Robert Reed - Marrow

Nursing a well-deserved pride, she worked her way along the avenue.

Alien wares outnumbered human wares, even in human shops. Entering a likely doorway, she could always expect to be noticed. And when she wasn’t, Miocene would recall that she wasn’t a Submaster now. Out of uniform, free of responsibilities, she possessed an anonymity that seemed an endless surprise.

From a spidery machine intelligence, she purchased an encyclopedia written entirely about the Great Ship.

In a tiny grocery, she bought a harum-scarum’s sin-fruit, its proteins and odd sugars reconfigured for human stomachs.

Eating one purchase, she skimmed over the other. There was a slender hundred-tetrabit entry about Miocene. She read portions, smiling more than not, making mental notes about half a hundred points that the author needed to correct.

From a monkeyish Yik Yik clerk, she bought a mild drug.

Then later, reconsidering this indulgence, she sold it at a profit to a human male who referred to her as “lady” and left her with the advice, “You look tired. Get laid, then get yourself some good sleep.”

He seemed to be offering a service, which she chose to ignore.

Afterward, Miocene spotted another security team. Humans and harum-scarums were disguised as passengers. But what’s more obvious than a police officer on the job? No passenger is that watchful, ever. Yet they never saw Miocene as she slipped into one of the very narrow, very dark passageways leading to a parallel avenue.

Invisible demon doors made the skin tingle. She strolled into a colder climate, the air having a delicious mountain thinness about it.

Another spidery machine was renting dreams and the rooms to use them. Miocene took one of each, then slept for twelve straight hours, dreaming about the ship when it was first discovered, and empty, her dream-self strolling along these darkened avenues, her eyes first to see the polished green olivine walls that would soon be laced with rooms that would become, in a geologic blink, thriving shops.

It was the rented dream, at first.

Then Miocene’s own memories were building images. How many tunnels and rooms had she seen first? No one knew. Not the encyclopedia’s author, or even Miocene herself. And that brought a lingering joy that made her smile the next morning while she sipped icy coffee and ate spiced blubbercakes for breakfast.

Her secret orders had included a destination. And a loose timetable.

Presumably her questions would be answered. But sometimes, particularly in quiedy happy moments like now, Miocene wondered if this business was nothing but the Master’s clever way of giving her favorite Submaster a good rest.

A vacation: that was a simple, boring explanation.

And compelling.

Of course this was a vacation!

Miocene rose to her feet, a thousand faces in easy view, and she began to hunt for yesterday’s boy, reasoning:

My first vacation after a thousand centuries of devotion.

Why not…?

It was an expensive vegetable, particularly when you paid for quality. But Washen knew her audience. She was certain that her old friend would appreciate the voices rising from the plant’s many mouths, the voices filling the empty, almost darkened cavity with a serene, deepest-space melody that his particular ear would find lovely. Her friend wasn’t here just now.

But wherever he was, he would hear the llano-vibra singing about blackness and emptiness and the glorious cold between the galaxies.

In another life, her friend raised the llano-vibra as a hobby, mastering the species’ complex genetics, twisting its elaborate genes to where it sang melodies even more serene than this specimen, and on the open market, infinitely more precious.

But he would never sell his companions.

Then his life and peculiar interests moved in even stranger directions, and he lost interest in his once precious hobby.

Eventually, he lost his post as a rising captain.

Crimes had occurred. Charges were filed. Using the escape route that the Master herself ordered her captains to create, the man went into hiding. The only contact Washen had had with him since was a cryptic note telling her that if she ever wanted to reach him, she should plant a llano-vibra in this empty and very dark corner of the ship, then plant herself in a comfortable seat in the nearest human tavern.

Which for the next two days was what Washen did.

The tavern was dark and mostly empty, but considerably warmer than deep space. She sat in back, in a booth carved from a single petrified oak, and she drank an ocean of various cocktails, thinking about everything, and nothing, finally concluding that it was too much to expect anyone to remember you after this many centuries… deciding that it was time to get on with her mission…

A man appeared, squinting into the cheap darkness, and Washen knew it was him. He was large, just as she remembered. The face was changed, but it was still pleasantly homely. His bearing had lost that captainly arrogance, and he wore civilian clothes with an ease that Washen could only envy. Who knew what name he went by? But ignoring the risks, she cupped a hand against her mouth, shouting across the gloom:

“Hey, Pamir! Over here!”

They had been lovers, but they weren’t well suited as a couple. Captains rarely were. The man was headstrong and confident, and he was smart, and in most circumstances, he was perfectly self-reliant. Yet those qualities that made him a successful captain had also weighed down his career. Pamir had no skill or interest in saying the proper words or giving little gifts to people in higher stations. If it hadn’t been for his considerable talent for being right more than most, the Master would have cut off his professional legs at the beginning, leaving him with a minimal rank and next to no responsibilities. Which might have been for the best, as it turned out.

The big man sat and ordered a pain-of-tears, and staring at the homely face, Washen replayed his tragic fall.

When he was a captain, Pamir befriended a very strange alien. And on this ship, strangeness took some doing. It was a Gaian entity—a small, deceptively ordinary humanoid body with a secret capacity to cover any world with its own self. Its flesh could grow rapidly, forming trees and animals and fungal masses, all linked by a single consciousness.The creature was a refugee. It had lost its home world to a second Gaian. And when that archenemy came on board, a full-scale war erupted, eventually destroying an expensive facility as well as the remains of Pamir’s career.

The Gaians fought to an exhausted draw, but their hatred still burned.

On his best day, Pamir was a difficult man, but he had a gift for seeing what was best inside any hopeless mess. He turned a laser on both Gaians, saving just enough of their tissue to let them begin again. Then he used his own flesh to make a child that embraced what was best in both aliens. And because Washen was Pamir’s friend, and because it was the right thing to do, she raised the Child. That was her name for it. The Child. Like any mother, she kept it safe and taught it what it needed to know, and when it grew too powerful to remain on board the Great Ship, she hugged it and kissed it and sent it off to an empty planet where it could live alone, making ancient wrongs right again.

It seemed as if the Child were sitting with them now, listening as its mother told proud stories and happy stories; and hopefully it could sense how very remarkable it was to see its father weep with joy.

Pamir wept like a captain. Quietly, and always under control. Then he wiped his eyes dry with heavy fingers and summoned up a grim smile, looking at his old friend for too long, reading her clothes and face and how she sat with her back against the backmost wall of this dingy pub.