The Greatship

by Robert Reed

  Machines rose up to meet the falling machine.

  Tiny, erosive devices, they struck the charred heat shield, burrowing into seams and points of weakness. Hard pops were felt more than heard, shaped explosions creating surgical gashes that swiftly peeled off the shield. Then a second wave of machines peppered the hull itself. Aasleen had just enough time to unfasten her straps and kick free of the crash chair, holding Rococo’s satchel close to her stomach, her kit on her back. The Scypha ship was being dismantled around her, and now a third wave of machines—larger, more sophisticated models—grabbed each sliver and disabled component, measuring its composition before using acids and blistering heat to tear into everything. This was the antithesis of engineering, taking a sophisticated device and creating in its stead something utterly simple, fundamental and pure.

  The bioglass cabin was the final target. It shattered along a hundred lines, and Aasleen found herself surrounded by cold thin air, spinning heels over head through a rain of elemental particles.

  After a few wild turns, she managed to clear the debris field.

  Holding her tuck, she let her body settle on a point of balance. Her head was leading the way. With deep painful gasps, she clung to consciousness, and after another minute the air thickened at least to where it wasn’t a miserable struggle to keep her mind clear.

  The yellowish-green land was forest, low and dense, every tree sporting one or two or three trunks and a tangle of branches. Wide blackish blocks of glass were scattered about the terrain—windowless structures that might or might not have been buildings, arranged without any obvious pattern. Curved spines of transparent glass rose up into the bright dusty sky, and the spines were moving, she realized. Like fingers possessing an infinite number of joints, they curled and reached, their tips diving into the canopy, grabbing up whatever was worth claiming from the treetops: Sweet foods grown to feed the animal bodies, perhaps. Perhaps.

  Every living cell was a Dun. The individual tree was just one of the lineage’s manifestations, the same as the animal-like masses which ate the tree fruits and tree leaves. If the Earth had evolved in similar directions, if totipotent lineages had dominated land and sea, there wouldn’t be such a thing as an ancestor. No close cousins or living parents, either. Humans and elands, walnuts and trilobites would be equal citizens embraced by a single identity. And more to the point, there would be no such creature as a human, every bipedal omnivore constructed in its own unique, never quite human way.

  The engineering of the Dun and Scypha and the other lineages was fascinating and gorgeously complex. Every cell had a compressed, efficient genetic language. Once built, no gene was discarded, and no avenue of development could be forgotten, which was the only way that such a plastic, thoroughly inspired system could work.

  Aasleen continued falling toward the pale green forest. Even with the lower gravity, her velocity would shatter bones and possible dislodge limbs. But humans didn’t rely on sloppy old DNA anymore. Repairs would begin instantly, disaster genes awakened from repositories scattered throughout her fractured body. There would be pain, sure. Pain was just as instructive today as when people were mortals. But with a lucky bounce or two, she might be alive again in a few minutes and walking normally within the hour, and then the next phase of this ugliness could begin.

  But as the air continued to thicken, a sturdy wind began to push, carrying Aasleen out over the thick whitish water of the sea.

  Turning onto her back, her face pointed at the gray sky, she clenched her eyes shut as the agony took hold, fierce but brief.

  The body died. The shallow muddy water was pushed aside, and her momentum shoved the muck out of her way, and then the muck flowed back over her. Aasleen’s mind retreated into a brief coma, and she survived by consuming fat through anaerobic pathways—metabolisms more ancient than oxygen, enlivened by new enzymes and a biochemistry full of modern efficiencies.

  When her body found the strength, she attempted to sit up. But the mud was deep and stubborn, and above it laid enough seawater to smother her again. Reaching with her right arm, she clung to Rococo’s satchel with her left. But the satchel felt different now. Lighter? No, heavier. The sealed flap had somehow come open, and mud and cold water had filled it up. But how could hyperfiber give up that easily? Then, just as she guessed the only likely answer, something pushed down into the water and grabbed her right hand. Another hand had taken hold of hers, a hand as cold as the sea, but possessing fingers and a helpful mood.

  She was yanked up into a sitting position.

  The air was still thin and unpleasantly chilled. Her first breaths found alien stinks and a profoundly rancid taste. But her companion looked utterly human, down to the black face and bright eyes and an expression not too unlike a warm, familiar smile.

  The creature could be Rococo.

  But it wasn’t. An elaborate machine was encased inside the native mud. A facsimile of a human had built from the cheapest material available, and she didn’t expect it to sound at all like Rococo.

  Yet it did.

  “Hello, Sister.”

  She tried to speak, and coughed instead.

  “Do you know why they hated you so much?” the apparition asked, its wet face drawn around a mechanical mouth and diamond eyes.

  She asked, “Who hated me?”

  With a mouth full of mud, she had a stranger’s voice.

  “Our parents,” the apparition said. “They were so angry with you. For centuries, they were livid. And I suppose they still are and won’t ever stop. Yet when I emigrated to the Great Ship, they viewed it as a good and honorable adventure that was worth embracing, and they wished me all the sweet fortune I could find.”

  Hate made her feel warm, alert.

  “Do you know the difference between us, Sister?”

  “No,” she said.

  “It is the distance between intense fury and furious pride.” The machine lifted a sticky hand, two fingertips clamped tightly together. “It is this much. It is this little. Those emotions are spectacularly close to being the same awful thing.”

  9

  “Where’s my brother?”

  With bright eyes, the machine regarded her for a speculative moment. Then her companion said, “Follow me,” and turned away, long legs pulling through the muck and shallow water.

  Aasleen poured the slop out of Rococo’s satchel, making sure nothing else was waiting inside. Then she collapsed its sides and stuffed it inside her own kit—a dirty sack woven from sapphire and spider silk—and with a touch, she told the kit to levitate and let her pull it by its handle.

  The sea had no distinct shoreline, no defined edge. The water simply grew shallower and more turbid, and at some ill-defined point, there was more land than liquid beneath her. The tracks left by the machine looked like human footprints, bare feet with high arches and long toes, and the sculpted mud retained its human shape, picking up excess mud. The machine paused where the land was dry, using fingers to clean between the toes. Aasleen was wearing field boots that cleaned themselves. She caught up and bent low, studying the entity’s motions. The illusion of muscle clung to a human-shaped skeleton. Except for a mud-cloth hanging about its middle, the machine appeared naked. Watching it was like watching Rococo, down to the smallest flourish of the fingers.

  “Harum-scarum,” she said.

  The machine lifted its gaze, yellow teeth and a bright pink tongue showing inside the smile. “Yes?”

  “You’re a harum-scarum facsimile.” A widespread species, ancient compared to humans, they possessed quite a few technological tricks. “Harum-scarums love to model their brains and use facsimiles for rituals and the most difficult jobs.”

  “Yes.”

  “And for fun,” she added.

  “Isn’t that what this is? Fun?” The machine straightened and walked toward the forest.

  “That’s not my point.” Aasleen kept on its left, using a similar stride. “Believe me, I know every last tool we brought with us. I’ve
got the Peregrine’s full inventory in my head. And I don’t remember anything about stockpiling this particular trick.”

  The machine offered nothing.

  “Rococo brought you with him. Didn’t he?”

  The toothy smile seemed appreciative. “Is this important?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Because if he left the Great Ship carrying you—a secret machine stowed inside his personal gear—then he had a pretty clear idea that he’d need you. And that tells me quite a lot.”

  “I didn’t know that I would employ this,” he said. “But it seemed like a prudent item to keep close.”

  “Why prudent?”

  Silence.

  She walked in front of Rococo—that’s how she thought of the machine now; it was the same as her brother—and with an accusing tone, she said, “When I first saw you, at that initial briefing on the Great Ship…you already had a very clear idea of what you were going to do here…”

  “What was possible was obvious,” her brother replied.

  “Before we boarded the Peregrine, you visited one of the harum-scarum districts and purchased this device, and then you had to pay somebody an additional fortune to have it reconfigured for our species and your mind. Since you couldn’t have done either job yourself, my guess is.”

  The first traces of vegetation were decidedly ordinary—what might have been an earthly grass starved of nutrients, left yellow and a little thin on the crusted surface of sun baked mud. Aasleen looked at the plants and the bright forest beyond, and then she glanced over her shoulder. The sun lay close to the horizon, the empty mud flat and smooth, marred only by two sets of determined tracks. “The water level dropped recently,” she said.

  Rococo squinted, lips pursing.

  “The Dun are heating the water,” she said.

  “Are they? How?”

  “They drained off the top meter of this sea. No, wait. The bottom meter would be better. Easier. They’ll drop the coldest, oxygen-poor water into subterranean chambers and let the world’s heat percolate into it, and then they bring the warmer water up to irrigate desert and moderate the local climate.”

  The yellow smile was encouraging, the voice thrilled. “You know, this is exactly what I promised them.”

  “What is?”

  “That you’re an exceptional talent. A gifted thinker carried by a rare set of instincts.” Rococo’s voice practically sang when he said, “I promised them the very best mind for a difficult job. And the fact that you are practically in my personal lineage was an added benefit, naturally.”

  But Aasleen couldn’t stop thinking about seawater and heat. “But it’s just a temporary measure,” she said. “Every liter of warmed water is going to bleed more heat away from the deep crust.”

  “Naturally.”

  They were past the grassy shoreline. A volume of shaded air took hold of them—cool damp air still barely thick enough to be breathed normally. The jungles on a million worlds were not too different from this one. Trees of different heights and different ages stood around them, each one a variation on some common theme built along the same photosynthetic system and unwavering metabolisms. There were things that weren’t quite animals wrapped around traditional architectures, including insects and worms, limbless and many-legged, and there were big-eyed climbers that were busily staring at the alien and alien machine that were strolling past their nesting sites. But even the same kinds of creatures had differences. One six-limbed monkey sported thick green fur while its companion had a feathery covering. The eyes held different positions, as did the mouths and large nostrils. Only one lineage ruled here, a grand and plastic and multitudinous species that was too inventive to produce the same body-plan twice in succession. Endless inspiration was wrapped around the same unchanging set of instructions, and despite genetic similarities, this was not the Scypha. The Dun was something else, smaller in numbers and power but equally as remarkable, and what Aasleen had known intellectually for years was suddenly gnawing at her. Stopping in the chilled sunshine of an open glade, she felt a deep disquiet, unable to ignore the emotion any longer.

  Rococo’s voice called off into the shadows, telling watchful souls to step forward and have their own look.

  Intelligent Dun emerged on all sides.

  They were bipeds, more than not. Perhaps they looked halfway human in order to honor their guest. More likely, this was a convenient form taken from what organic life had to offer. Some had many eyes, others just one. A few bodies sported two heads, while many more had their faces buried in their chests. Hands and hand-like feet were grown to serve very precise jobs. But every hand was lifted up now, extended and flattened, an endless array of fingers held erect, the gesture looking utterly human.

  An open-hand sign of peace, Aasleen assumed.

  The Dun were inventive and persistent, yes. But their world was cooling off, a little more every year. Yet wasn’t this state of affairs perfectly natural? When the Great Freeze came, each of these bodies would leave behind viable spores, trillions of them hiding in the deep dusts and glacial ice. And just one hypercompetent spore knew enough to resurrect the Dun forests and faces, just as soon as conditions changed for the better.

  Which would be when?

  Aasleen was thinking about all of it. Problems and solutions. What was easy, and what was nearly impossible. “If the Scypha never let the asteroids fall,” she asked quietly, “what happens?”

  “But you know that answer already,” said the Rococo facsimile.

  Then something else obvious showed itself. Aasleen straightened her back and swallowed, and she had no choice but laugh at herself and everyone else too.

  The Dun faces regarded her with their bright, unreadable eyes.

  It was the machine beside her that seemed intrigued, smiling for a long moment before asking, “What is it, Sister?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Aasleen nodded, telling her companion, “Let’s keep walking. Keep talking. And by the way, are you taking me to my brother?”

  “Perhaps,” said the diplomat’s voice. “Perhaps.”

  10

  Sometimes the subject wormed its way to the surface.

  During those periodic lectures, a crewmember might pose an innocent query that brushed against Chaos. Then everyone found himself thinking about that untouchable place, and perhaps a second hand would lift, and a second voice would ask about that mysterious, increasingly hostile realm. With concern, perhaps even a measure of sadness, they would refer to their hosts, wondering aloud if maybe the Scypha were intentionally strangling their cradle world to death.

  But Chaos was not dying. The ranking diplomat had made that salient point enough times to convince ten million people of its veracity. Borrowing from the exobiologists’ manual, Krill reminded audiences how the spores represented every lineage, and how they would remain for eons to come, waiting patiently inside the planet-wide dust. In some locations, more spores than dust were lying on and inside the ground. And while there was no way to know the future, it was easy to envision a different day when the Scypha would loosen their grip on the Rings, allowing a fire-shower of rock and ice to trigger another rebirth.

  “It’s not as if our hosts are fighting the other lineages,” she pointed out, her tone reasonable and responsible, her young-girl face glowing with infectious confidence. “We aren’t visiting a war zone here. We haven’t seen extinctions, and we won’t. I promise. If struggles are happening, they’re between the little lineages, all which is rigorously natural, since the inhabitants of Chaos have always fought for resources, for water and warmth. If you look at these circumstances as I do, you see a thousand failed lineages unable to make peace with one another, much less find any lasting prosperity.

  “The Scypha are something else entirely.

  “I won’t concede them to be innately superior to their sister lineages. Frankly, I don’t have the expertise to make judgment. But it’s not a small point to remind ourselv
es that the Scypha have accomplished wonders. On their own, they have escaped their limited beginnings. And in exchange for allowing a tiny population of their infinitely plastic bodies to come onboard the Great Ship, humanity will be given three empty worlds, which is a spectacular gesture on their part, the gift delivering new homes to millions of humans, complete with happiness and prosperity and the promise of long, luminous futures.”

  Krill could afford to be effusive; she was a very different beast than any exobiologist. But Chaos was descending into a long hard sleep, and the ultimate results depended on the viability of the spores, which was hard to determine from a range of a hundred million kilometers. Who knew what ten million years of unbroken drought and ice would do to the tiny dormant bodies? In their darkest moods, the experts liked to point out that these weren’t simple bacteria buried beneath Martian permafrost. Spores produced by the Scypha were substantial bodies, visible to the eye and covered in a hard, jewel-like cuticle. In principle, it was a magnificent and enduring system. But on the other hand—a grim, obstinate second hand—Chaos had never known dormancies as long as this one promised to be. Asteroid impacts had been uneven but inevitable events, and at most, the coldest driest deadest times had probably lasted not much longer the present drought.

  One day an old friend asked Aasleen, “Does it concern you?”

  “Does what concern me?”

  “Our part in what is happening to that world. And what isn’t happening to it. Do these events make you uneasy?”

  The AI technician was drifting beside her. “Help me,” she said. “Define your subject a little more clearly.”

  The machine said, “Chaos.”

  “I know,” Aasleen said. “But since when does that world concern you?”

  “In the last few moments, the idea struck me.” The rubber face put on a tight, worried expression. “I suddenly found myself dwelling on my critical role in this horrible business.”

  Aasleen had built this machine thousands of years ago. It had helped her erect the short-lived terraforming tent, and later, it had gladly accompanied her to the Olympus Peregrine and eventually to the Great Ship. And now they were together again, finishing the retrofitting of the last nuclear engine. It wasn’t unfair to claim that this thoughtful, talented machine was Aasleen’s oldest and possibly dearest friend, and there were even lonely moments when it was much more than that. But the machine was not sentient, not in any legal or compelling way, it wasn’t.