Mallow

by Robert Reed

  Nothing had come of it. Someone's stupid and very cruel joke had thrown the Master into an unseemly panic, and she had spent the last century trying to convince everyone that the apparitions were anything but real. They had to be someone's cruel illusion. Because what other choice did she have? A Master Captain's first duties were to her chair and her ship, and what kind of Master would she be if a holoimage and a handful of vague clues were to steer her away from traditions that had served both ship and chair for more than a hundred millennia . . . ?

  No, she didn't want to think about the Vanished. Not tonight, or ever again. But she seemed unable to stop herself, and trying to purge her mind, to make herself stronger and inflexible, only seemed to make the ghosts stronger, too.

  The Master's long table was set on a grassy ridge, affording a view that improved when she slowly, majestically rose to her feet. Her goblet was filled with a blood-colored harum-scarum wine. Was that why she was thinking of the dead? Or was it because directly in front of her, practically mocking her, was the empty chair reserved for Pamir? Absent again. Just like last year, and the year before. What was wrong with that captain? Such a talent . . . questionable but quick instincts married to an admirable, almost transcendent tenaciousness . . . and despite his ugly temperament, a captain able to inspire his subordinates and the average passenger . . .

  Yet he couldn't let himself bend for these little captainly rituals.

  It was a weakness of character, and spirit, that had always, even in the best times, crippled his chance to rise into the ship's highest ranks.

  'Where's Pamir?' she asked one of her security nexuses.

  'Unknown,' was the instant response.

  'Are there any messages from him?'

  The next response was slow in coming, and odd. The nexus's sexless voice asked her, 'Where do you think that captain might be?'

  In frustration, she killed that bothersome channel.

  Sometimes the Master found herself thinking that she had lived too long and too narrowly, and the simple grind of work had worn away the genius that had earned her this high office. If everyone in this room were suddenly set equal, she almost certainly wouldn't be named the Master Captain. Even in her most prideful moments, she understood that others could fill her chair as well as she could, or better. Even when she felt utterly in control, like now, a wise and ageless and extremely weary part of herself wished that one of these worshipful faces would tell her, 'Sit elsewhere. Let yourself relax. I'll take the helm for you, at least for a little while.'

  But the rest of the woman seethed at the idea of it. Always.

  It was the steely, self-possessed part of her that was standing now, gazing across the hectares of smiling faces and mirrored uniforms and cold dead fish. For this feast, the local birds and the louder insects had been lured into cages, then taken away. Everything that could know better knew to be quiet. An unnatural silence hung over the room. With her right hand, the Master grasped the crystal goblet. She swirled the wine once, a dark red clot dislodging from the rim and turning slowly as she lifted the goblet to her face, inhaling the aroma before the hand raised the goblet higher, up over her head, as she said, 'Welcome,' in a thunderous voice. 'All of you who cared enough to be here today, welcome. And thank you!'

  A self-congratulating murmur passed through the audience.

  Then again, silence.

  The Master opened her mouth, ready to deliver her much anticipated toast. Captains who dealt with the newest alien passengers were to be singled out this year. She would sing praises for their excellence, then demand improvements in the coming decades. The ship was entering a region thick with new species, new challenges. What better way to ready your staff than by feeding them congratulatory words, then showing them your hardest gaze?

  But before the first word found its way out of her mouth, she hesitated. Her breath came up short, and some obscure sense tied to one of her security nexuses started to focus on something very distant, and small, and wrong.

  Her eyes saw a slow, unexpected motion.

  From behind the walkyleen flycatchers came several figures. Then dozens more. And accompanying their appearance was a growing commotion, the seated captains wheeling around to stare at these visitors.

  They were captains, weren't they?

  Pamir and the other rude ones were arriving, at last and together. That's what the Master told herself, but she couldn't see anyone with Pamir's build, and she noticed that most of the newcomers, no matter their color, had a smoky tint to their flesh.

  For a better look, she tried to interface with the security eyes, only to learn that each of them had fallen into their diagnostic modes.

  Like a clumsy person trying to hold a lump of warm grease, the Master struggled to find any working security system.

  None were responding.

  'What's happening?' she asked every nexus.

  A thousand answers bombarded her in a senseless, unnerving roar. Then she focused on the newcomers, on their nearest faces. The ship and everything else had vanished. The Master found herself staring at the handsome woman at the lead, the tall one with her constricted face and the slick, hairless scalp, who looked rather like someone in whom she had given up all hope . . .

  'Miocene,' the Master blurted. 'Is it?'

  Whoever she was, the woman smiled like Miocene — a sturdy, almost amused expression leading her up to the main table. Flanking her were people who resembled the missing captains, in their faces and builds and in the confident way they carried themselves. One man in particular caught the Master's attention. He had Miocene's face and baldness, and a boyish little body, and bright eyes that seemed to relish everything he was seeing. He was the one who looked left, then right, nodding at his companions, causing them to stop next to the various tables, each of the strangers picking up the cold fishes, examining them with a peculiar astonishment, as if they had never before seen such creatures.

  Miocene, or whoever she was, climbed the grassy ridge.

  The bright-eyed man remained at her side.

  Softly, the Master asked, 'Is it you?'

  The woman's smile had turned cold and furious. Her uniform was mirrored, but too stiff, and the leather belt was totally out of place. She paused in front of the Master, and looking up and down the long table — staring at each of the Submasters - she said nothing. Nothing.

  Earwig and the other Submasters were hailing the nonexistent security systems. Demanding action. Begging for information. Then, looking at one another, a wild panic began to take hold.

  Softly, the Master asked, 'How are you, darling?'

  The reply came with Miocene's voice and her cold firmness. She stared across the table, saying, 'Earwig. Darling. You're in my seat.'

  The Master halfway laughed, blurting, 'If I'd known you were coming—'

  'Bleak,' said the bright-eyed man.

  A hundred other strangers said, 'Bleak,' together, in a shared voice.

  Thousands of voices, from every part of the Great Hall, screamed, 'Bleak,' in a ragged, chilling unison.

  Finally, the Master's First Chair started to rise, asking, 'What are you saying? What's this "bleak" mean?'

  'That's you,' the man offered with a cold smile.

  Then Miocene reached out with her left hand, taking a gold carving knife from the Master's place setting, and with a quiet, hateful voice, she said, 'I waited. To be found and saved, I waited for centuries and centuries . . .'

  'I couldn't find you,' the Master confessed.

  'Which proves what I have always suspected.' Then she used the Master's name, the pathetically ordinary name that she hadn't heard in aeons. 'Liza,' said Miocene. 'You really don't deserve that chair of yours. Now do you, Liza?'

  The Master tried to answer.

  But a knife had been shoved into her throat, Miocene grunting with the exertion. Then grasping the gold hilt with both hands, she gave it another thrust, smiling as the blood jetted across her, as the spine and cord were suddenly cut in two. />
  Thirty-five

  WITH A BRIGHT whoosh, the laser fired.

  A whiff of coherent light boiled away half of Pamir’s fist.

  But he kept swinging what remained, feeling nothing until his blackened flesh and the blunt ends of his bones struck the stranger's face, a dazzling sharp pain racing down his arm, jerking loose a harsh little scream.

  The other man grunted softly, a look of dim surprise coming to the grayish face, to the wide gray eyes.

  Even without both hands, the captain had a thirty-kilo advantage. He drove with his legs, then his right shoulder, shoving his opponent against the sealed elevator door and pinning the arm with laser flush to the body ... a second whoosh evaporating a portion of his ear and the edge of his captain's cap . . . and Pamir screamed again, louder this time, his good hand smashing into the squirming body, punishing ribs and soft tissues while he flung the man's hairless head against the hyperfiber door.

  With a heavy clatter, the laser fell to the floor.

  Pamir absorbed blows to his belly, his ribs. Then with his good hand, he grabbed the other man's neck and yanked and twisted, squeezing until he was certain that not a breath of oxygen could slip down that crushed throat. Then he used his knee, driving bone into the groin, and when a look of pure misery passed across the choking face, he screamed, 'Stop,' and flung the man back up the hallway.

  The laser lay beside Washen's clock.

  Pamir reached with his bad hand, realized his blunder, then too late, put his good hand around the weapon's handle, the whiteness of polished bone braced with the archaic heft of forged steel.

  A booted foot, hard as stone, kicked Pamir in the face, shattering both cheekbones and his nose.

  He felt himself flung back against the door, and lifting his good hand, he fired, a sweeping ray of blackish-blue light cooking his opponent's other foot.

  The man collapsed, and moaned quietly for a breath or two.

  With his own trembling legs, Pamir pushed against the slick door, forcing himself upright, watching the stranger's face grow composed. Resigned. Then once again, a look of defiance came into the gray face.

  'Kill me,' the stranger demanded.

  'Who are you?' Pamir asked.

  No response.

  'You're a luddite, aren't you?' The captain said it with confidence, unable to envision any other explanation. 'Washen was living in one of your settlements. Is that it?'

  A blank, uncomprehending expression gave him his answer.

  'What's your name?' he asked again. Gray eyes glanced at Pamir's epaulets. Then with a low croaking voice, the man announced, 'You're a first-grade.' 'Pamir. That's my name.'

  The man blinked, and sighed, and said, 'I don't remember your name. You must be new to the captains' ranks.' 'You know the roster, do you?' Silence.

  'You've got a big memory,' Pamir allowed.

  The silence acquired a distinct pride.

  'But then,' Pamir added, 'Washen always had an excellent memory, too.'

  At the sound of her name, the man blinked. Then he stared at Pamir, and with a forced calmness, he asked, 'Do you know my mother?'

  'Better than anyone else, nearly.'

  That statement puzzled the man, but he said nothing. 'You resemble her,' Pamir confessed. 'In your face, mostly. Although she was a lot tougher, I think.' 'My mother ... is very strong . . .' 'Is?'

  Silence.

  'Is?' he asked again. Then he picked up Washen's clock, using the two surviving fingers on his battered hand. The pain was constant, and manageable. He dangled the silver machine in the air between them, saying, 'She's dead. Your mother is. I found this and nothing else. And we looked everywhere, but we didn't find a body.'

  The man stared straight up, showing the ceiling his contempt.

  'It happened inside the leech habitat, didn't it?' Pamir guessed he was right, then asked, 'Did you see her die?'

  The man said, 'Kill me,' again, but without as much feeling.

  His burnt foot was healing itself. A good luddite wouldn't possess such talents. And for the lack of any better guess, Pamir said, 'I know where you're from. From the middle of the ship somehow. Somehow.'

  The man refused to blink.

  But Pamir had a sense of what was true, impossible as it seemed. 'How did you climb up here? Is there a secret tunnel somewhere?'

  The eyes remained open. Under control.

  'No,' the captain whispered. 'I was digging a nice wide hole toward you. Almost all the way down, and that's how you got up here. Am I right?'

  But he didn't wait for a response. On a secure channel, Pamir called the foremachine working inside the hole. Quietly and confidently, the AI told him, 'Everything is nominal, sir. Everything is as it should be.'

  Pamir shifted channels, as an experiment.

  Again, 'Everything is nominal, sir.'

  And he selected a third channel — a route and coding system that he had never used before — and the response was a perfect, seamless quiet that caused him to mutter, 'Shit,' under his breath.

  His captive was flexing his growing foot.

  Pamir cooked it again, with a lance of blue-black light. Then he pocketed the clock and grabbed the man by an arm, promising him,'I'll kill you. Eventually. But we've got to look at something first.'

  HE DRAGGED THE man to his cap-car.

  Racing his way along a roundabout course, Pamir tried to contact the Master. An AI's voice responded. A constricted, heavily encoded image of the bridge and a rubber face appeared just past the car's window. 'Be brief,' was the response.

  'I have an emergency here,' Pamir explained.'An armed intruder—'

  'One intruder?'

  He nodded. 'Yes—'

  'Take him to the nearest detention center. As you were instructed—'

  'What instructions?'

  A genuine discomfort spread across the sexless face. 'A first-degree alarm has been sounded, Captain. Did you not hear it?'

  'No.'

  The machine's discomfort turned to a knifing pain.

  'What's going on?' Pamir demanded.

  'Our alarm system has been compromised. Plainly'

  Pamir asked, 'What about the captains at the feast?'

  'I've lost all contact with the Great Hall,' the machine confessed, almost embarrassed. Then it hesitated abruptly, and with a different tone, it said, 'Perhaps you should come to the Master's station, sir. I can explain what I know, if you come to me immediately'

  Pamir blanked the channel.

  For a long while, he sat motionless, ignoring his prisoner, considering what he knew and what he needed to do first.

  More than a century ago, after the discovery of the camouflaged hatch, the captains constructed a blind inside the local pumping station. Like any good blind, there were a dozen secret ways to slip inside it. Like anything built by captains, the facility was in perfect repair, every sensor off-line but ready to come awake with the proper codes from the approved people.

  Pamir slipped into the blind without incident. But he didn't bother with sensors; his own eyes told him everything.

  Rising up the fuel line were dozens, perhaps hundreds of odd cars, windowless and vast, shaped like some kind of predatory beetlelike creature and built from a bright gray metal. Steel, perhaps. Which made them exceptionally strange vehicles, and impressive. He calculated their volume and the possible numbers of bodies stuffed inside each of them. Then staring at his prisoner, Pamir said nothing. He stared and waited until the man looked back at him, then he finally asked, 'What did you want?' 'My name is Locke.'

  'Locke,' he repeated. 'What do you want?'

  'We're the Builders reborn,' said the strange little man. 'And you're one of the misguided souls in service of the Bleak. And we are taking the ship back from you—'

  'Fine,' Pamir growled. 'It's yours.'

  Then he shook his head, adding, 'But that's not what I'm asking, Mr Locke. And if you're half as smart as your mother, you know that perfectly well . . . !'

  PAMI
R TOOK THEM on another roundabout journey.

  Inside a secondary fuel line, he pulled to a stop, then used the laser to surgically maim his prisoner. With Locke left harmless, he sprayed emergency lifesuits over their bodies, and after a few moments to let the suits cure, he unsealed the main hatch.

  The cabin's atmosphere exploded into the vacuum.

  Pamir scrambled into the open, removed a tool kit, then gave the car a random course and an unreachable destination. Then he dragged Locke out of the car before sealing it again, and together, they watched it accelerate into the blackness.

  A valve stood beside them. Built by unknown hands, unused for billions of years, it had been left open, seemingly just for them.

  Pamir dragged his prisoner after him. Then he tripped a switch that slowly, slowly closed the valve.

  The tertiary line was a kilometer long, ending at a tiny, never-used auxiliary tank. And past that tank was the world-sized ocean of hydrogen.

  Walking rapidly, carrying Locke on his back, Pamir started to talk, his voice percolating through the spray-on fabric. 'She isn't dead,' he said. 'There was a fight, and I assumed that if she was there, she was obliterated, or someone recovered her body. But Washen was left behind, and you never found her. Did you? You came back to that alien house for a reason. Your first chance in more than a century, and you ran back there to look for your mother. For Washen. One of my oldest, best friends.'

  Locke took a deep, pained breath.

  'We searched. If anyone fell from that habitat, we should have found them. A heavy body spat out by the decompression would have had a small horizontal vector. That's why we looked directly beneath the alien house.' He was halfway running, thinking about how much time they had and what he would do if he couldn't find any help. 'Are you listening to me, Locke? I know something about how much abuse a person can take. And if we can find enough of your mother, she's alive again.'

  Silence.

  'You were there, Locke.' Pamir said the words twice, then added, 'The hydrogen has currents. Slow, but complex. And like I said, we were looking for a whole corpse. Because that's what was easiest. But if there was just a small piece of her, like her head, the decompression would have given her a terrific horizontal vector. Her poor head would have frozen in moments and fallen hard in the darkness, dropping straight to the icy bottoms, and if that's the case, the two of us could find her. The search equipment is still there, ready to try. It just needs to know its target—'