The Greatship (18 page)

“What do I want?” she whispered to herself.

And there stood the answer, in plain view:  Another walk on the hull, of course.

His flesh had turned blue, and the eyes were much larger, each filled with black hairs that shone in the light, something about the face distinctly amused.  Two little tusks showed in the corners of the mouth.  The cool voice said, “I suppose we could go for a stroll.”  They were standing inside the same small room or one just like it; Quee Lee wasn’t sure about directions.  “We could,” Orleans repeated, “but if you want to bend the rules, why stop with the little ones?  Why not pick the hefty canons?”

“What canons?” she asked.

“Of course this will take months or maybe a few years,” he said.  “But that shouldn’t scare someone with centuries to fill.”

She waited.

“But I think I know you.  You’ve gotten curious about me, about us.”  Orleans moved an arm, not so much as a hum coming from the refurbished elbow and shoulder.  “We’ll make you an honorary Remora, if you’re willing.  We’ll borrow a lifesuit, set you inside it, and then transform you in a hurry-up fashion.”

“You can do that,” she said.

“We’ll use aimed doses of radiation for a foundation, and then we’ll wrap proven mutations inside smart cancers, and they’ll migrate to the proper spots and grow.”

She was frightened and intrigued, her heart kicking harder.

“This won’t happen overnight, of course.  And it depends on how much you want done.”  The black hairs pulled together, studying her.  “Of course nothing about this conversation is strictly legal.  The captains have disdain for putting passengers even a little bit at risk.”

“How much risk is there?”

Orleans said, “The transformation is easy enough, in principle.  I’ll dredge our records, making sure of the finer points.”  He paused, eyes relaxing into two unkempt tangles.  “We will need you to be in a shallow coma.  Intravenous feedings, no nexus activity, and you’ll be perfectly safe.  Lie down with one body and waken with another.  The new Quee Lee will be much improved, I would like to think.  How much risk?  None at all, believe me.”

She felt numb.  Small and weak and numb.

“You won’t be a true Remora.  Your basic genetics won’t be touched, I promise.  But an outsider looking at you will believe you to be genuine.”

For an instant, with utter clarity, Quee Lee saw herself along on the great gray hull, walking the path of the first Remora.

“Are you interested?”

“Maybe.  I am.”

“You’ll need a lot more interest before we can start,” he said.  “We have expenses to consider, and I’ll be putting my crew at risk.  If the captains find out, it’s suspensions for everyone.”

She said nothing.

“Are you listening, Quee Lee?”

“You want money.”

Orleans gave a figure.

But she was braced for a much larger sum.  Two hundred thousand hectos was large but quite bearable.  One year at any lazy, prosaic resort would cost at least that much.

“You’ve done this before,” she said.

“Not for a long time, no.”

She didn’t ask what seemed obvious, that Perri and his debts had come from a similar transaction.

“Take a year,” Orleans counseled.  “Research the matter, measure your thoughts, and feel sure.”

But she had already decided.

Looking at the Remora, she asked, “Can I pick my own face?  Can you wrap it inside a smart cancer and give it to me?”

“Certainly.”  A great fluid smile emerged, framed with tusks.  “Pick and choose whatever you want.”

“Your eyes,” she said.

“They are yours,” he declared, offering a little wink.

* * *

Arrangements had to be made, and what surprised her most—what she enjoyed more than the anticipation—was the subterfuge, converting the money into the proper flavor, and then telling friends and her apartment nothing except that she would be gone for an indeterminate period, at least a year and perhaps much longer.  Orleans hadn’t put a cap on her stay, and what if she enjoyed the Remoran life?  Why not keep her possibilities open?

“And what if Perri returns?” the apartment asked.

He was to be greeted as a treasured member of the family, naturally.  She thought she’d made herself clear.

“No, miss,” the voice said.  “What do I tell him about you?”

“Explain…explain that I have gone exploring.”

“Exploring?”

“Tell him it’s my turn for a change,” she said, leaving without so much as a backward glance.

* * *

Orleans found help from the female Remora, the same one who had taken Quee Lee to him twice now.  Her comma-shaped eyes hadn’t changed, but the mouth was smaller and the gray teeth had turned black as obsidian.  Quee Lee lay between them as they worked, their faces smiling but the voices tight and shrill.  Not for the first time, she realized that she never heard their true voices.  Wet mutterings had to be translated by the lifesuits, which was why throats and mouths could change so much without having any audible effect.

“Are you comfortable?” asked the woman.  But before Quee Lee replied, she asked, “Any last questions?”

Encased in the lifesuit, a sudden panic took hold.  “When I go home, when I am done…how fast can I return to my normal self…?”

“Cure the damage, you mean.”  The woman laughed gently, her expression changing from one unreadable state to another.  “There is no firm answer, dear.  Do you have an autodoc in your apartment?  Good.  Let it excise the bad and help you grow your own organs again.  Consider this a very bad accident.”  She looked up.  “It should take what, Orleans?  Ten days to be purged and cleaned up.”

The man said nothing, busy with the controls inside the suit’s helmet.  Quee Lee could barely see his face above and behind her.

“Ten days and you can walk in public again,” said the woman.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”  Quee Lee swallowed, pressure building against her chest—dread becoming panic, and terror waiting to strike.  She wanted nothing now but to be home again.

“Listen,” Orleans said, and then he said nothing.

Finally Quee Lee said, “Tell me.”

He knelt beside her.  “You’ll be fine.  I promise.”

The confidence was missing from the voice.  Perhaps he hadn’t believed she would go through with this adventure.  Perhaps the offer had been a bluff, something that no sane person would find appealing, and now he was inventing an excuse to stop everything.

But then he stood up and said, “Seals tight and ready.”

“Tight and ready,” said the woman.

Smiles appeared on both faces, though neither inspired confidence.  Then Orleans said, “There is a very tiny chance that you’ll die on the hull, like a Remora.  And there’s a somewhat greater risk of getting blistered by too much radiation, precipitating too many novel mutations, and the strangeness will get buried too deep.  A thousand autodocs won’t be able to root out the damage.”

“Vestigial organs,” the woman said.  “And maybe an odd blemish or two.”

“But nothing bad will happen,” said Orleans.

“It won’t,” Quee Lee said.

A feeding nipple appeared before her mouth.

“Suck and sleep,” Orleans told her.

She swallowed the chemical broth.

The woman said a few muddled words, and Orleans responded with a hard, sharp curse.

Then the woman said, “Oh, she’s asleep.”

But Quee Lee was beyond sleep.  She found herself in a dreamless, timeless void, her body being pricked with needles—little white pains marking every smart cancer—and it was as if nothing else existed but Quee Lee, floating in that perfect blackness while the universe was remade.

* * *

“How long?”

“Not so long.  Seven months, almost.”

Seven months.  Quee Lee tried to blink and couldn’t, couldn’t shut the lids of her eyes.  Then she tried touching her face, lifting a heavy hand and setting the palm on her faceplate before she finally remembered the suit.  “Is it done?” she said with a sloppy, slow voice.  A stranger’s voice.  “Am I finished now?”

“You’re never done,” Orleans said.  “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

She saw a figure, blurred but familiar.

“How do you feel, Quee Lee?”

Strange.  Through and through, she felt very strange.

“That’s normal enough,” he said.  “Another two months, and you’ll be perfect.  Have patience.”

She was a patient person, she remembered, eyes closing of their own volition.  Then her mind was sleeping again.  But this time she dreamed.  She was with Perri and Orleans at a beach.  Her husband was naked, sunning himself on the bright white sands, and the Remora seemed to be doing the same, odd as that looked.  She even felt the heat of the false sun, felt it baking her bones, and then she touched herself, not even a little surprised to feel the invulnerable skin of hyperfiber under her fingertips.

She woke and said, “Orleans.”

“Here I am.”

Her vision was improved now.  The wrong-shaped mouth could breathe normally, but each word was a slurring, frustrating struggle that her suit turned into coherent noise.

“How do I look?” she asked.

Orleans was the only other person in the room.  He smiled down at her and said, “You are gorgeous.”

His face was blue-black, or it was something else.  Sitting up, looking at the plain gray room, she realized how the colors had shifted.  Her new eyes perceived the world differently, sensitive to the same spectrum but in novel ways.

Climbing slowly to her feet, she asked, “How long?”

“Nine months, fourteen days.”

No, she wasn’t finished.  But the transformation had reached a stable plateau, and it was wonderful to be mobile again.  A few tentative steps didn’t end in disaster.  She found the date on her nexuses but little else; her presence here was heavily shielded, keeping her out of view from friends and captains alike.  Making clumsy fists with her too-thick hands, she lifted the hands and gazed at the hyperfiber gloves and imagined the strange new fingers inside.

“You should see yourself,” Orleans said.

Now?  Was she ready?

Her friend’s tusks glinted in the room’s weak light.  He offered a large mirror, and she bent closer until her face came into focus.  She saw a sloppy mouth full of mirror-colored teeth and a pair of hairy pits for eyes.  She took one deep breath and shivered.  Her skin was lovely, golden with the texture of fine leather.  Hard white lumps of tissue formed patterns on her cheeks, and her nose was a slender beak.  She wished she could touch herself, hands stroking her faceplate.  But Remoras could only touch themselves by stripping away the suits that made them Remoras in the first place.

“If you feel strong enough, you can go with me,” Orleans said.  “My crew and I are going on a patching mission, out to the bow.”

“When do you leave?”

“Right away.”  He lowered the mirror.  “The others are waiting in the shuttle.  Stay here for a couple more days, or follow me.”

“I’ll follow.”

“Good.”  He nodded.  “They’re eager to meet you.  They want to see what sort of person becomes a Remora.”

A person who doesn’t want to be locked away inside a bland gray room, she thought, all those bright mirrored teeth smiling now.

They had all kinds of faces, unique myriad eyes and twisting mouths and oddly drawn noses and openings that had no clear function, all wrapped inside flesh of every color.  Quee Lee counted fifteen Remoras, plus Orleans, and she worked to learn names and acquire some feel for her new friends.  The shuttle ride was like a party, an informal party of strangers that she had wandered into by chance, and she had never met happier people, listening to Remoran jokes and how they teased one another, and how they gently teased her.  They were also curious, asking about her apartment—how big; how fancy; worth how much—and they wanted stories about her long life.  Was it as boring as it sounded?  Quee Lee laughed at herself, nodding and saying, “No, nothing changes often or goes far.  The centuries bleed into one another, sure.”

One Remora with an operatic masculine voice and a contorted blue face shouted at the others, “People pay fortunes to ride the Ship, and then they do everything in their power to hide deep inside it.  But the joy of the ride is out here, out where the eyes and mind can see where we are going.”

The cabin erupted in laughter, the complaint an obvious favorite.

“Immortals are cowards,” said the woman beside Quee Lee.

“Foolish cowards,” said the woman with the comma-shaped eyes.  And then glancing at their guest, she said, “With a few exceptions, of course.”

Quee Lee felt uneasy, but not for long.  Looking through a filthy window, she watched the smooth landscape and glowing sky, one constant while the other never stopped changing.  That view soothed her.  Eventually she closed her new eyes and slept, waking when the pilot announced their arrival.

The shuttle was dropping and slowing.  Looking at her friends, Quee Lee saw smiles meant for her.  The Remoras beside her took her hands, and everyone prayed, “No comets today but plenty tomorrow, because we want the overtime.”

They hovered and fell and then settled.

Orleans joined Quee Lee, touching his faceplate to hers.  “Stay close,” he said, “yet don’t get in our way, either.”

The hyperfiber was older than the earth and deeper than most oceans, and at least in this one place the hull was covered with a soft faint dust that was kicked up easily, clinging to the machinery and lifesuits.  High above, the aurora and flashes of laser light dwarfed the brilliance of three nearby stars.  Quee Lee followed the others, listening to their radio chatter.  She ate Remoran soup—her first conscious meal in months—and she tried to map her new architecture, feeling the meal slipping down her throat.  Her stomach seemed unchanged, but did she have two hearts?  The beats were wrong, unless two hearts were nestled side by side, working in rhythm.  Orleans was three bodies ahead.  She approached him and said, “I wish I could look at myself, just once.  Slip of the suit to take in all of me.”

He glanced her way and then looked ahead.  “No.”

“I realize—“

“Remoras never remove their suits.”

His anger was followed by a deep chilling silence from everywhere.  Quee Lee looked about and swallowed before saying, “But I’m not a Remora.”

Silence persisted, quick looks exchanged.

“I will climb out of this contraption eventually,” she said.

Orleans stopped walking.  Then a softer, more tempered voice said, “Maybe we seem too rough and wild, but we do have taboos.”

“I’m sure.”

“These lifesuits are as much a part of our bodies as our guts and eyes, and being a Remora, a true Remora, is the one sacred pledge that you take for your entire life.”

Every face was stern, stolid.

The comma-eyed woman stepped up.  “The one sacrilege is removing your suit, no matter the reason.”

“Unthinkable,” said the opera voice.

Yet everyone was thinking about nothing else.

Then Orleans made a show of touching her, his hands warm and comforting through the suit.  The next smile felt summoned, and the look in the eyes was guarded for some reason.  Yet he said, “You are nothing but our guest, and we like you.  I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t enjoy your company.  But you won’t ever know us, or much less know how to return the pleasure, unless you can appreciate our beliefs.”

“Ideals,” said the woman.  “Our truths.”

“And accept our contempt for those that we don’t like,” Orleans said.  “Do you understand, Quee Lee?”

* * *

The crater was vast and rough along its lip and only partway patched.  Giant tanks already had been towed to the site along with the largest machines.  Pouring fresh liquid hyperfiber was more art than craft.  There was a proper speed to make the pour, and the curing process never happened the same way twice.  Each shift added another twenty meters to the smooth crater floor.  Orleans explained little pieces of the job to Quee Lee.  This was going to be a double shift, and she was free to watch and learn.  “But stay back and stay safe,” he said again, the tone vaguely parental.

She promised.  And for the first half-day, she was happy to sit just beneath the crater’s lip, on the ridge of tortured, refrozen hyperfiber, watching labors and listening to the radio chatter while imagining the comet that must have made this mess.  Not a large comet, she knew.  Major impact blasted wide holes that would reach into the distance, and an army of Remoras would be scattered before her.  But this wasn’t a small collision either.  A room-sized bolide must have slipped past the lasers—probably a fragment of a fragment that descended as part of a swarm of comets.  With that in mind, she watched the intense beams cutting through the aurora.  Her new eyes captured amazing details:  Every beam was invisible until it kissed dust.  Then the shock waves turned to violet phosphorescence, swirls of orange and cobalt and snowy white flowing outwards.  The sky was beautiful and only beautiful, but then the lasers fired faster, a spider web of beams focused on far flung targets.  The radio crackled ominously.  Another swarm of comets lay directly in front of the Ship, pinpointed by navigators and paranoid AIs rooted somewhere below—millions of kilometers of emptiness hiding ice and mud and rock that was closing fast.

The lasers fired still quicker, and the aurora surged, bathing the hull in warm yellowish light.

For no rational reason, Quee Lee bowed her head.

One sharp impact arrived with a flash and the faint rumble dampened by the hull.  The new crater wasn’t particularly close and it probably wasn’t particularly big, but it made Quee Lee’s next breaths feel special.  She watched plasmas rising in a plume, gases pushed high enough to be snagged by the aurora, and each charged particle was grabbed and then concentrated and pumped inside, helping replace the volatiles that were lost every time a streakship embarked or one of the giant rockets was ignited.

The Great Ship was an organism feeding on the galaxy.  That was the familiar image, the trusted cliché, yet suddenly it seemed quite fresh, even profound.  Quee Lee laughed quietly, looking out over the crater floor while turning her attentions inward.  Aware of her breathing, aware of the bump-bumping of the wrong hearts, she sensed changes happening with every little motion.  Her body had an odd indecipherable quality.  She felt every muscle fiber, every twitch and stillness.  No one could live for thousands of years and not experience this kind of excitement, yet she couldn’t recall ever feeling so alert, so self-absorbed and wondrous, and for a long while she did nothing but relish this giddy, infectious amazement.

If she was a true Remora, then she would be a world onto herself.  A world like the Ship, only tiny, its organic parts enclosed in armor and forever in flux.  The passengers below were changing, and the cells in her body were changing.  She was feeling her body evolving, and how did Orleans control this relentless process?  How could a human re-evolve sight, gaining unique eyes and a kind of vision that had never existed before and would never become real again?

What if she stayed with these people?

The possibility took her by surprise.

What if she took whatever pledge was necessary, embracing their taboos and proving that she belonged among them?  Did such things happen?  Could adventurous, virtuous passengers actually convert?

The sky turned red again, lasers punching through the aurora, each beam aimed at a point directly overhead.  The silent barrage was focused on a substantial mountain or lost little moon, vaporizing its surface before cracking its heart.  Then the beams separated, assaulting the big pieces first and then the shrapnel.  She felt helpless and glad of it.  There was nothing to do but sit, exhilaration married to terror, watching the aurora turned yellow and then white.  Force fields killed the momentum of the surviving grit and atomic dust.  Sudden tiny impacts kicked up the dusts around her.  Something struck her leg, the heat of a sun blossoming, following by dull pain.  She wondered if she was dead, and then she was certain that she was badly injured.  But the only mark was a tiny crater etched above her left knee, barely a blemish and the meteor shower already finished.

Quee Lee rose to her feet, shaking and happy.

Orleans’ commands were forgotten.  She began picking her way down the crater wall, full of insights and compliments that she had to share.  Twice she nearly tripped, finally reaching the work site while gasping, her air stale from her exertions.  Her new body had its own taste, unfamiliar and thick and a little bit sweet.

“Orleans,” she said.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” one man said.

The comma-eyed woman said, “Stay there.  Stay.  Orleans is coming, and you do not move.”

A lake of fresh hyperfiber was cooling and curing as stood beside it, a thin skin already forming, flat and silvery.  Mirror-like.  Quee Lee saw the sky reflected, and she leaned forward even when she knew that was wrong.  She risked falling, endangering herself and ruining the day’s work.  But she wanted to see her face again.

The nearby Remoras watched her, saying nothing.

She knelt and grabbed a lump of old hyperfiber, using it as a fulcrum as she leaned forward, and then the lasers flashed again, making everything obvious.

She didn’t see her face.

Or rather, she did.  But it wasn’t the face she expected, the face from Orleans’ obedient mirror.  Here was the old Quee Lee, mouth ajar, those pretty but ordinary eyes wide in amazement.

She gasped, knowing everything.  A considerable sum had been paid, nothing given in return.  Nothing here had been real.  An enormous and cruel joke was the goal, and now the Remoras were laughing, hands to their untouchable bellies and their awful faces twisting in new ways, ready to rip apart from the sheer brutal joy of the moment.