Hull Zero Three (24 page)

Tsinoy, I think, fell in love with the old woman right away and cared for our infant successors with a quiet enthusiasm. She did not need to protect the rest of us.

We had already initiated the final cooling of the hulls. Essentially, this meant the destruction of most living things aboard Hull Zero Three, the other hulls being nearly dead already. Some might survive for a time—Mother is always resourceful, and the gene pool is a never-ending source of ingenuity.

But we have stopped transport of ice from the moon to the hulls. Soon, there will no longer be heat to chase. The liquid within the hulls’ central tubes will also freeze, for a time, and Ship will drift without power, except for the reserves within this sphere.
PERCHANCE

The old woman died a few days after our arrival. She did not tell us all we needed to know, but she gave us the keys to what was left of Ship’s original instructions, almost eroded away after centuries of fighting.

Nell has learned this much after careful study of the remnants of Ship’s memory and after careful questioning of the monkeys, who have grown a touch dotty over time:

It was the original choice of the first Destination Guidance team to set the course for a system that observation showed was already inhabited by intelligent beings. Honorably enough, they died, their work done—but done badly, as it turned out.

As Ship approached its intended destination, the first Mother was created, and the first consorts. They prepared Ship to destroy, replace.
But Ship was somehow pushed into a minute diversion, away from its intended destination and toward a dangerously unstable star. That star exploded in a supernova, washing Ship in deadly radiation and damaging the hulls and memory.
As Ship’s memory degraded, emergency procedures dictated that memory and function would be diverted to biological components able to carry out basic functions, including preserving and re-creating the gene pool. Ship then entered the dusty outer clouds of the resulting nebula.
With the original destination no longer in reach, another Destination Guidance team was born—into the worst imaginable conditions. Ship Control was intermittent, the hulls were filling with monsters, the birthing chambers were either being perverted to Mother’s demands or, failing that, being shut down.
The old woman and her colleagues—then little more than adolescents— somehow reached the decision that Ship must not continue in its present form. Destination Guidance infiltrated hull communications and assumed control of some birthing chambers, creating counter-crew and subverting some of Mother’s Killers by mixing components of biology and memory.
They fought Mother in all her many different incarnations.
Thus began the war.
AT THE END, the old woman met with me alone in a small room the monkeys had arranged for her. She took my hand, her fingers as light as bird wings, and said, “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”
I’m not willing to admit I’ve seen anything.
She then adds, “Our Ship is haunted. Not just by the dead of ancient wars, oh no—but by something not from Ship. Something I believe set us a great challenge. When I told Selchek and Grimmel what I saw, they did not believe me. They joked, calling it my avenging angel. Puroy called it the Judge. She, too, did not believe it was real. But it was—I know. It’s been with us for hundreds of years.”
She regards me with a gaze growing strong and steady—an assured but also
frighened
gaze. I can barely look at her my body is trembling so.
“In time, others saw it as well. Those of us who saw felt that we were indeed being judged. We believed it diverted Ship toward the supernova. In part, seeing it—fearing its judgment—we knew that if we didn’t clean up our act and prevent the destruction of other innocent worlds, Ship would be utterly destroyed.”
I have to ask, “Where does it come from?”
She smiles, pats my wrist. “I do not know. It never told me, nor anyone else. It does not want to interfere any more than it has to.” The old woman then whispers, “Reach into your memory… Tell me what you think it might be. Look into the mirror. Engage your imagination. I know you have one.”
Her last words to me.

MAYBE WHEN I look into this mirror, I draw out a story, awakening not memory, not history, but fable.
I can’t express this at all well.
Ship can never return home. The designers who originally equipped it knew that it was far too capable, far too dangerous: a true slaying seed.
Intelligent life in other systems, sensing the approach of such a danger, might mount defenses to protect their homes. But they would likely take no risks, expending the least amount of effort, and do all they could to simply destroy us.
Who else from outside would care for such a large, clumsy, deadly contraption as Ship? Who else would care enough to challenge it, rather than to just safely destroy it and be done with us all?
Those who followed us from Earth would have built faster ships—or traveled using no ships at all. They would have spread out into a broad galaxy, perhaps going through their own hells of destruction and learning. And then, finding our Ship and perhaps others, vast capsulated samples of an ancestral world, they might have marveled, studied—valued. They might have felt sympathy for their primitive ancestors and wanted us to succeed, as a pilot flying a jet might feel for a lost family in a Conestoga wagon.
But they had no desire to watch Ship wreak ancient havoc. And so they appointed a chaperone, a guardian who chastised and protected at once, but who also conveyed a subliminal warning, a chance at reflection—a chance to discover our only place in space and time.

THE OLD WOMAN was my true mother. And my true partner. She made me. She saved me. After she was gone, I carried her to the forest, with Tsinoy’s help, and gave her over to the monkeys, who took her where they took the last of the mummies, to a place we do not know and do not care to find.

Eventually, I tell the others. Nell and Tomchin do not judge. Tsinoy and Kim, to my surprise, prove the most reluctant to accept the old woman’s story— my fable—or any part of what I think I saw.

Even when I remind them of the laser that saved my life. They have no answer for that.
This much seems clear. Ship has to earn the right to live. The only way to pass this test is to defeat Ship’s original design.
Ship has to find a conscience, or the chaperone could still destroy it utterly.

CENTURIES HAVE PASSED since we left Earth. It’s taken me this long to write about it. The books are almost full. This is the last of them.
We place the children in the old woman’s capsule. Tsinoy is despondent. She misses them. We will assign her other work. The monkeys have gone into hiding, preparing for what comes next. There is still much for the rest of us to do.
We will not be allowed to grow old together.
PENANCE AND GUIDANCE

Nell has found us a star, within the degrees of freedom left as Ship coasts. Once, apparently, this sun was hidden by an arm of nebula, invisible to those who made our first desperate choice. Only in the last few months has it emerged.
Perhaps something knew all along.
The calculations seem to fit. In a hundred years, Ship will send fuel to the

hulls. It will warm the engines, make a slow turn of a fraction of a degree, then cool again and sleep. We must conserve fuel in the sphere to power the shields, but even they will be weaker than they have been through our time of trial.

Our chosen is beautiful. A sun with at least twelve planets, two of them in a zone of habitability, and a decent halo of outer ice—something like the Oort cloud.

In two hundred years, after traversing a clear, calm void, almost empty of stardust, Ship will rise from cold slumber. Long before, Kim and Tsinoy and I will have purged the Klados of the dark pages of the Catalog. The hulls will finally join, and Ship will perform its last, century-long braking maneuver, sacrificing nearly all that remains of the moonlet; then it will take the long plunge into the inner system.

The infants will be awakened—raised, educated, and placed in charge. They will be the first new crew. Some of us will freeze down to become teachers. Perhaps one will be me, but that is no longer important or essential.

And in the end, once the final decision has been made—go or no go—the infants, now old, will pass away, as will those who raised and taught them, making room for Ship to grow a fresh crew and create landing vessels, seedships….

Oh, there will still be deception. The fresh crew will emerge as adults, will have memories of past training and lives. Our stories, our lives, will go on. I refuse to allow that love to die, just because it was never real.

The sphere is growing cold. Nell and I seek last warmth together. I saw it again last night. Shining and lithe, like polished moonlight. Nell was beside me but saw nothing. I thought it knew me, acknowledged me, but I could have been dreaming. I’m half-dreaming now. I can barely write, and the pages of this eleventh book are almost full. There will be no others.
I see our world so clearly. Cloud modest
I feel the warmth
she’s waiting
she smiles she’s all I ever wanted
WE
ARE
HERE
END SHIP’S ARCHAEOLOGY REPORT