Galactic Empires

by Gardner R. Dozois

  "He's unarmed," said Astanger to the others. "Instruct the others not to give him a weapon and not to give him a bullet when the time comes."

  "Astanger!" Shrad was glaring at him from the ground.

  In measured tones, Astanger said, "If you speak to me again I will shoot you in the kneecap." He returned his attention to the alien.

  The Grazen seemed to be agitated—if he was interpreting correctly its jerky movements and the way it was reaching out with its insectile hands to touch the surrounding tangle. It had deliberately made a gap to let Shrad through, to get them all together in one place, so why was it not now attacking? Was it waiting for others to come this way? How likely was that? The Guard were screwed so it seemed unlikely to him that they would be coming after Shrad. Maybe the escapees, since their ship lay beyond the Grazen?

  The ground shuddered and someone swore. What now? Astanger looked to where many of the crew were now gazing, as the shuddering of the ground increased. The moon was on the move, the glare of some titanic drive behind it. Slowly it shifted from its location above the horizon and grew visibly brighter. Astanger had no doubt it was moving into a position overhead.

  "Please, you must listen to me, Astanger," said Shrad.

  The man was crouching, desperate-looking. He hadn't even noticed what was happening in the sky-it probably didn't fit his ideology.

  "Do go on," said Astanger, almost too stunned to care anymore.

  "If we make a concerted attack on the creature itself, it'll lose control of… those… things. We should be able to fight our way through-get to the ship."

  Astanger considered that. They'd fired eight missiles at the creature and every one of those eight missiles had impacted on opalescent shields that abruptly sprang into being. Bullets just bounced off of the thing. Missiles into the tangle of pipework had shattered it, but the pipes just discarded the shattered sections, melded back together, and carried on. Now they were all out of missiles and the rest of their ammunition was depleted. He'd seen the others passing bullets to those who had run out. The bullets weren't for the Grazen. Astanger had four bullets left in his sidearm. He could spare one. He raised his weapon and fired once. Shrad went down yelling, clutching the mess of bone and blood that had been his kneecap. Astanger returned his attention to the alien.

  Why was it holding back? Did it understand that its prey would kill themselves when it made its final assault? Was it trying to figure out a way of capturing them alive?

  "Captain Astanger," said Grade, no longer worried about using a politically incorrect form of address.

  Astanger turned to see the man pointing upslope. Looking there he saw a group of people approaching. He recognized graywear, then, after a moment, recognized some of the escapees. There was one other with them—something odd about him. Two of the pipe things reared back and the group passed between. Now Astanger could see the other individual more clearly. He seemed to be walking in a kind of hollow in the air and around him metallic things seemed to hover on the edge of visibility. Pale, white hair, eyes that seemed to open into the Pit. Astanger knew at once who this person must be.

  The group approached, the escapees glancing warily at the crewmen as they moved aside. Finally, they reached Astanger. The Owner glanced down at Shrad, then raised his gaze to Astanger.

  ""Captain Astanger," he said, then his mouth twisted in a cruel smile.

  The moon now glared overhead, and the shuddering of the ground became a muted vibration, like the running of some vast engine, and one Astanger knew was shaking this whole world. That inconceivably gigantic vessel up there was his. Astanger was glad when the… man turned his attention toward the Grazen.

  "The Mother," the Owner intoned.

  Astanger looked in that direction, too, and to his horror saw that the Grazen was lining up some of those tube mouths, and that in them could be glimpsed twiggy insectile movement. He stepped back, brought his sidearm up to his head.

  "That won't be necessary, Captain"

  Yeah, right.

  One of the things spat out, rolled along the ground toward them, its pace leisurely. Astanger stepped back again, heard the sounds of weapons being cocked. The twiggy wheel slowed to a halt over Shrad, folded down into a kind of leggy cone.

  "Astanger!" Shrad screamed.

  It hesitated, wavering back and forth. The Owner gestured, and then the thing fell on the Doctrinaire. Shrad began yelling incoherently. Astanger gazed down at him without sympathy, then abruptly jerked his head up as the pipe that had fired the thing began to snake across the ground toward them. Now Shrad began screaming. The twig work was extruding spikes like clawed fingers and they were slowly easing into the man's flesh. He was struggling but, thus encaged, there was nowhere for him to go. Astanger noted that the wounds did not bleed. He guessed that would be too easy.

  The pipe reached Shrad and fibers speared out, glimmering like spider silk in the moonlight, from the seething multi jawed face of something inside. The fibers attached all around the cage, dragged Shrad in. His screams disappeared up inside the pipe, becoming hollow and echoey.

  "He ordered the bombing of the nursery world," one of the escapees said.

  Astanger glanced at her, recognized Kelly Haden. Then he understood the implication of what she was saying. The Mother, he realized.

  But it wasn't over. The other pipe-mouths were still there, those things still inside and ready to roll. Astanger was all too aware that though he personally did not take part in the bombing of the nursery world, he was part of the fleet that did, and that if he had been ordered to take part, he would have. The things began to ease out.

  "It's been the best it could be," said Grade. The man brought his carbine up underneath his chin and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  The Owner glanced at him. "Hasty," he said, then returned his attention to the Grazen Mother. "Must I destroy you?"

  Around him the metallic objects seemed to gain a greater solidity. He held out a hand to one side almost in sad entreaty. Astanger winced. It felt almost as if he was standing too close to a fire, yet what he was feeling was not exactly heat.

  "Withdraw, now," said the Owner.

  Like the heads of tubeworms, the twiggy wheels abruptly retracted out of sight. Movement all around. The pipes were all pulling back toward the Grazen and she began retreating downslope. She, and all her weird technology, gathered into a rolling wave falling away from them, then it all began to clump around her, opalescent shields flicking on in intervening spaces, gradually blotting her from sight. With a thrum that transmitted through the ground, the whole mass began to rise. Then, with a sighing groan, it shot up into the sky.

  "Thank you," said Astanger.

  The Owner held out a hand for silence, stillness, as he still gazed up into the sky. After about a minute, he returned his attention to them all.

  "These," he gestured to the escapees, "you will not harm. Their ship is now fully functional and you will all return on it." He paused for a contemplative moment. "Your Collective is collapsing. At my request, the Grazen will not attack what remains."

  "I have no love of the Collective," said Astanger.

  The Owner nodded, and Astanger reckoned that he'd had no need to say that, for it was probably why he was still alive. He noted that though the… machines around the Owner were now plainly visible, he and they seemed to occupy some encystment in reality, something somehow excised.

  The Owner said, "Leave now. You have one day to get beyond my border."

  A star of darkness flickered within that encystment, and all it contained seemed to be stretching away. Somehow Astanger knew that it was connected to that vessel hovering above them like the steel eye of some vast god.

  "Build something better this time-you have been warned," the Owner told them.

  The encystment retracted into the star, disappeared.

  Astanger guessed it was the best they could hope for.

  "Well, Societal Assets," said Astanger to the escapees, "we
'd best find the rest of your people and get out of here."

  "Fuck you," said Kelly Haden. "I'm not a 'Societal Asset' and I don't take orders from you!"

  Astanger held up his sidearm, reversed it, and held the butt out to her. "Then you must choose who you do take orders from, or choose to give them yourself."

  Really, it was the best they could hope for.

  * * *

  THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN BALLOON

  Robert Reed

  Taken from the Short Story Collection “Galactic Empires” (2008) edited by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  Robert Reed sold his first story in 1986, and quickly established himself as a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov's Science Fiction, as well as selling many stories to Science Fiction Age, Universe, New Destinies, Tomorrow, Synergy, Starlight, and elsewhere. Reed may be one of the most prolific of today's young writers, particularly at short fiction lengths, seriously rivaled for that position only by authors such as Stephen Baxter and Brian Stableford. And-also like Baxter and Stableford—he manages to keep up a very high standard of quality while being prolific, something that is not at all easy to do. Reed stories such as "Sister Alice," "Brother Perfect," "Decency," "Savior," "The Remoras," "Chrysalis," "Whiptail," "The Utility Man," "Marrow," "Birth Day," "Blind," "The Toad of Heaven," "Stride," "The Shape of Everything" "Guest of Honor," "Waging Good," and "Killing the Morrow," among at least a half dozen others equally as strong, count as among some of the best short work produced by anyone in the '80s and '90s; many of his best stories were assembled in his first collection, The Dragons of Springplace. Nor is he nonprolific as a novelist, having turned out eight novels since the end of the '80s, including The Lee Shore, The Hormone Jungle, Black Milk, The Remarkables, Down the Bright Way, Beyond the Veil of Stars, An Exaltation of Larks, Beneath the Gated Sky, Marrow, and Sister Alice. His most recent books include two chapbook novellas, Mere and Flavors of My Genius; a collection, The Cuckoo's Boys; and a novel, The Well of Stars. Reed lives with his family in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  In 1994, Reed launched a long series of stories (including novels such as Marrow,) about the Great Ship: a Jupiter-sized starship found abandoned in deep space by exploring humans and retrofitted into a kind of immense interstellar cruise ship, off on a grand tour of the galaxy (circumnavigating it, in fact), with millions of human and alien customers of many different races aboard. In the intricate story that follows, he points out that even on a starship the size of a gas giant inhabited by millions of passengers, there will be hidden corners where nobody has ever gone before, and enigmatic surprises to be found there-including a lesson in just how far the arm of the Empire can stretch, and how subtle and profound its touch can be.

  * * *

  I

  Quee Lee learned about the Vermiculate from an unlikely source-a painfully respectable gentleman who had never taken pleasure from adventuring or the unexpected. But their paths happened to cross during a feast given by mutual friends, and after the customary pleasantries, he pulled the ancient woman aside, remarking, "I have some news that might be of interest to you." Then, with a precise, mildly perturbed voice, he explained how one tiny portion of the Great Ship had never been mapped.

  "How can that be?" Quee Lee asked skeptically. After all, the captains had made it a priority to investigate every shipboard cavern and tunnel, and today even the tiniest crevice wore its own intricate name.

  "The captains were quite thorough," he admitted. "But the Ship is so very enormous."

  That it was. With the mass and volume of Uranus, no machine was the Great Ship's equal. Its engines were as big as moons, its fuel tanks could drink oceans, and me variety and volume of its onboard habitats was nothing less than spectacular. Mapping such an enormous body proved a daunting challenge. Yet the early captains were clever and very stubborn souls. Their survey began with a few million robots-small, elegantly designed machines bristling with sensors and curious limbs. Scrambling through the Ship's interior, the robots memorized every empty volume, and whenever a passageway split in two, the robots would pause, feasting on the local rock and metal and then building copies of their obsessive selves. As prolific as carpenter ants or harum-scarum fleas, those early scouts soon numbered in the trillions, and, ruled by a set of simple unyielding instructions, they moved ever deeper inside the Ship, eventually scurrying down every hole and recording each turn and dead end, working with relentless unison to create a precise three-dimensional model of the Ship's vacant interior.

  But the method had its limitations. Doorless bubbles and pockets and finger-wide seams lay out of reach; a few long caverns were sealed beneath kilometers of iron and hyperfiber. But with sonic probes and neutrino knives, the Ship's engineers eventually made even those buried places visible. The only major failure was hiding today in the Ship's distant core. But the peculiar world mat would be known as Marrow lay in the remote future. The Master Captain was being honest when she stood on the bridge, proclaiming that her fabulous machine had been mapped in full, and its crew and countless passengers had little reason not to believe every promise that this voyage would remain routine—a blissful journey that would eventually circumnavigate the bright heart of the Milky Way.

  "I understand how the Ship was mapped," remarked Quee Lee's companion. "What I am telling you is that despite everyone's best efforts, a few empty spaces are lurking out there."

  "And how do we know this?" she asked, her tone politely curious.

  "The Master Captain owns a team of AI savants," the gentleman replied. "They are brilliant machines designed to do nothing but ponder the Ship and its mysteries. One of those AIs recently made a thorough analysis of old data, and it discovered one glaring gap, one blank spot on the captains' map, and nobody seems to understand how this could have happened."

  "And when did we learn this?"

  "But we haven't learned anything," he countered, his calm voice breaking at the edges. "This is a very grave, very important business. Only the highest-ranking captains know about the flaw."

  "And you," she pointed out.

  "Yes, I know portions of the story. I can't tell how or why, however, and please don't ask me. But it occurred to me that you of all people would appreciate hearing this news."

  Give a rich secret to the blandest soul, and he will dream of telling what he knows. And Quee Lee was a charming presence as well as a very desirable audience: a wealthy woman from Old Earth and one of a handful of humans on board the Ship who could remember that precious moment when their species turned a sensitive ear to the sky and heard intelligent sounds raining down from the stars. In that sense, she was a remarkable, and very rare, creature-a lady of genuine fame inside the human community. She was also beautiful and poised, socially gifted and universally liked. Given the chance, any healthy, mildly insecure heterosexual male would work hard to impress Quee Lee.

  "Our captains are worried," her confidant mentioned. "The Master Captain even took the trouble of waking one of the old surveying robots and putting it down a promising hole. And do you know what happened?"

  "You're going to tell me, I hope."

  "The robot lost its way." The man sighed, rather bothered by this turn of events. "The machine fumbled around in the darkness, and then, with nothing to say for itself, it climbed back out of the hole again."

  "Fascinating," she exclaimed.

  "I knew you would enjoy this," he whispered, offering a smile and quick wink. After millennia of traveling together, he had finally managed to engage this beautiful creature.

  "Perri will want to hear this story," she mentioned.

  "But I wish you wouldn't mention it," the man sputtered. Then a worse possibility occurred to him. "I understood that your husband is traveling just now. He isn't here with us, is he?"

  "Oh, but he is," she exclaimed. By chance, Perri had just entered the festival room. For the last several weeks, he had been riding a saddle strapped to the back of a porpoiselike alien c
alled the Gi-Gee, enjoying wild swims in a frigid river of water and ammonia. Of course, Perri would want to learn of this man's news. A thousand souls were scattered across the room, human and otherwise. Most of the partiers were dressed in gaudy, look-at-me costumes—which was only proper, since these were among the wealthiest, most powerful individuals to be found in the galaxy. But Quee Lee looked past the towering egos, waving at the only human male dressed in plain, practical clothes.

  Instantly, her companion warned, "I don't want this to be known. Not outside our circle, please."

  The tone said it all: Perri was neither wealthy nor important, which made him unacceptable.

  But Quee Lee laughed off the insult as well as the earnest pleas for silence. "Oh, I'm sure my husband's already heard about the Vermiculate," she remarked. "Believe me, Perri knows the Ship as well as any captain does, and he knows everyone on board who matters, too." She winked, adding sweetly, "He knows you, of course."

  "Of course."

  "This won't be news to him," she promised.

  Yet, for some reason, Perri wasn't familiar with this particular rumor. He listened intently as Quee Lee related the mystery, and yes, he was very familiar with that region called the Vermiculate. It was an intricate nest of dry caves, very few entrances leading to a million dead ends. But he had never heard evidence that some portion of those caverns had escaped mapping.

  "Tell it again," he demanded, tugging at the fellow's elbow. "From the beginning, everything you know."

  But there weren't many new details to share.

  "I think I see what's happening," Perri mentioned. "This is probably just an old rumor reborn. The first two passengers to come on board the Great Ship started this story. Over drinks or in somebody's bed, they convinced themselves there had to be secret places and unmapped corners lurking somewhere. It helped heighten the sense of adventure, don't you see? And that's why every century or two, that same old legend puts on a new costume and takes its walk in public."