The Greatship

by Robert Reed

  They acted like social beasts, gathering into blood clans and tribes and nation-states, and sometimes an empire would rise, conquering some little portion of the dry land. But their world was mostly ocean, and the sturdiest, wisest empires proved as fragile as the citizens. The animals were social, but bonds were tenuous, conflicted. They told stories and every story was about them, and the oldest tales involved the Creation and fertile, milk-heavy mothers giving birth to wild sons who disowned good fathers and brothers who happily murdered brothers.

  Families always fell apart in a few generations. Every society was young enough to recall its humble birth and could see Death looming. No glorious mountain or sweet green river held the same name for long, and while everything in the world was in an uproar, the animal produced new tools and the first farms, and it invented cities and steel and radios and then slivers of magic electrified rock that began to think for themselves.

  Turmoil was everywhere, but the beast clung to its nature.

  Then a civilized voice found them

  Speaking from a sky that wasn’t filled with heroic humans, the voice sang out with laser light; and for the first time in their history, human beings fell silent, listening to the stark, elegant truths about the universe and their minuscule place inside the All.

  * * *

  The modern human still carries wet flesh on wet bone, and her voice is barely improved from the old voice, and she often talks in the same tireless gossipy fashion common to every marginally social, status-compulsive hierarchal beast. But living inside her old-fashioned flesh are machines: Ancient designs already proven in a multitude of unrelated species. The machines come in fleets, in multitudes. They provide her with strength and biochemical adaptability, quick healing and emergency healing and invulnerability to disease, plus a fabulous capacity to survive heat and pressure and violent, unexpected insults. Her soul is a vast sane mind that can memorize thousands of years and find the pleasure in most every moment. Little features and personal touches are attuned to the human species, but she still depends on the same trickery used by harum-scarums and Janusians and other species, common and rare. The woman will never age and never misplace an important thought, and if she is just a little bit careful, she will survive this elegant voyage around the Milky Way.

  For a human—for any species—she is a beautiful creature.

  Comfortably wealthy, she is free to sit where she wants and talk to friends all day and make new acquaintances when it suits her. Her company is usually human. Why wouldn’t it be? The woman is beautifully ordinary. She is gorgeous and tirelessly pleasant, and perhaps this voyage and the Great Ship are not quite what she had imagined when she left the earth, but this immortal woman won’t waste two moments of existence complaining to anyone about her tiny, trivial disappointments.

  Sometimes she will be sitting at a large table, surrounded by her oldest finest loudest friends, and she will abruptly look away.

  A lost expression comes to her, and someone notices.

  Touching her hand, the man-friend says, “Quee Lee.”

  She does not hear him.

  “Quee Lee,” says a woman friend.

  The pretty face tilts, and black eyes catch the fake sunlight while a deep clear voice asks, “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  But she realizes that the sound, the sensation, vanished some time ago. And looking at these faces that she knows as well as her own, she discovers a larger, more dangerous question waiting.

  “Why am I wasting my time here?”

  But the lady has all the time in Creation, and she is far too polite to give that thought breath enough to live by.

  The Remoras

  1

  Quee Lee’s apartment covered several hectares within one of the human districts, some thousand kilometers beneath the Ship’s hull. By no measure was it the most luxurious unit. Some of her friends owned as much as a cubic kilometer for themselves and their entourages. But it had been her home since she came onboard, quite a few centuries ago, and its hallways and cavernous rooms were as comfortable to her as her own body.

  The garden room was a favorite. She was enjoying its charms one afternoon, lying nude beneath the false sky and sun, eyes closed and nothing to hear but the splash of fountains and the prattle of little birds. Suddenly her apartment interrupted the peace, announcing a visitor. “He has come for Perri, miss. He claims this is urgent.”

  “Perri isn’t here,” she said, soft black eyes opening. “Unless he’s hiding from both of us, I suppose.”

  The apartment was momentarily silent, searching every crevice inside her property. Then it returned to say, “Perri is absent, and I have explained this to the man. But he refuses to leave. His name is Orleans, and he claims that he is owed a considerable sum of money.”

  What had her husband done now? Quee Lee made a guess and put on a bittersweet smile, and she sat up. Oh, darling…won’t you learn…? She would have to dismiss this Orleans fellow herself, spooking him with a hard little stare. She rose and let an emerald sarong clothe her, and she walked the length of her apartment, never hurrying, commanding the front door to open at the last moment but leaving the security screen intact. And she was expecting someone odd. Even someone sordid, knowing Perri. Yet she didn’t anticipate a bright lifesuit more than two meters tall and nearly half as wide, and she could never have imagined such a face gazing down at her with mismatched eyes. It took a moment to realize this was a Remora. An authentic Remora was standing in the public walkway, his fantastic round face watching her. The flesh was orange with diffuse black blotches that might or might not be cancers, and a lipless, toothless mouth seemed to flow into a grin. What would bring a Remora down here? They never, ever came below the hull.

  “I’m Orleans.” The voice was sudden and deep, slightly muted by the security screen. A speaker hidden somewhere on the thick neck told her, “Dear lady, I need help. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m desperate. I don’t know where else to turn.”

  Quee Lee had seen Remoras and even spoken to a few, although those conversations were aeons ago and their substance was buried deep, beyond her immediate reach. They were such strange creatures, stranger than most aliens, even if they possessed human souls.

  “Dear lady?”

  A good person would be welcoming. Yet Quee Lee couldn’t help but feel repelled, the floor rolling under her and her breath stopping short. Orleans was a human being, one of her own distant brothers. True, his genetics had been transformed by hard radiations. And yes, he normally lived apart from ordinary people. But inside the orange flesh and cancers was a tough, potentially immortal mind. Quee Lee wanted to have compassion for everyone, even aliens, and she managed to find her wits before saying, “Come inside.” She said, “If you wish, please do,” and with her invitation her apartment deactivated the invisible screen.

  “Thank you, dear lady.” The Remora walked slowly, almost clumsily, his lifesuit producing harsh grinding noises that rose up from the knees and hips. That was not normal; Orleans should be graceful, his suit dancing with power, serving him as an elaborate exoskeleton.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked out of habit.

  “No, thank you,” he replied, his voice perfectly pleasant.

  The question was foolish. Remoras ate and drank only suit-made concoctions. They were permanently encased in their shell, functioning as perfectly self-contained organisms. Food was synthesized, water recycled, and they were possessed by dreams of purity and independence.

  “I don’t wish to bother you, dear lady. I’ll be brief.”

  The politeness was another surprise. Remoras were famously distant, even arrogant. But Orleans continued to smile, watching her. One eye was a muscular it filled with thick black hairs, and she assumed the hairs were light sensitive. Like an insect’s compound eye, each one might build a piece of an image. But contrast, its mate was ordinary, white and fishy with a foggy blue center. Mutations could do astonishing tricks. An acce
lerated, halfway planned evolution was occurring inside that suit, even while Orleans stood before her, boots stomping on the stone floor, a single spark arcing toward her.

  “I know this is embarrassing for you,” said Orleans.

  “No, no,” she lied.

  “And it makes me uncomfortable too. I wouldn’t have made this trip for any small reason.”

  “Perri is gone,” she said again, “and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “But that is what I was hoping for.”

  “You were?”

  “Though I would have come either way.”

  The apartment, loyal and vigilant, wouldn’t let anything nasty happen to Quee Lee. She took one step forward, then another. “This is about some money being owed. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Owed for what exactly?”

  “Think of it as an old gambling debt.” Orleans didn’t want to offer clear descriptions; it was better to imply much and then press on. “This is a very old debt, I’m afraid. And Perri has refused me a thousand times.”

  She could imagine that. Her husband had his share of failings, incompetence and a self-serving attitude among them. But she loved the man in a disciplined fashion, and she accepted the flaws that he wore so easily and openly—unlike other men that she preferred not to think about now.

  “I am sorry, sir,” she said. “But I am not responsible for his debts.”

  The odd eyes continued to stare at her.

  Making her voice sound hard was best. “I hope you didn’t come all this way because you heard that he married well.”

  “No, no, no!” The grotesque face seemed injured. Both eyes became larger, and a thin tongue, white as dry ice, licked at the lipless edge of the mouth. “Honestly, we don’t follow the news about passengers. I assumed Perri was living with someone. He usually does. My hope was to come and make my case to whomever I found, winning a comrade. An ally. Someone who might become my advocate.” There was a hopeful pause, and then he said, “When Perri appears, will you explain to him what’s right and what is not? Would you, please?” Another pause, and then he added, “Even a lowly Remora knows the difference between right and wrong, miss.”

  That was an ugly trick, calling himself lowly, and he was painting her to be some flavor of bigot, which she wasn’t. Besides, she felt that their souls were linked in a profound fashion—joined together by a charming and handsome, manipulative user…by her darling husband…and Quee Lee discovered a sudden anger directed at the man who should be standing between them.

  “Dear lady?”

  “How much does he owe you, and how soon will you need it?”

  Orleans answered the second question first, lifting an arm with a sickly whine coming from his shoulder. “The sound is my seals begging to be replaced, or at least refurbished. Yesterday, if possible.” The arm bent and the elbow whined. “I had savings, but they vanished when I rebuilt my reactor.”

  Quee Lee appreciated his circumstances. Remoras lived on the open hull, standing on the most dangerous places for hours and days at a time. One split seal was a disaster. Any opening would kill most of his body, and even when his mind was safe inside a protective coma, Orleans would be at the mercy of radiation storms and comet showers. A balky suit was an unacceptable hazard on top of the normal dangers, and what could she say?

  She felt deep empathy for the man.

  Orleans appeared to take a breath. “Perri owes me fifty-two thousand hectos, dear lady.”

  “I see.” She swallowed. “My name is Quee Lee.”

  “Quee Lee,” he said. “Yes, dear lady.”

  “He and I will have a painful conversation, as soon as he comes home.”

  “I would be grateful if you did.”

  “I promise.”

  The ugly mouth opened, revealing blotches of green and gray-blue against a milky throat. Those could be cancers or pigments or perhaps strange new organs. The strangest sort of human was standing before her, and despite every myth, despite tales of courage and reckless sacrifice, Orleans appeared fragile. He even looked scared, that wet orange face shaking in despair as he turned away. His suit made an awful grinding noise, and his voice said, “Thank you, Quee Lee. For your time and patience, and for everything.”

  Fifty-two thousand hectos! More than that and she would have screamed. She promised herself to scream as soon as she was alone. Perri had done this man a great disservice, and he would hear about it. Fifty thousand wasn’t a grand fortune, even for a woman raised by a family of misers, but it would allow Orleans to refurbish his lifesuit, which was as much a part of his body as that furry eye or the five hearts beating inside his belly.

  Orleans was through her front door, turning around to say good-bye. False sunshine made his suit shine, and his faceplate darkened until she couldn’t see his features anymore. He might have any face, and what did a face mean? Waving at the visitor, sick to her stomach, Quee Lee considered giving him the sum now, erasing the old debt.

  But no, that wouldn’t happen. She was suspicious and a little angry, and worst of all, she lacked the required compassion. And having made up her mind, she ordered the security screen to reengage, helping mute the horrid grinding of joints as the Remora shuffled off for home.

  2

  Perri began as a story shared by immortal ladies.

  One day, Quee Lee was in the Make-ling district, enjoying an ordinary luncheon with a dozen acquaintances. The gollings were breeding in the canyon below. Perhaps that’s why the subject of the moment was sex, although frankly there didn’t have to be any excuses to let that topic reign. One acquaintance was a Martian woman with a flair for sexual intrigues, and she took the lead, boasting about a certain local boy who had done this and allowed that, and my, she hadn’t had so much fun in decades. Sordid details were her specialty. She gave the ladies and a couple husbands quite a lot to think about while the gollings continued to screech and wail. But then the superlatives began to flag, and needing something else to talk about, the woman mentioned, “Oh, yes. And Perri also tells these long wonderful and interesting stories.”

  “What kinds of stories?” Quee Lee asked.

  With a smirk and gently mocking tone, she said, “The young man likes to travel around the Great Ship. His dream, his life-plan, is to swim in every puddle and walk every tunnel, poking his business into every willing crevice and hole.”

  The bawdy people laughed hard.

  Quee Lee sat quietly, watching a golling rising into view. The Martian had a history of embellishments and outright lies, and who knew if there was any Perri behind the name? The moment passed without significance. The golling was a female glowing deep in the UV range, and her male suitors attacked her from below, slashing at the weakest parts of her body. Hydrogen gas bled into the open air and then detonated—blue flames felt by the audiences gathered on the balcony. Countless eggs started their blazing fall to the ground below. The mother would have died in the ancient past, bones and ashes feeding her children. But gollings were just as immortal as humans, and the giant lady would eventually heal. Of course every egg was infertile; there were limits to reproduction among the Ship’s passengers, particularly among aliens. Yet the females endured the incendiary misery because it was their nature, and because it defined them as a unique, eternal species.

  The subject of young lovers was forgotten.

  For years, Quee Lee didn’t think about the name Perri.

  Then a woman friend vanished without warning, missing for a long while and then suddenly back again. Explaining her whereabouts, she told Quee lee about an empty river running down the middle of an uninhabited cavern system and a handsome fellow named Perri who acted as her guide and sole companion. Nothing much had happened, except for the usual things that a bored woman does with a healthy male body. Perri proved himself to be a talker although she didn’t believe half of what he said, and he was a funny and very pretty man, and they enjoyed quite an adventure that day when they came across a se
cret camp of Hall’al’amans being sought by the captains for some important crime.

  Quee Lee concluded that Perri did exist, but he was tiny in her thoughts, and as the decades mounted, he once again vanished.

  Millions of humans lived onboard the Great Ship, and Quee Lee had never met anyone as old as her. But one of her dearest friends was eight days her junior. Both were from Earth, specifically from Old China. They often sought each out to share meals or wander through some touristy adventure, and they were often invited to the same parties—day-long affairs where thousands of bodies, mostly human, would trade gossip and observations, long stories and ancient jokes with tiny new twists.

  The friend came to one grand party with a young-faced human on her arm. Quee Lee was unimpressed with the boyfriend. He looked vain and silly and far too proud of himself. And when they were introduced, Perri acted utterly indifferent to this ancient creature from the home world. The three of them stood together, women making all of the polite noise. Then the friend spotted an ex-husband who needed to be abused public, and as she left, she jokingly warned Quee Lee not to steal anything of hers.

  Two strangers were left beside a tidal pool. Quee Lee watched the helt-trilobites dancing over beds of glass mussels. The man calmly studied her, and he said nothing. Then Quee Lee began looking for the perfect excuse to extract her from this misery. But that was the moment when her future husband threw a radiant smile at her, quietly saying, “I know quite a lot about you.”

  “Your girlfriend talks about me,” she guessed.

  “Sometimes, but I have a far more reliable source than that,” he said.

  Quee Lee named the other two women who spent time with this unexceptional man. But Perri shook his head, saying, “No, neither of them ever mentioned you.”