suitable for one or more of the many Involved species; the shallower examples of these – somewhat perversely called Craters – were roofed, the deeper usually not.
Sursamen was one such example of a Mottled Shellworld. Most of its Surface was smooth, dark grey and dusty – all the result of being lightly covered with nearly an aeon’s worth of impact debris after systemic and galactic bodies of various compositions, sizes and relative velocities had impacted with that unforgiving, adamantine skin. About fifteen per cent of its external shell was pocked with the covered and open bowls people called Craters and it was the greeny-blue reflected light of one of those, the Gazan-g’ya Crater, that shone through the porthole in the transit facility and gently lit up the bodies of the Grand Zamerin and the director general.
“You are always glad to arrive, to see Sursamen, or any Shellworld, are you not?” Utli asked Shoum.
“Of course,” she said, turning to him a little.
“Whereas, personally,” the Grand Zamerin said, swivelling away from the view, “it’s only duty keeps me here; I’m always relieved to see the back of the place.” There was a tiny warble and one of his eye stalks flicked briefly over to look at what appeared to be a jewel embedded in his thorax. “Which we’re informed occurs very shortly; our ship is ready.”
Shoum’s comms torque woke to tell her the same thing, then went back to its privacy setting.
“Relieved? Really?” the director general asked as they floated back through the web towards their respective entourages and the docking chutes that gave access to the ships.
“We shall never understand why you are not, Shoum. These are still dangerous places.”
“It’s been a very long time since any Shellworld turned on its inhabitants, Utli.”
“Ah, but still; the intervals, dear DG.”
The Grand Zamerin was referring to the distribution of Shellworld-induced mass die-offs through time. Plotted out, they implied only a slow dying away of such titanic murderousness, not yet a final end. The graphed shape of attacks approached zero, but did so along a curve that implied there might be one or two more yet to come, probably some time in the next few thousand years. If, of course, that was really the way these things worked. The implied threat of future cataclysms might be the result of coincidence, nothing more.
“Well then,” Shoum said, “to be blunt, we would have to hope it does not happen during our tenure, or if does, it does not happen in Sursamen.”
“It’s just a matter of time,” the Grand Zamerin told her gloomily. “These things turn killer, or disappear. And nobody knows why.”
“Yet, Utli,” the director general said, signalling mischievousness, “do you not find it in any sense romantic somehow – even in a sense reassuring – that there are still such mysteries and imponderables in our polished, cultivated times?”
“No,” the Grand Zamerin said emphatically, expelling an emission named Doubting the sanity of one’s companion, with barely a trace of humour.
“Not even in the abstract?”
“Not even in the abstract.”
“Oh, well. Still, I wouldn’t worry, if I were you,” Shoum told Utaltifuhl as they approached their attendants. “I suspect Sursamen will still be here when you get back.”
“You think its disappearance is unlikely?” Utli said, now expressing mock seriousness.
“Vanishingly,” Shoum said, but the joke didn’t translate.
“Indeed. And of course. However, it has struck us that so wonderful and enjoyable is the life we lead that a disaster of equal but opposite proportions must always be a threat. The higher you build your Tower, the more tempting a target for fate it becomes.”
“Well, at least you are vacating your Tower for the next year. I trust the trip home is rewarding and I shall look forward with pleasure to seeing you again, Grand Zamerin.”
“And I you, Director General,” Utaltifuhl told her, and performed the most respectful and delicate of formal mandible-nips on her outstretched maniple spine. Shoum blushed appropriately.
They had reached their respective entourages and a giant window that looked out the other side of the transit facility, to a small fleet of docked ships. Utaltifuhl looked out at the star craft and emoted dubiety. “Hmm,” he said. “And interstellar travel is also not without its risks.”
5. Platform
Djan Seriy Anaplian, who had been born a princess of the house of Hausk, a dynasty from a wide-spectrum pan-human species lately from a median level of the Shellworld Sursamen and whose middle name basically meant fit-to-be-married-to-a-prince, stood alone on a tall cliff looking out over a rust desert deep within the