by Robert Reed
Till asked, 'May I stand now, madam, and have a word?'
Miocene nodded, then gladly sat in the Master's oversized chair, letting every eye focus on him.
For the next few minutes, her son spoke about duty. About the importance of these next days and weeks. He repeated what his mother had already stated emphatically, that it was crucial for the ship's burn to be made on schedule. They needed to prove to the passengers and to the galaxy that the ship was in proficient hands.
It was her speech, and it wasn't.
As always, Miocene noticed how the faces seemed to drink in her son's words. Again, she could appreciate why he was able to find followers and motivate them. Even old men like Twist and Daen would nod appreciatively, their fealty having shifted — in some abstract, convoluted fashion - a little closer to the Waywards.
Then she wasn't thinking about Till, her eyes focusing on a new captain who had just entered the conference room, bowing at his superiors and taking one of the two empty chairs at the far end of the table.
Till concluded by saying, 'Welcome, Virtue.'
The one-time traitor from the Wayward camp managed a deeper bow, then said,'My apologies. There was a problem—'
'With the spine, again?'
Asked Till.
'With its borehole, specifically. Sir. Madam. The old hyperfiber has been putting up a tenacious fight.' Gray-white eyes blinked as if embarrassed, then stared at Virtue's own hands. 'Within the week, I can assure you, madam ... you will be able to rule the ship from anywhere, including Marrow . . .'
At this moment, they were nothing more than a boarding party. A few million highly motivated, thoroughly trained, and well-armed people living far from home.
'When the spine is finished, integration of command functions won't take long,' he promised. 'Another day, or two. Or perhaps three.'
Till glanced at his mother. For both of them, he said, 'Thank you, Virtue.'
Miocene barely noticed the exchange. What she was studying was the final empty chair, feeling that instinctive disquiet. When she listened again and heard nothing but patient silence, she leaned forward across the pearlwood table and said, 'Locke.'
She asked, 'Has anyone heard from him?'
No one responded.
But ever so slightly, Till's expression tightened. And he quietly admitted, 'No, there hasn't been any news.'
In the mutiny's opening moments, without warning, Locke had disappeared. It was commonly known but never discussed. The other captains and generals pretended to busy themselves with details while Miocene whispered to her son, 'Do you still think that he's off chasing his mother's soul?'
'Of course,' Till replied.
What was she hearing in his voice?
'I know the man,' he continued. 'He very much loved Washen, even though he didn't see her for centuries at a time—'
It was a love that Miocene could appreciate.
'And the poor man was wracked by guilt. For what happened, for what he had to do ... it was very difficult for him . . .'
Locke killed his own father, trying to save his mother. Yet Washen had died regardless. The two Waywards had seen her body torn apart by explosives. Shredded flesh and the dying mind were scattered across a great ocean of liquid fuel, and lost. Every report in the Master's files documented a long, fruitless search. A solitary Wayward had no chance of finding her. None. Miocene felt certain, yet she had to ask, 'Did you send anyone to search the leech habitat? As I suggested?'
'Naturally,' Till replied.
'And what did they find?'
'It was sealed, but there were signs of a struggle,' he admitted, shaking his head with a sudden heaviness. 'It's possible, just possible, that Locke stumbled into an armed guard. The evidence is narrow, but reasonable. There was a fight, and he was killed with his own weapon.'
She waited for a moment, then asked pointedly, 'Why didn't you tell me this?'
Till blinked. He sighed. Then with a peculiar sadness, he replied, 'It didn't feel like critical news.'
'If Locke's been captured—'
'Mother,' he growled. 'Locke is not a danger. You know that.'
She sat upright in the Master's chair, staring at that pretty face with all of the coldness that she could summon.
'He knows nothing,' her son insisted. 'His place at this table is honorary. Nothing else. For a long time, I haven't given him any authority. Because, as I promised, I know him so very well.'
Do you? she thought, in secret.
Then her coldness turned inward, and she shivered in invisible ways. After a long moment, she remarked, 'You might wish to search the fuel tank itself.' 'We already have,'Till replied.
Something about his eyes were flat. Unreadable. Even dead.
'That tank is huge,' Miocene reminded him.
'Which is why it took until today to finish our search.' The unreadable eyes wore a smile, and a smiling mouth added, 'I sent ten swarms to search—'
Ten swarms pulled from what duties?
'And all that they found were aerogel barges. Scientific instruments packed for shipment. And nothing alive or even a little bit important.'
'You're certain?' she asked.
Till calmly stepped into her trap, telling her,'Yes, madam. I am quite sure.'
With a harsh, loud voice, Miocene cried out, 'But you've missed important things in the past. Haven't you, First Chair? Haven't you?'
Her son stiffened.
The room fell silent, waiting.
Till forced himself to relax. Then quietly and angrily, he said, 'Locke is useless.'
Ten swarms were an enormous number of soldiers, particularly if you were chasing someone who was useless.
But Till just kept shaking his head, telling everyone at the long pearlwood table, 'Even if he wanted, he couldn't hurt us.'
Thirty-eight
'DON'T WORRY. IT'S just my hand.' The pressure was soft, soothing. 'Keep still now, dear. Still.' Who was moving?
The voice said a familiar name, and with the hand pressing, it complained, 'She's fighting. Me, or something else.' The voice is talking about me.
Another voice, deeper and more distant, said, 'Washen.' Said, 'Just he still. Washen. Please.'
Then a larger hand tried to smother her, pressing over her mouth and nostrils, and the deep voice drifted closer, familiarly intimate, telling her, 'We don't have much time. We're sprinting you through this regrowth.'
Regrowth?
'Sleep,' he advised, his hand lifting.
The woman's voice said, 'I think she is.'
But Washen was only keeping her eyes closed, feigning sleep, savoring the constant white pain of her new body's birth.
FRESH EYES OPENED. Blinked.
A piercing green light was eclipsed by a man's silhouetted face, and Washen heard her own voice asking, 'Pamir? Is that you?'
'No, Mother,' he replied.
Flinching, she asked, 'This is Marrow? Are we back?' Locke said nothing. 'Pamir!' she cried out.
'Your friend isn't here now,' said another voice. It was the same voice as before — feminine, and soft-spoken. 'He left for a little while,' the woman promised. 'How do you feel, darling?'
She moved her head, and her neck burst into flames. 'Slow, dear. Slow'
Washen breathed deeply and found herself staring at a lovely human woman dressed in an emerald sarong. Black hair. Full lips. Smiling, and shy. She wasn't a Wayward, obviously. Or any normal Loyalist. Her clothing said as much, and the smooth, unhurried way she moved underscored her ancient origins. This woman was a passenger. Wealthy, almost certainly. And probably unaccustomed to having a dead woman in her home.
'My name is Quee Lee.'
Washen nodded slowly, dancing with the pain. Eyes panned across the terran jungle. Wet green foliage was punctuated with riots of wild tropical flowers. Birds and painted bats darted through the sweet warm air. On the rotting stump of a tree, a troop of tailored monkeys sat in a sloppy ring, conspicuously ignoring the humans, playing some sort
of game with stones and sticks and the delicate white skulls of dead owls.
'They'll be back,' said the hostess. 'Soon.'
'They?*
'My husband and your friend.'
Washen lay inside an open autodoc bed, her new body dressed in a blackish goo of silicone and dissolved oxygen and a trillion microchines. This was how a soldier was reborn — too fast and clumsily, flesh and bone made in bulk while immunological functions were kept to a minimum. Quee Lee sat on one side of the bed, Locke on the other. Her son was dressed in a passenger's colorful garb, his flesh darkened by UV light, his lovely thick hair grown long enough to make a golden stubble, hands and broad bare feet lashed together with standard security cord.
Quietly, anxiously, she asked, 'How long has it been?' He didn't respond.
Quee Lee leaned forward, saying, 'One hundred and twenty-two years. Minus a few days.'
Washen remembered the explosive blows and the sensation of being yanked out of the leech habitat, tumbling and tumbling as her flesh froze and her mind pulled itself into the deepest possible coma.
When the nausea passed, she asked, 'Did you find me, Locke?'
He opened his mouth, and he closed it again. 'Pamir rescued you,' said Quee Lee. 'With your son's help.'
Again Washen glanced at the black security cords, then managed to laugh. 'I'm glad the two of you have become good friends.'
Embarrassment bled into a chilly anger. Locke straightened his back, then forced himself to explain. 'It was an accident. I went to the alien house. To see if the captains, or anyone else, had been there. And that ugly man stumbled over me.'
Pamir. Sure.
Her son shook his head in disgust, bare toes curling and uncurling in the black earth. What would a Wayward make of this rich soil? And the impossibly green trees? And the monkeys? And what about the ornate song of that little rilly bird that fell on them from the highest branches?
Finally, with a massive sadness, Locke admitted, 'I was weak.'
'Why?' asked Washen.
'I should have killed your friend.'
'Pamir's difficult to kill,' she responded. 'Believe me.'
Again, Locke clung to his silence.
Washen took a deep, thorough breath, then sat up in bed, the black goo clinging to her baby-smooth, utterly hairless flesh. When the worst of the pain subsided, she looked at Quee Lee and said, 'One hundred and twenty-two years.' She sighed and said, 'Circumstances have changed while I was sleeping. That's my guess.'
The woman flinched, then smiled shyly.
'What's happening?' asked Washen. 'With the ship—?'
'Nothing has happened,' said her hostess. 'According to our new Master Captain, the ship needed a change of leadership. Incompetence was rife. And now, according to her, everything is the same as before, except for what's better, and we'd be fools to entertain the tiniest concern.'
Washen glared at her son.
He refused to blink or look at any face.
Then to herself, in a soft angry voice, she said,'Miocene.'
And she turned back to Quee Lee, adding, 'That's who she sounds like.'
THE APARTMENT'S AI spoke with a firm authority, announcing, 'Perri is approaching. With the other one, he is.'
It said, 'They seem to be alone.'
Then it asked, 'Do I allow them inside, Quee Lee?'
'Absolutely'
Three more days had passed. Washen was six hours out of her bed, dressed in a simple white sarong and white sandals, and she had just eaten her first solid meal in more than a century, the endless fatigue turning into a nervous energy. She stood beside Quee Lee, waiting. The apartment door opened, its security screen in place, and out in the wide, tree-lined avenue, there was no one. What should have been a busy scene on any normal day was unnaturally quiet. Suddenly two men strode into view. The smaller man was handsome, smiling with an unconscious charm. The other man was larger and simple-faced, and Washen made the obvious mistake. Once the door was closed and locked by twenty means, she said to that larger man, 'Hello, Pamir.'
But the simple face peeled away, exposing a second face identical to the smaller man. Pretty in the same way. And charming. And most definitely not Pamir.
'Sorry,' said a laughing voice. 'Try again.'
The smaller man was Pamir. He peeled away his disguise, and the rumbling deep voice explained, 'I got an autodoc to peel away thirty kilos. What do you think?'
'You look wonderful anyway,' she allowed.
Pamir's face was rugged, like something hacked from a block of dense dark oak, an asymmetric tilt to the rough features and his dirty, badly matted hair tilting things even more. The man looked as if he couldn't remember when he last slept. Yet the bright brown eyes were clear and alert. When he looked at Washen, he smiled. Looking anywhere else, his expression grew distant, distracted. To no one in particular, he said, 'I'm famished.' Then his gaze returned to Washen, and the smile swam up from the massive fatigue, and with a familiar bite, cynical and wise, he said, 'Don't thank me. Not yet. If these grandchildren of yours find us, you'll wish that you were still at the bottom of that hydrogen sea.'
Probably so.
Yanking off the rest of his disguise, Pamir asked, 'Where's my prisoner?'
'In the garden,' Quee Lee replied.
'Has he grunted anything important?'
Both women said, 'Nothing,' in the same breath.
A bare hand pushed through the dirty hair. Then Pamir allowed himself a smile, and he confessed to Washen, 'I wanted to be with you. When you came back to us. But I had to see to this and to that first. Sorry.'
'Don't apologize.'
'Then I won't,' he grumbled.
Quee Lee asked her husband, 'What is happening out there?'
The pretty man rolled his eyes and thrust his tongue into one cheek.'In a word?' he said. 'It's awfully and weirdly and relentlessly quiet.'
She asked, 'Where did you go, darling?'
The men glanced at each other, and Perri said, 'Darling,' as a warning.
Then Pamir shook his head, saying, 'Food first. I want my thirty kilos back.' He peeled away the false flesh on his hands, saying, 'Then we've got to go somewhere. Just us, Washen. I've got a trillion questions, and barely enough time to ask ten.'
PAMIR WAS CLEAN and wearing new clothes. He and Washen were inside a guest suite. The suite's floor diamond was inlaid with sun and holo generators. Looking between their feet, they could see into Quee Lee's garden room, and in particular, they could watch the blond-haired man who sat in the largest clearing, who never yanked at the restraining straps, and who carefully watched each motion of every bird and bug and half-tame monkey.
'Tell me,' Pamir began. 'Everything.'
Nearly five thousand years were crossed in what felt like a single breath. The false mission. Marrow. The Event. Children born; Waywards born. The rebirth of civilization. Washen and Miocene escaping from Marrow. Then Diu caught them and brought them to the leech home, and Diu explained that he was the source of everything that had happened . . . and just as she was about to finish the story, she paused to breathe, and nod, telling Pamir, 'I know what you've been doing these last days.'
'Do you?'
'You were trying to decide if I was genuine. If you could trust me.'
He took a last bite of half-cooked steak, then watching her, asked, 'How about it? Can I trust you?'
'What did you find out?' she pressed.
'Nobody mentions you. Nobody seems to care. But Miocene and your grandchildren are searching hard for him’ Pamir pointed at the floor. 'They nearly found him, and me, inside the fuel tank. But don't let his glowering silences fool you. Locke told me enough to narrow our search site enough . . .'
'How many captains are running loose?'
'My count is twenty-eight. Or twenty-seven. Or maybe it's down to twenty-six.'
Quietly, she said, 'Shit.'
'Not including you,' he added. 'But your commission was dissolved long ago. And if that doesn't make you crazy,
listen to this. Right now, you're sitting with the ship's legal Master Captain. Isn't that a frightening thought?'
Washen did her best to digest the news. Then she bent and placed the palm of her new hand on the floor, as if trying to grasp her son's head. 'All right,' she whispered. 'Tell me everything you know. Fast.'
He told about his search for her and Miocene. About Perri's help and the mounting frustration, and how at the end, moments before he gave up, he stumbled across that archaic silver-encrusted clock—
'Do you still have it?' Washen blurted, her head lifting.
And there it was, dangling on a new silver chain. Pamir didn't have to say 'Take it' twice. Then, as Washen opened the lid and read the insignia, he told more of his story — the neutrino source; the hidden hatch; the collapsed tunnel - and he stopped where he and Locke were facing each other above the leech house.
With a soft click Washen closed the silver lid.
With a tone of apology, Pamir said,'If I'd expanded the search radius, and chased down every small target—'
'I'm not disappointed,' she interrupted, showing a warm smile.
'I was distracted,' he continued. 'First, the neutrinos. Then we found Diu's secret hatch, and I was doing nothing but digging.'
Washen cupped her hands around her clock, concentrating.
Pamir said, 'Diu,' with a firm contempt. Then he shook his head, adding, 'I honestly can't remember the little prick.'
I loved the man, thought Washen, in astonishment.
Then she said, 'Neutrinos,' with a soft, curious voice. Looking up at him, she asked, 'What did you see? Exactly. And how big was the flux?'
Pamir told everything, in crisp detail.
When Washen didn't react, he changed topics. 'As soon as you're strong enough, we're leaving. I don't have any official ties to Perri or Quee Lee. But there might be an old security file somewhere, and Miocene'll find it. We need a fresh place to hide. Which is partly what I've been doing these last days—'
'And then?'
'Bide our time. Be patient, and make ready' He spoke in slow, certain tones, sounding like a man who had given this issue his full attention. 'If we're going to take back our ship, and keep it, then we'll need to gather up the resources . . . the muscle and wisdom ... to make things a little less impossible . . .'
