by Robert Reed
The spidery machine deployed more eyes.
“Let go of me and run,” Crockett advised.
“Quiet,” said Doom.
“I’m slowing you down,” Crockett argued.
Then his companion yanked the jointed legs, threatening to cut his body in two. And very softly, Doom said, “One is with us. The tall one is here.”
With both fists, Crockett wiped at his eyes. Then he forced the lids to open, but he saw nothing except for the perfect blackness. The universe was him and this apparition that refused to release him, plus nothingness without end or purpose, comfort or hope. But at least his anaerobic metabolisms were awake now. He had enough strength to stand, and from that new perspective, he realized that he could hear the boiling lake lying straight ahead.
He took three increasingly small steps, feeling for the edge.
Each motion caused Doom to pull his legs in close again, but the creature didn’t offer so much as a whisper of advice.
With the third step, a new shape appeared before Crockett—a geometrical simple shape composed of dark lines joined together, each line moving slowly according to its own desires. Too late, he understood what he was seeing. The beautiful tall killer was standing directly in his path, probably fully aware of his presence and his hopelessness. Yet Doom chose that moment to speak again—in an abrupt, rather loud voice—telling his companion, “Run. Past her, and jump over the edge—”
“I’ll die,” he interrupted.
“My saviors will not let that happen. I promise.”
Even if the alien was telling the truth—if the Luckies would willingly digest his brain and volunteer their computing power to let an extra illusion to walk their nonexistent moon—this wasn’t what Crockett wanted. Never. With both hands, he grabbed the encircling legs, hard tugs accomplishing nothing while he cried out, “Get off me. Drop!”
The alien refused.
Crockett sucked in the hot black air and screamed. “Here I am! I’ve got him here. Here!”
Doom pulled his legs close, crushing the human guts.
The tall girl stepped closer, and then she set off a floating flare that lifted several meters overhead, throwing a hard bluish glare across the black rock of the shelf. A transparent mask lay over her pretty face, allowing her to breathe slowly and naturally. As always, she looked like a supremely happy soul. With a warm joyful smile, she watched Crockett fighting with his companion. She seemed utterly amused by the situation. Without question, she had won, but why didn’t she use the plasma gun riding in her long left hand? Then another figure emerged from the fumes—a short strong human, badly burnt but already beginning to heal.
The second killer said, “Hello,” to her partner.
She wasn’t wearing a breathing mask. It was lost or destroyed, or maybe she didn’t feel it was necessary anymore.
“I was waiting for you,” the tall girl allowed.
“Thank you.” That beautiful face had been destroyed, eaten to the bone by the firestorm. A sloppy mouth remained, withered lips and the stump of a tongue barely able to speak. “You almost made it,” she managed, studying Crockett with a pair of freshly grown eyes. But she was speaking to the alien. She said, “Mr. Doom,” and broke into a mocking laugh.
Too late, Crockett stepped toward the lake.
The tall girl had a second weapon—a tiny kinetic gun that neatly shattered both of his shins, leaving him sprawled out on his right side.
“You want your friend pulled off?” the tall girl asked.
The short girl fell to her knees. For a moment, she teased Crockett with that brutalized mouth, threatening to give him a dry, sooty kiss. Then she reached around back and used a special tool, and the machine-spider released its grip and fell helplessly onto its back.
“Make sure,” the short girl advised.
The tall girl deftly opened the armored carapace, and what she saw made her pause. Crockett couldn’t see the lovely face against the glare directly overhead, and perhaps she couldn’t see anything well enough because of her own shadow. Then she rocked backward, letting the full light of the flare fall into the cavity—a cavity designed to carry a mind that was most definitely missing.
“The crafty shit,” the tall girl muttered.
“A second lifeboat,” her partner muttered. “There must have been, and I didn’t notice—”
“You didn’t,” the tall girl agreed testily.
From the beginning, Crockett realized, he had been carrying an empty vessel—a package of programs and contingencies that was masquerading as a poor miserable soul facing death.
“He lied to me,” Crockett complained.
The short girl laughed at him, or herself.
“The shit,” said the tall girl once again.
Then the two of them traded glances, and the short girl climbed to her feet and moved out of the way. And her partner said, “Nothing personal,” and pointed her plasma gun at Crockett’s cowering face—
The empty spider flinched and leaped high.
When it detonated, the six long legs were driven hard into both women, cutting through spines and bones, leaving them in mangled wet piles…and allowing Crockett just enough time to crawl into a crevice where he wedged his own battered body, the next moment or two spent thanking his own considerable luck.
And with that, the caldera exploded.
8
Watching the eruption from below, various neighbors recalled having seen three friends accompanying clients to the ridge. Did they return in time? No? Well, incidents like this always seemed to happen, and usually more bodies were involved. But neither the hottest water or deepest snow could kill, and from experience, they understood that it was best to wait several days, letting the new mountain build itself to where its foundation was stable and as predictable as could be hoped for.
The deep lake continued to explode upwards, and the thick white steam cooled, falling again as waves of snow and delicate formations of ice. Gas bubbles and volcanic soot complicated the complex, ever-changing layering. No two mountains were ever the same, and this particular eruption built the tallest peak in memory—a lofty, single-vent ice volcano that looked as if it was willfully reaching for the ceiling, and with that, trying to touch the painted stars.
Steam was still pouring upwards when the rescue party found the burnt out cable car, and shortly after that, the two dead AIs.
What had seemed routine was not.
More volunteers joined in the desperate efforts. Portable heaters cut half a dozen tunnels up the ridge and down the other side. Two more days passed before the next body was discovered: One of the temporary security officers, horrifically maimed but conscious enough to point at her colleague. “It was the alien,” she managed to say with her frozen, half-healed face. “Watch for him, and be careful,” she warned. Then someone asked about Crockett’s whereabouts, and she paused for a moment, in thought, before directing them toward the shelf’s edge, into the scorching depths of the caldera itself.
“The poor bastard,” was the general consensus.
The other officer’s body was dug out of the ice, and both victims were carried back down to the hamlet; and after a full day of intense medical care, the two ageless women got out of bed and grabbed each by the hand, and a few moments later, they walked to the tram and rode away, leaving the habitat for places unmentioned.
A few hours later, one of the local vespers was hired to bring a married couple into the temporary ice tunnels. It was the woman, Quee Lee, who discovered Crockett’s mangled body. With her husband’s help, she dragged the lucky man into a convenient chamber. The vesper wanted to leave Crockett there and chase after help. But the humans decided to feed the man their modest dinners, and by keeping their patient warm and comfortable, it took only a few hours for him to recover to where he could stand on his own and walk slowly.
Crockett told what had happened. He claimed that he wanted to go home, but at the last moment, standing inside an empty car, he had a sudden cha
nge of mind.
“But I wish to leave now,” the vesper snapped.
“I’m staying here,” said Crockett. Covering his head with a makeshift cap, he turned to his saviors, adding, “You’re welcome to walk with me.”
“What’s the fee?” asked the husband, with a suspicious tone.
“Perri,” his wife snapped. “Does it matter–?”
“For nothing,” said Crockett. Then he smiled weakly, adding, “For the fun of it. How would that be?”
Tourists were exploring the new landscape—a giant gray-white dome of ice and air pockets and vantage points that would never exist in quite this way again. In another few weeks, the residual heat of the eruption would begin melting the mountain’s bones. Small quakes and a few large ones would cause spectacular avalanches. Eventually the caldera would fill with slush and dirt and the sleeping Luckies too, and the lake would be reborn, and a civilization that was already ancient when Earth was ruled by single-celled life would gracefully begin all over again.
But for this particular moment, three humans could walk safely on the face of the mountain.
Again, Crockett told his story.
Slowly, carefully, Perri and Quee Lee asked little questions, forcing him to explain those points that were hardest to explain. The sun was down, as it happened. And the nearest moon had risen just an hour ago—a almost full circle of ice and warm villages and unreal cities and teeming millions. Assuming that he had reached the lake, Doom was living there now. Or at least some elaborate bottle of intelligence, with his name and identity, believed that it was living on that spot of light cast up on that finite sky.
“He isn’t safe,” Crockett muttered.
His companions listened patiently.
“His enemies…they won’t stop just because of this…inconvenience…” A keen sorrow ran through the voice. Quietly, he said, “One year from now, or in a thousand and one years…somebody will pass through the hamlet, pretending to be like all the others who want the Luckies’ tricks. The stranger will want to make his family rich, or maybe he won’t have anything else to lose. The reasons don’t matter. All that counts is that he’ll walk up a trail and surrender his body to the aliens, and the Luckies will put him up on that moon there, and in another year, or fifty thousand years, he’ll finally accomplish what he was hired to do.” Crockett sighed, gesturing at that patch of cold light. “One way or another, Death is going to find its way there.”
“It’s the same for all of us,” Perri whispered.
Crockett glanced at him. For a moment, his face twisted with genuine horror; but then the horror slowly faded, replaced by a strange, bright expression that looked like pure wild joy.
During the cable car descent, Crockett asked his new friends if they often traveled around the Great Ship.
“Sometimes we stop wandering,” Quee Lee replied with a self-deprecating laugh.
“Name your hundred favorite destinations,” said Crockett. Then he added, “The warm, bright places, I mean. Alien and human both.”
Perri quickly supplied a list of more than a hundred habitats.
The car slid into its berth, and Crockett thanked both of them for everything, and then he walked out of the station, past his home and the little party of friends and neighbors who were waiting inside to surprise him…past them and out of the hamlet entirely, stepping onto the first tram available, and without one backward glance, leaving behind the unreal for those things that truly had to matter.
Bridge Nine
Little shards of far flung worlds never stop rising.
The purest strongest most elaborate materials have been cobbled into elegant streakships that climb to the Great Ship, dropping into prepared berths inside Port Beta, each welcomed by celebrations and suitable music, or if preferred, long silences designed to honor the onboard species. Slower ships are more common but just as reveled: Ungainly taxis and battered freighters, hyperfiber balloons and waspish yachts. Ships come from every important place in this arm of the galaxy, enduring risks and damage and sometimes severe damage. Many will never fly again. Chopped into salvage, they can be woven into new machines wearing ten million improvements. Fueled and crewed, they will then embark for worlds out in the dusty deep where new species and fresh experiences will be waiting, paying premiums for space onboard the Great Ship.
Mechanical shards carry living shards. Drips and sacks of alien fluid walk on bony legs, or they have jointed exoskeletons, or they make due with mobile roots or perfumed trails of slime. Many supremely wet creatures live inside larger drips and sacks. Liquid water is a necessity, or liquid methane, or molten sulfur, or ammonium hydroxide, or perchlorate, or silicone, or a different flavor of silicone, or gases compressed to high densities. Yet there are biologies that have no use for fluids. They can be machines or entities indistinguishable from machines, and there are species that don’t pretend to belong to one camp or the other—cyborgs born from old traditions or difficult environments, or perhaps recent marriages between unlikely, loving mates.
In some way shape or form, every species has been designed.
Evolution is the first master. Chance and cold practicality push the simple species into their basic, boilerplate structures. But natural selection often bows to experience and genetic manipulations. Disease is banished. Immortality is routine. Fashion has its influences, as do political certainties and political uncertainties. But tradition counts for quite a lot: Humans still look like apes, and they sing like apes, but the flesh and their young minds have been transformed by tricks older than the Krebs’ cycle.
Humans used to be the most common shards to step onboard, but those times are done. Human space was a thin belt of metal-poor worlds and sterilized worlds and odd planets that would probably never be entirely stable or safe for life, and the Great Ship passed out of that realm long ago, entering more civilized and wealthier and considerably more intriguing neighborhoods. Harum-scarums and Ginas and blue-passions and Janunsians are older, far more abundant species, and they are just a tip of the proverbial tentacle.
Life wears its culture and history and names, and humans have favorite names for the new passengers that never stop arriving.
In one average century, Undersheens and Jakks and cocoHarols and Lol*Tings step into the yellow, Sol-inspired lights of Port Beta. Quaker Maids ride on columns of compressed air. Channelmen and Ravvens are flyers—beautiful, unrelated creatures sporting wings and crimson plumage—while X(66)s are ugly beasts with voices so lovely, perfect and lovely and fluid, that the echoes of their arrival can be heard for years.
And this menagerie is nothing compared to the drips and circuits that arrive with the intelligent life forms. Each new passenger has its entourage. Microbes and fleas and important intestinal worms come onboard with the pets and domesticated livestock. Habitats and little apartments have critical plants and pretty plants and the special rare species that are supposed to be carried to the far end of the galaxy. Every alien body is precious, unique, and rich with tiny environments where little beasts and quick swift minds can hide from easy view, or in some cases, use their hosts as platforms to show the universe their own magnificence.
The humans own the Great Ship, and they rule it, and one key activity is to count the species that step and fly and swim their way inside.
Numbers always look precise, even when they fall short of the truth.
The Ship is eighty thousand years into a voyage scheduled to last half a million years, and it already can be said that no body in the galaxy, or perhaps even the universe, contains so much diversity.
There is no way to calculate the potential that lives beneath the deep hard hull.
But that doesn’t stop humans from building models, charting the promise and dangers. They use biology and sociology, history and other oracles. Weighty equations will say whatever they want to say, and perhaps a few captains believe one result over countless others. But even the fools among them would never risk their endless lives for any of thes
e fantastical, deeply subjective guesses, while the wisest few realize that each result is important only because it shows another future that will never come to pass.
Camouflage
1
The human male had lived on the avenue for thirty-two years. Neighbors generally regarded him as a solitary creature, short-tempered on occasion, but never rude without cause. His dark wit was locally famous, and a withering intelligence was rumored to hide behind the brown-black eyes. Those with an appreciation of human beauty claimed that he was far from handsome, his face asymmetrical, the skin rough and fleshy, while his thick mahogany-brown hair looked as if it was cut with a knife and his own strong hands. Yet that homeliness made him intriguing to some human females, judging by the idle chatter. He wasn’t large for a human, but most considered him substantially built. Perhaps it was the way he walked, his back erect and shoulders squared while the face tilted slightly forwards, as if looking down from a great height. Some guessed he had been born on a high-gravity world, since the oldest habits never died. Or maybe this wasn’t his true body, and his soul still hungered for the days when he was a giant. Endless speculations were woven about the man’s past. He had a name, and everybody knew it. He had a biography, thorough and easily observed in the public records. But there were at least a dozen alternate versions of his past and left-behind troubles. He was a failed poet, or a dangerously successful poet, or a refugee who had escaped some political mess—unless he was some species of criminal, of course. One certainty was his financial security, but where his money came from was a subject of considerable debate. Inherited, some claimed. Others imagined gambling winnings or lucrative investments on now-distant colony worlds. Whatever the story, the man had the luxury of filling his days doing very little, and during his years on this obscure avenue, he had helped neighbors with unsolicited gifts of money and sometimes more impressive flavors of aid.
