He tore through the brush and wobbled into the clearing where they’d made their plans. Plans that hadn’t flown too smoothly, as it went. Raubin was standing by the gear. Wonderful near him with her hands on her hips. Never was kneeling on the far side of the clearing, arrow nocked to his bow. He grinned as he saw Craw. “You made it then, chief?”
“Shit.” Craw stood bent over, head spinning, dragging in air. “Shit.” He straightened, staring at the sky, face on fire, not able to think of another word, and without the breath to say one if he had been.
Brack looked even more shot than Craw, if it was possible, crouched over, hands on knees and knees wobbling, big chest heaving, big face red as a slapped arse around his tattoos. Yon tottered up and leaned against a tree, cheeks puffed out, skin shining with sweat.
Wonderful was hardly out of breath. “By the dead, the state o’ you fat old men.” She slapped Never on the arm. “That was some nice work down there at the village. Thought they’d catch you and skin you sure.”
“You hoped, you mean,” said Never, “but you should’ve known better. I’m the best damn runner-away in the North.”
“That is a fact.”
“Where’s Scorry?” gasped Craw, enough breath in him now to worry.
Never jerked his thumb. “Circled round to check no one’s coming for us.”
Whirrun ambled back into the clearing now, hood drawn up again and the Father of Swords sheathed across his shoulders like a milkmaid’s yoke, one hand on the grip, the other dangling over the blade.
“I take it they’re not following?” asked Wonderful, one eyebrow raised.
Whirrun shook his head. “Nope.”
“Can’t say I blame the poor bastards. I take back what I said about you taking yourself too serious. You’re one serious fucker with that sword.”
“You get the thing?” asked Raubin, face all pale with worry.
“That’s right, Raubin, we saved your skin.” Craw wiped his mouth, blood on the back of his hand from his bitten tongue. They’d done it, and his sense of humor was starting to leak back in. “Hah. Could you imagine if we’d left the bastard thing behind?”
“Never fear,” said Yon, flipping open his pack. “Jolly Yon Cumber, once more the fucking hero.” And he delved his hand inside and pulled it out.
Craw blinked. Then he frowned. Then he stared. Gold glinted in the fading light, and he felt his heart sink lower than it had all day. “That ain’t fucking it, Yon!”
“It’s not?”
“That’s a cup! It was the thing we wanted!” He stuck his sword point-down in the ground and waved one hand about. “The bloody thing with the kind of bloody light about it!”
Yon stared back at him. “No one told me it had a bloody light!”
There was silence for a moment then, while they all thought about it. No sound but the wind rustling the old leaves, making the black branches creak. Then Whirrun tipped his head back and roared with laughter. A couple of crows took off, startled from a branch it was that loud, flapping up sluggish into the gray sky.
“Why the hell are you laughing?” snapped Wonderful.
Inside his hood Whirrun’s twisted face was glistening with happy tears. “I told you I’d laugh when I heard something funny!” And he was off again, arching back like a full-drawn bow, whole body shaking.
“You’ll have to go back,” said Raubin.
“Back?” muttered Wonderful, her dirt-streaked face a picture of disbelief. “Back, you mad fucker?”
“You know the hall caught fire, don’t you?” snapped Brack, one big trembling arm pointing down towards the thickening column of smoke wafting up from the village.
“It what?” asked Raubin as Whirrun blasted a fresh shriek at the sky, hacking, gurgling, only just keeping on his feet.
“Oh, aye, burned down, more’n likely with the damn thing in it.”
“Well… I don’t know… you’ll just have to pick through the ashes!”
“How about we pick through your fucking ashes?” snarled Yon, throwing the cup down on the ground.
Craw gave a long sigh, rubbed at his eyes, then winced down towards that shit-hole of a village. Behind him, Whirrun’s laughter sawed throaty at the dusk. “Always,” he muttered, under his breath. “Why do I always get stuck with the fool jobs?”
ALONE
ROBERT REED
Robert Reed was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Nebraska Wesleyan University, and has worked as a lab technician. He became a full-time writer in 1987, the same year he won the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and has published eleven novels, including The Leeshore, The Hormone Jungle, and far future science fiction novels Marrow and The Well of Stars. An extraordinarily prolific writer, Reed has published over 200 short stories, mostly in Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asimov’s, which have been nominated for the Hugo, James Tiptree, Jr., Locus, Nebula, Seiun, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, and World Fantasy awards, and have been collected in The Dragons of Springplace and The Cuckoo’s Boys. His novella “A Billion Eves” won the Hugo Award. Nebraska’s only SF writer, Reed lives in Lincoln with his wife and daughter, and is an ardent long-distance runner.
1
The hull was gray and smooth, gray and empty, and in every direction it fell away gradually, vanishing where the cold black of the sky pretended to touch what was real. What was real was the Great Ship. Nothing else enjoyed substance or true value. Nothing else in Creation could be felt, much less understood. The Ship was a sphere of perfect hyperfiber, world-sized and enduring, while the sky was only a boundless vacuum punctuated with lost stars and the occasional swirls of distant galaxies. Radio whispers could be heard, too distorted and far too faint to resolve, and neutrino rains fell from above and rose from below, and there were ripples of gravity and furious nuclei generated by distant catastrophes—inconsequential powers washing across the unyielding, eternal hull.
Do not trust the sky, the walker understood. The sky wished only to tell lies. And perhaps worse, the sky could distract the senses and mind from what genuinely mattered. The walker’s only purpose was to slowly, carefully move across the Ship’s hull, and if something of interest were discovered, a cautious investigation would commence. But only if it was harmless could the mystery be approached and studied in detail. Instinct guided the walker, and for as long as it could remember, the guiding instinct was fear. Fierce, unnamed hazards were lurking. The walker could not see or define its enemies, but they were near, waiting for weakness. Waiting for sloth or inattentiveness. Regardless how curious it was or how fascinating some object might be, the walker scrupulously avoided anything that moved or spoke, or any device that glowed with unusual heat, and even the tiniest example of organic life was something to be avoided, without fail.
Solitude was its natural way.
Alone, the ancient fear would diminish to a bearable ache, and something like happiness was possible.
Walking, walking. That was the purpose of existence. Select a worthy line, perhaps using one of the scarce stars as a navigational tool. Follow that line until something new was discovered, and regardless whether the object was studied or circumvented, the walker would then pick a fresh direction—a random direction—and maintain that new line with the same tenacity.
There was no need to eat, no requirement for drink or sleep. Its life force was a minor, unsolvable mystery. The pace was patient, every moment feeling long and busy. But if nothing of note occurred, nothing needed to be recalled. After a century of uninterrupted routine, the walker compressed that blissful sameness into a single impression that was squeezed flush against every other vacuous memory—the recollections of a soul that felt ageless but was still very close to empty.
Eyes shrank and new eyes grew, changing talents. With that powerful, piercing vision, the walker watched ahead and beside and behind. Nothing was missed. And sometimes for no obvious reason it would stop, compelled suddenly to lower several eyes, staring into a
random portion of the hull. From the grayness, microscopic details emerged. Fresh radiation tracks still unhealed; faint scars being gradually erased by quantum bonds fighting to repair themselves. Each observation revealed quite a lot about the hyperfiber, and the lessons never changed. The hull was a wonder. Fashioned from an extremely strong and lasting material—a silvery-gray substance refined during a lost age by some powerful species, perhaps, or perhaps a league of vanished gods. They were the masters who must have imagined and built the Ship, and presumably the same wondrous hands had sent their prize racing through the vacuum. A good, glorious purpose must be at work here; but except for the relentless perfection of the Great Ship, nothing remained of their intentions, their goals, or even an obvious destination.
When the walker kneeled, the hull’s beauty was revealed.
And then it would stand again and resume its slow travels, feeling blessed to move free upon this magnificent face.
2
There was no purpose but to wander the perfection forever: that was an assumption made early and embraced as a faith. But as the centuries passed, oddities and little mysteries gradually grew more numerous. Every decade brought a few more crushed steel boxes and empty diamond buckets than the decade before, and there were lumps of mangled aerogel, and later, the occasional shard of some lesser form of hyperfiber. As time passed, the walker began to come across dead machines and pieces of machinery and tools too massive or far too ordinary to be carried any farther once they had failed. These objects were considerably younger than the Ship. Who abandoned them was a looming mystery, but one that would not be solved soon. The walker had no intention of approaching these others. And in those rare times when they approached it—always by mistake, always unaware of its presence—it would flatten itself against the hull and make itself vanish.
Invisibility was a critical talent. But invisibility meant that it had to abandon most of its senses. Even as they strode across its smooth back, these interlopers were reduced to a vibration with each footfall and a weak tangle of magnetic and electrical fields.
Days later and safe again, the walker would rise up carefully and move on.
Another millennium passed without serious incident. It was easy to believe that the Great Ship would never change, and nothing would ever be truly new; and holding that belief close, the walker followed one new line. No buckets or diamond chisels were waiting to change its direction. As it strode on, the stars and sky-whispers silently warned that it was finally passing into unknown territory. But this did happen on occasion. Perfection meant sameness, and the walker could imagine nothing new. Then what seemed to be a flat-topped mountain began to rise over the coming horizon. Puzzled, it made note of the sharp gray line hovering just above the hull. More years of steady marching caused the grayness to lift higher, just slightly. Perhaps a mountain of trash had been set there. Perhaps a single enormous bucket upended. Various explanations offered themselves; none satisfied. But the event was so surprising, enormous and unwelcome, and the novelty so great, that the walker stopped as soon as it was sure that something was indeed there, and without taking one step, it waited for three years and a little longer, adapting its eyes constantly, absorbing a view that refused to change.
Finally, curiosity defeated every caution, and altering its direction, the walker steered straight toward what still made no sense.
At a pace that required little energy, it pressed ahead in half-meter strides. Decades passed before it finally accepted what was obvious: that while the Ship was undoubtedly perfect, it was by no measure perfectly smooth and eternally round. Rising from the hull was not one gigantic tower, but several. The nearest tower was blackish-gray and too vast to measure from a single perspective. Occasionally a small light appeared on the summit, or several tiny flecks of light danced beside its enormous bulk, and there were sudden spikes in dense, narrow radio noise that tasted like a language. Various explanations occurred to the walker. From where these possibilities came, it could not say. Maybe they arose from the instincts responsible for its persistent fears. But like never before, it was curious. It started to move once again, slowly and tirelessly pushing closer, and that was when it noticed how one of the more distant towers had begun to tip, looking as if it was ready to collapse on its side. And shortly after that remarkable change in posture, the tower suddenly let loose a deep rumble, followed by a scorching, sky-piercing fire.
But of course: these were the Ship’s engines. No other explanation was necessary, and in another moment, the walker absorbed its new knowledge, a fresh set of beliefs gathering happily around the Ship’s continued perfection. Fusion boosted by antimatter threw a column of radiant blue-white plasmas into the blackness, scorching the vacuum. This was a vision worth admiration. Here was power beyond anything that the walker had ever conceived of. But soon the engine fell back into sleep, and after thorough reflection, it decided to choose another random direction, and another, selecting them until it was steering away from the gigantic rocket nozzles.
If objects this vast had missed its scrutiny, what else was hiding beyond the horizon?
Walk, walk, walk.
But its pace began to slow even more. Flying vessels and many busy machines were suddenly common near the engines, and some kind of animal was building cities of bubbled glass. An invasion was underway. There were regions of intense activity and considerable radio noise, and each hazard had to be avoided, or if the situation demanded, crossed without revealing its presence.
Ages passed before the engines vanished beyond the horizon. A bright red star became the walker’s beacon, its guide, and it followed that rich light until the ancient sun sickened and went nova, flinging portions of its flawed skin out into the cooling, dying vacuum.
Younger stars appeared, climbing from the horizon as the walker pressed forward. A second sky was always hiding behind the hyperfiber body. The walker felt the play of gravity and then the hard twisting, the Ship leaving the line that had been followed without interruption for untold billions of years. After that, the sky was changed. The vacuum was not nearly so empty, or quite as chilled, and even a patient entity with nothing to do but count points of light could not estimate just how many stars were rising into its spellbound gaze.
A galaxy was approaching. One great plate of three hundred billion suns and trillions of worlds was about to intersect with a vessel that had wandered across the universe, every previous nudge and great reaches of nothingness leading to this place and this rich, perfect moment.
And here the walker stood, on the brink of something entirely new.
There was a line upon the hull that perhaps no one else could have noticed. Not just with their eyes and the sketchy knowledge available, no. But the walker recognized the boundary where the hull that it knew surrendered to another. Suddenly the thick perfect hyperfiber was replaced with a thicker but considerably more weathered version of faultless self. Even in the emptiest reaches of the universe, ice and dust and other nameless detritus wandered in the dark.
These tiny worlds would crash down on the Ship’s hull, always at a substantial fraction of light-speed, and not even the best hyperfiber could shrug aside that kind of withering power. Stepping onto the Ship’s leading face, the walker immediately noticed gouges and debris fields and then the little craters that were eventually obscured by still larger craters—holes reaching deep into the hard resilient hull. Most of the wounds were ancient, although hyperfiber hid its age well. All but the largest craters were unimportant to the Ship’s structure, their cumulative damage barely diminishing its abiding strength. But some of the wounds showed signs of repair and reconditioning. The walker discovered one wide lake of liquid hyperfiber, the patch still curing when it arrived on the smooth shoreline. Kneeling down, it looked deep into the still-reflective surface. For the first time in memory, there was another waiting to be seen. But the entity felt little interest in its own appearance. What mattered was the inescapable fact that someone—some agent or benevolent
hand—was striving to repair what billions of years of abuse had achieved. A constructive force was at work upon the Ship. A healing force, seemingly. Enthralled, the walker looked at the young lake and the reflected Milky Way, measuring the patch’s dimensions. Then it examined the half-cured skin, first with fresh eyes and then with a few respectful touches. A fine grade of hyperfiber was being used, almost equal to the original hull.Which implied that caretakers were striving to do what was good and make certain that their goodness would endure.
The endless wandering continued.
Eventually the galaxy was overhead, majestic but still inconsequential. The suns and invisible worlds were little more than warm dust flung across the emptiness, and still all that mattered was the Ship, dense and rich beyond all measure. Walk, and walk. And walk. And then it found itself on the edge of another crater—the largest scar yet on the hull—and for the first time ever, it followed a curving line, the crater’s frozen lip defining its path.
Bodies and machines were working deep inside the ancient gouge.
From unseen perches, it watched the activity, studying methods and guessing reasons when it could not understand. The vacuum crackled with radio noise. The sense of words began to emerge, and because the skill might prove useful, the walker committed to memory what it understood of the new language. Hundreds of animals worked inside the crater—humans they called themselves, dressed inside human-shaped machines. And accompanying them were tens of thousands of pure machines, while on the lip stood a complex of prefabricated factories and fusion reactors and more humans and more robots dedicated to no purpose but repairing one minuscule portion of the Ship’s forward face.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5 Page 17
