by Robert Reed
Washen’s ribs were on fire. She eased herself out of her chair, feeling the delicious warmth as the curved bones knitted themselves. Emergency genes synthesized machinery that turned masticated flesh into new bone and blood, giving her strength enough to stand. She sipped one breath, then another. The hatch began to open itself, creaking with each slow millimeter. If it jammed, they were trapped. Doomed. But that would be a ridiculous finish. Ludicrous. Which was why she dismissed the possibility, refusing to worry.
The hatch gave a squeal and jammed.
Then after a prolonged silence, it freed itself with a white-hot screech.
Darkness fell on them. Miocene stepped out into the silence, into the darkness. Her exhausted black eyes were huge. She was staring at the empty berths as Washen climbed and joined her, the two women standing close enough to touch each other, but avoiding that gesture, busily scouring their memories for the way out of the unlit assembly station.
At the same moment they pointed in the same direction, saying, “That way.”
Base camp had been without power for forty-six centuries. The Event had crippled every machine. Reactors, drones, all of it. The magnetic latches on every sealed door had failed. Pushing the last door aside, they stepped out into the soft, muted light of the dying buttresses.
“Wander,” Miocene ordered. “For half an hour. Then meet at the observation station, and we’ll go on from there.”
“Yes, madam.”
Washen started for the dormitories, then thought better of it. Instead she crept into the biolabs, opening curtains for light and dislodging dust that fell softly over dust. Every system was ruined. Cages with tough mechanical locks remained sealed—an ancient precaution—and inside each cage lay mounds of colorless dust. Washen found keys left hanging above a captain’s empty desk. Eventually she found the key that would fit and turn, and quietly, she crept into one of the cages, stepping over a child’s doll, then kneeling to reach into the largest dust pile.
Without food or water, the abandoned lab animals had dropped into comas, and as their immortal flesh lost energy and moisture, they had quietly and thoroughly mummified themselves.
Washen picked up one of the mandrill baboons—an enormous male weighing little more than a breath—and she held it against her own body, looking into the desiccated eyes, feeling its leathery heart beat, just once, just to say, “I waited for you.”
She set him down carefully, and left.
Miocene was standing on the viewing platform, impatient and concerned, gazing expectantly at the horizon. Even at this altitude, they could only see the captains’ realm. The nearest Waywards were hundreds of kilometers removed from them. Which might as well have been hundreds of light-years, as much as the cultures interacted anymore.
“What are you looking for?” Washen asked.
The Submaster said nothing.
“They’ll find out what what we’ve done,” Washen had to tell her. “If Till doesn’t know already, I’d be surprised.”
Miocene nodded absently, taking a deep, deep breath.
Then she turned, and never mentioning the Waywards, she said, “We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s find out what’s upstairs.”
* * *
TINY CAP-CARS REMAINED in their berths, untouched by any hand and shielded by kilometers of hyperfiber. Their engines remained charged, but every system was locked into a diagnostic mode. The com-links refused to work. The ship was dead, said the silence. But then Washen remembered that the com-link was singular and tightly guarded, and after a century’s wait, the security systems would have ripped out the only tongue, as a reasonable precaution.
Miocene offered a code that brought one car to life.
Occasionally Washen would glance at the Submaster, measuring the woman’s stern profile, and her silence, wondering which of them was more terrified. The long access tunnel led straight upward, not a trace of damage or disruptions showing anywhere along the narrow shaft. Then the tunnel ended with a slab of hyperfiber. Touch codes caused the slab to detach and fall inward, revealing an abandoned fuel line—a vertical shaft better than five kilometers across.
Against that vastness, the doorway closed again, vanishing.
The car skimmed along the surface of the fuel line, always climbing, gradually turning onto its back as they slipped closer to the vast fuel tank. If the great ship’s engines were firing, not so much as a shiver reached them. But those engines rarely ignited, Washen reminded herself. The stillness meant nothing.
Nothing.
Between the women, a pact had formed. Neither mentioned where they were going. After such an enormous wait, neither dared make the tiniest speculation. Possibilities had been exhausted. What was, was. Each said it with her eyes, her silence. It was implicit in the way their long hands lay in their laps, peacefully wrestling with one another.
The vast tunnel passed sleeping pumps larger than some moons.
Quietly, Washen asked, “Where?”
The Submaster opened her mouth, then hesitated.
Finally, strangely, she asked, “What do you think is best?”
“The !eech habitat,” Washen allowed. “Maybe someone lives there now. And if not, we could still borrow its com-lines.”
“Do that,” Miocene replied.
They entered through the fuel tank, flying high above the dark hydrogen sea. The !eech habitat was exactly as Washen remembered it. Empty. Clean. Forgotten. A scan showed nothing alive and warm. She slipped into its docking berth, then they climbed into the gray hub. With a breath and a slack, numbed expression, Miocene touched the aliens’ only com-panel, and nothing happened. In frustration, she said, “Shit,” and stepped back, telling Washen, “Do it for me. Please.”
But there wasn’t anything to do.
“It’s malfunctioned, or there’s no com-system anymore.” Washen said the words, then felt her belly knot up and ache.
Miocene glared at the dead machinery.
After a long moment, they turned away, saying nothing as they climbed back into the waiting cap-car.
A narrow service tunnel angled upward, passing through a series of demon doors, an atmosphere building with each crisp crackle. And in a soft, whispering voice, Miocene asked, “How many were on board? Do you remember?”
“One hundred billion.”
The Submaster closed her eyes and held them closed.
“Plus the machine intelligences. Another one hundred billion, at least.”
Miocene said, “Dead. They all are.”
Washen couldn’t see through her tears. With the back of a hand, she wiped her face, and she muttered, “We don’t know,” with a contrived hopefulness.
But Miocene said, “Dead,” again. She was defiant about her pronouncement. Then she straightened the clumsy fabric of her uniform, staring at her hands and the reflections that seemed to float inside her chest, and she sighed and looked up, staring straight ahead and sighing once again before announcing, “There is a higher purpose. To all of this. Since we’re still alive, there must be.”
Washen didn’t respond.
“A higher purpose,” the woman repeated. Smiling now. That wide strange smile said as much as her words.
The service tunnel ended inside one of the deepest passenger districts. Suddenly they were skimming along the obsidian floor of a broad, flattened tunnel—a minor passageway barely half a kilometer across—and it was plainly, horribly empty. No traffic. No important, busy lights. And to herself, in misery, Washen said, “Maybe the crew and passengers … maybe we were able to evacuate everyone…”
“Doubtful,” was Miocene’s response.
She turned to stare at Washen, ready to say something else honest, and harsh. But her expression changed abruptly. The eyes went distant, and wide, and Washen looked back over her shoulder in time to see a vast machine appear behind them, bearing down on them until a collision was imminent, then skipping sideways with a crisp, AI precision. And the machine passed them. A car, it was. A light-filled
diamond hull held a lake of warm saltwater, and floating in the center of the lake was the sole passenger—a whalelike entity with a forest of strong-handed symbionts rooted on its long back—and as it passed them at a blurring, impolite speed, the entity winked. Three of its black eyes winked just as humans would wink, offering them nothing but a friendly, casual greeting.
It was a Yawkleen.
More than four millenia removed from her post, yet Washen immediately remembered the species’ name.
With a flat, disbelieving voice, Miocene said, “No.”
But it was true.
Suddenly another dozen cars caught up with them, then slipped past. Washen saw four harum-scarums, and what could have been a pair of humans, and then an insectish creature that reminded her, with its intricate jaws and long black back, of the crap-sculptor beetle from the Marrow jungles.
From back home, Washen was thinking.
Where, if the truth were told, she’d almost prefer to be.
Twenty-five
A SMALL, OBSCURE waystation lay on the tubeway’s floor.
With a pained voice, Miocene ordered Washen to stop. Their car passed through a series of demon doors, an atmosphere spun around them. Then they did nothing. The Submaster sat erect, hands trembling and her face iron-taut and her mouth opened just enough to pull in a series of quick deep breaths, that private little wind whistling across her angry lips, a wild fury spreading from her eyes into her face, her body, then filling the car until Washen couldn’t help but feel her own heart hammering against her new ribs.
Finally, with a soft choked voice, Miocene said, “Go into the station.”
Washen climbed from the car.
“Do it,” Miocene commanded.
She was shouting at herself, staring at her folded legs and her trembling hands, then at the single hand that Washen offered, along with a quiet voice that reminded her, “Whatever is, is. Madam.”
The Submaster sighed and stood without accepting help.
The station’s lounge was small and tidy, flexible furnishings meant for almost any traveler, its floor and arching walls decorated with beds of false limestones, buttery-yellow and white and gray, each bed impregnated with a different stew of artificial fossils that looked terran at first glance. Which was the only glance that Washen allowed herself, stepping through the last demon door and finding no one present but the resident AI.
“The Master Captain!” Miocene barked. “Is she alive and well?”
With a smooth cheeriness, the AI reported, “The woman is in robust good health. And she thanks you for inquiring.”
“How long has she been healthy?” Washen pressed, in case there was a new Master.
“For the last one hundred and twelve millenia,” the machine replied. “Bless her, and bless ourselves. How can we do otherwise?”
Miocene said nothing, her face red with blood, her rage thick and tireless.
One of the fossil walls was sprinkled with combooths. Washen stepped inside the nearest booth, saying, “Emergency status. Captains’ channel. Please, we need to speak directly to the Master.”
Miocene stepped into the booth, then sealed its thick door.
The Master’s station appeared, spun from light and sound. Three captains and the usual AIs stared at them. Three captains meant this was the nightwatch, the exact time and date floating in the air behind them. Washen opened her clock and stared at the turning hands, realizing that Marrow’s clocks had been wrong by a little less than eleven minutes—a minor triumph, considering that the marooned captains had had to reinvent time.
Three human faces stared at them, dumbfounded, while their AIs, full of poise, simply asked, “What is your business, please?”
“Let me see her!” Miocene thundered.
There was a delay brought by distance, and a longer delay brought by stupidity. Finally, one of the captains remarked, “Maybe so. Who are you?”
“You know me,” the Submaster replied. “And I know you. Your name is Fattan. And yours is Cass. And yours, Underwood.”
Cass whispered, “Miocene…?”
His voice was soft, full of astonishment and doubt.
“Submaster Miocene! First Chair to the Master Captain!” The tall woman bent over the nearest captain, shouting, “You remember the name and rank, don’t you? So act. Something’s wicked here, and I need to speak to the Master!”
“But you can’t be,” said the cowering man.
“You’re dead,” said another captain. Underwood. Then she glanced at Washen, and with a strange pity, she confided, “You’re both dead. For a long time now…”
“They’re just holos,” the third captain announced. With an obstinate certainty, Fattan said, “Holos. Projections. Someone’s little joke.”
But the AIs had checked their reality by a thousand lightspeed means, and following some secret, long-buried protocol, it was the machines that acted. The image swirled and stabilized again. The Master apeared, sitting up in her great bed. Dressed in a nightgown made from shaped light and airborne pearls, she looked exactly as Washen remembered, her skin golden and her hair a snowy white. But the hair was longer, and instead of being worn in a bun, it lay loose over the broad meaty shoulders. Preoccupied in ways that only a Ship’s Master can be, she had to pull her attentions out of a hundred tangled nexuses, then focus on her abrupt guests. Suddenly her bright brown eyes grew huge. In reflex, she touched her own nightgown, probably wondering about their crude, almost laughable imitations of the standard ship uniform. A look of wonder and amazement swept over the broad face, and just as a smile appeared, it collapsed into an instant and piercing fury.
“Where are you?” she snapped. “Where have you been?”
“Where you sent us.” The Submaster refused to say, “Madam.” Approaching the bed, her hands pulled into fists, she said, “We’ve been on that shit-world … on Marrow…!”
“Where?” the woman spat.
“Marrow,” the Submaster repeated. Then in exasperation, “What sort of ridiculous game are you playing with us?”
“I didn’t send you anywhere, Miocene…!”
In a dim, half-born way, Washen understood.
Miocene shook her head, asking, “Why keep our mission secret for this long?” Then in the next breath, she answered her own question. “You meant to imprison us. That’s what this was. The best of your captains, and you wanted to push us aside!”
Washen took Miocene by the arm.
“Wait,” she whispered. “No.”
“The best of my captains? You?” The giant woman gave a wild, cackling laugh. “My best captains just don’t vanish without warning. They don’t stay hidden for thousands of years, doing who-knows-what, in secret!” She gasped, the gold of her face brightening. “Thousands of years,” she said, “and without so much as a whisper. And it took all of my genius and experience, and every last power at my disposal, to explain your disappearance and steer this ship away from panic!”
Miocene glanced at Washen, her expression astonished. Devastated. In a low, muttering voice, she said, “But if the Master didn’t—”
“Someone else did,” Washen replied.
“Security!” the giant woman cried out. “Two ghosts are talking to me! Track them! Catch them! Bring them to me!”
Washen killed the link, buying them a moment.
The two ghosts found themselves standing inside the darkened booth, stunned and alone, trying to make sense out of the pure insanity.
“Who could have fooled us?”
Asked Washen.
Then in her next breath, she knew how it could have been: someone with resources and access, and enormous ingenuity, would have sent orders in the Master’s name, bringing the captains together in the !eech habitat. Then the same ingenious soul deceived them with a replica of the Master, sending them rushing down into the ship’s core.
“I could have done this,” Miocene confessed, thinking along the same seductive, paranoid lines. “Gathered the machinery and fool
ed all of you. If I’d wished. Assuming that I had known about Marrow, and if I had time, and some compelling reason.”
“But you didn’t, and you didn’t, and you didn’t,” Washen whispered.
“Who did?” Miocene wondered aloud.
They couldn’t answer that brutally simple question.
Washen asked the booth for the roster of Submasters and high-ranking captains. She was hunting for suspects, and maybe for a friendly name on which she could place her frail trust.
In a bitter, low voice, Miocene said, “My seat. Has been filled.”
But the name that leaped out at Washen—what made her legs weak and breath quicken—was the captain occupying her former office.
Pamir.
“Who?” Miocene rumbled.
But in the next instant, she remembered the name. The crime. And with a weak exasperation, the Submaster said, “This just isn’t our ship. It can’t be.”
Washen ordered the booth to contact Pamir. On an audio-only line, she warned who was calling. There was a pause, just long enough for Miocene to say, “Try another.” But then Pamir’s original face emerged from the darkness. Strong and homely, the face smiled with a wild amazement. The reborn captain was standing inside his old quarters, surrounded by a meadow of singing llano-vibra plants.
“Quiet,” he told his plants.
Washen and Miocene were standing in the same meadow. The man facing them was bare-chested, tall and powerful through the shoulders, and he was breathing like a sprinter, gasping when he spoke.
“You’re dead,” he managed. “A tragic mishap, they say.”
“What about you?” Washen had to ask.
Pamir shrugged his shoulders as if embarrassed, then said, “What with the shortfall of talent, there was a general pardon—”
“I don’t want your story,” Miocene interrupted. “Listen. We have to explain … we need to tell you what happened…!”
But the meadow suddenly turned quiet, and the vegetation grew thin and pale, and Washen could see her own feet through the fading llano-vibra, Pamir’s fine face vanishing along with the rest of the scene.