Marrow

by Robert Reed

  “But Locke,” a second voice remarked, “don’t you realize? He was probably my father, too.”

  Miocene recognized that voice.

  Plainly stunned, Locke asked, “Was he? How do you know?”

  The Submaster inhaled, and again she forced her eyes to open. Her son was kneeling before her, eyes focused on her eyes, that charming, pretty face breaking into a knowing smile. “Am I right, Mother? Was Diu my father?”

  One of her most cherished secrets. All those vials of semen, and she selected a donor with gifts but minimal status. A father who wouldn’t be in any position to contest her role as the child’s sole parent …

  Miocene nodded.

  The whistling had stopped now. With blood on her tongue, she softly asked, “How long … have you known…?”

  Till laughed for a moment. Then he said, “Always.”

  Locke stumbled into view, at least as shocked as Miocene. “We’re brothers, and you always knew it,” he muttered, wrestling with the possibilities. Then he quietly and fearfully asked, “What else did you know?”

  Miocene spat out the blood, then said, “It was always Diu. Always.”

  Her son had deep cold eyes.

  Locke stepped nearer, whispering, “But you knew that, too.” He was staring at Till, saying, “I saw you. While Diu was confessing, I saw it in your face. You already knew all about his deceptions!”

  Till winked fondly at his mother.

  Then he looked at his half brother, and with a smooth, untroubled voice, said, “Our father was an agent. A means. A great tool of the Builders. But Diu’s work was finished, and you did exactly what was necessary, and nothing has changed. Do you hear me, Locke? You had to kill that man, or he would have murdered someone in whom the Builders have all their great, glorious hopes…”

  Locke glanced at new gray wall, his face slick with tears.

  Till looked down and said, “Mother,” with a firm, low voice.

  “I’ve been wrong,” said the shattered woman. “Wrong, and stupid.”

  “You have been,” he allowed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t know how sorry.”

  Till said nothing.

  Then she whimpered, “Forgive me. Can you, please?”

  His expression gave his answer. He smiled warmly, if only for an instant. Then he stood and remarked to Locke, “We need to hide our presence. As best as we can, then better. Then we’ll use Diu’s fancy machine to return to Marrow, and we’ll shut the tunnel as our father planned.”

  Carefully, Locke asked, “What about my mother?”

  Till sighed and said, “Let her sleep. For now, that’s all that we can do.”

  Locke wiped at his tears, but he moved like a man who knew his duty, who understood what was expected of him.

  Waywards could make wonderful followers, thought Miocene. Then she coughed, and with a stronger voice, she suggested, “You could go above … and look at the ship for yourself. Just once.”

  Till regarded her with pity and with amusement. “What did you find up there, Mother?”

  Miocene’s old anger fused with a new rage. Emotion helped her sit up again, her trembling hand grasping a piece of dead heart muscle, crushing it as she said, “The Master’s an idiot, unfit for her office … obviously, obviously…”

  Till nodded knowingly.

  “For my forgiveness,” he asked, “what are you willing to give?”

  “Anything,” Miocene muttered. “Tell me what you want…!”

  But her son merely shook his head, and with a sad, sturdy voice, he said to Locke, “Your laser.” Then with the weapon in both hands, he said to his mother, “You’re wrong. Don’t you see? I have never wanted you to follow me.”

  “No?” she squeaked.

  “That’s not my destiny,” he promised. “Or yours.”

  Then she understood—suddenly; perfectly—and her eyes grew wide.

  Till aimed the laser at her broken body, and with a flash of blue-white light, he destroyed everything but her tough old mind, plus enough skull and unburnt hair to serve as a trustworthy handle.

  PART 3

  THE MASTER’S CHAIR

  This was what it was: a trillion voices assembled into the least disciplined of choirs, every singer screaming its own passionate melody, each using some cumbersome, intensely personal language, and inside that mayhem and majesty, only one entity was capable of hearing the plaintive squeak of the softest, shyest voice.

  Such was the Master Captain’s burden, and her consuming, exhilarating joy.

  With perfect ears, she listened to the wind profiles over the enormous Alpha Sea. The Blue Sea. Lawson’s Sea. Blood-as-Blessing Sea. And those other five hundred and ninety-one major bodies of standing water. She heard the ship’s shield strengths. The health of its laser arrays. The repair status on its forward face: fair, good, excellent. (Never poor, and mostly excellent.) Plus the hydrogen harvests from the extrasolar environment, in metric tons per microsecond. She knew the oxygen profiles of every chamber, hallway, and inhabited closet. (Two tenths of a percent too high in the Quagmire, endangering its minimally aerobic passengers.) Carbon dioxide levels to the same warm precision. Biologically inactive gases, less so. And there were the ambient light levels. And voices that spoke of temperature. Humidity. Toxin checks. Photosynthetic rates, measured by direct means and by implication. Decay rates and decay agents. Biological; chemical; unknown. Census figures, updated with precision every seven seconds. Immigrants; emigrants; births; asexual divisions; and the occasional wail of Death. Comprehensive lists of passengers were compiled and recompiled. By species. By home world. By audible name, or structured touch, or the distinct and enriching scent of an individual fart. And according to their payment, too. Ship currency, or barter, or through gifts of knowledge. Profit was as critical as hydrogen harvests and oxygen counts, and it was calculated on twenty-three separate and elaborate scales, none of which was perfectly accurate. But linked together, they built a comprehensive estimate that wasn’t too much of a shambles, and it was that heavy-shouldered estimate that was beamed toward the now distant Earth, once every six hours, along with a comprehensive sketch of the ship’s last quarter of a day: in essence, reminding whoever might be listening thirty thousand years from today that here they were and and their voyage was progressing according to schedule and the going was going quite well, thank you.

  Said the Master’s own voice.

  The one-time derelict had evolved into a vibrant ship, rich and fundamentally happy—at least so far as a Master’s many nexuses could measure qualities as ethereal and private as happiness.

  But one matter kept worrying both nexuses and the woman, and that was the nagging, impossible mystery about Miocene and the other missing captains.

  When her captains first vanished, the Master’s response was a purposeful, magnificent panic. She dispatched security troops, uniformed and otherwise, who combed the vast ship, hunting for a few hundred women and men. At first the troops used subtle means, then after a barren week, random sweeps were implemented. And after another month of conspicuous failure, the troops gathered up known troublemakers and unlikable souls and held an assortment of surgical interrogations.

  Yet the missing captains—the best of the best—still would not be found.

  Colleagues soon realized the scope of things, and as whispered words let the news slip, first to the low-ranking crew members, then to the passengers themselves, explanations became mandatory. Which was why the Master fabricated the story about a secret mission to a distant world, leaving the purpose and exact destination undefined, allowing her audiences’ imagination and paranoia to fill in the unknowns. All that mattered was that she repeated the story often enough, forcing others to believe it, and after a century without any word from the missing captains, or even one plausable sighting, the Master put on a sorrowful face, then made a very public announcement.

  “The captains’ ship is missing,” she reported.

  It
was her annual banquet; thousands of lesser captains blinked at the news, putting on their own sorrowful faces as the words sank deep.

  “Their ship is missing and presumed destroyed,” she continued. “I wish I could explain their mission. But I cannot. Suffice to say that our colleagues and good friends are heroes, and we are forever in their debt, as is the Great Ship.”

  New security measures were in charge. Devised by the Master and implemented by her elite guard, these paranoias were intended to keep watch over the remaining captains. Old escape routes, wise in an earlier age, were forbidden and ordered dismantled. New nexuses incorporated into her vast body did nothing but report on the captains’ whereabouts and activities, failures and successes, and without being too intrusive, passed along certain thoughts, too.

  By then, the shortfall of captains was a real and pernicious issue. Only few percent of the roster were missing. Yet efficiencies had dropped by a full quarter, and innovation had collapsed by nearly sixty percent. The Master found herself studying the talents of every crew member, then the human passengers, too. Who among these warm immortal bodies would make a passable captain? Whom could she trust with some little part of the ship, if only to dress them in the proper uniform and march them up and down the public avenues, lending confidence to those who needed it most?

  Talent—genuine instinctive lead-us-around-the-galaxy talent—was in short supply.

  Even with training, time, and genetic tinkering, few souls had the deep ambition and the need for duty that captains required. The Master found herself automating more and more nexuses, making her days and nights even busier. Plainly, a few willing and talented souls would be a blessing. But how to find them? Her ship was so far from the Terran colonies, and her needs were so terribly, unbearably urgent …

  “What about a general amnesty…?” suggested her new First Chair.

  His name was Earwig, and he was thrilled with Miocene’s disappearance. Which was exactly as it should be. But Earwig lacked his predecessor’s better qualities, including Miocene’s good sense to publicly admit her ambitions. Not to mention her notorious inability to forgive and forget.

  “An amnesty?” said the Master, her voice doubtful. But not decided.

  “At last count, madam, eighty-nine captains have left the ranks. Some are imprisoned for minor crimes, while others long ago vanished into the general population, assuming new names and faces, and lives without responsibility.”

  “We need such people?” asked the Master.

  “If they willingly start at a low rank,” he argued. “And if their crimes are small enough that you, in your magnificence, can forgive them. I should think yes, we might make good use of them. Yes.”

  She summoned the list herself.

  In a fraction of a second, AI functionaries digested those eighty-nine lives and service records, and her conscious soul looked at the names, remembering most, surprised by the talent listed there. A smooth strong finger pointed at the highest-ranking name while her voice rumbled. “What do you think happened to your predecessor?”

  “Madam?”

  “To Miocene. I want your best guess.” She held her giant hand steady, repeating the obvious. “Several hundred colleagues vanished on the same day, and we haven’t found so much as a lost finger, and where do you think they must be?”

  “Far away,” was his verdict.

  Then sensing her mood as any good First Chair should, he added. “It was an alien influence.” Several species were named, all local and all suspicious. “They could have bribed our captains, or kidnapped them. Then smuggled them off the ship.”

  “Why those captains?”

  Ego made him say, “I don’t know why. Madam.”

  It wasn’t a matter of talent, he seemed to be claiming. Even though both of them knew otherwise.

  “You should trust your new security measures.” Earwig was dragging the conversation back toward the amnesty issue. “We can watch each of these forgiven captains. If they disappoint, we act appropriately. You can act, madam. There is absolutely no chance of a repetition of these events, madam.”

  “Am I worried about a repetition?”

  “Maybe I am,” he replied. Then he remembered to smile, looking at the list of fallen captains, at the name that the Master had firmly under her finger.

  Quietly, he said, “Pamir,” aloud.

  She watched her First Chair, then asked. “Do you really believe that a general amnesty would work? That a man like Pamir would give up his freedom for this uniform?”

  “Give up his freedom?” Earwig sputtered, not understanding those words.

  Then, struggling to please the Master, he added, “I remember Pamir. He was a talented, natural captain. Sometimes abrasive, yes. But whatever else is said about him, madam … Pamir was adept at wearing our uniform…”

  * * *

  THE AMNESTY WAS well advertised in the more discreet venues, and it was given a life span of exactly one century.

  During its first two minutes, half of the imprisoned and AWOL captains accepted its terms, begging forgiveness for their various crimes. Quietly but openly, each was returned to service, given a modest rank and obscure responsibilities, and after five decades of reliable service, they were awarded small promotions of pay and station.

  Pamir hadn’t appeared.

  The Master was disappointed but not surprised. She had known that man forever, it seemed. In a passing sense, she even understood him. It wouldn’t be like Pamir to join that first wave of supplicants. A laudable mistrust was part of his makeup, true. But more importantly, he was a creature of tremendous, almost crippling pride. In the amnesty’s final years, as more lost souls came forward, Pamir’s absence grew more notable. Even the Master decided that if he was still alive and still living on the ship—two enormous suppositions—then it would take a gift sweeter than forgiveness to bring him home to her.

  Twenty minutes before the amnesty ended, a large man wearing a contemplator’s robe and sandals and loosely fitting Pamir’s description strolled into the security office at Port Beta, sat with a casual calm, and told everyone in earshot, “I’ve gotten bored out there, I want my job back, or something halfway close to it.”

  Deep scans matched him to the missing captain.

  “You need to beg for the Master’s forgiveness,” he was told. With twenty tough purple and black clad police officers sitting and standing on all sides of the big unhandsome man, the resident general explained. “It’s a basic term of the amnesty. In fact, it’s the only term. She can see you and hear you. Beg now. Go on.”

  Pamir wouldn’t.

  Several thousand kilometers removed, the Master watched the man shake his head, telling his audience. “I won’t apologize for any of it. And you might as well not tire your mouth by asking.”

  Stunned, the general blinked and said. “You don’t have any choice, Pamir.”

  “What was my crime?” he replied.

  “You allowed a dangerous entity on board. And you were implicated in the destruction of one of our finest waste-treatment plants.”

  “And yet.” Pamir shrugged his shoulders, then admitted, “I don’t feel particularly guilty. Or even a little bit sorry.”

  Thousands of kilometers away, the Master watched. Listened. And behind the great flat of her hand, she smiled.

  “I did what was right,” he added. Then he looked past his accusers, guessing where the security eye was hiding. Speaking only to the Master, he pointed out, “I can’t ask for forgiveness, real forgiveness, if I don’t feel guilt.”

  “True enough,” she whispered to herself.

  The officers were less appreciative. One after another, they shook their heads in disgust, and the angriest man—a long-armed fellow laced with ape genes and a graceless temper—made a stupid threat.

  “We’ll arrest you, then. A trial, a quick conviction. And you spend the rest of this long long voyage sitting in the tiniest, darkest cell.”

  Pamir regarded the angry man, no
thing showing on his face.

  Then he rose to his feet, pointing out, “The amnesty has another eight minutes. I can still leave. But I suppose you could forget the time and wrestle me down. If that’s what you’ve got your hearts and stomachs set on, that is.”

  Half of the officers were thinking about tackling him.

  As if to tease, Pamir took a long step toward the office door. Then he pretended second thoughts. He halfway laughed, halfway turned. Looking back at the security eye again, at the Master, he said, “Remember all those vanished captains? The ones who, according to that ridiculous story of yours, left us on that secret mission…?”

  No one spoke, or moved, or remembered to breathe.

  “A week after she’d dropped out of sight … I saw one of your captains…”

  The ship’s trillion voices went silent.

  Suddenly the Master heard nothing but Pamir, and she saw no one else. From her quarters just beneath Port Alpha, she shouted, “Whom did you see?”

  At lightspeed, it seemed to take forever for her voice to reach its audience. But it boomed nonetheless, causing every head but one to jerk in surprise.

  “Leave the room,” she roared. “Everyone but Captain Pamir leaves!”

  For an instant, Pamir let the police see his smile. They bristled, made hard fists, and filed away. Then it was just the two of them, and the Master severed every input and output save one, and she appeared before him as shaped light and a panicky voice, demanding from the man, “Which of my captains did you see?”

  Quietly, and appearing almost amused, he said, “Washen.”

  Pamir and Washen had been close friends, if memory served.

  For that wide instant, she wasn’t the Master any longer. The trillion voices were forgotten, the Great Ship left to drift through space without her direction, and the effect, if anything, was pleasant. Bracing, buoyant. Welcome.

  “Where did you see Washen?”

  In crisp, certain detail, Pamir told enough to be believed.

  Then with a wise grin, he added, “I want my old rank back. You don’t have to pay me or trust me. But I’d be bored and useless if I were a millionth-grade captain.”