by Robert Reed
“Which song?” the woman sputtered.
“Oh, that’s their choice,” Miocene replied. “It’s always theirs.”
* * *
THE DEFECTOR WAS an emotional alloy: two parts arrogance, one part fear.
It was a useful combination.
Sitting at the table with Miocene, Virtue seemed to recall that smiles were a helpful gesture. But he wasn’t particularly skilled with the expression, his smile looking more like a pained wince, his light gray eyes growing larger by the moment.
“I told them that I absolutely had to see you,” he reported. “Only you, and as soon as possible.”
“Madam Miocene.”
His genius wavered. A stupid voice said, “Pardon?”
“I am your single hope,” she replied, leaning back in the tall chair as if disgusted by the creature before her. “You live out the day if I let you. Otherwise, you die. And I think that I’m entitled to hear my name used in the proper fashion, at the proper times.”
He looked at his own hands.
Then, quietly, “Madam Miocene.”
“Thank you.” She showed him a narrow grin, then with a slow, almost indifferent set of motions, she opened the bright chromium case of her electronic file box, pretending to read what she already knew by heart. “To my associates, you claimed that you had something to tell me. News fit only for my ears.”
“Yes … Madam Miocene…” He swallowed hard, then said, “It has to do with this world of ours—”
“This isn’t my world,” she interrupted.
Virtue nodded, and waited. His eyes couldn’t have been larger.
Miocene pretended to concentrate on the screen. “It says here … that you’re a second-generation descendant of Diu—”
“He was my grandfather, yes. Madam.”
“And your father…?”
“Is Till.”
She looked up, staring as if she had never noticed the familial resemblance. After a lengthy pause, she mentioned, “Many Waywards are Till’s children. As I understand these things.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“No real honor to it, since there’s so awfully many of you.”
“Well, I don’t know if I would…” He hesitated, then said, “No, madam, I suppose there isn’t a specific honor, no.”
She touched a key, then another, scrolling through the transcripts and the written accounts of each interrogator. Every entry gave clues to this man’s character, or lack of it. And none could be trusted as the final word on anything concerning him.
“So our texts are inaccurate. You’re claiming.”
Virtue blinked, and he held his breath.
Souls were a fluid alloy. The arrogance hid deep inside him, replaced on the surface by a growing, strengthening sense of fear.
“Are they inaccurate, or aren’t they?”
“In places, I think so. Yes.”
“Have you built a fusion reactor like the one in those diagrams?”
“No, madam.”
“Are there any reactors like it in the Wayward nation?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“I can’t be absolutely certain,” he admitted.
“And we haven’t built them, either,” she confessed. “Our geothermal plants are quite sufficient for our very modest demands.”
The defector nodded, then attempted a compliment. “This is an amazing city, madam. They let me see pieces of it on my way here.”
“That was their mistake,” she replied.
He hunkered, a little bit.
Then she gave him a smile, inquiring, “Do you Waywards have cities this large? With almost a million people in one place?”
“No. No, madam.”
“We’ve mastered some marvelous tricks,” she continued. “The crust beneath us is thick and solid, and we keep it that way. Quakes are diffused or bled away. The fluid iron is steered into managed zones. Artificial vents, in essence.”
Sensing her wishes, he allowed, “The Waywards don’t have that technology.”
“You’re still nomads, aren’t you? Basically.”
He started to answer, then hesitated. “I’m not a Wayward anymore,” he finally offered. Then with a tight little voice, he added, “Madam.”
“But you could tell me much about them. I would imagine.”
A cursory nod.
“You know about their lives,” she continued. “About their technologies. Perhaps even their ultimate goals.”
“Yes,” he said. “And yes. And no, madam.”
“Oh? You don’t know what Till wants?”
“Not in any clear way, no.” He swallowed as if in pain. “My father … well, Till doesn’t exactly confide in me…”
Again, Miocene touched the keys. “Maybe that’s why you lost the Wayward faith. Is that a possibility?”
“I’m not sure that I ever believed.”
“All that noise about Builders and Bleaks and ancient souls entombed inside those hyperfiber coffins…?”
“The truth is that I don’t know what’s real. Madam.”
She looked up, suspicion mixed with fascination. “So you might believe. If circumstances were changed in some way, that is.”
The arrogance resurfaced. Quietly, angrily, he asked, “Wouldn’t you change your mind? If you suddenly realized that your mind was wrong, I mean.”
“As I recall, you demanded to be brought here. To this temple specifically. I can only assume that you’re eager to see the Great Ship for yourself, and to that noble end, you want to help our holy mission…”
“No, madam.”
Miocene feigned surprise, then disgust. With her own quiet anger, she asked the defector, “In what do you believe?”
“Nothing.” He sounded defiant, but like a child too full of himself, too impressed with the keen edge of his own exceptional mind. “I don’t know why Marrow is here,” he complained, “much less who built it. Or why. And I’m absolutely convinced that no one else has answers for those questions, either.”
“The artifacts—?”
“There’s another obvious explanation for them.”
But she didn’t want to hear any groundless speculations. What was important here—what was vital and even urgent—was to ascertain the real talents of this taciturn young man. A contemptuous snarl preceded her firm declaration: “I don’t have use for Wayward scientists. We’ve had a few of you defect, once a century or so, and as a rule, you’re badly educated. Unimaginative. And you trade on the names of your insane fathers.”
“I am well educated,” Virtue replied, in a sudden fever. “And I’m extremely imaginative. And I don’t use your son’s name to my advantage!”
She stared at him, the picture of skepticism.
“Don’t you appreciate the risks that I’ve taken? For your sake, and everyone’s?” He barked the words, then with a wince and grunt restrained himself. A nervous hand threw open the book, as if one of its intricate, flawed pages would lend support for his cause. Then with a soft, furious tone, Virtue explained, “I was Chief of Delving at the main research facility at the Grand Caldera. In secret, I taught myself how to fly. Alone, I stole one of our fastest pterosaurs, and I flew to within a hundred kilometers of the border. Inside a rainstorm, I jumped. I left the pterosaur to be shot down, and without armor or a parachute, I dropped through the canopy. When my shattered legs healed, I ran. I ran all the way to that shithole checkpoint of yours. That’s how badly I wanted to be here, Grandmother. Madam Miocene. Whatever the fuck you want to be called…!”
“It’s a grand epic,” Miocene offered. “All that’s missing is the motivation.”
Glowering silence.
“Chief of Delving,” she repeated. “What were you delving into at the Grand Caldera?”
“Energy.”
“Geothermal energy?”
“Hardly.” He glanced at his own hands, reporting, “There has always been a problem, and both nations know it. There’s too mu
ch energy running through this place. Energy to light the sky, and power enough to compress an entire world and hold it in one place. That’s power beyond what fission can supply. Or normal fusion. Even the great captains are at a loss to explain such a thing.”
“Hidden matter-antimatter reactors,” Miocene offered.
“Something’s hidden,” he agreed. One hand pulled a braid into his mouth, and he sucked on the wig’s dark hair for a moment. Then he spat it out again, and he told the Submaster, “I was delving into the deepest regions.”
“Of Marrow?”
A cursory nod. “Looking for your hidden reactors, I suppose.”
“Don’t you know what you were hunting?” she countered.
His hot gray eyes lifted, glaring at his accuser. “I know. You think I’m difficult, and you’re not the first to think it. Believe me.”
Miocene said nothing.
“But between us, who’s more difficult? You’ve lived on Marrow for thirty centuries, ruling a tiny piece of what you claim is a tiny world. You claim that only you and the other captains understand the beauty and enormity of the great universe, while your son and the other Waywards are idiots because they tell simple stories that halfway explain everything, making us into the reborn kings of the universe …
“We aren’t kings,” he proclaimed. “And I don’t believe that an arrogant old woman like you really understands the universe. Great and glorious and nearly boundless, it is, and what tiny fraction of it have you seen in your own little life…?”
Miocene watched the eyes, saying nothing.
“I was peering inside Marrow,” the youngster reported. “The Waywards have a larger, more sensitive array of seismic ears than yours. Since most of the world is theirs, after all. And since they believe in living with quakes, not in defusing them.”
“I know about your seismic array,” said Miocene.
“Using three thousand years of data, I built a thorough, detailed picture of the interior.” As he spoke, a rapture took hold of his gray eyes, his narrow face, then his small body. “Arrogance,” he said again, with a harsh disgust. “By your own admission, you piloted the Great Ship for a hundred millenia before you realized that Marrow was here. And now you’ve lived here for another three millenia, and hasn’t it ever occurred to you, just once, that the mysteries don’t stop? That there’s something hiding deep inside Marrow, too?”
Suddenly Miocene heard the distant singing, muted by walls and the spiraling staircase, the voices ragged and earnest and in their own way beautiful.
She heard herself ask, “What is this … this something…?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Is it large?”
“Fifty kilometers across. Approximately.” The young man sucked on another braid, then said, “I want to find out what it is. Give me the staff and the resources, and I’ll determine if the buttresses are being fed from down there.”
The Submaster took a breath, then another. Then she quietly, honestly, told the defector, “That can’t be our priority. Interesting as it is, the question has to wait.”
Gray eyes stared, then pulled shut.
A billious voice reported, “That’s exactly what Till told me. Word for fucking word.”
When the eyes opened, they saw a laser cradled in the Submaster’s right hand.
“Hey, now,” he whined.
Miocene aimed for the throat, then panned downward. Then she rose and came around the table, completing the chore with delicacy and thoroughness. Only the face and the mind behind it remained unconsumed, a voiceless scream having pulled the mouth wide open. The stink of cooked flesh and a burned wig made the air close, distasteful. Working quickly, Miocene opened a satchel and dumped the head inside. Then she walked between the stacks of books, her guard waiting as ordered, out of earshot.
He took the satchel without comment.
“As always,” was all she needed to say.
With a nod, the loyal guard left, using the emergency exit. The defector’s interrogations had only just begun; and if he could prove his worth, he would be reborn into a new, infinitely more productive life.
Miocene took her time repacking the electronic file-box and adding a vial of ash to the ash pile—exactly what would be left by a man’s head. Then she picked up the book that had so bothered her grandson, and on a whim, she opened it to the reactor. Virtue had been correct, she realized. And she made a footnote to future scholars before she carefully returned the volume to its proper shelf.
The temple administrator was waiting in the stairwell.
With her hands wrapped in front of her, half-hidden by her lumpy robe, she looked up at the Submaster, winced and began to ask, “Where is he—?”
Then she smelled death, or she saw it walking the stairs with Miocene.
“What…?” the woman sputtered, never more nervous.
“The defector,” Miocene replied, “was a spy. A transparent attempt to plant an agent in our midst.”
“But to kill him … here, in the temple…!”
“To my mind, there’s no more appropriate location.” The Submaster pushed past her, then remarked, “You may clean up. I would be most thankful if you would do me this favor, and that you never mention any of this to anyone.”
“Yes, madam,” a tiny voice squeaked.
Then Miocene was in the open hallway again, the rattling, ill-disciplined voices singing about the bridge soon to be built and the rewards to be won, and for no precise reason, it seemed important for her to step out into the expansive chamber, facing the ranks of devoted worshipers.
It was chilling and enchanting to realize how easily, almost effortlessly, children embraced the words and dreams of another. Miocene looked at the startled, smiling faces, seeing nothing but the purest belief. Yet these people knew nothing about the worlds beyond their own. None had walked the ship’s smallest hallway, much less witnessed the beauty and majesty of the Milky Way. They sang of this great quest to return to the world above, ready to make any sacrifice to move past their simple silver sky. A sky unblemished, save for that lone patch of darkness directly above—the base camp, still and always abandoned.
Abandoned like the ship itself?
Billions might have died, and Miocene didn’t care. Perhaps she once hated the idea that her people, following her reasonable instructions, had triggered an elaborate, ancient booby trap, causing every organism above them to be murdered. But what had horrified once was now history, past and murky as only history can be, and how could Miocene accept any blame for what was surely unavoidable?
The ship might be dead, but she most definitely was alive.
To the pleasure of several thousand parishioners, this living embodiment of everything great about themselves joined in with their singing, Miocene’s voice strong and and relentless and untroubled by its melodic failures.
How easily they believe, she thought with a fond contempt.
Then as she sang about the sweet light of G-class stars, Miocene asked herself, in her most secret voice, “But what if it’s the same for the great souls?”
She wondered:
“What do I believe too willingly and too well…?”
Twenty-two
THE COLD IRON would occasionally shift on its own, giving no warning. The old faults never moved quickly or particularly far, and they rarely caused damage of consequence. The tremor-abatement facilities absorbed the event’s energies, and where feasible, what was harvested was piped into the main power grid. In that sense, quakes were a blessing. But the unscheduled events had a nagging habit of interrupting a certain captain’s deepest sleep, causing her to awaken suddenly, her dreams swirling out of reach in those delicious few moments before she found herself lucid again.
That morning’s quake lingered. Awake in her bed, lying on her right side, Washen felt the shudder falling away slowly, turning into the quiet, steady, and purposeful drumming of her own heart.
The calendar on the wall displayed the date.
4611.277.
Sheer curtains cut to resemble the unfolded wings of a lusciousfly let in the anemic skylight, illuminating the bedroom in which she had slept for the last six centuries. Steel walls covered with polished umbra wood gave the structure a palpable, reassuring strength. The high steel ceiling bristled with hooks and potted plants and little wooden houses, drab as dirt, where domesticated lusciousflies roosted and made love. A rare species in the bright, hot days after the Event, the lovely creatures had been growing more abundant as the overhead buttresses diminished—a cycle presumably aeons old. At Promise-and-Dream’s Genetic Works, the siblings had tinkered with their colors and size, producing giant butterflylike organisms with elaborate, every-colored wings. Every Loyalist seemed to have his own flock. And since there were twenty million homes in the nation, the sibling captains had made themselves a tidy, even enviable profit.
As Washen sat up in bed, her lusciousflies came out to greet her. With the softness of shadows, they perched on her bare shoulders and in her hair, licking at the salt of her skin and leaving their subtle perfumes as payment.
She shooed them away with a gentle hand.
Her old clock lay open on the tabletop. According to the slow metal hands, she could sleep for another hour. But her body said otherwise. While the mirrored uniform dressed her, Washen remembered dreaming, and the tremor. For a few wasted moments, she tried to resurrect her last dream. But it had slipped away already, leaving nothing but a vague, ill-fed disquiet.
Not for the first time, it occurred to Washen that she could build a universe from her lost dreams.
“Maybe that’s their real purpose,” she whispered to her pets. “When my universe is finished, so am I.”
Laughing quietly, she set her mirrored cap on her head.
There.
Breakfast was peppered bacon over a toasted sweet-cake, everything washed down with hot tea and more hot tea. The Genetics Works were responsible for the bacon, too. A few centuries ago, responding to the captains’ complaints, Promise and Dream had cultured several familiar foods in lab vats; respectable steaks and cured meats were the result. But it was a minor project, finished quickly and cheaply. Instead of trying to resurrect the genetics of cattle and boars, from memory, the siblings used the only available meat-bearer—humans—tweaking the genetics enough to make a fleshy product that wasn’t human. Not in texture, or in flavor. Or hopefully, in spirit.
