Mallow (25 page)

The sky fell dark.

Sensing the perfect darkness, the vault opened itself, revealing a new sky and a younger world. Marrow was suddenly barren and smooth, and it was covered with a worldwide ocean of bubbling, irradiated iron.

The audience found itself standing on that ocean,
unwarmed, watching an ancient drama play itself out. The Builders' enemies appeared.

Without warning, the hated Bleak squirmed their way through the chamber's walls, emerging from the co
untless access tunnels - insectl
ike cyborgs, each one enormous and cold and frighteningly swift. Like angry jackwasps, they dove at Marrow, spitting out gobs of antimatter that slammed into the molten surface. Scorching white-hot explosions rose up and up. Liquid iron swirled and lifted, then collapsed again. In the harsh shifting light, Washen glanced at her son, trying to measure his face, his mood. Locke was spellbound, eyes wide and his mouth ajar, his muscular body drenched with a glossy, almost radiant perspiration. Almost every face and body was the same. Even Miocene was enthralled. But she was staring at Till, not at the spectacle overhead, and if anything, her rapture was worse than the others'. While her son, in stark contrast, seemed oddly unmoved by these glorious, holy images.

A hyperfiber dome burst from the iron.

Lasers fired, consuming a dozen of the Bleak. Then the dome dove under the iron again, whale-fashion.

The Bleak brought reinforcements, then struck again. Missiles carried antimatter deep into the iron, seeking targets. Marrow shook and twisted, then belched fire and searing plasmas. Maybe the Bleak had won, killing the last of the Builders. Maybe the Great Ship was theirs. But the Builders' revenge was in place. Was assured. The Bleaks' forces pressed on, filling the narrow sky with their furious shapes.
Then the buttresses ignited, bringing their blue-white glare. Suddenly the monsters seemed tiny and frail. Before they could flee, the lightning storm - the Event — swept across the sky, bright enough to make every eye blink, dissolving every wisp of matter into a plasma that hung overhead as a superheated mist that would persist for millions of years, cooling as Marrow contracted and enlarged again, the world beating like a great slow heart, cooling itself gradually, a temporary crust covering the blistering iron.

A billion years passed in a moment.

The Bleaks' own carbon and hydrogen and oxygen became Marrow's atmosphere and its rivers, and those same precious elements slowly gathered themselves into butter bugs and virtue trees, then became the wide-eyed children standing in the present, in that natural depression, weeping in the deep, perfect darkness.

On a signal, the canopy was torn open, the gold foil splitting and falling in great long sheets that shimmered in the skylight.

Washen opened her watch, measuring the minutes.

Into that wide-eyed present, Miocene called out, 'There is more. Much more.' Her voice was urgent. Motherly. She stared only at Till, explaining,
'Other recordings show how the ship was attacked. How the Builders retreated into Marrow. This lump of iron . . . this is where they made their final stand . . . whoever they were . . . !'

A hundred thousand bodies stirred, making a softly massive sound.

Till wasn't awestruck. If anything, he seemed merely pleased, grinning as if amused by this vindication of a vision that needed no vindication.

For a slim moment, their eyes met. Then obeying some unspoken pact, mother and son looked away again. Indifference in one face; in the other, a wrenching pain.

The pained face glared at the sky. 'We never see the Builders themselves,' Miocene announced. 'But this thing, this gift that Washen and I have brought to you . . . it's given us a better, fuller understanding of the species . . .'

Till contemplated the same sky, saying nothing.

'Listen to me,' Miocene cried out, unable to contain her frustrations. 'Don't you understand? The Event that trapped us here, in this awful place . . . the Event was an ancient weapon. An apocalyptic booby trap that we probably triggered ourselves by sending our teams across Marrow . . . and that might have . . . probably did . . . kill and consume everyone above us, leaving the ship empty, and us trapped here . . . !'

Washen imagined a hundred billion vacant apartments and the long ghosdy avenues and seas turned to a lifeless steam; once again, the ship was a derelict, plying its way blindly among the stars.

If true, it was a horrible tragedy.

Yet Till's reaction was different, singular. 'Who is trapped?' he called out, his voice carrying farther than his mother's, buoyed up with a smooth, unnerving calm. 'I'm not trapped. No believer is. This is exactly where we belong.'

Miocene's eyes betrayed her anger.

Till conspicuously ignored her, shouting to the audience, 'We are here because the Builders called to the captains. They lured the captains to this great place, then made them stay, giving them the honor to give birth to us!'

'That's insane,' the Submaster growled.

Washen scanned the crowd, searching for Diu. Again and again, she would recognize his features in a Wayward's face, or eyes, or his nervous energy. But not the man himself. And they needed Diu. An intermediary with an intimate knowledge of both cultures, he could help everyone . . . and why hadn't Diu been invited to this meeting . . . ?

A cold dread took Washen by the throat.

'I know where you got this nonsense.' Miocene said the words, then took a long step toward Till, empty hands lifting into the air. 'It's obvious. You were a boy, and you stumbled across a working vault. Didn't you? The vault showed you the Bleak, and you hammered together a ridiculous story . . . this crazy noise about the Builders being reborn . . . and you convenie
ntly
at the center of everything . . .'

In a mocking, almost pitying fashion,
Till grinned at his mother.

Miocene raised her hands still higher, and she spun in a slow circle, a majestic rage helping her scream, 'Understand me! All of this is a lie!'

Silence.

Then Till shook his head, assuring everyone, 'I didn't find any vault or artifact.' He made his own turn, proclaiming, 'I was alone in the jungle. Alone, and a Builder's spirit came to me. He told me about the ship and the Bleak. He showed me everything that this vault contains, and more. Then he made me a promise: when this long day ends, as it must, I will learn my destiny, and your destinies as well . . . !'

His voice trailed off into the enraptured silence.

Locke unfastened the umbilical from the vault, and glancing at Washen, his flat, matter-of-fact voice told her, 'We'll bring the usual payment to Happens River.'

Miocene roared.

'What do you mean? The usual payment . . . ? But this is the best artifact yet!'

The Waywards gazed at her with a barely restrained contempt.

'This one functions. It remembers.' The Submaster was stabbing at the air, reminding everyone, 'The other vaults were just empty curiosities!'

Till said, 'Exactly.'

Then, as if it were beneath their leader to explain the obvious, Locke stepped forward, telling them, 'Vaults are usually crypts. They hold the Builders' souls. And the ones you sold us were empty because their souls have found better places to reside.'

Till pulled his blood-and-piss mask back over his face again, hiding everything but his bright eyes.

Every Wayward repeated the motion, a great rippling reaching to the top of the amphitheatre. And Washen had to wonder if this elaborate meeting, with all of its pagen-try and rich emotion, was intended not for a hundred thousand devoted souls, but for two old and very stubborn captains.

With his face obscured, Locke approached his mother.

A premonition made her mouth dry.

'Where is he?' she inquired.

Her son's eyes changed. Softened, sweetened.

'His soul is elsewhere now,' he replied, as a Wayward should. Then he gestured at the hard iron ground.

'Elsewhere?'

'Eight years ago.
'There was a sadness in his body and his voice. 'There was a powerful eruption, and he was taken.'

Washen couldn't speak, or move.

A warm hand gripped her by the elbow, and a caring voice asked, 'Are you all right. Mother?'

She took a breath, then told the truth.

'No, I'm not all right. My son's a stranger, my lover's dead, and how should I damn well feel . . . ?'

She pulled free of his hand, then turned away.

Miocene - the cold, untouchable Submaster - dropped to her knees on the hard iron, hands clasped before her weeping face. Their promising mission was ending with this. With Miocene pleading.

She said,
'Till,' with genuine anguish.
'I'm so very, very sorry, darling. I was wrong, hitting you that way . . . and I wish you would try to forgive me . . . please . . . !'

Her son nodded for a moment, saying nothing.

Then as he turned, preparing to leave, Miocene used her final plea.

'But I do love the ship,' she told him. And everyone.
'You were wrong then, and you're still wrong. I love and cherish the ship more than you ever could! And I'll always love it more than I love you, ungrateful little bastard . . . !'

Twenty-one

A
carde of
captains and gifted architects had designed the Grand Temple, and for a thousand years the best artisans had labored over it, while every adult Loyalist gave time and willing hands to its construction. Even half-finished, the Temple was a beautiful structure. Six gold-faced domes were arranged in a perfect circle. Graceful parabolic arches of tinted steels straddled the domes, riding higher and higher on each other's backs. The central tower was the tallest structure on Marrow, and the deepest. Its foundation already reached a full kilometer into the cold iron, and in its basement was a reservoir of pure water where the occasional neutrino would collide with a willing nucleus, the resulting explosion producing a lovely cone of light that proved to priests and to children what every Loyalist needed to accept without question: Marrow was a small part of a much greater Creation, a Creation invisible to the eye but not to the believing mind.

The Wayward defector had asked to be brought to
the temple, which was a perfectl
y ordinary request.

But the Submaster had reviewed the field reports as well as the transcripts of both official interrogations, and the only certainty was that nothing else about this defection was ordinary, much less simple.

The temple administrator was a nervous woman made more so by events. Wearing the soft gray robes of her office and a tortured expression, she greeted Miocene with a crisp, 'Madam,' and a cursory bow, then blurted out, 'It is an honor,' even as she prepared to complain what a great disruption this business was.

Miocene didn't give her the opportunity. Firmly and not too
gently
, she said, 'You've done a marvelous job, so far.'

'Yes, madam.'

'So far,' she repeated, reminding her subordinate that failure was always just one misstep away. Then with a softer voice, she asked, 'Where's our guest?'

'In the library.'

Of course.

'He wants to see you,' the administrator warned. 'He practically demands that I bring you to him.'

They were standing at one of the minor entranceways, the heavy door carved from a single virtue tree, ancient and gigantic. Because she refused to be rushed by anyone, Miocene paused, letting one hand caress the old wood, dark as clotted blood and perforated with spongelike holes where nodules of battery fats had been. Her guards — a pair of trunklike men with quick, suspicious eyes - stood nearby, watching the quiet side street. For an instant, Miocene's mind was elsewhere. She found herself thinking about the ship, and in particular, her wood-lined apartment not five hundred meters from the Master's quarters.

Then she blinked and gave a sigh, feeling a familiar little sadness, and a knot of secret fears . . .

'Well, then,' she muttered, straightening her back, then the creases of her uniform. 'Take me to our new friend.'

Public services were being held in each of the six main chambers. Citizens elected their priests, and as a result, each had his own style and perspective. Some spoke endlessly about the Great Ship. Its beauty, its grace; its unfathomable age, and its endless mystery. Others readied parishioners for the glorious day they would meet their first aliens. And an ecletic few dwelled on more abstract and far-reaching topics: the stars and living worlds and the Milky Way, and the vast universe that dwarfed everything that humankind could see and touch or even pretend to comprehend.

One service was wrestling with such cosmic wonders. A satin-voiced
gentle
man was singing praises of G-class suns.
'Warm enough to bring life to more than many worlds at a time,' he called out, 'and long enough lived to feed a creative evolution. Our home world, the great Earth, was born beside such a golden sun. Like the seed of a virtue tree, it was. It is. And our universe is full of billions of seeds. Life in its myriad forms is everywhere. Life thick and life lovely, and life forever.'