold. "What's with the audience?"

I looked back: the clearing was surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of lantern lights. I tapped a video feed from the 'sects still orbiting the ship. Yes, we seemed surrounded by hundreds of hooded figures. A small display in the bottom right hand corner popped up to say "187 individuals counted." Sometimes this technology amazed me.

"Gilchrist's fan club." I replied.

"He's not aboard yet? Is he actually coming?"

"Yes. He said there was just some last minute stuff he needed to tell the locals. He'll be back. It's his brother. He said he had a plan too. "

"Marko has been acting all freaked out since the first shots of the robed ones. I confined him to quarters. Seemed best thing to do."

"Great. Malcolm's acting all normal, so another one of the crew goes mad. I love this ship."

The ship itself responded: "And I love you too, Captain." I think it was trying to be funny.

Gilchrist came up the ramp behind me. "We'd better get a move on."

"Any reason?" I asked.

"Not really, just the fate of our species in our hands, so to speak." I didn't like the tone of his voice. Actually I didn't trust the tone of his voice. There was, however no reason to waste time.

"Malcolm, are you going into stasis again?" I called.

"Just going to my quarters." He called back. "Lunch is so lonely sometimes."

"Mr Kurl, take us up slowly please." I said, entering the bridge.

"Yes sir."

"Don't be too slow about it." Gilchrist said. I almost gainsaid him just for the perversity of it but decided that would be childish. I took my seat.

Gilchrist stood at the front of the bridge, before the view-screen. "Can I have a view from behind, please?" He asked. I mean he actually asked, rather than barking an order. Kurl looked at me for confirmation anyway and I nodded acquiescence.

The view behind showed a ring of bright dots in the fog which quickly faded to just fog, which, as we climbed, started to look more like clouds. As we rose we could see that the entire world did seem fogbound. It just didn't seem possible that anyone would let weather control do that to a planet, and it had obviously been like that for a long, long time.

Gilchrist began to speak. "I was going to go for remote-control. I could just imagine myself here, watching this scene and then clicking a large red button. But the planetary interference would have made that a little to haphazard. So I had to settle for a simple timer." He closed his eyes. "You were so sluggish there I thought we might not have made it in time, which would have been a shame."

"What the hell are you going on about?" Kurl asked. The view-screen picture started to show its spherical nature.

"In just under one minute, we will have the last one of my satellites. It will be worth an absolute mint in the right hands." Gilchrist turned to face us, his face contorted in a grin that true lacked sanity.

"What do you mean *will have* the last one of them?" I asked.

"Ah," Gilchrist raised a finger, "Hold on a second." He turned back to the screen and pointed. A darker cloud appeared above the cloud-base. "See if you can get a side view of that." Kurl quickly launched a handful of 'sects. The view-screen picture spun and we got a clear view of a mushroom cloud breaking the fog.

"I brought them light." Gilchrist said, making the hairs on my entire body stand on end. "That's what the prophecy said."

"You blew them up?" I said, jumping out of my seat and heading for him

"I created one last satellite, but with a built-in flaw. Well I suppose it wasn't a flaw if I built it in." He looked back at us. "That sort of technology is too powerful to let anyone get hold of it."

"Especially you," I said as I reached him.

"I suggest you stop choking me." He said with difficulty. "You know I'm right."

"I should launch that crate into the sun!"

Gilchrist seemed strangely unaware that I was strangling the life from him. He waved back at the screen, and I involuntarily looked. I dropped my hands from his throat.

Around the mushroom cloud, the fog had cleared, we could see land. It looked strangely pale, not as green as we would normally expect from an inhabited planet, but nonetheless, land; clear to the sky.

"I always deliver on my prophecies." He said, rubbing his throat.