Asimov's Science Fiction: June 2013 (9 page)

The clear eyes rose, and the alien called out, "This is a wondrous day."

"But not especially pleasant," said Pamir. "Somebody is shooting at us, and now I'm starting to believe you."

"Then this day is even better," the creature proclaimed.

A single strand of red glass was dangling from his hand. At a distance and even up close, it looked like every other stalk of fake grass.

Pamir didn't ask about glass or symbols.

"I'm here to warn you," was all that he had time to say. "We're still aiming for the Great Ship. I'm not giving that up. But no sane predictable brain would ever try it this way."

Modern bodies didn't easily rot.

Trillions of bacteria lived inside the guts and pores, but they weren't simple beasts waiting for easy meals. Every microbe was a sophisticated warrior tailored to serve its host. Service meant protecting the flesh in life, and if that life was cut to pieces by a plasma blast, then the surviving trillions worked as one, fending off wild bacteria while pulling out the excess moisture, rendering the temporarily dead man as a collection of perfectly mummified pieces.

Even broken, Maxx was a tough looking fellow. Pamir gave the autodoc every chunk, every burnt shred, and he kept close tabs on the progress. Dried tissues were rehydrated and then fed. Stem cells cultured themselves, and they built what was missing, and two days later the growth chamber was filled to overflowing with a naked man, hairless and massive. An earthly gorilla would be proud of that body. Leaving Maxx trapped inside the chamber seemed wise, but there was little choice. Pamir opened the lid before the boy was ready to move, and he stood over him, starting to explain what he wanted.

Maxx interrupted. "Where's my sister?"

"She'll be next," the captain promised. "But only after you make a promise, or you lie well enough to fool me."

Too soon, Maxx tried to sit up.

Two fingers and a quiet, "Stay," were enough to coax him back down again.

"I was awake," the boy said. "When I was dead, I was thinking."

"Thinking about Rondie," Pamir guessed.

"Not always, no."

The words carried implications.

Pamir quickly explained what had happened since their fight and what might happen if they held the same conventional course. He said that he had considered using Tailor, but the alien was useless. An insight had infected him, and he was even crazier than usual. As a precaution, Pamir had limited his tools and chained him nearby.

Maxx glanced at the Kajjas.

Then with a slower voice, the captain laid out the basics of his mad plan.

Some part of Maxx was listening. Yet more compelling matters had to be considered. The boy's voice was uneasy, shrill at the edges when he asked, "When will my sister be back?"

Rondie's remains were more numerous and in worse condition, and the autodoc was limited. "Six days, or with luck, five," he said.

"Take your time," Maxx advised.

Pamir said, "I don't do sloppy work."

"That isn't what I mean." Then with a shy smile, Maxx said, "I rather liked it, being alone."

"Solitude has its pleasures," Pamir said.

"Yeah, I promise, I'll do whatever you want me to do," said the resurrected man. "Just please, don't tell my sister what I just confessed to you."

The ship had rolled again, and denying every commonsense vector, it was once more accelerating, hard.

Pamir and Maxx were out of sight, out of reach. Tailor wore manacles and tethers, and an ordinary tool kit was in easy reach. Standing took too much work. Against the thundering engine, it was better to sit deep in the grassy glass. The drill lay between his feet, recharging itself. Five times, the Kajjas had ordered the drill to cut a single precise hole, and then with his own trembling hands, he fed one of the treasures into the breach.

Momentous times, that's what these were. His species had labored for one hundred million years, searching for enlightenment. Tailor couldn't remember when he wasn't preparing for this day. And at long last, he'd broken every code and deciphered old, vanished technologies. No barriers remained. The magic had no choice but work, and that's what he was doing.

Five times he overrode the drill's safeties, coaxing a slender beam of high-UV light to evaporate his flesh and then his bone before eating slowly, carefully into the living template of his mind.

Each hole was perfect.

Into each hole went one of the rare treasures.

During the first four attempts, he emptied his mind of thought, making ready for lightning and epiphanies. Tailor was relaxed and rested, fortunate beyond all measure, thinking about nothing, ready to be seized by truth in whatever serene form it came. And something did happen. Four times, there were sensations, the painful roiling of electrons that became familiar and intense to a point where much more was promised... and then the intensity slackened and slipped, nothing remaining but the residues one endures when rising from a deep, perishable dream.

On the fifth attempt, Tailor changed tactics.

He purposefully thought about quite a lot. Perhaps engaging old memories would open the necessary gateway. Who knew? That's why he built lost rooms in his head, and why he spoke to family members who were dead or so distant that they might as well be. He recalled his first journey in space and his first new sun, and buried inside that flood of old, rarely touched remembrance he discovered a nameless world, watery and deliciously warm but not available to colonize. Why was that? Because there were rules, yes. Supposedly the galaxy had no sovereigns, but the rising civilizations, young and otherwise, had carved laws and punishments out of the potential. This wet world was too promising to be claimed. The furry souls hiding inside their burrows and up on the high tree branches held promise—just enough of this and not too much of that—and their world was stable enough to survive comet blasts and the next half billion years. That was why the Kajjas scout team was just visiting. It had already been decided to move to another nearby solar system, harsher and far more promising.

Tailor couldn't remember when he last thought about that world.

It might have been the human homeland. Who would know? The galaxy never stopped moving, suns marching in every direction. Certainty would take work and patience, and he didn't have either to spare.

He considered calling to Jon. This memory would be a gift.

But the scorching laser had burrowed deep into his mind, much deeper than the others, and the fifth thread had to be eased into position and then sealed in place. Tailor accomplished both tasks with fingers and a torch. The thread only looked like the red glass. Years had been spent walking on the cargo, sleeping with it and ignoring it, and he'd never suspected: One strand in eight million was glass on the outside, mimicking its mates, but it was bioceramic at the core. Each core employed an architecture that was nothing like the standard mind. How it worked was just another mystery. Tailor had found six odd threads already, there were probably several hundred more, and this thread was inside him and talking to his soul, bringing nothing but pain, pure simple dumb pain, as the brain felt the grievous injury, more and more of his ancient memories thrown to oblivion.

Tailor dipped his head, and the translator transformed his noble sobs into sick human sobs.

All the while, the nameless ship was filled with motion, with purpose. The invincible engine was eating hyperfiber and shitting out the remnants. And Jon and Maxx were far away, making ready for the last portion of this desperate scheme.

Despair was a shroud, and through the shroud came a human voice.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Healing," the Kajjas said.

The new patient was lying inside the growth chamber. The autodoc had lifted its lid, allowing her flesh to grow while she breathed freely.

Rondie turned onto her side.

With a paternal voice, the autodoc told its patient to do nothing but rest.

"Shut up," she said.

Tailor laughed, but not because of her.

"Where's my brother?" she asked.

"Helping our insane captain," he said. "Jon has decided to harvest our own ship's armor and employ it as fuel."

"No," she said.

"It is a strange tactic, yes," he said.

"I mean, why isn't Maxx with me?"

Looking at any human, looking at the beast deeply and with all of his experience, it often occurred to Tailor that each of these creatures was a species onto herself. "Human" was just a convenience applied to a pack of disagreeable, dissimilar fur-bearers.

"You look strong," he said.

She said, "I'm feeling better."

"Wonderful," he said. "Can you climb out of that device now?"

Rondie was exceptionally powerful. Even unfinished, she sat up easily and the naked legs came out without much trouble. But death had made her cautious, and she moved slowly until an alarm sounded, the autodoc trying to coax her to behave with nothing but loud, brash sounds.

She jumped free and slapped the controls, earning silence.

"Come here," Tailor said.

Five slivers were inside him, and he had no idea what enlightenments they were carrying.

"When will my Maxx come back?" she asked.

Tailor said, "Come here and I will call your brother."

She took slow steps against the thundering of the engine. "So our bastard captain tied you down," she said, looking at the manacles and tethers.

"This is a verdict which I deserved and embraced." Then he reached with one hand and a foot, which was a blunder.

Rondie stopped, keeping out of his reach.

"You look as if you're hurting," she said.

"A few wounds, yes. But the mind is durable and profound, and I will heal soon enough."

"I'm going to get dressed," she said. "I want to find Maxx."

"But first," said Tailor.

She stared at him, waiting.

"G'lene is waiting inside the box, that packing crate lying just past the autodoc." The sixth thread felt light and cool in his palm and between his long fingers. "Would you unpack G'lene for me, please?"

"Let the bastard cure her."

"But I don't want you to feed her to the autodoc," he said. "No, I very much want the girl for myself. And I have a good reason, if that matters."

She shrugged, absolutely unmotivated.

"If you do this," he said, "the Luddite will be exceptionally angry with you. I promise."

"Okay," she allowed.

And as she walked toward the boxes, Tailor called out, "If it is easier, you may cut off the head. I desire nothing else."

The mad plan was to burn up their original fuel stocks in order to bring them home on a short vector. All that while, they would carve away a portion of the ship's prow, holding back those shards for later. If they survived the boost phase, the ship would be rolled again at the last possible moment, and then the engine's muscle and endurance would be severely tested. hyperfiber would be shoved into oblivion and expelled before them—a long spike of plasma and radiation slicing through the blackness. Every local eye would see their arrival, and that was part of Pamir's scheme: If someone tried to kill this ship, it would be a loud public act, a revealing act. If some secret power was at large, it would surely prefer to settle this matter in more private ways.

Pamir had explained his plan, and to one degree or another, the others accepted his rule if not his logic. Besides, everyone knew that they were far off course, and at this velocity and in this place, there was simply no other route home.

Every hand was needed. The original crew was at work, infuriating yet predictable. But now a second crew shared the ship with them. The twins could follow their usual script, sometimes for a full day or two. But then the boy suddenly begged to be left alone, please. Except his sister came out of death lonely, famished for more touches than ever and private words known only to her and maybe even the first stirrings of lust for the only object of value in her brief life.

The Kajjas remained the ancient puzzle. Freed of manacles and his studies, Tailor helped slice apart the least critical portions of the ship's armor. But without warning, he would suddenly turn fearless, risking millions of years of existence by stepping onto the open prow. Grains of dust would explode on all sides while he did nothing but sing, throwing old songs into the vacuum, eyes gazing up at the blue-shifted starlight that fell inside his joyous soul.

Even Pamir was two people. Long habit and the ingrained personality usually held him where he belonged—a blunt strong-willed soul that could sleep minutes every day and push three day's work into two. He ruled a minor realm inside the boundless universe governed by faceless, amoral laws. Those laws were too powerful and too perfect to give a shit about little him, and wasn't that the least awful existence imaginable?

But the other Pamir, the new man, was much less certain about everything.

Invisible, potent sovereigns held sway over the galaxy. Except in Pamir's mind, they weren't Kajjas sovereigns. They wore the faces and attitudes of captains. They were bold opinionated creatures looking splendid in their bright uniforms, each one ambitious, each a rival to all of the others, and somewhere there sat a world-sized Master Captain holding a godly feast every million years, just to prove to her nervous self that she was genuinely in charge.

The imagery had its charms, its humor.

Laughing, he could deny everything. One senile alien from a vanquished race was not much of an authority, and there were explanations waiting to be invoked. Their ship was nothing but a derelict, and its sovereigns were crazy, and nothing here was worth two drops of blood or any reputation. Those bits of glass that Tailor found were just that. They were glass. The alien had installed them, and what changed about him? The new boldness was nothing but Tailor's anguish for a thoroughly wasted life. The streak-ship following them was one mild coincidence, and its detonation was another. And that final attack—the wild flash of laser light—was just some local species running experiments in deep space, or a factory ionizing the dust to harvest it, or maybe someone was trying to kill them. But what did that mean? There were endless reasons to destroy another ship, and saving the universe for the sovereigns was far down on the list.