The Well of Stars

by Robert Reed

  The whirlpool settled, vanished, its energies sequestered into muscles of water and thousand-kilometer proteins.

  The newborn drifted in a sloppy circle. Great eyes and little eyes examined its surroundings. The horizon lay in a remote distance. In every direction, clouds were stacked high, each mass forming storms that spat lightning downward while great blue sprites danced their way into the highest reaches of the new atmosphere. A variety of ears heard rumblings and deep churnings, faraway thunder blending into the nearer, more massive sounds. Muscle was building, or it was healing. Dispersed networks of fusion reactors continued to grow and divide. Metals and rare earths were yanked out of the salty hot water, purified and set aside for later. The bird-body could taste the good hearty health of the ocean, and for a very little while, it was free to rejoice at all of this success.

  One of the giant rockets stood above the storms: a gray-black cone using hyperfiber and magnetic guts to contain the rising column of light and wild radiations, controlling the flow and tweaking its momentum. The nozzle had a steep tilt, as if it had halfway fallen over, and without any sound, it desperately shoved at the ship, trying to make that massive bulk dance sideways.

  A considerable waste of effort, the bird-body might have believed.

  The superconducting mind could have thought many things, or nothing, in the time it took a laser bolt to jump from the hidden blister high up on that nozzle, lashing at a point some ten kilometers in its wake. A blue-white bolt, brief and potent, it burrowed its way into the atmosphere, turning gases to a thin screaming plasma that couldn’t help but fling itself out of the way, drilling a deep empty hole as it passed.

  The next twenty bolts dove through the gap, boiling the water beneath before cooking a million tons of young muscle.

  Still, the bird-body circled, biding its time and hiding its abilities. The attack was expected and insubstantial, the wounds already healing—a little probing assault, most likely.

  The next attack was a hundredfold larger.

  Riding out of the rocket plume was an assortment of tiny machines, each wearing a jacket of hyperfiber that degraded in predictable, perfect ways. Little engines emerged from the heat-born crevices. Little diamond eyes acquired targets, and swift soulless brains guided the machines’ flight, and when the interceptors rose up out of the sea to meet them, they struggled to avoid the obstacles.

  The interceptors were iron darts, blind and numbering in the billions.

  Striking nothing, they nonetheless did a thorough job of herding the falling machines into narrower zones.

  As the polypond’s enemies slammed into the high reaches of the atmosphere, black heavily insulated organs burst from the water, disgorging rivers of lightning that were around one another, rising like cherry ropes into the ionosphere. None of the attackers were damaged. After all, they had successfully flown through a plume infinitely hotter than this. But each was left tagged and slightly charged, and the next pulse from the mother body—a coherent, irresistible stream of electricity—grabbed hold of the offending weapons, flinging them back up into the plume from which they had fallen.

  The Mother Sea growled and groaned, every sound happy.

  The bird-body took another hard look at the sky, seeing first what the Sea would notice in another half moment.

  The attack had been a diversion. From a second, more distant rocket plume came thousands of bodies, each deeply camouflaged and treacherously sly, all using the glare of one battle to sneak close and drop like rain.

  Some of the bodies were little suns, born and dead again with a single blistering light.

  Some linked with their neighbors, building much larger suns that managed to dive into the Mother Sea before igniting.

  Columns of steam leaped upward, flanking the bird-body and very nearly blinding it. The superheated air shoved it one way, then back again. But with a graceful dance, elegant and smooth, the entity twisted its wings, bringing the best of its good eyes to look at the brightest of the blasts, instinct telling it that that was where other, even worse dangers might hide.

  What looked like an eddy of quiet water shot across the Mother Sea.

  It was a puddle, a lake. Invisible again, and appearing again. Then as the bird-body stared, it once again vanished.

  With myriad voices, the bird-body gave a warning.

  Endless other voices rose up out of the Mother Sea. A new opponent had slipped out from the base of the rocket nozzle, using an invisible hatch that had been quickly destroyed. But what resembled water was a fleet of skimmers, shielded and dressed up in some kind of elaborate holo. And as they rushed along, sure to die in a matter of moments, the skimmers dropped tiny phages full of tools, microscopic and voracious—tools that ate and reproduced like cancers, already tainting the Mother Sea with death and their own relentless bodies.

  The bird-body dropped its wings.

  Scramjets kicked it into a hypersonic path, burning much of its body while carrying it across nearly a thousand kilometers of churning, irradiated water.

  Deep organs crawled to the surface of its skin.

  With its surviving eyes, the bird-body glanced at the skimmers. Darts and quick tendrils had cut some of them open. Ponds were on board—tiny independent whiffs of conscious shadow spilling across the water, torn apart by the terrific velocities, then killed in a thousand ways by the greatest shadow.

  Harum-scarums, it saw.

  Choking off its engines, the bird-body fell. What it aimed for was the sick band of contaminated water, injured, and inside the little whirlpools, dead. Where the Sea was slow to respond, the bird-body could be swift. Where size didn’t matter, it could craft, then deliver perfectly tailored plans for new cells that would eat the invaders, swiftly countering one of the inevitable kinds of attacks. The Mother Sea, like all the Seas, was familiar with every species of machine and each of their ugly uses. The bird-body was meant to quicken the Sea’s reactions, keeping these assaults to the level of a nuisance. At least until the enemies saw its importance, and like any multitude of ponds, they would adapt and try new ways to confound the Mother Sea.

  Falling like a knife, the bird-body prepared for its demise.

  A carefully crafted bolt of light came at it suddenly, passing through it, slivers of blue fire dividing and consuming, then cutting free certain organs and portions of its substantial and swift mind.

  In a multitude of ways, it died.

  In every other way, it tried to kill itself. To ruin its nature and possibilities, tricks and deeply buried potentials.

  The ultimate shadow—Death—very nearly claimed it.

  And then, to its utter horror, it heard a voice.

  “MY NAME IS Pamir,” he roared at the prisoner. He and his security team had shoved the most valuable pieces of the body into the hold. Conrad was piloting their one-of-a-kind craft. Part skimmer and part starship, the vessel wore enough high-grade hyperfiber to have ridden thousands of kilometers through scorching rocket exhausts. The powerful engines first killed their momentum, and now they were building it up again, trying to outrace a dozen blows from the furious polypond. At any moment, they might be crippled or ensnared. Which gave this interrogation no time and an enormous importance.

  “Did you hear me?” Pamir roared.

  The ship bucked. The Remora changed course, and despite crush-webs and braces, every organic body inside the hold felt its bones shatter.

  “We know what you want,” Pamir screamed.

  Silence.

  The air tasted burnt and toxic. His crumbled legs fought to heal themselves, and their ache made his voice dry and shrill.

  “We’re going to stop you. Do you hear me, little pond?”

  Some experts thought that might be a useful curse. Pamir was less sure, but he was willing to try anything now.

  “Rough spot,” Conrad warned.

  Again, their ship shook hard enough to break bones.

  Somewhere below, a black thunder blossomed and collapsed into silence. The
n with a delicate aim and a small measure of luck, Conrad dove through a newly made hatch above the polypond’s atmosphere, and the great engine quit its firing, leaving them streaking across the enormous bowl of the nozzle, their little vessel caught up in the magnetic envelopes, the envelopes turning the ship in an elaborate loop, carefully bleeding away its momentum.

  “You can hear me,” Pamir decided, his crippled body shoved against one padded wall.

  The scorched lump of neural tissue was alive, the links serviceable and neat. With a voice that sounded defiant but unsure, the creature inside said, “You are the Second Chair.”

  “We know what you want,” Pamir repeated.

  Silence.

  “We can even guess how you’ll try to destroy us.”

  “I will destroy nothing,” the entity corrected. “Since the universe is made of nothing and shadow.”

  Pamir used silence now, waiting the prisoner out.

  Finally, the voice said, “This piece of me knows nothing of substance. You can torture me all that you wish. You may study all of my pieces. But I have no special knowledge.”

  “Good,” Pamir replied.

  Then with a decidedly menacing tone, he added, “Innocence. I can’t think of any quality more useful than a little innocence.”

  Thirty

  “Still stuck at at home, are you?”

  Ignoring the implication, O’Layle replied, “For the moment. And you?”

  “The Master needs me here in the Happenstance.”

  “Nice?”

  “Enough.”

  By decree, all public transmissions were minimal, leaving the bulk of the ship’s com-system free for the captains. What O’Layle could see was his ex-lover’s face and sweet body rendered in two dimensions, plus flat glimpses hinting at the delicious scenery, a rich greenish blue forest wrapped snug around some bottomless black lake. Ancient memories were dislodged, and suddenly O’Layle was transported into the past. He wasn’t named O’Layle, and the lover was a different woman, beautiful in her own peculiar ways. What was her name? With the millennia, he had lost the simple sound of it, but what he remembered was its rhythm. Its music. Like water spilling on a flat stone, wasn’t it?

  “You’re smiling,” the woman observed.

  Was he? O’Layle carefully laid a hand over his mouth, wiping away an expression that couldn’t have been more inappropriate.

  “But of course you’re smiling,” she continued. “Your goddess is here. She’s come here to free you, you’re thinking. And I bet in your entire life, you’ve never felt happier.”

  “No,” he sputtered.

  “Don’t lie.”

  Was that what he was doing?

  “We know you,” she reminded him. “Don’t think we don’t. And we talk about you all the time, too.”

  How was he supposed to respond?

  “Look at me, O’Layle.”

  He dropped his hand, revealing a grim expression.

  “We’re dead.”

  “No—”

  “And you helped kill us,” she maintained. The Happenstance was not all that far beneath O’Layle’s prison cell, their communication nearly instantaneous. Eyes like black water stared at a point far beyond him. It was a dead stare matched by a dry, resigned voice—a ghost’s voice drained of its heat and rage—and with it she reminded him, “You told her about us. About the Great Ship and its secret cargo. You are the one. The reason, the impetus. The tiny nuclei that starts the catastrophic chain reaction—”

  “No!”

  “You shit,” she said.

  What could he offer now?

  The woman paused, breathing deeply for a moment. Then with a cold mocking voice, she asked, “Do you know why they spread us out across the ship?”

  His old friends and lovers were everywhere.

  “No,” he began. But then he realized that she didn’t mean just the people in their little orbit. For perhaps the first time in her life, the woman was referring to everyone, passengers and crew alike.

  “Your goddess wants to kill our ship,” she reminded him.

  The Blue World wasn’t his. The polypond and Inkwell did not belong to him. What he did and did not tell the enormous creature didn’t matter now, since she would have learned everything on her own, and with the same horrid, inevitable consequences. Just for two seconds, he wished people would stop repeating this empty nonsense.

  “Your lover wants our ship destroyed, and she wants to free the monster in the middle. Which may well obliterate the known universe, it seems.” Her mouth clenched and her eyes grew larger. “The captains have let the news leak. That, or it’s just too big and awful … too much truth to keep it secret any longer …”

  O’Layle glanced at a public feed. Through a hardened eye perched on one of the great nozzles, he could see the depleted but still-enormous spawn of the Blue World. She was the size of a moon, riding a great plume of radiation that continued to carry her on a collision course that began years ago. In another few days, she would pass that point where the Great Ship’s mass would accomplish as much as her muscular engine, and then she would accelerate farther, plunging into what was already herself.

  “Your goddess has plenty of weapons,” the woman observed.

  Separate feeds brought a catastrophic stew of images. The polypond churned and spat lightning and laser bolts, obliterating the bombs and skimmers sent out to injure her; tendrils and tritium charges were beginning to batter the ship’s engines, plainly trying to quiet them; and when their vessel was left drifting dead through space, what would happen … ?

  “We still haven’t seen all her claws,” the woman offered.

  “I’m not responsible,” O’Layle whispered.

  “Then who is?”

  “It could have been anyone.”

  “It was you.”

  “I should have stayed on board the ship,” he relented. “How many times do I have to say that?”

  “But no, we were glad you ran. In fact, thrilled to be rid of you.” A brilliant, bitter smile washed away the blackness of the eyes. “Your mistake was ignoring some very long odds, O’Layle. You ignored them, and then despite the odds, you survived.”

  He started to close down the line at his end.

  “You won a temporary survival,” she growled.

  He shook his head. “The captains have surprises waiting, I’m sure. And the Great Ship has proved … that it can ignore long odds, too.”

  But the woman had already vanished, leaving him pleading with a flat and empty blackness.

  THE BLUE WORLD continued her descent.

  Alone, O’Layle lived in the most remote room of his enormous prison cell, watching the public feeds, feeling a dim and constantly diminishing interest in the war news. What could he do? Absolutely nothing. Neither the polypond nor the captains had any interest in him. His friends and old companions wouldn’t answer his pleas. And why should they? There was nothing left to do but sit, sleeping when necessary and eating the occasional bite of barely tasted food. For another two days, even thought seemed like too much effort. This was infinitely worse than drifting inside that hyperfiber bubble, wandering between the stars … in so many more ways, he felt alone and lost, hope spent and not even an imaginary thread connecting him to the souls that should have mattered …

  The third day brought weeping punctuated with deep, wrenching sobs.

  And then he slept, and it was suddenly the fourth day.

  The Blue World was about to fall on their heads, and O’Layle woke from a brief, cleansing sleep. He couldn’t remember any dreams, or even a coherent thought, but something obvious had burrowed its way into his mind. Obvious, and probably useless. But it was such a simple, perfect idea that he found himself unable to throw it aside.

  The captains had left him with a special nexus and instructions. “If you ever think of anything new, use the nexus. Any new memory, any new insight. If it seems inconsequential, tell us about it anyway. Rely on us to judge what is and what
can never be worthwhile.”

  “O’Layle here,” he whispered to the activated nexus.

  Nothing happened.

  On the public feed, he could see the Blue World falling rapidly. Little flecks of light marked where warheads detonated in the space beneath it. Trying to poison her with radiations and other hazards, no doubt.

  “I just thought of something,” he told the silence. “Something obvious, and I’m sure you thought of it, too. But maybe you didn’t. Or maybe you did, but then threw the notion away.”

  No captain answered. They were too busy fighting, and that probably wouldn’t change before the end of everything.

  “Hello,” he kept saying.

  Minutes passed.

  Forever.

  No human had ever felt so alone, he told himself.

  And then came a smooth musical voice, familiar and beautiful, and O’Layle very nearly broke into tears again.

  “Quick,” was all that Washen said.

  To the First Chair, he muttered, “Madam. Thank you.”

  “What is it?”

  And then O’Layle hesitated. He hesitated and grinned slyly, and with a resolve that took both of them by surprise, he said, “No.”

  “What?” the distracted voice said.

  “I want to help you,” O’Layle muttered.

  Silence.

  “And the Great Ship, too.”

  Quietly, Washen asked, “Do you have something, or don’t you?”

  “But I won’t tell it to you,” he promised. Could she see his smile? Probably. Then he thought, Good. Let her see my smug, grinning face.

  Silence.

  “You need to let me go free,” O’Layle demanded.

  “No.”

  “Let me help you,” he pleaded. “Give me something difficult to do, and dangerous. I don’t care what.”

  Silence.

  “All right,” he said. Then with a faith born from depression and a bottomless longing, he told the First Chair what had finally, finally occurred to him.

  Silence.

  “Is it important?” he inquired.

  “Probably not,” she allowed.

  Of course it wasn’t.