The Well of Stars

by Robert Reed

The facility had no name, only a complex designation describing both its location and purpose. What they stood inside was a few hectares of mothballed controls and warmed air set deep inside the ship, on the brink of the cold iron core. Above them, visible through insulating sandwiches of diamond and aerogel, was a much larger chamber—a spherical volume a little less than a hundred kilometers in diameter. It was one of several dozen auxiliary fuel tanks that had never been used. Each tank was filled with vacuum and darkness, and each lay equally deep inside the ship, but separated from the six primary fuel tanks. It was inevitable that one of these empty tanks would lie directly between the ship’s bow and Marrow. And as such, it became the best last place to fight.

  The engineers clustered at one end of the big room, but the bulk of their work happened inside a long piece of adjacent plumbing, robots and AIs moving in graceful blurs, assembling a delicate device from stock parts. There were complications, always: Parts failed to mesh, and little corrections had to be made to plans barely an hour old, and there were constant tremors running down through the ship’s meat, the shaking growing harder by the moment. Aasleen stood among her engineers, asking questions and offering unsolicited advice. Finally, the team leader turned to her, saying, “Madam,” with a sharp voice. “We know exactly what we are doing here. You are not as qualified as I. And if you don’t leave us alone, I will pull off your head and shit in your neck. Madam.”

  Chastened, Aasleen joined Washen.

  Gazing straight upward, they saw nothing. Again, blackness ruled the universe, and a bitter sucking cold ran through the black, and for a slender exhausted moment, Washen found herself wondering:

  What if the polypond is right?

  If the Creation was something aborted or delayed … and if freeing the mysterious passenger, the prisoner in the center of Marrow, could wipe away this endless night … then how awful was the crime that they were committing here today … ?

  Washen swallowed her doubts and closed her eyes.

  Into that self-imposed darkness, a voice spoke.

  “Mother,” he said.

  For an instant, she assumed Locke was elsewhere. She left her eyes closed, opening one of the last of her working nexuses. But the only presence waiting there was the Master herself.

  “News?” the woman inquired.

  “None,” Washen admitted.

  “Then why pester me?” she snarled. And as the nexus closed again, Locke said to his mother:

  “Here. Look here.”

  He stood behind her. She hadn’t noticed his arrival, and as she turned to face him, a reflexive anger took hold. Why would her only child set himself in this very dangerous place? She came close to scolding him, then relief pushed the anger aside. Quietly, without hope, she said, “We are going to win here. Now.”

  The small man nodded dutifully, saying nothing. He was dressed like an AI sage, except for a Wayward belt tied around his waist, the brown leather looking peculiar against the milky white toga. Like everyone in this place, he was exhausted. A few deep breaths were necessary before he had the wind to admit, “I have been trying to find you and talk—”

  “I’ve always kept a nexus open to you,” she interrupted.

  “To your face, Mother.”

  The deadly tone made her focus.

  To his face, she asked, “What is it?”

  “I know who they are now,” he began.

  “Who they are now?”

  “As you guessed, like I imagined … for billions of years, and maybe since the beginning, they’ve been following in the ship’s wake …”

  To Washen, it felt as if a fist of stone had been driven into her belly.

  “They were chasing after our ship,” Locke continued. “But they were a long distance behind, and I don’t think they knew their target’s location. Not precisely, no. But then we fired the big engines—for the first time ever. We changed our trajectory, not once but thousands of times.” He lifted a flattened hand, and, using the fingertip of his other hand, he showed what he imagined must have happened. The Great Ship dove into the galaxy, tracing out an elaborate and highly publicized course partway around the Milky Way. While the other ship, following at some considerable distance, had several options open to it.

  “That second ship could have dropped close to the old white dwarf, just as we did,” said Locke. “But it would have been noticed, and I don’t think its crew wanted to be seen. And besides, they still would have been left far behind us. If their goal was to catch up to us—”

  “But they couldn’t do that,” Washen interrupted. “We’ve been over this and over this.” She shook her head, using her own flattened hand and fingertip to describe various trajectories into the Milky Way. “I don’t see how anyone could close a gap as large as what we’re talking about … tens of thousands of light-years behind us, maybe …”

  “But what if this other ship … ?”

  Locke started to pose another question, then paused. The floor was shaking, the entire ship vibrating now, an epic force moving closer to them by the instant.

  Pamir looked straight up.

  Aasleen stared at the Wayward, her eyes wide and glassy. “But if these pursuers had a streakship,” she began.

  “Or its equivalent,” Locke agreed. “A swift vessel, but very limited. Too tiny to carry the sensors necessary to pinpoint exactly where the Great Ship was. Coasting at the ship’s velocity. No extra fuel to make endless course corrections.” He nodded, reminding his mother, “Hammerwings fly slowly when they hunt. Only when they see their prey for certain do they accelerate to full velocity.”

  The shivering floor quieted for a moment.

  Then the drumming grew worse than ever, threatening to knock everyone off their feet.

  “They couldn’t see their target until we ignited the engines, until we gave it a voice. We made the Great Ship boast about its merits and future course, and by then humans had control, and what would be the most reasonable course for something that is very swift but small?”

  Pamir dropped his gaze. “Get ahead of us,” he offered. “Wait for us along the way, somehow …”

  “They’d have to be exceptionally patient,” Aasleen warned.

  Then with her next breath, she admitted, “But they’ve already invested a few billion years in their pursuit.”

  Humans would never comprehend that kind of fortitude.

  “I’ve been thinking this thorough Locke continued.”If I was small but very quick—and if I didn’t know where the Great Ship was, but I had a fair idea about its velocity—I would match its trajectory to the best of my ability, then I would wait, and watch, and wait. For as long as was necessary. And when I saw the Great Ship fire its engines for the first time—a tiny flicker thousands of light-years ahead of me—I’d know that someone had finally found it and claimed it for themselves. And that’s when I would spend all of my reserves. I wouldn’t try to catch the ship straightaway. I probably don’t have the resources to take it back from its new owners. But I could decipher the ship’s future course, and if I burned every gram of fuel to jump ahead, diving into the galaxy at a point along that course, and there find a likely world …”

  He hesitated.

  “What?” Washen snapped.

  “I’d find an empty world and then play an enormous game,” Locke explained. “I would build up my numbers, invent a history and then use that history to fool the captains … I would beg for a small berth on this vast, precious ship … and after an appropriate interval, I would quietly vanish from the captains’ view …”

  The floor bucked suddenly.

  A thousand silent alarms told Washen the worst. Then in the next moment, the team’s lead engineer declared, “We’ve got to load and calibrate; then we are ready. Ready!”

  The first thin trace of light appeared directly above them.

  Locke glanced upward and quietly said, “The !eech.”

  But the Submasters had no time left for oddities and old histories. Suddenly they were
hurrying off to stations where they could help orchestrate the final battle. Even Washen had to say to her son, “Not now. In a few minutes, maybe. But I can’t listen anymore, darling.”

  Locke found himself standing alone.

  The band of light above him was brightening. The polypond’s ultimate weapon was biting into a sudden emptiness. But he paid little attention to the mayhem, his mouth closing for a moment while the eyes wandered in no particular direction, then the mouth parted again, and to nobody he said, “But this is what is most interesting. I think.”

  He explained, “They left just enough of a trail to be followed. Just enough that I could envision their existence and find their marks and follow them until I am absolutely sure that they exist.”

  He paused.

  Again, the floor shivered, and he glanced up at the descending blade, and in the barest whisper, he said, “Of course. Whatever they are, whatever they desire … they want very much to be found …”

  Forty-seven

  The cap-car wore a dozen burly coats of the finest hyperfiber, but the protection was far from adequate. “We’re being seared alive,” Osmium remarked, as they lifted into the blue-white glare. With gamma radiation punching its way through the armor and through their bodies, he told his companion, “We are cooking like a meal,” while his eating mouth made the rudest possible sound.

  “Closer,” Pamir insisted.

  Dying bones ached as they rose higher.

  “Tracking now,” he said.

  In any given nanosecond, the car knew its position to within the diameter of an iron nucleus, and its body was sprinkled with delicate lasers that were nearly as precise. Whispery beams measured the outer edge of the Sword, while others mapped each of the black holes. An ocean of data was accumulated in moments. As the Sword cut deeper into the empty fuel tank, more of its surface lay exposed, stroked by light and memorized in withering detail. Another three cap-cars, similarly equipped and flying toward other vantage points, did the same relentless job. Harmonics were measured. Warps and points of strength were identified. The polypond’s weapon was stable but eroding. Elegant mathematical maps were built and tested, discarded and built all over again. In less than forty seconds, a single AI overseer—there wasn’t time for teams of machines or human involvement—decided that it could predict where the next region of greatest stability could be found, and it marked the nanosecond when its weapon could be unleashed. And then, finding itself with almost four seconds to wait, it decided to signal the captains, using a cheery voice to sing, “Hope.”

  They were hovering thirty kilometers from the Sword’s superheated edge. Pamir’s body was dying, and his mind wasn’t far behind. He heard, “Hope,” and for a sloppy instant, he couldn’t remember the word’s significance. Hope for what? Turning to the harum-scarum, he meant to ask, but Osmium put a hard hand to his face, steering his eyes back to the main display.

  A golden flash appeared below them.

  Pamir remembered: A minor conduit led down into a useful loop, pristine and full of nothingness. The engineers and their robots had built a simple but powerful acceleration chamber inside that loop. Minutes ago, an object no bigger than a fist had been introduced—a sphere of hyperfiber adorned with immersion eyes and tiny thrusters, all laid over a sphere of iron and busy machines, which in turn covered another paper-thin sphere of hyperfiber. At the center of that was a highly charged, rapidly spinning black hole—the same tiny black hole that the fef had brought aeons ago as a gift to the captains. Smaller than a pinprick and containing the mass of a small mountain, the hole was launched along a precise line, its velocity tweaked endless times during that microsecond ride toward its target.

  Oblivious to the danger, the Sword continued to roll through the heart of the ship, cutting and consuming while its powerful frame absorbed every new stress and the cumulative damage.

  One of its teeth emerged from the ripped stone above—a swollen but still tiny black hole held tightly in place—and the tooth passed above the captains’ last hope. They missed each other by five kilometers. A last course correction was attempted. To the brink of what was possible, the aim looked perfect. And then just before it struck the target, the black hole’s electrical charge was bled away, leaving it perfectly neutral.

  At a fat fraction of lightspeed, the Sword was struck, a pinprick of nothingness diving into its very thin edge.

  Human eyes were too slow to watch.

  Nothing changed. As the cap-car descended, streaking for cover, Pamir saw the wild razor light continue to lengthen, cutting into the middle of the fuel tank. In the duration of a heartbeat, their weapon had already done all of its damage and left the ship behind, racing out into the Inkwell now, and eventually, escaping from the Milky Way. But even the most hopeful models predicted a delay of ten or twelve seconds. They had cut the Sword at its strongest point. Strength had a predictable flat surface. Far narrower than the hyperfiber ribbon, the black hole would burrow into its meat, leaving behind a channel of plasmas and empty space. As the black hole ate, it grew. As it grew in mass, the damage would increase, and a multitude of instabilities would rise and rise again.

  Most models promised fifteen seconds, give or take.

  The cap-car dove into an empty conduit, crush-webs grabbing at the burnt bodies inside.

  Through tears, Pamir stared at the flickering images.

  Fifteen seconds became twenty.

  Became twenty-five.

  No model predicted such a long wait. If the Sword could spin around once and again, showing no sign of catastrophic failure, then none would come. They hadn’t done enough damage. Improbable meant unlikely. Why did anyone bother to believe that they had a real chance at making this work?

  A voice said, “Bad aim, it looks like …”

  Washen.

  There wasn’t time for a second shot. What they needed was a long stretch of empty space—a vacuum surrounded by known masses and predictable forces—and that had been lost The vast radiant blade continued to descend, slicing and carving until one of its awful teeth bit into the tank’s floor, ripping apart the place where the Submasters had gathered.

  Where Washen had been.

  Pamir called to her.

  Silence.

  The tube around him began to vibrate. He and Osmium were nearly ten kilometers from the cutting zone, and they were at risk. But of course, everything was ruined and doomed, and only habit caused Pamir to tell his companion, “We need to run some more.”

  The harum-scarum laughed.

  Then Washen’s voice dropped down on him. Through a nexus that was rapidly failing, she screamed, “No. Not this ship. No!”

  She sounded like a furious, red-faced, and utterly powerless child.

  In despair, she wailed, “Not my grandchildren! No—!”

  Then every nexus failed; every sound became a perfect silence.

  Pamir took control of the little car. He considered sloughing off the brutalized armor. But he thought again and started to move them deeper into the ship, following the conduit, pushing toward the closest pumping station.

  Osmium continued to laugh with both of his mouths.

  Pamir glanced his way.

  Then a weak, sorry laugh leaked out of him, and Pamir started to say, “Quite the day—”

  The cap-car slammed into a wall and halfway disintegrated. Shards of armor plating and engine parts flew ahead and fell to the floor of the little tube, and the car’s cabin fell on top of the wreckage and slid to a halt. And then again, with an even greater violence, the pieces picked up and moved.

  Or the pieces were utterly still, and it was the ship that was moving.

  Both answers presented themselves to Pamir, and then he wasn’t thinking about anything at all.

  SALVATION

  “Well, well. Life lurks behind those eyes, I see.”

  The life behind the eyes slowly absorbed its surroundings. Tree limbs lay shattered and strewn about, white wood bleeding sap and the air stinking
of sugary water and chlorophyll. Closer was a face. A human face, apparently. Perri slowly focused on the face, and after some groggy considerations, he decided that it was a human face, but not a normal one by most measures. Indeed, what was perhaps the oddest kind of creature was kneeling beside him, holding a rusty shovel in one hand, smiling happily with a face that was probably not much more than a hundred years old, and ancient beyond all measure.

  The luddite gave his battered ribs a poke with the shovel. “Back to your wits yet, are you?”

  Perri coughed, then admitted, “No.”

  “You were looking for something here. Remember? Tracking some odd bug or worm or something … some species that owed you money, you told me … though I still don’t believe you, of course …”

  “What happened?” Perri muttered.

  “The hillside decided to join the valley floor.”

  He dimly recalled the avalanche beginning—

  “And you were carried along for the ride.” The ancient face had a bright, almost boyish grin. “Remember that?”

  Perri had ridden into this obscure cavern inside a cap-car, yes. He recalled racing through, trying to beat the Sword before it cut the cavern in two. At the end, what he wanted was to return to his wife, to hold Quee Lee once more before the polypond either won or lost. And this was the only possible route—a deep cavern, isolated and happy because of its isolation. Its twin rivers fed into a sea that drained nowhere but up, offering a thousand routes leading to the ship’s upper reaches. To Quee Lee’s front door, and home. But Perri had stopped for a few moments. Why? He had seen something, or something had seen him—

  “We spoke,” he recalled. Dredging up pieces, he said, “I asked you about an alien.”

  “You caught a whiff of something,” the worn face reminded him.

  A biological cue, yes. An instrument riding on his car had inhaled a fleck of dust that triggered an alarm. Somewhere in the last one or two thousand years, a creature that may or may not have been an !eech had crossed this ground.

  “You were looking for your bug,” the luddite said.