Robert Reed - Marrow

Miocene said nothing, her face red with blood, her rage thick and tireless.

One of the fossil walls was sprinkled with com-booths. Washen stepped inside the nearest booth, saying, “Emergency status. Captains’ channel. Please, we need to speak directly to the Master.”

Miocene stepped into the booth, then sealed its thick door.

The Master’s station appeared, spun from light and sound. Three captains and the usual AIs stared at them. Three captains meant this was the nightwatch, the exact time and date floating in the air behind them. Washen opened her clock and stared at the turning hands, realizing that Marrow’s clocks had been wrong by a little less than eleven minutes—a minor triumph, considering that the marooned captains had had to reinvent time.

Three human faces stared at them, dumbfounded, while their AIs, full of poise, simply asked, “What is your business, please?”

“Let me see her!’ Miocene thundered.

There was a delay brought by distance, and a longer delay brought by stupidity Finally, one of the captains remarked, “Maybe so. Who are you?”

“You know me,” the Submaster replied. “And I know you. Your name is Fattan. And yours is Cass. And yours, Underwood.”

Cass whispered, “Miocene…?”

His voice was soft, full of astonishment and doubt.

“Submaster Miocene! First Chair to the Master Captain!’ The tall woman bent over the nearest captain, shouting, “You remember the name and rank, don’t you? So act. Something’s wicked here, and I need to speak to the Master!”

“But you can’t be,” said the cowering man.

“You’re dead,” said another captain. Underwood. Then she glanced at Washen, and with a strange pity, she confided, “You’re both dead. For a long time now…”

“They’re just holos,” the third captain announced. With an obstinate certainty, Fattan said, “Holos. Projections. Someone’s little joke.”

But the AIs had checked their reality by a thousand lightspeed means, and following some secret, long-buried protocol, it was the machines that acted. The image swirled and stabilized again. The Master apeared, sitting up in her great bed. Dressed in a nightgown made from shaped light and airborne pearls, she looked exactly as Washen remembered, her skin golden and her hair a snowy white. But the hair was longer, and instead of being worn in a bun, it lay loose over the broad meaty shoulders. Preoccupied in ways that only a Ship’s Master can be, she had to pull her attentions out of a hundred tangled nexuses, then focus on her abrupt guests. Suddenly her bright brown eyes grew huge. In reflex, she touched her own nightgown, probably wondering about their crude, almost laughable imitations of the standard ship uniform. A look of wonder and amazement swept over the broad face, and just as a smile appeared, it collapsed into an instant and piercing fury.

“Where are you?” she snapped. “Where have you been?”

“Where you sent us.” The Submaster refused to say, “Madam.” Approaching the bed, her hands pulled into fists, she said, “We’ve been on that shit-world… on Marrow…!”

“Where?” the woman spat.

“Marrow,” the Submaster repeated. Then in exasperation, “What sort of ridiculous game are you playing with us?”

“I didn’t send you anywhere, Miocene…!”

In a dim, half-born way, Washen understood.

Miocene shook her head, asking, “Why keep our mission secret for this long?” Then in the next breath, she answered her own question. “You meant to imprison us. That’s what this was. The best of your captains, and you wanted to push us aside!”

Washen took Miocene by the arm.

“Wait,” she whispered. “No:

“The best of my captains? You?’ The giant woman gave a wild, cackling laugh.’My best captains just don’t vanish without warning. They don’t stay hidden for thousands of years, doing who-knows-what, in secret!’ She gasped, the gold of her face brightening. “Thousands of years,” she said, “and without so much as a whisper. And it took all of my genius and experience, and every last power at my disposal, to explain your disappearance and steer this ship away from panic!”

Miocene glanced at Washen, her expression astonished. Devastated. In a low, muttering voice, she said, “But if the Master didn’t—”

“Someone else did,” Washen replied.

“Security!’ the giant woman cried out. “Two ghosts are talking to me! Track them! Catch them! Bring them to me!”

Washen killed the link, buying them a moment.

The two ghosts found themselves standing inside the darkened booth, stunned and alone, trying to make sense out of the pure insanity.

“Who could have fooled us?” Asked Washen.

Then in her next breath, she knew how it could have been: someone with resources and access, and enormous ingenuity, would have sent orders in the Master’s name, bringing the captains together in the leech habitat. Then the same ingenious soul deceived them with a replica of the Master, sending them rushing down into the ship’s core.

“I could have done this,” Miocene confessed, thinking along the same seductive, paranoid lines. “Gathered the machinery and fooled all of you. If I’d wished. Assuming that I had known about Marrow, and if I had time, and some compelling reason.”

“But you didn’t, and you didn’t, and you didn’t,” Washen whispered.

“Who did?” Miocene wondered aloud.

They couldn’t answer that brutally simple question.

Washen asked the booth for the roster of Submasters and high-ranking captains. She was hunting for suspects, and maybe for a friendly name on which she could place her frail trust.

In a bitter, low voice, Miocene said, “My seat. Has been filled.”

But the name that leaped out at Washen—what made her legs weak and breath quicken—was the captain occupying her former office.

Pamir.

“Who?” Miocene rumbled.

But in the next instant, she remembered the name. The crime. And with a weak exasperation, the Submaster said, “This just isn’t our ship. It can’t be.”

Washen ordered the booth to contact Pamir. On an audio-only line, she warned who was calling. There was a pause, just long enough for Miocene to say, ‘Try another.’ But then Pamir’s original face emerged from the darkness. Strong and homely, the face smiled with a wild amazement. The reborn captain was standing inside his old quarters, surrounded by a meadow of singing llano-vibra plants. “Quiet,” he told his plants.

Washen and Miocene were standing in the same meadow. The man facing them was bare-chested, tall and powerful through the shoulders, and he was breathing like a sprinter, gasping when he spoke.

“You’re dead,” he managed. “A tragic mishap, they say”

“What about you?” Washen had to ask.

Pamir shrugged his shoulders as if embarrassed, then said, “What with the shortfall of talent, there was a general pardon—”

“I don’t want your story,” Miocene interrupted. “Listen. We have to explain… we need to tell you what happened…!”

But the meadow suddenly turned quiet, and the vegetation grew thin and pale, and Washen could see her own feet through the fading llano-vibra, Pamir’s fine face vanishing along with the rest of the scene.

Miocene asked, “What’s happening, booth?”

Again the booth was dark; it had nothing to say.

Washen eyed the Submaster, feeling a chill in her hard, hungry belly. The booth’s door was sealed, and dead. But the mechanical safeties operated, and with their shoulders they managed to shove the door open. Then together, in a shared motion, they stepped out into the waystation’s lounge.

A familiar figure stood in plain view, calmly and efficiently melting the resident AI with a soldier’s laser.