The Well of Stars (38 page)
Authors: Robert Reed
“The keenest blade is the blade never felt.”
Mere said the words in Tilan, then human, and finally in their original harum-scarum. Then she glanced at the face of an old-fashioned timepiece that Washen had only just given her—a round machine full of humming parts wrapped inside a dull silver case—and she carefully counted the seconds until impact. For a multitude of responsible reasons, she was being held in quarantine. Her new body was being tended to by an intense little autodoc. Stripped of every kind of nexus, she was reduced to watching events as they were projected into the longest wall of her chamber. But at least the feeds were immediate, uncensored and honest. Probes in high orbit above the ship watched the Sword from every angle. Straight on, the great machine was a delicate vertical shimmer—a taut line vibrating under some great pressure—and then the vibration would relax slightly, and the looming threat would suddenly vanish against the black of the nebula. But probes watching from one side or another saw an enormous ribbon of silk, perfectly round and possessing the illusion of stillness. Without features for an eye to follow, the mind couldn’t tell that the Sword was turning. And even with its enormous size, it looked remarkably insubstantial next to the Great Ship—like a child’s throwing hoop about to strike the indifferent face of a great wet stone.
The autodoc told her, “Relax,” and laced her shattered ribs with a healing agent. “And exhale now. Please.”
Mere blew out, wincing with the pain.
“Inhale now. Please.”
The pain diminished noticeably, or she was too distracted to notice.
Beneath the Sword, the newborn sea was churning.
Suddenly a narrow band of water developed a crease, fibers and gels and dams of woven hyperfiber forming a double wall that instantly began to pull apart. It was a reflex, she imagined. The polypond was fully prepared to die, yet its own flesh instinctively fought to save itself for another few minutes. Spending vast sums of energy and concentration, the entity dug a deep valley in its own flesh, exposing the original hull of the ship. For an instant, Mere could see the once-flooded telescopes, crushed by currents and the pressure, and the slick gray-white face of the deep, utterly useless armor. Then the Sword plunged into the breach, and for a long amazing instant, it hovered.
Suddenly a narrow band of water developed a crease, fibers and gels and dams of woven hyperfiber forming a double wall that instantly began to pull apart. It was a reflex, she imagined. The polypond was fully prepared to die, yet its own flesh instinctively fought to save itself for another few minutes. Spending vast sums of energy and concentration, the entity dug a deep valley in its own flesh, exposing the original hull of the ship. For an instant, Mere could see the once-flooded telescopes, crushed by currents and the pressure, and the slick gray-white face of the deep, utterly useless armor. Then the Sword plunged into the breach, and for a long amazing instant, it hovered.
Rockets were firing at the hub, tweaking the Sword’s angle one last time. Then they abruptly stopped firing, some point of perfection achieved. Like a woman pulling a dagger into her own chest, the ship’s gravity yanked at the blade, and a scorching white light filled the screen.
A gentle tremor passed through Mere.
Was it the impact, or a personal nervous flinch?
“Do not move,” the autodoc advised. Then with a different voice, it assured her, “You will survive, darling, and so will the rest of us.”
Mere didn’t believe the words, but she couldn’t help but embrace the sentiment. She watched the screen, and the machine watched, too, with its extra eyes, and after a while, one of them said, “Astonishing.”
The word was inadequate, but every word would be. With each second, one hundred tiny black holes swept through the strongest matter known, gouging and cutting and setting the wreckage into churning motion, the quasi fluid rising into the sharp edge of the blade itself, feeling the carefully sculpted charge that grabbed hold of it and flung it outward. The jet formed a single stream, white and intense, and ethereal, and lovely in a horrible fashion. Tens of kilometers of hyperfiber were swiftly sliced away and left useless, and as the Sword cut deeper, it slowed its descent again. Rockets fired and fired harder, and the
blade held its pace, and some critical point was achieved. Achieved, and obvious. Suddenly the white stream of plasmas was tainted with traces of yellow and amber, then a vivid burst of deep red. The black holes were burrowing through granite and basalt, and into atmospheres and water, too.
blade held its pace, and some critical point was achieved. Achieved, and obvious. Suddenly the white stream of plasmas was tainted with traces of yellow and amber, then a vivid burst of deep red. The black holes were burrowing through granite and basalt, and into atmospheres and water, too.
The autodoc had stopped working. Every glass eye was focused on images still thousands of kilometers removed from this place, and the spider-thin hands held delicate instruments up high, and a voice that could never sound anything but utterly confident asked, “What will we do? What will the captains do? How will Washen defeat this thing?”
A distinct, undeniable vibration caused the chamber to shake.
“She’ll destroy the Sword,” Mere offered. “Or knock it free and outrace it. I would guess.”
Neither spoke for a moment.
Then with a vaguely skeptical tone, the machine asked, “Is any of that possible?”
And then it dismissed its own question. “Every illness has its cure,” it declared. “How can I believe anything else?”
FIVE MINUTES MORE.
The tremors grew worse by the moment, insistent, then rough, then the roughest blows were punctuated with hard, sharp rumblings. Great explosions and little collapses sent vibrations traveling through the meat of the ship, many of them skimming along the base of the hull, arriving at Port Gwenth along with a growling groan that was felt more than it was heard.
Mere sat alone. Her frail little body had been patched as far as possible, and the confident yet terrified machine had hurried off, giving the excuse, “I have other patients who need me more.” Which was fine. Was best. When hadn’t Mere preferred solitude? But even as she told herself
she was fine, a new voice found her. Soft and prickly, it said, “Hello,” then, “I was looking for you.” And Mere couldn’t help but feel genuine relief, turning in her seat, a hundred little aches meaning nothing and the sight of a human face—even this human’s face—winning a small but cherished joy out of her.
she was fine, a new voice found her. Soft and prickly, it said, “Hello,” then, “I was looking for you.” And Mere couldn’t help but feel genuine relief, turning in her seat, a hundred little aches meaning nothing and the sight of a human face—even this human’s face—winning a small but cherished joy out of her.
“Hello,” he said again, the pale yellow eyes growing larger. “My name—”
“O’Layle,” she interrupted.
He hesitated. For a moment, he glanced at the images on the long wall, and then he forced himself to step closer, asking, “Have we met?”
“Never,” she promised. Then she looked straight ahead again, studying the endless cutting and the vivid colors streaming out of the wound now. “But I studied you and your transmissions from the Blue World—”
“Oh, you’re the one they sent into the Inkwell. In secret.”
She nodded, not looking at him now.
“That’s why we’re in quarantine together,” he continued. “I heard about you. A little while ago, one of the captains explained … that the polypond spat you back at us …”
Already Mere was growing tired of this man.
“We’re much the same,” O’Layle continued, stepping close to her. Staring at the images of carnage, he said with a quiet, awed voice, “Both of us lived with her. As part of her.”
In a fashion, she thought.
Then he knelt, altogether too close. He insisted in pushing his face beside hers, remarking, “Both of us have served the alien. Each in our own way, naturally.”
Somewhere along the narrow lip of the Sword, an ocean was struck. Hydrogen was stripped of its electrons and thrown into space, a vivid white line marking the obliteration of billions of liters. Watching, Mere wished she were blind. Closing her eyes, she felt the ship shaking even harder
now. Then the voice beside her named an alien species, and with a low laugh, he asked, “Do you remember them?”
now. Then the voice beside her named an alien species, and with a low laugh, he asked, “Do you remember them?”
“The !eech?” Mere said, “Yes, I do.”
“You are sure?”
“I studied them. Before they came on board, I went to their world and lived with them—”
“Because that’s what you do. With difficult species, yes.” His voice was happy, almost giddy. “You don’t know me, but I have heard much, much, much about you.”
Shut up, she thought.
Then Mere opened her eyes, concentrating on the wall, on the deepening gouge being chiseled into the heart of the ship. How much longer before the Sword hit the core? Glancing at the new watch that filled her hand, she whispered, “Forty-two minutes.”
O’Layle didn’t hear her, or he simply didn’t care about the time that remained. What he needed to say was, “I knew them, too.”
“Who?”
Then he said the name again. He clicked his tongue in a clumsy fashion, and then said, “Eech,” afterwards. “!eech,” he told her. And with a delight that was boyish, pure and nearly sweet, he boasted, “They once hired me for a task. A very important job. This was aeons ago, of course. But I should have remembered. I guess they must have done something to my mind afterward … some kind of selective amnesia …”
“Why are you telling me this?” she blurted.
But O’Layle wouldn’t answer her directly. More than forty minutes remained until the ship and possibly all of Creation was obliterated, and he invested a full two minutes boasting about the sums of money that he had been given and how he had been fooled. “After I did my job, they convinced me that it was an inheritance,” he offered with a low laugh. “It was so much money that it took me a thousand years to spend it, and all that time, I couldn’t remember that I earned it. I lied even to myself, telling others that it was a gift from a dead old friend—”
“The !eech went extinct,” Mere interrupted.
O’Layle winked at her, nodding.
“On this ship, at least,” she said, struggling to recover the details for herself. “Thousands of years ago, they suddenly vanished.”
“Oh, I know all about that.”
The tone should have scared her, but her soul didn’t have room for any more fear. Mere shook her head, one hand physically shoving at the much larger man. Then with a cracking voice, she asked, “Why are you telling me this?”
“They’ve been asking about it,” O’Layle said. “About the !eech. Asking me these sharp little questions. Prying at my head with fancy memory-enhancing tools. I truly hadn’t thought about that species in the last hundred centuries—it’s remarkable how much I had forgotten—but now it’s pretty much come back to me again.”
“What did you do for the !eech?”
He kept smiling. “They needed someone to help. You see, they had taken some sort of vote and decided … well, as you say … long ago, they suddenly became extinct …”
“You did that?” she spat.
He rolled his shoulders. Like an evil child, he said, “They were desperate. I remember that now.”
“You murdered the species?”
“If a species wishes to die,” O’Layle countered, “then it isn’t truly murder. Now is it?”
With both hands, she shoved at him. But the man refused to move, gazing at her with a look of pride and growing consternation. Finally, with a wounded voice, he asked, “What kind of monster do you think I am?”
Even as the ship fell apart around them, he had to tell her, “I didn’t have to kill any of them. I just had to make them seem dead to the universe. You see? That’s what I’m trying to explain.”
Very little had been brought to this obscure place. Half a dozen brigades of soldiers had brought their field weapons to help with security, and a team of engineers was working feverishly to complete the setup, and there was an ensemble of small machines wrapped around the single object that those machines had been built to serve. The First and Second Chairs also just arrived. There was no point in hiding any longer. What happened here, in a matter of minutes, would determine whether or not the ship survived. Washen and Pamir found themselves standing side by side, hands touching for a moment, then falling apart, and one of them repeated the word, “Improbable,” while the other nodded agreeably, allowing herself a slender smile and a determined sense of genuine confidence.
The facility had no name, only a complex designation describing both its location and purpose. What they stood inside was a few hectares of mothballed controls and warmed air set deep inside the ship, on the brink of the cold iron core. Above them, visible through insulating sandwiches of diamond and aerogel, was a much larger chamber—a spherical volume a little less than a hundred kilometers in diameter. It was one of several dozen auxiliary fuel tanks that had never been used. Each tank was filled with vacuum and darkness, and each lay equally deep inside the ship, but separated from the six primary fuel tanks. It was inevitable that one of these empty tanks would lie directly between the ship’s bow and Marrow. And as such, it became the best last place to fight.
The engineers clustered at one end of the big room, but the bulk of their work happened inside a long piece of adjacent plumbing, robots and AIs moving in graceful
blurs, assembling a delicate device from stock parts. There were complications, always: Parts failed to mesh, and little corrections had to be made to plans barely an hour old, and there were constant tremors running down through the ship’s meat, the shaking growing harder by the moment. Aasleen stood among her engineers, asking questions and offering unsolicited advice. Finally, the team leader turned to her, saying, “Madam,” with a sharp voice. “We know exactly what we are doing here. You are not as qualified as I. And if you don’t leave us alone, I will pull off your head and shit in your neck. Madam.”
blurs, assembling a delicate device from stock parts. There were complications, always: Parts failed to mesh, and little corrections had to be made to plans barely an hour old, and there were constant tremors running down through the ship’s meat, the shaking growing harder by the moment. Aasleen stood among her engineers, asking questions and offering unsolicited advice. Finally, the team leader turned to her, saying, “Madam,” with a sharp voice. “We know exactly what we are doing here. You are not as qualified as I. And if you don’t leave us alone, I will pull off your head and shit in your neck. Madam.”
Chastened, Aasleen joined Washen.
Gazing straight upward, they saw nothing. Again, blackness ruled the universe, and a bitter sucking cold ran through the black, and for a slender exhausted moment, Washen found herself wondering:
What if the polypond is right?
If the Creation was something aborted or delayed … and if freeing the mysterious passenger, the prisoner in the center of Marrow, could wipe away this endless night … then how awful was the crime that they were committing here today … ?
Washen swallowed her doubts and closed her eyes.
Into that self-imposed darkness, a voice spoke.
“Mother,” he said.
For an instant, she assumed Locke was elsewhere. She left her eyes closed, opening one of the last of her working nexuses. But the only presence waiting there was the Master herself.
“News?” the woman inquired.
“None,” Washen admitted.
“Then why pester me?” she snarled. And as the nexus closed again, Locke said to his mother:
“Here. Look here.”
He stood behind her. She hadn’t noticed his arrival, and as she turned to face him, a reflexive anger took hold. Why would her only child set himself in this very dangerous
place? She came close to scolding him, then relief pushed the anger aside. Quietly, without hope, she said, “We are going to win here. Now.”
place? She came close to scolding him, then relief pushed the anger aside. Quietly, without hope, she said, “We are going to win here. Now.”
The small man nodded dutifully, saying nothing. He was dressed like an AI sage, except for a Wayward belt tied around his waist, the brown leather looking peculiar against the milky white toga. Like everyone in this place, he was exhausted. A few deep breaths were necessary before he had the wind to admit, “I have been trying to find you and talk—”
“I’ve always kept a nexus open to you,” she interrupted.
“To your face, Mother.”
The deadly tone made her focus.
To his face, she asked, “What is it?”
“I know who they are now,” he began.
“Who they are
now
?”
now
?”
“As you guessed, like I imagined … for billions of years, and maybe since the beginning, they’ve been following in the ship’s wake …”
To Washen, it felt as if a fist of stone had been driven into her belly.
“They were chasing after our ship,” Locke continued. “But they were a long distance behind, and I don’t think they knew their target’s location. Not precisely, no. But then we fired the big engines—for the first time ever. We changed our trajectory, not once but thousands of times.” He lifted a flattened hand, and, using the fingertip of his other hand, he showed what he imagined must have happened. The Great Ship dove into the galaxy, tracing out an elaborate and highly publicized course partway around the Milky Way. While the other ship, following at some considerable distance, had several options open to it.
“That second ship could have dropped close to the old white dwarf, just as we did,” said Locke. “But it would have been noticed, and I don’t think its crew wanted to be
seen. And besides, they still would have been left far behind us. If their goal was to catch up to us—”
seen. And besides, they still would have been left far behind us. If their goal was to catch up to us—”
“But they couldn’t do that,” Washen interrupted. “We’ve been over this and over this.” She shook her head, using her own flattened hand and fingertip to describe various trajectories into the Milky Way. “I don’t see how anyone could close a gap as large as what we’re talking about … tens of thousands of light-years behind us, maybe …”
“But what if this other ship … ?”
Locke started to pose another question, then paused. The floor was shaking, the entire ship vibrating now, an epic force moving closer to them by the instant.
Pamir looked straight up.
Aasleen stared at the Wayward, her eyes wide and glassy. “But if these pursuers had a streakship,” she began.
“Or its equivalent,” Locke agreed. “A swift vessel, but very limited. Too tiny to carry the sensors necessary to pinpoint exactly where the Great Ship was. Coasting at the ship’s velocity. No extra fuel to make endless course corrections.” He nodded, reminding his mother, “Hammerwings fly slowly when they hunt. Only when they see their prey for certain do they accelerate to full velocity.”
The shivering floor quieted for a moment.
Then the drumming grew worse than ever, threatening to knock everyone off their feet.
“They couldn’t see their target until we ignited the engines, until we gave it a voice. We made the Great Ship boast about its merits and future course, and by then humans had control, and what would be the most reasonable course for something that is very swift but small?”
Pamir dropped his gaze. “Get ahead of us,” he offered. “Wait for us along the way, somehow …”
“They’d have to be exceptionally patient,” Aasleen warned.
Then with her next breath, she admitted, “But they’ve already invested a few billion years in their pursuit.”
Humans would never comprehend that kind of fortitude.
“I’ve been thinking this thorough Locke continued.”If I was small but very quick—and if I didn’t know where the Great Ship was, but I had a fair idea about its velocity—I would match its trajectory to the best of my ability, then I would wait, and watch, and wait. For as long as was necessary. And when I saw the Great Ship fire its engines for the first time—a tiny flicker thousands of light-years ahead of me—I’d know that someone had finally found it and claimed it for themselves. And that’s when I would spend all of my reserves. I wouldn’t try to catch the ship straightaway. I probably don’t have the resources to take it back from its new owners. But I could decipher the ship’s future course, and if I burned every gram of fuel to jump ahead, diving into the galaxy at a point along that course, and there find a likely world …”
He hesitated.
“What?” Washen snapped.
“I’d find an empty world and then play an enormous game,” Locke explained. “I would build up my numbers, invent a history and then use that history to fool the captains … I would beg for a small berth on this vast, precious ship … and after an appropriate interval, I would quietly vanish from the captains’ view …”
The floor bucked suddenly.
A thousand silent alarms told Washen the worst. Then in the next moment, the team’s lead engineer declared, “We’ve got to load and calibrate; then we are ready. Ready!”
The first thin trace of light appeared directly above them.
Locke glanced upward and quietly said, “The !eech.”
But the Submasters had no time left for oddities and old histories. Suddenly they were hurrying off to stations where they could help orchestrate the final battle. Even
Washen had to say to her son, “Not now. In a few minutes, maybe. But I can’t listen anymore, darling.”
Washen had to say to her son, “Not now. In a few minutes, maybe. But I can’t listen anymore, darling.”
Locke found himself standing alone.
The band of light above him was brightening. The polypond’s ultimate weapon was biting into a sudden emptiness. But he paid little attention to the mayhem, his mouth closing for a moment while the eyes wandered in no particular direction, then the mouth parted again, and to nobody he said, “But this is what is most interesting. I think.”
He explained, “They left just enough of a trail to be followed. Just enough that I could envision their existence and find their marks and follow them until I am absolutely sure that they exist.”
He paused.
Again, the floor shivered, and he glanced up at the descending blade, and in the barest whisper, he said, “Of course. Whatever they are, whatever they desire … they want very much to be found …”
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