Mallow

by Robert Reed

  With a soft pride, Locke mentioned, 'From here, everything is our work.'

  The tunnel suddenly became narrower, hammerwings missing them by nothing in the silent vacuum.

  'How strong is it?' Washen inquired.

  'Better than you would think,' he replied, his voice almost defensive.

  Again, Washen closed her eyes and watched the war. But the Waywards had retreated, or died, and most of the Remoras' links were dead. There was nothing to see except the battered hull glowing red, radiating the heat of impacts and battles as well as the bloody glow of the passing sun.

  She shut down all of her nexuses, and she kept her eyes closed.

  Quietly, Locke identified himself to someone, then demanded, 'I need immediate passage to Marrow. I have a critical prisoner with me.'

  Not for the first time, Washen asked herself:

  'What if?'

  Locke had offered to bring her here. On his own, without compliant, he had helped find workable ways through the security systems — a journey that had gone remarkably well. Which made her wonder if everything was a ruse. What if Till had told his old friend,'I want you to find your mother somehow. For both of us. Find her and bring her back home, and use any means you wish. With my blessing.'

  It was possible, yes.

  Always.

  She remembered a different day, following their son into a distant jungle. Locke was obeying Till's orders then. Unlikely as it seemed, it could be the same now. Of course, Locke hadn't warned anyone about the rebellion coming, or the Remoras' plan to scuttle the ship's shields. Unless those events had also been allowed to happen, serving some greater, harder-to-perceive purpose.

  She thought about it again, and again, with a muscular conviction, she tossed the possibility aside.

  The hammerwing in front of them was slowing.

  Locke pulled around it, then dove for the still invisible bottom.

  Perhaps he guessed his mother's thoughts. Or maybe it was the moment, the shared mood. 'I never told you,' he began. 'Did I? One of Miocene's favorites came up with an explanation for the buttresses.'

  'Which favorite?'

  'Virtue,' Locke replied. 'Have you met him?' 'Once,' she admitted. 'Briefly.'

  Their AI took control, braking their descent as they passed thousands of empty hammerwings docked and waiting for the next belly full of troops.

  'You know how it is with hyperfiber,' her son continued. 'How the bonds are strengthened by taming little quantum fluxes.'

  'I've never quite understood the concept,'she confessed.

  Locke nodded as if he could appreciate the sentiment. Then he smiled. He smiled and turned to his mother, his face never more sad. 'According to Virtue, these buttresses are those same fluxes, but they've been stripped of normal matter. They're naked, and as long as they have power, they're very nearly eternal.'

  If true, she thought, it would be the basis of another fantastic technology.

  Her mind shifted. 'What did Miocene think about his hypothesis?'

  'If that's true,' he said, 'it would be an enormous tool. Once we learned how to duplicate it, of course.'

  She waited for a moment, then asked, 'What about Till?'

  Locke didn't seem to hear her question. Instead, he mentioned, 'Virtue was worried. After he offered his speculation, he told everyone that stealing energy from Marrow's core was the same as stealing it from the buttresses. We could weaken the machinery, and eventually, if we weren't careful, we might even destroy Marrow and the ship.'

  Washen listened, and she didn't.

  Their car had passed through a quick series of demon doors and slowed to a near stop, and suddenly the tunnel around her opened up, revealing the diamond blister below, the bridge thick and impressive at its center, and Marrow visible on every side. She thought she was prepared for the darkness, but it surprised her regardless. The entire world had swollen since she was last here, and it had fallen into a deeper dusk, countless lights sparkling on its iron face, each little light plainly visible through a hot, dry atmosphere.

  Marrow was one vast, uninterrupted city.

  And despite being warned, Washen felt a sudden sadness.

  'Till listened to Virtue's worries,' Locke reported. 'Listened to every one of them, and he looked concerned throughout. But do you know what he said to that man? What he said to all of us?'

  Obeying some inaudible command, their car dove toward the bridge, toward an open shaft. Toward home.

  'What did Till say?' Washen muttered.

  '"These buttresses are too strong to be destroyed that easily," he told us. "I'm certain of it." Then he showed his smile to each of us. You know how he smiles. "They're simply too strong," he repeated. "That would be too easy. The Builders don't work that way . . ."'

  Forty-eight

  FROM THE BREATHING mouth came a long whistle, hard and sharp, plainly excited. Pamir growled, 'Quiet.'

  As if it were necessary; as if anyone could possibly hear them inside here.

  'She comes,' said the translator fused to the harum-scarum's chest. 'I see the false Master. One little shot, and she is forever removed.'

  'No,' said Pamir. Then he announced to everyone, 'We will wait. Wait.'

  He was speaking to five hundred humans, including seven of the surviving captains, and perhaps twice as many harum-scarums. But this was a mammoth facility, and most of them were busy attacking the last-moment work with their ad hoc training and a professional desperation. Booby traps had to be found and disabled. Machinery that hadn't worked in billions of years had to be awakened, in secret. And this team's actions had to be married to the actions of twenty other teams, each operating at a key note, everyone pushing to meet a timetable that looked more fanciful with each worried breath.

  Again, the harum-scarum said, 'I will shoot her'

  'Shoot yourself,' Pamir snapped.

  That was a savage, dangerous insult; suicide was the ultimate abomination.

  But the alien had known Pamir for a long time, respecting him in a joyless fashion. He decided to absorb the insult without comment. Instead, an enormous finger pointed to a tiny knot of data moving rapidly down the fuel line, and with a slow, reflective whisde, he told the human, 'This is the false Master's vehicle. It is. And with the reigning confusion, no one will miss her until it is too late. If you allow me—' 'Expose us?'

  Both mouths closed tight.

  Pamir shook his head, disgust mixed with a burning fatigue. 'Miocene isn't an imbecile. Mask your scan to make it look Wayward, then examine that car as it passes. She won't be on board. Even in a hurry, she knows better.'

  The alien made ready, big hands and an obstinate mind sending out a string of crisp instructions to hidden sensors.

  Pamir hunkered closer to the viewing port, watching the Waywards' steel vehicles rising and falling past their hiding place. Miocene's cap-car was a tiny fleck of hyperfiber, barely visible to the naked eye and past them in a half-instant. He waited another few moments, then asked, 'What did you see?'

  'A passenger.'

  Pamir nearly flinched. Then he thought to ask, 'What sort of passenger?'

  'Composed of shaped light,' the harum-scarum confessed. 'A holo in the false Master's likeness.'

  A single nod was the only gloating that Pamir allowed himself. Miocene probably slipped inside one of the empty troop cars, telling no one her whereabouts ... in case her enemies were waiting en route . . .

  The gloating quiet was interrupted by a sudden deep rambling.

  In the distance, humans and harum-scarums called out to each other, asking, 'An attack? Or another impact?' 'An impact,' barked several knowledgeable voices. 'How big?' 'How bad?'

  A fat comet had struck not far from Port Erindi, and scanning the early data, Pamir knew it was a huge blast. A record breaker. He fought the urge to call the Remoras, to order Orleans or whoever was left to bring up the shields again. But it was still too soon. 'Keep working,' he told everyone, including himself. And he stared at images stol
en from farther below, picking one of the steel machines at random, watching it plunging into the access tunnel's mouth, rushing past the waystation where Washen and her son had lingered, waiting for permission before vanishing into those impossible depths.

  Suddenly, with absolutely no warning, one of the team leaders whispered into his ear. 'We're ready here. The big valve is ours.'

  And in the next instant, another voice — the translated boast from a harum-scarum engineer — announced, 'We're prepared here. Against much greater odds, and unseen, and ahead of schedule.'

  Pamir let himself think: It's going to happen . . . !

  His heart responded, swelling and pounding hard against his throat, his voice nearly breaking when he asked the alien beside him, 'How are we?'

  'Close,' the whistle promised.

  A pause.

  The next whistle was a curse. 'A stranger's shit,' said the harum-scarum, an instinctive rage rising, then collapsing again.

  'What's wrong?' Pamir asked. 'Don't tell me it's the pumps . . .'

  His companion said, 'No.'

  A fat, spike-nailed thumb pointed, showing him that one of the rising vehicles was slowing in front of them, deploying antennae and sturdy lasers, armored soldiers already marshaling inside its injection airlocks.

  'My scan—' the harum-scarum moaned.

  'Or its a routine patrol,' Pamir offered. 'Or someone noticed their power being funneled away.'

  The alien moaned, saying, 'If it was me, I will shoot myself.'

  Pamir said, 'Fine.'

  He backed away from the viewing port and viewing screens, stepping out onto a gangway that he helped build just a century ago. People were specks, almost unnoticed in the darkest corners. The giant pumps looked close in the ancient gloom, and they were deceptively simple: slick balls and eggs of hyperfiber wrapped around machinery vaster than any heart, and fantastically strong, and durable enough to wait for billions of years before they took their first thunderous beat.

  This was the same pumping station that the captains had used as a blind. The Waywards had searched it thoroughly, and with good captainly tricks, they had tried to secure it. On occasion, they sent patrols. But there were only so many soldiers, and there were thousands of kilometers of fuel lines begging to be guarded, and there was a war to wage, and they were always too much in a hurry to dismande the sophisticated camouflage that Pamir had helped install.

  In a whisper, he asked his team, 'How soon?'

  'Ready,' said a few.

  'Soon,' others promised.

  Then he returned to the port and screens, estimating how soon the Waywards would be shaking his hand.

  'Ready,' said another voice. And another.

  The harum-scarum remarked, 'With what we have now, we can do it.'

  Fewer pumps than ideal, and not every valve in their control. But yes, they could do it. What he had dreamed up in Quee Lee's apartment and what had always felt slippery as a dream ... it was a genuine reality now . . . somehow . . .

  Both of the alien's mouths opened, and the air-breather whistled, 'We must now. Remove these monsters from the universe.'

  Pamir said nothing.

  Again, he looked through the port, watching the bug-shaped chunk of steel aligning itself for an assault. Then he glanced at a snoop screen. A bright sparkle marked another descending car, this one dropping faster, showing not so much as a breath of caution.

  Pamir told his ally, 'No.'

  Then he told every team in a thousand-kilometer radius, 'Finish your preparations. Do it now.'

  The alien gave out a sharp, furious whistle, the translator having the diplomatic sense not to explain what had just been said.

  'We're waiting,' Pamir repeated. 'Waiting.' Then to himself, under his breath, he muttered, 'This crazy trap needs to be a little more full.'

  Forty-nine

  NEARLY FIVE MILLENNIA had been spent making the climb to freedom. A strong soul accomplishes what can only be considered impossible, building a society out of nothing, then gaining her destiny as her fair reward. How else could Miocene look at this epic? Yet she found herself suddenly retracing her ascent, making the desperate long fall in what felt like the jump of an eye, the throb of the heart, too quickly to suffer even the littlest doubt. And all because a dead colleague and the closest thing to a friend sent her a few words, promising to meet her and tell her a story.

  Plainly, this was someone's trick.

  Miocene saw the obvious instantly, and instinctively.

  But even then, she left the security of her station, her decision made. Then the Remoras brought down the ship's own shields, and she began to understand what an enormous trap this could be. Yet she continued the plunge. Able to lead from anywhere, she spat out orders and directives and fierce encouragements and outright threats, helping make certain that the insurrection would be crushed shortly. Then she arrived victorious at the apex of the new bridge, stepping out of the empty hammerwing and toward the waiting car . . . and she hesitated, finding herself staring across the swollen gray face of Marrow, if only for an instant . . .

  The guard on duty — a square-faced man named Golden — stepped close and smiled up at the ship's Master. Then with a proud voice, he reported, 'I sent them straight down, madam. Straight on down.'

  She had to ask, "Who's that?'

  'Locke and his prisoner,' he answered, his tone asking in turn, 'Who else do you expect?' Miocene said nothing.

  Slowly, slowly, she pulled her eyes closed. But in her mind she could still see the cold lights of Marrow, and its black iron face. She saw them better with her eyes shut. And what she felt, if anything, was an infectious relief. And a jittery, infinite joy.

  If this was someone's ambush, she reasoned, then Washen was the bait. And Miocene reminded herself that she wasn't without resources, and tremendous power, and oceans of experience and cleverness, and cruelty, too.

  Every possibility was reviewed in succession. Then she made the same decision again, with a new resolve.

  Opening her eyes, she glanced at Golden, saying, 'Good,' without focusing on his smiling and proud and exceptionally foolish face.

  Miocene told the earnest man, 'Thank you for your help.'

  Then she stepped into the sealed, windowless car, sat in the first chair, and with a single word, she was falling again, fast and then faster, the weary old buttresses reaching through the wall and licking at her mind, making her feel, for just those sluggish few moments, wondrously and deliciously insane.

  THE TEMPLE ADMINISTRATOR will wore the long gray robes of her office and still fought against any force that might threaten to disrupt her life or her day. She rose to her feet, staring at the newcomers with a sputtering horror, then she crossed her arms, took a fierce quick breath, and exhaling with an obvious pain, said to Washen, 'No.' She snapped, 'You died a hero. Now stay dead!'

  Washen had to laugh out loud, replying, 'I've tried to be dead. I did my very best, darling.'

  It was Locke who stepped forward. He moved close enough to intimidate, then spoke with a soft rapid voice that left no doubt as to who was in charge. 'We need one of the temple's chambers. We don't care which. And you will personally bring your guests to us, then leave. Is that understood?'

  'Which guests—?'

  'The sad souls locked inside your library.' Washen leaked a smile.

  The woman opened her mouth, framing her rebuttal.

  But Locke didn't give her the chance. 'Or would you rather be reassigned, darling? Maybe to one of these heroic units heading up onto the hull.'

  The mouth pulled shut.

  'Is there a free chamber?' Locke asked.

  'Alpha,' the administrator allowed.

  'Then that's where we'll be,' he replied. And with a captain's decorum, he waited for the underling to turn and slink away.

  It was a short, illuminating walk to the chamber.

  Washen was prepared for changes, but the overcrowded and desiccated world outside remained outside. The hallways we
re nearly empty and exactly as she remembered them, complete to the potted flycatchers. And while the air was drier than before, and probably purified, it still managed to stink of Marrow: rusts and bug dusts and heavy metals, not to mention a subtle odor that could only be described as strangeness.

  A pleasant stink, she found herself thinking.

  The occasional parishioner bowed to Locke, then gawked at his mother.

  She noticed how everyone seemed equally thin, as if an orchestrated famine were in effect. But at least everyone was dressed in simple clean clothes that they hadn't made from their own flesh. A leftover Loyalist tradition? Or maybe hungry people couldn't heal quickly enough to make skinning themselves worthwhile.

  She didn't let herself ask.

  Suddenly impatient, Washen stepped into the chamber, her simple presence causing lights to awaken. The domed ceiling was exactly as she remembered it, pretending to be the sky, and behind the polished steel railing, the diamond likeness of the bridge was much the same. But the bridge was thicker and and stronger and better shielded than Aasleen's original plans, conduits filling two shafts, then merging at the old base camp: an armored thread just visible, clinging to the curved sky for perhaps ten kilometers, then vanishing again. The Spine.

  'Is this a model?' she asked.

  Locke had to look up, taking a moment to decipher the question. 'No,' he allowed. 'It's a holoprojection. Real time, and accurate.'

  Good.

  Then she looked at Locke, ready to thank him again. And to compliment him on everything that he had already done.

  A new voice interrupted them.

  'It is,' someone cried out. 'Washen!'

  Manka's voice, followed by Manka. And Saluki. Zale. Kyzkee. Westfall. Aasleen. Then she stared at the siblings. Promise with Dream beside her, as always. Both were shuffling forward, feet never quite leaving the floor. The legs and faces were the same, only thinner. There was a chill to their touch, and behind the chill, a desperate warmth, and a genuine happiness, and then a reflexive concern that Washen wasn't real or might vanish any moment.

  'I'm real, and I might get taken away,' she allowed.

  More than a hundred old captains hugged her or each other. Close whispering voices asked, 'How's the mutiny today?'