by Robert Reed
'With you trapped down there,' Washen offered.
Diu shrugged again. 'How does that old story play? It's better to rule in one realm than serve in another—?'
There was an abrupt, soft squeal.
The false Master had stopping moving, eyes staring back toward the center of the habitat, something seen and the machine repeating the squeal again. Louder this time, and more focused.
If there was an echo, Washen couldn't hear it.
Irritated, Diu asked, 'What is it?'
Then he turned and stepped toward the robot, asking, 'Is something wrong?'
With the Master's voice, it said, 'Motion.' 'From the entranceway?' 'Along the line, yes.' 'What about now?'
'Nothing.'
'Watch,' was Diu's advice. Then he faced his prisoners, and with an odd little smile, focused on Miocene. 'You've done something else surprising,' he decided. 'Am I right? You've fooled me in another way. Haven't you, darling?'
'I didn't build one escape pod,' Miocene confessed. 'There are two pods. Both serviceable.'
The man took a breath, then held it. Then he said, 'So,' with a low, contemptuous voice. 'Two more captains have followed you up here. So what?'
He turned to the false Master.
'Shoot—' he began to order.
'No,' Miocene interrupted, taking a step and lifting both hands. 'I didn't invite any captains. And believe me, you don't want to open fire on them.'
The false Master was aiming at a target too distant for human eyes.
Diu growled, 'Wait.'
He turned back to the women, his expression merely surprised. He seemed to be just a little angry. Then he lifted his kinetic weapon, fingers to the trigger as he said, 'Who, then? Tell me.'
'My son,' said Miocene.
The false Master was still as a statue, waiting for the correct word.
'Till,' Miocene whispered. 'I hoped he'd be curious enough. Through his spies, I sent a message. Virtue was under orders to launch Till to the bridge. I gave him the codes to awaken a second cap-car. I just wanted him to have this chance to see the Great Ship for himself.'
'Well,' Diu said softly, defiantly. Then he looked off into the distance, contemplating that narrow infinity, and after a few moments of hard thought, he told his machine, 'Kill them. I don't care who they are. Kill them.'
The laser gave a sharp, sudden crack.
Miocene ran, screaming now, hands reaching as Diu turned and calmly shot her in the chest, a fat explosive charge burrowing through bone and the wildly beating heart, then detonating with a wet pop.
She collapsed into a shockingly red pool of blood.
Following protocols, the robot turned, ready to defend its master. For that simple instant, Washen knew she was doomed. She ducked down, by instinct, and watched the lasers barrel swing for her, charged again and ready to turn her water and flesh into an amorphous, lifeless gas. But when the next crack shattered the silence, the beam missed. She felt the heat pass overhead and watched in amazement as the false Master panned up and up, aiming at nothing, the golden face turning bright as it absorbed blistering, unrelenting energies.
Quietly, with an eerie grace, the face collapsed into a molten goo.
The barrel of the laser dropped and pulled sideways, then fired again, punching a hole in the wall behind Washen, holding steady until that vast body and its weapon turned to a duck liquid, the robes burning as a Marrow-like pond melted its way into the gray floor.
Diu was screaming and backing up as he fired twice.
Washen tackled him from behind.
They wrestled, and she threw a forearm into his exposed throat, and for a delicious moment she thought she could win. But her body wasn't perfectly healed. A thousand weaknesses found her, and Diu bent her back, hard, then gave her a smooth strong shove, and when she tumbled, he aimed his weapon at her heaving chest.
'Till heard you,' she sputtered. 'With these leech acoustics—'
'So,' he replied.
She said, 'He knows everything—!'
Diu hit her with one explosive round, pushing her back against the window.
'What's changed? Nothing's changed!' he roared. Then he shot again, and again. As if from a great distance, Washen heard him shout, 'I have a million sons!,' and the next round punched through one of the gaping holes in her body, cutting deep into the insulated window before detonating with a dull, almost inaudible thud.
Quietly, with the blood filling her mouth, Washen said, 'Shit.'
Diu was aiming again. Aiming at her head.
Washen blinked and fell to the floor, watching with a thin interest and a genuine impatience, thinking this wasn't how it was meant to be.
This was wrong.
Behind Diu, a running figure appeared. Legs and arms and a familiar, welcome face came sprinting out of the grayness, a laser drill clasped in one hand.
He wasn't whom she expected. Instead of Till, she saw her son.
Locke called out, 'Father.'
Startled, Diu turned to face him.
And Locke shot him with the drill, emptying its energies into that jittery body, that old metaphor of the flesh ready to boil coming true.
In a moment, Diu evaporated.
Vanished.
Then Locke stepped toward Washen, his face torn with compassion and a wild fear. He dropped the drill and blurted, 'Mother.' But she couldn't hear his voice. Something louder, and nearer, interrupted him. Then came the sensation of motion, sudden and irresistible, and Washen felt herself being sucked through a small hole, her ravaged body spinning and freezing, and falling, the blackness everywhere, and a tiny voice inside her whispering:
'Not like this.
Not now.
No.'
Twenty-seven
THERE WAS A screaming wind and the harsher, nearer wailing of a lone man.
Miocene pried open her eyes and found herself miraculously sitting upright, her chest ripped open and her uniform splattered with dying blood and bone and the shredded and blackened muscle of her dead heart. Diu and the false Master had vanished. But the newcomer was running straight for her, sprinting with the roaring wind ... a Wayward man, half-naked and barefoot, shorn of his hair and every dignity, his miserable voice screaming, 'Mother, no . . . !'
Was this her child?
Miocene couldn't place his face. But just the same, she tried to grab him, aiming for one of his legs and losing her balance as a consequence, dropping to her side and the man leaping over her helpless body, again screaming, 'No ...!,' with a voice as pitiful and lost as she was feeling now.
For a moment, or a year, the ancient woman shut her eyes.
The wind fell away to a whistling murmur. The leech habitat was repairing its damage, and she realized that her miserable carcass was trapped here. The screaming man was near the wall, sobbing now. Slobbering. 'I should have . . . done it faster ... fired at him sooner ...!' he was complaining to someone. Then with a massive disgust, he confessed, 'But he's my father, and my hand froze—!'
'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.
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 complied 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 a 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?'
