Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

drifted here. ’You are in the wrong
place.’ I was annoyed how prissy I sounded. I pointed to the
Conurbation, on the other side of the valley. ’That’s where you’re
supposed to be. The evacuation point.’
    ’I’m sorry,’ she said, bemused. ’We’ve lived here in the village
since my grandfather’s time. We didn’t like it, over in Blessed. We
came here to live a different way. No replicators. Crops we grow
ourselves. Clothes we make - ’
    ’Mothers and fathers and grandfathers,’ Tilo cackled. ’What do you
think of that, Lieutenant?’
    ’Academician, why are you here, in this village?’
    He shrugged. ’I came to study the mountain, as an exemplar of the
planet’s geology. I accepted the hospitality of these people. That’s
all. I got to like them, despite their - alien culture.’
    ’But you left your equipment behind,’ I snapped. ’You don’t have
comms implants. You didn’t even take your mnemonic fluid, did
you?’
    ’I brought my pickup beacon,’ he said smugly.
    ’Lethe, I don’t have time for this.’ I turned to Doel. ’Look, if
you can get your people across the valley, to where that transport
is, you’ll be taken out with the rest.’
    ’But I don’t think there will be time - ’
    I ignored her. ’Academician, can you walk?’
    Tilo laughed. ’No. And you can’t hear the mountain, can you?’
    That was when Mount Perfect exploded.
     
    Tilo told me later that, if I’d known where and how to look, I
could have seen the north side of the mountain bulging out. The
immense chthonic defect had been growing visibly, at a metre a day.
Well, I didn’t notice that. Thanks to some trick of acoustics I
didn’t even hear the eruption - though it was heard by other Navy
teams working hundreds of kilometres away.
    But the aftermath was clear enough. With Lian and Doel, and with
Academician Tilo limping after us, I ran to the crest of a ridge to
see down the length of the valley.
    As we watched, a billion tonnes of rock slid into the valley in a
monstrous landslide. Already a huge grey thunderhead of smoke and ash
was rearing up to the murky sky. A sharp earthquake had caused the
mountain’s swollen flank to shear and fall away.
    But that was only the start of the sequence of geological events,
for the removal of all that weight was like opening a pressurised
can. The mountain erupted - not upwards, but sideways, like the blast
of an immense weapon, a volley of superheated gas and pulverised
rock. The eruption quickly overtook the landslide, and I saw it
demolish trees, imports from distant Earth, sentinels centuries old
flattened like straws. I was stupefied by the scale of it all.
    And there was more to come. From out of the ripped-open side of
the mountain, a chthonic blood oozed, yellow-grey, viscous, steaming
hot. It began to flow down the mountainside, spilling into rain-cut
valleys.
    ’That’s a lahar,’ Tilo murmured. ’Mud. The heat is melting the
permafrost - the mountain was snow-covered two weeks ago; did you
know that? - making up a thick mixture of volcanic debris and
meltwater. I’ve learned a lot of esoteric geology here,
Lieutenant.’
    ’So it’s just mud,’ said Lian uncertainly.
    ’Just mud. You aren’t an earthworm, are you, marine?’
    ’Look at the logging camp,’ Doel said.
    Already the mud had overwhelmed the heavy equipment, big yellow
tractors and huge cables and chains used for hauling logs, crumpling
it all like paper. Piles of sawn logs were spilled, immense wooden
beams shoved downstream effortlessly. The mud, grey and yellow, was
steaming, oddly like curdled milk.
    Just mud. For the first time I began to consider the contingency
that we might not get out of here.
    In which case my primary mission was to preserve Tilo’s data. I
quickly used my suit to establish an uplink. We were able to access
Tilo’s records, stored in cranial implants, and fire them up to the
Spline. But in case it didn’t work -
    ’Tell me about dark matter,’ I said. ’Quickly.’
    Tilo pointed up at the sky. ’That star - the natural sun, the
dwarf - shouldn’t exist.’
    ’What?’
    ’It’s too small. It has only around a twentieth of Earth’s sun’s
mass. It should be a planet: a brown dwarf, like a big, fat Jovian.
It shouldn’t burn - not yet. You understand that stars form from the
interstellar medium - gas and dust. Originally the medium was just
Big-Bang hydrogen and helium. But stars bake heavy elements, like
metals, in their