Marrow

by Robert Reed

  “How many captains does it take to fuck?” one asked.

  “Three,” the others shouted. “Two to do it, while the third captain hands out the appropriate awards and citations!”

  “Where does the Master send her shit?” asked another.

  Everyone pointed at the nearest of the rocket nozzles, then broke into a familiar, half-amused giggle.

  Then Orleans leaned forward, asking, “What’s the difference between the new Master and the old one?”

  There was an abrupt silence. Everyone knew the question, but nobody recognized the joke. Which wasn’t surprising, since the old man had just dreamed it up.

  His newest mouth pulled into an enormous smile, short tusklike teeth tapping against the faceplate. “Any ideas? No?” Then he let off a big laugh, telling them, “Our new Master came back from the dead. While the old one was never alive.”

  Polite, if somewhat nervous laughter gave way to silence.

  Pivoting his helmet, Orleans showed his face to the crew. On a public channel, he told them, “It wasn’t very funny. You’re right.” But on a scrambled private channel, he said, “Don’t dwell on things.” He told them, “We’ll be dead soon enough. Relax.”

  Nervousness mutated into a useful determination. No, they were thinking, they wouldn’t die. His crew’s outlook was betrayed by their straight-backed postures and defiant fists. These were mostly youngsters, and most still believed they could fool death by culturing a positive attitude along with their innate cleverness and deserved good fortune. “Not me,” each thought. “I won’t die today.” Then one after another, they turned their faces toward the rocket’s nozzle, looking at its vastness, and at the brilliant column of light—the new Master’s farts—the light dwarfing everything else, splitting the universe neatly in two.

  Only Orleans ignored the spectacle. He kept his amber eyes focused on the blisterlike buildings that flanked the wide roadway. In a rare mood, he found himself feeling sentimental, recalling that when he was a youngster, he thoroughly expected to be dead by now. Vaporized by an impact comet, probably. The idea that he could outlive everyone in his generation … well, it didn’t seem like a possibility then. Such an impossibly long life would prove a Remora’s cowardice, or at least a crippling sense of caution. Yet Orleans was neither a coward nor a worrier, and he had a sharp disrespect for luck, good and otherwise.

  Over the centuries, then the millenia, he had seen friends die without warning or a fair chance. He had outlived children and grandchildren, then descendants who carried a tiny fraction of his unique seeds. But it wasn’t luck that had carried him this far. Not good luck, or its evil mate. What was to blame, undoubtedly, was the universe’s own magnificent, seamless indifference.

  Orleans was too small to be noticed.

  Too insignificant to send a comet plummeting his way.

  His was a faith rich with logic and an ascetic’s beauty, and until this moment, it seemed to be a durable, determined faith. But suddenly a second possibility had crawled into view. Perhaps, just perhaps, some great Fate had long ago taken Orleans under its protective shroud, saving him for this day and this moment, making it possible for him to make this inconspicuous journey across the ship’s vast and stark and enchanting hull.

  The city wasn’t even a name when Orleans was born. But today it was large enough that leaving it seemed to take forever. Building after blister-shaped building streaked past. Hyperfiber homes, for the most part. Minimalist places with walls and a roof, hard vacuum and ample privacy, where couples and other mating configurations contributed their seeds, babies born inside hyperfiber wombs that expanded as needed, both child and machine developing hands and legs, and a head, and deemed “born” during a day-long celebration that culminated when a fully functioning reactor and recycle system were strapped onto the Remora’s wide back.

  Between the homes were the rare shops hawking what few wares could entice citizens who had absolutely no need for food or drink, and who disapproved of most possessions. Other structures were assembled from clear diamond, and unlike buildings, they were sealed against the vacuum. Sealed and stocked with a variety of species, terran and otherwise. Every organism was nominally immortal, and under the rain of hard radiations and the force of simple time, they had mutated in chaotic fashions, yielding a wild assortment of shapes and unlikely colors, and unexpected, sometimes entertaining behaviors.

  Remoran parks, in essence.

  The largest park was on the city’s fringe, and as they passed that blur of color and shape, Orleans told himself to go there and take a look at its inhabitants. Who knew? Perhaps he would find inspiration for his next self-induced transformation.

  The skimmer streaked into the open, accelerating to its limits.

  Time moved sluggishly, stubbornly, Again, then again, Orleans showed his face to his crew, and on the scrambled channel, he forced them to repeat their timetable and describe each of their critical jobs. Then for the first time, he finally looked at their target, and he allowed himself a deep quick breath, holding his personal atmosphere inside lungs that were only glancingly human—lungs built by a lifetime of carefully directing mutations that gave them and their slow black blood an efficiency bordering on perfection.

  The Remoran ideal.

  Like thousands of skimmers in the past, theirs was slipping close to the giant nozzle, taking them toward the ship’s leading face. A slab of scrap hyperfiber lay in the open. Even at their enormous speed, the AI pilot should have had time to notice it, and react. But the AI—old and notorious for its failures—announced that it was ill, and a human would have to drive from this point on.

  In those critical moments, the slab cocked itself, then sprang up.

  Engulfed by the skimmer’s forcefield, it spun once, then was driven into the diamond body, slicing into machinery and knocking both reactors off-line.

  In less than three kilometers, the skimmer dropped to the hull and stopped.

  Within moments, an automated plea was sent, and an empty skimmer began navigating its way though city traffic, making for the crippled vessel. And just to make the drama more genuine, the Remoran dispatcher laughed at the crew’s misery and embarrassment, telling a favorite old joke.

  “Why’s the sky full of stars?”

  Several dozen recorded voices replied in a carefully ragged chorus.

  “To entertain Remoras!” they screamed. “While we wait for fucking parts!”

  Forty-one

  WASHEN COULD TELL, even at a distance, even though they were wearing the bruise-black uniforms of security troops, and their skin was gradually losing its smoky cast as the ship’s lights and new foods worked on their flesh; with all that, Washen could still see them for what they were.

  Waywards.

  The two-engine burn was half-finished, and five Waywards were calmly working their way down the narrow avenue. If Washen was as obvious as they, she was doomed. The next pair of staring eyes would spot her, and a narrow burst of laser light would boil away her new body, and whatever was left would be carried straight to the new Master, Washen’s miseries just beginning. But she reminded herself that she didn’t stand out, even a little bit. She had a name and robust identity that would absorb every scrutiny. She was wearing a mask of someone else’s skin, giving her an appearance designed not to draw attention. What’s more, Washen had ceased to be. The first-grade captain was thousands of years dead. The Loyalist leader died more than a century ago. If she was especially fortunate, both of these women had been forgotten, wiped into a delicious anonymity that in the fullness of time would claim everyone who happened to be sitting here today.

  “Delicious,” she muttered.

  “What is?” asked one of her companions.

  “The ice cream,” she allowed, smiling as she dipped her spoon back into the melting brown mound. Then with an understated honesty, she said, “It’s been a little while since I enjoyed a good chocolate.”

  Pamir nodded agreeably. He was wearing a handsome
face, and like Washen, he wore a simple dark ochre robe that made them look like clergy members in any of several different Rationalist faiths. As clergy members, they were ready to proselytize with the slightest encouragement, which was why most of their fellow passengers tried to avoid small talk with them. It was the perfect identity for two humans who needed to hide in the bustling heart of the ship.

  The third member of their little party was even more imposing. Massive and towering, he lifted a mug of something rancid and took a few long swallows down his eating hole, while his breathing hole quietly whistled a few words.

  “It is a beautiful place, this place,” his translator declared.

  Pamir glanced at Washen, allowing himself a knowing grin. Then he stared at the harum-scarum’s face, asking, “How’s your drink?”

  The alien was mostly heated plastic and hidden motors. Locke was tucked inside the long body, his legs tied back and arms bound at his sides. Everything that the harum-scarum would see, he saw. Everything it heard was piped into his ears. But his mouth was filled with a permeable plastic, and a small AI told the machine when to move and what to say. Locke was a passenger inside that automaton. He was cargo. Since the early days of the ship, devices of this ilk had smuggled things illegal and precious. According to Pamir, this was the best model on hand—considering the limits of time and their very special needs.

  The false voice whistled, answering Pamir’s question. “My drink is beautiful,” said the box on the broad chest.

  “And what’s beauty?” asked Washen, sounding very much like a proselytizer. “Do you remember what we told you, friend?”

  “The residue of reason mixed in a sea of chaos,” their companion answered.

  “Precisely,” said the humans, in a shared voice, both dipping spoons into their beautiful desserts. Then Washen stared off at the Waywards, saying, “Chaos,” to herself, under her quickening breath.

  * * *

  WALKING THE AVENUE, watching aliens and strange humans going about their very strange lives, the Waywards struggled to retain a sense of total control. No, they didn’t come from a backward world. No, they weren’t awed by the endless cosmopolitan landscape that was the Great Ship. In their smiling faces and grim, staring eyes, they showed nothing but a cocky toughness common to police officers anywhere. And elaborate sensors automatically probed and prodded the strange bodies around them, teasing out their secrets, proving that there was nothing here to be feared.

  And yet.

  Behind the eyes was a nervousness, childlike and almost endearing.

  As they approached the cafe, Washen studied them with nothing but her own eyes and experience. Obviously, the five Waywards had spent their short lives making ready for today. For this particular walk. They’d always known that they would board the Great Ship, reclaiming it for the Builders. They had studied their roles and practiced a thousand scenarios to exhaustion—scenarios designed by Miocene, no doubt—and like children anywhere, they couldn’t help but accept this day with a rigorous lack of imagination.

  Of course they were here. Of course they ruled the ship! After all, this moment had been promised to them by Till and the dead Builders. From the moment they were born, and in every spoken word…!

  But despite simulations and every carefully entombed lesson, the reality of this place was beginning to slam down on their inexperienced heads; a whiff-Kon saluted them with its tail, and one young man jerked his hand, ready to fend off an imagined blow. A golden rilly bird landed on one of their armored shoulders, wanting to sing for food and getting nothing but a quick shove for its trouble. Then a human child, perhaps knowing a little something about Waywards, said, “For you,” He was sitting at a nearby table, and he said, “A gift, sir.” Then he handed up a wide, greenish-brown beetle. No, it was a cockroach. Something that the child had caught under the cafe tables, probably.

  The Wayward accepted the gift and pointed sensors at its body and kicking legs. Then he glanced at his companions, and receiving no suggestions, he did what must have seemed like the polite thing.

  He pushed the roach into his mouth, and chewed.

  What was a quiet avenue became deathly silent. Passengers and a few off-duty crew members held their breath until the Wayward swallowed. By then, he sensed that he had guessed wrong, and for a moment, he was lost. What should he do now? But then some teacher’s sage advice came back to him, and he said, “What a wonderful flavor.” He said it with a humble charm. Then he laughed, working desperately to expose his embarrassment to his very tense audience.

  A palpable relief came from everywhere at once.

  Wrapped inside that tiny drama was a lesson. Washen glanced at Pamir, and he nodded, seeing it for himself.

  The old Master and her dusty old captains weren’t missed. The mutiny had been quick and virtually bloodless, and the mutineers—whatever their motives—had a simple charm, not to mention other qualities that tourists always appreciated:

  These Waywards were a different sort of people, novel and new, and in the most unexpected ways, they could be entertaining.

  The patrol continued with its sweep, and after another few moments, they arrived at Washen’s table, a first little glance giving them no reason to linger. But the trailing officer—a strong chocolate-colored woman—seemed to notice something about the three of them, and she hesitated. She stared at Washen, and too late, Washen realized that she had been staring at one of the youngish men, his quick face and smoky gray eyes reminding her of Diu.

  One of Diu’s children, perhaps.

  The woman said, “Please, if you would. Your idenitities, please.”

  Her fellow officers paused and looked over their shoulders, waiting with a professional impatience.

  Washen, then Pamir, offered their new names and flecks of other people’s skin. The harum-scarum obeyed last, its attitude perfectly in keeping with its nature—an angry tangle of sounds diluted in the translation:

  “I resent you, but you have the power.”

  The woman seemed to understand the species. “I have the power,” she agreed, “but I admire you just the same.” Then their names were checked against the ship’s extensive rosters, and when everything appeared as it should, she told the three of them, “Thank you for your gracious cooperation.”

  “You’re welcome,” Pamir replied, for everyone.

  The Wayward seemed ready to leave, then had second thoughts. Or she pretended second thoughts, taking a half-step before pausing, a glance at Washen preceding the careful question, “Why don’t you approve of us?”

  “Is that what you think?” asked Washen.

  “Yes.” There was something of Aasleen in the face and manners. Perhaps it meant nothing, but the woman seemed less like a Wayward than the others. She said, “Ignorance,” with a delicate anger. Then shaking her head as if disappointed, she added, “You consider yourself a person of rational intelligence. As I understand your Rationalist uniform. But I don’t believe you have any understanding of me. Is that true?”

  Washen said, “Probably somewhat true, yes.”

  The officer was scanning her—a deep, thorough scan meant to find any abnormalities, any excuse for a deeper interrogation. Conversation was an excuse to stand too close and stare.

  “About this world of yours,” Washen began. “This Marrow place—”

  “Yes?”

  “It seems very mysterious. And unlikely, I think.”

  These weren’t points easily deflected. The woman shrugged her shoulders, and with a forced amiability quoted a Rationalist maxim. “‘Good questions asked well dispel every mystery.’”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Hazz City,” the woman replied.

  “When?”

  “Five hundred and five years ago.”

  Washen nodded, wondering if she had ever met this woman. “Hazz City … is that a Wayward place…?”

  “Yes.”

  “Always?”

  The woman nearly took the bait. Then s
he hesitated, and with a delicate accuracy, she told everyone in the cafe, “Marrow isn’t a large world. And as long as humans have lived there, in one flavor or another, everything on it has been Wayward.”

  Washen sat motionless, and silent.

  Their interrogator turned to Pamir, saying, “Please, sir. Ask a good question.”

  The false face grinned, and after a half-moment, he wondered aloud, “When can I go down and see this world of yours?”

  She was scanning Pamir, and her companions formed a half-circle around the table, their sonics and infrareds probbing from different vantage points. The man with Diu’s eyes laughed gently, then said, “You can visit there now, if you want.”

  As a prisoner, he meant.

  The woman disapproved. She said it with a hard glance, then calmly and smoothly explained to Pamir, “In the near future, there will be tours. Of course. It’s a very lovely world, and I’m sure it will be a popular destination.”

  Some of the passengers nodded agreeably, probably eager for the day.

  Then the harum-scarum belched with a solid thud, and drawing everyone’s attention, he promised, “I have a better question than theirs.”

  “By all means,” said the woman.

  “May I join the Waywards?”

  That brought a nervous little silence. Then the woman smiled with a genuine serenity, and she gave the honest answer.

  “I don’t know,” she told the alien. “But when I find myself in Till’s company again, I will certainly ask—”

  She was interrupted by a sudden motion.

  Abrupt, and small. But the motion was noticed. Patrons at other tables looked down in astonishment, watching as the faces of their drinks rippled, as the ceiling and walls and rigid stone floor trembled.

  A sound followed after the motion. There was a low, low roar that came sweeping from above, racing down the avenue and passing deeper into the ship.

  Washen feigned surprise.

  Pamir did it better. He straightened his back and looked at the woman officer, and with a voice edging into terror, he asked, “What the fuck was that?”