The Well of Stars

by Robert Reed

  The K-class sun has no worlds, only a loose assemblage of asteroids and comets left over from an impoverished dust cloud. Settlers from a machine species have claimed every rock larger than a human fist, attaching beacons and at least one species of booby-trap. In culture and language, they seem to be related to the 449-tables, but since they won’t meet with us, much less allow close examinations, we can only make sloppy guesses about their origins …

  They claim to know nothing about the nebula. They say it does not interest them, that they possess all of the room and resources they need right here, for now and the next ten billion years … which is a fair estimate, considering that to date they have retroformed only half a thousand scattered bolides …

  But my first officer has voiced doubts about their attitude.

  We passed through the system last night, borrowing momentum from the sun to acquire a new course. Neither my first officer nor I could sleep. “Remember when we were approaching?” she asked. “When they first noticed us, I mean. We made a burn and gave our little ‘Hello …’”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “Remember? What did their first transmission show us?”

  An elaborate, highly detailed picture was sent to us. (I’m including the image, of course. Perhaps you can make more out of this, Master.) From what I can tell, the picture shows us that the local residents possess no starships. They were tiny machines, and scarce, and by a thousand measures, utterly harmless. They had no intention of launching toward the nebula. Again and again, they referred to us as being “great thinking silicon”—apparently a common 449-Able reference to intelligent machinery—and they seemed to mention an old treaty, a sworn agreement, or maybe a desperate promise …

  “I don’t think it was a treaty,” my first officer told me. “Treaties are drawn up between near equals. To me, they sounded as if they were little guys begging the nebula to let them survive.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “We weren’t coming from the direction of the nebula.”

  “Yeah, but we seem to be heading toward it,” she reminded me. “At two-thirds the speed of light, which might be an alarming sight to somebody who spends a lot of their time being scared …”

  Today, we caught a stray broadcast from a G-class sun twenty light-years removed from us … from the far side of the nebula, apparently …

  A highly intelligent species—a sessile species from a world with a dense wet atmosphere—was trying to communicate with someone inside the dust cloud. For thirty seconds, we were traveling inside their much-weakened com-laser. We captured just a portion of their message. (Broadcast included.) They seem to be giving thanks for some small charity or favor … and when they are not saying, “Thank you,” they are begging for a response …

  In one image, they show themselves rooted beside a second species. The nebula inhabitants, perhaps? Both species appear sessile, as it happens … like giant hydras, with very much the same body design … But their neighbors—the ones who are now refusing to answer their pleas—seem at least ten times larger than them …

  Approaching the new world, the Pak’kin seemed to assume that we were a starship returning to the nebula. One nest after another sent us greetings, wishing us a successful voyage home. Even from fringes of their solar system, we could see that their world was enormous and very dry. Again, we found another weak candidate for a port of call. But on the outskirts of the system, a stony little comet smashed our armor, its shards gutting us in a hundred places, and after making rough repairs, I have just told my first officer, “We’ve got to stop here.”

  We have no choice.

  Our main antennae will have to be rebuilt from scraps and scavenged pieces of our shuttle com-systems. We will be in a blackout state until finally moving into a high orbit around the Pak’kin world. My first officer suggests that we pretend to be from the nebula. “In this neighborhood,” she points out, “everybody seems to respect whoever lives inside that black cloud.” She says, “We should fake it, and we might win favors. You never know until you try.”

  But I have made a different choice.

  “We come from the Great Ship,” I have told her, and everyone, “we don’t have any reason to lie. In fact, I think we can use our home ship to our advantage. An artifact bigger than most worlds, and older than any sun … How can a cloud of cold black soot appear any more impressive than us … ?”

  AS THE CALAMUS transmissions were being replayed, the Submasters were scattered around the ship, in secure immersion tanks, each sitting inside the same holo image showing the landing party and the Pak’kin. It made for a very crowded mountaintop.

  “Now look this way,” Pamir instructed, using a blue laser to guide everyone’s eyes. “Past Lorkin and his crew. Past their ugly-ass little shuttle. You see? Out where the cameras weren’t really pointing … do you see that … ?”

  Washen thought she could see it, yes. Where light and shadow had been captured by the peripheral edges of the lenses, she could see bodies. They were even lower-built than the Pak’kins sent as the delegation, perhaps they were more powerful, and there were too many of them to count. And each cone-shaped body seemed to carry some type of weaponry.

  “No, I’m talking about something else,” warned Pamir.

  The holo was received just three days ago, and he had done the initial analysis. Until moments ago, nobody else knew what he had found.

  “But who are these others?” the Master inquired, her image sitting with the invisible cameras, her puzzled voice twisting the conversation back to the obvious. “Are they soldiers from the local hive? Or another hive?”

  “One or the other, madam,” Pamir replied.

  Washen walked through the image of Lorkin and then his first officer and lover. Alone, she strolled to the edge of the holo, observing what seemed to be the low, gravity-smashed peak of a second mountain standing on the very brink of sight. Strong limbs or machinery had eaten into the peak’s bare stone. An image had been created, and at first glance, it was a Pak’kin. A nest queen, apparently. But the proportions were a little wrong, and she understood biomechanics well enough to appreciate that this enormous figure portrayed a creature that was not at all Pak’kin. But whatever the species, myth or alien, it had so impressed the natives that they had spent centuries and fortunes to reproduce its vastness and majesty.

  “Has there been another transmission?” asked Osmium.

  Washen glanced at the head of security.

  Pamir shook his head, a grim smile dissolving with a heavy shrug. “They promised a second transmission in thirty hours,” he said to the harum-scarum. “But that deadline came and went thirty hours ago.” Then he walked through the Pak’kin dignitaries, telling everyone, “We did manage to catch two little squawks of modulated noise before the scheduled broadcast. Then our largest mirror field spotted what might have been the detonation of a nuclear charge above the Pak’kin home world.”

  “These are dead faces,” Aasleen remarked, looking straight into Lorkin’s famished eyes.

  “Obviously,” the Master declared.

  Then with a survivor’s instincts, she added, “They should have lied about their origins. Given themselves a stronger position to bargain from. If someone thinks you’re a god, you’d better let them believe it.” She broke into a wild laugh, knowing that grim lesson from her own spectacular life. “Lorkin’s first officer had the only good set of instincts,” she argued. “It’s a shame we can’t bring her back. A little prison stay as an example, then give her a small commission—”

  “But what lives inside the Inkwell?” half a dozen Submasters asked, their faces gazing up at the vast Inkwell.

  Just the Calamus signal had mentioned four candidate species: a giant cetacean, and a thinking machine, and a giant hydra, and perhaps some sort of Pak’kin queen. And that was in addition to transmissions filtering in from other far-flung worlds. Dozens more species had been described as originating from somewhere inside the Inkwell
. Each description was suspiciously similar to the species offering the testimony; but in every case, the nebula’s inhabitants had been physically larger, and always made a lasting impression on their neighbors.

  Washen wasn’t certain they yet had any clue about what was waiting ahead of them. She walked back through the holo to join her colleagues, but unlike the rest of them, she stared down at her feet.

  “We’re running out of time,” she muttered.

  Eyes focused on the barren alien rock, she reminded everyone, “We’ve got less than a hundred years to get ready … and we still don’t have any clear idea what we’re getting ready for …”

  Six

  She was tiny and boyish and by most measures quite plain. Her hair was long and spiderweb-thin, her skin an impoverished yellow left thin and smooth by life. Eyes the color of roiled water were much too large for the narrow, sharp-boned face, while her mouth was a thin, inexpressive line almost lost beneath the simple long nose. Yet those big eyes had a watchful quality and an obvious intelligence, the slight body possessed a surprising strength, and on those rare occasions when she spoke, she had a musical and memorable if somewhat sad little voice.

  “Hello,” she quietly sang out.

  Half a dozen harum-scarums were sitting together, enjoying a communal meal in a small open-air cafe that catered to predators. Six mouths chewed while the other six quietly gossiped. The remnants of the shared meal lay in the middle of their table, assorted bones and hooves and a long black skull still lashed together with fat pearly ligaments. Five of the diners glanced at the newcomer. Even sitting, they were considerably taller than the little human—grayish bipeds with thick hides and spikes jutting from their elbows—and with a smooth, malicious ease, the nearest alien remarked, “A monkey girl for dessert. What a fine treat!”

  Four of her companions laughed at the insult.

  “Here, monkey girl,” she continued, shoving a long hand between the human’s sticklike legs. “Let me help you onto our table.”

  Any other human would have screamed and galloped off. Or wept. Or shown some other equally offensive reaction. But this human simply went limp, as if she anticipated the hand and hard words, and with an amused glint in her doelike eyes, she clung to the long forearm, a whispery little voice begging, “Please help me, please?”

  What could the harum-scarum do?

  Match the creature’s bluster with your own bluster, naturally.

  The woman threw the little human into the middle of the table. Passersby stopped and stared at the odd scene, alarm mixed with curiosity. But when the tiny human refused to flinch or beg, the harum-scarum had no choice but to stand tall and tear off one of the legs of the creature’s simple brown trousers. The bare flesh beneath barely covered the sticklike bones. Even for a human, the creature was scrawny, sickly-looking, and unappetizing. Suppressing her revulsion, the harum-scarum began to insert a knobby foot into her eating mouth, followed by the ankle and shin and the big pale lump of a knee.

  Even as the pressure of teeth and the muscular throat gripped tight, the human smiled at her assailant.

  And it wasn’t a human smile, either.

  The human mouth was a dirty orifice, air and food sloppily mixed into a gruesome shared mush. Yet somehow that thin and exceedingly alien opening had acquired the scornful, belittling expression of a harum-scarum. Even as her bare leg was being squeezed hard, a thousand teeth dimpling the helpless skin, there was a real and unnerving sense that this alien—this stupid ape—almost welcomed the miseries to come.

  With a deep retching sound, the harum-scarum threw up her dessert.

  But the game wasn’t finished. The human continued to lie beside the stripped carcass, and with a mocking delight, she offered her bare leg to each of the diners. With her own throat, without the aid of any translator, she said, “Please,” in their native tongue. Somehow she managed to make the appropriate deep grunt, mocking one after another with a brazenness that appalled most of her audience.

  “I am nothing,” she told them, in nearly perfect harum-scarum.

  “I am a baby,” she whined. “A newcomer to space and the stars. Human, I am. Undeserving of my fortune. And you—you are ten million years older than I—and I am barely worthy to serve as your meat’s own meat.”

  Throughout the whole performance, the sixth harum-scarum remained silent. When the bare leg was offered to him, he said nothing, staring at the little alien with a face scrubbed free of emotion. His companions assumed that he was furious, but unlike the rest of them, he couldn’t afford to show his rage. He was considerably older than they, and he was a hero from the recent war, and for reasons political and proper, he had been welcomed into the ranks of the ship’s captains, then swiftly promoted to become one of the very few Submasters.

  “Osmium;” the human said, reading the name riding on the bright uniform. Then with a laugh, she mocked him.”Have you ever wished to? Eat a little human whole, maybe? I would be honored to feel my bones shatter in your brave throat, my flesh boiled away by your brave acids, my remnants shit out of your glorious ass … I would feel like such a fortunate little girl … !”

  At last, the Submaster reacted.

  With a wet cough, the offered foot was thrown out of his eating mouth. Then the other mouth broke into a deep, deeply amused laugh, and displaying a casual respect that took his companions by surprise, Osmium said, “Hello, friend,” in the human language.

  “Hello, Mere.”

  MERE WAS INVITED to sit with them. Without explanation, Osmium gave her an equal status, their table reconfiguring itself, the hexagon growing a matching seventh side. Then with barely two glances at the tiny soul beside him, he turned to the woman across the table, saying, “What you were telling us? Continue with your confession, please …”

  “I am not a coward,” the woman replied. “I am brave enough to be honest, and honesty only sounds cowardly.”

  “You wish to leave the ship,” Osmium pressed.

  “How else can I say it?” She glanced at the human, disgust mixed with a grudging respect. Harum-scarums had been flying between the stars before this creature jumped down from the trees. Yet humans were first to find the Great Ship. Humans claimed the artifact first and managed to hold it, and according to the chaotic but mostly honored legal codes of their galaxy—The Fire of Fires, they called the galaxy—the Great Ship would remain with the humans until the end of time.

  “I was born on this vessel,” she reminded Osmium.

  Except for the Submaster, all of the harum-scarums were born somewhere nearby.

  “I grew up inside these avenues and rooms and caverns,” she continued.

  “And you love the Great Ship,” Osmium offered.

  “How can anyone not love her birthplace?”

  The little human seemed to flinch. But she said nothing, those wide dark eyes endlessly absorbing her surroundings.

  “I love this ship, and I treasure my life, and I have always believed that I would live my next trillion breaths here.”

  “Of course,” Osmium growled.

  “But this,” the woman rumbled. “This new direction of ours. This accidental, supremely pointless trajectory. How can I hold my enthusiasm for an endless voyage into the deepest, emptiest realms of Creation?”

  Osmium said nothing.

  Mere sat beside him, her chair tall enough to lift her eyes up to the level of their thick, heavily armored necks. She seemed to understand every word, and she noticed gestures and swift expressions that other species wouldn’t perceive, and in the midst of everything, she watched the carcass on the platter begin to move slowly, ligaments yanking at the black skeleton as the creature—a little river-bear—remembered that it was still alive.

  Humans ate cultured meat or occasionally killed specially bred animals, pretending to be carnivores. But harum-scarums had more respect for life. Millions of years ago, they had infused their domesticated animals with the same life-prolonging technologies they used on themselves, a
nd as they traveled through space, they took their treasured animals with them, eating them down to a minimal last morsel before reconjuring them inside special vats.

  For an instant, Mere seemed disgusted by the sight of those flopping, bloodied bones. But her voice was calm when she pointed out, “There is a ban on emigration. And this man here is authorized to forcefully stop anyone who tests that ban.”

  “Every soul makes its choices,” the woman countered.

  Mere nodded, human fashion.

  With a simple contempt, she said, “Kill yourself. Then you’ll be set free.”

  Suicide was an unthinkable abomination, but the woman refused to take offense. Quietly, she pointed out, “My opinion is not only mine. But where I wield enough strength to accept disagreeable fates, there are lesser creatures on board who grow desperate. The farther they fall toward the Inkwell, the closer they are to panic.”

  The cafe was in a bright avenue of white granite, wide but not so wide that the walls were lost with the distance. Above them, the gently arched ceiling was built from raw hyperfiber decorated with globes and gelatinous ribs filled with ultrathermic bacteria. The glow of the microbes supplied the steady blue-white light. Even when the avenue was less than crowded, it was a loud place. Today, thousands of creatures were strolling or rolling or sometimes drifting overhead on broad wings. Every form of mouth and speaking anus made a steady white chatter, and to an experienced ear, there was a persistent discord to the mayhem. Thousands of years of seamlessly pleasant travel had come to an end. During the last quick century, the wealthiest souls from a multitude of worlds found themselves unsure about the most secure of commodities—the future. If souls weren’t afraid, something would be wrong. Yet what they were feeling wasn’t just the tiny reasonable worries brought on by an unexpected change to the ship’s course. It was also the Wayward War. It was also the sudden discovery of an entire world hidden in the midst of what was supposed a fully explored ship. And it was the rumors of an ancient cargo, and an evil force or forces called the Bleak … and there was the pernicious fear that the Waywards would recover someday and attack once again. “What worth is there in a captain’s assurances?” the voices asked. Plainly, the humans didn’t know their vessel half as well as they had promised, and to souls who had thousands and millions of years left to live, this had become a daunting and endlessly sobering situation.