The Greatship

by Robert Reed

  “I am different than you,” Alone conceded.

  “Do you sleep?”

  “Never.”

  “Yet you never feel mentally tired?” The purple face nodded, and she said, “Right now, I’m envious.”

  Envy was a new word.

  “I’m trying to tell you something,” she said. “This old Remora lady has been awake for a very long time, and she needs to sleep for a little while. Is that all right? Do whatever you want while my eyes are closed. If you need, walk away from me. Vanish completely.” Then she smiled, adding, “Or you might take a step or two in my direction. If you feel the urge, that is.”

  Then Wune shut her misplaced eyes.

  During the next hour, Alone crept forward more than three meters.

  As soon as she woke, Wune noticed. “Good. Very good.”

  “Are you rested now?”

  “Hardly. But I’ll push through the misery.” Her laugh had a different tone. “What’s your earliest, oldest memory? Tell me.”

  “Walking.”

  “Walking where?”

  “Crossing the Ship’s hull.”

  “Who brought you to the Ship?”

  “I have always been here.”

  She considered those words. “Or you could have been built here,” she suggested. “Assembled from a kit, perhaps. You don’t remember a crowd of engineers sticking their hands inside you?”

  “I remember no one.” Then with confidence, Alone said, “I have never been anywhere but on the Great Ship.”

  “If that was true,” Wune began. Then she fell silent.

  Alone asked, “What if that is so?”

  “I can’t even guess at all of the ramifications.” After a few minutes of silence, she said, “Ask something of me. Please.”

  “Why are you here, Wune?”

  “Because I’m a Remora,” she offered. “Remoras are humans who got pushed up on the hull to do important, dangerous work. There are reasons for this. Good causes and bad justifications. Everything that you see here…well, the hull is not intended to be a prison. The captains claim that it isn’t. But now and again, it feels like the worst cage imaginable.”

  Then she hesitated, thinking carefully before saying, “I don’t think that was your question. Was it?”

  “Like me, you are alone,” it pointed out. “Most humans gather in large groups, and they act pleased to be that way.”

  With a serious tone, Wune said, “I’m rather different than the rest.”

  Alone waited.

  “You see, the hull is constantly washed with radiation, particularly out here on the leading face.” She gestured at the galaxy. “My flesh is immortal. I can endure almost any abuse. But these wild nuclei crash through my cells, wreaking terrible damage. My repair mechanisms are always awake, always busy. I have armies of tiny workers marching inside me, fighting to lift my flesh back to robust health. But when I am alone, and when I focus on my body’s functions, I can influence my regenerating flesh. On a good day, with nothing except willpower, I can direct my own evolution.”

  That might explain the odd, not quite human face.

  “I’m out here teaching myself these tricks,” Wune admitted. “The hull is no prison. To me, it is a church. This is a temple. I have been handed a rare opportunity where the tiniest soul can unleash potentials that her old epic life never revealed to her.”

  “I understand each of your words,” said Alone.

  “But?”

  “I cannot decipher what you mean.”

  “Of course you can’t.” Wune laughed. “Listen. My entire creed boils down to this: If I can write with my flesh, then I can write upon my soul.”

  “Your ‘soul’?”

  “My mind. My essence. Whatever it is that the universe sees when it looks hard at peculiar little Wune.”

  “Your soul,” the walker said again.

  Wune spoke for a long while, trying to explain her newborn faith. Then her voice turned raw and sloppy, and after drinking broth produced by her recyke system, she slept again. The legs of her lifesuit were locked in place. Nearly five hours passed with her standing like a statue, unaware of her surroundings, and when she woke again barely twenty meters of vacuum and hard radiation separated them.

  The Remora didn’t act surprised. With a quieter, more intimate voice, she asked, “What fuels you? Is there some kind of reactor inside that body? Or do you steal your power from us somehow?”

  “I don’t remember stealing.”

  “Ah, the thief’s standard reply.” She chuckled. “Let’s assume you’re a machine. You have to be alien-built. I’ve never seen any device like you, or even heard rumors. Not from the human shops, I haven’t.” After a long stare, she asked, “Are you male?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m going to call you male. Does that offend you?”

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps you are.” She wanted to come closer. One boot lifted, seemingly of its own volition, and then she forced herself to set it back down on the hull. “You claim not to know your own purpose. Your job, your nature are questions without answer.”

  “I am a mystery to myself.”

  “Which is an enormous gift, isn’t it? By that, I mean that if you don’t know what to do with your life, then you’re free to do anything you wish.” Her face was changing color, the purple skin giving way to streaks of gold. And during her sleep her eyes had grown rounder and deeply blue. “You don’t seem dangerous. And you do require solitude. I can accept all of that. But as time passes, I think you’ll discover that escaping notice will only grow harder. The surface area is enormous, yes. But where will you hide? I won’t chase after you. I promise. And I can keep my people respectful of your privacy. At least I hope I can. But the Great Ship is cursed with quite a few captains, and they don’t approve of mysteries. And we can’t count all the adventurers who are racing here, abandoning home worlds and fortunes just to ride on this alien artifact.”

  With just a few words, the galaxy above seemed even more treacherous.

  Wune continued. “Maybe you don’t realize this, but our captains have decided to take us on a tour of the Milky Way. Humans and aliens are invited, for a fat price, and some of them will hear the rumors about you. I guarantee, some of these passengers will come up on the hull, armed with sensors and their lousy judgment.”

  He listened and tried to think clearly.

  “There is selfishness in my reasons,” Wune admitted. “I don’t want these tourists under my boots. And since you can’t hide forever in plain sight, we need to find you a new home.”

  Horrified, Alone asked, “Where can I go?”

  “Almost anywhere,” Wune assured. “The Great Ship is ridiculously big. It might take hundreds of thousands of years just to fill up its empty places. There are caverns and little tunnels. Nobody can name all of the seas and canyons and the dead-end holes.”

  “But how can I find those places?”

  “One place is all that you need, and I know ways. I will help you.”

  Terror and hope lay balanced on the walker’s soul.

  With those changeless human teeth, Wune smiled. “You say you know nothing about your nature, your talents. And I think you mean that.”

  “I do.”

  “Look at the chest of my suit, will you? Stare into the flat hyperfiber. Yes, here. Can you see your own reflection?”

  His body had changed during these last few minutes. Alone had felt the new arms sprouting, the design of his legs adjusting, and without willing it to happen, he had acquired a face. It was a striking and familiar face, the purple flesh shot with gossamer threads of gold.

  “I almost wish I could do that,” Wune confessed. “Reinvent myself as easily as you seem to do.”

  He could think of no worthy response.

  “Do you know what a chameleon is?”

  Alone said, “No.”

  “You,” she said. “Without question, you are the most natural, perfect chamel
eon that I have ever had the pleasure to meet.”

  5

  A solitary wanderer could slip inside the Ship and never be seen. Clearly and simply, Wune explained how that might be accomplished, and more important, which mistakes to avoid. Hours had passed. She grew drowsy again, and with yawns and rolling motions of her hands, the Remora wished her chameleon friend rich luck and endless patience. “I hope you find what you are hunting and avoid whatever it is that you are fleeing.”

  Alone offered thanks but had no intention of accepting advice. Once Wune was asleep, he picked a fresh direction and walked away, and for several centuries he wandered the increasingly smooth hull, watching lasers slash and auroras swirl while the galaxy—majestic and warm and bright—rose slowly to meet the Great Ship.

  Sometimes he was forced to hide in the open. Techniques and his confidence improved, but always weighed down by the sense that the Remoras were watching him, despite his tricks and endless caution. And he certainly eavesdropped on them, especially when Wune’s name was mentioned. Her frank smart voice never found him again, but others spoke of the woman with admiration and love. Wune had visited this bubble city or that repair station. Serving the Great Ship was an honor and a joyous, dangerous burden, she preached. And to her loyal people, she exalted the strength that comes from mastering the evolution of your own mortal body. And then Wune was killed, evaporated by a shard of ice that slipped past every laser. The news had to be absorbed slowly. He didn’t understand his emotions but discovered that he couldn’t walk any farther, and he hid where he happened to be, for a full year doing nothing. Wune was the only entity with whom he had ever spoken, and he was deeply shocked, and then he saw that he was sad, but what wore hardest was the keen pleasure when he realized that she was dead but he was still alive.

  Eventually he followed a line leading back to Ship’s trailing face, slipping past the bubble cities and into the realm of giant engines. Standing before one towering nozzle, Alone recalled Wune’s promise of small, unmonitored hatches. Careless technicians often left them unsecured. With a gentle touch, Alone tried to lift the first hatch, and then he tried to shove it inwards. But it was locked. Working his way along the base of the nozzle, he tested another fifty hatches before deciding that Wune was mistaken. Or perhaps the technicians had learned to do their work properly. But having nothing else to do, he invested the next twenty months walking a piece of one great circle, toying with every hatch and tiny doorway that he came across, persistence rewarded when what passed for his hand suddenly dislodged a narrow doorway.

  Darkness waited, and the palpable sense of great distance.

  He crawled down, slowly at first, and then the sides of the nearly vertical tunnel pulled away from his grip.

  Falling was floating. There was no atmosphere, no resistance to his gathering momentum. Fearing someone would notice, he left the darkness intact. Soon he was plunging at a fantastic rate, and he recalled Wune’s voice and words: “Those vents and access tubes run straight down, sometimes for hundreds of kilometers.”

  His tube dropped sixty kilometers before making a sharp turn.

  There was no warning. One moment, he was mildly concerned about prospects that he couldn’t measure, and the next moment saw pure misery and flashes of senseless light as his neural net absorbed the abuse. But he never lost consciousness. His shattered pieces flowed together. Wounds were healed slowly, drenched in pain. And he was still broken and helpless when a familiar voice found him.

  Lying in the dark, unable to move, something quiet came very close and said, “The cold,” before falling silent again.

  He didn’t try to speak.

  After a long while, the voice said, “Forever, the cold.”

  “What is cold?” Alone whispered.

  “And dark,” said the voice.

  “Who are you?”

  The voice said, “Listen.”

  Alone remained silent, straining to hear any kind of sound, no matter how soft or fleeting. But nothing else was offered. Silence lay upon silence, chilled and black, and he spent the next long while trying to decipher which language was used. No human tongue, clearly. Yet those few words had been as transparent and simple as anything he had ever heard.

  Once healed, he seeped light.

  The engine’s interior was complex and redundant, and most of its facilities were never used. Except for the occasional crackling whisper, radio talk never reached him. This was a realm where he could wander. Happily he discovered a series of nameless places where the slightest frosting of dust lay over every surface—a dust never disturbed by limb or by breath. Billions of years of benign neglect promised seclusion. No one would find him in this vastness, and if nothing else happened in his life, all would be well.

  Ages passed.

  Technicians and their machines traveled through these places, but always bound for more important locations.

  Hiding was easy inside the catacombs.

  Sometimes the overhead engine was fired, but there were always warnings. Great valves were opened and closed. Vibrations traveled along the sleeping tubes. A deeper chill could be felt as lakes of liquid hydrogen were prepared for fusion. Alone always knew three sites where he could quickly find shelter. His planning worked well, and he saw no reason to change what was flawless.

  Then one day, nothing was the same again. Sitting inside a minor conduit, Alone was happily basking in a pool of golden light leaking from his inexplicable body. He was thinking about nothing, which was his favorite state of mind. And then the perfect instant was in the past, lost. A deep rumble announced dense fluids on the move, and before he could react, he was picked up and carried away by a hot viscous and irresistible liquid. Not hydrogen, and not water either. This was some species of oil dirtied up with odd metals and peculiar structures. He was trapped inside juices and passion, life and more life, and he responded with a desperate radio scream.

  Tendrils touched him, trying to weave their way inside him.

  He panicked, kicked and spun hard, pulling his body into the first disguise that occurred to him.

  Electric voices jabbered.

  A language was found, and what surrounded him said in the human tongue, “It is a Remora.”

  “Down here?”

  “Tastes wrong,” a third voice complained.

  “Not hyperfiber, this shell isn’t,” said a fourth.

  No voice ever repeated. This oily body contained a multitude of independent, deeply communal entities.

  “The face is,” one said.

  “Look at the face,” said another.

  “Can you hear us, Remora?”

  “I do,” Alone allowed.

  “Are you lost?”

  Alone understood the word, but it seemed too full of implications. So with as much authority as possible, he said simply, “I am not lost. No.”

  An alien language erupted, the multitude debating what to do with this conundrum.

  Then a final voice announced, “Whatever you are, we will leave you now in a safe place. For this favor, you will pay us with your praise and thanks. Do this and win our respect. Otherwise, we will speak badly of you, today and for the eternity to come.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Thank you, yes.”

  He was spat into a new tunnel—a brief broad hole capped with a massive door and filled with magnetic filters, meshed filters, and powerful mechanical limbs. The limbs gathered him up, and Alone transformed his body again, struggling to slide free. But the machines tied themselves into an enormous knot, trapping him. Alone felt helpless. Maybe something good would have happened, but he panicked. Wild with terror, fresh talents were unleashed, and he discovered that when he did nothing except consciously gather up his energies, he could eventually let loose a burst of coherent light—an ultraviolet flash that jumped out of his skin, scorching the smothering limbs—and he tumbled back onto the mesh floor.

  A second set of limbs emerged, stronger and more careful.

  Alone tried to adapt. A longe
r rest produced an intense magnetic pulse. The mechanical arms flinched and died, and he changed his shape and flowed out from between them. The chamber walls and overhead door were high-grade hyperfiber. With bursts of light, he attacked the door’s narrow seams. He attacked the floor and vaporized the dead arms and focused on the seams again. Security AIs made no attempt to hide their presence, calmly studying the ongoing struggle. Then an auxiliary door opened, revealing a pair of humans clad in armored lifesuits, complete with massive hyperfiber helmets that showed no faces, only cameras, giving extra protection to their tough, fearful minds.

  The technicians held busy instruments, but mostly they used their shielded eyes.

  One man asked, “What is that thing?”

  “I don’t damn well know,” said the other.

  “Think it’s the Remoras’ ghost?”

  “Who cares?” he said. “Call the boss, let her think.”

  The humans retreated. Fresh arms were generated, slow and massive but designed just moments ago to capture this peculiar prize. Alone was herded into a corner and grabbed up, and an oxygen wind blew into the chamber, bringing a caustic mist of aerosols designed to weaken any normal machine. Through the dense air and across the radio spectrum, humans spoke to him. “We don’t know if you can understand us,” they admitted. “But please try to remain still. Pretend to be calm. We don’t want you hurt, we want you to feel safe, but if you insist on fighting, mistakes are going to be made.”

  Alone struggled.

  Then something was with him—a close, familiar presence—and the voice said, “The animals.”

  Alone stopped fighting.

  “They have us,” said the voice.

  He listened to the air, to the empty static.

  But whatever just spoke to him was gone again, and that’s when a low whistling noise began to leak out of the prisoner—a steady sad moaning that stopped only when the ranking engineer arrived.