Robert Reed - Marrow

“Five hundred years.”

Magnified and projected from cumbersome speakers, her voice seemed to boom across the city and the world.

There was a great cheer, sloppy and full throated, and honest.

“Five centuries,” she repeated, her voice louder than the crowd’s. Then Miocene asked the nation, “Where are we now?”

A few jokes were muttered.

“Where we always are!’ someone called out.

A thin trickle of laughter diminished into a respectful, impatient silence.

“We are climbing,” the Submaster declared. “Constantly, endlessly climbing. At this moment, we are being lifted skyward at the graceful, glorious rate of a quarter of a meter to the year. We are building new machines and new citizens, and despite the hardships that the world throws at us daily, we are prospering. But what is more important, by a thousandfold, is that you remember what we are climbing toward. This world of ours is only a small place. It is like a hammerwing larva nestled inside its large and infinitely more impressive cocoon.

“We are in the center of a starship. A great vessel, complex and vast. This starship is racing through a universe that you have never seen. About which you know next to nothing. A universe of such scope and beauty that when you see it, I promise, all of you won’t be able to hold back your tears.”

She paused, just for an instant.

“I promise. All of you will see this great universe.

“For the willing and the loyal, your rewards will be vast and glorious, and you will have no fear or want for the rest of your endless lives.”

A small cheer rose, then collapsed on itself.

“I know how hard it can be,” she told them. “To believe in places and wonders that none of you have witnessed for yourselves. It takes a certain type of thinking. A grand, dreaming mind. It takes courage and trust, and I am so pleased with each and every one of you. For your work. Your patience. And your boundless love.”

A larger, self-congratulatory cheer blossomed, hands clapping each other and flat wet bellies before the crowd slowly let itself grow quiet again.

“We old captains thank you. Thank you!”

That was a prearranged signal. The surviving captains were sitting behind Miocene according to rank. As a body, they rose to their feet, their silvered uniforms catching the light, and after a communal bow, they sat again, staring purposefully at the back of her head.

“Your lives here have only become richer with time,” she remarked. “We old captains brought knowledge with us, a small taste of what is possible. You see the impact of that knowledge every day, everywhere. We can now predict eruptions months in advance, and we farm the local jungles with great efficiency, and who is our equal at building new and fantastic machines? But those aren’t our greatest gifts to you, our children. Our grandchildren. All of our beautiful, loving descendants.

“Our greatest gifts are charity and honor.

“Charity,” she repeated, “and honor.”

Miocene’s voice ran off into the distance, bouncing off the High Spines and returning again. Softer now, and kinder.

She smiled grandly, then said, “This is what charity is. On my authority, today and for the next complete year, there is a full pardon in effect. A full pardon intended for any person belonging to the Wayward camps. We want to include you in our dream. Yes, the Waywards! If you are listening to me now, come forward. Come out of the wild forests! Come join us, and help us build for this great day coming!”

Again, the echoes bounced off the nearby mountains.

Surely the Waywards were hiding on those slopes, watching the great celebration. Or closer, perhaps. Rumor had it that spies crept in and out of the Loyalist cities every day. But even when she heard the thunder of her own voice, Miocene didn’t believe that any Wayward would ever willingly accept her charity.

Yet only one year later, typing into the bulky and very stupid machine that passed for an AI, the Submaster could write, “Three souls have returned to us.”

Two were Loyal-born, desperately unhappy with the hard Wayward existence. While the third convert was one of Tills grandchildren, which meant that she was one of Miocene’s great-grandchildren.

Of course the Submaster had welcomed each of them. But she also made certain that the three newcomers were shadowed by special friends, and their conversations were recorded and transcribed, and nothing of technical merit, no matter how trivial, was put in easy reach.

Every night, just before her sleepless sleep, Miocene typed into the machine’s simple magnetic mind, “I hate this world.

“But,” she added with a grim satisfaction, “I will have it by its heart, and I’ll squeeze that heart until it can never beat again.”

A decade later, the High Spines were about to die.

Seismic evidence showed an ocean of liquid metal rising beneath them, and the local virtue trees were equally convinced. A string of hard, sharp tremors caused a panic in the jungles and up on the raw black iron, and inside Hazz City people were knocking their most cherished buildings off their foundations, preparing to carry them away, abandoning the region according to precise, exacting plans.

What the grandchildren were doing was wrong. They knew it was foolish and dangerous, and they expected to pay a stiff penalty. Yet the promise of wildfires and utter devastation—more carnage than they had ever witnessed in their little lives—was too much temptation to resist.

A dozen youngsters, the absolute best of friends, borrowed asbestos suits and boots and bright blue-painted titanium oxygen tanks, carrying those treasures to the foothills in a series of secret sleeptime marches. Then as their home city was being wrestled to safer ground, they assembled near the main round, and in order to swear eternal secrecy for what they were about to do, each cut off one of his or her little toes, the twelve bloody pieces buried in a tiny, unmarked grave.

They weren’t true grandchildren. Not to the captains, at least. But they were called “grandchildren” because that was the tradition. Girls and boys anywhere from tenth- to twentieth-generation Loyalists marched together toward the High Spines, in a neat double row, and pushing through the first traces of smoke and caustic vapor, they told some of the traditional jokes about the ancient ones.

“How many captains does it take to get off Marrow?” one boy asked.

“None,” his girlfriend chimed. “We do all the work for them!”

“How big is this ship we ride inside?”

“It gets bigger every day,” another girl offered. “At least in the captains’ minds!”

Everyone had a good little laugh.

Then another boy asked, “What is happier than our leader?”

“A daggerwing on a dinner spit!’ several of his friends shouted, on cue.

“Why is that?” he inquired.

“Because the bug is going to die soon, while our leader just keeps turning on her spit, feeling the flames!”

Miocene’s dark moods were famous. Indeed, they were a source of great fondness among the average grandchild. Looking at that very tall woman, you actually saw the gloom in those dark ageless eyes, and it was easy to believe her desperate need to leave Marrow, returning to that wondrous and most peculiar place called “the ship.”

On Marrow, a cheery, optimistic leader would never inspire. No one else could deserve the kind of support and ceaseless work that the Loyalists gave freely and almost without question.

At least in this little group, that was everyone’s definite opinion.

As their march continued, the laughter grew louder and more nervous. These were city children, after all. They knew the jungle well enough, but this district had been tectonically quiet for most of their lives. The snapping fires and swirling black ash were new to them. In secret, each girl and boy realized that they’d never imagined such a persistent, withering heat. Sometimes they’d burn a hand intentionally, taking what comfort they could from the quick healing of their wounds. Passing too near a little fumarole, half of them scorched the insides of their mouths and cooked their lungs, and coughing hard, they had to huddle beneath a massive baybay tree, slashing its bark to let the cool sap seep out and soothe their aches.