Hull Zero Three (10 page)

A kick at the bulkhead sends me off at the wrong angle. I reach out as far as I can. Two fingers grab hold of a burned, curled edge, and after a few seconds of utterly graceless scrambling, I’ve pulled myself out of the stinking, rubble-filled void, through the breach, and into a quiet, calm blue space that seems to go on forever….
Where I stare into the biggest eye in the entire universe.
CORE

The eye looms over me, a curved, transparent wall about a hundred meters wide. I’m on one side of a space that caps the eye like a gigantic goggle. Behind the eye is liquid water—lots and lots of water, blue green and lovely, filled with an amazing array of bubbles huge and small, moving in sluggish leisure with the residual currents from the last spin-up—very slowly wobbling, jiggling, breaking up, rejoining.

Fizz in a giant’s soda bottle.
The eye has immense depth. It’s the forward end of a huge tank. This leaves me limp with awe, and after I slow my heart and breathing and realize I’m not in immediate danger, the view jogs my memory, filling in basic knowledge from Dreamtime.
Ship needs fuel and reaction mass. The dirty ice moonlet supplies both. Mining machines on the surface send up chunks of ice that get stored in the tanks. That’s where the serpent gouge comes from—machinery digging. The moonlet is mostly water, a small portion of which is deuterium; this can be used in a
fusion
reaction. Fusion is the process of combining the nuclei of atoms into larger nuclei. This requires lots of energy to get started but then releases enormous amounts. But that’s only the beginning. The fusion is just a starter for something even more powerful—bosonic reduction.
For hundreds of years, Ship’s drive has been pumping out broken bits of atoms and streams of high-energy light in a twisting, glowing stream. Ultimately, Ship’s velocity climbs to about twenty percent of the speed of light, .2 c—that is, sixty thousand kilometers per second. It takes something as big as the moon to fill out the requirements of the basic equations that move Ship between the stars. Just on the edge of memory—like something fading after a vivid dream—I see the moonlet being chosen from a dusty, frozen cloud far, far out from the sun. The name of the cloud is incomprehensible,
Hort
or
Hurt
—
Ice is transported up the struts to the hulls, then melted, pumped through the sluices—stored in a big tank.
Lots of water.
None for me. I’m exhausted, in pain, thirsty. I squeeze water from my own bottle into my mouth, start to choke, and spit weightless beads. Trying to draw breath and steady myself, I see the red spot from a bleary corner of my eye.
Spin-up resumes with a lurch. My hand loses its grip, and I roll around the perimeter wall of the tank’s cap. Here, at or near the core, the centrifugal force is minimal but still catches me by surprise. I roll, kick, float free for a moment, and look around. The haystack blur must have come through the breach while I was captivated by the slow blue-green roil inside the tank. I can’t find it again. There’s something outboard, to my left—movement opposite the motion of the hull. My head pivots like a bird’s. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s an illusion, and when I can wash out my eye, it will be gone.
Leavemebe.
Across the cap, near the broad forward end, hatches line the perimeter wall. I try to stand, but my feet pull out from under me, and I bounce again, then drift outboard—down. Here, if I can keep up with the rotating wall, I’ll weigh a fraction of a kilogram. But I’m getting dizzy. I roll until my palms skid on the wall, thankfully smooth but for the jagged edges around the breach. I push off and let the breach roll on by. Finally, I drop and spread flat, relying on friction to gather the necessary force. I’m riding with the wall, spread-eagled and vulnerable to anything with better means of locomotion, better control in the wide spaces.
I have a good view of what’s going on inside the tank. The huge liquid volume reacts to spin-up with an amazing display of fluid dynamics. The bubbles slowly try to coalesce at the center, but currents keep breaking them up, thrusting them outward, until they rebound and gurgle in again. The tank’s contents swish into a massive, godly whirlpool. This would be a beautiful vision to go out on—waiting for the water to surround the long air pocket like a tornado….
Looking inboard, up, I again see the blur—larger now and growing, the red speck revolving on the outside of a fine maze of glassy fibers, gleaming straws flexing and pulling. The thing is a network of glistening rods tied together with tiny blue knots.
Across its surface flash narrow concentric bands of pale color, expanding and contracting, whirling blue and black and green, drawing my gaze inward, then reversing, whirling outward.
Much more fascinating than the tank.
Mesmerizing.
It’s beautiful, ghostly, and I hope quick and strong. I’m resigned. This must be one of the large Killers—not the worst way to go, according to my book.
A brilliant bronze-colored beam shoots across the chamber and spears the hypnotic mass. The beam flicks and cuts the thing in half. The two halves writhe. Its bands of color fade. Black spots appear. The beam flicks again and quarters it. The severed masses catch fire and burn with intense blue flames. I smell caramel and acid. A slow rain of corrosive droplets strikes my body, my face, stinging, hissing.
I scream—and look down. A sharp pain has shot up my right arm. A spear pierces the bicep. There’s a cord attached. I grab the cord, and it jerks through my hands as I’m yanked clockwise, out from under the burning fragments.
The last bits of the glass haystack with the red eye impact the outer wall with a series of gluey
plo
s. The flames intensify—the bits pop and explode.
I’m being pulled toward an open hatch—already halfway across. I use one hand to take the excruciating pressure off the spear shaft and try not to scream again. There’s a head and a torso silhouetted in the hatch’s dim orange glow. I see a face. Quizzical, large eyes.
It’s the girl. One of the girls.
She looks vexed. “Come here, you!” she grunts, and reels me in.
TAKING THE BOW

Through the hatch, the next figure I see is large and yellow with greenish accents, like an unripe lemon. Two muscular arms, two tree-trunk legs—human enough in this place. Except for his color and something about the texture of his skin, waxy and finely pitted, he does not remind me at all of fruit. His head is broad, set low on thick shoulders, with wide-set eyes, small nose, and narrow, almost doll-like lips. I say “he,” but of course this is just a guess.

He grabs me gently enough, then pushes the end of the spear. The barbs retract. Swiftly, he pulls the shaft from my arm, then reaches into a gray bag slung around his wrist and smears something onto the bleeding wound. His hands are huge and fast and delicate as a jeweler’s. The bleeding stops, and with it most of the pain.

“He’s Teacher,” the girl says to Big Yellow, and makes a gesture. “I grabbed him back behind the sluice.”
“You sure he’s the same?” Big Yellow asks.
The girl takes my shoulders and peers at me. “Do you know me?”
I favor my arm. My eyes sting, my lips burn—corrosive drops on my face. “I’ve met you,” I say to the girl. “Two of you.”
The girl reaches into her own bag and hands me a bottle of water. “Wash your face,” she says. “We’ve got a place forward where we can fix you up. The others should be coming back soon.”
I’m sure she’s seen me before—this particular me. And I’ve seen her before. “You’re the one who pulled me out of the sac?”
She nods. I find the gesture strangely human, which implies that I’m beginning to regard the girl as something other, though I can’t say why.
“Midwife,” Big Yellow says. His voice is rich. I’d love to hear him sing. I’d love to hear any kind of music. Funny, to think of music now, but I lift the bottle above my head and rinse out my eyes. After a while, they don’t sting as much, and my lips feel better. I drink a little and return the bottle.
“That’s yours,” she says. “I left my book behind. Did you find it?”
“I found it in a bag. Something else stole it. A silvery shape—”
“They don’t exist,” the girl says with a stern look.
“Right. One of you—I think—drew something in the shaft. In blood. What was it supposed to be?”
Pique turns to embarrassment.
“Careful,” Big Yellow warns. “She’s your sponsor. You need her.”
I can accept that—for now. “The shapeless haystack thing?”
“A factor,” Big Yellow says. “I’ve never seen one like it before.”
“A Killer,” the girl says.
“What happened to Picker and Satmonk?”
The girl shakes her head. “They’re strong and friendly, but they don’t last long.”
“And your sister?”
“Don’t ask,” Big Yellow advises.
The girl ignores the question.
I rub my arm. The tugged muscles hurt more than the wound itself. It could have been worse—that shaft could have penetrated bone. “What did you shoot me with?” I ask.
Big Yellow lifts the apparatus, a bent piece of spring—a bow—strung with a twisted length of black fiber. The shaft is a thin, hollow tube; the barbs, more pieces of metal, spring-loaded in roughly cut notches at the tip. Pulling on the cord the right way retracts the barbs. He waggles the bow. It’s broken in two.
“Found it in a junk pile. Now it’s ruined.”
“Sorry,” I say.
He manages a grin. “Have to find another,” he says.
We appear to be in a space actually made for long-term human occupation—unlike the no-frills pads and lockers or even the boy’s tailored space. More style, something on the order of decorated, personalized, even pretty. Nets arranged along the wall support glassy objects of many shapes and colors. The curving inboard ceiling has been painted with pictures of trees and clouds, as if we’re sitting under a leafy bower. This arouses erratic memories of poetry and botany.
Big Yellow and the girl bob slowly up and down on their toes, watching me intently. Waiting for a reaction. I try to smile. “Nice.” I haven’t seen the entire scene, but the human touches are compelling—sympathetic. Somebody lived here for a while—not, I think, my present hosts. The centrifugal tug is no greater here than in the cap of the water tank. I rotate on one toe, like a ballet dancer, arms out, gently push off, rising, then drop to the outboard deck. Bobbing is pleasant. I like it.
Curved rails and cables have been raised and slung in strategic positions from floor and ceiling. The bottom edge of the farthest wall, intersecting the bulkhead to my left, with its hatch, is barely visible beyond the curve of the ceiling. Big. Deluxe accommodations.
Wealliketolivenearthewater.
The forward wall…
Whoever lived here (or would live here) wanted to keep a constant watch. Like the end of the water tank, this wall is transparent, but fogged by a layer of grime. Someone—perhaps the girl or Big Yellow—has wiped a big oval. Irregular shadows lurk beyond.
I bob and echo to the oval. I’m facing the bow. What I see is even more compelling than the décor behind me. At this point in the hull’s narrowing taper, the conical structure is visible almost in its entirety. The maximum width of the hull, outside where I stand, must be roughly a hundred meters. This room, and those that complete a circle of habitats forward of the water tank, fills about a third of that width and pokes forward toward the bow.
Ten big cylinders—each about fifty or sixty meters long—are ranked outboard to my right. Their skeletal frameworks barely conceal the graceful curves of the shipwrights and tenders and other machines that build and prepare for launch the seedships that will probe and examine the planet, returning with the information necessary to match us to the planet—and the planet to us.
This view awakens too many memories for me to process all at once. I
know
this place—I know it well. This is where my work always begins, where the relationships forged over long hours of training will blossom into magnificent results—love and adventure and hard, hard work.
But a few seconds are enough to show me that the machines in the nose of hull number three are in disrepair. They’ve suffered from much worse than simple neglect. Ship’s mad war has struck the tip of our spear—and severely blunted it. I see the damage mentioned in my book. The cylinders and the embryonic craft within are bent, pitted, burned, blasted. Inboard, training and education units—like the crystal and steel seedpods of giant trees—have been ruptured and left in glistening, weeping ruins. To my right, the processors that would have created all of our landing vessels have been dealt similar blows, as if smashed by angry children with hammers and torches.
“What happened here?” I ask, my voice breaking.
“You’re the teacher,” Big Yellow says. “You tell us.”
Movement behind me—the hatch opening and closing.
“You found one?”
I turn to see a gray figure so spidery-thin it takes me a moment to decide it’s human—and a woman. She’s more than two meters tall, with a long, narrow face and large dark eyes. A fine dark fur covers her cheeks and arms up to her bare shoulders. Her fingers curl and uncurl at the end of long, taut arms.
“He found his way here,” Big Yellow says.
“The girl helped—at the beginning,” I say.
The spidery woman moves along the rails and cables with the fluid poise of a
baleina
. Somehow, her thinness doesn’t even come across as skinny. She’s just another unexplained type in our tortured menagerie. “So, she thinks you’re important,” she says, doubtful.
“He is!” the girl insists. “He’s Teacher.”
“I’ve brought Tsinoy,” the spidery woman says. She gives me a narrow look, like a warning. “It’s right behind me.”
“Watch out,” Big Yellow says with a chinless nod.
The hatch opens again, and this time, white upon ivory fills the shadow, as if painted by a wide brush. I push back and resist a strong urge to run and hide—if I could run, if there is anyplace to hide.
This one is almost too large for the hatch, and far from human. Shining ivory spines ripple and fold back like bristled fur. Slung low between canine shoulders, a long head shows small, pinkish-red eyes and a blunt, reptilian snout. When rime-white lips pull back, I see ice-colored teeth—teeth that
Iknow
are stronger than animal teeth, maybe stronger than steel.
I’ve seen this one before—in a part of the Dreamtime I’m not supposed to remember… don’t
wan
to remember.
Its body, below ridges of pale bristle, is corded with glistening spiral bands of muscles connected to silvery-gray bones. The muscles find new connection points and the beast refashions its shape and increases its power as it braces ceiling to floor beside the spidery woman.
It isn’t part of any
Klados
I should ever have to deal with. It’s from the wrong part of the Catalog.
Catalog.Klados.
Oh, God. Too much all at once. I’m backed up against the long window. My body is soaked in sweat. The girl grabs a cable with one hand, legs folded. She looks at me and then at the ivory beast, judging what, I don’t know. The beast shakes and shivers with a clatter.
Ivoryandsilverandice.
“He doesn’t like me,” it says to the spidery woman. The voice is dreadful, deep, grating in an oddly musical way—terrifying.
“You scared the hell out of me, first time I met you,” Big Yellow says.
“Talk Teacher down,” the spidery woman tells the girl.
The beast says, “Shit,” but doesn’t press the issue.
More memory bobs to the surface—more nightmare information. The fact that I
do
recognize it causes a nauseating sensation of being two people in the same body. It’s one of Ship’s dark secrets—a Tracker. Trackers are biomech weapons of incredible versatility and power. They can live off almost any combination of gases or liquids found in organically fertile environments.
But Trackers are not supposed to be able to
talk
Dropped into any situation, all a Tracker does is track, clear, and kill.
Itshouldn’tbehere.
It shudders with another clatter. I worry that I’ve angered it, expecting it to change shape again at any moment. Why hasn’t it killed them all, killed me?
“Do we trust him?” the Tracker asks.
“Do we have a choice?” Big Yellow asks.
The girl looks between us, eyes sharp. The spidery woman shrugs.
“How’d you all get here?” I croak.
“We were pushed,” the spidery woman says. She’s casual, unafraid of any of us—least of all the ivory beast. “Factors moved forward and burned out the birthing rooms, the living quarters aft. No more newbies. We’re the last.”
“They’ll find us if we stay here,” Big Yellow says.
The girl pulls herself along the cable and reaches to take my wrist. “I prayed for you,” she says. “So you came.”
“She
always
prays for you,” Big Yellow says.
The Tracker sees something in my expression and moves closer, pawclaws clenching, stretching. I definitely feel threatened.
“You see me, you know what I am. I’m not just a freak,” it says. “Tell me.”
Before my eyes, the spines drop and the pale, glistening muscles rearrange on the screw-shaped bones, reassigning lift and load and balance. It’s looking more and more like a four-legged tank—or something called an
armadil
. An armadillo with the head of an awful, lizardlike wolf. Three animals I’ve never seen. “Do you have a name?” it asks me.
“No,” I say. “I don’t remember.”
“I’m the only one here with a name,” it says. “Why?”
“Beg pardon,” the spidery woman says. “Introductions. Teacher, this… is Tsinoy.”
“I’m not
supposed
to look like this,” the Tracker says. Its voice drops an octave—something out of a deep, deep cave. “I look awful.”
“I’m not supposed to look the way I do, either,” Big Yellow says.
“I am what Mother made me,” the girl says.
“Of course,” Big Yellow says with what I take to be a wry face, allowing for the waxy stiffness of his features.
“What about you?” I ask the spidery woman.
“No name,” she says. “But I know that I work best in low gravity.” She stretches her arms and adds, “I also know a lot about the hulls. Especially what Ship will look like when all three hulls join. The Triad.”
“Good for her,” Big Yellow says. “For me, it’s all a mystery.”
The spidery woman approaches the window. I drop back to give her a chance to look through the cleaned oval and survey the wreckage of our hopes. Her large eyes turn sad.
The girl tugs me to a big curved brown blob that might be a chair. It seems to suck me down and relax me at the same time, holding me with a soft, polite grip. “Tell us,” she says. “You’re Teacher. Tell us what you remember.”
“If you know something, teach us, Teacher,” Big Yellow says. “We’re hungry for knowledge.”
I swallow. Again, I feel as if I’ve split into two people, two Dreamtimes twisted together. The Tracker has kept its focus on me, like a cat watching a bird.
“What do I do?” it asks. “What’s my purpose?”
I don’t want to ignore this question, but I also have no desire to disappoint—and what I’ve involuntarily and hazily recovered won’t make any of us happy. The spidery woman passes me a squeeze bulb of water. I drink. “You’re called a Tracker,” I say. “Sometimes we send Trackers down to a planet in the first seedships. Or others like Trackers.”
“Why would Ship do that?” the spidery woman asks.
“If there’s a major problem with our destination planet, crew improvises from the Catalog.”
“What catalog?” Big Yellow asks.
“How would they use me?” the Tracker overrides him.
I answer the Tracker first. Whatever it has in its soul, it still terrifies me. “You clear the ground,” I say, trying to reduce the impact of simply telling it,
You kileverythingyoumeet
“Help prep the planet for human occupation.”
“I’m a Killer?”
You’reaKiler
I don’t say this out loud. I do say, under my breath, “I don’t know. Just stop staring.”
“Shit.” The Tracker stands down, moves away, seems to shrink, elongate, reduce its offensive posture even more. It appears almost smooth, sleek.
“It’s
my
beast, so be nice to it,” the spidery woman says softly. She doesn’t like what I’ve told them any more than I do. “It protected me, came here with me. No need to get it upset. The question is, who’s in charge—Teacher or me?”
“You left
me
out,” Big Yellow says, mocking disappointment.
“Teacher,” the girl insists.
“But you’re not actually a
leader
,” Big Yellow says.
“I don’t think so,” I agree.
“Can you talk to Ship Control and ask for help?”
“The Ship talked to me, I think—once.”
“Maybe he’s lying,” the Tracker grumbles.
The spidery woman stretches herself again to full length—very impressive. She and the Tracker make a formidable pair.
“Teacher knows
everythin
, if he gets poked right,” the girl insists.
Big Yellow asks, “Is it true, Teacher? What else is in that catalog? Me?”
“I don’t know. Leave me alone for a while.” I avoid their eyes. I need to think, to rest. More of my head fog is starting to lift. I don’t like any of what memory shows me now. I’m supposed to be born after we find a planet, after we arrive—that’s the grand scheme of my Dreamtime. Arrival—planetfall—is a complicated job at the end of a hundred million processes, a trillion decisions, big and little. Getting there is most of the fun.
Maybe Dreamtime is all wrong, a convincing fairy story. What’s dawning on me—what should have been obvious from the beginning—is that if the planet isn’t hospitable, if there’s difficulty, Ship would have to adapt. I’m not born and raised. I’m made—like them. If big problems arise, I can be customized. I come in more than one variety. And now two of me—or more—are mixed together.