Authors: Robert Reed
The Well of Stars (33 page)
“Which is a very big miss,” Pamir offered.
She said nothing.
“The prisoner in the middle,” he continued. “Tiny as tiny can be, the estimates keep claiming. What are the odds that the polypond could actually hit that kind of target?”
Washen refused to speak.
“She might have a thousand small-mass black holes,” he continued. “Give or take, of course. And if she keeps firing them into us, each time more accurately than the last … at this current rate, with a sample size of two blasts …”
“One in a million,” she offered.
Which were bad enough odds to make them feel better. But Pamir was too honest to leave it there. “All she has to do is cut the thing out of its containment,” he remarked. “Whatever the prisoner is. A Bleak. Or a Builder. Or the Creation held up.” He let go of her hand, adding, “That’s what the prisoner tried to do, after all. Before, when it wanted to ram us into that fat black hole.”
Washen meant to respond.
Her words were already formed and waiting. Her mouth opened far enough to let out the first tentative sound. Then came an impact that she never felt. A black hole with the smallest mass so far struck within forty-six meters of the ship’s true bow—a mathematical point on the hyperfiber hull that was celebrated with a simple diamond plaque now submerged under a hundred kilometers of living ocean.
It was a tiny piece of infinity, but the polypond had accelerated it to one-third the speed of light.
The trajectory was nearly perfect.
As she watched—as her mute mouth hung open and her eyes brightened—Washen saw a flash of light emerge from the hyperfiber directly above Marrow, traversing the sleepy buttresses and cutting through the heart of the iron planet, then emerging on the far side with the same eerie blue afterglow that hung in what was an otherwise nearly perfect vacuum.
If the containment at the core had been disrupted …
If the ancient safeguards were failing …
If the monster was being unleashed now … now could she be here, lying with Pamir on her big undimpled bed?
“We may not have eight days,” she allowed, thinking of Endeavor.
“We might not have eight minutes,” Pamir grunted. Then with a big laugh, he said, “We might have died already. The universe has been created, finally, and we’re just shadows making tiny, unimportant sounds … !”
The six great ports had been named after the children of an otherwise forgotten explorer. Alpha was where humans first slipped inside the ship, and it had always been the jewel, preferred by captains and requested by the most important passengers. Beta was a lesser sister, honorable and always reliable, and in her own fashion lovely. Caprice was where the muscular freighters brought in or removed cargo. Denali had earned a reputation for the illicit, although her main function was to handle objects and wild souls deemed a little dangerous. Endeavor was a quiet clean facility used to house surplus taxis and streakships. While the final port, the obscure and mostly unvisited Gwenth, had been left virtually untouched by a hundred thousand years of human occupation. Its central cylinder was rarely lit and never pressurized, and except
for basic repairs made to adjacent hatches and berths, the facility looked as if no one had come to the place since the Builders had packed up their tools and walked away.
for basic repairs made to adjacent hatches and berths, the facility looked as if no one had come to the place since the Builders had packed up their tools and walked away.
O’Layle stepped into a narrow and very deep chamber, and with a nervous little breath, smelled nothing.
Nothing.
It occurred to him that no human being, nor any other species for that matter, had stood where he was standing now. A glow-globe followed him, illuminating the entire room with a soft peach light. The floor was a sheet of hyperfiber older than the galaxy, perfectly clean but dimmed to gray by the pressures of simple time. The flanking walls and the low ceiling were much the same. It took a hundred strides to walk the length of the room, as he was supposed to do; then came a thick pane of diamond braced with hyperfiber strands. The glow-globe went black. O’Layle touched the diamond with a single finger, and only then did he realize that his hand was shaking. Both hands were trembling, and a sturdy pressure was building against his chest. What was he supposed to do? Stand alone in the darkness, waiting for the Builders to return? For a moment, despair got the best of him. He dipped his head, butting it against the cold pane, and his arms crossed on his chest, squeezing hard, forcing his tight little lungs to exhale and breathe again.
“Look.”
The voice was directly behind him.
“Ahead,” said the voice. “And down.”
When could he stop listening to others? When would his soul again be his own? Not yet, plainly. And with eyes that had adapted to the perfect blackness, O’Layle stared down into a chamber vast enough to hold a hundred fully fueled starships.
There, and there, flecks of light moved a little ways, then vanished.
More lights emerged, and one of them rose off the round expanse of floor, making no sound he could hear and no vibration that was transmitted through the thick
pane. What he was seeing was beautiful—a sparkling mass of light and uncoiling energy—and as O’Layle watched the object rise, he realized it was intricate and vast, and in the end, utterly ordinary.
pane. What he was seeing was beautiful—a sparkling mass of light and uncoiling energy—and as O’Layle watched the object rise, he realized it was intricate and vast, and in the end, utterly ordinary.
A simple tech-wagon sat in the middle of the lights, loaded with fefs and Remoras and scaling its way up an invisible thread.
“What’s happening—?” he began to ask.
“Not yet,” the voice told him.
O’Layle knew that voice. A name and face swam out of his memories, and then much else with it. Odd. That was the sensation. Prickly odd. A thousand tiny memories began to bubble out of nowhere, and in the middle of it, he said, “Perri,” with a soft, almost despairing voice.
“Quiet,” Perri told him.
He couldn’t obey. “I don’t feel right,” he explained. “Something’s wrong with my head, my mind—”
“Stand still,” a second voice growled.
O’Layle didn’t recognize that male voice, but it never spoke again. Instead, Perri moved closer to him, if not exactly close, and through acoustic trickery, he whispered into the frightened man’s ear. “You’re safe,” he promised. “You’re fine. I brought an old friend of mine.”
In the near blackness, O’Layle saw nothing. “I want to help,” he said again. “I told Washen—”
“We know.”
“What occurred to me,” O’Layle muttered. “I was thinking, and suddenly it occurred to me … and if it’s useful, and I can help …”
“But that’s an entirely different matter,” Perri claimed.
O’Layle shut his eyes, and now the blackness was his own.
“My friend brought some machinery with him—very rare, very elaborate tools—that help with memories. Did you know, O’Layle? The universe has infinite layers, and you exist in some infinite fraction of them. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” he blurted.
“And you understand that?”
Rarely, and never with much feeling. He shook his head, admitting, “It’s never made much sense to me.”
“Nor to me,” Perri replied.
O’Layle turned again, looking out through the diamond. No one told him to remain motionless, and the odd prickling in his head seemingly had fallen away. The lights below were softer now, and scarcer. As he watched, two and then two more of the glows folded in on themselves and vanished.
“How long have we known each other?”
Perri asked the question, and then he gave a clear and definitive answer. He named the precise year when they first met, and with a sharp tone, he asked, “Is that right? Or am I mistaken?”
O’Layle started to say. “You’re right.”
Then, he hesitated.
“No.”
“I’m wrong?” Perri snapped.
“It was eighty years earlier,” O’Layle confessed. “I had a different name, a different face. You and your old wife—”
“Quee Lee.”
“You were attending a party. In the Wealth District, wasn’t it? Sure, it was. I haven’t thought about that party in ages. If ever.”
“What do you remember?”
“Your old wife.”
Silence.
“She wandered off to find something unfancy to eat. That’s what she said to me. ‘Unfancy fare.’ And I turned to you and asked, ‘So how did you find …”’
His voice trailed away.
“How did I find what?” Perri purred with a soft, almost seductive voice. “Tell me what you remember. Exactly.”
“‘How did you find such a sweet place to park your prick?’”
In the darkness, O’Layle braced himself. The remembered
moment came back to him, and with it arrived the memory of a pretty-faced man cracking him in the mouth with a crystal goblet. Suddenly he felt a blow delivered tens of thousands of years ago, and with one hand rubbing his unsore jaw, he asked, “How does this trick work?”
moment came back to him, and with it arrived the memory of a pretty-faced man cracking him in the mouth with a crystal goblet. Suddenly he felt a blow delivered tens of thousands of years ago, and with one hand rubbing his unsore jaw, he asked, “How does this trick work?”
“In certain ways, the mind acts across the quantum universe.” Perri seemed to have moved closer than before. His voice was both softer and louder, and with only the barest trace of anger, he explained, “Memories can be enhanced. If the one person that you are can be linked with an infinite number of very similar O’Layles, and if all of you can work together to resurrect forgotten things—”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not sorry,” Perri told him. “You’re just scared for the moment.”
And maybe for the rest of my life, O’Layle thought.
“Yes,” Perri said. “That’s when we met.”
“I wish I was sorry.”
“Oh, sure.”
O’Layle took a deep, deep breath. But he could still smell nothing but emptiness and himself.
“Do you know why you’ve come here?” Perri inquired.
“No. Why?”
“I have no idea. Washen asked you here.” His interrogator laughed for a long moment. “She told me where to find you. I asked about yoù because I want to pose a few questions to you, while I still had the chance.”
O’Layle bristled. “What questions?”
Silence.
There were no lights below him now. But above, moving swiftly and silently, were sparkles and glimmers bright enough to show O’Layle the outline of one of his trembling hands.
“About the long-ago past,” Perri offered.
“All right.”
“And aliens.”
“What aliens?”
Silence.
Again, O’Layle’s mind felt the odd cold touch of a trillion fingers. With a quavering voice, he asked, “Which species?”
“I want to know about the aliens that you never think of.”
Now the lights above were quietly blinking out of existence, and suddenly every cold finger dove inside O’Layle’s helpless mind.
The skin of the water was sticky and thick, warm and pleasantly scented—not unlike the aroma of a spent petal from a blooming lilac. Mere lay upon it, on her back, hands folded across her narrow belly and her bare ankles crossed; and to the best of her limited capacity, she listened to the water, feeling for the pulse and tides of the world beneath her.
During the last long while, the pulse had quickened.
Great organs were beginning to move, shifting positions according to some fresh need. The water was gradually warming, and sometimes a jet of fluid caused its skin to ripple slightly. This tiny living dollop—a nameless drop of the great polypond—was making itself ready for something. And Mere was a minuscule twist of life clinging to the creature, stripped of clothes and machinery, helpless in every meaningful way.
“I will show you now.”
Her response was to do nothing. She lay motionless, her breathing slow and even, the newborn heart beating lazily while she kept her eyes closed tightly enough that only the slightest hint of light crept into them.
“Mere,” said the vaguely feminine voice.
She would do nothing easily or instantly.
“You will wish to see this,” the polypond decided.
Then with an impatient gesture, it evaporated the lids of her eyes.
Then with an impatient gesture, it evaporated the lids of her eyes.
The Great Ship filled the sky, and Mere barely recognized what she saw.
“Watch,” the voice commanded.
That was her only choice. Her head was suddenly locked in place, her helpless eyes unable to make tears. What she watched was an enormous sphere flecked with vivid colors and slippery bolts of energy. The hull lay hidden beneath a deep, stormy ocean. The only landmarks to survive were the rocket nozzles, but each wore a fresh appendage that had grown out of the water. None of the engines were firing. The ship was drifting, helpless and ensnared. And as she thought about the consequences of that helplessness, a sudden flash of light filled the central nozzle, leaving in its wake a thin vertical trail of ionized matter standing in the rarefied gases that had pooled inside the great nozzle.
Mere’s new heart hammered against her new ribs.
The polypond released her, and she stood, only her tiny feet still gripped by the world’s skin.
“Why?” she asked.
“You can’t hit the target,” she assured herself.
Then with a genuine curiosity, she had to ask, “What do you call it? What you think is at the center of the ship—?”
“The All.”
“Inside Marrow?”
“The All,” the voice repeated.
She mouthed the word, “All,” and nodded grimly. Then in a tone of simple confession, she admitted, “I don’t know the mathematics, the philosophy. The seventh theory isn’t often taught in my realm, and almost never believed.”
Silence.
“The universe is unfinished. You claim.”
“Do you regard the Creation as being finished?” The voice responded with a tone both reasonable and amused.
“Have the stars finished aging? Has every species evolved to perfection? Will another trillion years bring no change to everything that you see and can imagine?”
“Have the stars finished aging? Has every species evolved to perfection? Will another trillion years bring no change to everything that you see and can imagine?”
Mere was positioned behind and to one side of the Great Ship. She could see past its wet limb, out into the depths of the Inkwell. With a finger, she reached at what looked like a simple blue dot, and the dot grew larger, magnified and highlighted until she could see too much: an ensemble of powerful machinery and living limbs steering a sphere of hyperfiber, and inside that sphere, highly charged and held in suspension, was something very tiny and exceptionally powerful. She knew it. Another black hole was being aimed, a careful hand lobbing it at a very tiny target.
“The universe is changing, changing,” she allowed. “Everything evolves in every way, yes.”
“But what you see is only shadow,” the polypond assured. “Shadow and vague possibility, and with each moment, the useful energies of the universe diminish. Stars age. Entropy rises. Matter compresses into pockets of nothingness, while the galaxies ride the dark tides, receding from one another at a rate that only quickens with the next moment, and the next.”
As Mere watched, the shepherding machines began to fold themselves up into knots and dive into the sphere, lending their mass to the final weapon. With a tight little voice, she said, “If the All is riding inside my ship … if it is anywhere, and real … how big is the All?”
“It has no definable size.”
“But how large is your actual target?” She pressed a finger and thumb together, adding, “You want to rip it out of its containment. Its prison. So just how large is this nut that you want to crack?”
“Quite small, yes.”
“Like a nut?” She held an imaginary walnut in her hand. “Bigger? Smaller? Or do you even know?”
Silence.
“O’Layle knew nothing about it. Just rumors thrown
over some half-truths. The specifics, if there were any … only the people who lived on Marrow were privy to what was inside …”
over some half-truths. The specifics, if there were any … only the people who lived on Marrow were privy to what was inside …”
Living pieces of polypond were now crawling inside the hyperfiber sphere, presumably falling all the way to the black hole, living water and dying flesh accelerating to the brink of lightspeed before vanishing with a quick flash of X-rays that left nothing to see.
Mere pulled her view back to the Great Ship.
“Waywards,” she muttered.
“Yes?” the polypond replied.
“O’Layle wasn’t the only soul that you rescued. Was he? Of course he wasn’t. Thousands threw themselves off the ship. Who else did you find? A little taxi jammed full of odd gray people, maybe?”
She nodded, answering her own question.
“In the center of Marrow, under the hot iron and nickel, is a machine. A prison cell, maybe. Something ancient, whatever it is. I saw the official files, years later. And Washen told me what she knew. The Waywards would weave hyperfiber around gold and lead ballast, and inside refrigerated cabins, they sank down. Down to the prison, down the containment vessel, whatever we agree to call it … down where the All is safely and forever entombed.”
“There were twenty-three Waywards,” the voice allowed, “one of whom happened to have the rank and good fortune to see the All for herself.”
Mere nodded; breathing hard.
“But the Great Ship is built to survive,” she offered. “It’s designed to cross vast reaches, enduring whatever natural hazards it finds. Stellar-mass black holes are rare between the galaxies. But the tiny ones, like you’re using … the odds of one of them impacting on a target measuring just a few kilometers across …” She shook her head. “No, that’s too inevitable. The Builders wouldn’t have allowed such a porous little prison to be built.”
She said, “The All has no size.”
Again, with a surging confidence, she told both of them, “You’re trying to hit nothing with bombs tinier than my fingertip. It won’t work. You can’t succeed. In one shadow realm out of a billion … maybe … but that kind of cataclysm has to happen every day, in some shadow realm …”
Then she laughed sadly, remarking, “But we’re still here, aren’t we?”
The hyperfiber sphere was accelerating, plunging toward the ship with a fierce urgency. The first flash erupted on the leading face of the ship, which was unexpected. Mere shouldn’t have been able to see the impact up near the invisible bow. Yet there it was, a fountain of radiant gases; and an instant later, even before her racing heart could fill with blood and beat again, that knob of twisted and highly charged nothingness burst out of the ship’s trailing face. Not from inside the centermost nozzle, this time. Not even from somewhere within the forest of other towering nozzles. The black hole missed the core by nearly twenty thousand kilometers, delivering a horrible glancing blow that surely killed thousands before it emerged into space again, leaving in its wake a fierce little pinprick of heat that was already beginning to cool.
“A weak shot,” Mere almost said.
But she stopped herself. With a tight quiet voice, she said, “That was intentional. Wasn’t it? A nudge to push your target into a slightly better position.”
Silence.
But there was something smug and proud in the silence. With a low whisper, she said, “Show me. Out ahead.”
The view changed instantly, radically. What she saw was a feed from a sister bud or a machine traveling on a different trajectory. From beside the Great Ship, she could see in every direction, and with an improving deftness, she identified and studied a series of little blue marks set along the ship’s course.
Each mark was the same as the others—tiny black holes contained within neat spherical jackets of hyperfiber.
Beyond was what was interesting. Out on the fringe of what was visible—but probably no more than a week or two in the future—waited something else entirely. Mere enlarged what looked like a faint red smear, and after a moment or an hour, she managed to breathe again. But she refused to make any comment. Masking her pain to the best of her ability, the tiny woman forced herself to look in the opposite direction, gazing back into the Coal Sack with these wonderful borrowed eyes.
“You are going to die,” she said.
“I am not alive,” the polypond responded. “I am shadow and nothingness, and I have never been.”
“In every existence, the captains will defeat you,” she promised. Never in her wisp of a life had she sounded more human, a boastful, brazen, and preposterous voice saying, “They’ll find a thousand ways to make you fail. To subvert and deny what you want. To make you look silly and stupid, and miserable. And afterward, you will die.”
Silence.
“All these millions of years, you’ve kept this nebula intact. Suns pass near it and through it, but you move the gases and dusts just so. Genius and giant muscles have kept your ocean whole.” She paused, enlarging key portions of the dense black Coal Sack. “But that’s all shit now,” she growled. “Look. Already, the exhaust of so many engines—your engines, mostly—is pushing the dust, making it fall into high-density zones that are tugging at the neighboring dust and gas, and in another few thousand years—not long at all—this home of yours, this strange great body, is going to start collapsing into a hundred new suns. And you will be dead.”
Again, the creature said, “But I am only shadow.”
“A cowardly, stupid shadow,” she said.
The skin beneath her rippled and grew still, its stickiness
gone. And a moment later, with a flinch of a foot, Mere caused herself to lift free. The bud’s engine had stopped firing. They were close enough to the target. The Great Ship’s mass would pull her the rest of the way home.
gone. And a moment later, with a flinch of a foot, Mere caused herself to lift free. The bud’s engine had stopped firing. They were close enough to the target. The Great Ship’s mass would pull her the rest of the way home.
“Don’t lose your hold on me,” she whispered.
A purplish tendril grew out of the water, its tip reaching for her, then hesitating.
“Hold me close,” she advised. “And when you reach the surface, I think you should try to protect me.”
“For what gain? Will you help me?”
“Gladly.”
“Then tell me,” said the voice. The tendril flattened and turned into a simple mirror, showing Mere herself.
“Tell you what?”
“How will these great captains fight?”
“I do not know,” she confessed.
“What are your ship’s secret weaknesses? Offer that much.”
“Nothing I know is going to be timely or important.” Gazing at her own reflection, she shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry.”.
Silence.
“I don’t think you understand,” she warned.
Then with a cold voice, Mere explained again, “You are going to die. The captains will fight you until you are defeated. Behind us, your nebula will collapse into suns and new worlds. Your neighboring species feel no love for you, and some of them will hunt down your surviving pieces. Or worse, your pieces will fly apart and becoming separate entities, each with its own name and tiny soul.”
“How can you help me?” the voice asked.
Mere laughed.
For a very long time, she made a show of her laugh and a human brashness, then with a wide sharp smile, she declared, “Isn’t it obvious? You stupid, silly creature … don’t you see what I am to you … ?”
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