The Well of Stars

by Robert Reed

  The comet’s impact had pushed the starship off course. Moving faster than the Great Ship, it slipped past unnoticed, its arrow-straight trajectory carrying it deeper into the galaxy, past countless suns before it moved back out to a place rather near the ship’s future course.

  According to this very unlikely account, the AI pilot found a pair of close-orbit suns and the living world that revolved around both; and after some lovely or very lucky navigation, it managed to burn the last of its fuel, bleeding off most of its momentum, then jettisoning its lone passenger, sending her down onto the world’s largest continent.

  With an immortal’s constitution, the woman survived both the impact and several temporary deaths. Then for the next few thousand years, she lived among the resident aliens—small humanoids called the Tila. In the early years, she was worshiped as a god. The Tila taught her their language and culture, and she played an occasional role in their development. During her long life, she watched as her foster species built their civilization, gradually learning about the universe and their world and the two suns that kissed one another in their bright beautiful sky.

  “So how did you acquire your name?” Washen asked, during the first interview. She said the name twice: first as the Tila supposedly had, then as a human might. “Mere,” she said. “It means small. Tiny, and unremarkable.”

  “I am,” the tiny woman said of herself. “Small. Tiny. And not all that remarkable.”

  Tutors had taught this little creature the human tongue. But Mere spoke the alien language with much more skill and an unconscious ease, and she moved her limbs in ways no human ever did. She could have been raised by another species. There were a few examples on record, although nothing as lengthy or as unplanned as Mere’s supposed life.

  “You say you were a god to them,” Washen pointed out. “Why would anyone name their god Mere?”

  “Because I wasn’t much of a deity, they learned. Soon enough.”

  A considerable sadness showed in her face and body, but the expressions weren’t quite like what a normal human would display. Starvation at birth and an alien diet of odd amino acids and the wrong minerals could conceivably produce a body like hers. But Miocene’s fear, and now Washen’s fear, was that this was not a genuine human, but instead another kind of creature wearing some elaborate camouflage. Washen’s assignment was to discern what was true, or at least to give her best guess. This little whiff of a body and the soul inside … were they really as simple and strange as they pretended to be?

  Perhaps Mere understood the importance of the interview. Or maybe she wanted to lend her false story another set of telling details. Either way, she promised the young captain, “The Tila think quite differently from the way you think.”

  “Do they?”

  “And I think rather differently from the way you or they think. I don’t have a Tilan brain. I don’t have its skills. But judging by everything that the other giant woman said to me—”

  “Miocene?”

  “I think that you … meaning your species … I think humans entertain some odd little notions about the universe.”

  “Little?” Washen laughed softly. “What do you mean?”

  “Everything that is possible,” said Mere in a flat, certain voice, “is inevitable. Everything that can happen has no choice but to occur.”

  “Is that what the Tilan believe?”

  “It’s what they know, and it’s my firm, sure belief.” The big eyes gazed off into the far corners of the room. A prison cell, really, but infinitely more comfortable than the tiny habitat that somebody had added to her battered old starship. “The Tilan mind is very sensitive to the quantum effects of the universe. Every motion they make, every little thing that they see, is shrouded in a cloud of possibility. Life moves in all directions at once. Life always persists, in at least one thread of reality. And the universe—the real universe—encompasses too many realities to count.”

  “But I know that,” Washen remarked, almost casually. Then with a quiet calculated laugh, she added, “We have several theories of the universe. Two or three of them believe in the many-worlds scenario.”

  Mere laughed at her—Tilan fashion. Then with a tone dismissive in both languages, she said, “You have the mathematics. But do you believe the great equations?”

  “Believe in them how?”

  “Do you apply them to all aspects of your life?”

  “No,” Washen had to say.

  “Does any human that you know … or any other organism, for that matter … do any of them believe in this infinite realm … ?”

  “On occasion. Yes.”

  “That’s worse than never,” was the little woman’s verdict. Then after a long, thoughtful silence, she said, “We had two suns. Close enough that they touched one another, like lovers.”

  It happened on occasion. Twin stars were born close together, spinning fast around their common center of gravity.

  “Our suns were too close,” she whispered.

  Washen waited, saying nothing.

  “I watched it,” Mere remarked. “With thousands of years to fill, I could study the suns’ intricate motions. I could measure the changes coming. There was a great drought on my world, and then after that, a long period of endless rains. The twin suns were dancing too close, their atmospheres touching, and their momentum was changing.”

  “A chaotic situation,” Washen allowed. “There are harmonic circumstances, and gravity waves. Sometimes the suns can hang apart for long times, then quite suddenly, in the course of a few centuries—”

  “My world was dying.”

  For the first time, Washen moved liked a Tilan might. Miocene had built a small vocabulary of meaningful gestures, and now she used one of them in a bid to show understanding and compassion.

  The motion pleased the strange little woman. She sighed, smiled like a Tilan, then like a human, and with a quiet little voice, she reported, “My people attempted to save themselves. There were plans to build colonies on the outer worlds, and there were larger plans to pull our world into a wider orbit. But then they heard the signals from this ship. They saw your invitations to join the voyage around the galaxy. You were already past us, but they’d found my old starship moving like a comet around our suns, and after generating a series of entirely random events—allowing the many-worlds to decide everyone’s inevitable fate—they decided to forgo all of their great projects.”

  Washen watched the big sorry eyes.

  “They refitted the starship. But instead of using it to help save themselves, they put me on board and pointed me toward you. Because I was the same species as you. Because they were thankful for the little help that I had given them. Because in this one thin river of an existence, they wanted me to reach my intended destination. At long last.”

  “You came willingly?” Washen asked.

  “No.” Mere made the confession with anger and a wrenching grief. “No, I am not that good at being Tilan. I wish I had been. But no.”

  Washen nodded, and waited.

  After a little while, Mere said, “I fought them. I fought as hard as I could. But they shattered both of my legs and both of my arms, and while I was helpless … while my body was healing itself, and my ship was preparing to leave … they said to me, ‘Don’t be selfish, Mere. It isn’t your right. It isn’t even possible. Even if we wish, we can’t destroy any little portion of our destiny.”

  THE INTERIOR OF the cabin was a single room, comfortably snug and minimally furnished. Mere served her guest a small meal of cold fish and an unnamed tea that left both of their mouths stained a vivid sour purple. Conversation came and went. When they spoke, they usually concerned themselves with trivial matters: the weather on the delta; the whereabouts of an odd species; the burdens in being the new First Chair. And then after a longer pause, Washen looked at her hostess with a mixture of sorrow and compassion, promising her, “If you would rather, stay home. I can ask someone else to do this. If you want, recommend somebody.
You know the candidates better than I do.”

  Mere rose and walked over to the only window, looking out across the flat tired water. Then touching the window frame, she caused the river to vanish. Even sitting, Washen was tall enough to see another river pushing through an entirely different time, and the barest glimpse told her enough.

  Tila.

  Ages ago, Miocene had approached a young captain. “I want to know what you think about this strange little creature,” she had explained. “Learn whatever you can. Believe or dismiss what you want of her stories. Then come to me and give me your final report.”

  “I believe her,” was Washen’s verdict.

  Miocene seemed to nod agreeably. But then she asked, “What do you believe?”

  “Mere is human. She was born in horrific conditions. The first few thousand years of life were intellectually and emotionally impoverished, then she suddenly found herself surrounded by aliens. Which is why she doesn’t seem entirely human. She isn’t. The Tila did their best, I suppose … but her half-starved brain didn’t finish a normal, healthy development—”

  “I never bothered,” Miocene remarked. “Did you look for the Tila?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did you find?”

  Washen hesitated for a moment. “Back along her ship’s course,” she admitted, “there is a solar system. But there is only one sun. Two smaller suns coalesced sometime in the last few decades, and what remains is very hot and blue. And what would have been the Tilan home world is now a superheated Venus-class world.”

  “And did you show her this news?”

  “Yes.”

  Miocene squinted at a point just above Washen’s head. “What was her response?”

  “Misery,” said Washen. “Despair. But also, a kind of resignation.”

  “Because her homeland died in just this one little existence,” the Submaster offered. “She’s human, but she’s Tilan, too. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  In the present, Washen muttered a few words under her breath.

  Mere turned, and with a smile that took both of them by surprise, she asked, “What are you thinking about, madam?”

  “The past,” Washen allowed. “I’m talking to a dead woman.”

  Mere seemed to understand. She nodded and took one last long look at the vanished river. Then she touched the frame again, causing the window to rapidly jump from one alien world to another.

  “Why wouldn’t I accept this assignment?” she inquired, her tone more amused than offended. “And how could I ask anyone else to take my place? This is my river to navigate to the best of my ability. My destiny to live through and die inside.”

  Washen didn’t reply.

  For a moment, she was standing with Miocene again. Again, she was explaining, “The woman is exactly who she seems to be. Human or Tila, I believe her. And she isn’t any kind of threat to the ship, either.”

  Miocene had laughed with a harsh, amused tone.

  “Of course she’s no threat,” the woman cackled. “We can watch her. We can let her sit in prison forever or kick her back into space. My dear. You misunderstood your assignment.”

  Appalled, Washen asked, “What was my assignment?”

  “To assess her abilities,” Miocene reported, subtly changing the original wording. “She isn’t human, or Tilan either. Have you noticed? Maybe it’s the starved brain, or maybe it’s her very peculiar upbringing. But she seems remarkably plastic when it comes to behaviors, and thoughts.”

  Miocene had already digested Washen’s final report, or she had come to the same conclusions.

  “What I want to know is this,” the original First Chair had said. “Can we find some way for that odd little creature to help our wonderful ship?”

  IN THE PRESENT, Washen stood beside Mere, laying a warm hand on the bony little shoulder.

  “I’ve infiltrated dozens of worlds,” the tiny creature muttered. “Have you ever been disappointed in my work?”

  “Never,” Washen admitted. Then with the next breath, she mentioned, “But this isn’t a simple world, and we know almost nothing going in.”

  Mere shrugged and giggled.

  “Every day, we die,” she reminded Washen. Then she reached up, patting the hand that was set on her shoulder. “And every day, against incredible odds, we find a thousand ways to live.”

  Ten

  A dozen lasers threw their malevolent best at the target. Born to defend the ship against collisions, their purpose was to shatter and melt, pulverize and dissolve objects as large as small moons. More than adequate for this tiny assignment, they focused their rage on a single body that was moving overhead in a long lazy orbit. What they hit was a mass of Ganymede ice—a highly compressed form of solid water waiting inside an elegantly shaped cone of woven diamond. The first fierce blasts compressed, then superheated the exposed surface. By carefully changing the sequences and frequencies of the coherent light, the lasers created an endless explosion of plasma and white-hot steam, plus a bone-busting acceleration as the thrust increased and the target’s mass fell away. The streakship rode on the tip of the diamond cone. The assisted launch saved fuel and coddled the high-output engines. Without question, it made for a spectacular show, which was not a small matter with the crew and passengers watching. According to popular opinion, this was the most important emissary mission in the last hundred thousand years. Representatives of the Great Ship were bound for the Inkwell and its mysterious inhabitants. So important was this adventure that the Master’s own Second Chair was in command. Speaking from his seat on the little ship’s bridge, almost smothered beneath a silky crush-web, Pamir grunted the word, “Done,” as the last of the water exploded into space. Then a second onslaught of light arrived—new frequencies battering and boiling the diamond cone, delivering another potent push—and afterward, he said, “Done,” again, that sketch of cultured jewelry evaporating in his wake, a cooling mist of ionized carbon lending its mass to the cause.

  For a little while, the streakship coasted ahead at a fat fraction of lightspeed. Pamir and his AIs made triple sure that they had cleared the debris field. Sometimes in the chaotic mayhem of high-velocity impacts, shards of the diamond or ice could be kicked out ahead. Disasters were unlikely, but why invite any chance? Once the appropriate checks had been made, Pamir told both his small crew and vast audience, “Light the torch.” And an instant later, with a clean and fiercely hot and nearly invisible blast, the swift ship started to gain velocity again, yanking itself up toward better than two-thirds lightspeed.

  The Inkwell lay ahead. A black splash against the far-off stars had become a great ocean, bottomless and vast. More than three light-years of nearly empty space lay between them and the margins of the nebula. But even at their incredible velocity, the emissaries wouldn’t reach their final destination until the Great Ship was approaching the first waves of dust and cold gas. They were plunging toward a target that was barely visible, trusting their own thin armor and defenses as well as the decency of unknown souls.

  Whenever the Master spoke in public, she reminded her audience, “Nebulas are not clouds. They aren’t as dense as the thinnest air, even. In fact, according to the course that we’ve mapped for ourselves, the Inkwell isn’t going to be a tenth as difficult as diving through someone’s Oort cloud.”

  Once Pamir was gone, the Master gave a good smart speech. She had written it herself, without input from Washen or her acting Second Chair. Every public channel was hers, and her performance was both perfect and minimal. Aasleen was the acting Second Chair. Sitting on the bridge with Washen, the chief engineer grinned with pleasure and astonishment. “I couldn’t do this,” she admitted. “This kind of purposeful sweet noise. I couldn’t make it. Not so that humans would believe me, I couldn’t.”

  “You’re too literal,” Washen offered. “Too tied to your numbers.”

  The woman appreciated what sounded like a compliment. “Oort clouds are easy,” she stated. “A light-month thick at th
e very worst. But we’re going to be pushing through this ink for the next thirty-plus years. Without pause. Without any chance to rest and make thorough repairs.”

  Washen looked at her friend and colleague. They had lived together on Marrow, where Aasleen’s talents helped the captains survive and then prosper. Worry had its good reasons. When Aasleen saw bad things looming, Washen knew better than to shake her head, or remind her good friend about all those good smart ways in which the ship was stronger now.

  Their shields had been enhanced, and the hull was almost entirely repaired, and there were nearly twice as many lasers as before, all deeply embedded in bunkers and sprinkled across the face of that deep, dirty-mirror armor. They were also making endless adjustments to their course. Occasionally one of their vast engines would fire, for a heartbeat or for a day, nudging the ship just enough to avoid some near collision still five or ten years in the future. Every moment, the sprawling fields of mirrors and radio dishes were peering deeper into the cold dust, constantly refining maps whose accuracy and deep reach would have been impossible only a hundred years ago. And they were getting what seemed to be help—advice and encouragement from the souls living within that great darkness.

  “Remember this,” said the Master, in conclusion. Then the bright face smiled with an expression radiating confidence and a seamless faith. “For more than a thousand centuries, this ship and crew have traveled our galaxy. We have met thousands of species, many of which live with us now. The combined experience and technological prowess of this ensemble belongs to us. This is why we offer berths for those who could give us knowledge: We want to learn. All of our species wish to excel. And when remarkable circumstances come to face us, we bring insights and tricks that no single species can match.”