by Robert Reed
'It will,' Miocene replied.
Virtue took a deep, skeptical breath.
Washen examined the car in person, touching the outside of the hatch, fondling the odd, ugly pipes.' Aasleen suggested something along these lines,' she allowed. 'I can't remember when, it was that long ago. But after she was done explaining herself, you said no. You said it would be too clumsy and too limited, not to mention the technical hurdles, and you ordered us to put our efforts into richer ground.'
'I said those things. Yes.'
For lack of anything better, Washen smiled, and she said. 'Well, then. The best of luck to you.'
Miocene let herself show a grin. 'Good luck to both of us, you mean. The interior, as you see, seats two.'
The woman was brave, but she wasn't fearless or a fool. She had to flinch and think hard about her next breath, eyeing the Submaster for a long moment before asking, 'Why? Me?'
'Because I respect you,' Miocene replied, honestly and without qualms.
The dark eyes grew larger.
'And because if I order you to accompany me, you will. Now.'
Washen took a careful breath, and another. Then she admitted, 'I suppose all of that's true.' 'And truthfully, I need you.' That declaration seemed to embarrass everyone. To kill the silence, Miocene turned to Virtue, telling him, 'Start the procedures.' She paused. Then quietly, she added, 'As soon as we're on board.' The man looked ready to cry.
She didn't leave him the opportunity. With a crisp wave and a defiant stride, Miocene re-entered the car. Not for the first time, she thought how it resembled the Great Ship - a thick body with a hidden hollow sphere at its center.
To Washen, she said, 'Now, darling.'
The first-grade was obviously considering her next step, and everything else, too. Long, strong hands wiped themselves dry against her uniform, and with a mixture of stiffness and grace, she bent over and climbed through the hatchway, then examined the twin seats, padded and set on greased titanium rails. The seats would always keep their backs to the accelerations. As if to appreciate the technology, she touched the simple control panel, then the inner wall. The hand pulled away abruptly, and she said, 'Cold,' with a quiet little voice.
'Crude, chilly superconductors,' Miocene admitted.
Then the Submaster touched the panel, and as the hatch pulled itself shut, she said, 'Virtue.' She looked out at him and said, 'I trust you.'
The man was crying. Nothing but.
The hatch closed and sealed itself, and as the two women sat together, back to back, Washen said, 'You trust him, and you respect me, too.' She was securing her protective straps, and laughing. 'Trust and respect. From you, on the same day'
Miocene refused to look over her shoulder. She busied herself making last-instant checks, saying to the controls, 'You're more gifted than I am when it comes to other people. You can speak to the grandchildren, and the other captains . . . and that's a sweet skill that could prove an enormous advantage . . .'
Washen had to ask, 'Why is that an advantage?'
'I could explore the ship alone,' Miocene allowed. 'But if the worst has happened - if everything above us is dead and empty - then you, I think, Washen . . . you are the better person to bring home that terrible news . . .'
Twenty-four
HERE WAS THE culmination of more than four thousand years of single-minded labor — two captains ready to throw themselves off Marrow. Washen found herself strapped into the primitive crash chair, part of her demanding some task, some worthwhile duty, even when she knew full well that there was nothing to do now but sit and wait and wish for the best.
With a crisp, dry voice, Miocene worked her way down a precise checklist.
Her mysterious companion might resemble Till, or Diu, but his voice was far too slow and uncertain to belong to either man. He spoke across an intercom, alternating, 'Good,' and 'Yes,' and, 'Nominal,' with little pained silences.
The captains sat back to back. Unable to see the Submaster's face, Washen found herself thinking about little else. It was the same cold, confident face that it had always been, and it wasn't. Washen always marveled at how Marrow had changed that rigid woman. A metamorphosis showed in the wasted, haunted eyes, in the taut corners of the pained mouth. And when she spoke, as she did now, even a simple word felt infinitely sad, and a little profound.
'Initiate,' that sad voice commanded.
There was a pause.
Then the little man said softly, with resignation, 'Yes, madam.'
They were falling, accelerating down a dark, airless shaft. This wasn't a bridge, and it was never supposed to be. It was a vast piece of munitions, and everything depended on its accuracy. Descending to the starting point, to the electromagnetic breech, Miocene whispered technical details. Terminal velocity. Exposure to the buttresses. The transit time. 'Eighteen point three seconds.' Which was nearly as long as they spent inside the buttresses on their way down. But without the same levels of protection, or backup systems, or even a single field test beyond the laboratory.
The ugly cannonball stopped abruptly, then its thick walls began to hum. To crackle, and sputter, and seemingly ripple as the protective fields were woven tighdy around them.
Again, Miocene said, 'Initiate.'
There was no response this time. Would the man obey? But as she thought those words, Washen was slammed back into her seat, bone pressed against dense padding, gee forces mounting, tearing flesh and bursting blood vessels.
Then came the sensation of drifting.
A pleasant, teasing peace.
After leaving the shaft, there was perhaps a half second of streaking up through the last breaths of the atmosphere, a cluster of little rockets firing on the hull, correcting for the very thin winds. In her mind's eye, Washen saw everything: Marrow's storm clouds and cities and tired volcanoes falling behind while the slick sliver of the chamber wall descended on them. Then they struck the buttresses, and her eyes filled with random colors and senseless shapes, while a thousand incoherent, terrified voices screamed inside her dying mind.
Madness.
Eighteen point three seconds of nothing else.
Time dragged. That's what she promised herself when she managed to concentrate, carving a sensible thought out of that screaming chaos. It was a symptom of the buttresses, this compression of the seconds. Because if more than eighteen seconds had passed, they had simply missed their target, falling short, and now they were tumbling in a close, fatal orbit around Marrow.
No, we can't be, Washen whimpered.
The frightened voices lent her their fear, and a ragged wild panic took her by the throat, by the colon. Nausea came in one savage thrust. Washen bent forward as far as the padded straps allowed, and with her left hand she managed to yank the silver clock from its pocket, then open it, that sequence of practiced motions requiring what seemed to be hours of relentless work.
She stared at the fastest hand.
A solid click meant that a full second had passed.
Then, another.
Then her seat, and Miocene's, unlocked and slipped on the titanium rails, meeting at the opposite end of the little cabin, locking again with a crisp determination.
Washen looked up.
Swallowing a burning mouthful of bile and vomit, she stared up at where she had just been, and she saw herself restrained in an identical chair, her own face twisted in misery, gazing down, hair hanging loose and long, unlike Washen's bunned hair, and the mouth opening as if this hallucination were ready to offer a few tortured words.
Washen watched herself, and in rapt attention, listened.
But then they had pierced the buttresses, and a string of angry rockets fired beneath Washen, braking the vehicle as it plunged, she hoped, into the battered remains of the original bridge.
Impact.
Washen felt the car scrape hard against hyperfiber. There was a sloppy shrieking on her right as pipes and boiling superconductors were stripped away. Then an instant of silence, followed by a s
econd, deeper roar from her left, their car bouncing down the shaft.
Rockets barked again, killing momentum at all costs.
The final impact was abrupt and crushing, and it was over before her mind registered the barest pain.
The chair fell back into its original position.
A voice said, 'There.'
Miocene's voice. Then the Submaster fought her way out of her belts and made herself stand, holding her long sides as she sipped each breath, acting as if her ribs had been shattered.
Washen's ribs were on fire. She eased herself out of her chair, feeling the delicious warmth as the curved bones knitted themselves. Emergency genes synthesized machinery that turned masticated flesh into new bone and blood, giving her strength enough to stand. She sipped one breath, then another. The hatch began to open itself, creaking with each slow millimeter. If it jammed, they were trapped. Doomed. But that would be a ridiculous finish. Ludicrous. Which was why she dismissed the possibility, refusing to worry.
The hatch gave a squeal and jammed.
Then after a prolonged silence, it freed itself with a white-hot screech.
Darkness fell on them. Miocene stepped out into the silence, into the darkness. Her exhausted black eyes were huge. She was staring at the empty berths as Washen climbed and joined her, the two women standing close enough to touch each other, but avoiding that gesture, busily scouring their memories for the way out of the unlit assembly station.
At the same moment they pointed in the same direction, saying, 'That way'
Base camp had been without power for forty-six centuries. The Event had crippled every machine. Reactors, drones, all of it. The magnetic latches on every sealed door had failed. Pushing the last door aside, they stepped out into the soft, muted light of the dying buttresses.
'Wander,' Miocene ordered. 'For half an hour. Then meet at the observation station, and we'll go on from there.'
'Yes, madam.'
Washen started for the dormitories, then thought better of it. Instead she crept into the biolabs, opening curtains for light and dislodging dust that fell softly over dust. Ever)' system was ruined. Cages with tough mechanical locks remained sealed - an ancient precaution - and inside each cage lay mounds of colorless dust. Washen found keys left hanging above a captain's empty desk. Eventually she found the key that would fit and turn, and quietly, she crept into one of the cages, stepping over a child's doll, then kneeling to reach into the largest dust pile.
Without food or water, the abandoned lab animals had dropped into comas, and as their immortal flesh lost energy and moisture, they had quietly and thoroughly mummified themselves.
Washen picked up one of the mandrill baboons — an enormous male weighing little more than a breath - and she held it against her own body, looking into the desiccated eyes, feeling its leathery heart beat, just once, just to say, 'I waited for you.'
She set him down carefully, and left.
Miocene was standing on the viewing platform, impatient and concerned, gazing expectantly at the horizon. Even at this altitude, they could only see the captains' realm. The nearest Waywards were hundreds of kilometers removed from them. Which might as well have been hundreds of light-years, as much as the cultures interacted anymore.
'What are you looking for?'Washen asked.
The Submaster said nothing.
'They'll find out what what we've done,' Washen had to tell her. 'If Till doesn't know already, I'd be surprised.'
Miocene nodded absently, taking a deep, deep breath.
Then she turned, and never mentioning the Waywards, she said, 'We've wasted enough time. Lets find out what's upstairs.'
TINY CAP-CARS REMAINED in their berths, untouched by any hand and shielded by kilometers of hyperfiber. Their engines remained charged, but every system was locked into a diagnostic mode. The com-links refused to work. The ship was dead, said the silence. But then Washen remembered that the com-link was singular and tightly guarded, and after a century's wait, the security systems would have ripped out the only tongue, as a reasonable precaution.
Miocene offered a code that brought one car to life.
Occasionally Washen would glance at the Submaster. measuring the woman's stern profile, and her silence, wondering which of them was more terrified. The long access tunnel led straight upward, not a trace of damage or disruptions showing anywhere along the narrow shaft. Then the tunnel ended with a slab of hyperfiber. Touch codes caused the slab to detach and fall inward, revealing an abandoned fuel line - a vertical shaft better than five kilometers across.
Against that vastness, the doorway closed again, vanishing.
The car skimmed along the surface of the fuel line, always climbing, gradually turning onto its back as they slipped closer to the vast fuel tank. If the great ship's engines were firing, not so much as a shiver reached them. But those engines rarely ignited, Washen reminded herself. The stillness meant nothing. Nothing.
Between the women, a pact had formed. Neither mentioned where they were going. After such an enormous wait, neither dared make the tiniest speculation. Possibilities had been exhausted. What was, was. Each said it with her eyes, her silence. It was implicit in the way their long hands lay in their laps, peacefully wresding with one another.
The vast tunnel passed sleeping pumps larger than some moons.
Quietly, Washen asked, 'Where?'
The Submaster opened her mouth, then hesitated.
Finally, strangely, she asked, 'What do you think is best?'
'The leech habitat,' Washen allowed. 'Maybe someone lives there now. And if not, we could still borrow its com-lines.'
'Do that,' Miocene replied.
They entered through the fuel tank, flying high above the dark hydrogen sea. The leech habitat was exactly as Washen remembered it. Empty. Clean. Forgotten. A scan showed nothing alive and warm. She slipped into its docking berth, then they climbed into the gray hub. With a breath and a slack, numbed expression, Miocene touched the aliens' only com-panel, and nothing happened. In frustration, she said, 'Shit,' and stepped back, telling Washen, 'Do it for me. Please.'
But there wasn't anything to do.
'It's malfunctioned, or there's no com-system anymore.' Washen said the words, then felt her belly knot up and ache.
Miocene glared at the dead machinery.
After a long moment, they turned away, saying nothing as they climbed back into the waiting cap-car.
A narrow service tunnel angled upward, passing through a series of demon doors, an atmosphere building with each crisp crackle. And in a soft, whispering voice, Miocene asked, 'How many were on board? Do you remember?'
'One hundred billion.'
The Submaster closed her eyes and held them closed.
'Plus the machine intelligences. Another one hundred billion, at least.'
Miocene said, 'Dead. They all are.'
Washen couldn't see through her tears. With the back of a hand, she wiped her face, and she muttered, 'We don't know,' with a contrived hopefulness.
But Miocene said, 'Dead,' again. She was defiant about her pronouncement. Then she straightened the clumsy fabric of her uniform, staring at her hands and the reflections that seemed to float inside her chest, and she sighed and looked up, staring straight ahead and sighing once again before announcing, 'There is a higher purpose. To all of this. Since we're still alive, there must be.'
Washen didn't respond.
'A higher purpose,' the woman repeated. Smiling now. That wide strange smile said as much as her words.
The service tunnel ended inside one of the deepest passenger districts. Suddenly they were skimming along the obsidian floor of a broad, flattened tunnel - a minor passageway barely half a kilometer across — and it was plainly, horribly empty. No traffic. No important, busy lights. And to herself, in misery, Washen said, 'Maybe the crew and passengers . . . maybe we were able to evacuate everyone . . .'
'Doubtful,' was Miocene's response.
She turned to stare at
Washen, ready to say something else honest, and harsh. But her expression changed abruptly. The eyes went distant, and wide, and Washen looked back over her shoulder in time to see a vast machine appear behind them, bearing down on them until a collision was imminent, then skipping sideways with a crisp, AI precision. And the machine passed them. A car, it was. A light-filled diamond hull held a lake of warm saltwater, and floating in the center of the lake was the sole passenger — a whalelike entity with a forest of strong-handed symbionts rooted on its long back - and as it passed them at a blurring, impolite speed, the entity winked. Three of its black eyes winked just as humans would wink, offering them nothing but a friendly, casual greeting.
It was a Yawkleen.
More than four millenia removed from her post, yet Washen immediately remembered the species' name. With a flat, disbelieving voice, Miocene said, 'No.' But it was true.
Suddenly another dozen cars caught up with them, then slipped past. Washen saw four harum-scarums, and what could have been a pair of humans, and then an insectish creature that reminded her, with its intricate jaws and long black back, of the crap-sculptor beetle from the Marrow jungles.
From back home, Washen was thinking.
Where, if the truth were told, she'd almost prefer to be.
Twenty-five
A SMALL, OBSCURE waystation lay on the tubeway s floor.
With a pained voice, Miocene ordered Washen to stop. Their car passed through a series of demon doors, an atmosphere spun around them.Then they did nothing.The Submaster sat erect, hands trembling and her face iron-taut and her mouth opened just enough to pull in a series of quick deep breaths, that private little wind whistling across her angry lips, a wild fury spreading from her eyes into her face, her body, then filling the car until Washen couldn't help but feel her own heart hammering against her new ribs.
Finally, with a soft choked voice, Miocene said, 'Go into the station.'
Washen climbed from the car. 'Do it,' Miocene commanded.
She was shouting at herself, staring at her folded legs and her trembling hands, then at the single hand that Washen offered, along with a quiet voice that reminded her, 'Whatever is, is. Madam.'
