Mallow (8 page)

'These hydrogen seas have always been the deepest features,' she commented.
'Below them is nothing but iron and a stew of other metals squashed under fantastic pressures.'

The ship had been reduced to a smooth black ball — the essential ingredient in a multitude of parlor games.

'Until now, we knew everything about the core.' The Master paused, allowing herself a knowing grin. 'Clear, consistent evidence proved that when the ship was built, its crust and mande and core were stripped of radionuclides.The goal, we presumed, was to help cool the interior.
To
make the rock and metal still and predictable.
We
didn't know how the builders managed their trick, but there was a network of narrow tunnels leading down, branching as they dropped deeper, all reinforced with hyperfiber and energy buttresses.'

Washen was breathing faster now. Nodding.

'By design or the force of time, those little tunnels collapsed.' The Master paused,
sighed, and shook her golden face. 'Not enough room for a microchine to pass. Or so we've always believed.'

Washen felt her heart beating, a suffused and persistent and delicious joy building.

'There was never, ever, the feeblest hint of any hidden chamber,' the Master proclaimed.
'1
won't allow criticism on this matter. Every possible test was carried out. Seismic. Neutrino imaging. Even palm-of-the-hand calculations of mass and volume. Until some fifty-three years ago, there wasn't one sane reason to think that our maps were in any sense incomplete*

A silence had engulfed the audience.

Quietl
y, smoothly, the Master said, 'The full ship. Please.'

Again, the iron ball was dressed in cold rock and hyper-fiber.

'We pivot ninety,' she said.

As if suddenly bashful, the ship's leading face turned away from her. Rocket nozzles swung into view, each large enough to cradle a moon. None were firing, and according to the schedule, none would fire for another three decades.

'The impact, please.'

Washen stepped closer, anticipating what she would see. Fifty-three years ago, passing through the Black Nebula, the ship collided with a swarm of comets. Nobody was surprised by the event. Brigades of captains and their staff had spent decades making preparations, mapping and remapping the space before them, searching for hazards as well as paying customers. But avoiding those comets would have cost too much fuel. And why bother? The swarm wasn't harmless, but it was believed to be as close to harmless as possible.

Gobs of antimatter were thrown at the largest hazards.

Lasers evaporated the tumbling fragments.

The captains watched the drama play out again, in rigorous detail: off in distant portions of the room, little suns flickered in and out of existence. Gradually the explosions moved closer, and finally, too close. Lasers fired without pause, evaporating trillions of tons of ice and rock. The shields brightened, moving from a dull blanket of red into a livid purple cloak, fighting to push gas and dust aside. But debris still peppered the hull, a thousand pinpricks dancing on its silver-gray face. And at the bombardment's peak, there was a blistering white flash that dwarfed the other explosions. The captains blinked and grimaced, remembering the instant, and their shared sense of utter embarrassment.

A mountain of nickel-iron had slipped through their vaunted defenses.

The impact rattled the ship. Gelatin dinners wiggled on their plates, and quiet seas rippled, and the most alert or sensitive passengers said, 'Goodness,' and perhaps grabbed hold of something more solid than themselves. Then for months, Remoras had worked to fill the new crater with fresh hyperfiber, and the nervous and bored passengers talked endlessly about that single scary moment.

The ship was never in danger.

In response, the captains had publicly paraded their careful schematics and rigorous calculations, proving that the hull could absorb a thousand times that much energy, and there would still be no reason to be nervous, much less terrified. But just the same, certain people and certain species had insisted on being afraid.

With a palpable relish, the Master said, 'Now the cross section. Please.'

The nearest hemisphere evaporated. In the new schematic,
pressure waves appeared as subtl
e colors emerging from the blast site, spreading out and diluting, then pulling together again at the stern, shaking a lot of the ship's plumbing before the waves met and bounced, passing back the way they had come, back to the blast site where they met again, and again bounced. Even today, a thin vibration was detectable, whispering its way through the ship as well as the captains' own bones. 'AI analysis. Please.'

A map was laid over the cross section, everything expected and familiar. Except for the largest feature, that is.

'Madam,' said a sturdy voice. Miocene's voice. 'It's an anomaly, granted. But doesn't that feature . . . doesn't it seem . . . unlikely . . . ?'

'Which was why I thought it was nothing,' the Master concurred. 'And my most trustworthy AI - part of my own neural net - agreed with me. This region defines some change in composition. Or in density. Certainly nothing more.' She paused for a long moment, carefully watching her captains. Then with a gracious, oversized smile, she admitted, 'The possibility of a hollow core has to seem ludicrous.'

Submasters and captains nodded with a ragged hopefulness.

But they hadn't come here because of anomalies. Washen knew it, and she stepped closer. How large was that hole? Estimates were easy, but the simple math created some staggering numbers.

'Ludicrous,' the Master repeated. 'But then I thought back to when I was a baby, barely a century old. Who would have guessed then that a jovian world could be made into a starship, and that I would inherit such a wonder for myself?'

Just the same, thought Washen, some ideas will always be insane.

'Madam,' Miocene said with a certain delicacy. 'I'm sure you realize that a chamber of these proportions would make our ship considerably less massive. Assuming we know the densities of the intervening iron, naturally . . .'

'But you're assuming that our hollow core is hollow.' The Master grinned at her favorite officer, then at everyone. Her golden face was serene, wringing pleasure out of her audience's confusion and ignorance. Calmly, she reminded them,
'This began as someone else's vessel. And we shouldn't forget that we still don't know why our home was built. For all we can say, this was someone's cargo ship, designed for moving things other than people, and here, finally, we've stumbled across the ships cargo hold.'

Most of the captains shuddered.

'Imagine that something is hiding inside us,' the Master commanded. 'Cargo, particularly anything substantial, has to be restrained, protected. So imagine a series of buttressing fields that would keep our cargo from rattling around every time we adjusted our course.
Then imagine that these buttresses are so powerful and so enduring that they can mask whatever it is that's down there—'

'Madam,' someone shouted.

After a pause, the Master said, 'Yes, Diu.'

'Just tell us, please . . . what in hell is down there
..
. ?'

'A spherical object,' she replied. And with a slow wink, she added, 'It is the size of Mars, about. But considerably more massive.'

Washen's heart began to gallop.

The audience let out a low, wounded groan.

'Show them,' the Master said to her AI. 'Show them what we found.'

Again, the image changed. Nestl
ed inside the great ship was another world, black as iron and distinctly smaller than the surrounding chamber. The simple possibility of such an enormous, unlikely discovery didn't strike Washen as one revelation, but as many, coming in waves, making her gasp and shake her head as she looked at her colleagues' faces, barely seeing any of them.

'This world — and it is a genuine world — has an atmosphere.' The Master was laughing quietly, and her quiet voice kept offering impossibilities.'Despite the abundance of iron, the atmosphere has free oxygen. And there's enough water for small rivers and lakes. All of those delicious symptoms that come with living worlds are present here—'

'How do you know?'Washen called out.
Then, in reflex, 'No disrespect intended, madam!'

'I haven't visited the world, if that's your question.' She giggled like a child, telling everyone, 'Yet fifty years of hard, secret work have paid dividends. Using self-replica ting drones, I've been able to reopen one of those collapsed tunnels. And I've sent curious probes to the chamber for a first look. That's why I can stand here, assuring you that not only does this world exist, but that each of you are going to see it for yourselves.'

Washen glanced at Diu, wondering if her face was wearing the same wide smile.

'By the way, I named this world.' The Master winked and said,
'Marrow.'
Then again, she said,
'Marrow.'
Then by way of explanation, she said,'It's a very old word. It means "where the blood is born.'"

Washen felt her own blood coursing through her trembling body.

'Marrow is reserved for you,' the Master Captain promised.

The floor seemed to pitch and roll beneath Washen's legs, and she couldn't remember when she last took a meaningful breath.

'For you,' the giant woman proclaimed. 'My most talented, trustworthy friends , , . !'

Washen whispered, 'Thank you.'

Everyone said the words, in a ragged chorus.

Then Miocene called out, 'Applause for the Master! Applause!'

But Washen heard nothing, and said nothing, staring hard at the strange black face of that most unexpected world.

MARROW

T
he sky is
smooth as perfection and as timeless, round as perfection and supreme in every way that end of the universe should be.

A trillion faces ignore the sky. Perfection is insignificant. Is boring.

What has consequences is sick and flawed and sad and angry, everything that you eat or wishes to eat you, and everything that is a potential fuck. Only imperfection can change its nature, or yours, and t
he sky never changes. Never. Wh
ich is why those trillion eyes look up only to watch fir things flying or floating — everything nearer to them than that slick silvery roundness.

Time is no perfection down here.

In this place nothing can be the same for long, and nothing succeeds that cannot adapt, swiftly, without hesitation or complaint, and usithout the tiniest remorse.

The
ground beneath is not to be trusted.

The
next deep breath is not a certainty.

Perhaps a th
inking, reasonable, and self-awar
e mind would desire some taste of that glorious perfection.

To
ingest the eternal.

To
borrow its strength and grand endurance,
if
only for a little moment.

But that wish is too elaborate and much too spendthrift for these minds. They are weak and small and temporary. Focus on the instant. On eating and fucking, then resting only when there is no choice. Nothing else is so firmly etched into their hot genetic, swirling in the blood and riding tucked inside pollen and sperm.

Waste a moment, and perish.

This
is a desperate and furious universe. Profoundly flawed, absolutely. But inside every tiny mind is what passes for a steely pride that says:

I am here.

I
am alive.

On the backside of this leaf or perched on the crest of that hot iron pebble, I rule . . . and to those living things beneath my feet, too small to be seen by me. I am something that looks great and powerful . . .

Perfect in your pathetic little eyes . . . !

Six

SECRET WONDERS HAD
been accomplished in mere decades.

Molelike drones had gnawed their way through thousands of kilometers of nickel and iron, reopening one of the ancient, collapsed tunnels. In their wake, industrial ants had slathered the walls with the highest available grade of hyperfiber. One of the fuel tank's reserve pumping stations had been taken off-line, then integrated with the project. Fleets of cap-cars, manufactured on-site and free of identification, waited outside the excavation, ready to carry the captains to the ship's distant center; while a brigade of construction drones had gone ahead, building a base of operations - an efficient and sterile little city of dormitories, machine shops, cozy galleys, and first-rate laboratories all tucked within a transparent blister of freshly minted diamond.

Washen was among the last to arrive at the base camp.

At the Master's insistence, she led the cleaning detail that carefully expunged every trace of the captains from inside the leech habitat.

It was a necessary precaution in an operation demanding seamless security, and it required hard, precise work.