Asimov's Science Fiction: June 2013

Robert Reed tells us that his planned trilogy with Prime Books is still a trilogy, but will be published as a single volume, perhaps in April of 2014. The working title is
The Memory of Sky.
Bob is also planning to "self-publish a collection of Great Ship stories called
The Greatship.
Yes, one word. Each story has been slightly reworked, and there is new bridge material, and not only will this be available as an e-pub, but there will be a POD version as well." Status updates on this project will be found at
robertreedwriter.com.
The collection won't include his 2012 material or his thrilling new "Great Ship" tale about what it means to be...

The man came to Port Beta carrying an interesting life.

Or perhaps that life was carrying him.

Either way, he was a strong plain-faced human, exceptionally young yet already dragging heavy debt. Wanting honest, reliable employment, he wrestled with a series of aptitude tests, and while scoring poorly in most categories, the newcomer showed promise when it came to rigor and precision and the kinds of courage required by the mechanical arts. Port Beta seemed like a worthy home for him. That was where new passengers arrived at the Great Ship, cocooned inside streakships and star taxis, bomb-tugs and one-of-a-kind vehicles. Long journeys left most of those starships in poor condition. Many were torn apart as salvage, but the valuable and the healthiest were refurbished and then sent out again, chasing wealthy travelers of every species.

A local academy accepted the newcomer, and he soon rose to the most elite trade among technicians. Bottling up suns and antimatter was considered the highest art. Drive-mechanics worked on starship engines and dreamed about starship engines, and they were famous for jokes and foul curses understandable only to their own kind. Their work could be routine for years, even decades, but then inside the monotony something unexpected would happen. Miss one ghost of a detail and a lasting mistake would take hold, and then centuries later, far from Port Beta, a magnificent streak-ship would explode, and the onboard lives, ancient and important, were transformed into hard radiation and a breakneck rain of hot, anonymous dust.

That was why drive-mechanics commanded the highest wages.

And that was why new slots were constantly opening up in their ranks.

According to official records, the academy's new student was born on the Great Ship, inside a dead-end cavern called Where-Peace-Rains. Peculiar humans lived in that isolated realm, and they usually died there, and to the soul, they clung to preposterous beliefs, their society and entire existence woven around one linchpin idea:

The multiverse was infinite.

There was no denying that basic principle. Quantum endlessness was proven science, relentless and boundless and beautiful. Yet where most minds saw abstractions and eccentric mathematics, those living inside Where-Peace-Rains considered infinity to be a grand and demanding gift. infinity meant that nothing could exist just once. Whatever was real, no matter how complicated or unlikely, had no choice but to persist forever.

In that way, souls were the same as snowflakes.

A person's circumstances could seem utterly unique, yet he was always surviving in limitless places and dying in limitless places, and he couldn't stop being born again in every suitable portion of the All.

Life had its perfect length. Most humans and almost every sentient creature believed in living happily for as long as possible. But the archaic souls inside that cave considered too much life to be a trap. One or two centuries of breathing and sleeping were plenty. Extend existence past its natural end, and the immortal soul was debased, impoverished, and eventually stripped of its grandeur. Only by knowing that you were temporary could life be stripped of illusion and the cloaks of false-godhood, and then the blessed man could touch the All, and he could love the All, and if his brief existence proved special, a tiny piece of his endless soul might earn one moment of serene clarity.

Where-Peace-Rains constantly needed babies. Like primitive humans, its citizens were built from water and frail bone and DNA full of primate instincts. The outside world called them Luddites—an inadequate word, part insult and part synonym for madness. But the young drive-mechanic was remarkable because he grew up among those people, becoming an important citizen before relinquishing their foolish ways.

Stepping alone into the universe, the man was made immortal.

But immortality was an expensive magic.

It had to be.

Archaic muscles and organs needed to be retrofitted. The body had to be indifferent to every disease, ready to heal any wound. Then the soggy soft and very fragile human brain was transformed into a tough bioceramic wonder, complex enough to guarantee sufficient memory and quick intelligence to thrive for eons.

But transformation wasn't the only expense. The boundless life never quit needing space and food and energy. Eternal, highly gifted minds relished exotic wonders, yet they also demanded safety and comfort—two qualities that were never cheap. That's why the Great Ship's captains demanded huge payments from immortals. Passengers who never died would never stop needing. And that was why the one-time Luddite was impressive: Fresh inside his new body, consumed by his many debts, he was using a new brain to learn how to repair and rebuild the most spectacular machines built by any hands.

Every student was soon hired as a low-wage trainee. The newcomer did small jobs well, but more importantly, he got out of the way when he wasn't needed. People noticed his plain, unimpressive face. It was a reasonable face; fanatics didn't need beauty. The man could be brusque when displeased, and maybe that quality didn't endear him to his superiors. But he proved to have an instinct for stardrives, and he knew when to buy drinks for his colleagues, and he was expert in telling dry old jokes, and sometimes, in a rare mood, he offered stories about Where-Peace-Rains. Audiences were curious about the cavern and its odd folk, the left-behind family and their ludicrous faith. Years later, co-workers thought enough of their colleague to attend his graduation, and if the man didn't show adequate pride with the new plasma-blue uniform, at least he seemed comfortable with the steady work that always finds those who know what they are doing.

***

Decades passed, and the reformed Luddite acquired responsibilities and then rank, becoming a dependable cog in the Tan-tan-5 crew.

Then the decades were centuries.

One millennium and forty-two years had steadily trickled past. Port Beta remained a vast and hectic facility, and the Great Ship pushed a little farther along its half-million year voyage around the galaxy, and this man that everybody knew seemed to have always been at his station. His abandoned family had died long ago. If he felt any interest in the generations still living inside Where-Peace-Rains, he kept it secret. Skill lifted him to the middle ranks, and he was respected by those that knew him, and the people who knew him best never bothered to imagine that this burly, plain-faced fellow might actually be someone of consequence.

His name used to be Pamir.

Wearing his own face and biography, Pamir had served as one of the Great Ship's captains. Nothing about that lost man was cog-like. In a vocation that rewarded charm and politics, he was an excellent captain who succeeded using nothing but stubborn competence. No matter how difficult the assignment, it was finished early and without fuss. Creativity was in his toolbox, but unlike too many high-gloss captains, Pamir used rough elegance before genius. Five projects wearing his name were still taught to novice captains. Yet the once-great officer had also lost his command, and that was another lesson shared with the arrogant shits who thought they deserved to wear the captains' mirrored uniform: For thousands of years, Pamir was a rising force in the ranks, and then he stupidly fell in love with an alien. That led to catastrophes and fat financial losses for the Ship, and although the situation ended favorably enough, passengers could have been endangered, and worse than that, secrets had been kept from his vengeful superiors.

Sitting out the voyage inside the brig was a likely consequence, but dissolving into the Ship's multitudes was Pamir's solution. The official story was that the runaway captain had slipped overboard thirty thousand years ago, joining colonists bound for a new world. As a matter of policy, nobody cared about one invisible felon. But captains forgot little, and that's why several AIs were still dedicated to Pamir's case—relentless super-conductive minds endlessly sifting through census records and secret records, images dredged up from everywhere, and overheard conversations in ten thousand languages.

Every morning began with the question, "Is this the day they find me?"

And between every breath, some piece of that immortal mind was being relentlessly suspicious of everyone.

"Jon?"

Tools froze in mid-task, and the mechanic turned. "Over here."

"Do you have a moment?"

"Three moments," he said. "What do you want, G'lene?"

G'lene was human, short and rounded with fat—a cold-world adaptation worn for no reason but tradition. One of the newest trainees, she was barely six hundred years old, still hunting for her life's calling.

"I need advice," she said. "I asked around, and several people suggested that I come to you first."

The man said nothing, waiting.

"We haven't talked much before," she allowed.

"You work for a different crew," he said.

"And I don't think you like me."

The girl often acted flip and even spoiled, but those traits didn't matter. What mattered was that she was a careless technician. It was a common flaw worn by young immortals. Carelessness meant that the other mechanics had to keep watch over her work, and the only question seemed when she would be thrown out of the program.

"I don't know you much at all," said Pamir. "What I don't like is your work."

She heard him, took a quick breath, and then she pushed any embarrassment aside. "You're the Luddite, aren't you?"

There were various ways to react. Pamir told the nearest tool to pivot and aim, punching a narrow hole through the center of his palm.

Blood sprayed, and the hole began to heal instantly.

"Apparently not," he said.

G'lene laughed like a little girl, without seriousness, without pretense.

Pamir didn't fancy that kind of laugh.

"Jon is a popular name with Luddites," she said.

Pamir sucked at the torn flesh. He had worn "Jon" nearly as long as he had worn this face. Only in dreams was he anybody else.

"What kind of advice are you chasing?" he asked.

"I need a topic for my practicum."

"Ugly-eights," he said.

"That's what you're working on here, isn't it?"

He was rehabilitating the main drive of an old star-taxi. Ugly-eights were a standard, proven fusion engine. They had been pushing ships across the galaxy longer than most species were alive. This particular job was relentlessly routine and cheap, and while someone would eventually find some need for this old ship, it would likely sit inside a back berth for another few centuries.

"Ugly-eights are the heart of commerce in the galaxy," said Pamir.

"And they're ugly," she said.

"Build a new kind of ugly," he said. "Tweak a little function or prove that some bit or component can be yanked. Make this machine better, simpler or sexier, and a thousand mechanics will worship you as a goddess."

"Being worshipped," she said. "That would be fun."

She seemed to believe it was possible.

The two of them were standing in the middle of an expansive machine shop. Ships and parts of ships towered about them in close ranks. Port Beta was just ten kilometers past the main doors, and the rest of Pamir's crew and his boss were scattered, no other face in sight.

"I know what you did for your practicum," said G'lene. "You built a working Kajjas pulse engine."

"Nobody builds a working Kajjas pulse," he said. "Not even the Kajjas."

"You built it and then went up on the hull and fired the engine for ninety days."

"And then my luck felt spent, so I turned it off."

"I want to do something like that," she said. "I want something unusual."

"No," he said. "You do not, no."

She didn't seem to notice his words. "It's too bad that we don't have any Kajjas ships onboard. Wouldn't it be fun to refab one of those marvels?"

Kajjas space had been left behind long ago. Not one of their eccentric vessels was presently berthed inside Beta. But the Great Ship had five other ports, reserved for the captains and security forces. Did G'lene know facts that weren't public knowledge? Was the girl trying to coax him into some kind of borderline adventure?

"So you want to play with a real Kajjas ship," Pamir said.

"But only with your help. I'm not a fool."

Pamir had never given much thought to G'lene's mind. What he realized then, staring at that pretty ageless and almost perfectly spherical face, was that she didn't seem to be one thing or another. He couldn't pin any quality to his companion.

"The Kajjas are famous explorers," she said.

"They used to be, but the wandering urge left them long ago."

"What if I knew where to find an old Kajjas starship?"

"I'd have to ask where it's hiding."

"Not here," she said.

The way she spoke said a lot. "Not here." The "here" was drawn out, and the implications were suddenly obvious.

"Shit," said Pamir.

"Exactly," she said.

"It's not on the Great Ship, is it?"

The smile brightened, smug and ready for the next question.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Exactly who I seem to be," she said.

"A lipid-rich girl who is going to fail at the academy," he said.

To her credit, she didn't bristle. Poise held her steady, and she let him stare at her face a little longer before saying, "Maybe I was lying."