“Good,” my twin says. “My thoughts almost exactly.”
“We’re more effective if we believe in what we’re teaching—if we’ve lived it and experienced some of the consequences of screwing up. We have to have a history. So we’re given one. But we also have to be filled in on the real-world situation.”
My twin carries on from this, nodding his head frantically and holding up one hand as if he wants to control an orchestra. “That’s right. And there is no real-world situation. Something has asked us to be made and trotted out before the stage has been set, our stage, our play—before there are colonists to teach or any situation someone could possibly expect us to face.”
I’m getting the rhythm. Two heads are better than one. And it might be possible that we’ve been fed different parts of the puzzle.
“We saw part of the Catalog,” I say. “Centuries of effort and money and programming, all poured into the gene pool.” I look over my shoulder at Tomchin and Kim. “Not all the suitable planets are going to be exactly like Earth. So colonists come in a variety of styles, suited to particular environments. If you don’t have to carry around fully formed people, if all you’ve got is embryos—or even more simple than that, instruction sets fed into bio-generators…”
I am surprised by that word.
“You just made that up?” my twin asks.
“Maybe. Bio-generators hooked up to a database of all possible life-forms, Earth life modified to occupy the far-flung reaches of all practical evolution….” I’m shivering again. The others, including Nell, are like a crowd in a jazz club, moving in around a hot jam session.
Nell says, “Whoever put together Ship wanted us ignorant of our true nature and origins? That’s what you’re saying, right?”
My twin says, “We wouldn’t need to know about our origins. In fact, it might distract us.” Even Tomchin is following our dialogue with signs of comprehension. Tsinoy is so close I feel her ivory spikes digging into my calf. I withdraw that leg and look at her resentfully.
“Go on,” she grumbles. “Whoever made me screwed me over and told me nothing about why.”
“Well, you are the real puzzle here,” my twin says. “Trackers shouldn’t have fully formed human intellects and probably would never be employed as navigators.”
“Astrogators,” Tsinoy corrects. “But why would you have any memory of something that shouldn’t be in the first place?”
This pushes us into the embarrassing zone of our speculations. I am no braver than my twin but am less experienced, so I go first. “I think part of our programming, our historical indoctrination, might contain contingency plans—dark ones. Secrets we’d never acknowledge, never need to acknowledge—unless things go badly wrong.”
“Cleaning up planets,” Tsinoy says. “I’m a Killer.”
“Oh,” Nell says, a sound of dread.
“If we get where we’re going and there’s competition…”
“We can’t go anywhere else,” my twin says. “We’ll be out of fuel. It’s either get along—which may or may not happen—or kill and strip the system to survive. To accomplish our mission.”
“You say that’s what I’m designed for,” Tsinoy says.
“Maybe. But now it’s starting to make sense.”
“And as Teachers, cultural instructors, you’d have to persuade the colonists they need to destroy the natives,” Kim says. “That’s total crap.”
“Yeah,” Tsinoy says. “Maybe they give you a fine-tuned moral compass.”
“And you?” I ask her.
She’s all bristle and no grace, and now her voice is low and not in the least musical. She sounds confused. “I don’t like what I’m made to do.”
“Well, here’s some relief,” my twin says. “From what we’ve been able to access, you’re not the worst this ship can do. Not by half.”
“Actually, we didn’t get that far,” I add. “We don’t qualify—we’re not total warriors. There’s a part of the Catalog that’s kept hidden—for a good reason.” My twin seems unhappy I’m telling them about this. I go on, anyway. “If our destination is super-bad, if there’s already a civilization with weapons that could hurt us, we’re given access to the most powerful and destructive points of creativity in the Klados—the Wastelayers. That’s what they were called. Our designers didn’t want us to carry that kind of history in our normal patterns. That kind of…”
“Guilt,” Nell says. She moves back and touches the hemisphere again, a light caress. Her eyes flutter.
“Right,” my twin says, with a glance in my direction. “Now you all know.” He seems regretful.
Nell lets go of the controls. “That’s enough for me,” she says. “The sequence that begins hull combination has three checkpoints. We can do it all from here, if we want. We can initiate, then hold—that should send some sort of message to Destination Guidance. Put back the shields.”
“How long would that take?” Kim asks.
“Total combination… at least ten hours. But the process starts right away.”
“And how long until this damned storm knocks us loose?” I ask.
“This part of the nebula is filled with protoplanetary dust, blown out from an exploding star,” Tsinoy says.
“Any minute…” Nell says. She stops, but we’re all immediately thinking the same thing. Destination Guidance must have steered us wrong—deliberately. Dropping the shields and letting the dust wear us all away was in the works from the very beginning.
They don’t want us to find a new home. They don’t need the hulls, they don’t need to travel, they don’t need to arrive. All they want to do is survive in their little sphere, sitting on top of all the fuel they could ever use.
With the engines shut down, hundreds of thousands of years’ worth.
“Do we vote,” Nell asks, “or just act?”
“Doesn’t take long to vote,” Kim points out.
Tsinoy agrees with a raised claw-paw-arm.
“Seconds count.”
“Do it,” everyone says, almost as one.
Tomchin adds a low whistle.
“Right,” Nell says, and slaps her hands on the hemisphere. “Starting combination sequence.”
She drops into eyes-up contact. It seems forever, but it’s probably just a few minutes, before the control chamber brightens, small alarms go off like little fairy bells. Then instructive lines and arrows glow, barricades rise, and a voice announces, “Find safe positions within the indicated outlines. When hulls begin to merge, additional safe areas will be created, and you will be instructed how to retreat and maintain.”
Rails and cables rearrange around us, and new controls rise to our right while others sink down to our left and inboard. It’s working. Or at least, something’s happening.
We look at each other, help each other to the safer positions in the chamber, but say very little, listening to the constant sound of our hull being sandblasted by the ghosts of unborn worlds. It’s a creepy sound. Twenty percent of the speed of light creates a hell of a slipstream.
At least two of us still have questions, of course. That’s our nature. But we don’t voice them. Maybe the girls have their own objections, their own agenda. But we don’t need to be any more frightened than we already are. As a team, we’ve matured at least to the extent that we know that much.
And that’s pretty impressive, considering how we all began.
Maybe the designers knew a thing or two after all, is one of the thoughts I’m thinking. But then there’s another: How could things have gone so wrong?
And part of my fictitious past comes up with a wise old professor teaching a literature class in starship prep: “If you want to ask how evil begins, just look to basic human nature. What’s good gets bent, and bad is the inevitable result.”
Right, but how do I have any respect for someone who may never have actually lived? I’m like a character in one of those plays we never studied—a character given flesh but no additional lines, and set loos
e on a weird, half-empty stage, in front of a critical audience we can’t see. Or don’t want to see.
“Crapola,” my twin says, and we nod and reach out and touch fingers, knowing we’re thinking much the same thoughts and reaching much the same conclusion.
“We’re real,” he says. “Just go with that much.”
“Amen,” I say.
Amen. Nell used it earlier but I didn’t connect. It’s a strange word with all sorts of connotations. Where’s the god we should pray to? Which direction? We do have a prayer, actually. We were taught one in that academy we never went to. There’s a religion that goes behind it, but I don’t want to cloud my thoughts with useless emerging details. The prayer, however, offers a hope of some relief from doubt and pain, if we can just say it right.
So I give voice.
“Creator of all
Bless those who are small
With wisdom and love.
Provide for our care
And Guide us as we voyage
Across vastness unspeakable
Toward bright new homes.
We honor space,
Which is your memory,
And seek the wisdom
That is our ration.
No more, no less.
Amen.”
By the third line, most of our group is following along—but not my twin. He’s watching closely but not saying the words. Our voices echo in the space. Common ground. We are family—most of us.
The girls have wandered off again.
We can feel the motion now—subtle and different. The noise is subsiding, though not by much, indicating that our forward profile might be altered, even reduced—whatever that implies. We don’t question small favors.
The forward viewports have become fogged and pitted. All it would take is something the size of a—
Grain of sand.
Crackling veins fly across the ports, and a squeal like something big and frightened draws our breath away, literally—air is being sucked from the bow. Then the panels fly up before there’s time to think. The squealing stops.
We can’t see outside now, except by venturing into the weird world of Ship Control, but we’re leaving that up to Nell for the moment. We huddle, all but Tsinoy, who is contented with just sticking a smoothed paw into the ring gathered within a safety zone.
Maybe we don’t want to know that we’re dying.
Maybe we’re shielded by the prayer.
Maybe…
After an indefinite time, Nell joins us. Fear leaves us empty. “First checkpoint,” she tells us. “They’ll have to talk if they want us to stop there.”
“Or?” Kim asks.
“Or we crush them and take our chances,” she says. “They got it wrong so far. Who can guarantee they won’t betray us all over again?” She looks at my twin, then at me. “Sound right?”
“Absolutely,” he says.
“We should find the girls,” Nell says.
“They know their way around,” Kim says, and Tomchin agrees.
There’s little to do. The noise keeps us from any rest. Our thoughts tumble. We’re half-delirious despite a ration of food from the tent-shaped chamber, brought to us by Tomchin and Tsinoy.
Nell keeps the hulls at the first checkpoint for what seems a very long time, and still, nothing has changed—nobody’s talking to us. Destination Guidance remains as aloof and unknown—and as silent—as ever.
Kim lets go of a guide cable and kicks across to me and my twin, landing midway between us and taking hold of another cable. Weightless, his movements are swift and efficient; I would have pegged him for the model of an occupant for a high-gravity world, stocky and strong, but surprises abound.
“We’re still being battered,” Kim says. “How much longer can we wait?”
Nell has stayed near the control panel and the hemisphere. She listens to our low voices through the grind and roar. The shivering suddenly increases, as if we’ve entered a particularly dense patch. The point is doubly made.
“Next checkpoint,” my twin says. “Show we mean business.”
I agree. “What have we got to lose? Nobody knows how much longer this can last.”
Tsinoy and Tomchin have collected the bulbs and spheres that held our meals and slipped them into a gray sack. Now they gather around. Tomchin is eager to ask questions, but we can’t catch his drift, and after a moment, he gives up, shaking his hands at the noisy air.
Tsinoy seems thoughtful. “I can’t be sure,” she says. “But I can almost feel the density out there. It’s very thin, but we’re moving very fast. There’s dust, there’s gas… There might be bigger chunks. If we hit one of those, we’ll be blasted to bits.”
“How long?” Nell asks.
“We’ve already survived for hours,” Tsinoy says. “I just don’t know how strong the hulls are.”
“The other hulls don’t matter,” Kim says.
“We can’t finish the integration if either of the other hulls is severely damaged—or lost,” Nell says. “Maybe that’s what they’re waiting for—one of the hulls to go.”
“Speed it up,” I say. “Can you?”
“Probably not, but I can move to the next checkpoint. An hour at most. We’re hunkering in, and from what I’m learning in the control space, parts of the hull are already adapting for the combination.”
“Maybe that’s making us more aerodynamic,” Kim says, but Tsinoy and Nell are unconvinced.
“Go for it,” I say.
“Go,” my twin says.
The others agree.
Nell immerses herself in the control space, and we don’t hear from her for a while. Her eyes are almost closed, showing just a low crescent of sclera, like a cat dozing. The hull seems to be moving again. Outside, the noise of the storm changes, but it’s neither more nor less this time.
“Where did the girls go?” my twin asks.
“To find their mother, probably,” Kim says from a short distance. “We have yet to be introduced.”
“Who is this ‘Mother,’ and what’s she like?” Nell asks. “Has anybody seen anything that could give us a clue?”
This reminds me of the sketch in blood left in the outboard shaft by one of our girls—the one, presumably, who helped me get born. “Maybe we don’t want to actually meet Mother,” I say.
The sound around us suddenly drops to a whisper, then to almost silence. The change is quick—a couple of seconds and we can talk without shouting, think without grating our teeth.
“We have a shield!” Nell calls out. “It’s off to one side, but it’s there. They’ve given in!”
But she doesn’t sound convinced. We gather beside her, clinging to cables and a bar near the control pylon. We know better than to slap our hands around hers on the hemisphere—the display doesn’t work that way; no more than three individuals at a time.
We let Tsinoy go first. The Tracker becomes completely still, except for the shivers that keep her curled-up paws on the hemisphere. Her spines are smooth and withdrawn, so as not to poke Nell, who still has that dozing-cat look, immersed in whatever the hull is feeding her in the way of information.
After a moment, Nell asks, “Shall I stop integration?”
Tsinoy pulls back her paws. “We’re protected,” she confirms. “The shields have moved, to be sure, but nebular material is being diverted around and behind the hulls—as designed.”
“I’m stopping, then,” Nell says.
“Why?” my twin asks.
“Because Tsinoy says we still need Destination Guidance.”
The rest of us are unhappy with that decision—we’d just as soon see the author or authors of our misery squashed or absorbed or otherwise obliterated. But Tsinoy’s warning is an unavoidable consideration.
“Sure,” I say, and Kim agrees. “Stop integration.” My twin, oddly, doesn’t chime in on this decision. He holds back, physically and verbally, putting a little distance between himself and the rest of us. I think that he’s been playing s
ome sort of hand and does not want to overplay.
The hull’s motion along the rails on the moon far below, toward the moon’s forward end and the other two hulls, slows. We can detect very tiny changes in momentum through the gentle tug on our gripping hands and hooked feet.
“Done,” Nell says. “What now?”
“We have to talk, and they have to be willing to talk,” my twin says. Playing his hand again, very sly. “Otherwise, they’re no use at all—and we might as well wipe them out.”
“Maybe they want us to come to them,” Kim suggests, with a shake of his big head.
“The controls don’t show anything alive down there,” Nell says. “The whole area is frozen. We’re in control… for the time being. They know they can’t get rid of us.”
“Maybe it’s all automated,” I say.
“Automation is sporadic. Ship’s systems are pretty shot. I say we hold as much information between us as we might find left in Ship’s memory.”
“Great,” Kim says. “Nobody’s in charge?”
“Can you send a message throughout Ship, to all the hulls?” I ask. “That might get through.”
“Only if there’s a connection in the first place. An emergency signal…” She pulls her hands away from the hemisphere and her eyes fully open. She shivers, then curls up on the bar next to the pylon. “Working this thing takes it out of me. I have to repeat everything ten times, learning and doing at once.”
“Then show me how,” I say. My twin grins and raises his arm. “Show us how.”
“Me too,” Kim says, and Tomchin indicates with another hand that he’s interested. Tsinoy is watching the covered forward viewports, like a dog waiting for its master—a dangerous, sad dog—and seems to be paying the rest of us and our situation no never mind.