The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5

by Jonathan Strahan

  Alone let his body become visible again.

  “Step away,” he pleaded.

  Aasleen stared at him for another moment. Then she backed off slowly, saying nothing until she had doubled the distance between them.

  “Do you know what puzzleboys are?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Puzzleboys build these wonderful, very beautiful machines—hard cores clothed with liquid exteriors. Their devices are durable and inventive. Their best machines are designed to survive for ages while crossing deep space.” Aasleen paused, perhaps hoping for a reaction. When she grew tired of the quiet, she explained, “Puzzleboys were like a lot of sentient species. They wanted the Great Ship for themselves. Thousands of worlds sent intergalactic missions, but my species won the race. I rode out here on one of the earliest starships. Among my happiest days is that morning when I first stood on the Ship’s battered hull, gazing down at the Milky Way.”

  He said, “Yes.”

  “You know the view?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled, teeth showing. “A couple thousand years ago, as we were bringing the Great Ship into the galaxy, puzzleboys started singing their lies. They claimed they’d sent a quick stealthy mission up here. The laws of salvage are ancient—far older than my baby species. Machines can’t claim so much as a lump of ice for their builders. But the aliens claimed that they’d shoved one of their own citizen’s minds into a suitable probe. Like all good lies, their story has dates and convincing details. It’s easy to conclude that their one brave explorer might have actually reached the Great Ship first. If he had done that, then this prize would be theirs. At least according to these old laws. The only trouble with the story is that the mission never arrived. I know I never saw any sign of squatters. Which is why we’ve made a point of insulting that entire species, and that’s why the legal machinery of this cranky old galaxy has convincingly backed our claim of ownership.”

  Quietly, he said, “Puzzleboys.”

  “That’s a human name. A translation, and like most approximations, inadequate.”

  With a burst of radio, the species’ name was offered in its native language.

  “Do you recognize it?” asked Aasleen.

  He admitted, “I don’t, no.”

  “All right.” She nodded. A thin smile broke and then vanished again. “Let’s have some fun. Try to imagine that somebody we know, some familiar civilization, dreamed you up and sent you to the Great Ship. Maybe they borrowed puzzleboy technologies. Maybe you’ve sprung from a different engineering history. Right now, I’m looking at a lot of data. But despite everything I see, I can’t pick one answer over the others. Which is why this so interesting. And fun.”

  Alone said nothing.

  She laughed briefly, softly. “That leaves me with a tangle of questions. For instance, do you know what scares me about you?”

  He took a moment before asking, “What scares you?”

  “Your power supply.”

  “Why?”

  Aasleen didn’t seem to hear the question. “And I’m not the only person sick with worry,” she admitted. She closed one of her eyes and opened it again abruptly. “Miocene,” she said, and sighed. “Miocene is an important captain. And you’re considered a large enough problem that, right now, that captain is sitting inside a hyperfiber bunker three kilometers behind me. Three kilometers is probably far enough. If the worst happens, that is. But of course nothing is going to go bad now. As I explained to Miocene and the other captains, you seem to have survived quite nicely and without mishap, possibly for many thousands of years. What are the odds that your guts are going to fail today, in my face?”

  He considered his nature.

  “Do you have any idea what’s inside you?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “A single speck of degenerated matter. Possibly a miniature black hole, although you’re more likely a quark assemblage of one or another sort.” She sighed and shrugged, adding, “Regardless of your engine design, it is novel. It’s possible, yes, and I have a few colleagues who have done quite a lot of work proving that this kind of system might be used safely. But to see something like you in action, and to realize that you’ve existed for who-knows-how-long, and apparently without demanding any significant repair…

  “Alone,” she said, “I am a very good engineer. One of the best I’ve ever met, regardless of the species. And I just can’t believe in you. Honestly, it’s impossible for me to accept that you are real.”

  “Then release me,” he begged.

  She laughed.

  He watched her face, her nervous fingers.

  “In essence,” she continued, “you are a lucid entity carrying a tiny quasar inside your stomach. A quasar smaller than an atom and enclosed within a magnetic envelope, but massive and exceptionally dense.”

  “Quasar,” he repeated.

  “Matter, any matter, can be thrown inside you, and if only a fraction of the resulting energy is captured, you will generate shocking amounts of power.”

  He considered her explanation. Then with a quiet tone, he mentioned, “I have seen the Ship’s engines firing.”

  “Have you?”

  “Next to them, I am nothing.”

  “That’s true enough. In fact, I’ve got a few machines sitting near us that can outstrip your capacities, and by a wide margin. But as Submaster Miocene has reminded me, if your magnetic envelope is breached, and if your stomach can digest just your own body mass, the resulting fireworks will probably obliterate several cubic kilometers of the Ship, and who knows how many innocent souls.”

  Alone believed her. But then he remembered that good lies have believable details and he didn’t feel as certain.

  Aasleen smiled in a sad fashion. “Of course I don’t know exactly what would happen, if your stomach got loose. Maybe it has safety mechanisms that I can’t see. Or maybe its fire would reach out and grab my body, and everything else in this room would be consumed, as well as Miocene…and with that, the Great Ship would be short one engine, and the survivors would have an enormous hole in the hull, spewing poisons and nuclear fire.”

  “I won’t fail,” he promised.

  She nodded. “I think that’s an accurate statement. I know I want to believe that both of us are perfectly safe.”

  “I won’t hurt the Ship.”

  “All right. But why do you feel certain?”

  He said, “Because I am.”

  Aasleen closed her eyes, once again concentrating on the machines inside her head.

  “Please,” said Alone. “Let me go free.”

  “I can’t.”

  He changed his shape.

  Aasleen’s eyes opened. “I know that story about you and Wune. My guess? That you’d take on my appearance like you did hers.”

  But he hadn’t. He had no limbs now, no face. To the eye, he looked like a ball of hyperfiber with giant rockets on one hemisphere, thick armor on the other. Using a hidden mouth, he promised, “I won’t do any harm. I shall not hurt anyone and I will never injure the Ship.”

  “You just want to left by yourself,” she said.

  “Nothing else.”

  “But why?”

  He had no response.

  “Which leads us to another area of deep concern,” she continued. “A machine built by unknown hands is discovered wandering inside another machine built by unknown hands. But there seems to be two mysteries, there might be only one. Do you understand what I mean?”

  He said, “No.”

  “Two machines, but only one builder.”

  He didn’t react.

  She shook her head. “We don’t know how old the Great Ship is. Not precisely, but we have informed guesses. And no matter how well-engineered you appear to be, I don’t think you’re several billion years old.”

  He remained silent.

  Aasleen took one step closer. “There’s the third terror involving you: a captain’s nightmare. Maybe you are the puzzleboy
s’ machine. Or you’re somebody else’s representative. Either way, if you arrived here on the Ship before any human did, and if there’s a lost soul inside whatever passes for your mind…well, then it’s possible that a different species might legally claim possession over the wealth and impossibilities that the Great Ship offers. And at that point, no matter how sweet your engineering is, your fate is out my hands…”

  Her voice trailed away.

  She took a tiny step forward.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t know what I am. I know nothing.”

  The tiny machines inside Aasleen were speaking rapidly again.

  “I’m watching your mind,” she confessed. “But I’m not at all familiar with its neural network. It’s a sloppy design, or it’s revolutionary. I don’t know enough to offer an opinion.”

  “I wish to leave now,” he said.

  “In the universe, there are two kinds of unlikely,” Aasleen warned. “The Great Ship is one type—never attempted or even imagined, but achievable, provided someone has time and the muscle to make it real. And then there’s the implausible that you imagine will come true, and one day your worst fears turn real. If the Great Ship belongs to someone else, then my species has to surrender our claim. And even though I believe that I am a good and charitable soul, I don’t want that to happen. Facing that prospect, I would fight to keep that from happening, in fact.”

  Alone did nothing, gathering his strength.

  “And even if you are safe as rain,” she said, “I don’t relish the idea of you wandering wherever you like. Not on my ship. Certainly not until we can find the answers to all these puzzles.”

  Without warning, Alone lost his shape, turning into a hot broth that tried to flow around the grasping arms.

  The arms seemed to expect his trick, quickly creating one deep bowl that held him in place.

  “I promise,” said Aasleen. “You’ll be somewhere safe. We will keep you comfortable. And as much as possible, you’ll be left alone. Not even Miocene wants to torment you. And that’s why a special chamber is being prepared—”

  A new talent emerged.

  The liquid body suddenly compressed itself, collapsing into a tiny dense and radiant drop hotter than any sun. And as the bowl-shaped limbs struggled to keep hold of this fleck of fire, Alone stole a portion of their mass, turning it into energy, shaping a ball of white-hot plasma.

  And with that, he shrank into an even tinier, hotter bit of existence.

  Aasleen turned and ran.

  The arms were pierced. Not even the hyperfiber floor could resist his descent. He struck and sank out of sight, and when he was beneath the floor, hyperfiber turned into a bed of pale pink granite, and much as a ship passed between the stars, he was slicing quickly through what felt much like nothing.

  7

  Creating a narrow hole, Alone fell.

  The hole was lined with compressed, distorted magma that flowed and bubbled and soon hardened above him. But despite the minuscule trail, his enemies would follow. He felt certain. Alone had value in their eyes, or he was dangerous, or they simply could not approve of his continued existence. Whatever their reasons, Aasleen and the captains would go to considerable trouble to chase him. But the Great Ship was full of holes and tunnels, and it occurred to him that his enemies would simply gather below him, waiting inside the next chamber.

  To fool these hunters, Alone let his body balloon outwards, one final burst of blazing heat leaking out before his descent was finished.

  Fifteen kilometers beneath Aasleen, the machine built a new chamber. It was a tiny realm, the spherical wall glowing red as the residual heat bled away, and he lay silent in the middle for long minutes before sprouting delicate fingers, pushing their tips into the cooling magma. Falling from above were vibrations—bright hard jarrings marking the closing and sealing of every hatch and orifice and superfluous valve. Then something massive and quite slow passed directly beneath him. But the subtle noises were never regular, never simple, creating distortions and echoes as the waves broke around empty spaces deep within the cold rock. Swim in one downward angle, and a large chamber would be waiting. Another easy line promised a more distant but far more extensive cavern. But what caught Alone’s interest was a line that might be an illusion, a flaw in the rock, perhaps, or it might be a tunnel leading nowhere. But that target was close. Alone pulled his body into a new shape. Looking like the worms common to a hundred billion worlds, he began slithering and shoving his way forward.

  He missed his goal by eighty meters.

  But instinct or a wordless voice urged him to pause and think again. What was wrong? An urge told him what to do, and he obeyed, following a new line until he was not only certain that he was lost but that the Great Ship was solid to its core, and his fate was to wander this cramped darkness until Time’s end.

  Suddenly the rock beneath him turned to cultured diamond.

  With the worm’s white-hot head, he pushed through the gemstone. The Great Ship was laced with countless tiny tunnels, and this was among the most obscure, barely mapped examples. He glowed brightly for a long moment, new eyes probing in both directions before one was chosen. Then inside a space too small for a human child to stand, he began to run—sprouting limbs as necessary, pushing off the floor and the sides and that low slick diamond ceiling. With every junction and tributary hole, he picked for no reason. Eventually he was hundreds of kilometers from his beginning point, random choice his guide until the moment when he realized that he was beginning to wander back toward his starting point. Then Alone decided to pause, listening to the diamond and the rock beyond. The next turn led to a dead end, and he backed out of that hole and hunkered down, and with a soft private voice asked, “What now?”

  “Down,” the familiar voice coaxed.

  Nothing else was offered. No other instruction was needed. He burned a fresh hole into the diamond floor, and after plunging three kilometers, his fierce little body exploded out into a volume of frigid air that stretched farther than the light of his body could reach.

  Alarmed, he made himself black as space.

  He fell, and a floor of water and carbon dioxide ice slapped him when he struck bottom.

  The cavern was five kilometers in diameter, bubble-shaped and filled with ancient ice and a whisper of oxygen gas. Except for the dimpled footprints of one robot surveyor, there was no trace of visitors. No human had ever stepped inside this place. But as a precaution, Alone erased his tracks, and where his warmth had distorted the ice, he made delicate repairs.

  A walker’s existence gave way to the sessile life. He moved only to investigate his new home. Every sealed hatch leading out into the Ship was studied, and he prepared three secret exits that wouldn’t appear on the captains’ maps. Sameness made for simple memories. The next seventeen thousand years were crossed without interruption. Life was routine, and life was silent and unremarkable, and the old sense of fear subsided into a slight paranoia that left each sliver of Time sweet for being pleasantly, unashamedly boring.

  Doing nothing was natural.

  For long delicious spans, the entity sat motionless, allowing his heat to gradually melt the ice. Then he would cool himself and his surroundings would freeze again, and he would pretend to be the old ice. With determination and a wealth of patience, he imagined billions of years passing while nothing happened, nothing in this tiny realm experiencing any significant change. Sometimes he sprouted a single enormous eye, and from another part of his frigid body he emitted a thin rain of photons that struck the black basalt ceiling and the icy hills around him, and with that eye designed for this single function, he would slowly and thoroughly study what never changed, and with his mind he would try to imagine the Ship that he could not see.

  “Speak to me,” he might beg.

  Then he would wait, wishing for a reply, tolerant enough to withstand a year and sometimes two years of inviting silence.

  “Speak,” he would prompt again.

  S
ilence.

  Then he might offer a soft lie. “I can hear you anyway,” he would claim. “Just past my hearing, you are. Just out of my reach, out of my view.”

  But if the strange voice was genuine, then its maker was proving itself more stubborn even than him.

  Seventeen millennia and thirty-seven years passed, and then with a thunderous thud, a hatch on one wall burst inward. Unsealed for the first time, the open door let in a screaming wind and a brigade of machines—enormous swift and fearless assemblages of muscle and narrow talents that knew their purpose and had only so much time to work.

  Alone was terrified, and he was enthralled. Imagining that he could escape at will, he retreated to the chamber’s center. But then the other hatches exploded inwards, including a big opening at the apex of the ceiling. Machines began to burrow into the ice and string lights, and then they carved the black walls and built a second, lower ceiling. And all the while, they were leaking enough raw heat that the ancient glacier began to melt, transformed into fizzy water and gas.

  Alone huddled inside the rotting shards of the ice.

  Each of his emergency exists were either blocked or too close to active machines. The chamber floor was quality hyperfiber, difficult to pierce without creating a spectacle. Alone pretended to belong to the floor. For the next awful week, he did nothing but remain still. Then the ice had melted and the first wave of machinery vanished, replaced by different devices that worked rapidly in smaller ways, but with the same tenacious purpose.

  Mimicking one common machine, he drifted to the new lake’s surface.

  A shoreline was being constructed from cultured wood and young purple corals and farm-raised shellfish, everything laid across a bed of glassy stone filled with artificial fossils—ancestors to the chamber’s new residents. Humans stood beside the aliens, the species speaking through interpretive AIs. The aliens wore broad purple shells, and they were happiest when their gills lay in the newly conditioned water. The humans wore uniforms of various styles, different colors. One uniform had the bright reflective quality of a mirror, and the woman inside it was saying, “Beautiful, yes.” Then she knelt down and sucked up a mouthful of the salted, acidic water. Spitting with vigor, she said, “And a good taste too, is it?”