Mallow

by Robert Reed

  Orleans dove into the black bottomless hole. Feet first, Pamir followed.

  In that perfect darkness, there was no sense of falling. The body felt nothing of its own rapid acceleration, and rime seemed to slow, and Pamir was trying to relax, readying himself for a distant floor, when a voice suddenly, unexpectedly whispered into his ears.

  'Pamir?' said the voice. 'Can you talk?'

  Washen.

  'Can you hear me, Pamir?'

  He didn't dare use even a scrambled channel. Someone might hear his convoluted bark, then trace the source. But maybe Washen realized as much, because she kept talking, making it feel as if they were falling together.

  'I've got news,' she reported. 'Our friend has helped, and will help us . . .'

  Good.

  'But I need to know,' she continued. 'Will our other friends assist? Have they agreed to fight with us?'

  Just then, something powerful struck the hull.

  For a screeching instant, Pamir brushed against the shaft wall. The entire hull was rippling under the impact. Then he was tumbling through space again, free of weight, momentarily functioning as a tiny, tiny starship . . . and he closed his eyes, remembering to breathe, then telling Washen, and himself, 'The Remoras will fight.'

  He whispered to her, 'We've got ourselves a war.'

  THE BLEAK

  MY PERFECT, ETERNAL solitude shattered by a wealth of stars, and by life, boisterous and abundant life, and it felt as if this was how it had always been. Skies filled with suns and living worlds, and the life within me fat and steady, prosperous beyond need or reasonable want, and how could it be any other way? Life peaceful, more than not. Life punctuated with great loves and endurable defeats. Life conjuring children out of semen and egg, software and cold crystals, and those children racing through their fresh-scrubbed incarnations with an innocent zest that always eroded into the steady cool pleasantness that is a mark of maturity that time, under its tireless hand, forces upon each of us.

  I had nearly forgotten Death.

  Not as a theory, never. As a principle and occasional tragedy, I couldn't help but think of that great balancer. But as hard practicality - as the simple inevitable consequence of Life - Death seemed as left behind as my ancient, much treasured solitude.

  Or perhaps I never actually knew Death.

  To me, Her face appears grim and self-assured, yet unexpectedly beautiful. That beautiful face rests on a tall body growing stronger as the carnage worsens, and more lovely. A body that feeds on one soul or ten million souls, choosing her mouthfuls with a fickle maliciousness sure to leave the living wondering:

  'Why not me?'

  'Why am I still here, alone?'

  I hear their voices. From my skin come murmurs. Shouts. Coded ticks and great white roars of EM noise, and always, lovely Death drinks in their glorious misery.

  'Abandon your station . . . now . . . !'

  'Attack . . . now . . . !'

  'Do you see them . . . no . . . not yet, no . . . !' 'Hold—'

  'Not there, you need to be . . . by the patch-and-pray shop . . . do you see, no . . . !' 'Retreat—/'

  'Casualties . . . in excess of... eleven million in the bombardment, and twenty million displaced into basements . . .'

  'They ambushed us at the assembly point, with machine-shop nuclears . . .'

  'Kill me. If it comes to it.'

  'I will. I promise.'

  'Casualties eighty percent. Swarm still functioning.' 'Fall back, and dig ... !'

  'We have a reactor sabotaged. Off-line. Request engineers.' 'How about it? A quick screw?'

  'Prisoners will be assembled here. Ranked according to their likely knowledge here. By me. Then taken home for interrogation, or disposed by standard means . . .'

  'Fanatics.'

  'Maniacs.'

  'Soulless fucks.'

  'How about a really quick fuck?'

  'Come see, come see! I want to show all of you. These are cyborgs, my friends! Much as the Bleak were! Nothing but machines with odd guts shoved inside them. Here, touch their guts. Touch them, and smell them. Make yourselves clothes with this odd flesh. Cut up their shells for trophies. Machines and meat, and a great evil, and nothing else. I promise you—!'

  'Casualties, ninety-two percent. Swarm effectiveness diminished.'

  'Escape wherever you can, however you can . . .'

  'NOTICE: WITHIN THE LAST SHIPMENT OF PRISONERS WAS A CAMOUFLAGED FINGER OF ANTIMATTER. ALL PRISONERS MUST BE EXAMINED THOROUGHLY BEFORE EMBARKING—'

  'Retreat again . . . with all available skimmers . . . !'

  'They're the Bleak, reborn! And this is our duty, and our honor, to chop them open and kill them slowly—!'

  'Our last city . . . Wune's Hearts . . . abandoned . . .'

  'NOTICE: PASSENGERS ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE SAME TREATMENT AS REMORAS. THEY MAY NOT BE SUMMARILY EXECUTED, REGARDLESS OF BEHAVIOR. CIVIL CODES WILL REMAIN IN EFFECT. ALWAYS. FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MASTER CAPTAIN—'

  'I won't tell you anything, Bleak! Ever!'

  'They're calling us the Bleak now. Whatever that is. I don't know. Considering, maybe we should be insulted . . .'

  'Press them! Run them!'

  'I'm finished, and you promised.'

  An EM crackle, then a solid whump.

  'Good dreams, friend.'

  'My swarm's gone. No one else alive. My family, most of them, are in Happens River. Tell them—'

  'All right you shits! I'm a Bleak. We're all pretty fucking Bleak in here. Does that scare you? Does that make you want to drip your piss? Because we're going to keep holding our positions, you fucks, and if you want to take us, you've got to follow your piss down into our hole—/'

  'All engines secured!'

  'Reactors, on-line!'

  'Waywards, they keep coming . . . new units keep coming . . . there's more Waywards than we've got stars . . .' 'Again, retreat. You know how!'

  'PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: FIGHTING SLOWS IN THE INSURRECTION'S LAST HOURS. THE SHIP'S TRAILING FACE IS SECURE. ESSENTIAL SHIP OPERATIONS HAVE NEVER BEEN IMPAIRED. PASSENGER DISTRICTS HAVE NEVER BEEN ENDANGERED. FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR

  BLESSINGS, THANK YOU. FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MASTER CAPTAIN—'

  'So we've got some time. How about a slow screw?'

  'Sounds nice.'

  'Doesn't it, now?'

  Forty-five

  ONE OF THE generals said it first, and said it badly.

  'The Remoras are just about beaten,' he declared, standing over the latest strategic holomaps. When he realized that the Master had overheard his audacious words, he straightened his back and squared his shoulders, adding, 'We've destroyed every one of their cities, imprisoned or killed most of them, and pushed their refugees out onto the ship's bow. Without cover, and with only a fool's hope left to them.' Then he said, 'Madam,' with a minimal bow, smiling in the Master's direction while his pale eyes kept careful track of Till.

  A reprimand was in order.

  Something blunt, and powerful, and lasting.

  Miocene showed a narrow grin, and in a near whisper, she assured her officer, 'There is nothing to celebrate here.'

  'Of course, madam.' Again, the little bow. 'I simply meant—'

  She stopped him with a crisp wave of the hand, and said nothing.

  Instead of the expected words, Miocene stared at each of her generals, and Till, then conspicuously looked at no one when she said, 'When we first arrived here, I noticed a man. A human male standing outside the bridge, wearing nothing but a handwritten sign.'

  Silence.

  'The End Is Here,' she quoted.

  The silence grew less sure of itself.

  'I'm a busy person, but I still have time enough to ask simple questions.' She shook her head, telling everyone, 'He was a fool, obviously. One of those poor souls whose focus narrows too much, who can't work free of some consuming, pathetic idea. For the last six centuries, that fool wore his sign in public. Outside the Master's station. Did you know that? Did you k
now that he painted those words on fresh parchment every morning, careful to never repeat the curl and color of any letter. Why that was important to him, I can't say. Two days ago - the last time I left these quarters - I could have stopped for a moment and asked him those questions. I could have let him explain his passions to me. "What makes it so important, sir, that you're willing to invest hundreds of years in what looks futile to a normal soul . . . ?"'

  Miocene sighed heavily, then admitted, 'Even if I wanted, I couldn't ask him any questions now. Nor could I help him, if that's what I thought was best. Because he has vanished. More than two hundred thousand mornings of rising before dawn and painting his important pronouncement according to his difficult, choking logic . . . and for some reason, the fool couldn't stand on his usual ground two mornings ago. Or yesterday morning. Or today, for that matter. I can't see him through any of my security eyes. Quite simply, he has vanished. Now don't you think that is odd?'

  One of the Wayward generals - Blessing Gable - cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and started to say, 'Madam—'

  'No. Shut up.' Miocene shook her head, then warned everyone, 'I'm not interested in anyone's reasons. Not for this or for that. And frankly, the fate of one odd soul is not particularly compelling to me. What sickens me is knowing that someone made assumptions, not asking simple questions first. What worries me is my own simple question:"What else are my arrogant, inexperienced generals forgetting to ask themselves and each other?'"

  Till stepped forward. This staff meeting belonged to him. For sturdy and obvious reasons, Miocene had given her First Chair responsibility over the war. She had too many new duties of her own to embrace just now. Besides, these events were too large and much too savage to directly involve a Master. Better her son than her, yes. Not one nanogram of self-doubt gnawed at Miocene now.

  'You're right, madam,' Till allowed. Then he showed the generals how to bow, saying to the foot-worn marble floor, 'It's too soon to call anything won, madam. Victory comes at a terrible cost. And of course the Remoras may only be the first of our enemies.'

  She said, 'Yes. Yes. Exactly'

  Because this wasn't her meeting, she was free to leave it. A show of power was her only agenda, and she turned suddenly, strolling toward one of several hallways leading into the back of the Master's mazelike apartment ... telling her son on a private channel, nexus to nexus, 'When you're finished here, come see me . . .'

  'Yes, madam,' said a crisp voice. While the voice on the private channel promised, 'It won't be long, Mother.'

  Miocene thought to glance over her shoulder. But no, that would do little good. She knew from experience that she wouldn't see unexpected emotions in those faces. Ask all the simple questions you want, she told herself. But don't waste precious energy when you know that the answers, pleasing or bitter, will simply refuse to show themselves.

  THE APARTMENT HAD always been familiar terrain, and a weaker person, infected with self-doubts, might have avoided these rather small, always comfortable, and purposely ordinary rooms. But the new Master had never considered living anywhere else. If she deserved the old Master's chair, then why not the woman's home? Indeed, after these first weeks, the hallways and alcoves, potted jungles and even the old expansive bed, made Miocene feel nothing but at ease.

  Her bed already had an occupant.

  'The meeting—?' he began.

  'Everything is fine,' she replied. But to be certain, she linked herself to security eyes and ears, the constant bark and flutter of her generals interrupted by the quieter, more forceful growl of Till. After a moment of satisfied eavesdropping, she asked, 'Is there progress?'

  'Of a slow sort,' Virtue replied. 'Yes.'

  The Remoras knew how to damage the ship. It seemed that Wune's professed love for this machine didn't mean much, and they were attacking it with the same zest with which they fought her office and her authority. In an instant, Miocene consumed the latest damage reports and repair predictions, one of her nexuses failing to give her the data on her first try.

  In a crisp, angry voice, Miocene said, 'That problem's surfacing again.'

  'That's what I warned you about,' he replied. Virtue regarded her with bright gray eyes, too big for his face and too open to hide anything. 'What we're doing to you . . . well, it's never been done. Not to a human. Profound changes—'

  "'—in a profane amount of time." I remember what you, and everyone, has told me.' She shook her head regardless, then casually told her uniform to melt at the shoulders, the fabric collapsing onto the living rug, leaving her wide and deep and lovely body shining in the bedroom's false sunshine.

  She sat on the edge of her bed.

  Virtue moved nearer, but it took him a moment to find the strength to touch her on the bare breast. Of course he didn't like her new body, and of course she didn't care. Nexuses needed room and energy, and her body had to increase proportionally to her responsibilities. Besides, Virtue's timidity had a charm. A sweetness, even. She couldn't help but smile, eyes dropping, watching those little fingers desperately caress the brown expanse of her left nipple.

  'We don't have time,' she reported. 'My First Chair will be here soon.'

  Virtue was thankful for that, but he had poise enough to make his hand linger for a moment longer, fingers feeling the nipple swell with blood and newer fluids.

  When his hand vanished, she told her nightgown to dress her.

  Afterward, speaking with a quiet concern, Virtue reported, 'You look tired. Even more than usual, I think.'

  'Don't tell me to sleep.'

  'I can't tell myself to sleep,' was his reply.

  Miocene began to smile again, her head turning and her mouth opening, a compliment phrased and ready to be uttered. 'I wish you were as good with my nexuses as you are with my mood.' She fully intended to say those words, but an abrupt, unexpected urge became a coherent flash inside one of her working nexuses . . . and she hesitated after saying only, 'I wish . . .'

  Virtue waited, ready to smile when it was his turn.

  She focused on something no one else could see.

  After a long moment, her lover mustered the courage to ask, 'What's wrong?'

  Miocene said, 'Nothing.'

  Then she rose from the bed, looking at her nightgown with a confused expression, as if she couldn't remember asking for it.

  Again, she said, 'Nothing.'

  Then Miocene told Virtue, 'Wait here. Wait.' She took a step toward the room's back wall, ordered her uniform to cover her body again, and for a third time, with barely a whisper's force, she said, 'Wait,' as a doorway appeared in what looked like polished red granite.

  'But,' he sputtered, 'where are you—?'

  The door closed and sealed behind her.

  That the Master's apartment had secret places had been no surprise. As First Chair, Miocene realized that the complex layout of rooms and hallways left spaces for privacy, or avenues of escape. The only surprise was that these secret places were at least as ordinary as the public ones. They were blandly furnished, and more than not, without clear purpose. The largest of the hidden rooms had been improved already during her tenure, then filled with severed, slowly mummifying heads. It seemed an appropriate means of storing the disposed captains, cruelty and banality perfectly joined together. But the room behind her bedroom was much smaller, and no one, not Virtue or even Till, knew that it contained a hidden hatchway that the former Master had had installed during some recent attack of paranoia, the hatchway leading to an unregistered cap-car that had been built on-site, ready for this exact instant.

  Once under way, Miocene made certain that no one was searching for her. And only then did she re-examine the message that had found its way to her on one of the oldest, most secret channels employed by captains.

  'Here's what I propose,' said the familiar voice, and the very familiar face, speaking to her from a holobooth inside a certain way-station deep in the ship.

  A booth she already knew well, it turned out.


  The woman smiled, her black hair short and downy, her features bright and smooth as if the flesh and nose and the rest of her had just been regrown. She smiled with a mixture of smug pleasure and vindictiveness, telling Miocene, 'I know what the Great Ship is. And I really think you need to know, too.' Washen.

  'Meet me,' said the dead woman. 'And come alone.'

  When she first saw the face and heard those unlikely words, Miocene had nearly muttered aloud, 'I won't meet you, and certainly not alone.'

  But Washen had anticipated her stubbornness, shaking her head with a genuine disappointment, telling her, 'Yes, you'll meet me. You don't have a choice.'

  Miocene closed two of her eyes, letting her mind's eye focus on the recorded message, on those deep, dark, and utterly relentless eyes.

  'Meet me in the Grand Temple,' said Washen.

  'In Hazz City,' she said.

  'On Marrow,' she said.

  Then she almost laughed, and looking at the Master's imagined eyes, she asked, 'Why are you afraid? Where in all of Creation could you possibly feel as safe, you crazy old bitch of bitches?'

  Forty-six

  A FLEET OF old skimmers and sleeks and retrofitted cap-cars fled across the endless hull, dressed to resemble the battered hyperfiber beneath, their engines masked and muted, and every vehicle surrounded by false cars - holo-echos designed to be obvious, hopefully looking dangerous or weak, the projections begging the Waywards to fire at them instead of tormenting phantoms that might or might not be.

  Orleans was steering one of those phantoms.

  An EM pulse had pushed its AI pilot into insanity, leaving him no choice. The same pulse had killed its main reactor, leaving them depending on an auxiliary that whispered to the driver. 'I am sick. I need maintenance. Do not depend on me.'

  The Remora ignored the complaints. Instead, he looked back at the passengers, a whisper-signal carrying his minimal question:

  'How soon?'

  'Ninety-two,' said a white-as-milk face.

  Minutes, she meant. Ninety-two minutes, according to the latest projection. Which was too long, and what could be taking so much time . . . ?