The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Ring - Part 2

Timothy nodded, looking thoughtful. "Let's say these helmets once worked like our Helmets of Farsensing. They allowed these people to see and hear things happening far away. Maybe they allowed them to see and talk to each other without having to leave their homes. They could have done all their business without getting out of bed. They didn't even have to go to the toilet, although they would have needed to feed themselves somehow."

He looked at the skulls, imagining a tube delivering food to the mouth similar to the ones taking waste from the pelvic area. It never occurred to him to connect the tube in the arm with the problem. "They would have arranged some way to feed themselves," he added feebly. "Maybe they stayed like this for so long that they just wasted away. One or more of them might have died without the others even noticing."

"The tapeworm effect," said Thomas.

Saturn scowled at him in annoyance, but then he nodded thoughtfully. The elder wizard was too intelligent to reject an idea just because it came from someone he despised. Encouraged, Thomas continued. "All their needs were satisfied. They didn't even need to move from their alcoves."

"Fools," agreed Saturn. "But even if that were true, I can't imagine the entire population passing away in this manner. The beds in the other rooms suggest that they'd only recently embarked upon this sessile lifestyle. A year or two at most. There would have been a portion of the population that still lived their lives the usual way, either because they chose to or because they hadn't yet managed to acquire these, these beds of living death."

"If enough people died, there may not have been enough left alive to carry on their civilisation," suggested Timothy. "When bloodeye fever hit Polostia, it killed so many that the survivors had to abandon the country. Merchants who no longer had anyone to trade with. Farmers who no longer had anyone to buy their surplus. Soldiers who no longer had anyone to defend. Any society is a network of people doing things for each other. If enough of them die, the whole thing falls apart."

Matthew was shaking his head vigorously, though. "No, I don't buy that! Take this chap here. If his wife or one of his children died, do you seriously think he wouldn't have known? Look at them. They're all here, all in the same room together. They'd have spoken to each other, wouldn't they? And when one of them no longer responded... Well, they'd have known something was wrong, wouldn't they?"

"Maybe they all died at once," suggested Thomas. "Maybe everyone in the whole world died at once."

"How?" demanded the cleric, but the wizard could only shake his head, at a loss how to answer.

"The question is irrelevant," said Saturn. "We came here to determine whether these people were the Shipbuilders, and they quite clearly were not. The Shipbuilders used magic, but these people seemed to use a similar brand of natural philosophy to the Veglian Citybuilders. Of course, the Shipbuilders may have belonged to a neighbouring civilisation, perhaps based on the planet below, or even another planet circling the same star. We will visit each of the other worlds circling this star before leaving this universe, to determine whether any of them has the capacity to support life."

He drifted out of the room, as stately and magnificent as a ship under full sail, leaving the others to swim through the air, kicking themselves off walls and pulling themselves by handholds, as they tried to follow him.

☆☆☆

Ten minutes later they were back aboard the Bescot, the soldiers carefully stowing the artifacts they'd brought back while Saturn went forward to speak to Tager Yee.

Thomas, meanwhile, was looking pleased and relieved, thinking back on Saturn's words in the habitation block. The way he'd agreed with his suggestions in front of the others, conversing with him almost as he had before the attack upon the Jules Verne. Could it be that he was beginning to forgive him?

The very possibility gave him a glow of pleasure, but the more realistic part of him thought that Saturn simply didn't think enough of him to care what he thought, and didn't want to make a fool of himself by repeatedly lambasting someone of so little importance. Paradoxically, therefore, the elder wizard's comments, seeming to be supportive on the surface, might actually be an indication of how low Thomas had sunk in his estimation. He refused to let the possibility upset him, though. If Saturn was showing how little he thought of Thomas, then Thomas would show how little he thought of Saturn by not letting it get to him.

"I wonder if Strong knows how long Saturn's planning on spending in this universe?" said Matthew, keeping his voice low so that the elder wizard wouldn't overhear him. "The Jules Verne might be waiting there, by the portal, for days. Weeks!"

If Strong's still alive, thought Thomas, reminded of the skydeath event. Lenny... He shut off the thought. She's fine! He told himself.

"He's still acting like he's the real Captain," he agreed. "Strong's going to have to come down hard on him, put him in his place." The possibility forced a grin of anticipation to appear on his face, and he wondered whether there was any way he could arrange to be present for the confrontation.

"I'm not sure he really intends to stay here that long, though," he added. "Not while there're so many other worlds to explore. He might give each of the other worlds a quick flyby, just enough of a look over to see if they're at all habitable, but he won't want to hang around while there are so many more likely places to look."

He glanced across at where Jop Sonno and Roj Villa were still packing the artifacts away, rolling them up in the hammocks which they then strung across the centre of the ship. The two soldiers were chatting together in a friendly way, mainly telling each other what a freaky place the habitation block had been.

"They seem to be getting on," said the wizard. "I admit I thought you'd made a mistake, bringing a cavalryman and an infantryman. I expected sparks to be flying. Sharp words shooting back and forth..."

"Just an idea I had," replied the flight leader. "The cavalrymen as a group keep needling the infantrymen, as do the seamen, but I thought if I could get one cavalryman together with one infantryman, each of them away from their friends..."

"Brilliant!" agreed Thomas, full of genuine admiration. "And when they go back aboard the Jules Verne, Sonno will go on being friends with Villa, and will try to bring his friends around..."

"Well, that's the idea," agreed Matthew. "Only time will tell if it works."

The two of them fell silent as they watched the two soldiers, who were now watching the felisian crewmen and chuckling as they swapped what were probably unkind comments regarding the cat people. Thomas sighed. It seemed they'd only buried their own differences in order to gang up on someone else. Was that the way it would always be? Was that the human condition? The us and them syndrome? Something so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that they'd never be rid of it?

It was pretty depressing if it were true, and so the wizard deliberately put it out of his mind and went over to talk to the cleric instead. There were still a couple of things about the bodies they'd found that were bothering him.