by Robert Reed
Judging a hatch’s value was three parts diagnosis, two parts art, and inevitably, ten parts good fortune. Telescopes tied into dimwitted machines did nothing but happily stuff data into shapes that brighter AIs could analyze. Whatever was promising or peculiar was sent to the raider leaders. The average day brought ten or fifteen events worthy of closer examination, and because of his service record, Peregrine was given first-glance at those candidates. But even with ripe pickings, he often did nothing. Other raiders flying their own ships would dive into the high atmosphere every few days, but sometimes weeks passed without Peregrine once being once tempted to sit in the pilot’s padded chair.
“I want to grow old in this job,” he confessed whenever his bravery was questioned. “Most souls can’t do what I do. Most of you are too brave, and bravery is suicide. Fearlessness is a handicap. Chasing every million-wing flight of catabolites or sky-spinners is the quickest way to go bankrupt, if you’re lucky. Or worse, die.”
“That is one reasonable philosophy,” his friend mentioned, speaking through the voice box sewn into a convenient neural center.
“I’m sorry,” said Peregrine. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was chatting with a woman friend.”
The alien lifted one of his intricate limbs, signaling puzzlement. “And where is this woman?”
“Inside my skull.” Peregrine gave his temple a few hard taps. “I met her last night. I thought she was pretty, and she was pleasant enough. But she said some critical words about raiders wasting too many resources, and I thought she was accusing me of being a coward.”
“You listed your sensible insights, of course.”
“Not all of them,” he admitted.
“Why not?”
“I told you,” said Peregrine. “I thought she was pretty. And if I acted like an unapologetic coward, I wouldn’t get invited to her bedroom.”
Hawking absorbed this tidbit about human spawning. Or he simply ignored it. Who could know what that creature was thinking beneath his thick carapace? Low-built and long, Hawking held a passing resemblance to an earthly trilobite. A trio of crystalline eyes pulled in light from all directions, delicate optical tissues teasing the meaning out of every photon. His armored body was carried on dozens of jointed legs. But where trilobites had three sections to their insect-like bodies, this alien had five. And where trilobites were dim-witted creatures haunting the floors of ancient seas, Hawking’s ancestors evolved grasping limbs and large, intricate minds while scurrying across the lush surface of a low-gravity world.
Hawking was no social animal. And this was a blessing, since he was the only one of his kind in the city. Peregrine had studied the available files about his species, but the local data sinks were intended to help military operations, not educate any would-be xenologists. And likewise, after spending decades in close association with the creature, and despite liking as well as admiring him, there were moments when old Mr. Hawking was nothing but peculiar, standoffish and quite impossible to read.
But Peregrine had a taste for challenges.
“Anyway,” he said, cutting into the silence. “I lied to that woman. I told her that I wasn’t flying because I knew something big was coming. I had a feeling, and until that ripe moment, I was resting both my body and my ship.”
“And she believed you?”
“Perhaps.”
After a brief silence, Hawking said, “She sounds like a foolish young creature.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong.” Peregrine laughed and shrugged. “Just as I hoped, I climbed into her bed. And during one of our slow moments, she admitted who she was.”
“And she was?”
“The woman was an engineer during the War. She was working in the repair yards while my mother served as a pilot. So like you, my new girlfriend is one of the original founders.”
“Interesting,” his friend responded.
“Fusilade is her name,” he mentioned. “And she seems to know you.”
“Yet I do not know her.”
Then Peregrine added, “And by the way, she very clearly remembers your arrival here.”
Fourteen moon-sized rocket nozzles stood upon the Great Ship’s stern, and the center nozzle served as the gathering place for tired pilots and engineers during the War. Once the fighting ended, representatives of twenty different species found themselves trapped in this most unpromising location, utterly isolated, with few working machines, minimal data sinks, and no raw materials. Facing them was the daunting task of building some kind of workable society. Hawking was a rarity—the rich passenger who had visited the hull before the comets began to fall, and who managed to outlive both his guides and fellow tourists. Alone, this solitary creature had scaled one of the outlying nozzles, and then his luck lasted long enough to find passage with a harum-scarum unit—the final group of refugees to make it to this poor but safe place.
“She feels sorry for you, Hawking.”
“Why would she?”
“Because you’re a species with a population of one.”
The alien was unimpressed with that assessment. He cut the air with two limbs, his natural mouth rippling before leaking a disapproving click.
“I know better than that,” Peregrine continued. “I told her that you’re such a loner, it’s difficult for you to share breathing space with me, and you know me and approve of me far more than you know and approve of anyone else.”
The creature offered no reply.
“‘Why call him Hawking?’ she asked me. ‘Nobody else does.’”
“Few others speak to me,” his friend said.
“I explained that too,” said Peregrine. “And I told her that your species are so peculiar, you never see reason for any permanent names. When two of you cross trails, each invents a new name for himself or herself. A private name blossoms, and it lasts only as long as that single perishable relationship.”
The limbs gave the air an agreeable sweep.
“You picked Hawking, and I don’t know why,” Peregrine continued. “Except it’s a solid sound humans can utter, unlike your own species’ name, of course.”
Quietly, with his natural mouth, Hawking made a sharp clicking sound followed by what sounded like, “Eech.”
“!eech,” the human tried to repeat.
As always, there was something intensely humorous about his clumsy attempt. Nothing changed in the creature’s dome-like eyes or the rigid face, but suddenly all of the long legs wiggled together, signaling laughter, the ripples moving happily beneath his hard low unreadable body.
2
“And I remember your mother,” the old woman had mentioned last night.
Like every citizen, Fusilade’s apartment was tiny and cold; power had always been a scarce commodity in the city. But her furnishings were better than most, made from fancy plastics and cultured flesh, including a glass tub filled with spare water. Winking at her young lover, she added, “No, I doubt if your mother ever actually knew me. By name, I mean. But I was part of the team that kept those early raider ships flying. Without twenty ad lib repairs from me, that woman wouldn’t be half the hero she is today.”
Alopex was as famous as anyone in the city, and that despite being dead for dozens of centuries. She had defended these giant rockets during the Polypond War. But the alien eventually destroyed each of the Great Ship’s engines, choking and plugging every vent, trying to keep reinforcements from reaching the hull. And at the same time, the captains below blocked every doorway, desperate to keep the Polypond from infiltrating the interior. Brutal fights were waged near the main ports, but none had lasted long. A barrage of tiny black holes was fired through the Ship’s heart, but none delivered a killing blow. Then the final assault came, and despite long odds, a starship that was more ancient than any visible sun had endured a thorough beating but survived.
Afterwards, over the course of several months and then several years, the Polypond grew quieter, and by every credible measure less menacing.
Som
ething was different. The alien was different, and maybe the Great Ship too. But those few thousand survivors could never be sure what had changed. With the clarity of the doomed, they had come here and built a refugee camp. Peregrine’s mother proved a natural leader. Like her son, Alopex was a small person, dark as space, blessed with long limbs and a gymnast’s perfect balance. And she was more than just an early raider. No, what made the woman precious was that she was first to realize that nobody was coming to rescue them. The giant engines remained dead and blocked. High-grade hyperfiber had plugged even the most obscure route through the armored hull. And worse still, the Great Ship was now undergoing some mysterious but undeniable acceleration. Without one working rocket, the world-sized machine was gaining velocity, hurrying its way along a course that would soon take it out of the Milky Way.
Alopex helped invent the raider’s trade. In makeshift vehicles, she dove into the Polypond’s atmosphere, stealing volatiles and rare earths, plus the occasional machine-encrusted body. Those treasures allowed them to build shelters and synthesize food. Every few days, she bravely led an expedition into the monster’s body, stealing what was useful and accepting every danger.
Time and Fate ensured her death.
She left no body, save for a few useful bits of tissue that made up her meager estate. Her funeral was held ages ago, yet even today, whenever an important anniversary arrived, those rites and her name were repeated by thousands of thankful souls.
By contrast, Peregrine’s father was neither heroic nor well regarded. But he was a prosperous fellow, and he was shrewd, and when one of the great woman’s eggs came on the market, he spent a fortune to obtain it and a second fortune to build the first artificial womb in the city’s history.
“I remember your mother,” said the old woman, plainly proud of any casual association. Then with an important tone, she added, “That good woman would have been pleased with her young son. I’m sure.”
Peregrine was almost three hundred years old, which made him young—particularly in the eyes of a much older lady who seemed to be happily feeding a fantasy. He offered nods and a polite smile, telling her, “Well, thank you.”
“And I know your father fairly well,” she continued.
“I never see the man,” Peregrine replied with a sneer, warning her off the topic.
“I know,” she said.
Then after a pause, she asked, “Did you mean it? Do you really feel that an especially large hatch is coming?”
“No,” he said, finally admitting the truth.
Then before his honesty evaporated, he added, “There aren’t any trends, and I don’t have intuitions. And I never, ever see into the future.”
Something in those words made the old woman laugh. Then she turned quiet and caring, and with sudden tenderness, she said, “Darling. Everybody sees some little part the future. Only the dead can’t. And if you think about it, you’ll realize…there’s nothing more important that separates big-eyed us from poor cold blind them.”
3
There was nothing to add after Peregrine’s laughable attempt to say, “!eech.” Hawking fell into perfect silence, indistinguishable from countless other silences; and Peregrine responded with his own purposeful quiet. He was sitting at one end of hanger, working with the latest data about hatches and general Polypond activity. His friend stood near the raider ship. Which was less animated, that sleeping machine or the alien? Hours and even days might pass, and the creature wouldn’t move one antenna. Yet Hawking claimed to never feel lonely or bored. “A respectable mind always has fascinating tasks waiting in its neurons,” he would say, which was perhaps why his very odd species lacked the words to describe painful solitude or empty time.
The day’s hatches were distant and scarce.
Peregrine finally gave up the hunt. He sat at the end of the diamond blister, feeling the cold of deep space while studying the ever-changing scenery below. Clouds were gathering between their home nozzle and the next, the thinnest and lightest clouds shoved high above the others. This happened on occasion, and it meant nothing. But the result was a splotch of deep blackness, larger than a healthy continent and unpromising to the bare human eye.
Just to be sure, Peregrine played with infrared frequencies and flashes of laser light, making delicate measurements. Something inside that blackness was different, he noticed. Straight before him, something was beginning to happen, and that’s why he wasn’t particularly surprised when the clouds began to split, bleeding a strange golden light that was brighter than anything else in view.
Through his own telescope, he saw the vanguards of the rising hatch.
Moments later, on a shielded line, an AI expert contacted him. With a navigational code and simple words, the machine changed the complexion of Peregrine’s day and week.
“This interests,” it said with a flat, desiccated voice.
Peregrine found himself with a worthy topic. “I thought I was lying to that woman,” he told Hawking. “About having intuitions, I mean. But look at this hatch. Look at the diversity. And that’s without being able to see much of it yet.” His heart was pounding, his voice quick and growing happy. “I don’t know if anybody has seen, ever…a hatch as big and diverse as this one…”
Hawking did not move, but the hemispherical eyes absorbed the data in a few moments. Then the complicated mouth of tendrils and rasping teeth made a series of little motions—motions that Peregrine had never seen before, and chose to ignore for the moment.
“I’m leaving,” the human announced.
Every raider with a working ship would be embarking now.
“It’s going to be a rich day,” he said, throwing himself into the first layer of his flight suit.
Finally, Hawking spoke.
“You are my friend,” said the alien, nothing about his voice out of the ordinary. “And from all that is possible, I wish you the best.
4
Simplicity was the hallmark of a raider’s ship. The hull was made from diamond scales bolstered with nanowhiskers, all laid across a flexible skeleton of salvaged hyperfiber. Resting in its berth, Peregrine’s ship held a long, elegant shape reminiscent of the harpoons that populated ancient novels about fishermen and lost seas. But that narrow body swelled when liquid hydrogen was pushed into the fuel tanks. One inefficient fusion reactor fed a lone engine that was sloppy but powerful. The launch felt like the endless slap of a monster’s paw, brutal enough to smash bone and pulverize the sternest living flesh. But like every citizen, Peregrine was functionally immortal, blessed with repair mechanisms that could take the stew inside a flight suit and remake the man who had been sitting there.
His body died, and time leaped across a string of uneventful minutes.
Opening new eyes, Peregrine found himself coasting, climbing away from the Great Ship. Six AIs of various temperaments and skills made up his crew. In his absence, they had continued studying the available data. One served as his pilot, and even when Peregrine reclaimed the helm, the machine waited at a nanosecond’s distance, ready to correct any glaring mistakes.
Inside any large hatch, bodies came in different shapes, different species. The AI most familiar with mercantile matters pointed at the center of the hatch. “These gull-wands match those we saw fifteen years ago. Their wings had some good-grade hyperfiber, and nearly ten percent of the collected hearts were salvageable.”
Gull-wands had tiny fusion reactors in their chests. One reactor was powerful enough to light and heat a modest home.
“How much could we make?” Peregrine asked.
An estimate was generated, followed by an impressed silence from every sentient entity.
But then Peregrine noticed a closer feature. “Over here…is that some kind of cloud?”
“No,” was the best guess.
The mass was black along its surfaces, swirling in its interior, and through cracks that were tiny at any distance came glimmers of a fantastically bright blue-white light.
“Any
thing like it in the records?”
There was an optical similarity to clouds of tiny, extremely swift bodies observed only eight times in the past.
“In my past?”
“Not in your life, no,” one voice replied. “During the city’s life, I mean.”
“Okay. What were those bodies made of?”
That was unknown, since none had ever been captured.
“So pretend that’s what we’re seeing,” he said. “Estimate the numbers in that single gathering.”
“The flock is enormous,” another AI reported. “In the range of ten or eleven billion—“
“That’s what we want!” Peregrine exclaimed.
Skeptical whispers buzzed in his ears.
But the human pointed out, “Everyone else is going to be harvesting gull-wands. Hearts and hyperfiber are going to be cheap for the next hundred years. But if we find something new and special…even gathering up just a few of them…we could pocket several fortunes, and maybe even upgrade our ship…”
His crew had to like the sound of that.
But the pilot warned, “Reaching the target will entail burning a large portion of our reserves.”
“So do it now,” Peregrine ordered, releasing the helm.
And for the second time in a very brief while, his fine young body was crushed into an anonymous jelly.
5
There was no perfect consensus about what the Polypond was—undiminished foe, mad psyche divided against itself, or the spectacular carcass of a once great foe. And in the same fashion, there were competing ideas about the place and purpose of the hatches. Since the rising bodies had mouths and were often seen feeding, maybe they were a favorite means of pruning old tissues and reviving what remained. Or they were infected with some new, improved genetics that had to be spread through the greater body. Maybe they had a punishing function, retraining regions that their Polypond master judged too independent. Unless of course hatches were exactly what they appeared to be: Biological storms. One or many species were enjoying a season of plenty, and working together, those countless bodies would rise into the highest atmosphere, spreading their precious seeds and spores as far as physically possible.