The Greatship

by Robert Reed

  “So who has told you about me?”

  “My intuition,” he said.

  A moment passed, and then she laughed at him and at the entire situation.

  Perri was neither surprised nor offended. Nothing dimmed the smile, and he reached out with one hand, fingers closing on her elbow. It was the first time he touched her, and then he said, “Madam, I think you are the most important person here.”

  She continued laughing at him.

  He shrugged and let go of her.

  “All right,” said Quee Lee. “So you think that I’m the most important person in this room.”

  “In this room and everywhere,” Perri said, winking once before turning and walking away.

  3

  Perri failed to come home the next day, and the next. Then ten days had passed, and Quee Lee had left messages with nexuses and his usual haunts. She was careful not to explain why she wanted him. Nothing about the silence was unusual. Perri was probably wandering somewhere new, and he liked to isolate himself as much as possible. For her part, Quee Lee was skilled at waiting, her days defined by visiting friends and little parties thrown for any small excuse. It was her normal life, never anything but dreamily pleasing; yet she kept thinking about Orleans, imagining him walking on the open hull with his seals bursting, his strange body starting to boil away…that poor man…!

  Taking the money to Orleans was an easy decision. The hectos weren’t an impressive sum, particularly when wrapped inside AI guardians. But wasn’t it better to have Perri owing her instead of owing a Remora? She had the better chance to recoup the debt, and besides, she doubted that her husband could raise the money without borrowing from others—aliens as well as humans. For the nth time, she wondered how she had ever let Perri charm her. What was she thinking, agreeing to this crazy union?

  But her husband was a blessing, and not just a little blessing. Ridiculously young and wearing his youth with verve, he gladly shared what he had in abundance, including enthusiasms and boundless energy. He was an excellent lover, but rarer than that, Perri knew when to stop and what to do next. He could listen when it was important, and nothing she told him was misunderstood or conveniently forgotten. Not once had he tried to rob Quee Lee from her money, and his personal tastes could never be confused for expensive. Besides, the man was a challenge. No doubt about that. Maybe her friends didn’t approve of the man. Flings and long affairs were not the same as legal bonds, as more than a few wise voices had pointed out. But to a woman of her vintage, in the beginning millennia of a five hundred thousand year voyage, Perri was something fresh and remarkable. And Quee Lee’s old friends, quite suddenly, seemed like fossils doing nothing but sitting inside museum exhibits.

  “I was born on the Ship, did you know?” he explained at the beginning. “Just weeks after my parents came onboard. They were riding as far as a colony world, but I stayed behind. My choice.” His laughs came in countless flavors. Laughing and gazing into the false sky of her bedroom ceiling, he asked, “Do you know what I want to do with my life?”

  “Explore every corner of the Great Ship,” she said, repeating what she was told years before.

  “Except the Ship isn’t the point,” he said. “The aliens are what matter. Where else in the galaxy can you find thousands of species and their assorted civilizations woven together? Each species is fascinating, and most have never seen one another up close. For instance, there’s a giant spidery creature with a scent-name which roughly translates as Webmaster, and tiny machine aliens called G/gloons live with them. Two species from a thousand light-years apart, but the G/gloons build cities on the sprawling webs, and each Webmaster collects rent in the form of addictive pheromones.”

  Quee Lee had to be impressed. Who else in her small life could tolerate aliens, what with their overbearing odors and impenetrable minds? Perri was remarkable. Even her most critical friends admitted that much. And even the old friend who lost a lover to Quee Lee made a habit of forgetting her jealousies, begging to hear the latest Perri adventure as told by his foolish, indulgent wife.

  “Can you afford to stay on the Ship?” she asked him.

  “I’m paid up for the next ninety thousand years,” he claimed. “Minus my day-to-day expenses, but that’s all right. Believe me, when you’ve got armies of wealthy souls in one place, there are always opportunities to make a living.”

  “By legal means?”

  “Glancingly so.” He had a rogue’s humor, all right. Yet later, in a more sober mood, he said, “I have grown a few enemies. I’m warning you, my love. Like anyone, I’ve made more mistakes than seems fair—my youthful blunders—but at least I’m honest about them.”

  Blunders, indiscretions. Crimes, perhaps. Yet Perri had nothing to earn her distrust.

  “We should marry,” he proposed one evening. “We like each other’s company, yet we seem to weather our time apart too. And from what I see, you don’t need a partner who shadows you day and night. Do you, Quee Lee?”

  She didn’t. True enough.

  “A small tidy marriage, complete with rules and barricades,” he assured her. “I get a home base, and you enjoy your privacy, plus my considerable entertainment value.” Those words demanded a big long laugh, from both of them. Then he said, “I do promise. You’ll be first to hear my latest tales. And I’ll never be any kind of leech, darling. The mayhem will be out of sight, and with you, I will be the consummate gentleman.”

  * * *

  Quee Lee carried the money and AIs in a camouflaged pouch, traveling to the hull by cap-car. There was one Orleans in the crew listings, no mention made if he was a Remora or not, and the only address was Port Beta. The facility was enormous—a towering cylinder lined with shops and capped with a kilometer-thick hatch—and there were days when Beta was filled with workers and robots and elegant streakships freshly arrived from new worlds. But this was a different day: The floor was an empty sweep of gray hyperfiber. An engineer stood nearby, but she didn’t notice the visitor; wrapped in shifting lights that formed numbers and intricate technical plans, she calmly some unseen person that they were prone to profound little errors. Besides Quee Lee, the only tourists were aliens, some kind of fishy species encased in bubbles of ammonium hydroxide. The fish wiggled their fins and their bubbles rolled forward in response. It was like standing inside a school of wise tuna, the sharp chatter audible and Quee Lee unable to decipher any of it. Were they mocking her? She had no clue, and it made her all the more frustrated, leaving her feeling lost and more than a little homesick because of it.

  By contrast, the first Remora seemed quite normal. Walking without any grinding sounds, it covered ground at an amazing pace. Quee Lee had to run to catch it. To catch her. Somehow the lifesuit seemed feminine, and a woman’s voice responded to the urgent shouts.

  “What, what, what?” asked the Remora. “I’m busy.”

  Gasping, Quee Lee asked, “Do you know Orleans?”

  “Orleans?”

  “I need to find him. It’s quite important.” Then she wondered if something had happened, something terrible, and she had arrived too late.

  “I do know someone named Orleans, yes.” The face had comma-shaped eyes, huge and black and bulging, and the mouth blended into a slit-like nose. Her skin looked like silver, odd bunched fibers running beneath the surface. Black hair showed along the top of the faceplate, except at second glance it wasn’t hair. It looked like ropes soaked in oil, the strands wagging with a slow stately pace.

  The mouth smiled. Then the utterly normal voice said, “Actually, Orleans is one of my closest friends.”

  True? Or was she making a joke?

  “I really have to find him,” Quee Lee said. “Can you help me?”

  “Can I help you?” The strange mouth smiled, gray pseudoteeth as big as thumbnails, the gums the same silver as her skin. “I’ll take you to him. Does that constitute help?” And Quee Lee found herself following, walking onto a lifting disk without railing, the Remora standing in the center
and waving to the old woman. “Come closer. Orleans is up there.” Skyward gestures were delivered with both gloved hands. “A good long way, and I don’t think you’d want to try this alone. Would you?”

  * * *

  “Relax,” Orleans advised.

  She thought she was relaxed, except she found herself nodding, breathing deeply as a secret tension began to evaporate. The ascent seemed to take ages. Save for the rush of air slipping past her ears, it had been soundless. The disk had no sides at all—a clear violation of safety regulations—and Quee Lee needed to grasp hold of the Remora’s shiny arm, surprised to feel rough spots in the hyperfiber. Minuscule impacts had left craters too tiny to see. Remoras were very much like the ship itself—enclosed biospheres taking abuse as they pushed through raw space.

  “Are you feeling wonderful?” Orleans asked.

  “I feel better.” First she endured a thirty kilometer ride through the cavernous port, clinging tight a Remora, and now this. She and Orleans were inside some tiny room not five hundred meters from the vacuum. Did Orleans live here? Studying the bare walls and stubby furniture, she was tempted to ask. But no, this was too spare, too ascetic to be anyone’s home, even Orlean’s. Evading that subject, she asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired. Fresh off my shift, and devastated.”

  Ten days had changed the face. The orange pigments were softer, and both eyes were the same sickening hair-filled pits. How clear was his vision? How did he transplant cells from one eye to the other? There had to be mechanisms, reliable tricks…and she found herself feeling ignorant and glad of it, thank you.

  “What do you want, Quee Lee?”

  She swallowed. “Perri came home, and I brought what he owes you.”

  Surprise emerged from the face. Then a cool voice said, “That is the best news.”

  Out from the pouch she pulled one newly minted coin, fifty-two thousand hectos tied into its circuits, and working not to sound mistrustful, she mentioned that its AI would shepherd the money, making certain that the funds were used where it was needed.

  His shiny palm accepted the gift, and when the elbow gave a harsh growl, she said, “I hope this helps.”

  “My mood already is improved,” he said.

  What else? She wasn’t sure what to say next.

  “I should thank you somehow,” Orleans said. “May I give you something for your troubles?” One eye actually winked at her, hairs contracting into their pit and nothing left visible but a tiny red pore. “How would you like a very quick tour?”

  Looking at the bleak room, she asked, “What sort of tour?”

  “Outside, on the hull,” he said. “We’ll find you a lifesuit. We always have them waiting, in case some captain wants to embarrass himself.” A big deep laugh filled the chamber. “Once every thousand years, they come, whether we need their help or not?”

  What was he saying? She had heard him, yet she hadn’t.

  A smile and another wink prepared the next moment. “I am serious, Quee Lee. Would you like to take a little stroll?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I never considered—”

  “Safe as safe will be,” he said, whatever that meant. “Listen, this is the best place for a jaunt. We’re behind the bow, which means that impacts are nearly impossible. But we’re not close to the engines and their radiations either.” The next laugh included a waving hand. “Oh, you’ll get a snack of gamma rays, but nothing important. You’re nothing but tough, Quee Lee. Does your fancy apartment have an autodoc?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, there is no problem at all.”

  She wasn’t scared, at least in any direct way. What Quee Lee felt was excitement and fear born of excitement. She had no experience to compare with what was happening. A creature of habits, rigorous and ancient, she couldn’t guess how she would respond out there. No habits had prepared her for this moment.

  “Here,” said her gracious host. “Come in here.”

  No excuse offered itself. They walked inside a closet full of lifesuits. She let Orleans select her suit and then dismantle it with his growling joints. “Yours opens and closes, unlike mine. And it lacks two layers of redundancies. Otherwise, ours are identical.”

  On went the legs, the torso and arms and helmet; she banged the helmet against the low ceiling and put a shoulder into the wall with her first step.

  “Follow me,” said Orleans, “and stay slow.”

  Wise words. The locker room led to a tunnel that zigzagged toward space, ancient stairs fashioned for a nearly human gait. Each bend had a demon door that held back the Ship’s thinning atmosphere. They began speaking by radio, voices close, and she could feel through the suit’s skin, pseudoneurons interfacing with her own. Here gravity was stronger than earth-standard, yet despite her added bulk she moved with ease, the helmet striking the ceiling as she climbed. Thump, and thump. She couldn’t help herself.

  Orleans laughed pleasantly, the sound intimate, comfortable. “You’re doing fine, Quee Lee. Relax.”

  Hearing her own name made her feel courageous.

  “Remember,” he said. “Your servomotors are potent. Lifesuits make motions large. Don’t overcontrol and never act cocky.”

  She wanted to succeed. More than anything in recent memory, she wanting to pass as close to perfect as possible.

  “Concentrate,” he told her.

  Then her gait changed, and he said, “That’s better, yes.”

  They arrived at a final turn and a hatch, and Orleans paused and looked back at her, his syrupy mouth making a preposterous smile. “Here we are. We’ll dance outside for a little while, all right?” A pause, then he added, “When you go home, tell your husband what you’ve done. Amaze him.”

  “I will,” she whispered.

  And he opened the hatch with one arm—the abrasive noises just audible across the radio—and a bright glow washed over them. “Beautiful,” the Remora observed. “Isn’t it beautiful, Quee Lee?”

  4

  Perri didn’t return for several more weeks.

  “I was rafting Cloud Canyon and didn’t get your five thousand messages,” he said. “What’s so very important, my love?”

  Just then Quee Lee realized that she wasn’t going to tell him about her adventure, nor the money. And having decided on secrecy, she crafted a worthy reason: She would wait for the better time, that weak moment, when Perri’s guard was down for repairs.

  The messages were nothing. She said that she had missed him and been worried about him, and how was the rafting, and who went with him?

  “Lovely and Tweewits,” said Perri, chuckling softly. “The rafting was lovely, but Tweewits are big hulking baboons and not particularly pretty.” He smiled until she smiled. He looked thin and tired; but that night, without prompting, he made love to her twice. And the second time was special enough that she was left wondering how she could so willingly live without sex for long spells. It could be the most amazing pleasure.

  Perri slept, dreaming of artificial rivers roaring through artificial canyons, and Quee Lee sat up in bed, in the dark, whispering for her apartment to show her the view from Port Beta. The images were projected on her ceiling, twenty meters overhead, the shimmering aurora changing from crimson to purple, then gold and green—force fields wrestling with every kind of spaceborn hazard.

  “What are you thinking, Quee Lee?”

  Standing on the hull, Orleans had asked the question, and she answered it once again, in a soft awed voice. “Lovely.” Then she shut her eyes, remembering the hull itself had stretched into the distance, flat and gray, bland yet somehow serene. “It is lovely.”

  “And the view is more impressive on the bow,” her companion had said. “The fields are thicker, stronger. The big lasers pound the comets that are ten million kilometers in front of us, softening them up.” His voice was slow and soft when he told her, “You can feel the Ship moving when you look up from the bow. You honestly can.”

  She had sh
ivered inside her lifesuit, out of pleasure more than fear. The passengers who walked on the hull had permission. She did not. No doubt rules were being broken, which was another unexpected pleasure. On the hull she had felt exposed, profoundly naked. And maybe Orleans had measured her mood, watching her unremarkable face lit up by the flickering pulses. “Do you know the story of the first Remora?” he asked.

  Did she? She wasn’t certain.

  “Wune,” he said with his voice smooth and quiet. “She came to the Ship as a registered criminal, a habitual repeat offender who could escape prison by signing on as a crew member.”

  “What crimes?”

  “Do the details matter?” The round orange head shook off the question. “Bad deeds were responsible. But the point is that Wune arrived without rank, glad for the opportunity, and like any good mate, she took her turns working on the exposed hull.”

  Quee Lee had nodded, staring at the far horizon.

  “She was pretty, like you. Maybe prettier. Between shifts, she did typical typicals, exploring the Ship and having affairs of the heart and then grieving those affairs when they went badly. Like you, Quee Lee, she was smart. And after just a few centuries, Wune saw the trends: Captains were avoiding their shifts on the hull. Meanwhile certain people, guilty of small offenses, were pushed into double-shifts in their stead.”

  Status. Rank. Privilege. She could understand these things too well.

  “Wune led the rebellion,” Orleans said with pride. “But instead of overthrowing the system, she conquered it with an embrace. She built a lifesuit with its semi-forever seals and the hyperefficient recycke systems. She created a machine that she would never have to leave, and then she began to live on the hull, in the open, sometimes alone for years and for decades.”

  “Alone?”

  “The prophet’s contemplative life.” He glanced fondly at the smooth gray terrain. “Wune stopped purging her body of cancers and other damage. She let her face—her beautiful face—become speckled and scabbed with dead tissues. Then she taught herself to manage the mutations, with discipline and strength. And once she was the master of her body, she selected friends equally without status, teaching them tricks while explaining the peace and purpose she found while living in the open, contemplating the universe without clutter, without obstructions.”