The Well of Stars (21 page)
Authors: Robert Reed
Death is never a simple state. Not to philosophers, nor to a determined if rather limited biologist.
In a laboratory no bigger than a closet, Mere reached inside the burnt and blasted chunk of matter, finding neurons built along some alien logic. If this had been a human mind, she could have reanimated and interrogated it. If it belonged to any known alien, she might have managed the same trick, with patience. But despite similarities to a dozen known species, there was no easy path to progress. This was a sliver of a mind. There was no telling how large the original brain had been, or what its function had been, and if anything important had been filed away in this tiny corner of Self. But what else did Mere have to do today? What else was half as important as studying this prize? That was her attitude every morning, waking from a dream-rattled sleep for the next four thousand mornings, the same first thought bubbling out of her
“Today I’ll make sense of you, my friend. My fellow survivor.”
THE
OSMIUM
CONTINUED plunging deep into the Inkwell.
OSMIUM
CONTINUED plunging deep into the Inkwell.
At random intervals, Mere received updates from home—encrypted and cleverly disguised, each containing highly summarized accounts of what the captains saw and what the resident experts believed, at least a few years ago. The data were cut to the bone; information
meant noise, and any noise, no matter how well hidden, increased the chance of discovery. That was why the Inkwell charts were updated only occasionally, and even when limited to the changes from past charts, the updates were fantastically complicated—hundreds of cubic light-years full of threadlike rivers of ionized ice, many thousands of warm-moon and Mars-mass bodies, plus banks of dense black dust and clouds of frigid hydrogen that were gathered at their densest inside the Satin Sack. Each of those features had been carefully named, and all moved in relation to their neighbors as well as the rest of the Inkwell. Each river flowed with its own velocity while the masses of dust and gas gradually acquired new shapes, spinning on some grand axis or holding perfectly still, features gaining mass or losing their substance according to some thoroughly choreographed scheme that felt natural and planned, and at all times, deeply beautiful.
meant noise, and any noise, no matter how well hidden, increased the chance of discovery. That was why the Inkwell charts were updated only occasionally, and even when limited to the changes from past charts, the updates were fantastically complicated—hundreds of cubic light-years full of threadlike rivers of ionized ice, many thousands of warm-moon and Mars-mass bodies, plus banks of dense black dust and clouds of frigid hydrogen that were gathered at their densest inside the Satin Sack. Each of those features had been carefully named, and all moved in relation to their neighbors as well as the rest of the Inkwell. Each river flowed with its own velocity while the masses of dust and gas gradually acquired new shapes, spinning on some grand axis or holding perfectly still, features gaining mass or losing their substance according to some thoroughly choreographed scheme that felt natural and planned, and at all times, deeply beautiful.
Mere had been pushing through the Satin Sack for several months, far ahead of the Great Ship but gradually drifting closer to its course. One evening, just as she was rising into sleep, an update arrived inside the much-diluted beam of a navigational laser. The newest charts were included, along with an upbeat message from the Master Captain. “I can’t express how thankful I am to have your good eyes and mind serving us,” the golden face declared. “And don’t be a stranger, please.”
“Call home,” was the message’s true intent.
It had been more than a year since Mere had taken that risk, and then only to offer a minimal description of her latest trajectory. For many smart reasons, she had no intention of revealing her existence now, or for years to come, if necessary. When she had something to offer, of course she would speak. But despite twenty-hour workdays and a wealth of observations, nothing seemed quite urgent enough or peculiarly odd.
Nine days later, again at bedtime, a far-off laser caressed
the
Osmium,
its infrared beam too diffuse to be noticed by the casual observer.
the
Osmium,
its infrared beam too diffuse to be noticed by the casual observer.
Embedded inside the beam, wrapped within a package of photons too weak to melt a snowflake, were great volumes of new information. It was too soon for any message from the Great Ship, much less another complete chart update. The random schedule of transmissions had been decided ages ago, known only to the captains and her, and this was an entirely unscheduled event.
Someone was playing a game, Mere suspected.
But the encryptions were proper, and a hundred predetermined cues added to the authenticity. She stored the transmission, isolated it, then asked for a volunteer among the resident AIs. “Examine it,” she told one of the semisentient entities. “And tell me what you think.”
The AI was thorough and exacting, and it was very slow. Mere had time to eat a tiny, cold-blooded dinner—a taste of sugar and a bite of fat giving her refrigerated body the energy necessary to survive the night. Then instead of sleeping, she continued working on a project that had consumed the last few hours of this particular day.
She had recovered more than just that neural mass from the polypond vessel. Twists and slivers of plastic and alloyed metals, diamond shards and low-grade hyperfiber gave subtle clues about their collective purpose. Even their pattern in space was important. By replaying the collision and matching it with the debris field, Mere had built a reasonably accurate model of both the polypond ship and its death: simple fusion engines and big tanks full of liquid hydrogen, plus a minimal shield protecting a spherical compartment quite a bit larger than her own ship. The bolide—probably a chunk of cometary ice—had torn through the shield before delivering a glancing blow to the ship’s heart. The resulting blast had scattered debris across billions of kilometers, and everything made perfect sense except for the problem of what the ship had been carrying.
The polyponds were self-maintaining Gaian worlds.
Supposedly.
Like old trees in a great forest, the largest of them dominated their local landscape, while the babies were born in dense little groves removed from the rest. But unlike trees, individuals such as the Blue World seemed able to generate their own energy. With a whim, they could build continents and populate them with whatever organisms they felt they needed. Which begged the question:
What products would they trade with one another?
It could be politics, Mere reasoned. Neural bodies representing some mother world would journey out to visit the neighbors, like emissaries, achieving in person what coded communications couldn’t accomplish.
It could be a slow, proven means of teaching one another.
Or it was a ritual of great age and undeniable importance: an exchange of tissues and minds, perhaps tied into some unending process that won friendship and solidarity from all of the polyponds.
Or it was nothing but gossip, ugly and simple.
From her vantage point, with her limited eyes, Mere couldn’t see far or particularly well. Like a hiker in a deep forest, she had a wondrous view of the trail under her feet, but the gloom kept most of the woods hidden. Inside the Inkwell, and particularly now, deeply embedded within the Satin Sack, she felt as if she was halfway blind. Features barely half a light-year distance had to be enormous to be seen, or very bright, and nothing here seemed particularly big or brilliant.
Where did the polypond ship begun its voyage? And to where was it heading when it was killed?
Good candidates were tough to find, answers impossible. But during these last few weeks, as Mere dove into the increasingly dense Sack, she was remembering what she had noticed aeons ago while walking through a Tilan jungle: Trees were only the largest, showiest citizens, and
no matter how impressive, they were always outnumbered a thousandfold by things tiny, and, in their own way, quite astonishing.
no matter how impressive, they were always outnumbered a thousandfold by things tiny, and, in their own way, quite astonishing.
Scanning the nearby blackness, she was making her own thorough map of objects too tiny and too distant for the captains to notice. Everywhere she looked, she saw the telltale signs of little machines working in patient cold ways. Sometimes her ship moved in unexpected directions, betraying the touch of a small mass close enough to give her a faint, brief tug. Just as her own feeble mass was tugging at each of them.
Another stew of problems, that.
“What am I to think?” she muttered quietly to the dead caramelized lump. “Is there anything here that bites or stings?”
She laughed for a moment, softly. Then her thoughts began to wander, and for the first time in months, Mere found herself thinking about one of her favorite Tilan husbands—the great genius of Creation. Which was when her slow-minded AI announced finally, “I am finished with my work.”
“Is it genuine?”
“The message is. Yes.”
“But is it interesting?”
There was a pause. It was a long, thoughtful pause according to a machine’s compressed sense of time. Then the AI reported, “This is a fascinating message from the Great Ship, I believe.”
Washen had sent the communication, not the Master Captain. Just that was an alarming detail. The holo of the First Chair smiled at her good friend, and with a cool and strong but decidedly puzzled voice, she reported, “Some of these baby polyponds—the buds—are picking themselves up and moving.”
An elaborate new chart began to unfold before her.
“You probably can’t see them yet,” Washen mentioned. “It’s happening at the Sack’s farthest reaches first. And of
course, we have some difficulty seeing the other side of the Sack, so we can’t be sure what’s there. But what we do know is an enormous surprise.”
course, we have some difficulty seeing the other side of the Sack, so we can’t be sure what’s there. But what we do know is an enormous surprise.”
Mere focused on the chart, and in particular, on one of the little polyponds. A vast fusion engine had grown from one hemisphere, and the entire body was accelerating at a brutal cost. Just a glance showed her how much energy was involved, and a second hard look told her the eventual velocity and at what point it would intersect with the Great Ship.
“These are the most distant buds,” Washen repeated. Then with a friendly grin, she added, “But you can see the implications for yourself, I’m sure.”
Mere nodded.
“So what do you think?” asked a voice speaking across great reaches of cold and darkness. “Any ideas?”
Again, she nodded.
“I’m not all that surprised,” Mere whispered to herself. Then she laughed at herself, adding, “But why am I not surprised? Now that’s the question worth answering!”
Every morning, Washen slipped free of her clothes and abandoned the little schooner, swimming until she reached the point where there was nothing to see but the jade-colored sky and the smooth, empty, and utterly flat face of the ocean. Except for the occasional faint cloud, the sky was empty, and besides her body and its resident microbes, the water was nearly devoid of life. Waste heat from factories and reactors warmed the surface waters. For the last hundred millennia, these deep caverns had been left immersed in darkness. The illusory sun was an enormous expense, and building it for a single person was
extraordinary, and of course she had fought the entire concept. For five months, practically from the day that the emissary died, Washen dismissed every suggestion of a holiday. But it wasn’t only Pamir who had pushed her into this empty time. The Master Captain argued, “You’ve worn yourself to dust, darling.” Speaking at the last banquet, gazing out at every captain, the Master shook her head soberly, reminding her audience, “We need to make ourselves fresh and ready for what comes. But a few of us, I’m afraid, are working our finite souls into a frail, stupid, and useless kind of numbness.” Then she pointed an accusing finger at her First Chair, adding, “I order you to take time off. Now. Turn off your nexuses, darling. Peel away that uniform. And for the sake of the ship and yourself, get some rest!”
extraordinary, and of course she had fought the entire concept. For five months, practically from the day that the emissary died, Washen dismissed every suggestion of a holiday. But it wasn’t only Pamir who had pushed her into this empty time. The Master Captain argued, “You’ve worn yourself to dust, darling.” Speaking at the last banquet, gazing out at every captain, the Master shook her head soberly, reminding her audience, “We need to make ourselves fresh and ready for what comes. But a few of us, I’m afraid, are working our finite souls into a frail, stupid, and useless kind of numbness.” Then she pointed an accusing finger at her First Chair, adding, “I order you to take time off. Now. Turn off your nexuses, darling. Peel away that uniform. And for the sake of the ship and yourself, get some rest!”
It was an order that Washen simply couldn’t accept.
Pamir repeated the argument on several occasions. He was stubbornly persuasive, and she was charmingly evasive. “I’m coping. I’m sane. Test me, darling. Any way you wish, and I promise, you’ll go away pleased.”
Then he turned blunt, bordering on defiant, and Washen leaned against good rational arguments. “I can’t leave my job now,” she professed. “Just today, another fifteen polypond nurseries are moving. And those are the ones we can optically resolve. At last count, fifty thousand buds are on a rendezvous course with us.”
“A rendezvous that won’t happen for years,” Pamir mentioned.
“While the grown polyponds have stopped talking to us,” she continued, nothing about her voice or manner betraying the true depth of her worries. “And while the Blue World and several dozen other adults are on the move, too.”
“Listen to your own propaganda,” he countered. “We’re dealing with an isolated species of committed hermits who have no choice but to deal with us, and who have done everything they promised to help our voyage.”
She shook her head. “What happened to the famous Pamir paranoia?”
“When I need it, I’ll bring it out to dance.”
Washen laughed for a long moment.
“Are you done?”
“Hardly,” she promised.
Pamir bristled, saying nothing.
Then Washen continued laying out the obvious dangers as well as her meaty fears. “Most of this is conjecture. We know nothing, and so everything is possible. And we’re doing just about everything we can do, preparing ourselves for whatever we can imagine.”
“We’ll win any war,” Pamir muttered.
“But doing just about everything isn’t doing everything, and don’t even pretend that we can imagine all the possibilities—”
“I’m not talking,” he grumbled.
“Thank you,” she snarled.
“When did you sleep last?”
“Fifty minutes ago,” she reported.
“For how long?”
Washen felt a knife in her stomach. But she kept smiling, and with only the barest tension, she added, “Ten-minute naps can accomplish worlds. If you know how to space them.”
“If you know,” he echoed.
She couldn’t linger and debate. Washen had intelligence reports begging to be digested, half a dozen mood campaigns to launch, and a huge proposal from Aasleen to study. At her prompting, the chief engineer had devised the means to make the ship’s enormous rocket nozzles into telescopes. Thin mirrors would be applied after every burn, focusing mechanisms eating the starlight and correcting the clumsy reflections until they could be trusted. As many as five engines might be employed, each vast and capable of being tilted at relatively steep angles, and working with the existing telescope fields on the
ship’s trailing face, they could theoretically peer farther into the cosmos than any other array in the galaxy.
ship’s trailing face, they could theoretically peer farther into the cosmos than any other array in the galaxy.
“Of course every time we fire an engine, we’ll have to rebuild the telescope,” Aasleen mentioned, skepticism mixed with the occasional damning figures. “And we don’t dare try this now, since we’re shooting off little burns every few weeks.”
The tunnel through the Inkwell was open and empty. The polyponds weren’t speaking to them anymore, but the forward-facing telescopes saw a clean, well-scrubbed path through the center of the Satin Sack. Little burns meant they were on course. The barest nudge today meant falling down the middle of the path, not glancing against any edge.
“But still,” the chief engineer continued. “This has me wondering. Why invest time and energy to look back at where we’ve been? What are you thinking? That someone is following us?”
“I have no idea.”
“But you do have an idea,” Aasleen pressed. “I lived on Marrow. For a good long while, that was my home. And, Madam First Chair, I know exactly what this obsession is about.”
“Whatever is true,” Washen began. Then her voice lost its way, and her eyes closed, and after a moment, she asked, “Wouldn’t you want to know what’s out there?”
“No, I don’t think I would like to know.”
The women shared a grim little laugh. Then the meeting ended with an obligatory discussion about the polyponds and motives. Aasleen offered one fresh and incredible suggestion, but before Washen could take it seriously, she dismissed her proposal for a hundred thorough reasons. Then she repeated what had always been the official hypothesis. “We’re talking about children,” she reminded Washen. “The buds just want a close look at us. That’s all.”
Except the Blue World, and the several of the other full-grown polyponds, were climbing after them, too.
“Old doesn’t mean incurious,” the chief engineer joked.
“Yes it does,” Washen joked, then sent her friend away, skipping her next scheduled sleep, preferring to use her scarce time to study a tangle of social projections and poll results and crew reports and rumor studies. Then it was suddenly tomorrow, and one of her nagging nexuses reminded her of another key appointment. She couldn’t be late. In a tiny swift and unmarked cap-car, she arrived at the correct apartment in a matter of minutes. The door greeted her warmly and explained that her son had been detained. “But breakfast is ready in the Marrow room,” the voice added. “Locke says to go and make yourself comfortable.”
She went there, but comfort was nearly impossible.
Alone, she sat at the edge of the lava field. To re-create the life cycles of the Marrow creatures, Locke had flooded one corner of the big room with liquid iron. The succession process had barely begun. Beneath a dim gray sky, Washen claimed a simple chair woven from fire-weeds and jeweled beetles, and she ate most of a hammerwing while her mind leaped from nexus to nexus, dealing with a hundred little jobs before a voice—a distinct and quite familiar voice—declared, “Here is something that you need to understand, dear.”
Washen looked up to find a dead woman standing before her.
The narrow face grinned, enjoying her surprise. Then Miocene stepped closer, looking like a suffering woman or an exceptionally vigorous ghost. Her flesh was gray and smoky. Her uniform was composed of Marrow materials, lacking the brilliance and endurance of Washen’s clothes. The only First Chairs that the ship had ever known stared at one another in the evening glare, and the standing woman said, “I worked hard, always. Everything I earned came from my strength and my deep determination, and all that endless work.”
The sitting woman flinched.
“Since you’re the best at a thousand jobs,” the dead woman continued, “you are smart to do them all for yourself.”
Washen struggled to stand.
“What do you think?” Miocene continued. “That I was an insufferable bitch through the whole of my life?”
Washen woke, finding a hand upon her shoulder and Locke saying, “Sorry. I let you sleep, and our time’s done.”
“What time is it?” she muttered, momentarily confused.
Through a hundred nexuses, she learned the name of this particular moment. And then the moment was gone, left behind and lost, and that’s when she finally talked herself into taking the vacation.
IT WASN’T ENOUGH just to silence her buried nexuses. Pamir had agreed, and with a calm insistence, he added, “You also need to be somewhere without people. Without crew or passengers, or me.”
“I’ll miss you,” she mentioned.
“We barely see each other,” he reminded her, just enough of a barb in the words to make his disgust plain. Then he proposed an itinerary for an unusual, one-of-a-kind holiday.
“The Grand Ocean,” he began.
An image took hold of her. She laughed, interrupting him to ask, “Why not just a little pond in an unlit room? Wouldn’t that be just as dark and alone?”
“We’ll light the sky for you,” he promised.
The waste made her queasy.
“And while the cavern’s lit,” he continued, “Osmium’s troops can search for secret colonies and illegal adventurers. So there is a good purpose in this business, other than keeping the ship’s head sane.”
The Grand Ocean was not a single cavern; it was a vast array of linked caves that happened to lie at the same depths inside the ship. The first humans mapped the great volume, and then flooded it with melted ice from a hundred
higher caverns. The Ocean’s surface area was larger than the Earth’s. Reaching more than a hundred kilometers deep, it was the biggest body of water on the ship and bigger than most of the galaxy’s other oceans, too. And it was empty. Except for a tiny quantity of dissolved minerals and salt, it was nothing but pure, cold, and unlit water, kept in reserve for the homeward leg of the ship’s voyage. Except for the rare autotrophic bacteria, nothing lived in this realm. Just with her presence, Washen had nearly doubled the bioload of the entire sea.
higher caverns. The Ocean’s surface area was larger than the Earth’s. Reaching more than a hundred kilometers deep, it was the biggest body of water on the ship and bigger than most of the galaxy’s other oceans, too. And it was empty. Except for a tiny quantity of dissolved minerals and salt, it was nothing but pure, cold, and unlit water, kept in reserve for the homeward leg of the ship’s voyage. Except for the rare autotrophic bacteria, nothing lived in this realm. Just with her presence, Washen had nearly doubled the bioload of the entire sea.
She hadn’t swum so much since childhood. Every morning for the last thirty mornings, Washen had practiced a variety of strokes, muscles gradually relearning the rhythm and feel of pressing against the water. Then the swimming became unconscious, and she could push her ageless long body to its limits, steady hard strokes eventually making her gasp and giggle.
Thinking about the Great Ship wasn’t allowed—at least not until the long swim home. And when she did think of large subjects, she kept her mind fixed on the broadest matters, no little jobs or urgent timetables nipping at her now. In that seemingly infinite span of water, Washen kept finding a sweet comfort: the ship’s size and age, and the unimaginable distances that it had crossed, always on its own. She loved this glorious orb of high technology and simple stone, and how could she not feel a little foolish to worry about threats, real or imagined?
Her schooner called to her with the only nexus she allowed herself—a simple navigational beacon whispering, “This way, yes. This way.” Back on her temporary home, she prepared a huge meal and ate all of it, and she raised the sails with her increasingly strong back and arms. The artificial sun had darkened her limbs. A steady wind always rose by midday, carrying her for another few kilometers before the sun dropped and darkness descended. But it wasn’t the perfect black that ruled here normally. Pamir had painted a starscape both
odd and familiar. Without nexuses, Washen couldn’t feel sure about its origins; but when she looked at the smears of light and occasional feeble star, she realized that she was gazing at the galaxies of the Virgo cluster—a vast realm of suns and unnamed worlds, gas clouds and raw energy that might, in many millions of years, meet the Great Ship.
odd and familiar. Without nexuses, Washen couldn’t feel sure about its origins; but when she looked at the smears of light and occasional feeble star, she realized that she was gazing at the galaxies of the Virgo cluster—a vast realm of suns and unnamed worlds, gas clouds and raw energy that might, in many millions of years, meet the Great Ship.
Alone, Washen would hold long, elaborate conversations with herself, enjoying the sound of her own voice and the quick well-rested thoughts that slipped between the words.
She slept hard for six or even seven hours at a stretch—the longest uninterrupted sleep she could remember—and she woke rested, alert eyes gazing across an emptiness of quiet water that couldn’t seem more lovely.
On the thirty-first morning, she swam again.
At first, Washen lay on her back, one arm after the other reaching over her head, swift hands cutting into the water and yanking hard. When she felt warm and loose, she turned over onto her belly, and like a happy porpoise, she did a rolling stroke, browned arms reaching together as the body bent like a wave, every muscle working with an instinctive grace, pointed feet delivering the final hard kick.
It was an expensive stroke for a human body. Eventually she collapsed into a simple crawl, from time to time pausing, looking back over her shoulder. The horizons were far away, but her boat was a little thing, and she had only good human eyes to look across all that bright smooth water.
Once the masts and folded sails had vanished, she turned for home.
With a simple patient breaststroke, Washen made the return voyage, her tanned face held out of the water and her long black hair streaming behind her. Quietly, she talked to herself. About nothing, usually. She spoke to
dead people and lost lovers, and sometimes she imagined the grandchildren whom she had left down below, fighting for their lives on Marrow.
dead people and lost lovers, and sometimes she imagined the grandchildren whom she had left down below, fighting for their lives on Marrow.
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