Robert Reed - Marrow

She asked, “Has anyone heard from him?”

No one responded.

But ever so slightly, Till’s expression tightened. And he quietly admitted, “No, there hasn’t been any news.”

In the mutiny’s opening moments, without warning, Locke had disappeared. It was commonly known but never discussed. The other captains and generals pretended to busy themselves with details while Miocene whispered to her son, “Do you still think that he’s off chasing his mother’s soul?”

“Of course,” Till replied.

What was she hearing in his voice?

“I know the man,” he continued. “He very much loved Washen, even though he didn’t see her for centuries at a time—”

It was a love that Miocene could appreciate.

“And the poor man was wracked by guilt. For what happened, for what he had to do… it was very difficult for him…”

Locke killed his own father, trying to save his mother. Yet Washen had died regardless. The two Waywards had seen her body torn apart by explosives. Shredded flesh and the dying mind were scattered across a great ocean of liquid fuel, and lost. Every report in the Master’s files documented a long, fruitless search. A solitary Wayward had no chance of finding her. None. Miocene felt certain, yet she had to ask, “Did you send anyone to search the leech habitat? As I suggested?”

“Naturally,” Till replied.

“And what did they find?”

“It was sealed, but there were signs of a struggle,” he admitted, shaking his head with a sudden heaviness. “It’s possible, just possible, that Locke stumbled into an armed guard. The evidence is narrow, but reasonable. There was a fight, and he was killed with his own weapon.”

She waited for a moment, then asked pointedly, “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

Till blinked. He sighed. Then with a peculiar sadness, he replied, “It didn’t feel like critical news.”

“If Locke’s been captured—”

“Mother,” he growled. “Locke is not a danger. You know that.”

She sat upright in the Master’s chair, staring at that pretty face with all of the coldness that she could summon.

“He knows nothing,” her son insisted. “His place at this table is honorary. Nothing else. For a long time, I haven’t given him any authority. Because, as I promised, I know him so very well.”

Do you? she thought, in secret.

Then her coldness turned inward, and she shivered in invisible ways. After a long moment, she remarked, “You might wish to search the fuel tank itself.”

“We already have,’Till replied.

Something about his eyes were flat. Unreadable. Even dead.

“That tank is huge,” Miocene reminded him.

“Which is why it took until today to finish our search.” The unreadable eyes wore a smile, and a smiling mouth added, “I sent ten swarms to search—”

Ten swarms pulled from what duties?

“And all that they found were aerogel barges. Scientific instruments packed for shipment. And nothing alive or even a little bit important.”

“You’re certain?” she asked.

Till calmly stepped into her trap, telling her,’Yes, madam. I am quite sure.”

With a harsh, loud voice, Miocene cried out, “But you’ve missed important things in the past. Haven’t you, First Chair? Haven’t you?”

Her son stiffened.

The room fell silent, waiting.

Till forced himself to relax. Then quietly and angrily, he said, “Locke is useless.”

Ten swarms were an enormous number of soldiers, particularly if you were chasing someone who was useless.

But Till just kept shaking his head, telling everyone at the long pearlwood table, “Even if he wanted, he couldn’t hurt us.”

“Don’t worry. It’s just my hand.” The pressure was soft, soothing. “Keep still now, dear. Still.” Who was moving?

The voice said a familiar name, and with the hand pressing, it complained, “She’s fighting. Me, or something else.” The voice is talking about me.

Another voice, deeper and more distant, said, “Washen.” Said, “Just he still. Washen. Please.”

Then a larger hand tried to smother her, pressing over her mouth and nostrils, and the deep voice drifted closer, familiarly intimate, telling her, “We don’t have much time. We’re sprinting you through this regrowth.”

Regrowth?

“Sleep,” he advised, his hand lifting.

The woman’s voice said, “I think she is.”

But Washen was only keeping her eyes closed, feigning sleep, savoring the constant white pain of her new body’s birth.

Fresh eyes opened. Blinked.

A piercing green light was eclipsed by a man’s silhouetted face, and Washen heard her own voice asking, “Pamir? Is that you?”

“No, Mother,” he replied.

Flinching, she asked, “This is Marrow? Are we back?” Locke said nothing. “Pamir!’ she cried out.

“Your friend isn’t here now,” said another voice. It was the same voice as before—feminine, and soft-spoken. “He left for a little while,” the woman promised. “How do you feel, darling?”

She moved her head, and her neck burst into flames. “Slow, dear. Slow”

Washen breathed deeply and found herself staring at a lovely human woman dressed in an emerald sarong. Black hair. Full lips. Smiling, and shy. She wasn’t a Wayward, obviously. Or any normal Loyalist. Her clothing said as much, and the smooth, unhurried way she moved underscored her ancient origins. This woman was a passenger. Wealthy, almost certainly. And probably unaccustomed to having a dead woman in her home.

“My name is Quee Lee.”

Washen nodded slowly, dancing with the pain. Eyes panned across the terran jungle. Wet green foliage was punctuated with riots of wild tropical flowers. Birds and painted bats darted through the sweet warm air. On the rotting stump of a tree, a troop of tailored monkeys sat in a sloppy ring, conspicuously ignoring the humans, playing some sort of game with stones and sticks and the delicate white skulls of dead owls.

“They’ll be back,” said the hostess. “Soon.”

“They?”

“My husband and your friend.”

Washen lay inside an open autodoc bed, her new body dressed in a blackish goo of silicone and dissolved oxygen and a trillion microchines. This was how a soldier was reborn—too fast and clumsily, flesh and bone made in bulk while immunological functions were kept to a minimum. Quee Lee sat on one side of the bed, Locke on the other. Her son was dressed in a passenger’s colorful garb, his flesh darkened by UV light, his lovely thick hair grown long enough to make a golden stubble, hands and broad bare feet lashed together with standard security cord.

Quietly, anxiously, she asked, “How long has it been?” He didn’t respond.

Quee Lee leaned forward, saying, “One hundred and twenty-two years. Minus a few days.”

Washen remembered the explosive blows and the sensation of being yanked out of the leech habitat, tumbling and tumbling as her flesh froze and her mind pulled itself into the deepest possible coma.

When the nausea passed, she asked, “Did you find me, Locke?”

He opened his mouth, and he closed it again. “Pamir rescued you,” said Quee Lee. “With your son’s help.”

Again Washen glanced at the black security cords, then managed to laugh. “I’m glad the two of you have become good friends.”

Embarrassment bled into a chilly anger. Locke straightened his back, then forced himself to explain. “It was an accident. I went to the alien house. To see if the captains, or anyone else, had been there. And that ugly man stumbled over me.”

Pamir. Sure.

Her son shook his head in disgust, bare toes curling and uncurling in the black earth. What would a Wayward make of this rich soil? And the impossibly green trees? And the monkeys? And what about the ornate song of that little rilly bird that fell on them from the highest branches?