The Greatship

by Robert Reed

  Rococo was fun, and he was good. He was also exceptionally skilled at managing his sister’s emotions—knowing how often to meet with her, and for how long, and somehow finding the sweetest way to orchestrate the event so that both of them felt as close to comfortable as possible.

  Wisely, Rococo never brought up their parents or the distant home world. That duty was left in Aasleen’s lap.

  And when she asked about his childhood—how could she not?—the man sitting before her always put on a careful face, measuring his words and muting their tone before offering the narrowest response.

  The world Aasleen remembered was gone; Rococo described a planet transformed by human hands. Her gossamer smart-tent proved to be just a brief step on the way to larger adventures. By the time he emigrated, the entire atmosphere was fully oxygenated, the continents covered with soil made from comet crusts and ocean muck, and the latest crop of engineers were busily draping a tough monomolecular curtain over the entire world—a much larger version of Aasleen’s tent, its central purpose filtering out the blistering UV light.

  Aasleen was disappointed, and she didn’t mind saying so.

  “We weren’t born on the Earth,” she said. “And we always had the means on hand to adapt to these hazards. UV is something we can easily tolerate.”

  “That’s absolutely true,” he said without hesitation.

  “And our engineered flora and fauna were going to depend on the hard radiation, that rich free abundant energy bolstering the biosphere’s productivity.” She looked at her hands, ancient feelings emerging. “We agreed. Before I left, votes were taken, and the colonists decided to let the planet stay as alien as possible…to force us to meet it at some good and worthy middle point.”

  Her brother nodded amiably, his face sharing her disgust. But later, replaying the conversation, she noticed that Rococo avoided the opportunity to come out and say, “Yes, you are right, sister. I’m on your side here.”

  Because he didn’t agree with her, she realized. Nor did he agree with the vote, either.

  “What about my tent?” she asked.

  His eyes widened while his mouth pulled into a small knot.

  “Is anything left of it?”

  Rococo shook his head. Then with another expression of diplomatic disgust, he admitted, “The entire structure was dismantled for scrap.”

  Aasleen wasn’t vain by nature. But this was a pivotal event in her life, which was why she asked, “Yes, but is there some little statue, maybe? Is there a monument or plaque, just to let people know?”

  “People know,” he said. “It’s part of our history.”

  “History,” she echoed. Then with a scorn that took both of them by surprise, she said, “I was hoping for a little more than some cryptic notes in a dusty historical file…as forgotten as everything else…”

  Rococo was charming and soothing, and in ways few souls could match, he could deftly step into difficult circumstances, creating a false but welcome peace. But he had an even more unusual gift: With his sister and perhaps other difficult souls, he knew that it was best sometimes not to attempt peace. These were very old feelings for Aasleen’s, making them exceptionally stubborn. And even at their worst, the feelings were harmless, and by their nature silly, and if he let her spout on, they quickly lost their teeth and fury.

  The siblings’ last social engagement was a late night meal for the entire crew. The Peregrine was halfway rebuilt, the most difficult jobs already completed. By chance or by someone else’s planning, Aasleen was sitting next to her brother, sharing the back corner of the ship’s largest galley. His journal was beside him—a portable slab of plastic encased in a diamond sleeve. He never touched it, but he didn’t put it inside the satchel, either. Much later, replaying the moment, Aasleen could appreciate how her little brother had played her. Very softly, he mentioned receiving a note from their mother. The woman was constantly sending digitals and little messages to her much-loved son, and that unfailingly bothered Aasleen. She bristled at the news. As he knew she would, she began to offer disparaging words about being dead to her home world. But this time, for the first time, Rococo interrupted the pity-play. “But you are doing enormous work now,” he said with feeling. “These things you’re involved in…these are adventures far more important than terraforming an obscure colony world. For instance, the future history of an entire species is being determined here. And you, Aasleen…you are playing a pivotal role in the drama…”

  She saw the mistake. But instead of correcting him, she shrugged and stabbed her grilled eland.

  “You know,” Rococo said. Then he fell silent.

  “What do I know?”

  Throwing a wink at her, he warned, “I won’t be here much longer. The diplomatic corps will come and go as necessary. But until our last couple months, I plan to live among the Scypha. Full-time, on various worlds.”

  The wall beside them wore images harvested from the approaching solar system. The Rings were highlighted, the largest and most important asteroids glowing green. She glanced at them and the simple gray speck that was Chaos. Nodding, she asked, “Are you giving tonight’s briefing?”

  That was the reason for this gathering. All but a skeleton staff was sitting in the galley, waiting to hear the latest news about their mission.

  “I’ll generate a few words,” Rococo said.

  “Because I can’t stay,” she admitted. “I’ve got a rocket nozzle to inspect. And there’s a diagnostic that’s turning up new problems.”

  “Are we in trouble?”

  “No worse than usual.” She set down her knives and dabbed her lips with a piece of sticky ice. “It’s just that we’re going to being asking a lot out of engines that are either well past their prime or too new to trust…”

  Her voice trailed away.

  Rococo nodded with compassion, as if her burdens were riding his shoulders too. Then he touched the wall—touched it low and brought up the menu—and without a word of explanation, he asked for an image of Chaos.

  Aasleen was thinking about slipping away. Had she shown her face long enough? Would Hazz or his staff put a black mark on her record? Then a flash struck the corner of her eye—a soundless, brilliant, and enduring light—and she turned in time to watch a blister of plasma rising from the shore of an alien sea.

  The image was ancient, or it was invented. Either way, she was witnessing an event that had happened perhaps a billion times in the past. An asteroid or lost comet had plunged onto that battered world, vaporizing the entire sea and melting a portion of the crust, producing shockwaves that burned up every organic body that happened to be trapped on the surface.

  Four billion years ago, this was the Earth.

  She and her brother had spoken about this many times. Or rather, Rococo had made the noise, and she had listened, interested in what he was saying even when she already knew the details.

  Nobody knew for sure how many times life evolved on the Earth.

  But in the early eons, when hundred-kilometer bolides were falling like rain, the ancient ocean was repeatedly boiled off and the crust turned to magma, and even the toughest little bugs were killed. Only later, when nothing bigger than fifty kilometers was crashing down, life survived, if barely. Microbes found places to survive—usually in porous rock deep underground. The best guess was that by the bombardment’s end, a single line of Archaea—the thermophilic bacteria—had endured the worst abuse, and that plucky survivor was grandmother to every crawling, talking organic beast that managed to spring up on their cradle world.

  But the bombardment had never ceased on Chaos.

  Grind up an earthly sponge into mush, and the individual cells would gradually migrate back together again, slowly forming another adult organism.

  On a much grander scale, Chaos took that course. Many lines of life developed during its early history, and most of them evolved multicellular forms. But there were critical differences in their genetics and physiology as well as the makeup of indivi
dual cells. Far tougher than Precambrian worms, each of those early lineages left behind spores that would wait for the heat and fire to fade away. Then they would come alive again, growing in the wreckage and the warm springs. Eventually those tiny children would come together, killing and eating those that didn’t belong to their lineage, while joining with the cells that did. Inside each viable nucleus was enough genetic information to put together a wide array of body plans. Usually the creatures were photosynthetic, and occasionally they looked like clumsy animals. Successful lineages left the most spores. And since there was no way to know when the next asteroid would fall, or where, natural selection continued to move in a most jerky, gloriously unpredictable fashion.

  Watching Chaos endure the gigantic blast, Aasleen asked, “Is this what I’m going to miss? Are you briefing us about old history?”

  Rococo shook his head. “No, not at all.”

  “Then why show this to me?”

  “Because I think it is interesting,” he allowed. “Of all the places I’m going to visit, all the wondrous sights I’ll witness…there’s no way for me to embrace the most interesting and important world of all.”

  Of course he couldn’t visit Chaos. That cradle world was under a strict quarantine, and Aasleen could appreciate their hosts’ reasons: Each lineage was embroiled in a constant against every other lineage. This was not war. This was older and much vaster than any battle of armies, and there was no chance of lasting forgiveness. The Scypha had been lucky to escape their home world, and it was only natural for them to keep their enemies out of reach.

  But the muddy alien politics didn’t interest her. Rococo mentioned his fascination with Chaos, and Aasleen nodded agreeably, thinking nothing more about it. Then after making her own assessment of human politics, she saw the opportunity to float away.

  But Rococo put his hand on top of hers, the gesture not quite gentle. “You were right, you know.”

  “What was I right about?”

  “Families,” he said. “When you belong to a family, everything can seem like a spectacular mess.”

  She couldn’t agree more.

  “But when you stand apart, immune to personal histories and private passions…well, what matters most is perfectly easy to see…”

  She hesitated.

  Then quietly, she said, “Species.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you were talking before, you mentioned that I was helping with something big, something that would determine a species’ future.” Shaking a callused finger, she reminded him, “Scypha do not exist as species. Not so we would recognize them, at least.”

  Rococo nodded, smiled.

  Then he bent close and kissed his sister lightly on the cheek—he had never kissed her before, in any fashion—and into her ear, he whispered, “But Aasleen, I wasn’t thinking about the Scypha.”

  7

  For three years, the gray face of the world was simple and unlovely—a bland fleck of light not worth a bare-eyed glance. But as Aasleen plunged toward that face, the world became huge, revealing a multitude of complications as well as a dirty, unpolished brand of beauty. Two seas rode the visible hemisphere—shallow round bodies of muddy water straddling the dawn line, the southern sea wearing a stubborn patch of early summer pack ice. The cold flat desert between was home to a dust storm, ruddy and fragile, working its way to the east. Elsewhere volcanoes stood alone, dormant and possibly dead, young glaciers flowing from their summits, grinding rock into fresh eager dust. Peel away the world’s dust and a landscape of overlapping pocks and blisters would be revealed—the cumulative damage wrought by six billion years of tireless abuse. Like a plow turning soil, the impacts had shattered the crust down to the mantle. Without enough internal heat to generate tectonics, Chaos depended on those good hard blows. Ten million years ago, a massive carbonaceous asteroid had blasted out a basin stretching most of a thousand kilometers across. The molten plain spouted fire and red-hot projectiles big as mountains. Portions of the atmosphere and crust were thrown into space, and every sea boiled away and then fell again as a scalding rain. But after the rain cleared and the rock froze, warm water collected inside the newborn crater, and life prospered in what was a sudden tropical climate, there and everywhere on Chaos. Dry ice and water ice and fossil methane had been kicked loose from the regolith, producing a sultry wet heat that was maintained by a gracious string of lesser impacts—the beginnings of a persistent, much-treasured golden age that lasted, without serious pause, until a just few geologic moments ago.

  The heat shield was positioned for impact; Aasleen couldn’t see the world with her own eyes. A live, unmagnified feed revealed patches and twists of color emerging slowly from the endless gray. From a thousand kilometers overhead, she could make out slivers of gold and violet, watery blue splotches and green dots in several distinct shades. Each color stood alone. Sun-facing slopes were popular, as were the rare river valleys. One giant shield volcano wore perhaps three-dozen oases—tiny, wholly unique communities huddled around hot springs or their tepid, fondly recalled remnants. And along the sunny shore of the largest sea, at the end of the line she was following, ran a ribbon of pale yellow-green larger any other living zone, yet encompassing barely fifty thousand square kilometers.

  The Dun.

  Strewn among Aasleen’s scholarly references was every lecture delivered by her brother. Over the last several hours, she had studied any portion pertaining even slightly to that one patch of shoreline. No other lineage on Chaos was as closely related to the Scypha. The fission came after the massive impact that brought on the golden age: Two isolated populations emerging on opposite sides of the world, each quickly dominating its own hemisphere. Even today, the Dun remained the dominant force on the home world. They had a functioning, marginally vigorous biosphere. They wielded nuclear power and irrigation and other high technologies. And no other lineage could even pretend to build spaceships, which was perhaps why Rococo had invested the breath and time on the ill-understood entities.

  Aasleen didn’t attend her brother’s longest, best lecture, but she watched one moment at least ten times. A crewmember lifted a hand and then stood before making his point. “I don’t understand,” he said. “One lineage succeeds masterfully while its sibling accomplishes what? Very little, from what I can tell. I mean, I’m sure that the Dun are comfortable on that beach. But what makes them so different from the Scypha?”

  Rococo nodded patiently, throwing his warmest smile out at everyone. Then with the nicest possible voice, he told the fellow, “No, you don’t understand the situation at all.”

  The slight had been delivered with a diplomat’s soothing voice.

  The man slouched and agreed. “I guess I don’t understand. I’m sorry if I missed something obvious.”

  “Try and think of it this way.” Rococo winked slyly. “You’re assuming there was some pre-Scypha, pre-Dun lineage. You imagine a shared ancestor dividing into two equal parts. But this isn’t at all like evolution on the Earth, sir. These lineages haven’t split into two streams. No, one of them has remained true to its ancestral beginnings, while the other is the upstart—more the bastard child than an equal sibling.”

  The galley was full of thoughtful, mystified faces.

  “Which lineage is which?” the lecturer asked. Then with a bright grin, he answered his question with more questions. “Which one lives exactly as it always lived? And which one has completely and forever walked away from home?”

  * * *

  Two hundred kilometers above Chaos—at long last—a slight impact jostled Aasleen. The swift little drone that chased her across the solar system had just arrived, making a rough docking with her ship.

  The cabin’s hatch opened with a tiny wind pushing an envelope of pure, high-grade hyperfiber toward her. Grabbing one of the ruby-rope straps, she pulled the satchel close. Its various locks remained intact. The diplomatic seal was undisturbed. If anyone had tinkered with the mechanisms, she would see it n
ow. But nobody had. Like a birthday girl, she shook the satchel side to side, one object rattling. She couldn’t imagine anything but Rococo’s journal, abandoned because of its mass. Or if her brother had anticipated this moment, maybe he left it behind for his sister to keep safe.

  There was no time to break the seal. Aasleen stowed the satchel, focusing again on the world below. Only a sprinkling of young impact craters stared back at her. Dust and cold water ruled, and Rococo had repeatedly lectured about that detail: Aeons ago, once the Scypha had populated the various asteroid belts, they learned how to predict the endless motions of every substantial bolide. Little nudges and the occasional hard shove were what kept those little worlds from in place. Collisions between the asteroids had fallen to nothing, and nothing substantial wandered free of the Rings, and with that triumph, the home world was suffering quietly, growing colder and drier, every failed lineage collapsing back into oases that might live for another thousand years, or even another twenty million. But the inevitable was approaching. The gray world would become gray at every distance, and a traveler would see nothing alive, even as her ship began to slam into the first high whiffs of atmosphere.

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