Robert Reed: Marrow

Whatever the humans discovered inside me, I discovered, too.

Until that moment, I had never fully comprehended my greatness, or my own glorious, well-worn beauty.

I wanted to thank my guests, and could not. Just as I couldn’t make them hear my plaintive warnings. But I was growing more comfortable with my muteness. Everything has its reason, and no matter how great and glorious I am, I am nothing compared to the wise ones who created me… and who am I, a mere machine, to question their boundless wisdom…?

Beneath my watery seas were still larger oceans of liquid hydrogen.

Fuel for my sleeping engines, no doubt.

Humans learned how to repair my pumps and giant reactors, and they managed to activate one of the great engines, an experimental burst of high-velocity plasmas proving hotter than expected, and more powerful.

By then, we were plunging into their galaxy.

It was named for a mother’s secretions, this Milky Way.

I began to taste its dusts, and its feeble heat warmed my old skin. A quarter of a trillion suns were below me, plus a hundred trillion worlds, living and otherwise. From nothingness, I was falling into the cosmopolitan heart of the universe. Tens of thousands of species had seen my arrival, and naturally a few sent their own tiny ships, orbiting me at the usual respectful distance, using many voices as they asked to be allowed onboard, or bluntly demanded to be given possession of me.

The humans refused everyone. Politely at first, then less so.

I heard their cold officious words about interstellar law and the status of derelict ships. Then came a careful, calculated silence.

One of the interlopers decided on action. Without warning, it attacked, turning the human starships into light and pulverized debris.

Unprepared for war, most species made a graceless retreat. Only the most violent few remained, unleashing their weapons against my armored hull. But if I can withstand a giant comet impacting at a fat fraction of lightspeed, their tritium bombs and X-ray lasers could do nothing. Nothing. The humans, safely inside me, went about their lives, ignoring the bombardment, repairing and recalibrating my old guts while their enemies exhausted themselves against my great body.

One after another, the starships gave up the fight and left for home.

Desperate to establish any claim, the last species attempted a hard landing. Their captain plunged toward my leading face, dipping in and out of craters while streaking toward the nearest port. It was a brave and bold and foolhardy act. A network of shield generators and lasers and antimatter cannons lay inside deep bunkers. In some lost age, they must have worked to protect me from comets and other hazards. As they had with my other systems, the humans had discovered the machinery and made repairs. And with a mixture of retribution and charity, they used the lasers to destroy the attackers’ engines, and their weapons, and they made prisoners out of the survivors.

Then with a roaring voice, they shouted at the Milky Way.

“This ship is ours!’ they shouted.

“Ours!”

“Now, and always! The Ship belongs to us…!”

Set on top of a great black boulder were black wooden chairs, and sitting on those chairs, enjoying the false sunshine, were the Master Captain and her closest staff, each dressed in his or her fanciest mirrored uniform.

“Now that we’ve won,” began the Master, “what have we won?”

No one spoke.

“We’ve got title to the largest starship ever,” she continued, gesturing at a blue ceiling and the warm surf and the warmer basaltic rock. “But governments and corporations paid for our mission here, and they aren’t unreasonable to expect some return on their fat investments.”

Everyone nodded, and waited. They knew the Master well enough to hold tight to their opinions, at least until she looked at them and said their names.

“This ship is moving awfully fast,” she pointed out. “Even if we could rotate one hundred and eighty degrees and fire its engines until the tanks are dry, we’d still be moving too fast to dock anywhere. You can’t make twenty Earth masses dance for you. Can you?”

Silence.

She chose a narrow, coolly professional face. “Miocene?” Her assistant said, “Yes, madam.”

“Ideas? Any?”

“We can’t stop ourselves, madam. But we could use our engines to adjust our course.” Miocene was a tall, perpetually calm woman. She glanced at the compad on her lap, then let her walnut-colored eyes lift and meet the Master’s impatient gaze. “Tiiere is a white dwarf ahead of us. A three-day burn starting now would take us past it at relatively close range, and instead of slicing through the galaxy, we would be turned. The ship would pass through human space, then continue on into the heart of the galaxy.”

“But to what end?” asked the Master.

“To give us more time to study this technology. Madam.”

A few of her fellow captains risked little nods of agreement.

Bui for some reason, the Muster wasn’t convinced. With a sharp creaking of wood, she rose to her feet, towering over even the tallest of her subordinates. For a long while, she did nothing. She let them watch as she did nothing. Then she turned and stared across the open water, studying the wind-driven waves as they broke against the basalt, her colorless swift mind trying to distill what was best from everything that was possible.

Out in the surf, a whale appeared.

It was a tailored minke whale-a popular species on terraformed worlds—and riding the saddle on its dark broad back was a single child. A girl, judging by her build and the wind-thinned giggle. Quietly, the Master asked, “Whose child is that?”

With the war finished, the captains and crew had produced the occasional child, setting roots deeper into the ship.

Miocene rose and squinted at the bright water, then admitted, “I’m not sure about the parents. But the girl lives nearby. I’m sure that I’ve seen her.”

“Get her. Bring her to me.”

Captains are captains because they can accomplish any chore, and usually with a minimum of fuss. But the girl and her whale proved difficult to catch. She ignored the orders coming across her headset. When she saw the skimmer approaching, she gave a loud giggle, then made her friend dive, both using their hydrolizing gills to breathe, staying out of easy reach for another full hour.

Finally a parent was found, then convinced to coax his daughter to the surface, where she was captured and dressed in an oversized robe, her long black hair dried and tied before she was ushered to the top of the great boulder.

The Master rose, offering her captive her own enormous chair. Then she sat on a knob of basalt, her mirrored uniform brilliant in the afternoon light, her voice almost as friendly as it was firm.

“Darling,” she asked, “why do you ride that whale?”

“For fun,” the youngster replied instantly.

“But swimming is fun,” the Master countered. “You can swim, can’t you?”

“Better than you, ma’am. Probably.”

When the Master laughed, everyone else did as well. Except for Miocene, who watched this interrogation with a growing impatience.

“You’d rather ride than swim,” the Master said. “Am I right?”

“Sometimes.”