The Well of Stars

by Robert Reed

  Washen was consumed by her work. With an army of nexuses to help, she manipulated grand plans and careful long-term schemes, always striving to make them play well with one another. To protect her sanity, she slept, but only in bites and little breaths, and only when Pamir or Aasleen fell into the breech. Seeing her son was a rare business, and for a long time she assumed that the long gaps were the fault of her office or some lack of discipline in her own self. But what else could she do? A relaxed dinner with Locke meant that she would have to plan the next major burn in a different hour, which meant delaying two meetings with the fef and the Remoras, and that meant that she would have to postpone her speech of comfort and well-wishing to one of the resident species until a less appropriate time, or she would simply have to go without sleep again, draining herself even more than she had anticipated. Speaking with Locke was too hard. Sometimes she didn’t see him for several years at a time. Yes, they traded messages and holos, usually once every week. But no technology had ever matched the intimacy and power of a relaxed supper. And when that meal arrived, often after a long absence, the entire evening could be spent just fighting to pick up the threads from their last dinner.

  If they met in her quarters, the meal was simple but elegant—a gift from one of the local communities, perhaps. Human-prepared or otherwise, but always familiar to Washen. But if they met in Locke’s quarters, they ate grilled hammerwings and sweet lava nuts and other Marrow treasures. Her son had cultured those species from samples brought up by the would-be conquerors. In a private cavern several kilometers long and almost as wide, he had built a tiny but authentic model of Marrow, complete with molten iron spills and a sky gradually growing dark. His diet and the sky kept him looking like a Wayward, with the smoky gray skin and a slightly famished cast to the eyes. But at least in his mother’s presence, he dressed like a law-abiding passenger, in simple trousers and a light shirt. And when possible, Washen left her uniform elsewhere, matching his casual tastes—a touch of detail from the relentless and deft administrator.

  Too often, she spoke about her work and its biggest problems.

  When Locke stared off into the distance, watching a fat hammerwing flying against the illusionary sky, she would stop herself. In midsentence, if necessary. Then with a sorrowful honesty, she would say, “Sorry.”

  At first, Locke would nod, and say, “No, it’s all right.”

  Then Washen would insist, “I want to hear about your work. What are you doing now?”

  But after a few decades of graceless niceties, her son decided simply to leap past her weak apology as well as the rest of the traditional noise. Washen would be recounting what she believed to be an interesting story, perhaps about an obscure species and how she had handled them in a dangerous moment … and in midsentence, Locke would blurt out, “My work is going well.”

  It was his signal, and after a few more decades, Washen stopped feeling insulted or embarrassed.

  “I’m still learning about the science and mathematics,” her son would explain. He had enjoyed a thorough education as a boy on Marrow, but those were harsh times, and on Marrow, children and their society had no clear picture of the greater universe. “I’ve still got a long way to go,” his confession went. “And that’s just until I can match what the AIs know by pure instinct. Doing any significant work … well, that might never happen. Who can say?”

  “But you’re learning,” she would remind him.

  Locke would nod and smile amiably, pleased to have his discipline recognized. Then he might tell his mother a long, convoluted story about some odd feature in one of the six essential Theories of All. In common usage, there was just the single Theory. Robust and remarkably simple, it seemed to explain everything of substance about the universe, from its tiny birth to its endless inflation, from the relatively quiet present and into the gathering darkness, with its bitter cold and the eventual, inevitable death. Only certain rarefied specialists bothered with the incongruities and wilder details: What was the basic nature of the superuniverse? Was time real or an illusion? Were the parallel existences genuine, or were they just mathematical conveniences? And was there anyplace inside this conundrum for something that might be labeled “the soul”?

  Out of simple convenience, those detailed and often contrary theories had been lumped into six equal categories, or species, or little hills.

  As the daughter of engineers, and then as the trained captain of a starship, Washen had been promised that each of those theories was as valid as any other, and just as trivial. There was no available means to test them against one another, at least not inside this universe. But their lofty and deeply clever mathematics always pointed to the same conclusion. Washen was traveling through an existence that was inevitable—a tail of reality riding on the end of every great equation. The only factor that mattered to a captain was which of her passengers believed in which of the six theories. Each had its attractions and inducements, as well as its disagreeable points. Most species embraced whatever vision of All would make them sleep easiest or live best or accept their own hard existences with the least complaint. What they believed was a window on their nature, and sometimes when Locke spoke about one of the theories, she would mention, in passing, “The Galloon don’t believe in time, either,” or with a tisk-tisking tone, she would warn Locke, “The harum-scarums despise the idea of parallel realities. There’s only one existence, and of course they have to be at the middle of it.”

  Locke would nod patiently, perhaps showing a little grin. He didn’t particularly care about the aesthetics of any species, including his own. What he was striving for was to sit on a high point and look at the terrain without prejudice, seeing everything that there was to see.

  During one of the little lunches, more than ten decades after the Wayward War, he launched into a description of a new mathematics. At first, Washen listened intently and felt certain that she understood the heart of it. But at some point during the monologue, she realized that she hadn’t any clue about what the sounds striking her ears could possibly mean. As always, Locke had given her files to examine—lessons and illustrations produced from his own notes and elaborate papers—and she linked herself to the day’s files, burrowing deep, then coming up again like a drowning woman bursting out of a cold bottomless sea.

  “What are you talking about?” she blurted.

  But her son had ceased talking, probably several minutes ago.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” she confessed. Complained. And then with a self-deprecating laugh, she said, “Throw me a line, darling. Would you?”

  “A line?” The image didn’t make immediate sense to him.

  Finally, a dim old memory tickled her mind. Washen said, “Wait,” before her son could offer an explanation. “I remember now.”

  “What?”

  “My mother, and a few teachers … they would sometimes mention … what was it … ?” She closed her dark eyes, concentrating. “A seventh Theory of All. Very obscure, and trivial … nobody ever actually believes in it …”

  Locke’s response was a gentle shrug and a nod.

  “I don’t know anything about the seventh Theory,” she said again, begging for any help.

  But Locke could only shrug, admitting, “I don’t know much more than you.” Then after a long pause, he added, “It is a disgusting set of equations. Really, even the AIs—my teachers, my colleagues—they despise that seventh solution to everything. It’s that ugly, that sad. If it wasn’t fascinating, I doubt if they’d ever look at it twice.”

  THREE DECADES LATER, in the midst of another lunch, Washen again asked, “How are the lessons going?”

  He smiled broadly, which was a little odd.

  Then with a shrug of his shoulders, he mentioned, “I’m actually accomplishing a little work now. Nothing important. But at least I’m building a framework for everything that I’ll accomplish in the next million years.”

  He meant it. When he spoke of such an enormous period of time
, he did it with a pure and withering expertise. Better than almost anyone, Locke understood that frightening span of time. And with a devotion that only fanatics and madmen could embrace, he accepted his doom with a deep, pure, and utterly happy smile.

  Finally, Washen asked, “What work are you doing?”

  “Something small,” he said.

  She waited.

  “I made a list,” he reported. And of all things, he produced the huge wing of a copperfly—the first parchment used by the captains when they were marooned long ago on Marrow. “A little list.”

  “Good,” she offered.

  He unfolded the wing along its natural seams, bending it so that only his eyes could see words written by his own hand.

  “What sort of list?” she inquired.

  “Just some obvious questions,” he replied.

  “Such as?”

  “Obvious questions,” he repeated. He had his father’s energetic eyes, but his silences reminded Washen of her own mother. Every few years, Washen again realized that Locke and his grandmother were rather similar creatures. Except that the old woman had been swallowed up by the exacting, impatient business of engineering—a rigid realm of perfect knowledge drawn across a thoroughly defined existence.

  “What is obvious?” she pressed.

  He said, “I’m sure you’ve asked these questions yourself. Probably thousands of times, I would think.”

  “Show me.”

  He considered the request, but then the hands began to refold the tough ruddy wing. “Not now.”

  “A glimpse, maybe?”

  He shook his head, stowing the wing out of sight.

  “Really,” she pressed, “I would love to see what you’ve asked.”

  But her son was woven from sterner stuff. With a gentle shake of the head, he repeated, “You’ve asked these questions yourself. And if you haven’t … well, Mother, then seeing them now isn’t going to help much, is it … ?”

  Eight

  “At last count,” said Pamir. And then he said nothing else, glancing toward Washen and the Master Captain before gazing out at the rest of his audience, his expression shifting from a veneer of professional focus into what seemed to be a rugged little smile. His big soul wore a matching voice, and after that pause was finished, he remarked, “But there is no last count. Or any first count, as it happens. Our data are so imprecise and subjective, our basis for opinions so badly defined, that if you wanted to fix a number to what we know, you’re misleading yourself. Or you’re some species of fool.”

  That declaration brought a sturdy silence, forcing others to peer into elaborate files that they had already digested, sometimes for more than a decade.

  Washen knew exactly what Pamir planned to say, yet she felt the same surprise that she saw in the other faces. Years of expert research were being discounted, at least for this moment. It was a shock, and it made an old soul nervous, and to hide an anxious grin, she firmly clenched her jaw.

  But the Master Captain nodded appreciatively. Sitting between her First and Second Chairs, she said, “Exactly,” and an instant later, with a polish resulting from ages of determined practice, she steered the meeting back onto its expected rail. “But perhaps, Submaster Pamir. Perhaps you might give us a brief and tidy summary of these imprecise, subjective, and very foolish numbers.”

  “Of course, madam. Of course.”

  The room was not large, the furnishings were minimal, and until less than an hour ago, this space had been just an anonymous bubble tucked inside the bottom reaches of the ship’s hull. Random protocols had chosen the room from a hundred thousand candidates. The audience had been ordered to come to the ship’s bridge, and except for the top three captains, each had his journey interrupted by a single security officer wearing civilian garb. The officers brought them here, and until the meeting was finished and its participants had dispersed, the same officers were to remain inside an adjacent room, every last one of their nexuses disabled for the duration.

  Secrecy was a reasonable precaution. But more to the point, secrecy was terribly easy to accomplish, which was why the Master had insisted on taking these effortless precautions.

  “Besides,” she had argued, “my experience is that if you dress someone up in the pomp and circumstance of deep secrets, he will have no choice but to consider himself as essential to some critical undertaking. Which isn’t a bad thing. Making the soul feel as if it matters … well, that almost always helps you …”

  Washen remembered the conversation, then Pamir’s voice brought her back to the present.

  With a firm but impressed voice, Pamir explained, “At last count, we have 306 separate accounts of life inside the Inkwell. Yes, that’s two more accounts than you have in your files. Which is part of the reason we’re here today. A good fat part, yes.”

  Faces stared him, a little anxious as they waited.

  “About the other 304 accounts. Records. Legends, and what have you.” He shrugged. “The commonality is the variation. We’ve always noticed that. How every species living near the Inkwell has a murky but distinctly individual vision of what lives inside the nebula. Plus this tendency, this odd reflex … of picturing their neighbor as being simply a larger, grander version of themselves.”

  The room was furnished with chairs grown for this occasion and a long table adorned with uneaten and entirely ignored foods. Beside the longest wall was a simple squidskin pane into which Pamir poured a variety of images. There were towering machines and beetly giants and ruby-colored lizards and apish creatures plainly evolved for zero-gee conditions, plus a wide assortment of starships from the Inkwell, and little shuttles, and probes too small to carry more than a lone human heart. To date, the Great Ship had collected accounts from a volume fifty light-years to a side. And even more impressive, the oldest accounts had been supplied not by witnesses or their descendants, but through the stolid work of paleoscientists—researchers digging into buried homes and bunkers on worlds formerly inhabited by technological species. On three occasions, they uncovered files or stone-etched records, copies of which had been sent to the Great Ship in good faith; and according to the scientists who discovered the relics, each was at least as old as the human species.

  “The pattern holds,” Pamir assured. “Whatever lives inside the nebula, it shows itself to others as being rather like themselves.”

  Examples continued to parade across the squidskin.

  “And this holds for the 305th example, too.” Pamir triggered a deeply encrypted file, and the screen went blank except for a lone sun, ruddy and extremely small. “This M-class dwarf is a little less than two light-years from the outer margin of the dust. But unlike most of the local suns, it’s cutting rapidly through the galactic plane.”

  Their perspective leaped closer. These images had been built year by year, a great rain of photons gathered and condensed by the giant mirrors, then refined by an army of single-minded AIs and gifted navigators. Not only had they drawn out every conceivable detail, they had also reached back along the star’s course, pinpointing where the wandering mass had emerged from the black dust, and before that, where it had probably first burrowed into the Inkwell’s body.

  “It was a glancing collision,” Pamir observed. “We still can see the dust roiling about. Where the sun reemerged into open space, for instance. Here.”

  From the audience, a male voice said, “Sir?”

  Pamir was staring at the various images, the rough face concentrating with the same intensity shown by every other face. It was as if he had never seen these files. It was as if he was interested and completely at a loss for any opinion, and there was a brief pause where it seemed as if he hadn’t heard the voice calling to him. But he had heard it. And without looking away from the squidskin, he calmly said, “Perri. What is it?”

  Sitting in the front row of chairs was a boyish-faced man of no particular age. Perri was something of a minor celebrity. It was said, with good reason, that he knew the ship better than a
nyone but those who built it. He certainly knew its passageways and habitats better than any other living passenger, and probably more than anyone in the captains’ ranks, too. He was smart and effortlessly charming. Among his detractors, who were many, there were those who claimed that Perri was nothing but a cheap thrill-seeker and a slippery manipulator. But when the Waywards appeared, he and his wife joined the rebellion. While his detractors hid or joined the enemy ranks, the self-taught expert on every function of the ship had proved instrumental in its salvation.

  “That little sun has only the one planet,” Perri remarked.

  Pamir answered with a crisp, half-distracted nod.

  “But of course, that could be tied to its velocity. I’m assuming some kind of near collision in its past. Maybe an ejection from a multistar system.”

  Again, the Submaster nodded.

  “Which would have stripped away any other planets, I suppose. But what I’m seeing here, at first glance …”

  His voice trailed away.

  “By all means,” Washen prodded.

  The young face grinned, pleased to have the First Chair watching him. Then he gripped the hand of his wife—a beautiful, ancient woman named Quee Lee—and with a half laugh, he mentioned, “That’s an oddly ordinary orbit for a single world. If there were other worlds in the past, I mean. And if they were stripped free of this little sun during some old mayhem.”

  Pamir grinned slightly. “Too far out, you mean?”