Mallow (59 page)

Two men stood waiting. Virtue wept without dignity or the smallest composure. Till, in perfect contrast, was staring at Miocene, his cold expre
ssion growing colder as he quietl
y remarked, 'You don't have any appreciation for what you have done, Mother. None.'

'What I'm doing,' Miocene replied, 'is saving the ship. My ship. That's all that matters here. My ship!'

The boyish face stiffened.

Then, softened.

The bridge screamed beneath them, and it pulled, and the platform plunged a full meter, then caught itself.

Washen looked down. What resembled rain clouds at first glance were b
illowing columns of smoke, countl
ess fires started by the brutal, endless quakes that were tearing through the thick crust, shattering the iron plate along every weakness.

She looked up again.

A comforting hand fell on Virtue's shoulder, and Till said, 'Into the car.' He gave a soft shove, then added, 'If you wish, Locke. You can return with us, too.'

Locke straightened his back. He didn't reply.

'Then die here,' was Till's pronouncement. 'With the rest—'

Miocene lifted a hand.

Stuck into that swollen mass of flesh and nexus and bone was a small laser. It looked insubstantial. Worse than useless. Almost pathetic. But Washen knew that it could incinerate a man with a shaped flash, leaving nothing. And she knew from Miocene's face that she meant to kill her son.

The shot was never fired.

Another bolt of light came from above, evaporating her weapon and her hand. But instead of shock or pain, Miocene seemed filled with a wild, indestructible power. Bending forward, she screamed and drove with her legs, with her new bulk, slamming into her son exactly as the bridge twisted again, a seering of purple light obliterating her trailing leg.

Washen dropped down.

Then looked overhead.

She saw the Wayward soldier. Golden, was it? She saw him standing on a high catwalk, aiming the big laser with a professional calm. Quick bursts, too fast to count. Then she looked back at Miocene, watching as the woman wailed, vanishing in whiffs of boiled blood and white-hot ash.

Dying, she clung to her son.

Near death, she still managed to mutter, 'Till,' with a desperate voice. Soft, in the end. Doomed, and sorry. 'Please,' her boiling mouth whispered. And then, nothing.

A last surgical burst of light obliterated the head and the Masters mirrored cap, and late by a half-moment, her son turned to see the car and its sole occupant drop away without the slightest warning.

The bridge's machinery was failing. A safe-mode took Virtue racing downward, trying to save the precious car.

Miocene had delayed her son just enough.

Washen stared at Till, watching an impossible thought play itself out on that appealing face. How could this happen? What great purpose did it serve? In a voice meant for someone else, Till asked, 'Now what do I do?'

If there was a reply, Washen didn't hear it.

But something must have been heard, or at least thought. Because without hesitation,
Till flung himself into the open door, and a moment later, the door closed and the bridge jerked sideways one last time, it and the Spine shattering just beneath the camp's diamond blister, plunging sideways toward the burning face of Marrow.

Eventually the liquid hydrogen would fall.

Captain spoke about making plans. About taking cover, or perhaps finding a car that might survive the storm. But Washen didn't take part in the plan-making, occupying herself by sitting with her legs crossed, watching nothing but the slow patient turning of her clock's
little
hands.

Asaleen thought she was crazy.

Again, to himself, Locke spoke comfortably about death's embrace.

Promise, then Dream, tried to thank Washen for pulling them off Marrow. 'We never thought we'd be anywhere else again,' they confessed. 'And you did your best.'

Even Golden joined them, offering his weapon in surrender, then spending the next few minutes watching Marrow boil and explode.

Finally, Washen closed her clock.

And with a nonchalant importance, she rose.

Everyone watched as she stepped out into the open and looked up. But wasn't it too soon for the cold rain? Then they saw her waving at something overhead, and every captain and both of the Waywards looked up together, watching in stunned silence while a fleet of whale-shaped vessels began to slow, making ready for a hard landing.

Pamir was first to step out.

Perri and ten armed harum-scarums followed.

Aasleen immediately recognized Pamirs craggy face, and she laughed, and she said, 'What is this? Don't you know there's a flood coming?'

Pamir lifted his eyebrows, grinning. Then he took his first good look at Marrow.

'Oh, I turned off that flood.' he remarked in a casual voice. 'Long ago,' he said. 'A lake of hydrogen inside that big long tube of vacuum . . . well, it evaporates as it falls. Believe me, we swam through what's left of it, and we probably won't get two drops here.'

Sounding insulted, Dream asked Washen, 'What about your threat? About sending down that killing flood?'

'I'm not that cruel,' Washen replied. 'I don't murder helpless worlds.'

Pamir shook his head and threw a long arm around Washen, pulling her close. 'You wouldn't have?'

'I just like to tease worlds now and again,' she added, smiling and weeping in the same instant, thinking that never in her long, strange life had she ever felt so tired . . .

THE
BUILDERS

E
ach of my
engines screams and spits fire, and those titanic, withering energies translate into the gentlest of nudges. I hear nothing but a quiet coaxing voice trying to whisper me nearer to that swollen, dying sun. And I obey the voice. I obey even when I foresee a collision with its tenuous atmosphere. Even as I feel pricks and little deaths within my body, I obey the simple laws of motion and force and inertia, dipping nearer to the sun, and nearer . . . a bracing, wondrous fear taking hold of me . . .

An engine dies.

Th
en, two others.

Deep inside me, a series of hard bright explosions collapse fuel lines and fuse screaming pumps.
The
surviving engines continue to burn, but softer now.
The
gentle nudge has diminished to a gentle breath from behind and beside me.

But still, I fall toward the sun.

My fear loses its wonder.

Gradually and thoroughly, a wild panic seizes me.

With a sudden clarity, I watch the great war against my engines. Every act
of
violence is too small to matter, or slightly misplaced, or simply ill-timed. The cumulative effects are slow to gather, hard to perceive. Finally, in agony, I rally myself trying to come to the aid
of
my companions.

Perhaps in tiny ways, I am felt. Heard. Believed.

A Remora considers a thousand valves, and as I whisper my advice, she closes the only valve that does lasting good.

A magnetic bottle, billions
of
years old and never ill, fails abruptly, at the best possible moment, spewing shards
of
anti
-
iron into a spiking facility working at full throttle.

Human engineers assassinate AIs who won't listen to reason, then replace the machines at their posts.

Debris clogs a minor fuel line.

Harum-scarums attack my engines as if their brilliant fire and light are personal affronts to them.

One stubborn engine is tilted in the opposite direction, then fed all of the fuel that it can possibly consume.

And finally, the leech habitat is torn from the fuel tank's ceiling, then shoved crosswise into the gaping throat of an enormous fuel line . . .

Two more engines sputter, good as dead.

But still I can nearly taste the sun, feeling its heat and breath against my great skin . . . and a moon-sized lump of iron and nickel plunges into my side, cutting deep but leaving me intact . . . lending just enough momentum to keep me out here . . . to make me miss the sun by what, when I consider the vast distances that I have covered, is nothing . . .

I miss by nothing.

And a little later, still celebrating my very good fortune, I pass near a tiny and black and enormously massive something . . . and again, my trajectory changes . . . and peering past the curtain of stars and whirling planets. I can see where I will be going next . . .

Blackness, again.

The
sunless nothing, again.

And in a strange, almost unexpected fashion, I realize this is where I want to be . . .feeling as though I am happily falling toward home again . . .

Epilogue

'T
ry talking.'

'Hello?' said a sloppy, slow voice.

'Sorry. It's still too early, madam. I'm well aware. But you deserve to know what's happened, and what's happening now, and what you can expect when you get legs again. And a real voice. Not sounds made by a mechanical box.'

'Pamir?' she squeaked.

'Yes, madam.'

'Am I . . . alive, still . . . ?'

'We found your remains, and the other captains', too. Most of them, at least.' Pamir nodded, even though the patient couldn't see him. 'Your heads were stacked inside one of your
little
rooms. Waiting for trial, I suppose. If Miocene had had her way . . .'

'Where's Miocene?'

'Your best friend? Your favorite and most trusted colleague?' He allowed himself a harsh laugh, then admitted, 'Miocene died. And let's just leave it there for now. Explanations can wait a few days.'

'My ship?'

'Battered, but recovering. Madam.' Silence.

'Her mutiny managed to fail,' he promised. 'There are pockets of resistance. Gangs and loners, and that's about it. There's no way to bring up reinforcements now.'

'Who . . . who do I thank . . . ?'

Pamir offered silence.

'You?' she asked.

Again, silence.

Finally, betraying a stew of emotions, she said, 'Thank you, Pamir.'

'And Washen, too.'

A confused sound rose up from the box.
Then the Master muttered, 'I guess I don't understand very much. Do I?'

'Barely anything. Madam.'

A pause. Then, 'Who else do I thank?'

'The Remoras,' he said.'And the harum-scarums. With help from another hundred species, plus a few million machine intelligences, too.'

Silence.

Pamir continued, admitting to the Master,
'I found lots of cooperation. But to keep it, I had to make promises. Fat ones.'

A pause. Then, 'Yes?'

'We've got holes to fill among the captains' ranks, and elsewhere. I assured our new allies that they would be our first candidates—'

'Remoras?' she interrupted.

'"Everything that can think, can serve." That's been my
little
motto for the last few weeks. I thought it was best.' 'Harum-scarums? As captains?'

'If they want to stay on board. Yes, madam. Naturally'

'But why would they leave? Because a few sick officers tried to take my ship—?'

'Well, that's not really what's happening.' Pamir laughed again, adding,
'Everything is complicated, and most of the answers would take too long. But what you need to know, before anything ... we aren't following our planned course, I'm afraid—'

'What?'

'In fact, in another few millennia, we'll be passing out of the galaxy entirely. Moving in the general direction of the Virgo cluster, it seems.'

A glowering silence.

Then the mechanical voice asked, 'What about me?'

'What about you, madam?' 'Will I remain the Master?'

'Personally, I'm split on this issue.' Pamir took a dark satisfaction, each word delivered with a practiced care. 'You surrounded yourself, madam, with competent achievers, and you cultivated their ambition, and when a few captains turned on you, you were surprised. Unprepared, and incompetent, and flabbergasted.'

Angry silence.

'Miocene wanted to put you on trial. And I could do that. As acting Master, I have the authority, in principle, and with the general mood around here, I think you'd lose your precious chair. In a fair trial, or even if you were allowed every advantage.'

A pause. Then,
'All right, Pamir. What are your intentions?'

'We can't lose you. Not in the wake of any mutiny, and not with so many changes coming this quickly' He sighed, then added,
'Our ship needs continuity and a familiar face, and if you don't agree to reclaiming your chair — with some provisions — I will contrive some way to put your face and your big windy voice in front of the passengers and crew. Am I understood?'