Hull Zero Three (21 page)

TSINOY IS DOUBLY nervous now that we have arrived at the bow. I notice a shift in the way everyone looks at me, at my twin. Suspicion has fallen on both of us.

“What happened to Kim?” my twin asks. “What about the girls?” “The girls are aft,” I say. “I think they’re okay. I finally met Mother.” My throat constricts and my eyes well up. “She’s holding on to Kim. She seems busy. In charge. You might recognize her.”
“What’s she like?” my twin asks, and looking at the way his eyes move, I wonder if he hasn’t already guessed—or knows. Perhaps he also saw the drawing in the shaft. He might know instinctively—a purer form of adapted Teacher.
I describe her as best I can, words remarkably incapable of capturing her essence. My twin gives one large shiver—just as I did, hours before. “It can’t be
her
,” he says, without conviction. Instead, I detect a spooky longing. “Did
she
recognize you?” he asks.
“In a manner of speaking. We’re all mixed together,” I say. “Somebody filled our molds with mixed ingredients—mixed personalities.”
“Souh
buddy
?” Tomchin asks. In our absence, Tomchin has devised a nasal sort of speech that I only half understand.
“Nell’s been communicating with Ship Control since you left,” my twin says as we pull ourselves to the thin forest of pylons. Nell still has her long, thin hands on the blue hemisphere. “She never lets go, but sometimes she talks. She says she’s receiving updates. I’m worried about her.”
We pause to digest all that we think we know, all that we think we have seen. I explain both legs of the journey as best I can—the monsters, the factors, in their huge tanks. I try to describe the gene pool—but my twin seems to see it already, in revived memory.
Nell stays attached, impassive, seemingly deaf to our words.
I conclude, “This isn’t just a colonizing ship; it’s a death factory.” I feel the conflict—and what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with surviving at all costs?
Nell releases her hands from the hemisphere and wrings her long fingers to get blood flow. “I’m famished,” she says.
“Whau’s Shibb gaeing to do?” Tomchin asks.
“Food first,” Nell insists. “We have to stay calm and think things through. There’s been too much confusion and conflict. But maybe—just maybe—we have enough clues that we can finally make good decisions.”
My twin volunteers to get food. I join him, just for camaraderie—and also because I want to keep an eye on him. I haven’t told anyone that Mother wants
him
to go back.
We retrieve food and bulbs of sweet liquid. Ship is still taking care of us— perhaps at Mother’s command. Or because of Nell.
Over food, Nell begins. “I’ve been speaking with someone who claims to represent—or to be—Destination Guidance,” she says. “I can’t trace where this voice comes from. I can’t even know if it’s one, or many, male or female or…” She holds back from saying
human
. “And I don’t know if we can trust anything it says. And, yes, the voice says Ship has been diverted.”
“From where, to where?” Tsinoy asks.
“Unknown. It’s all a mess. Some of us were created at the instigation of Destination Guidance—that’s what the voice claims.” Nell makes a face. “Destination Guidance tapped into a vein of conscience—something to that effect. It made sure that vein fed into some of us. Sometimes the patterns sent to the birthing rooms got confused, perhaps deliberately. Signals overlapping and parasitizing other signals. We were mixed in the mold, and even our molds were mixed—as Teacher says. Ship itself created another group to defend the original mission. One faction took control—and then another.” She looks at me with sad appraisal. “I think the fight has been going on for at least a hundred years. Mother has finally won control of the gene pool. She’s in charge of most of the factors.”
“Oh, Lord,” my twin says. He looks bleak.
“You both seem to know who and what this
Mother
is,” Nell says. “The girls helped you get born, favored you, escorted you to safety—and to this hull. It’s only natural to assume that one or both of you was created to be Mother’s ally, her consort. The rest of us were a necessary risk. We’d be eliminated later. There’s just one question left. Did either of you come equipped with a conscience?”
My twin has stayed close, interweaving his position with mine, as if to confuse the others. Until now, most of them could not have told us apart—or didn’t care to try. But Tsinoy has scrupulously watched us, tracking our scents. “Mother rejected him,” she tells Nell, raising a limb in my direction. “She sent him away to be killed. I brought him here through the killing tanks, as you suggested.”
Nell looks me over with narrow eyes, infinitely weary. She does not want this responsibility, this power.
“He smelled angry,” Tsinoy finishes. Then her snout does something that makes it more porous, less plated and shiny—and she sniffs my twin. “He’s in
rut
.”
He does smell a little rank.
My twin tries to kick away. Tsinoy intercepts him, holds him firmly but gently.
“Not you,” she husks.
PART THREE
THE WORLD

My twin stammers out an argument that he’s as innocent as I am, that we’ve been making bad decisions all along and that there’s no way we can trust anything Destination Guidance says. He’s panicky, sharp-voiced. I feel sorry for him—and for me. He’s ruining it for both of us. Weakly, he concludes, “Maybe it fed all of you delusions in Dreamtime—just made it all up.”

“You have always smelled different,” Tsinoy grumbles. Her grumble sounds like distant thunder, and my hair stands on end. Inflection is not one of her talents.

“How in hell would you know what
rut
is?” he shouts, squirming in her grip. His face turns red. “You’re sexless—you’re neuter!”
“Only my body,” Tsinoy says.
He twists his face toward me. “You’d let them kill your own twin! You’ll be next!”
“Nobody says we’re going to kill you,” Nell says. She manages to look as if she’s reclining, one ankle under a bar, head on hand, elbow resting on empty space—all long limbs and fluid poise. Nell catches my look and bristles. “You’re both handicapped,” she says. “She’s played on your emotions.”
“Who was
your
mother?” my twin shouts.
“I don’t think my patterns go that deep,” Nell says. “I don’t remember a childhood or a mother or a family.”
My twin’s face has screwed into tears. “Let me go to her,” he begs. “I belong with her.”
“The wrong one went aft,” Nell says, and prims her lips. Nell and Tsinoy have turned their eyes toward the windows, longing for a cleanness of vast spaces and suns, for what lies beyond Ship. The relief of infinity, of choices, of futurities lost. But the windows are still being repaired. They are fogged, dark.
I feel weak.
We hear a noise behind us. A deep brown shadow moves through darkness into the bow’s illumination.
It’s Big Yellow.
“Kim!” Nell cries. “We worried about you.”
“No need,” Kim says. “I did some gardening and got loose. I don’t think anyone got hurt. But you guys really pissed her off. She’s making her move.”
“How soon?” Nell asks, dead calm.
“Minutes, maybe. After I got loose, I passed about a dozen forest balls, and they were filled with growing things, big things and small. Worse than any I’ve seen so far.”
Kim approaches Tsinoy, who is still holding on to my twin, and reaches out with one huge hand. One finger caresses my twin’s cheek. “He’s the one she wanted, right?” he asks.
Nell nods, then points to me. “This one’s okay. I think.”
“Yeah. He did good back there.” Kim reaches out with his other hand, places it on my twin’s opposite cheek, then clamps and twists my twin’s neck. It snaps like a stick. Instantly, he just hangs.
My body jerks and I shove away from the group.
“We need to leave,” Kim says. “Back to the other hulls… anyplace but here. I don’t think even Tsinoy can fight what’s coming.”
The Tracker cradles the lifeless body and makes a soft, strange sound, then pulls back her claws, releasing it. It slips away, head bobbling, no hurry, eyes wide. Then it follows a new, slow curve toward the floor.
Tomchin looks around, stretches his arms. Points back to the transport craft.
“We should get more food and water,” Nell says.
“No time,” Kim says. He’s already grabbing and shoving, moving us toward the transport, happy to abandon the last viable hull—the last place that could feed us and clothe us.
No protest. Mother has won another round.
Aft of the staging area, in the tent-shaped chamber, we hear low, awful sounds, like whispers or snakes slithering through grass. Tsinoy shifts her muscles and bulks up, clamping her paw-claws down on the deck between us and the noises.
We pull ourselves toward the entrance of the egg-craft. I look aft. Something moves along the deck, clinging and transparent, like a wash of water but dotted with twitching, shining hairs and ruby spots for eyes. It laps up over Tsinoy’s feet. Smoke lifts and she begins to bleed—thick red drops. The liquid is cutting her up like razors. She lets go with a mewl, swiping the fluid off with quick strokes of ivory claws, and Kim grabs her outstretched limb, pulling her after the rest of us.
I catch a glimpse of what might be cherubim in the bow, little angels hovering over the lapping tide. They are jumping, climbing, yanking themselves forward—Mother’s vanguard.
The fluid is on the lip of the hatch when Nell tells it to close. We push away from Hull Zero Three. We’ve had enough of monsters, of Mothers and daughters and dreams and lies and incomprehensible wars. We can only hope the moon-bound sphere of Destination Guidance is any sort of sanctuary.
If not, we will choose black space and the deadly grit between the stars.
END DOCUMENT
SWEEP SURVEY
COMPLETE
This document has been judged original and authentic.
FILED: SHIP ARCHAEOLOGY REPORT
SURVEY TEAM PERSONAL ADDENDUM

He was
you
, wasn’t he?” my partner asks. “He was a Teacher, after all.” The survey of the joined hull and all of its nooks and hiding places, the sweep of extraneous biology—what little remains—has taken our team sixty days. We’ve multitasked throughout that time, my partner and our seven team members, working other jobs, preparing the staging areas and providing instruction for both the Ship’s maintenance crew and those who will go planetside.
“But…” My partner is almost at a loss. “Was
she
me?”
“Which one?”
“You know which one I’m referring to.”
“No way of knowing,” I say. “No pictures. Nothing we can use to judge.”
“Ship could have kept a record of it.”
“Who understands Ship?” I ask. “We still haven’t unraveled all of the systems and controls.”
“It must have been a horrible time.”
I wonder if I’ve made a mistake by letting her read ten of the books—ten out of eleven, all contained in a ragged, tattered gray bag. No other books or bags have been found. The survey team that gathered them can’t read the writing, but for some reason I can, and so can my partner. Ship is full of languages. The books are written in colloquial English, with a heavy slant toward twenty-first century cultural values and norms. My partner and I naturally speak Pan-Sinense, perhaps like the Knob-Crest called Tomchin. We have confirmed that such physiological forms are within Ship’s creative capabilities, including the monster factors—
But there is no way to know just what our writer looked like. We can only surmise that he resembled me. No way of knowing for sure.
But I feel it. Something in the way he thinks, in the word-choices apparent even through the unfamiliar flow of characters.
My partner is less pleased with her matching.
“
She
seems impossible,” she says. “Have you found anything like her in the Catalog?”
“No,” I say, but that isn’t precisely the truth. I have used data tools to recover parts of the Catalog that were not completely erased, and even to evaluate the theoretical potentials of the original Klados—of which our present Ship retains but a small selection.
Once, Ship was so much greater—and yes, something like the Mother could have existed. We were sent to the stars fully equipped. If we had stayed that way, I’m convinced we would have died—Ship would have either killed itself or been extinguished.
I’ve made my decision. I can trust my partner, but observing her disgust, her sense of loss and disappointment, I realize what I must do with the last book. I am responsible for the cultural training and morale of the colonists and, ultimately, the success or failure of our long, difficult journey. It’s shocking enough to read these first ten of the recovered books and begin to understand that our histories, our past memories, have all been manufactured. More shocking still to contemplate the amoral complexities of Ship’s designers, the desperate desire to succeed at all costs, against all odds—no matter what the consequences to other worlds, other lives.
Evil.
Yes, but we might have benefited…. Something still lingers in me. Something wrong, perverse. Lovely.
I have held back the final volume—the eleventh—from my partner’s eyes. Even now, it burns in my thoughts… and yet pleases. Someday, centuries from now, the complete story will be revealed, and it will rock us all, so young and confident and strong.
But only then.
In the meantime, our world beckons—more beautiful than we could ever have hoped.
I have replaced the eleventh volume in the bag, sealed it in sequestered storage, made certain that it will stay on Ship for as long as Ship is safely in orbit.
If you have read these old texts and our wraparound analysis, then you are educated and mature. But be prepared for knowledge that could alter your perception of all we have accomplished, all that we are.
We have lives to lead and worlds to conquer—figuratively, of course. We have found a fine new world, youthful and undeveloped. There are no civilizations, no complex ecosystems. We are already incorporating its biological wisdom into our plans.
Ship has learned. Ship was taught….
But the teaching was hard.
ELEVENTH BOOK

The peace and quiet of space, away from the hulls, heading inward, toward the little moon, still protected by the shields…
Profound silence. Not even the little egg-craft makes a sound. We are adrift, breaths held—afraid to provoke another whim of fate, or perhaps afraid to alert Destination Guidance to the fact that we are still alive. That we are about to become visitors.
Nell breaks this silence with a deep breath. “How old is Ship, do you think?” she asks, looking at me. As if I have an answer.
I’m spent. I shrug. “Five hundred years,” I say, surprised that this figure sticks in my head. “Maybe.”
“So it was launched from… where? Earth? Five centuries ago?” Kim asks.
“From the Oort cloud,” Tsinoy says. She has shrunk to a more manageable size, to give the rest of us room, rearranging her muscles and “bones” to a less energy-intensive posture. She’s still in pain.
“What’s a wart cloud?” Kim asks, perhaps to distract her from her pain.
“O-O-R-T. It’s the afterbirth of our solar system, a big halo of leftover ice and dust,” Tsinoy says. “Some of the conglomerations are hundreds of kilometers wide. Ship was constructed among the inner planets, then sent out to the far limits. An Oort moonlet was selected, trimmed, and compacted. All this took fifty years. Ship was attached and launched five hundred years ago, as Teacher says. If we can believe any of it.”
“Can we go back?” Kim asks.
“No,” Tsinoy says, and lifts a paw-claw to lick. She shudders at the taste of her wounds. “Once launched, Ship is forbidden to return. Too dangerous.”
Another silence, a long one. We are revolving, reorienting. Our short journey—a few dozen kilometers—is coming to an end. Nell and Tsinoy move toward the viewport. They almost bump heads. I marvel at the contrast.
Our females.
“First things first,” I say. “Will Destination Guidance let us in?”
“Others have sought refuge before us,” Nell says.
“What happened to them?” I ask.
“I wish I knew.”
“We’re about to connect,” Kim says.
Sounds of joining, sealing. Our ears pop as pressures equalize. Tsinoy moves toward the hatch, our first line of defense.
The hatch opens. We are flooded with cold air. Very cold. Frost plumes before our faces.
SILVER AGE