The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  The eyes were wide and brown, and they didn’t so much as blink.

  “It was an interesting story,” Washen conceded.

  Till looked like any ten year old who didn’t know what to make of a bothersome adult. Sighing wearily, he shifted his weight from one brown foot to the other. Then he sighed again, the picture of boredom.

  “How did you think up that story?” she asked.

  A shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “We talk about the ship. Probably too much.” Her explanation felt sensible and practical. Her only fear was that she would come across as patronizing.

  “Everyone likes to speculate. About the ship’s past, and its builders, and all the rest. It has to be confusing. Since we’re going to rebuild our bridge, with your help … it does make you into a kind of builder …”

  Till shrugged again, his eyes looking past her.

  On the far side of the round, in front of the encampment’s shop, a team of captains had fired up their latest turbine—a primitive wonder built from memory and trial-and-error. Homebrewed alcohols combined with oxygen, creating a delicious roar. When it was working, the engine was powerful enough to do any job they could offer it, at least today. But it was dirty and noisy, and the sound of it almost obscured the boy’s voice.

  “I’m not speculating,” he said softly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I won’t tell you that. That I’m making it up.”

  Washen had to smile, asking, “Aren’t you?”

  “No.” Till shook his head, then looked back down at his toes. “Madam Washen,” he said with a boy’s fragile patience. “You can’t make up something that’s true.”

  MISSION YEAR 114.41:

  Locke was waiting in the shadows—a grown man with a boy’s guilty face and the wide, restless eyes of someone expecting trouble to come from every direction.

  His first words were, “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  But a moment later, responding to an anticipated voice, he said, “I know, Mother. I promised.”

  Washen never made a sound.

  It was Diu who offered second thoughts. “If this is going to get you in trouble … maybe we should go home …”

  “Maybe you should,” their son allowed. Then he turned and walked away, never inviting them to follow, knowing they wouldn’t be able to help themselves.

  Washen hurried, feeling Diu in her footsteps.

  A young jungle of umbra trees and lambda bush dissolved into rugged bare iron: Black pillars and arches created an indiscriminate, infuriating maze. Every step was a challenge. Razored edges sliced at exposed flesh. Bottomless crevices threatened to swallow the graceless. And Washen’s body was accustomed to sleep at this hour, which was why the old grove took her by surprise. Suddenly Locke was standing on the rusty lip of a cliff, waiting for them, gazing down at a narrow valley filled with black-as-night virtue trees.

  It was lucky ground. When the world’s guts began to pour out on all sides, that slab of crust had fallen into a fissure. The jungle had been burned but never killed. It could be a hundred years old, or older. There was a rich, eternal feel to the place, and perhaps that’s why the children had chosen it.

  The children. Washen knew better, but despite her best intentions, she couldn’t think of them any other way.

  “Keep quiet,” Locke whispered, not looking back at them. “Please.”

  In the living shadows, the air turned slightly cooler and uncomfortably damp. Blankets of rotting canopy left the ground watery-soft. A giant daggerwing roared past, intent on some vital business, and Washen watched it vanish into the gloom, then reappear, tiny with the distance, its bluish carapace shining in a patch of sudden skylight.

  Locke turned abruptly, silently.

  A single finger lay against his lips. But what Washen noticed was his expression, the pain and worry so intense that she had to try and reassure him with a touch.

  It was Diu who had wormed the secret out of him.

  The children were meeting in the jungle, and they’d been meeting for more than twenty years. At irregular intervals, Till would call them to some secluded location, and it was Till who was in charge of everything said and done. “What’s said?” Washen had asked. “And what do you do?” But Locke refused to explain it, shaking his head and adding that he was breaking his oldest promise by telling any of it.

  “Then why do it?” Washen pressed.

  “Because,” her son replied. “You have every right to hear what he’s saying. So you can decide for yourselves.”

  Washen stood out of sight, staring at the largest virtue tree she had ever seen. Age had killed it, and rot had brought it down, splitting the canopy open as it crumbled. Adult children and their little brothers and sisters had assembled in that pool of skylight, standing in clumps and pairs, talking quietly. Till paced back and forth on the wide black trunk. He looked fully adult, ageless and decidedly unexceptional, wearing a simple breechcloth and nimble boots, his plain face showing a timid, self-conscious expression that gave Washen a strange little moment of hope.

  Maybe Till’s meetings were a just an old game that grew up into a social gathering.

  Maybe.

  Without a word or backward glance, Locke walked into the clearing, joining the oldest children up in the front.

  His parents obeyed their promise, kneeling in the jungle.

  A few more children filtered into view. Then with some invisible signal, the worshippers fell silent.

  With a quiet voice, Till asked, “What do we want?”

  “What’s best for the ship,” the children answered. “Always.”

  “How long is always?”

  “Longer than we can count.”

  “And how far is always?”

  “To the endless ends.”

  “Yet we live—”

  “For a moment!” they cried. “If that long!”

  The words were absurd, and chilling. What should have sounded silly to Washen wasn’t, the prayer acquiring a muscular credibility when hundreds were speaking in one voice, with a practiced surety.

  “What is best for the ship,” Till repeated.

  Except he was asking a question. His plain face was filled with curiosity, a genuine longing.

  Quietly, he asked his audience, “Do you know the answer?”

  In a muddled shout, the children said, “No.”

  “I don’t either,” their leader promised. “But when I’m awake, I’m searching. And when I’m sleeping, my dreams do the same.”

  There was a brief pause, then an urgent voice cried out, “We have newcomers!”

  “Bring them up.”

  They were seven year olds—a twin brother and sister—and they climbed the trunk as if terrified. But Till offered his hands, and with a crisp surety, he told each to breathe deeply, then asked them, “What do you know about the ship?”

  The little girl glanced at the sky, saying, “It’s where we came from.”

  Laughter broke out in the audience, then evaporated.

  Her brother corrected her. “The captains came from there. Not us.” Then he added, “But we’re going to help them get back there. Soon.”

  There was a cold, prolonged pause.

  Till allowed himself a patient smile, patting both of their heads. Then he looked out at his followers, asking, “Is he right?”

  “No,” they roared.

  The siblings winced and tried to vanish.

  Till knelt between them, and with a steady voice said, “The captains are just the captains. But you and I and all of us here … we are the Builders.”

  Washen hadn’t heard that nonsense in a quarter of a century, and hearing it now, she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or explode in rage.

  “We’re the Builders reborn,” Till repeated. Then he gave them the seeds of rebellion, adding, “And whatever our purpose, it is not to help these silly captains.”

  Miocene refused to believe any of it. “First of all,”
she told Washen, and herself, “I know my own child. What you’re describing is ridiculous. Second of all, this rally of theirs would involve nearly half of our children—”

  Diu interrupted. “Most of them are adults with their own homes.” Then he added, “Madam.”

  “I checked,” said Washen. “Several dozen of the younger children did slip out of the nurseries—”

  “I’m not claiming that they didn’t go somewhere.” Then with a haughty expression, she asked, “Will the two of you listen to me? For a moment, please?”

  “Go on, madam,” said Diu.

  “I know what’s reasonable. I know how my son was raised and I know his character, and unless you can offer me some motivation for this … this shit … then I think we’ll just pretend that nothing’s been said here …”

  “Motivation,” Washen repeated. “Tell me what’s mine.”

  With a chill delight, Miocene said, “Greed.”

  “Why?”

  “Believe me, I understand.” The dark eyes narrowed, silver glints in their corners. “If my son is insane, then yours stands to gain. Status, at least. Then eventually, power.”

  Washen glanced at Diu.

  They hadn’t mentioned Locke’s role as the informant, and they would keep it secret as long as possible—for a tangle of reasons, most of them selfish.

  “Ask Till about the Builders,” she insisted.

  “I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  The woman took a moment, vainly picking spore cases from her new handmade uniform. Then with a cutting logic, she said, “If it’s a lie, he’ll say it’s a lie. If it’s true and he lies, then it’ll sound like the truth.”

  “But if he admits it—?”

  “Then Till wants me to know. And you’re simply a messenger.” She gave them a knowing stare, then looked off into the distance. “That’s not a revelation I want delivered at his convenience.”

  Three ship-days later, while the encampment slept, a great fist lifted the world several meters, then grew bored and flung it down again.

  Captains and children stumbled into the open. The sky was already choked with golden balloons and billions of flying insects. In twelve hours, perhaps less, the entire region would blister and explode, and die. Like a drunken woman, Washen ran through the aftershocks, reaching a tidy home and shouting, “Locke,” into its empty rooms. Where was her son? She moved along the round, finding all of the children’s houses empty. A tall figure stepped out of Till’s tiny house and asked, “Have you see mine?”

  Washen shook her head. “Have you seen mine?”

  Miocene said, “No,” and sighed. Then she strode past Washen, shouting, “Do you know where I can find him?”

  Diu was standing in the center of the round. Waiting.

  “If you help me,” the Submaster promised, “you’ll help your own son.”

  With a little nod, Diu agreed.

  Miocene and a dozen captains ran into the jungle. Left behind, Washen forced herself to concentrate, packing her household’s essentials and helping the other worried parents. When they were finished, hours had passed. The quakes had shattered the crust beneath them, and the golden balloons had vanished, replaced with clouds of iron dust and the stink of burning jungle. The captains and remaining children stood in the main round, ready to flee. But the ranking Submaster wouldn’t give the order. “Another minute,” he kept telling everyone, including himself. Then he would carefully hide his timepiece in his uniform’s pocket, fighting the urge to watch the turning of its hands.

  When Till suddenly stepped into the open, grinning at them, Washen felt a giddy, incoherent relief.

  Relief collapsed into shock, then terror.

  The young man’s chest cavity had been opened up with a knife, the first wound partially healed but the second wound deeper, lying perpendicular to the first. Ripped, desiccated flesh tried desperately to knit itself back together. Till wasn’t in mortal danger, but he wore his agony well. With an artful moan, he stumbled, then righted himself for a slippery instant. Then he fell sideways, slamming against the bare iron in the same instant that Miocene slowly, slowly stepped into view.

  She was unhurt, and she was thoroughly, hopelessly trapped.

  Spellbound, Washen watched the Submaster kneel beside her boy, gripping his straight brown hair with one hand while she stared into his eyes.

  What did Till say to her in the jungle? How did he steer his mother into this murderous rage? Because that’s what he must have done. As events played out, Washen realized that everything was part of an elaborate plan. That’s why Locke took them to the meeting, and why he had felt guilty. When he said, “I know. I promised,” he meant the promise he made to Till.

  Miocene kept staring into her son’s eyes.

  Perhaps she was hunting for forgiveness, or better, for some hint of doubt. Or perhaps she was simply giving him a moment to contemplate her own gaze, relentless and cold. Then with both hands, she picked up a good-sized wedge of nickel-iron—the quakes had left the round littered with them—and with a calm fury, she rolled him over and shattered the vertebrae in his neck, then continued beating him, blood and shredded flesh flying, his head nearly cut free of his paralyzed body.

  Washen and five other captains pulled Miocene off her son.

  “Let go of me,” she demanded. Then she dropped her weapon and raised her arms, telling everyone in earshot, “If you want to help him, help him. But if you do, you don’t belong to our community. That’s my decree. According to the powers of my rank, my office, and my mood … !”

  Locke had stepped out of the jungle.

  He was the first to come to Till’s side, but only barely. More than two-thirds of the children gathered around the limp figure. A stretcher was found, and their leader was made comfortable. Then with a few possessions and virtually no food, the wayward children began to file away, moving north when the captains were planning to travel south.

  Diu stood beside Washen; since when?

  “We can’t just let them get away,” he whispered. “Someone needs to stay with them. To talk to them, and help them …”

  She glanced at her lover, then opened her mouth.

  “I’ll go,” she meant to say.

  But Diu said, “You shouldn’t, no. You’ll help them more by staying close to Miocene.” He had obviously thought it through, arguing, “You have rank. You have authority here. And besides, Miocene listens to you.”

  When it suited her, yes.

  “I’ll keep in contact,” Diu promised. “Somehow.”

  Washen nodded, thinking that all of this would pass in a few years. Perhaps in a few decades, at most.

  Diu kissed her, and they hugged, and she found herself looking over his shoulder. Locke was a familiar silhouette standing in the jungle. At that distance, through those shadows, she couldn’t tell if her son was facing her or if she was looking at his back. Either way, she smiled and mouthed the words, “Be good.” Then she took a deep breath and told Diu, “Be careful.” And she turned away, refusing to watch either of her men vanish into the shadows and gathering smoke.

  Miocene stood alone, speaking with a thin dry weepy voice.

  “We’re getting closer,” she declared, lifting her arms overhead.

  Closer?

  Then she rose up on her toes, reaching higher, and with a low, pained laugh, she said, “Not close enough. Not yet.”

  MISSION YEARS 511.01–1603.73:

  A dozen of the loyal grandchildren discovered the first artifact. Against every rule, they were playing beside a river of liquid iron, and suddenly a mysterious hyperfiber sphere drifted past. With their youngster’s courage, they fished it out and cooled it down and brought it back to the encampment. Then for the next hundred years, the sphere lay in storage, under lock and key. But once the captains had reinvented the means, they split the hyperfiber, and inside it was an information vault nearly as old as the earth.

  The device was declared authentic, and useless, it
s memories erased to gray by the simple crush of time.

  There were attempts at secrecy, but the Waywards always had their spies. One night, without warning, Locke and his father strolled into the main round. Dressed in breechcloth and little else, they found Washen’s door, knocked until she screamed, “Enter,” then stepped inside, Diu offering a wry grin as Locke made the unexpected proposal: Tons of dried and sweetened meat in exchange for that empty vault.

  Washen didn’t have the authority. Four Submasters were pulled out of three beds, and at Miocene’s insistence, they grudgingly agreed to the Waywards’ terms.

  But the negotiations weren’t finished. Diu suddenly handed his ex-commanders wafers of pure sulfur, very rare and essential to the captains’ fledgling industries. Then with a wink, he asked, “What would you give us in return for tons more?”

  Everything, thought Washen.

  Diu settled for a laser. As he made sure it had enough punch to penetrate hyperfiber, nervous voices asked how the Waywards would use it. “It’s obvious,” Diu replied, with easy scorn. “If your little group finds one artifact, by accident, how many more do you think that the Waywards could be sitting on?”

  Afterwards, once or twice every century, the captains discovered new vaults. Most were dead and sold quickly to the Waywards for meat and sulfur. But it was ninth vault that still functioned, its ancient machinery full of images and data, and answers.

  The elegant device was riding in Miocene’s lap. She touched it lightly, lovingly, then confessed, “I feel nervous. Nervous, but exceptionally confident.”

  The Submaster never usually discussed her moods.

  “With a little luck,” she continued, “this treasure will heal these old rifts between them and us.”

  “With luck,” Washen echoed, thinking it would take more than a little.

  They arrived at the clearing at three in the morning, shiptime. Moments later, several thousand Waywards stepped from the jungle at the same moment, dressed in tool belts and little else, the men often carrying toddlers and their women pregnant, every face feral and self-assured, almost every expression utterly joyous.