Robert Reed - Marrow

The energized man winked, saying, “True, madam. And bless you for remembering.”

She shrugged, then turned.

“And there’s you, Madam Miocene. One of the Master’s oldest, most loyal and cherished assistants. When I was a little girl living in By-the-sea, I’d see you and the Master Captain sitting on the rocks together, planning our glorious future.”

“I’m an old hag, in other words.”

“Ancient,” Washen concurred. “Not to mention one of only three Submasters with first-chair status at the Master’s table.”

The tall woman nodded, drinking in the flattery.

“Whatever the reason,” said Washen, “the Master wants her very best captains. That much is obvious.”

With an amused tone, the Submaster said, “But darling. Let’s not forget your own accomplishments. Shall we?”

“I never do,” Washen replied, earning a healthy laugh from everyone. And because nothing was more unseemly in a captain than false modesty, she admitted, “I’ve heard the rumors. I’m slated to become the next Submaster.”

Miocene grinned, but she didn’t comment on rumors.

Which was only right.

Instead she took an enormous breath, and with a strong, happy voice, she asked everyone, “Can you smell yourselves?”

The captains sniffed, in reflex.

“That’s the smell of ambition, my dears. Pure ambition.” The tall woman inhaled again, and again, then with a booming voice admitted, “No other stink is so tenacious, or in my mind, even half as sweet…!”

Another two captains arrived to applause and good-natured abuse. No one else was coming, though there was no way to know it at the time. Some hours later one of the last-comers was using the leech latrine—little more than a dilating hole in a random, suitably remote part of the room—and peering off in an empty direction, he noticed motion. With eyes sharper than any old-styled hawks, he squinted, finally resolving a distinct something that seemed to be growing larger, moving toward him from a new, unexpected direction.

With both decorum and haste, the captain ordered his trousers back on and jogged back to the others, telling the ranking officer what he had seen.

Miocene nodded. Smiled. Then said, “Fine. Thank you.”

“But what should we do, madam?” the young captain blurted.

“Wait,” the Submaster replied. “That’s what the Master would want.”

Washen stared into the distance, ceiling and floor meeting in a perfect line. After a long while, the perfection acquired a bump. A swollen bright bit of nothing was moving toward them, covering distance with a glacial patience. Everyone stood together, waiting. Then the bump split into several unequal lumps. The largest was bright as a diamond. The others spread out on either side, and that’s when the captains began to whisper, It is. Her.”

Saying, “Finally,” under their breaths.

An hour later, the undisputed ruler of the ship arrived.

Accompanied by a melody of Vestan horns and angcl-voiced humans, the Master crossed the final hundred meters. While her officers still wore civilian disguises, she had the mirrored cap and sturdy uniform that her office demanded. Her chosen body was broad and extraordinarily deep. Partly, that body was a measure of status. But the Master also needed room to house a thoroughly augmented brain. Thousands of ship functions had to be monitored and adjusted, without delays, using a galaxy of buried nexuses. As another person might walk and breathe, the Master Captain unconsciously ruled the ship from wherever she stood, or sat, or found a spacious bed where her needy parts could sleep.

A vast hand skated along the oyster-gray ceiling, keeping the Master’s head safe from being unceremiously bumped.

She had soft bright golden skin—a shade popular with many non-terran species—and fine white hair woven into a Gordian bun, and her pretty face was so round and smooth that it could have belonged to a toddler. But the radiant brown-black eyes and the wide grinning mouth conveyed enormous age and a flexible wisdom.

Every captain bowed.

As was custom, the Submasters dropped farthest.

Then a dozen low-grade captains began dragging the hard leech cushions toward her. Diu was among the supplicants, on his knees and smiling, even after the great woman had strolled past.

“Thank you for coming,” said a voice that always took Washen by surprise. It was a very quiet voice, and unhurried, perpetually amused by whatever those wide eyes were seeing. “I know you’re perplexed,” she assured, “and I trust that you’re concerned. A good sensible terror, perhaps.” Washen smiled to herself.

“So let me begin,” said the Master. Then the child’s face broke into its own smile, and she said, “First let me tell you my reasons for this great game. And then, if you haven’t been struck dead by surprise, I’ll explain exactly what I intend for you.”

Accompanying the Master were four guards.

Two humans; two robots. But you never knew which were the machines dressed as humans, or the humans with a machine’s sense of purpose—an intentional ruse making it more difficult for enemies to exploit any weakness.

One guard released a little float-globe that took its position beside the Master.

The gray glow of the ceiling diminished, plunging the room into a late-dusk gloom. Then the amused voice said. “The ship. Please.”

A real-time projection swallowed the float-globe. Built from data channeled through the Master’s internal systems, the ship reached from the floor to the ceiling. Its forward face looked at the audience. The hull was slick and gray, cloaked in a colorful aurora of dust shields, a thousand lasers firing every second, evaporating the largest hazards. On the horizon, a tiny flare meant that another starship was arriving. New passengers, perhaps. Washen thought of the machine intelligences, wondering who’d meet them in her absence.

“Now,” said the Master, “I’m going to peel my onion.”

In an instant, the ship’s armor evaporated. Washen could make out the largest caverns and chambers and the deep cylindrical ports, plus the hyperfiber bones that gave the structure its great strength.

Then the next few hundred kilometers were removed. Rock and water, air and deeper hyperfiber were exposed.

“The perfect architecture,” the Master declared. She stepped closer to the shrinking projection, its glow illuminating a grinning face. Resembling an enormous young girl with her favorite plaything, she confessed, “In my mind, there’s no greater epic in history. Human history, or anyone else’s.”

Washen knew this speech, word for word.

“I’m not talking about this voyage of ours,” the Master continued. “Circumnavigating the galaxy is an accomplishment, of course. But the greater adventure was in finding this ship before anyone else, then leaving our galaxy to reach it first. Imagine the honor: to be the first living organism to step inside these vast rooms, the first sentient mind in billions of years to experience their majesty, their compelling mystery. It was a magnificent time. Ask any of us who were there. To the soul, we consider ourselves nothing but blessed.”

An ancient, honorable boast, and her prerogative.

“We did an exemplary job,” she assured. “I won’t accept any other verdict. In that first century—despite limited resources, the shadow of war, and the sheer enormity of the job—we mapped more than ninety-nine percent of the ship’s interior. And as I could point out, I led the first team to find their way through the plumbing above us, and I was the first to see the sublime beauty of the hydrogen sea below us…”

Washen hid a smile, thinking, A fuel tank is a fuel tank is a fuel tank.