The Greatship (28 page)

The world was white, and damned.  The snow fell in waves, burying the dead lanes and high roofs, wiping away every last trace of the city.  Huddled inside their homes—inside their graves—the citizens could do nothing but wait for any good news, nursing little hopes amid wild despair.  Only the river held the thinnest promise of life.  Flat slabs of ice moved in a great parade, immune to fear or caution, holding their pace until their prows pushed out into the air, and dipped, each slab falling with smooth inevitability, dropping over the brink of the falls, still floating on the face of the water as it plunged into a cold, fierce maelstrom.

Lastborn took them over the brink, and down.

Eleven kilometers of air and spray and thunder lay below them, and behind the water stood the basalt cliff.  Sensors began working, hunting for things that were surely trying to hide—a few bodies and probably some machinery, plus every trick of camouflage that a smuggler could drag along.

The sensors found plenty, none of it remarkable.  Each vertical kilometer was examined in detail, and then the Dawsheen took them back towards the sky, flying along the waterfall’s lip, peppering the current with tiny probes better suited for other, easier jobs.

Perri ignored the search, or pretended to ignore it.

“No one is here,” Lastborn declared.

Perri was squinting into his elaborate map, studying an empty maze of tunnels situated on the far side of the cliff.

Again, the Dawsheen said, “There is no one.”  Then with an improving sense of things, he turned to Quee Lee, confessing, “My tools and patience are exhausted.  I will leave you inside the jail, where you will be safe.”

“No.”

Both of them said that word.  Quee Lee spoke with a begging tone, while Perri nearly shouted.

The map dissolved and Perri pocketed his tiny projector.  “Leave us at the base of the falls,” he told Lastborn.  “I’ve got one good place to look.”

“There is, I promise, no one.”  But the alien relented, dashing over the little knoll where the couple had watched the Gathering, then dropping fast.  Where the cliff was exposed, it formed a massive black wall decorated with that single zigzagging white line.  That line was the staircase covered with snow.  Now and again, little shapes came into view, crawling their way up through the snow.  Half a dozen secondary parades were attempting the long, hard climb.  These were the Queen’s little sisters.  Evolution and pragmatism demanded their existence.  What if disaster struck?  But no Queen had been lost during the last ten thousand Alls.  They were symbols only—emergency repositories of genetic matter accompanied by smaller entourages, each encasing only a fraction of the genetic wealth held by their big sister.

The base of the cliff was bare rock, the freezing mist reducing visibilities to a soggy arm’s length.

“Where?” asked Quee Lee.

Perri looked at her for an instant.  “Maybe you should stay here.”

She leaped first, and again, loudly, she asked, “Where?”

“We’ll work our way along the base,” he said.  “Stagger closer to the falls.”

The rocks were treacherous, slick and jumbled.  Sensing the terrain, their boots sprouted crampons, and their robes shed the freezing water, channeling it off to their downstream side.  Too late, Quee Lee turned to say, “Thank you,” to Lastborn.  But he had already lifted off.  Then to her husband, with a modest concern, she asked, “Won’t the water crush us?  Or the falling ice?”

“Probably,” he said, stepping into the lead.  “But the ice is slush before it reaches bottom, and the river is choked to a trickle.  Compared to what it was.”

“You pray,” she said.

He laughed, saying, “Yes, help me pray.  That just about doubles its effectiveness.”

They marched.  Rock litter and massive boulders quickly vanished beneath a frosting of new ice.  In a sense, it was an easy walk.  The cliff was always to their left, always close.  A foot might plant wrong, but the boot invented some way to faultlessly hold the balance.  Sometimes Perri moved ahead too quickly, and vanished.  But later, as Quee Lee grew accustomed to the pace, she would catch him, a gloved hand set firmly against his back, reminding him of her presence and urging her to hurry.

There was some ill-defined moment when they moved behind the great falls.

Half a kilometer later, they were blind.  The robes were pushing against their functional limits, and the sleet sounded like an avalanche of gravel.  Quee Lee refused to quit, but she was regretting her stubbornness.  Never again, never, would she let herself ignore her rational instincts, following after Perri in one of his little miseries.

Perri stopped in the wet blackness.  Crouching, he activated his holo-map.  But instead of checking their position, he ordered up one of the Ship’s main reactors.  Then he magnified that portion of the map, peering inside the reactor chamber.  The light was sudden, brilliant and pure.  This was a traveler’s trick:  Dial to a bright place, and let the map illuminate your surroundings.

The image of fusion threw a white glow against the base of the cliff.  They saw a cavern or maybe an overhanging spur of rock.  A glimmer came back at them, and Perri stood and walked straight for the glimmer and it brightened gradually, and lifted, and Quee Lee looked up to see motion overhead.  She was watching two figures apparently walking on their heads.

The ceiling was hyperfiber.

The Great Ship’s bones lay exposed.  Tumbling waters must have chiseled away the basalt, revealing the supporting strata.  She looked at herself—a sloppy, pale version of herself—and then she looked ahead again, hurrying after Perri, the air drying while the roar of the sleet fell into an angry rumble.

She didn’t see the kidnappers.

Perri slowed and dimmed his map, and he kneeled, saying nothing.  With a hand in the air, he asked her to drop beside him.  Then he extinguished the map, letting a second light burst into view.

The cave ended with a wall of high-grade hyperfiber.  Three men stood before the wall, manipulating a plasma drill, using slow measured bursts to peel away the barrier in millimeter bites.  Work fast, and someone might notice the energy discharges.  Work too slow and someone might stumble into their hiding place.  The men seemed perfectly attuned to their task, urgency married to patience.  Burn, clean the new surface, and wait.  Burn, clean, wait.  Burn, clean, wait.  The rhythm was steady and relentless, and very nearly silent.  The only voice belonged to the man who had yelled at the Dawsheen waiter.  “Now,” he would say every minute.  And the other two men would step behind opaque shields, letting the drill spit out another carefully crafted pulse.

“How did they get here?” Quee Lee asked.

Expecting the question, Perri was already pointing into the shadows.  “We just walked past their ship.  It looks like a boulder, because it is a hollow rock, reequipped and very sneaky.”

She nodded, and squinted.

The drill pulsed, washing the scene with light, but she couldn’t see what she wanted to see.

“The Queen,” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said.

A minute later, the man called out, “Now.”

And again, the drill pulsed.  This time, Quee Lee glanced to her right, spotting two figures.  The human was sitting on a flat slab of gray-black stone.  The Queen was sitting, too.  Was that really Her?  They weren’t too far away.  In the gloom, the creature resembled any Dawsheen.   But there her features were smooth, almost plainness, like a hurried sketch of something infinitely more complicated.  She was wearing a plain cloak, nothing about her distinctive.  There was no hair or plumage, no flourishes.  She was sitting across from her kidnapper.  Again, the drill pulsed, and the injured hyperfiber continued to glow.  With a voice that wasn’t right for a Dawsheen, the Queen said a few words.  The man was wearing an odd wide smile, and he said a few words of his own, his voice sounding like the bleating of a child’s toy.

Quee Lee tried to make sense of the scene.

And then she felt something, or heard something.  For no conscious reason, she looked back over her shoulder, turning in time to see a boot perched on an adjacent rock, and the trousers tucked into the boot, the trousers lifting into a rounded body that was wearing the dark, thoroughly drenched uniform of a Dawsheen police office.

She put her elbow into Perri’s side.

He started to turn.

Lastborn aimed his weapon with a practiced touch, but his nervousness fought against an easy shot.  It took another moment for him to feel sure enough to fire.  The gun drained itself in one full blast, and the world turned white, the screaming ball of plasmas rolling towards its target.  But a set of transparent diamond shields absorbed the blast, keeping the Queen from being incinerated.

Perri said, “Shit,” and stood.

Lastborn unholstered his second weapon, and with the same nervous earnestness aimed at the Queen.

Her shields had evaporated.  She tried to run, and the human threw himself between Her and the attacker—a fearless, useless gesture—and Perri managed to throw a loose rock overhand, catching Lastborn on the back of his head.

The second blast hit the ceiling and faded.

In reflex, Quee Lee sprinted at Lastborn.

The alien was working with his first gun, trying to find enough residual power for a second shot.

“Why?” she screamed.  “Why?”

She grabbed the lead foot, and yanked, accomplishing nothing.

“Why—?”

And then what felt like a great hand descended on them, and there was nothing else to see.

Every morning, She would walk with her instructors, and listen.  The beach was sand made by the glaciers and living wind-reefs built from the same sand.  The Sea was blue and warm and just a little salty.  When her instructors spoke, the tropical blue air filled with words about duty and history and honor and the great noble future.  The duty was Her own, demanding and essential; while the honor was entirely theirs.  Who wouldn’t wish to nourish and educate the newborn Queen?  Together, the instructors shared a history reaching back into a mist of conjecture and dream; while the future lay before Her, as real as anything can be that has not yet been born.

She was an empty vessel walking beside the warm blue water—a large vessel filled with empty spaces, every space begging to be jammed full of important treasure.

Her powers were obvious.  Animals fell silent and still as she passed, staring at her simple body with the purest longing.  Every bush and fruited blade threw out its spores, hoping to find Her blessing.  Even the tiniest microbe struggled to reach her, crawling wildly across a dampened grain of quartz while one of Her vast and noble feet rested in the lazy surf.

The Queen’s little sisters didn’t elicit such dramatic responses.   One day, She looked back at them and at their own little entourages, and with simple curiosity asked, “What is their future?”

Her first instructor was an elderly Dawsheen woman.  She answered with a dismissive tone, as if to say, “What happens to them does not matter.”  But then, sensing the Queen wasn’t satisfied, she explained, “They will follow you, always.  And hibernate in their safe havens.  And your children will eat their sleeping bodies, except for the one or two of them will be sent away—”

“Sent where?”

“Another world, perhaps.”  The face was full of indifference.  Little sisters couldn’t be more insignificant to this old woman.  “We roam the galaxy for a purpose,” she reminded her student, gesturing to the illusion of a sky.  “At this moment, my people are hunting for suitably empty worlds.”

That was when the Queen realized that she did not like this woman.

Then there was a different walk, on an entirely different day.  She sensed eyes staring and a silence.  But the stare didn’t come from the trees or soil this time.  Looking out at the little waves, she spied what resembled a mossy stone bobbed in the surf, a pair of enormous black eyes watching nothing but Her.

She had never seen one of the Others.

For the briefest instant, with a mixture of curiosity and desire, She returned the gaze.  And then her instructor covered Her eyes with every hand, and a sudden voice, tight and angry, warned her, “It should watch your sisters, not you.  That one is not yours.”

But the eyes kept staring, and She returned their gaze.

“Your Magnificence,” the old woman said.  “Your Other has already been chosen, infinitely suited for You and Your glorious duty.  Please, please, turn your eyes away.  Everyone knows that that Other is sick, and peculiar, and you do not want to know anything more about it…!”

Perri woke slowly.

“There’s a general alert,” someone said.  Then after a pause, the same voice said, “Shit.”

Perri pried his eyes open and breathed.  His pain told him that he still had hands and feet, and an intact body.  His skin was warm and bare, arms and legs were lashed down.  Someone sat beside him, similarly restrained.  Quee Lee.  Was she awake?  Maybe.  He wasn’t certain.  Then he looked at two figures sitting on the floor opposite him—a human hand lay hidden inside the Queen’s Dawsheen hands—and what was meant to look like a human face betrayed bliss and simple, corrosive horror.

Finally, Perri understood.

Again, Loon said, “Shit.”

The male creature sitting before Perri spoke in a whisper, and a translator buried in the false throat asked, “What is wrong now?”

The smugglers sat at the front of the little cap-car, each eavesdropping on a different sliver of the security net.  A third time, Loon said, “Shit.”  Then he turned and grimaced, saying, “We’ll slip past fine.  I’ve got emergency routes waiting.  I’ve beaten these general alarms plenty of times.”

Quee Lee stirred and quietly called to her husband.

Perri nestled against her.  “You’re all right now.”

“And you?”

He didn’t answer.  With a rapt intensity, he stared at the Queen, and when she seemed to look back at him, he asked, “Why?”

The man-figure looked at him now.

“Why?” Perri repeated.

Neither entity answered that deceptively simple question.

Then Loon threw up his arms, saying, “This shouldn’t have happened.  If you’d let me kill that Dawsheen–”

The Queen bleated, and her translator said, “No.”

“No killing,” said her companion.  “I explained.”

“One old, doomed Dawsheen.  Good as dead already.”  Loon shook his head, frustrated and enraged, and helpless.  “But of course we had to leave him.  We had to give him the chance to get off a warning.”

Again, Perri asked, “Why?”

Quee Lee was naked.  Her robe, like Perri’s, had been taken away, along with every link to their buried nexuses.  But they were unhurt.  Loon was a smuggler.  In the right circumstance, he might kill an alien, but murdering human beings was an entirely different crime.

“I don’t understand,” Perri said.  “Explain this to me.  Why?”

Dipping her head, Quee Lee said, “Because the two of them, in some uncommon sense, are in love with each other.”

Perri shook his head, a thin laugh breaking out.  “Except that’s not what I’m asking them.”

Both aliens stared at him, wary but curious.

“I know what you want,” Perri said.  “You want each other.  You’re hoping to escape, to get onboard one of the little starships bound for somewhere else…another world, and some kind of freedom…and that’s why you’ve gone to all this work and risk.”

“Yes,” the Queen rumbled.

“And that’s why they want you to die,” said Perri.  “You’re a traitor, in their eyes.  A danger.  An abomination!”

“Shut up,” Loon told him.

“But you’re not dangerous,” Perri said, “and you’re not any kind of abomination.  Believe me, I understand.  All you want is to join together.  You want only what Queens and Others have desired from the beginning of time.  An empty world, a fresh beginning, and the chance to realize your own future…”

Again, Loon started to say, “Shut up.”

But the Other lifted one human hand, in warning.  And with a smooth male voice, it said, “We have a beautiful, beautiful world to build.”

“I can believe that,” Perri said.

Then the Queen spoke, her musical voice diluted into the inadequate words, “A new world unlike any.  A lovely, elegant All that will never be born if we do not make the proper journey!”

An alarm sounded, loud and urgent.

Loon cursed and abruptly changed course.

Quee Lee leaned forward, smiling at their shared hands.  “It must be extraordinarily important to you, to make you sacrifice so much.”

The Queen spoke for several moments, which the translator distilled to the single word, “Yes.”  But Her voice held the meaning, longing and sad desperation fixed to the faint, dying hope that something worthy would come out of all this crazy wanting.

Then one last time, Perri said, “I still want to understand why.”

Queen and Other stared at him, baffled.

Then he asked, “Why did you hire Loon Fairbanks?  Why did you think he was going to be your salvation?”

No answer came.

Loon rose to his feet.  To nobody in particular, he shouted, “Will you just shut the hell up now!”

“That man,” Perri said.  “He smuggles objects, and he’s not even the best at that.  You need the finest.  You deserve nothing less!”

The Other asked, “Who is the finest?”

“Me.  I am.”

Silence.

“What you should do is fire Loon,” said Perri.  “Dismiss him, and do it now.  Do it this moment.  Then I will hire him and his crew as my subcontractors, and I’ll try to get you what you desire, and deserve.”

The Queen spoke, no translation offered.

With the tone of a sorry confession, her mate and collaborator admitted, “But we have no more money to give.”

“Goodness, that’s no obstacle,” Quee Lee blurted.  And with an effusive grin, she said, “Believe me.  This darling man works for surprisingly little!”