The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  The tunnel turned into an abandoned fuel line that spilled out into the leech habitat.

  Everything was exactly as Washen’s team had left it. Empty and dusty and relentlessly gray, the habitat welcomed them with a perfect silence.

  Miocene gripped her belly, as if in pain.

  Washen tried to link up with the ship’s net, but every connection to the populated areas had been severed.

  “We’re going on,” Miocene announced. “Now.”

  They pressed on, climbing out of the mammoth fuel tank and into the first of the inhabited quarters. Suddenly they were inside a wide, flattened tunnel, enormous and empty, and looking out at the emptiness, Miocene said, “Perhaps the passengers and crew … perhaps they were able to evacuate the ship … do you suppose … ?”

  Washen began to say, “Maybe.”

  From behind, with a jarring suddenness, an enormous car appeared, bearing down on them until a collision was imminent, then skipping sideways with a crisp, AI precision. Then as the car was passing them, its sole passenger—an enormous - whale-like entity cushioned within a salt water bath—winked at them with three of its black eyes, winking just as people did at each other, meaning nothing but the friendliest of greetings.

  It was a Yawkleen. Five millennia removed from her post, yet Washen immediately remembered the species’ name.

  With a flat, disbelieving voice, Miocene said, “No.”

  But it was true. In the distance, they could just make out a dozen cars, the traffic light, but otherwise perfectly normal. Perfectly banal.

  Pausing at the first waystation, they asked its resident AI about the Master’s health.

  With a smooth cheeriness, it reported, “She is in robust good health. Thank you for inquiring.”

  “Since when?” the Submaster pressed.

  “For the last sixty thousand years, bless her.”

  Miocene was mute, a scalding rage growing by the instant.

  One of the waystation’s walls was sprinkled with com-booths. Washen stepped into the nearest booth, saying, “Emergency status. The captains’ channel. Please, we need to speak to the Master.”

  Miocene followed, sealing the door behind them.

  A modest office surrounded them, spun out of light and sound. Three captains and countless AIs served as the Master’s staff and as buffers. It was the night staff, Washen realized; the clocks on Marrow were wrong by eleven hours. Not too bad after fifty centuries of little mistakes—

  The human faces stared at the apparitions, while the AIs simply asked, “What is your business, please?”

  “I want to see her!” Miocene thundered.

  The captains tried to portray an appropriate composure.

  “I’m Miocene! Submaster, First Chair!” The tall woman bent over the nearest captain, saying, “You’ve got to recognize me. Look at me. Something’s very wrong—”

  The AIs remembered them, and acted.

  The image swirled and stabilized again.

  The Master was standing alone in a conference room, watching the arrival of a small starship. She looked exactly as Washen remembered, except that her hair was longer and tied in an intricate bun. Preoccupied in ways that only a Ship’s Master can be, she didn’t bother to look at her guests. She wasn’t paying attention to her AI’s warnings. But when she happened to glance at the two captains—both dressed in crude, even laughable imitations of standard ship uniforms—a look of wonder and astonishment swept over that broad face, replaced an instant later with a piercing fury.

  “Where have the two of you been?” the Master cried out.

  “Where you sent us!” Miocene snapped. “Marrow!”

  “Where … ?!” the woman spat.

  “Marrow,” the Submaster repeated. Then, in exasperation, “What sort of game are you playing with us?”

  “I didn’t send you anywhere … !”

  In a dim, half-born way, Washen began to understand.

  Miocene shook her head, asking, “Why keep our mission secret?” Then in the next breath, “Unless all you intended to do was imprison the best of your captains—”

  Washen grabbed Miocene by the arm, saying, “Wait. No.”

  “My best captains? You?” The Master gave a wild, cackling laugh. “My best officers wouldn’t vanish without a trace. They wouldn’t take elaborate precautions to accomplish god-knows-what, keeping out of sight for how long? And without so much as a whisper from any one of them … !”

  Miocene glanced at Washen with an empty face. “She didn’t send us—”

  “Someone did,” Washen replied.

  “Security!” the Master shouted. “Two ghosts are using this link! Track them! Hurry! Please, please!”

  Miocene killed the link, giving them time.

  The stunned ghosts found themselves standing inside the empty booth, trying to make sense out of pure insanity.

  “Who could have fooled us … ?” asked Washen. Then in her next breath, she realized how easy it would have been: Someone with access and ingenuity sent orders in the Master’s name, bringing the captains together in an isolated location. Then the same ingenious soul deceived them with a replica of the Master, sending them rushing down to the ship’s core …

  “I could have manipulated all of you,” Miocene offered, thinking along the same seductive, extremely paranoid lines. “But I didn’t know about Marrow’s existence. None of us knew.”

  But someone had known. Obviously.

  “And even if I possessed the knowledge,” Miocene continued, “what could I hope to gain?”

  An ancient memory surfaced of its own accord. Suddenly Washen saw herself standing before the window in the leech habitat, looking at the captains’ reflections while talking amiably about ambition and its sweet, intoxicating stink.

  “We’ve got to warn the Master,” she told Miocene.

  “Of what?”

  She didn’t answer, shouting instructions to the booth, then waiting for a moment before asking, “Are you doing what I said?”

  The booth gave no reply.

  Washen eyed Miocene, feeling a sudden chill. Then she unsealed the booth’s door and gave it a hard shove, stepping warily out into the waystation.

  A large woman in robes was calmly and efficiently melting the AI with a powerful laser.

  Wearing a proper uniform, saying the expected words, she would be indistinguishable from the Master.

  But what surprised the captains even more was the ghost standing nearby. He was wearing civilian clothes and an elaborate disguise, and Washen hadn’t seen him for ages. But from the way his flesh quivered on his bones, and the way his gray eyes smiled straight at her, there was no doubt about his name.

  “Diu,” Washen whispered.

  Her ex-lover lifted a kinetic stunner.

  Too late and much too slowly, Washen attempted to tackle him.

  Then she was somewhere else, and her neck had been broken, and Diu’s face was hovering over her, laughing as it spoke, every word incomprehensible.

  Washen closed her eyes. Another voice spoke, asking, “How did you find Marrow?” Miocene’s voice?

  “It’s rather like your mission briefing. There was an impact. Some curious data were gathered. But where the Ship’s Master dismissed the idea of a hollow core, I investigated. My money paid for the drones that eventually dug to this place, and I followed them here.” There was a soft laugh, a reflective pause. Then, “This happened tens of thousands of years ago. Of course. I wasn’t a captain in those days. I had plenty of time and the wealth to explore this world, to pick apart its mysteries, and eventually formulate my wonderful plan …”

  Washen opened her eyes again, fighting to focus.

  “I’ve lived on Marrow more than twice as long as you, madam.”

  Diu was standing in the middle of the viewing platform, his face framed by the remnants of the bridge.

  “I know its cycles,” he said. “And all its many hazards, too.”

  Miocene was standing next to Was
hen, her face taut and tired but the eyes opened wide, missing nothing.

  “How do you feel?” she inquired, glancing down at her colleague.

  “Awful.” Washen sat up, winced briefly, then asked, “How long have we been here?”

  “A few minutes,” Diu answered. “My associate, the false Master, was carrying both of you. But now it’s gone ahead to check on my ship—”

  “What ship?”

  “That’s what I was about to explain.” The smile brightened, then he said, “Over the millennia, I’ve learned how to stockpile equipment in hyperfiber vaults. The vaults drift in the molten iron. In times of need, I can even live inside them. If I wanted to pretend my own death, for instance.”

  “For the Waywards,” Miocene remarked.

  “Naturally.”

  The Submaster pretended to stare at their captor. But she was looking past him, the dark eyes intense and unreadable, but in a subtle way, almost hopeful.

  “What do you want?” asked Miocene.

  “Guess,” he told them.

  Washen took a long breath and tried to stand. Miocene grabbed her by the arms, and they stood together like clumsy dancers, fighting for their balance.

  “The ship,” Washen managed.

  Diu said nothing.

  “The ultimate starship, and you want it for yourself.” Washen took a few more breaths, testing her neck before she pulled free of Miocene’s hands. “This scheme of yours is an elaborate mutiny. That’s all it is, isn’t it?”

  “The Waywards are an army,” said Miocene. “An army of religious fanatics being readied for a jihad. My son is the nominal leader. But who feeds him his visions? It’s always been you, hasn’t it?”

  No response.

  Washen found the strength to move closer to the railing, looking down, nothing to see but thick clouds of airborne iron kicked up by some fresh eruption.

  Miocene took a sudden breath, then exhaled.

  Strolling towards them, huge even at a distance, was the false Master. Knowing it was a machine made it look like one. It had a patient stride, even with its thick arms raised overhead, waving wildly.

  “What about the Builders?” Miocene blurted.

  Diu nearly glanced over his shoulder, then hesitated. “What are you asking?”

  “Did they really fight the Bleak?”

  Diu enjoyed the suspense, grinning at both of them before he admitted, “How the fuck should I know?”

  “The artifacts—?” Miocene began.

  “Six thousand years old,” he boasted. “Built by an alien passenger who thought I was in the entertainment industry.”

  “Why pretend to die?” Miocene asked.

  “For the freedom it gave me.” There was a boy in his grin. “Being dead, I can see more. Being dead, I can disguise myself. I walk where I want. I make babies with a thousand different women, including some in the captains’ realm.”

  There was silence.

  Then for a moment, they could just begin to hear the machine’s voice—a deep sound rattling between the dormitories, fading until it was a senseless murmur.

  “We spoke to the Master,” Washen blurted.

  Miocene took the cue, adding, “She knows. We told her everything—”

  “No, you told her almost nothing,” Diu snapped.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But she’ll be hunting for us,” Washen said.

  “She’s been on that same hunt for five thousand years,” he reminded them. “And even if she sniffs out the access tunnel this time, I won’t care. Because on the way back down, I mined the tunnel. Patient one-kilo charges of antimatter are ready to close things up tight. Excavating a new tunnel is going to take millennia, and probably much longer. Giving myself and my friends plenty of time to prepare.”

  “What if no one digs us out?” Washen asked.

  Diu shrugged, grinning at her. “How does the old story play? It’s better to rule in one realm than serve in another—?”

  Then he hesitated, hearing a distant voice.

  The Master’s voice.

  A laser appeared in his right hand, and he turned, squinting at his machine, puzzled by the frantic arm-waving.

  “Another car,” said the voice, diluted to a whisper. “It’s in the berth next to yours … !”

  “What car?” Diu muttered to himself.

  “I believe I know,” Miocene replied, eyes darting side to side. “I built two vessels, identical in every way. Including the fact that you never knew they existed.”

  Diu didn’t seem to hear her.

  Miocene took a step toward him, adding, “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Someone else is here. Or if they squeezed in together, two someone.”

  “So?” Diu replied. “A couple more captains lurking nearby—”

  “Except,” Miocene interrupted, “I didn’t send my invitation to my captains.”

  Diu didn’t ask to whom it was sent.

  Washen remembered Miocene had stood on this platform, watching Marrow. Watching for Till, she realized. How long would it have taken him to move the car to the bridge? That was the only question. She had no doubts that once motivated, the Waywards could do whatever they wanted inside the captains’ realm.

  “I was hopeful,” Miocene confessed. “I was hopeful that my son would be curious, that he would follow me back to the ship and see it for himself.”

  There was a sound, sharp and familiar.

  The false Master stopped in mid-stride, then began to collapse in on itself. Then a thin column of light appeared in the smoke, betraying the laser’s source.

  Diu started to run.

  Miocene followed, and Washen chased both of them.

  Beside the platform, in easy earshot, stood a drone. A lone figure was kneeling beneath its ceramic body, wearing breechcloth and holding a crude laser drill against his shoulder, intent on reducing the machine to ash and gas.

  Diu saw him, stopped and aimed.

  At Locke.

  Maybe he was hesitating, realizing it was his son. Or more likely, he simply was asking himself: Where’s Till? Either way, he didn’t fire. Instead, Diu started to turn, looking at his surroundings as if for the first time—

  There was a clean hard crack.

  A fat chunk of lead knocked Diu off his feet, opening his chest before it tore through his backside.

  With the smooth grace of an athlete, Till climbed out from the meshwork beneath the platform. He seemed unhurried, empty of emotion. Strolling past Washen, he didn’t give her the tiniest glance. It was like watching a soulless machine, right up until the moment when Miocene tried to block his way, saying, “Son,” with a weak, sorrowful voice.

  He shoved her aside, then ran toward Diu. Screaming. At the top of his lungs, screaming, “It’s all been a lie—!”

  Diu lifted his hand, reaching into a bloody pocket.

  Moments later, the base camp began to shake violently. Dozens of mines were exploding simultaneously. But the enormous mass of the ship absorbed the blows, then counterattacked, pushing the access tunnel shut for its entire length, and as an afterthought, knocking everyone off their feet.

  Diu grabbed his laser.

  He managed to sit up.

  Washen fought her way to her feet, but too late. She could only watch as Miocene managed to leap, grabbing Till by the head and halfway covering him as the killing blast struck her temple, and in half an instant, boiled away her brain.

  Till rolled, using the body as a shield, discharging his weapon until it was empty. Then a burst of light struck him in the shoulder, removing his right arm and part of his chest even as it cauterized the enormous wound.

  Using his drill, Locke quickly sliced his father into slivers, then burned him to dust.

  Miocene lay dead at Washen’s feet, and Till was beside her, oblivious to everything. There was a wasted quality to the face, a mark that went beyond any physical injury. “It’s been a lie,” he kept saying, without sound. “Eve
rything. A monstrous lie.”

  Locke came to him, not to Washen, asking, “What is monstrous, Your Excellence?”

  Till gazed up at him. With a careful voice, he said, “Nothing.” Then after a long pause, he added, “We have to return home. Now.”

  “Of course. Yes, Your Excellence.”

  “But first,” he said, “the ship must be protected from its foes!”

  Locke knew exactly what was being asked of him. “I don’t see why—?”

  “The ship is in danger!” the prophet cried out. “I say it, which makes it so. Now prove your devotion, Wayward!”

  Locke turned, looking at his mother with a weary, trapped expression.

  Washen struck him on the jaw, hard and sudden.

  She had covered almost a hundred meters before the laser drill bit into her calf, making her stumble. But she forced herself to keep running, slipping behind the drone with only two more burns cut deep into her back.

  It was as if Locke was trying to miss.

  Hours later, watching from the dormitory, Washen saw her son carrying four of the comatose baboons out into the courtyard, where he piled them up and turned the lasers on them. Then he showed the ashes to Till, satisfying him, and without a backward glance, the two walked slowly in the direction of the bridge.

  Washen hid for several days, eating and drinking from the old stores.

  When she finally crept into the bridge, she found Diu’s sophisticated car cut into pieces, and Miocene’s fused to its berth. But what startled her—what made her sick and sad—was Marrow itself. The captains’ new bridge had been toppled. Wild fires and explosions were sweeping across the visible globe. A vast, incoherent rage was at work, erasing every trace of the despised captains, and attacking anyone that might pose any threat to a lost prophet.

  In that crystalline moment of horror, Washen understood what she had to do. And without a wasted moment, she turned and began to make ready.