The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  The man said nothing, busy with certain controls inside her suit’s helmet. Quee Lee could just see his face above and behind her.

  “Six months and you can walk in public again.”

  “I don’t mean it that way,” Quee Lee countered, swallowing now. A pressure was building against her chest, panic becoming terror. She wanted nothing now but to be home again.

  “Listen,” said Orleans, then he said nothing.

  Finally Quee Lee whispered, “What?”

  He knelt beside her, saying, “You’ll be fine. I promise.”

  His old confidence was missing. Perhaps he hadn’t believed she would go through with this adventure. Perhaps the offer had been some kind of bluff, something no sane person would find appealing, and now he’d invent some excuse to stop everything—

  —but he said, “Seals tight and ready.”

  “Tight and ready,” echoed the woman.

  Smiles appeared on both faces, though neither inspired confidence. Then Orleans was explaining: “There’s only a slight, slight chance that you won’t return to normal. If you should get hit by too much radiation, precipitating too many novel mutations…well, the strangeness can get buried too deeply. A thousand autodocs couldn’t root it all out of you.”

  “Vestigial organs,” the woman added. “Odd blemishes and the like.”

  “It won’t happen,” said Orleans.

  “It won’t,” Quee Lee agreed.

  A feeding nipple appeared before her mouth.

  “Suck and sleep,” Orleans told her.

  She swallowed some sort of chemical broth, and the woman was saying, “No, it would take ten or fifteen centuries to make lasting marks. Unless—”

  Orleans said something, snapping at her.

  She laughed with a bitter sound, saying, “Oh, she’s asleep…!”

  And Quee Lee was asleep. She found herself in a dreamless, timeless void, her body being pricked with needles—little white pains marking every smart cancer—and it was as if nothing else existed in the universe but Quee Lee, floating in that perfect blackness while she was remade.

  —

  “How long?”

  “Not so long. Seven months, almost.”

  Seven months. Quee Lee tried to blink and couldn’t, couldn’t shut the lids of her eyes. Then she tried touching her face, lifting a heavy hand and setting the palm on her faceplate, finally remembering her suit. “Is it done?” she muttered, her voice sloppy and slow. “Am I done now?”

  “You’re never done,” Orleans laughed. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  She saw a figure, blurred but familiar.

  “How do you feel, Quee Lee?”

  Strange. Through and through, she felt very strange.

  “That’s normal enough,” the voice offered. “Another couple months, and you’ll be perfect. Have patience.”

  She was a patient person, she remembered. And now her eyes seemed to shut of their own volition, her mind sleeping again. But this time she dreamed, her and Perri and Orleans all at the beach together. She saw them sunning on the bone-white sand, and she even felt the heat of the false sun, felt it baking hot down to her rebuilt bones.

  She woke, muttering, “Orleans? Orleans?”

  “Here I am.”

  Her vision was improved now. She found herself breathing normally, her wrong-shaped mouth struggling with each word and her suit managing an accurate translation.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  Orleans smiled and said, “Lovely.”

  His face was blue-black, perhaps. When she sat up, looking at the plain gray locker room, she realized how the colors had shifted. Her new eyes perceived the world differently, sensitive to the same spectrum but in novel ways. She slowly climbed to her feet, then asked, “How long?”

  “Nine months, fourteen days.”

  No, she wasn’t finished. But the transformation had reached a stable point, she sensed, and it was wonderful to be mobile again. She managed a few tentative steps. She made clumsy fists with her too-thick hands. Lifting the fists, she gazed at them, wondering how they would look beneath the hyperfiber.

  “Want to see yourself?” Orleans asked.

  Now? Was she ready?

  Her friend smiled, tusks glinting in the room’s weak light. He offered a large mirror, and she bent to put her face close enough…finding a remade face staring up at her, a sloppy mouth full of mirror-colored teeth and a pair of hairy pits for eyes. She managed a deep breath and shivered. Her skin was lovely, golden, or at least appearing golden to her. It was covered with hard white lumps, and her nose was a slender beak. She wished she could touch herself, hands stroking her faceplate. Only Remoras could never touch their own flesh….

  “If you feel strong enough,” he offered, “you can go with me. My crew and I are going on a patching mission, out to the prow.”

  “When?”

  “Now, actually.” He lowered the mirror. “The others are waiting in the shuttle. Stay here for a couple more days, or come now.”

  “Now,” she whispered.

  “Good.” He nodded, telling her, “They want to meet you. They’re curious what sort of person becomes a Remora.”

  A person who doesn’t want to be locked up in a bland gray room, she thought to herself, smiling now with her mirrored teeth.

  They had all kinds of faces, all unique, myriad eyes and twisting mouths and flesh of every color. She counted fifteen Remoras, plus Orleans, and Quee Lee worked to learn names and get to know her new friends. The shuttle ride was like a party, a strange informal party, and she had never known happier people, listening to Remora jokes and how they teased one another, and how they sometimes teased her. In friendly ways, of course. They asked about her apartment—how big, how fancy, how much—and about her long life. Was it as boring as it sounded? Quee Lee laughed at herself while she nodded, saying, “No, nothing changes very much. The centuries have their way of running together, sure.”

  One Remora—a large masculine voice and a contorted blue face—asked the others, “Why do people pay fortunes to ride the ship, then do everything possible to hide deep inside it? Why don’t they ever step outside and have a little look at where we’re going?”

  The cabin erupted in laughter, the observation an obvious favorite.

  “Immortals are cowards,” said the woman beside Quee Lee.

  “Fools,” said a second woman, the one with comma-shaped eyes. “Most of them, at least.”

  Quee Lee felt uneasy, but just temporarily. She turned and looked through a filthy window, the smooth changeless landscape below and the glowing sky as she remembered it. The view soothed her. Eventually she shut her eyes and slept, waking when Orleans shouted something about being close to their destination. “Decelerating now!” he called from the cockpit.

  They were slowing. Dropping. Looking at her friends, she saw a variety of smiles meant for her. The Remoras beside her took her hands, everyone starting to pray. “No comets today,” they begged. “And plenty tomorrow, because we want overtime.”

  The shuttle slowed to nothing, then settled.

  Orleans strode back to Quee Lee, his mood suddenly serious. “Stay close,” he warned, “but don’t get in our way, either.”

  The hyperfiber was thickest here, on the prow, better than ten kilometers deep, and its surface had been browned by the ceaseless radiations. A soft dry dust clung to the lifesuits, and everything was lit up by the aurora and flashes of laser light. Quee Lee followed the others, listening to their chatter. She ate a little meal of Remoran soup—her first conscious meal—feeling the soup moving down her throat, trying to map her new architecture. Her stomach seemed the same, but did she have two hearts? It seemed that the beats were wrong. Two hearts nestled side by side. She found Orleans and approached him. “I wish I could pull off my suit, just once. Just for a minute.” She told him, “I keep wondering how all of me looks.”

  Orleans glanced at her, then away. He said, “No.”

&
nbsp; “No?”

  “Remoras don’t remove their suits. Ever.”

  There was anger in the voice and a deep chilling silence from the others. Quee Lee looked about, then swallowed. “I’m not a Remora,” she finally said. “I don’t understand….”

  Silence persisted, quick looks exchanged.

  “I’m going to climb out of this…eventually…!”

  “But don’t say it now,” Orleans warned. A softer, more tempered voice informed her, “We have taboos. Maybe we seem too rough to have them—”

  “No,” she muttered.

  “—yet we do. These lifesuits are as much a part of our bodies as our guts and eyes, and being a Remora, a true Remora, is a sacred pledge that you take for your entire life.”

  The comma-eyed woman approached, saying, “It’s an insult to remove your suit. A sacrilege.”

  “Contemptible,” said someone else. “Or worse.”

  Then Orleans, perhaps guessing Quee Lee’s thoughts, made a show of touching her, and she felt the hand through her suit. “Not that you’re anything but our guest, of course. Of course.” He paused, then said, “We have our beliefs, that’s all.”

  “Ideals,” said the woman.

  “And contempt for those we don’t like. Do you understand?”

  She couldn’t, but she made understanding sounds just the same. Obviously she had found a sore spot.

  Then came a new silence, and she found herself marching through the dust, wishing someone would make angry sounds again. Silence was the worst kind of anger. From now on, she vowed, she would be careful about everything she said. Every word.

  —

  The crater was vast and rough and only partway patched. Previous crew had brought giant tanks and the machinery used to make the patch. It was something of an art form, pouring the fresh liquid hyperfiber and carefully curing it. Each shift added another hundred meters to the smooth crater floor. Orleans stood with Quee Lee at the top, explaining the job. This would be a double shift, and she was free to watch. “But not too closely,” he warned her again, the tone vaguely parental. “Stay out of our way.”

  She promised. For that first half-day, she was happy to sit on the crater’s lip, on a ridge of tortured and useless hyperfiber, imagining the comet that must have made this mess. Not large, she knew. A large one would have blasted a crater too big to see at a glance, and forty crews would be laboring here. But it hadn’t been a small one, either. It must have slipped past the lasers, part of a swarm. She watched the red beams cutting across the sky, their heat producing new colors in the aurora. Her new eyes saw amazing details. Shock waves as violet phosphorescence; swirls of orange and crimson and snowy white. A beautiful deadly sky, wasn’t it? Suddenly the lasers fired faster, a spiderweb of beams overhead, and she realized that a swarm was ahead of the ship, pinpointed by the navigators somewhere below them…tens of millions of kilometers ahead, mud and ice and rock closing fast…!

  The lasers fired even faster, and she bowed her head.

  There was an impact, at least one. She saw the flash and felt a faint rumble dampened by the hull, a portion of those energies absorbed and converted into useful power. Impacts were fuel, of a sort. And the residual gases would be concentrated and pumped inside, helping to replace the inevitable loss of volatiles as the ship continued on its great trek.

  The ship was an organism feeding on the galaxy.

  It was a familiar image, almost cliché, yet suddenly it seemed quite fresh. Even profound. Quee Lee laughed to herself, looking out over the browning plain while turning her attentions inward. She was aware of her breathing and the bump-bumping of wrong hearts, and she sensed changes with every little motion. Her body had an odd indecipherable quality. She could feel every fiber in her muscles, every twitch and every stillness. She had never been so alive, so self-aware, and she found herself laughing with a giddy amazement.

  If she was a true Remora, she thought, then she would be a world unto herself. A world like the ship, only smaller, its organic parts enclosed in armor and forever in flux. Like the passengers below, the cells of her body were changing. She thought she could nearly feel herself evolving…and how did Orleans control it? It would be astonishing if she could re-evolve sight, for instance…gaining eyes unique to herself, never having existed before and never to exist again…!

  What if she stayed with these people?

  The possibility suddenly occurred to her, taking her by surprise.

  What if she took whatever pledge was necessary, embracing all of their taboos and proving that she belonged with them? Did such things happen? Did adventurous passengers try converting—?

  The sky turned red, lasers firing and every red line aimed at a point directly overhead. The silent barrage was focused on some substantial chunk of ice and grit, vaporizing its surface and cracking its heart. Then the beams separated, assaulting the bigger pieces and then the smaller ones. It was an enormous drama, her exhilaration married to terror…her watching the aurora brightening as force fields killed the momentum of the surviving grit and atomic dust. The sky was a vivid orange, and sudden tiny impacts kicked up the dusts around her. Something struck her leg, a flash of light followed by a dim pain…and she wondered if she was dead, then how badly she was wounded. Then she blinked and saw the little crater etched above her knee. A blemish, if that. And suddenly the meteor shower was finished.

  Quee Lee rose to her feet, shaking with nervous energy.

  She began picking her way down the crater slope. Orleans’s commands were forgotten; she needed to speak to him. She had insights and compliments to share, nearly tripping with her excitement, finally reaching the work site and gasping, her air stale from her exertions. She could taste herself in her breaths, the flavor unfamiliar, thick and a little sweet.

  “Orleans!” she cried out.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” groused one woman.

  The comma-eyed woman said, “Stay right there. Orleans is coming, and don’t move!”

  A lake of fresh hyperfiber was cooling and curing as she stood beside it. A thin skin had formed, the surface utterly flat and silvery. Mirrorlike. Quee Lee could see the sky reflected in it, leaning forward and knowing she shouldn’t. She risked falling in order to see herself once again. The nearby Remoras watched her, saying nothing. They smiled as she grabbed a lump of old hyperfiber, positioning herself, and the lasers flashed again, making everything bright as day.

  She didn’t see her face.

  Or rather, she did. But it wasn’t the face she expected, the face from Orleans’s convenient mirror. Here was the old Quee Lee, mouth ajar, those pretty and ordinary eyes opened wide in amazement.

  She gasped, knowing everything. A near-fortune paid, and nothing in return. Nothing here had been real. This was an enormous and cruel sick joke; and now the Remoras were laughing, hands on their untouchable bellies and their awful faces contorted, ready to rip apart from the sheer brutal joy of the moment…!

  —

  “Your mirror wasn’t a mirror, was it? It synthesized that image, didn’t it?” She kept asking questions, not waiting for a response. “And you drugged me, didn’t you? That’s why everything still looks and feels wrong.”

  Orleans said, “Exactly. Yes.”

  Quee Lee remained inside her lifesuit, just the two of them flying back to Port Beta. He would see her on her way home. The rest of the crew was working, and Orleans would return and finish his shift. After her discovery, everyone agreed there was no point in keeping her on the prow.

  “You owe me money,” she managed.

  Orleans’s face remained blue-black. His tusks framed a calm icy smile. “Money? Whose money?”

  “I paid you for a service, and you never met the terms.”

  “I don’t know about any money,” he laughed.

  “I’ll report you,” she snapped, trying to use all of her venom. “I’ll go to the captains—”

  “—and embarrass yourself further.” He was confident, even coc
ky. “Our transaction would be labeled illegal, not to mention disgusting. The captains will be thoroughly disgusted, believe me.” Another laugh. “Besides, what can anyone prove? You gave someone your money, but nobody will trace it to any of us. Believe me.”

  She had never felt more ashamed, crossing her arms and trying to wish herself home again.

  “The drug will wear off soon,” he promised. “You’ll feel like yourself again. Don’t worry.”

  Softly, in a breathless little voice, she asked, “How long have I been gone?”

  Silence.

  “It hasn’t been months, has it?”

  “More like three days.” A nod inside the helmet. “The same drug distorts your sense of time, if you get enough of it.”

  She felt ill to her stomach.

  “You’ll be back home in no time, Quee Lee.”

  She was shaking and holding herself.

  The Remora glanced at her for a long moment, something resembling remorse in his expression. Or was she misreading the signs?

  “You aren’t spiritual people,” she snapped. It was the best insult she could manage, and she spoke with certainty. “You’re crude, disgusting monsters. You couldn’t live below if you had the chance, and this is where you belong.”

  Orleans said nothing, merely watching her.

  Finally he looked ahead, gazing at the endless gray landscape. “We try to follow our founder’s path. We try to be spiritual.” A shrug. “Some of us do better than others, of course. We’re only human.”

  She whispered, “Why?”

  Again he looked at her, asking, “Why what?”

  “Why have you done this to me?”

  Orleans seemed to breathe and hold the breath, finally exhaling. “Oh, Quee Lee,” he said, “you haven’t been paying attention, have you?”

  What did he mean?

  He grasped her helmet, pulling her face up next to his face. She saw nothing but the eyes, each black hair moving and nameless fluids circulating through them, and she heard the voice saying, “This has never, never been about you, Quee Lee. Not you. Not for one instant.”