The Well of Stars

by Robert Reed

  The aging face nodded, nothing to say.

  “Maybe the children have grown enough,” Washen allowed. “Maybe that’s as simple as any explanation needs to be.”

  The view shifted suddenly, dramatically. Everyone stared at one of the nursery clusters, except this cluster lay near the bottom of the Satin Sack. Two light-years distance, and the infrared signature was extraordinarily bright. Inside a narrow zone, each of the moon-sized children appeared as hot as plasma, portions of their watery bulk surging into space on a fountain that was not only hot but fiercely radioactive too.

  “The engines are crude but effective,” Washen relented. “Reaction-mass affairs powered by laser arrays driven by fusion reactors—systems we know something about.”

  Silence.

  “The most distant children are moving now,” she continued. “Of course, if they wish to come visit us … to come see the Great Ship at a closer vantage point … well, they would have to get an early leap on things. Which seems like a reasonable story to tell.”

  “Yes, it does seem reasonable,” the emissary agreed.

  “Except every child seems to be thinking the same way. The Sack is four light-years tall, and all of the buds on its margins are expending fabulous amounts of energy and their scarce water for no clear purpose other than to move toward us. They’ll have to destroy more than half of their mass just to make a close approach. And does that seem at all reasonable to you?”

  Silence.

  The Master Captain interrupted, saying, “We just want to know, dear. Do you have any idea what they’re trying to accomplish?”

  Again, silence.

  “And the Blue World,” said Pamir with a stern voice. “Your parent. She must have sprouted some kind of engine, too. Because after we passed by, she began flinging a huge hot jet of her own into space. She’s approaching us from behind, at a fantastic cost of mass and energy.” He sighed, then said, “At current rates, she’ll catch us just before we get clear of the Sack …”

  His voice trailed away.

  The other Submasters rose to their feet. But since none of them were physically present—why accept all the risks of placing everyone on the exposed hull?—it was Pamir’s duty to walk across the face of the new crater, grabbing the emissary by her shoulder and tugging hard enough to make her lifesuit collapse at its knees.

  Key enzymes had failed, bringing the hoary old Kreb’s cycle to a halt.

  The emissary had died, while the sky above was filled with countless thousands of relentless, utterly determined giants.

  DELUGE

  The trickle crawls out from between two carved faces, and for a long little moment perches on the lamellated fringe of a pink granite beak, gathering itself, forming a bulb of clear cold water that borrows its color from the stone and its brilliance from the sky. It sparkles and shivers as its growing mass wrestles with the surface tension of its skin. Then a nearby voice speaks. The simple vibration is enough to shake the drop, causing it to flinch and break free and silently fall. The voice says, “We trust all the captains. Always, always.” The glistening drop plunges into a smooth and polished pocket at the base of the two stone Janusian faces, mixing with a thousand other drops. “But we trust her most,” says the voice. “Washen,” says a voice much like the first. “Though it’s good to have the Master Captain still at the helm,” says the first. “Of course we think that way” the second adds. Then after a lengthy pause, both voices declare, “Look into their one-faces. Nothing is more obvious than their best intentions.”

  Janusians are born with just a single face, but upon maturation they find a worthy mate, and following a process older than their species, the tiny male lashes himself to his lover’s back with an array of elaborate and viciously hooked limbs. The hooks burrow deep, releasing anesthetics and sperm. The first merging takes several seasons. Immunologic systems adapt and marry. Two bodies link, blood vessels and limbs gradually joined. The position of the smaller head depends upon genetics and social conventions, but the male usually twists his head backward, watching for foes and missed opportunities. In ancient times, the two minds would remain separate and pragmatically unequal, the female ruling in every important circumstance. But then the Janusians embraced immortality. When two souls shared a single body and one set of circumstances, and did so for unbroken aeons, they gradually and inexorably grew into a single entity. Simple habit accounted for the shared philosophy and a unified outlook, while nexuses and adventurous neurons built permanent neural bridges. When her face looked at the pool of blessing waters, both could enjoy her reflection. Then their shared body turned, and both looked at his smaller, equally pretty face, and together, the shared voices repeated, “We trust Washen. Her one-face knows what is best for the ship, and for us.”

  Seepage fills the pool and gives birth to a thin and nameless stream that follows a narrow fissure—an elegant and perfectly straight seam cut in the floor of the worship park. Evaporation and thirsty creatures nearly drink it dry. But the last slow dampness reaches a tiny stream that eventually leaves the park, following a conduit cut through a thousand meters of cold granite and two meters of bracing hyperfiber. The conduit helps fill a little reservoir that is carefully poisoned with heavy metals. An AI shopkeeper sells the toxic water to the appropriate clients. Several local passenger species, one of them truly gigantic, will pay dearly for the leaden flavor of home to slake their thirsts. But they are rare clients, and there are issues of freshness. The shopkeeper purges the reservoir every eleven days, filtering out the useful metals while allowing the pure cheap water to run out the tap and across his diamond-tiled floor, then into the little river that slides past his shop.

  He is a passionate machine and experienced in his trade, which is selling fluids of all kinds to all kinds. And with a machine’s endless energy, he will talk about any subject to any passerby.

  “For one, I love this detour that our ship has taken,” he claims, speaking to a human woman, wearing a little crewman badge on her trousers. “No voyage is a voyage without a gale pushing you into unexpected seas. That’s what I believe.”

  To a towering harum-scarum, he says, “I am so fond of your species. And may I tell you, it was long ago when your sort should have been invited to sit among the captains!”

  Staring in either direction, he can see a full kilometer along the avenue, and with a glance, he recognizes most of the species. If traffic is slow, and if he sees a potential client approaching, he will step back into his shop and reconfigure his artificial body. There is no doubt that he is an AI. Pretend otherwise, and certain civil codes are tested, not to mention the social norms. But just as any shopkeeper knows the value of manners and a smiling expression, this machine knows how to make clients feel comfortable.

  With a whiff of pheromones, he tells a paddywing, “Nectar like you haven’t had since you were green! Come try mine, please!”

  To a passing Boil-dog, he sings, “Piss for a lover, I can make you!”

  Dressed like a gillbaby, he claims, “I can freshen what you’re living inside, if you need. And at a fair price.”

  After that sale, he spies a lone captain approaching. Again he steps inside his shop and steps out again, smiling with a decidedly human face. “Hello to you, honorable and noble sir. I hope the day smiles on you.”

  The captain says, “And to you, sir,” while glancing at the apron of wet stone.

  “A little something for the tongue, sir? A broth? A liquor? A sweet drink of your own invention, perhaps?”

  “I cannot drink,” the captain confesses. “Sorry.”

  The shopkeeper hadn’t noticed until now, but the captain is a projection. He is real in the way that moonlight is real, and he has been sent by one of the higher captains—

  “Pamir,” the figure offers.

  “I know you well, sir. I have followed your astonishing career with interest, and may I say—”

  “No, please. don’t want to hear anything about me.”

  The
shopkeeper nods, then asks, “What may I say then?”

  “You hear things, I would think.” The projection wants to know “What is the mood of the ship?”

  “Confident,” the AI replies. “Excited. Eager to see what waits—”

  “Bullshit.”

  Unsure of a response, silence is best.

  Then the projection adds, “But thank you for that lie. I know you meant well by it.”

  Again, silence seems best.

  “There is something I would like to buy. If I recall, you have an optical trap under your countertop.”

  “No, I do not, sir.”

  The projection smiles, waiting patiently.

  The AI knows captains. If they think they are right, no argument works. The only hope is to show them the idiocy of their ways. With that in mind, the machine walks inside his shop—a spacious side cavern with a round wall covered with assorted taps and nipples and false penises and mouths as well as changeable ports that can be configured in an instant to fit the needs and preferences of any likely species. The counter itself is a tiny raised platform carved from slick onyx. Behind it is an assortment of invisible cubbyholes, all of which contain exactly what they are supposed to contain. But when the AI begins to say, “As you can see,” his odd guest points with a long hand, asking, “What about that?”

  How odd. The machine hadn’t noticed that cubbyhole. Opening it with a touch, he is surprised and amazed and a little scared to find a small bottle filled with a grayish substance that has no weight whatsoever.

  “Empty it into me,” Pamir says.

  The shopkeeper complies immediately. An unknown quantity of raw data is absorbed by the tall bundle of shaped light.

  “Now put it back again, please.”

  The bottle records nothing but the opinions expressed by the shopkeeper. Passersby are not recalled—not their faces or voices, much less their names. The AI is a mirror, of sorts. He is a template. To make a sale, he will put on any face or attitude, and both are cues to slippery moods of its clients.

  “Thank you,” says the projection.

  “You are welcome, I suppose. Sir.”

  Together, they walk outside again.

  “Perhaps I should ask—” the machine begins.

  “You wouldn’t remember, even if I told you.”

  Somehow, that seems like enough of an answer. The shopkeeper nods and looks down at the human shoes that he wears at this moment, glassy eyes watching the cool pure water slipping down into the passing river.

  “How long have you had this shop?” the projection inquires.

  “Since the first thousand years of the voyage, nearly.”

  “And you drain this reservoir how often?”

  “Every eleven days, ship-time.”

  “But the stone isn’t worn,” the rumbling low voice points out. “You see? If you’d been here for a thousand centuries, and if every eleven days you drained this one reservoir, not to mention your other stockpiles …”

  “I do not understand” the machine confesses.

  But he is alone suddenly and what he doesn’t understand is why he is speaking to himself.

  The little river flows to the end of the avenue, dives through another long conduit, and after being heated to the brink of boiling, the water is shoved up into a mass of black mud and dirty bubbles of methane. Inside a diamond bubble, a thousand creatures sit in the soft scalding mud. For the last twenty thousand years, this is where they have lived. Every need flows to them. Every curiosity is answered by nexuses and glow-screens and other standard tools. Their species has no common name, just a set of numbers and letters designated by the captains who admitted them to the Great Ship. They are intensely social creatures, but only with their own kind. Paradise is a hot wet realm full of stink and sudden fires and the musical roar of farts, great voices rising up through the steam, telling one another. “This herd did not pay for the wrong path. Steer toward our destination, as promised, or we demand our fees returned in full … !”

  The water is cleaned again and set free again, merging with another little river before a long, spiraling fall through a series of fresh caverns and long avenues. Each chamber differs in the native rock and the steepness of the slope, in its width and height and how the terrain has been shaped. Billions of years ago, unknown hands worked with rock and hyperfiber, fractals and the demands of engineering, contriving clifflike walls and granite shoulders and mock-faults and too many side caverns to count. Even ceilings refuse to be predictable: Hyper-fiber forms ribs or fat arches or interwoven domes, and, depending on the grade, they are as bright as mirrors or gray as cold smoke. Or there are stone ceilings braced with little spines of hyperfiber—pink granites or black basalts or bright green olivines, or cultured ruby or diamond or sapphires, singly or mixed into an elaborate but seemingly accidental stew of glittering faces. There are no artificial skies. The only lights are small and occasional, and simple, casting a feeble white glow over the river’s busy face. There is no soil on the shoreline and no intentional life anywhere. For the moment, this drainage is being held in reserve. Much of my interior is the same. For all the billions of passengers, there is little need to open up most of my emptiness. After more than a hundred thousand years, I remain mostly wilderness, a realm of untouched stone and empty spaces hovering on the brinks of Time.

  The river steals up minerals from the surrounding stone, feeding a few patient microbes, while some presentient machines turn parasitic, milking power from the occasional light. Sometimes tourists wander in here and out again, leaving behind intense little colonies of life on their wastes and discarded meals. A tuft of gray-green marks a rotting sandwich. A bluish smear is all that remains of an enormous fecal pile. Then there is the tourist who never left—a biped of some obscure species who wandered into this cavern alone, scaled the enormous clifflike wall, and at the worst possible moment lost his grip on his inadequate rope. The fall shattered both of his legs and both of his spines. The essential equipment that he carried with him was left high above, out of reach. Immortal but lacking a human’s relentless repair mechanisms, he had no choice but to remain where he lay Then starvation and thirst drove him into a deep coma, and what survives today sits in a little bowl just three meters above the waterline—a mummified body that has not moved in the last eighteen centuries.

  The river meets a new river and little springs, twisting and curling and always falling as it swells into a deep, swift, and relentless torrent. Fifty thousand kilometers have been covered, with a drop of better than two thousand. The last empty cavern is vast, a wide flat floor allowing the water to wander like a fat snake between walls that to the casual eye look like barren mountains. Brown rock and gray rock camouflage what covers a portion of one wall. Homes and glass domes hide on that steep terrain. For twenty kilometers, a secret city thrives. This is an unlisted community The captains know about it, but, except where security has leaked, nobody else is aware of its existence. Almost since the beginning of the voyage, humans have lived on this stark ground. They are luddites of a certain odd order. For reasons religious as well as reasoned, they don’t believe in many of the modern technologies. Life should be mortal and brief, since there is a golden afterlife, and why would anyone wish to avoid such a glorious fate? Old age begins before their second century but death can come any moment. They wear out-of-date costumes and odd hairstyles, and each carries one of three sacred texts at all times. They are isolationists. Only on special occasions do they trade with the rest of the passengers, and only through distant intermediaries. They don’t believe in nexuses or glow-screens. But they approve of fusion power and intensive agriculture, and every home has a decent library, and despite their brief life span, much emphasis is placed on learning and all of the great questions that are older than their species.

  Two old men stand at the base of their brown mountains, holding hands as friends should, watching the fishless river slide past their boots.

  “If the captains cannot turn the s
hip,” one man mentions, “then it will continue out into the cold between the galaxies.”

  “As I hear it,” his friend concurs.

  “In another few thousand years,” the first man adds.

  “As they say.”

  “And then after another long while, the Virgo cluster is achieved.”

  The distances and spans of time are enormous, almost too much to imagine. But the second man tries his best before allowing, “If it is God’s plan.”

  “Unless it is not,” his friend says ominously.

  But they are old men, each to die in another little while, and because they are mortal and brief, they feel blessed: Not even their children’s children will have to deal with such terrible questions.

  Another conduit ends with ice.

  Inside an insulated cylinder, feeling a sudden cold and the pressure of more water plunging in from behind, the river freezes. Its flow slows, if not entirely stopping. Machines inject stones and clods of earth into the pure ice, making it look and taste like a well-fed glacier. Then the ice bursts out of the cylinder and into a little valley that feeds down into a cold turquoise sea.

  The Yawkleen swim in their sea. They are cetaceans with many eyes and armed symbionts rooted into their long, muscular backs, and they live in small schools that eat the krill-like swarms that thrive in the cold brackish water. The sky of their youth hangs overhead, vast and blue and centered upon a giant jovian world and a multitude of sister moons. Engineers have found ways to mimic the giant tides of their home sea. Waves push into the glacial valley, lifting the tongue of ice until it shatters and begins to float, then the waves retreat again, exposing a hundred meters of black rock and tough seaweeds and crablike creatures as big as rooms.