The Greatship

by Robert Reed

“What else should I do?” it said, utterly amused. “There are no negotiations, since I have won, and you will soon die and be lost, and why did you waste flesh on this ridiculous mission?”

  The diplomats were killed in painful manners, their neural centers returned for Aeon’s edification.

  A few centuries later, a single working starship lifted from the highest peak on Aeon’s far side. The pilot was the self-sufficient Child, and the Child was carrying a portion of its parent’s memories and the wrenching lessons as well as Aeon’s character and desires.

  The strongest of the nearby signals led to the Great Ship.

  What choice did it have but to believe the transmissions, expecting to find a tolerant and charitable crew of unlinked animals, and in such a gigantic vessel, any tiny berth for its little self?

  Mercy, in whatever truncated form, had to exist in the universe.

  Without mercy, why should one ever bother with life, or even bother with the smallest single breath?

  * * *

  Samara listened to the tale, never interrupting.

  Afterwards it remained silent, and Pamir realized that this was the first time that he had ever told the story to another, in any form.

  A wan smile appeared on the alien, and he said, “That was delicious. A delicious, satisfying lie.”

  Pamir mopped at the sweat on his homely face. “What do you mean? That this never happened?”

  The body shrugged like a human, and the orange glow behind it flared, dilating orifices belching gases that instantly caught fire. Then it said, “In these last days, at last, I have come to understand your species. Tiny minds, and old. Your thoughts are so hardened by habit and wish that none of you seem capable of asking the obvious.”

  “I’m expelling you,” Pamir said. “I intend to contact the Master Captain and see you thrown off our ship.”

  “You can’t expel what you can’t catch, old man.”

  Again, Pamir hoped to be murdered. A heroic, short-sighted part of him saw no other solution, and only after another moment of life did he bother to wonder why he was thinking this way. This was not the man that he had been just ten centuries ago.

  The orange mass moved, retreating like a vast amoeba. There was a vivid sloshing as it watery self crept into hairline fissures, unmapped and uncountable. That’s how it got here, the captain realized. It slipped through the Ship’s cracked, aged body; and how could anyone corner such a creature?

  Then Samara asked, “Who is the Child?”

  Pamir stared at the basalt, saying nothing.

  “Maybe the Child is that one fragment of Aeon, the creature that happens to be your friend. Or maybe it’s Aeon’s world-sized creation.” The body stepped backward, pausing against the ancient wall. “Perhaps both are its children. But since I arose from the first and truest child, perhaps I should be given that cherished name. Yes?”

  “Stay away from me,” Pamir said.

  Samara responded with a prolonged gaze, eyes pained and disappointed. Then it asked another question:

  “If sisters tell two stories…which sister will you believe?”

  The body was merging with the wall, and the orange glow was the weakest, coolest light imaginable.

  “Which of us?” asked the vanishing mouth.

  Pamir gave no answer.

  “A fair warning to you,” Samara said. “I intend to relish my work, and good-bye. Forever, I hope.”

  The many-billion-year night had returned, undiminished by that one weak sliver of day.

  7

  “Weapons,” said Pamir, speaking as much to himself as the Child. “I know sources. There are markets. You can’t make these kinds of weapons for yourself–”

  “Thank you.”

  “And they’re designed for humans. Another pair of hands? Does that sound worthwhile?”

  “Friend Pamir,” the Child replied, speaking through the nearest griffin. “When it’s time, I hope you leave me. I can’t ask you to fight, and for the sake of truth, I should mention that you are tiny and weak and more a burden than an effective soldier.” The voice was certain, logic and empathy smeared together. “What I’ve asked you to do, you have done. What more can I want?”

  “Let me take my chances,” said Pamir. Then, for emphasis, he added, “You’ll have to use more than words to keep me away.”

  The Child didn’t react to the banality, except to beat the griffin’s wings. Huge eyes watched the human, golden pupils pulled wide, threatening to swallow Pamir whole.

  The captain turned, walking just to be walking.

  An alien sewer flowed beside him, rushing between high canyon walls. Here the water should be clean and sweet, but as more of the Child was readied to fight, less of the wastes were being absorbed and purified. Soon no work would be done, and raw sewage would percolate through the central sands, into a reservoir that Pamir had left empty for this day. The AI overseers were long ago recalibrated; months could pass, and no one needed to know what was happening. Yet that act—the sabotage of one warning system—reminded Pamir that he wasn’t acting as a captain, his first duty no longer directed at the Ship and its smooth, dignified operation.

  Fumes rose from the river, tickling his nose, scorching flesh. Pamir coughed but refused to back away from the shoreline. Nestled inside the torrent was a mock-fish, camouflaged to match the brown poisons, suction cups holding it to the hyperfiber streambed while its armored back was visible in the deeper troughs. This species was first built during the long war. Its eggs were shaped like dead shells and fat plankton—harmless detritus swept up with the stolen ocean—and they would hatch inside the giant pumps and along the length of the interplanetary bridge. With palpable pride, the Child had explained how the fish stole energy from the moving water while building flesh laced with unstable compounds. Each body was a bomb, and Aeon was trying to ignite a single apocalyptic blast. But the Monster anticipated the attack, no significant damage done, and afterward it mocked its enemy for the transparent, foolhardy nontrick.

  Pamir wondered what good a few fish would do now, and he coughed harder, tasting blood as he turned to look at the canyon walls and sky.

  It was easy to forget where he was: The Child had transformed itself. Every vegetable mass was covered with spines and piercing threads, a thousand proven, reborn poisons waiting to be injected, another ten thousand fresh poisons crafted from the alien sewage, ready to be thrown into the breach. No mock-animal, no matter how small or scarce, lacked a killing function. Fruiting bodies were engorged with napalms. Bacteria generated tons of necrotic enzymes. The griffins were growing larger and swifter, and more ominous, they were resting more than training, shepherding their energies in case of a sudden attack. Even the Child’s color hinted at deadly work, a blackness of flesh and bark swallowing the soft orange sunlight, hiding details under a velvety sameness that would make an attacker’s job ever so slightly more difficult.

  Pamir couldn’t wander at will. Toxins and spring-loaded blades would make a nightmare out of the shortest stroll.

  The Child was right; his body was a small weak burden.

  But he was a captain too, and that helped immeasurably. Samara would have to enter through one of the orifices; the hyperfiber floor and ceiling were too dense and perfect to allow passage. That known, Pamir had an army of sensors above and below the facility, and booby-traps hid inside the sewage lines, inorganic bombs and electrified screens set to maim anything that might be alive. And Pamir himself had crawled inside the ancient machinery, behind the canyon walls, inventing at least one good trick to help the Child, if it ever came to that…

  The griffin gently draped one huge talon over Pamir’s shoulder. Its beak and talons were sheathed in hyperfiber, mirror-colored and sharp. Pamir had ordered them from a friendly supplier, paying through an official account—another lapse as a captain, and he didn’t care.

  With the gentlest possible voice, the griffin asked, “What kinds of weapons can you offer, and where will you find them, fr
iend Pamir?”

  He answered the first question with vagaries but no specifics. As for the second question, he said, “I can’t be certain, since I’ve never actually tried to assemble this kind of gear.”

  The Child waited.

  “But captains know all the illegal markets,” he said.

  Myriad eyes watched him. Then the griffin said, “There is something else here.”

  “What is here?”

  “I know your expressions,” it said. “You have words that you want to tell me, perhaps.”

  “I told you what’s important,” he said.

  The Child knew about his meeting with Samara, but Pamir neglected to mention the parting words. He wanted to forget them, and sometimes it felt as if he could. But the face showed too much, and the Child had reasons to ask, “Is this a trivial matter? Is it silly? Why not just say it and get it done with, friend Pamir?”

  He felt like a lover admitting to an indiscretion. “The Monster tried to tell a different history.”

  “Yes?”

  “Different,” he repeated.

  The bright talon lifted. A small voice said, “I can imagine.”

  “I don’t know any details. All it did was throw out noise about a two-sided story.”

  “The creature is clever,” said the Child.

  “I realize that.” There was no place to hide his eyes, cold sweat making his skin shine. “It gave me some vague shit about sisters, and I don’t know where it would have led.”

  “Because you can imagine anything. You have that power, which it knows full well.”

  Pamir had worked hard for days, avoiding daydreams, keeping his liquid thoughts in safe places. Captains—even a sordid, failed captain—knew that doubt was a killer. The decision made and then aborted was often worse than a simple, clean mistake.

  “It is cunning,” said the griffin, with confidence.

  Pamir nodded, and after a long uncomfortable pause, he said, “I’ll keep one weapon in reserve, for my own use.”

  “If you wish.”

  “And I will be here when Samara comes.”

  “As you wish, friend Pamir.”

  The griffin sprang into the air, wings beating once, then again, carrying it toward a high perch where the hyperfiber lay exposed, griffins by the hundreds set shoulder to shoulder, doing nothing.

  Then something soft stroked Pamir’s back. He wheeled, startled to find a reborn angel. The body was taller than him, perfect breasts in his face, while its face—a lean strong lovely favorite—sang to him, “For you.”

  New hands stroked his chest, no human hand so soothing.

  But Pamir said, “Not now, no.” He managed a blind backward step, his heel jabbed with an electrified thorn. “Take it away. Build something useful.” In other words, cobble together something strong, and brutal, and fatal.

  The angel’s eyes were deep, hiding worlds.

  Stepping into the churning waters, its flesh painlessly dissolved as it moved, the beautiful body embraced and annihilated in moments; and Pamir left behind in what passed for solitude.

  * * *

  He took an official leave of absence.

  The Submaster was not known for her charm or warmth. Taking tight hold of Pamir’s hand, Miocene said, “Enjoy your rest. But remember, endless rest is Heaven, and Heaven does not exist.”

  A Remora sold Pamir five dozen plasma guns, homemade from stolen parts and capable of incinerating everything short of medium-grade hyperfiber. As was customary, the officer told the seller that he was taking friends on a hunt, their quarry large and mechanical and decidedly nonsentient. That would be the excuse in case of trouble. Then Pamir set to work, adapting all the guns but one for griffins’ paws. He was working at home, nearly finished, when Washen arrived at his front door.

  “We should meet for drinks,” she said. “Meet and talk.”

  “That would be great,” Pamir lied, standing in the hallway, a munitions depot hiding around the first corner. “The week after next week might be best.”

  Washen smiled for a moment. Then she said, “Your friend has vanished.”

  The Child was what he thought about first. Instinct crafted a story where the Gaian had decided not to fight, following instead the escape route that Pamir designed, or maybe another avenue…but that was stupid, and he realized what she meant with the word “friend”.

  “Samara,” she said. “Remember him?”

  “Barely.” Pamir blew through his teeth.

  “Either way, he’s gone.” Washen offered a rich little smile, as if some special knowledge was being shared. “And I thought you’d want to know, since you seemed fascinated about him.”

  “Not him, no. I was wrong.”

  She knew better but didn’t press. “I heard a rumor that you are taking some time off.”

  “A little while, yes.”

  “Who’s doing your jobs?”

  He named captains, leaving one responsibility unaccounted for.

  Washen didn’t mention what was obvious, and a tacit conspiracy had begun. What did she suspect? But nothing could be as strange as the truth, which lent the moment its thin satisfaction.

  Then his friend, peer, and ex-lover said, “She must be astonishing.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman, whatever she is.” A slicing look brought jealousy cloaked in a vapid, unwelcome pity. “But you don’t even realize it, do you? How much you’re in love. How deep the holds reach.”

  “That’s not me,” he said.

  And against long odds, he believed those words.

  Washen’s gaze wandered down the hallway and back to him again, and she said, “The week after next then. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  She left, and in a mad rush, Pamir loaded the big cap-car and set out for the Child, following the most direct route. The last gun was ready with minutes to spare, and that wealth of idle time allowed him to admit a few hard truths to himself. He even promised himself to admit his affections when he arrived. But stepping through the final hatch, Pamir couldn’t say the planned words. He found a griffin waiting on the other side, its eagle-eyes staring through him, and in a hushed voice, the Child told him:

  “Samara. Is here.”

  8

  Holding to form, their enemy arrived as Drought.

  Every sewer was blocked. Plugs of rubbery flesh were lodged upstream, beyond the reach of booby-traps. The river below Pamir—the one from human districts—had fallen to a greasy blue-green rivulet, its fish dead and dying, the Child absorbing and reallocating their bodies in the grandest kind of panic he had ever witnessed.

  Griffins took every plasma gun but his.

  The first griffin remained behind, asking for quick training.

  Pamir showed how to link the gun’s umbilical to the Ship’s power supply, and then he gave a demonstration, melting and sealing the hatch behind him with a thunderous blast. An instant later, an alarm sounded. Something was moving in the nearest tunnels; sensors disgorged phenomenal volumes of vague, conflicting data. Pointing the barrel at the dry river’s source, the captain said, “It’s massive, and it’s flowing, and every bomb is detonating.”

  Yet the orifice remained empty and silent, no motions betrayed.

  The gun’s barrel began to twist, correcting for Pamir’s little failures.

  “Hide,” begged a hundred small voices. “Will you please?”

  He pointed at a small intake port exposed by the drought. The griffin carried him and his gun to the makeshift redoubt, and a second griffin brought a hyperfiber suit, trim and lightweight, with a double-thick helmet and a sealed environment. Examining his reflection in the hyperfiber wall, Pamir decided that he felt as expected: Strong. Scared, but determined. And tired, yet existing outside the need for normal rest.

  “How soon?” he asked the reflection.

  The Child gave no answer.

  Pamir relinked and calibrated the gun. Every high cloud had evaporated, the moisture stored and the bare
ceiling reflecting the rich blackness below. Nothing happened in the next minute, and the next hour was the same. It became possible to imagine that Samara would wait as long as possible, studying their strengths while letting their weaknesses grow.

  What was that?

  A million faces tilted. Something was felt, heard. Pamir glanced at the readouts from the sensors, countless signs of motion making his heart race.

  “Now!” screamed the Child’s nearest face.

  It was a leathery, fanged face, droplets of alien plague arcing through the dry, dry air.

  Pamir squared his shoulders, telling his reflection, “I guess I am. Ready.”

  * * *

  Through the closest orifice, in one titanic push, came life, unformed and full of energies that bled out of it as light and screaming white noise. The electrified screens had shattered. Winged beasts sprang from the plastic goo, born in flight, driving for the Child’s center. And in reflex, fruits exploded, and living nets launched themselves, engulfing and slicing the enemy’s bodies. Then the armed griffins worked as a well-trained unit, bolts of plasma evaporating bodies and breaking molecules, leaving incandescent vapors that hung in the air, for a moment, before they were absorbed by a second wave of screaming winged enemies.

  Pamir aimed and fired, nanosecond pulses cutting. Boiling. Doing remarkably little good.

  Samara was vast. It wasn’t as large as the Child, but its first assault killed as much as it lost, and it absorbed casualties from both of the sides, reshaping and reanimating the spoils, then launching those newborn troops.

  The second assault dwarfed the first.

  The third nearly reached Pamir’s hiding place, and he fired until a haze of boiled blood hung as a curtain before him.

  “Retreat,” the Child said.

  Then another sound arrived. More distant, and louder, it was a piercing wail rising through the crimson fog. Pamir retreated deeper into the port, and he lifted his gun, and a vast winged creature plowed into the riverbed before him. It was one of Samara’s bodies. Fresh cacti impaled it, needles pumping lethal stews into the bleeding flesh. A smaller beast sprang from lifeless back, and it too was grabbed by the spines, dying in turn. But then its corpse instantly gave birth to a pair of wings—dragonfly-style; more delicate than smoke—and the wings flapped hard, Pamir watching with a mixture of astonishment and fatalism. They were wings with a thread-like body between, and what could such a little thing accomplish?