Mallow (30 page)

'I said those things. Yes.'

For lack of anything better, Washen smiled, and she said. 'Well, then. The best of luck to you.'

Miocene let herself show a grin. 'Good luck to both of us, you mean. The interior, as you see, seats two.'

The woman was brave, but she wasn't fearless or a fool. She had to flinch and think hard about her next breath, eyeing the Submaster for a long moment before asking, 'Why? Me?'

'Because I respect you,' Miocene replied, honestly and without qualms.

The dark eyes grew larger.

'And because if I order you to accompany me, you will. Now.'

Washen took a careful breath, and another. Then she admitted, 'I suppose all of that's true.' 'And truthfully, I need you.' That declaration seemed to embarrass everyone. To kill the silence, Miocene turned to Virtue, telling
him, 'Start the pro
cedures.' She paused. Then quietl
y, she added, 'As soon as we're on board.' The man looked ready to cry.

She didn't leave him the opportunity. With a crisp wave and a defiant stride, Miocene re
-
entered the car. Not for the first time, she thought how it resembled the Great Ship - a thick body with a hidden hollow sphere at its center.

To Washen, she said, 'Now, darling.'

The first-grade was obviously considering her next step, and everything else, too. Long, strong hands wiped themselves dry against her unifo
rm, and with a mixture of stiff
ness and grace, she bent over and climbed through the hatchway, then examined the twin seats, padded and set on greased titanium rails.
The seats would always keep their backs to the accelerations. As if to appreciate the technology, she touched the simple control panel, then the inner wall. The hand pulled away abruptly, and she said, 'Cold,' with a quiet little voice.

'Crude, chilly superconductors,' Miocene admitted.

Then the Submaster touched the panel, and as the hatch pulled itself shut, she said, 'Virtue.' She looked out at him and said, 'I trust you.'

The man was crying. Nothing but.

The hatch closed and sealed itself, and as the two women sat together, back to back, Washen said, 'You trust him, and you respect me, too.' She was securing her protective straps, and laughing. 'Trust and respect. From you, on the same day'

Miocene refused to look over her shoulder. She busied herself making last-instant checks, saying to the controls, 'You're more gifted than I am when it comes to other people. You can speak to the grandchildren, and the other captains . . . and that's a sweet skill that could prove an enormous advantage . . .'

Washen had to ask, 'Why is that an advantage?'

'I could explore the ship alone,' Miocene allowed. 'But if the worst has happened - if everything above us is dead and empty - then you, I think, Washen . . . you are the better person to bring home that terrible news . . .'

Twenty-four

Here was the
culmination of more than four thousand years of single-minded labor — two captains ready to throw themselves off Marrow. Washen found herself strapped into the primitive crash chair, part of her demanding some task, some worthwhile duty, even when she knew full well that there was nothing to do now but sit and wait and wish for the best.

With a crisp, dry voice, Miocene worked her way down a precise checklist.

Her mysterious companion might resemble Till, or Diu, but his voice was far too slow and uncertain to belong to either man. He spoke across an intercom, alternating, 'Good,' and 'Yes,' and,
'Nominal,' with little pained silences.

The captains sat back to back. Unable to see the Submaster's face, Washen found herself thinking about little else. It was the same cold, confident face that it had always been, and it wasn't.
Washen always marveled at how Marrow had changed that rigid woman. A metamorphosis showed in the wasted, haunted eyes, in the taut corners of the pained mouth. And when she spoke, as she did now, even a simple word felt infinitely sad, and a little profound.

'Initiate,' that sad voice commanded.

There was a pause.

Then the little man said softly, with resignation, 'Yes, madam.'

They were falling, accelerating down a dark, airless shaft. This wasn't a bridge, and it was never supposed to be. It was a vast piece of munitions, and everything depended on its accuracy. Descending to the starting point, to the electromagnetic breech, Miocene whispered technical details. Terminal velocity. Exposure to the buttresses. The transit time. 'Eighteen point three seconds.' Which was nearly as long as they spent inside the buttresses on their way down. But without the same levels of protection, or backup systems, or even a single field test beyond the laboratory.

The ugly cannonball stopped abruptly, then its thick walls began to hum. To crackle, and sputter, and seemingly ripple as the protective fields were woven tighdy around them.

Again, Miocene said, 'Initiate.'

There was no response this time. Would the man obey? But as she thought those words, Washen was slammed back into her seat, bone pressed against dense padding, gee forces mounting, tearing flesh and bursting blood vessels.

Then came the sensation of drifting.

A pleasant, teasing peace.

After leaving the shaft, there was perhaps a half second of streaking up through the last breaths of the atmosphere, a cluster of little rockets firing on the hull, correcting for the very thin winds. In her mind's eye, Washen saw everything: Marrow's storm clouds and cities and tired volcanoes falling behind while the slick sliver of the chamber wall descended on them. Then they struck the buttresses, and her eyes filled with random colors and senseless shapes, while a thousand incoherent, terrified voices screamed inside her dying mind.

Madness.

Eighteen point three seconds of nothing else.

Time dragged. That's what she promised herself when she managed to concentrate, carving a sensible thought out of that screaming chaos. It was a symptom of the buttresses, this compression of the seconds. Because if more than eighteen seconds had passed, they had simply missed their target, falling short, and now they were tumbling in a close, fatal orbit around Marrow.

No, we can't be, Washen whimpered.

The frightened voices lent her their fear, and a ragged wild panic took her by the throat, by the colon. Nausea came in one savage thrust. Washen bent forward as far as the padded straps allowed, and with her left hand she managed to yank the silver clock from its pocket, then open it, that sequence of practiced motions requiring w
hat seemed to be hours of relentl
ess work.

She stared at the fastest hand.

A solid click meant that a full second had passed.

Then, another.

Then her seat, and Miocene's, unlocked and slipped on the titanium rails, meeting at the opposite end of the little cabin, locking again with a crisp determination.

Washen looked up.

Swallowing a burning mouthful of bile and vomit, she stared up at where she had just been, and she saw herself restrained in an identical chair, her own face twisted in misery, gazing down, hair hanging loose and long, unlike Washen's bunned hair, and the mouth opening as if this hallucination were ready to offer a few tortured words.

Washen watched herself, and in rapt attention, listened.

But then they had pierced the buttresses, and a string of angry rockets fired beneath Washen, braking the vehicle as it plunged, she hoped, into the battered remains of the original bridge.

Impact.

Washen felt the car scrape hard against hyperfiber.
There was a sloppy shrieking on her right as pipes and boiling superconductors were stripped away. Then an instant of silence, followed by a second, deeper roar from her left, their car bouncing down the shaft.

Rockets barked again, killing momentum at all costs.

The final impact was abrupt and crushing, and it was over before her mind registered the barest pain.

The chair fell back into its original position.

A voice said, 'There.'

Miocene's voice. Then the Submaster fought her way out of her belts and made herself stand, holding her long sides as she sipped each breath, acting as if her ribs had been shattered.

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. Ever)' 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 th
at would fit and turn, and quietl
y, 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 expecta
ntly
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 abse
ntly
, taking a deep, deep breath.

Then she turned, and never mentioning the Waywards, she said, 'We've wasted enough time. Lets 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 wresding with one another.