The cruelty and cleverness of their vanquishers had lain in identifying and choosing a latent weakness congenital to the Ythyn. They had always been a little overly fascinated with mortality compared with the norm of vaguely similar species, but not to the stage of serious abnormality and certainly not to the point that it in any way defined them. And if they had been so grotesquely psychologically disfigured in the process of making them so excessively morbid that they ceased to be iden-tifiably themselves there would have been no artistry, no fitness in their punishment. Instead, by this subtle but significant tweaking of their own bodies’ instruction set, they became what they might have become anyway had some bizarre shiftings in their environment and circumstances so decreed. Those who had not taken their own lives and refused to submit to the inheritable amendment were killed or hunted down and forced to undergo the treatment anyway, though most of those so treated killed themselves as well.
The survivors became wanderers, one of the dozens of planet-evolved species denied or — in a few cases — eschewing any sort of home world. They built massive cold, dark ships and accrued enormous libraries and data reservoirs filled with the subject of death. They haunted the sites of great battles, terrible massacres and awful disasters. Over time, they began to gather the unclaimed dead from such sites, storing them more or less as they found them in their great airless ships, each carrying a cargo of collected death, plodding from one end of the galaxy to the other or gradually spiralling around it. Too big for wormhole travel, loath even to approach too close to a star, the Sepulcraft depended on smaller ships to harvest the dead. Even these rarely used wormholes these days. The Propylaea, which had charge of all the Mercatoria’s portals, was not a charity, and demanded money for passage. The Ythyn had little to offer in payment.
They collected ships from those bringing the dead — or themselves, to die — but those were usually hulks, wrecks or near the end of their useful working lives and anyway regarded by the Ythyn as sacred, amongst the dead themselves. There were occasional donations and bequests from many different societies but they were few and far between. When they could afford to, and there were bodies to be got from the far end of a wormhole, an Ythyn ship would spend the little collateral it had accumulated and send a needle craft to make the collection. But usually they just physically followed the galaxy’s generally sporadic instances of mass death.
That they had long since dutifully gathered up the remaining bodies of the now-extinct species which had inflicted their punishment upon them and could therefore relatively easily and without resistance have re-amended themselves back to their original selves, but had chosen not to, was either their most poignant tragedy of all, or a recognition that they had found a place within the galactic scheme of things that suited them better than might any other.
— We are on our way to the Chistimonouth system, Duty Receptioneer Ninth Lapidarian told the Dweller and the human as they made their way along a vast curved corridor deep within the giant ship. The tall birdlike being used one of its two thin forelegs to manipulate the controls of a small cagelike car that carried them in perfect silence along a monorail set in the centre of the wide tunnel. It was perfectly dark, too. They were having to use active sensing to illuminate the seemingly never-ending corridor. — We seek the mortal remains of a newly contacted Serpenterian civilisation, a possible offshoot of the Desii-Chau (themselves, lamentably, no more; extinct, or, at the very best, deep within the fifth category of abatement), unadopted, which fell prey, sadly, to a series of solar flares some centuries ago. The sole inhabited planet was sorely affected. Of the single sentient species thereon, it is believed that no living trace remains. It will be our privilege and our duty, when we arrive there in another few decades, to inter within these hallowed halls as many of the still-unburied as we are able.
— How will they be unburied? Y’sul asked. — Do they float? Won’t they all have sunk into their own depths? Into water or mud or dissolved rock or something?
The corridors were lined with the dead: stapled, pinned, stitched or ice-welded to the tubular surface (the concept of floors, walls and ceilings had some meaning while the ship was under power, but it was temporary). A few body types were best preserved in cavities, alcoves sealed with diamond leaf.
· Those happily buried will be left where they lie, underground, Duty told them. — Some remains are expected in structures, even after all this time. The reports we have had from scouter species indicate that there may be many unclaimed cadavers still in space, at Lagrange points.
· What if they’re all gone? Y’sul asked. — What if somebody’s beaten you to it and… eaten them or recycled them or something?
· Then we will make our way to the next location where we may honour the dead, the dark bird told them, imperturbable.
· Come to think of it, Y’sul said brightly, — there might be a few bods to pick up in a place called Ulubis fairly soon.
Fassin looked at the Dweller but he wasn’t paying any attention.
· Ulubis, Duty said. — I have not heard of this place. Is it a planet?
· System, Y’sul said. — Home of the planet Nasqueron. In Stream Quaternary, one of the Southern Tendril Reefs.
· Ah, yes. Rather far away from here.
· Lots of humans there and another lot on their way, Y’sul said. — Probably going to be a war. Lot of deaths, I’d imagine. You collect humans?
· We have difficulties only with certain Cincturian species, the bird-creature told them. — Humans we have heard of and accommodated in the past, though not on this craft. I shall pass on your information at the earliest opportunity to our most proximate Sepulcraft. They may well be aware already, of course,
and possibly on their way even as we speak. However, we are grateful for your thoughtfulness.
— My pleasure, Y’sul said, sounding pleased with himself. He glanced at Fassin. — What?
Fassin looked away. They were passing bodies spread against the tunnel’s surface like small solidified explosions of rock. -Palonne, their guide informed them. — Ossile, obviously. Victims of war. Subject to a parasitic stone-rot virus of some sort.
— Fascinating, Y’sul said. — Are we nearly at this Leisicrofe fellow yet?
Duty looked at a small display clipped to one of his cinched-in wings. — Another few hundred metres.
· What’s he up to here, anyway? Y’sul asked.
· Up to? The Ythyn sounded uncertain.
· Just… studying you people, is he?
· Why, no. No, of course not. The Ythyn officer was silent for a moment. — Oh dear.
Fassin and Y’sul exchanged looks.
Fassin said, — You’re not saying he’s dead, are you?
— Well, yes. Of course. This is a Sepulcraft, gentlemen. I was under the impression that you simply wanted to see the body.
* * *
The news came while she was asleep. Taince watched an hours-old recording of the faint, sideways-seen, blue-shifted glimmers approaching from the direction of the E-5 Discon as the Starveling invasion fleet started braking for its arrival in Ulubis system. The invaders would take nearly three months to reach Ulubis. The Summed Fleet was still four months’ travel away, including its own, more dramatic deceleration regime, due to start in a little more than eighty days. The Fleet tacticians had learned quite a lot just from the braking profile of E-5 Discon’s fleet.