Mallow

by Robert Reed

  She lifted her head.

  The motion was so abrupt that the room suddenly fell silent. A flock of jade-crickets broke into song, then, as if sensing a breach in etiquette, stopped.

  'Assuming some kind of expansion,' Miocene told her captains, 'this world of ours has grown a little less than a kilometer since the Event. And at this rate, assuming that Marrow can maintain this modest pace for another five thousand years ... in another five millenia, the world will fill this entire chamber, and we'll be able to walk back to our base camp.'

  In her own grim, determined way, Miocene laughed.

  'And after that,' she whispered, 'if need be . . . we'll be able to walk all the way home . . .'

  Fourteen

  IT WAS SLEEPTIME for the children.

  Washen intended to visit the nursery. But as she approached she heard the gentle murmurs of a voice, and she hesitated, then eased closer, an adult caution and her own curiosity making a game out of this routine chore.

  The community nursery was built from iron blocks and iron bricks, black umbra wood making the steeply pitched roof. Next to the cafeteria, this was the largest structure in the world, and easily the most durable. Washen leaned against the wall, an ear to one of the little shuttered windows, listening carefully, realizing that it was the oldest boy who was speaking, telling everyone a story.

  'We call them the Builders,' he was explaining. 'That's our name for them because they built the ship and everything within it.'

  'The ship,' whispered the other children, in one voice.

  'The ship is too large to measure,' he assured them, 'and it is nothing but beautiful. Yet when it was new, there was no one to share it with. There were only the Builders, and they were proud, and that's why they called out into the darkness, inviting others to come fill its vastness. To come see what they had done and sing about their lovely creation.'

  Washen leaned against the wall, smelling the shutter's sweet wood.

  'Who came from the darkness?' asked that oldest boy. 'The Bleak,' dozens of voices answered instantly. 'Was there anyone else?' 'No one.'

  'Because the universe was so young,' the boy explained. With utter confidence, he picked his own odd course through what the captains had taught him. 'Everything was new, and there were only the Bleak and the Builders.'

  'The Bleak,' one little girl repeated, with feeling.

  'They were a cruel, selfish species,' the boy maintained. 'But they always wore smiles and said careful words. They came and sang praises to our lovely ship. But what did they want? Even from the earliest moment?'

  'To steal our ship,' the others answered.

  'In the night, as the Builders slept unaware,' he said with a practiced foreboding, 'the Bleak attacked, slaughtering most of them while they lay helpless in their beds.'

  Every child whispered, 'Slaughtered.'

  Washen eased her way closer to the nursery door. Each child had his own little bed positioned according to some personal logic. Some of the beds were close together, in twos and threes and fives, while others preferred distance and a comparative solitude. Peering through the shuttered door, she found the storyteller. He was apart from the others, sitting up in his little bed, his face catching one of the bright slivers of light that managed to slip through the heavy ceiling. His name was Till. He looked very much like his mother, tall with a tall, thin face. Then he moved his head slightly, and he resembled no one but himself.

  'Where did the surviving Builders go?' he asked.

  'Here.'

  'And from here, what did they do?' 'They purified the ship.'

  'They purified the ship,' he repeated, with emphasis. 'Everything above us had to be killed. The Builders had no choice whatsoever.'

  There was a long, reflective pause.

  'What happened to the Builders?' he asked.

  'They were trapped here,' said the others, on cue.

  'And?'

  'They died here. One after another.' 'What died?' 'Their flesh.'

  'But is flesh all that there is?' 'No!'

  'What else is there?' 'Their spirits.'

  'What isn't flesh cannot die,' said that very peculiar boy.

  Hands against the warm iron frame of the door, Washen waited, trying to recall when she had last taken a meaningful breath.

  In a songful whisper, Till asked, 'Do you know where the Builders' spirits live?'

  'Inside us,' the children replied with a palpable delight.

  'We are the Builders now,' Tills voice assured them. 'After the long, lonely wait, we have finally been reborn . . . !'

  AFTER, EIGHT DECADES, life on Marrow had become glancingly comfortable and halfway predictable. Twist's tectonics team had mapped the local plumes and vents and every major fault, and as a consequence, they knew where the iron crust was thickest and where to build homes that would linger. Food was abundant and was only going to be more so. Washen's biologists were cultivating wild plants, and in the last few years, they had begun raising the most palatable bugs in cages and special huts. Various attempts at science, no matter how clumsy, were making gains. Miocene had been right: Marrow was expanding at a steady, almost stately pace as the buttressing fields grew weaker, and the sky's brilliant light had already faded by more than a percentage point. Aasleen's people, fueled by genius and sanguinity, had invented at least ten difficult schemes that would allow everyone to escape from Marrow.

  It would only require another forty-nine centuries, give or take.

  Children were inevitable, and essential. They brought new hands and new possibilities, and they would replace the losses inflicted by this awful place. Then once they had their own children, a slow-motion demographic onslaught would have begun.

  Every female captain owed the world at least one healthy boy or girl; that was Miocene's pronouncement.

  But her words slammed up against modern physiologies. There wasn't one viable egg or a motile sperm inside any captain. In modern society, complex medicines and delicate autodocs were used to tease long-lived people into fertility. They had neither. That's why it took twenty years of determined research before Promise and Dream, working in their own laboratory, discovered that the black spit of a hammerwing, poisonous to most native life-forms, could induce a temporary fecundity in human beings.

  There were dangers, however. A woman required very high, even toxic dosages, and the effects on a developing embryo were far from clear.

  Miocene volunteered to be first.

  It was an heroic act, and if successful, it would be a selfish act, her child destined to be the oldest. She ordered the two captains to collect sperm from every donor, and alone, the Submaster impregnated herself. As far as Washen could tell, no one but Miocene could be certain who Tills father was.

  Miocene carried the boy for the full eleven-month term. The birth itself was uneventful, and for those first few months, Till seemed perfectly normal. He was happy and engaged, ready to smile up at any face that smiled at him. Later, as they tried to piece together events, it wasn't apparent when the baby had changed. It must have happened slowly, and only later were the effects obvious. Till was a happy, giggling boy riding gracefully on his mother's hard hip, and then it was a different day, and people began to notice that he was much more quiet, still riding that hip without complaint, but his gaze distant, and always, in some odd, undefinable fashion, distracted.

  HAMMERWING SPIT WASN'T to blame.

  Maybe the boy would have grown up the same way on the ship. Or Earth. Or anywhere else, too. Children are never predictable, and they are never easy. In the following years, the encampment began to fill up with strangers. They were small and fierce, and they were endlessly entertaining. And more than anyone anticipated, the children were challenges to the captains' seamless authority.

  No, they didn't want to eat that bug dinner.

  Or poop in the neat new latrines.

  And thank you, no, they wouldn't play nice, or sleep during the arbitrary night, or listen to every important word when th
eir parents explained what Marrow was and what the ship was and why it was so very important to eventually escape from their birthplace.

  But these were little problems. Over the last decades, Washen had tried every state of mind, and optimism, far and away, was the most pleasant. She worked hard to remain positive about everything difficult and gray.

  Good, sane reasons were keeping them from being rescued. The most likely explanation was the simplest: the Event was a regular phenomenon, and it had reached beyond Marrow, collapsing the access tunnel so completely that digging it out again was grueling, achingly slow work. That's what must have happened to the original tunnels, too. Earlier Events had destroyed them. And the Master could only act with caution, balancing the good of a few captains against the unknown dangers, the well-being of billions of innocent and trusting passengers taking easy precedence.

  Other captains were optimistic in public, but in private, in their lovers' beds, they confessed to darker moods.

  'What if the Masters written us off?'

  Diu posed the question, then immediately offered an even worse scenario.

  'Or maybe something happened to her,' he grunted. 'This was an utterly secret mission. If she died unexpectedly, and if the First Chair Submasters don't even know that we're down here . . .'

  'Do you believe that?' asked Washen.

  Diu shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'Sometimes.'

  Through the heavy walls and sealed shutters came the drumming of a hammerwing. Then, silence.

  For a moment, it felt as if Marrow were listening to them.

  Playing Diu's own game, Washen reminded him,'There's another possibility.'

  'There's many. Which one?'

  'The Event was bigger than we realize. And everyone else is dead.'

  For a moment, Diu didn't react.

  It was the unmentionable taboo. Yet Washen kept pressing, reminding him, 'Maybe we weren't the first ones to find this derelict ship. Others came before. But the builders had left behind some kind of booby trap, primed and ready'

  'Perhaps,' he allowed. Then he sat up in bed, iron springs squeaking as his smooth strong legs dropped over the edge, toes kissing the cool dark floorboards. Again, softer this time, he said, 'Perhaps.'

  'Maybe the ship cleanses itself every million years. The Event destroys everything foreign and organic'

  A tiny grin emerged. 'And we survived . . . ?'

  'Marrow survived,' she replied. 'Otherwise, this would be barren iron.'

  Diu pulled one of his hands across his face, then with his fingers, he combed the long coffee-colored hair. Even in the bedroom's enforced darkness, Washen could see his face. After so many years, she knew it better than she knew her own features, and in the vastness that was her remembered life, she couldn't think of any man to whom she had felt this close.

  'I'm just talking,' she told him. 'I don't believe what I'm saying.'

  'I know.'

  Placing a hand on his sweaty back, she realized that Diu was watching the crib. Their infant son, Locke, was hard asleep, blissfully unaware of their grim discussion. In another three years, he would live in the nursery. He would live with Till, she kept thinking. A month had passed since Washen had overheard that story about the Builders and the Bleak. But she hadn't told anyone. Not even Diu.

  'There are more explanations than we have people,' she admitted.

  Again, he wiped the sweat from his face. Then she said, 'Darling,' with an important tone. 'Have you ever listened to the other children?' He glanced over his shoulder. 'Why?' She explained, in brief.

  Since they built this house, the same sliver of light had slipped its way through the shutters. Changing the tilt of his head, the light hit his gray eye and the high strong cheek.'You know Till,' was Diu's response. 'You know how odd he can seem.'

  'That's why I didn't mention it.'

  'Have you heard him tell that story again?'

  'No,' she admitted.

  'But you've been eavesdropping, I'd guess.' She said nothing.

  Her lover nodded wisely and came close to a smile. Then with a little wink, he stood up, bare feet carrying him to the crib.

  But Diu wasn't looking at their son. Instead, he was fingering the mobile hung over the crib on a thick, trustworthy cord. Painted pieces of wood bounced gently on nearly invisible wire, showing Locke all those wonders that he couldn't see for himself. The ship was in the center, largest by a long way, and surrounding it were tinier star-ships and several generic birds as well as a Phoenix that his mother had carved for her own reasons, then hung there without explanation.

  After a moment, Washen joined Diu at the crib.

  Locke was a quiet baby. Patient, uncomplaining. From his parents he had acquired a stew of immortal genes and an easy strength, and from this world, his birthplace, came . . . well, what about him was Marrow? Not for the first time, Washen wondered if it was wrong to allow children on a world barely understood. A world that could probably kill all of them. And kill them tonight, if the urge struck it.

  'I wouldn't worry about Till,' said Diu. 'I don't,' she promised, speaking more to herself than him.

  But the man still explained himself. 'Children are imagination machines,' he said. 'You never know what they're going to think about anything.'

  Washen was remembering the Child, that part-human, part-Gaian creature that she raised for Pamir, and with a bittersweet grin, she replied, 'But that's the fun in having them. Or so I've always been told . . .'

  THE BOY WALKED alone, crossing the public round with his eyes watching his own bare feet, watching them shuffle across the hot, sky-baked iron. 'Hello, Till.'

  He seemed incapable of surprise. Pausing, he lifted his gaze slowly, a smile waiting to shine at the captain. 'Hello, Madam Washen. You're well, I trust.'

  Under the sky's blue glare, he was a polite, scrupulously ordinary eleven-year-old boy. He had a thin face joined to a small, narrow body, and like most of his peers, he wore as little as the adults let him wear. Modern genetics were such a tangle; Washen had given up guessing who was his father. Sometimes she wondered if Miocene even knew. She obviously wanted to be his only parent, openly grooming him to stand beside her someday. Whenever Washen looked at the half-feral boy wearing nothing but a breech-cloth, she felt a nagging resentment, petty as can be, and since it was directed at an eleven-year-old, simply foolish.

  'I have a confession to make,' she said, using her own smile. 'A little while back, while you were in the nursery, I overheard you talking to the other children. You were telling them a very elaborate story'

  The eyes were wide and brown with darts of black inside them, and they didn't so much as blink.

  'It was an interesting story,'Washen conceded.

  Till looked like any boy who didn't know what to make of a bothersome adult. Sighing wearily, he shifted his weight from one brown foot to the other. Then he sighed again, the portrait of pure boredom.

  'How did you think up that story?'

  A shrug of the shoulders.

  'I know we like to talk about the ship. Probably too much.' Her explanation felt sensible and practical. Her biggest fear was that she would come across as patronizing. 'Everyone likes to speculate. About the ship's past, and its builders, and the rest of it. All our chatter has to be confusing. And since we are going to be rebuilding the bridge, with your help ... it does rather make you into a species of Builder, doesn't it . . . ?'

  Till shrugged again, his eyes looking past her.

  On the far side of the round, in front of their machine shop, a team of sweating captains fired up their latest turbine — a primitive wonder built from rough steel and vague memories, plus considerable trial and error. Homebrewed alcohols combined with oxygen, creating a delicious roar. While it was working, the engine was powerful enough to do any job they could offer it, at least for today. But it was dirty and noisy, and it was inefficient, and the sound of it almost obscured the boy's strong voice.

  'I'm not speculating,' he announc
ed. 'Not about anything.'

  Washen said, 'Excuse me?' as if she hadn't heard him.

  'I won't tell you that. That I'm making it up.'

  The turbine sputtered, then fell silent.

  Washen nodded, smiling in a defeated way. Then she noticed an approaching figure. From the shop, wearing her old epaulets on a simple robe of handwoven fabric, Miocene looked weary as always, and angry in a thousand ways.

  'I don't make up anything,' the boy protested. His mother asked, 'What don't you do?' Till didn't say.

  For a moment, he and Washen exchanged looks, as if making a pact. Then he turned to Miocene, complaining, 'That machine ... it sounds awful.'

  'It does. You're right.'

  'Is that how the ship is? Big engines screaming all the time?'

  'No, we use fusion reactors. Very efficient and quiet, and extremely safe, too.' She glanced at Washen, asking, 'Don't we, darling?'

  'Fusion, yes,' Washen offered, her hands trying to straighten the stiff fabric of her own handmade uniform. 'The best reactors in the galaxy, I would think.'

  Then like a trillion mothers, Miocene said, 'I haven't seen you for too long. Where have you been, Till?'

  'Out there,' said Till. He waved in a distant, imprecise fashion, three of his fingers smaller than the rest. And paler. Regenerating after a little accident, no doubt.

  'Were you exploring again?'

  'But not far from here,' he told her. 'Always in the valley' He was lying, thought Washen. She heard the lie between the words.