by Robert Reed
Everyone watched as she stepped out into the open and looked up. But wasn’t it too soon for the cold rain? Then they saw her waving at something overhead, and every captain and both of the Waywards looked up together, watching in stunned silence while a fleet of whale-shaped vessels began to slow, making ready for a hard landing.
Pamir was first to step out.
Perri and ten armed harum-scarums followed.
Aasleen immediately recognized Pamir’s craggy face, and she laughed, and she said, “What is this? Don’t you know there’s a flood coming?”
Pamir lifted his eyebrows, grinning. Then he took his first good look at Marrow.
“Oh, I turned off that flood,” he remarked in a casual voice. “Long ago,” he said. “A lake of hydrogen inside that big long tube of vacuum … well, it evaporates as it falls. Believe me, we swam through what’s left of it, and we probably won’t get two drops here.”
Sounding insulted, Dream asked Washen, “What about your threat? About sending down that killing flood?”
“I’m not that cruel,” Washen replied. “I don’t murder helpless worlds.”
Pamir shook his head and threw a long arm around Washen, pulling her close. “You wouldn’t have?”
“I just like to tease worlds now and again,” she added, smiling and weeping in the same instant, thinking that never in her long, strange life had she ever felt so tired …
PART 5
THE BUILDERS
Each of my engines screams and spits fire, and those titanic, withering energies translate into the gentlest of nudges. I hear nothing but a quiet coaxing voice trying to whisper me nearer to that swollen, dying sun. And I obey the voice. I obey even when I foresee a collision with its tenuous atmosphere. Even as I feel pricks and little deaths within my body, I obey the simple laws of motion and force and inertia, dipping nearer to the sun, and nearer … a bracing, wondrous fear taking hold of me …
An engine dies.
Then, two others.
Deep inside me, a series of hard bright explosions collapse fuel lines and fuse screaming pumps. The surviving engines continue to burn, but softer now. The gentle nudge has diminished to a gentle breath from behind and beside me.
But still, I fall toward the sun.
My fear loses its wonder.
Gradually and thoroughly, a wild panic seizes me.
With a sudden clarity, I watch the great war against my engines. Every act of violence is too small to matter, or slightly misplaced, or simply ill-timed. The cumulative effects are slow to gather, hard to perceive. Finally, in agony, I rally myself, trying to come to the aid of my companions.
Perhaps in tiny ways, I am felt. Heard. Believed.
A Remora considers a thousand valves, and as I whisper my advice, she closes the only valve that does lasting good.
A magnetic bottle, billions of years old and never ill, fails abruptly, at the best possible moment, spewing shards of antiiron into a spiking facility working at full throttle.
Human engineers assassinate AIs who won’t listen to reason, then replace the machines at their posts.
Debris clogs a minor fuel line.
Harum-scarums attack my engines as if their brilliant fire and light are personal affronts to them.
One stubborn engine is tilted in the opposite direction, then fed all of the fuel that it can possibly consume.
And finally, the !eech habitat is torn from the fuel tank’s ceiling, then shoved crosswise into the gaping throat of an enormous fuel line …
Two more engines sputter, good as dead.
But still I can nearly taste the sun, feeling its heat and breath against my great skin … and a moon-sized lump of iron and nickel plunges into my side, cutting deep but leaving me intact … lending just enough momentum to keep me out here … to make me miss the sun by what, when I consider the vast distances that I have covered, is nothing …
I miss by nothing.
And a little later, still celebrating my very good fortune. I pass near a tiny and black and enormously massive something … and again, my trajectory changes … and peering past the curtain of stars and whirling planets. I can see where I will be going next …
Blackness, again.
The sunless nothing, again.
And in a strange, almost unexpected fashion, I realize this is where I want to be … feeling as though I am happily falling toward home again.…
Epilogue
“TRY TALKING.”
“Hello?” said a sloppy, slow voice.
“Sorry. It’s still too early, madam. I’m well aware. But you deserve to know what’s happened, and what’s happening now, and what you can expect when you get legs again. And a real voice. Not sounds made by a mechanical box.”
“Pamir?” she squeaked.
“Yes, madam.”
“Am I … alive, still…?”
“We found your remains, and the other captains’, too. Most of them, at least.” Pamir nodded, even though the patient couldn’t see him. “Your heads were stacked inside one of your little rooms. Waiting for trial, I suppose. If Miocene had had her way…”
“Where’s Miocene?”
“Your best friend? Your favorite and most trusted colleague?” He allowed himself a harsh laugh, then admitted, “Miocene died. And let’s just leave it there for now. Explanations can wait a few days.”
“My ship?”
“Battered, but recovering. Madam.”
Silence.
“Her mutiny managed to fail,” he promised. “There are pockets of resistance. Gangs and loners, and that’s about it. There’s no way to bring up reinforcements now.”
“Who … who do I thank…?”
Pamir offered silence.
“You?” she asked.
Again, silence.
Finally, betraying a stew of emotions, she said, “Thank you, Pamir.”
“And Washen, too.”
A confused sound rose up from the box. Then the Master muttered, “I guess I don’t understand very much. Do I?”
“Barely anything. Madam.”
A pause. Then, “Who else do I thank?”
“The Remoras,” he said. “And the harum-scarums. With help from another hundred species, plus a few million machine intelligences, too.”
Silence.
Pamir continued, admitting to the Master, “I found lots of cooperation. But to keep it, I had to make promises. Fat ones.”
A pause. Then, “Yes?”
“We’ve got holes to fill among the captains’ ranks, and elsewhere. I assured our new allies that they would be our first candidates—”
“Remoras?” she interrupted.
“‘Everything that can think, can serve.’ That’s been my little motto for the last few weeks. I thought it was best.”
“Harum-scarums? As captains?”
“If they want to stay on board. Yes, madam. Naturally.”
“But why would they leave? Because a few sick officers tried to take my ship—?”
“Well, that’s not really what’s happening.” Pamir laughed again, adding, “Everything is complicated, and most of the answers would take too long. But what you need to know, before anything … we aren’t following our planned course, I’m afraid—”
“What?”
“In fact, in another few millennia, we’ll be passing out of the galaxy entirely. Moving in the general direction of the Virgo cluster, it seems.”
A glowering silence.
Then the mechanical voice asked, “What about me?”
“What about you, madam?”
“Will I remain the Master?”
“Personally, I’m split on this issue.” Pamir took a dark satisfaction, each word delivered with a practiced care. “You surrounded yourself, madam, with competent achievers, and you cultivated their ambition, and when a few captains turned on you, you were surprised. Unprepared, and incompetent, and flabbergasted.”
Angry silence.
“Miocene wanted to put you
on trial. And I could do that. As acting Master, I have the authority, in principle, and with the general mood around here, I think you’d lose your precious chair. In a fair trial, or even if you were allowed every advantage.”
A pause. Then, “All right, Pamir. What are your intentions?”
“We can’t lose you. Not in the wake of any mutiny, and not with so many changes coming this quickly.” He sighed, then added, “Our ship needs continuity and a familiar face, and if you don’t agree to reclaiming your chair—with some provisions—I will contrive some way to put your face and your big windy voice in front of the passengers and crew. Am I understood?”
She said, “Yes.”
After a contemplative moment, she said, “Fine.”
After a long, painful wait, she said, “Of course you want to be my First Chair. Isn’t that right, Pamir?”
“Me? No.” He laughed for a long moment. A deep, honest laugh. Then he told her, “But I know someone more qualified. By a long ways.”
The Master might be battered and disoriented. But she was sharp enough to make a good guess, asking, “Where’s Washen? May I speak with her?”
“Eventually,” Pamir allowed.
Then he rose to his feet and set the mirrored cap on his head, at the customary angle, and he mentioned, “Your First Chair is setting things right around the ship. Believe me, you wouldn’t trust anyone else with this assignment.”
Quietly, almost submissively, the Master said, “Thank you again, Pamir.”
“Yeah. You’re welcome.”
Then with a whispering laugh, she added, “I knew you’d bring sweet luck someday. Didn’t I tell you that I had a feeling? Didn’t I?”
But the Master was alone now. Pamir had slipped away without begging for permission, and nobody was there to hear the raspy voice from the little box saying, “Thank you, thank you.” With a giddy joy, she cried out, “To everyone who helped save me and the ship … a trillion sweet thanks…!”
* * *
AT FIRST GLANCE, they looked like lovers and nothing more.
The woman was human, tall for her species and quite lovely, and the human male sharing her table was just as tall and not nearly so pretty. The woman smiled and spoke quietly, and the man grinned and laughed, then with a word or two, he caused the woman to laugh hard and long. Then they held hands like lovers. It was a simple, natural gesture that their fingers and palms managed with a practiced perfection. Passersby barely gave them a glance. Why should they? Lovers were common along this particular avenue, and these passengers were far too busy with their own important lives to notice two humans who happened to be out of uniform, wearing faces that changed their appearance just enough to lend them a well-earned anonymity.
These were exciting times. Perhaps even wondrous times. After aeons of utter, unruffled sameness, everything on board the Great Ship was changed. There had been a mutiny and a war, and even with that finished now, there were new changes bearing down on everyone. A new course for the ship! Talk of new captains being hired from among the passengers, and new opportunities for every species! And at the center of this great old vessel were mysteries too incredible to describe, much less comprehend in a matter of days and weeks!
Everyone wanted to see this Marrow place, if only from a safe distance. And since they couldn’t actually see the world, they talked about it in loud, excited voices, or in chemical shouts, or with complicated touches that asked obvious questions for which nobody seemed to have answers.
What was locked at the center of Marrow?
What, really, was this thing they kept calling the Bleak…?
And what about the Great Ship? It was on a course to leave the galaxy, which was more than a little complication for most passengers. There were only so many taxis and so many living worlds between here and the intergalactic beyond … and it seemed unlikely that even a fraction of those who wanted to embark would be able to do so …
Which left the passengers where?
Trapped, in one sense. Or in a different sense, infinitely blessed. How many souls had ever taken a voyage of this scope? Hundreds of millions of years from now, with luck, the Great Ship would slice its way through the Virgo cluster … and beyond those wild ports was more emptiness, and black reaches of time, and marvels that undoubtedly would astonish all of those who could endure that long, long wait …
And what about the Waywards? the voices asked each other, with fear and with grave respect.
Rumor stated that billions of Waywards still lived on Marrow, keeping close to the ancient Bleak. While other wise, apparently knowing voices claimed that Waywards were still running at large among the ship’s well-lit, apparently peaceful avenues. They had vanished during the chaos, and now they were hiding in the most remote, empty places, gathering themselves for their next awful assault.
Unless, of course, they were nearer than that.
A few voices suggested that maybe the Waywards were among them now. Perhaps there was a chosen, well-trained cadre of priests who only pretended to be wealthy human passengers. But how would you recognize them? In what subtle, accidental way would they betray their identity, letting a simple passenger have the danger and the honor of capturing them in the middle of a brightly lit avenue?
Those two lovers were Waywards. It was their meal that gave them away. Someone noticed that the tall, pretty woman had ordered a platter filled with some monstrous thing called a hammerwing, and when it arrived at her table, she cut it open with a casual expertise, dishing out a portion to her man, then kissing the back of his hand before she let him have the first little bite.
Someone shouted, “Waywards! There!”
Individuals from various species heard the warning translated, then responded by pushing up to the little table, leveling arms and jointed legs at the diners, and with scared voices and farts, they repeated their accusation.
“Look there! Waywards!”
“Stop them!”
“Someone, arrest them!”
The lovers couldn’t have been more calm. Unhurried, they set down their eating utensils and reached across the table one last time, fingers knotted together in that same comfortable fashion … and after a moment of blistering suspense, they decided to let their disguises fall away, and they stood up tall, and their touristy clothes changed back into the brilliant and lovely uniforms that captains were always supposed to wear.
To her lover, the woman asked, “What do you think?”
“You ate this bug for how long?” the man growled.
“Nearly five thousand years,” she confessed.
“And did it ever taste good?”
“What do you think?” she asked.
Then they were laughing, and they were hugging each other … and it was as if there weren’t crowd gathered close around them … as if it were just them, and they were perfectly alone …
* * *
“I THOUGHT YOU needed to see this for yourselves,” Washen told them. “Sitting in the same room for an eternity can’t help the creative process.”
The AI scribes stared down at the face of Marrow, saying nothing.
“Does it inspire? Are you finding any new ideas?”
Speaking for all, one of the scribes said, “No,” with a disgusted tone. Implied were the words, “Of course this doesn’t help!”
There was little to see, in truth. Sweeping fires and the pent-up energies of countless volcanoes had filled the atmosphere below with clouds, black and opaque to almost every wavelength. But as awful as things looked from here, most of Marrow was neither burning nor boiling. Long-range sensors and every AI simulation gave the same sturdy answer: the old Wayward lands hadn’t been touched by the conflagration. What was happening to the world wasn’t much worse than what a million other disasters had wrought in the past. In fact, the ecosystem would probably be revitalized by the chaos, while some or most of the Waywards could hunker down, lick their wounds, and wait for the skies to clear.
The scribes continued
to stare politely at the boiling black clouds.
Washen motioned. Locke walked out onto the diamond platform, knelt beside the scribes, and with a quiet reverence said, “Maybe I can offer you a new idea. Are you interested, machines?”
One after another, the rubber faces turned toward him. Polite expressions were left frozen in place, while the rapid minds behind them ignored everything but the one vast problem worthy of their considerable trouble.
Locke said, “This ship.”
He asked, “What if you don’t know its real dimensions?”
There was a momentary flicker of interest.
Locke licked his lips, then explained, “When I was a child, I had a toy. A model of the ship. It fit in my hand, it was that small. But I was a boy, too young to appreciate the ship’s real dimensions.”
Eyes widened, imagining his long-ago toy.
“My mother tried to explain the size of things. She told me about protons and kilometers and light-seconds, and light-years, and she promised me that the ship was huge. But light-years are huge, aren’t they? So when I was five or six, I believed that the ship must be that big. Millions of light-years across, I thought. Which was silly, of course. She teased me, I remember. Oh, I was stupid in ways that none of you have ever been, I bet.”
The eyes began to drift off again.
But then Locke asked, “What if? When they were fabricating the ship … what if the Builders didn’t stop with the hull? Marrow surrounds the Bleak, whatever that is, and what we call the Great Ship surrounds Marrow. But what if the hull isn’t the end of their work? What if their project reaches out a lot farther, and now, after all this time, it has reached as far as we can see, or imagine…?”
Without exception, the scribes leaned forward.
“You’re looking into the ship’s structures and exact proportions, hunting for some hidden message,” Locke concluded. “But what if the message isn’t written just in this stone and iron and hyperfiber? What if the Builders’ ship is the universe, too … the trillions of stars and the whirling galaxies, and every unmapped mote of dust, and everything else that we can see or suppose throughout the entire visible creation…?”
