Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

many of them to
count, to identify, to track. This world had no sun and too many
stars; it knew no day, no night, only this unchanging, muddy
starlight. Here, time washed by unmarked, and in every direction the
sky looked the same.
    They had to cross a cultivated field. A floodlight bank loomed
over the green growing things, presumably intended to supplement the
starlight.
    Kard hauled a semi-transparent suit out of the scavenged bundle he
carried, and tied off the arms and legs. ’You,’ he said to Tomm.
’Take this. We need supplies.’
    Xera made to protest at this casual theft of somebody’s crop. But
Tomm was already running alongside Kard’s long strides. They began
pulling handfuls of green pods into the tied-off suit. Xera waited by
Stub.
    Kard snapped, ’Tell me what you eat here.’
    ’Peas,’ said Tomm brightly. ’Beans. Rice. Wheat.’
    ’No replicators?’
    Xera said, ’Admiral, Tomm’s ancestors are here because they fled
the Qax Occupation of Earth, seven thousand years ago. Nano
replicators are Qax technology. To the colonists here, such things
are hated.’
    Kard glanced around. ’So how did they terraform this place?’
    ’The hard way. Apparently it took them centuries.’
    ’And now they grow wheat.’
    ’Yes.’
    Kard laughed. ’Well, our suits will filter out the toxins.’
    ’We have goats too,’ said the boy.
    ’Oh, imagine that.’
    They came to an ancient, tangled tree, and Kard bent to inspect
its roots. He pulled out a handful of what looked like fungus.
’What’s this?’
    ’Dreaming mould,’ said Tomm.
    ’Say what?’
    Xera hurried over. ’That is why we’re here. It’s a relic of the
native ecology, spared in the terraforming.’
    Kard hefted the greyish stuff. ’This is supposed to be
sentient?’
    ’So the locals claim.’
    ’It can’t even move.’
    ’It can,’ insisted Tomm. ’It moves like slimy bugs.’
    Xera held up her data desk, showing Kard images. ’On the move it
absorbs nutrients from organic detritus, local analogues of leaves
and grass. Then the protoplasm hardens into a definite shape as the
mould prepares to fruit. In some species you get little parasols and
rods.’
    This organism was actually like the slime moulds of Earth: a very
ancient form from a time when categories of life were blurred, when
the higher plants had yet to split off from the fungi, and all animal
life had streamed in protoplasmic shapelessness. What was more
controversial was whether these moulds were sentient, or not. Already
she was wondering how she could complete her assessment - how could
she possibly tell?
    Kard saw her doubts. He turned to the kid. ’How can this mould of
yours be so smart if it can’t use tools?’
    ’They used to,’ said Tomm.
    ’What?’
    ’Once they built starships. They came from over there.’ He pointed
into the murky roof of stars - but the way he was pointing, Xera
realised, was towards the Galaxy’s main disc.
    She asked, ’How do you know such things?’
    ’When you touch them.’ The boy shrugged. ’You just know.’
    ’And why,’ Kard asked, ’would they come to a shithole like this?
It hasn’t even got a sun.’
    ’They didn’t want a sun. They wanted a sky like that,’ pointing up
again.
    ’Why?’
    ’Because you can’t tell the time by it.’
    Kard was glaring at Xera, hefting the mould. ’Is this all there
is? What in Lethe are we doing here, Commissary?’
    ’Let’s just try on the idea before we dismiss it,’ Xera said
quickly. ’Suppose there was an ancient race, done with’ - she raised
a hand at the sky, where worlds burned - ’with all this. Colonising,
building - ’
    Kard snapped, ’So they came to this worn-out dump. They dismantled
their starships, and dissolved into slime. Right? But it isn’t even
safe, here in this cluster. Have you any idea what it would be like
to live through a Galaxy plane-crossing?’ He shook his head. He threw
the native life form into the hopper, along with the pea pods and
runner beans.
    ’Admiral - ’
    ’End of discussion.’
    On they walked.
     
    The stars were sombre. Most were orange or even red, floating
silently in their watchful crowds. All this cluster’s stars were
about the same age, and all were old. Even the planets were so old
the radioactivity trapped in their interiors had dwindled away. Which
explained the exhausted landscape: no tectonics, no geology, no
mountain-building.
    This was what you got in a globular cluster. Like a