Robert Reed - Marrow

Finally, with a massive sadness, Locke admitted, “I was weak.”

“Why?” asked Washen.

“I should have killed your friend.”

“Pamir’s difficult to kill,” she responded. “Believe me.”

Again, Locke clung to his silence.

Washen took a deep, thorough breath, then sat up in bed, the black goo clinging to her baby-smooth, utterly hairless flesh. When the worst of the pain subsided, she looked at Quee Lee and said, “One hundred and twenty-two years.” She sighed and said, “Circumstances have changed while I was sleeping. That’s my guess.”

The woman flinched, then smiled shyly.

“What’s happening?” asked Washen. “With the ship-?”

“Nothing has happened,” said her hostess. “According to our new Master Captain, the ship needed a change of leadership. Incompetence was rife. And now, according to her, everything is the same as before, except for what’s better, and we’d be fools to entertain the tiniest concern.”

Washen glared at her son.

He refused to blink or look at any face.

Then to herself, in a soft angry voice, she said,’Miocene.”

And she turned back to Quee Lee, adding, “That’s who she sounds like.”

The apartment’s AI spoke with a firm authority, announcing, “Perri is approaching. With the other one, he is.”

It said, “They seem to be alone.”

Then it asked, “Do I allow them inside, Quee Lee?”

“Absolutely”

Three more days had passed. Washen was six hours out of her bed, dressed in a simple white sarong and white sandals, and she had just eaten her first solid meal in more than a century, the endless fatigue turning into a nervous energy. She stood beside Quee Lee, waiting. The apartment door opened, its security screen in place, and out in the wide, tree-lined avenue, there was no one. What should have been a busy scene on any normal day was unnaturally quiet. Suddenly two men strode into view. The smaller man was handsome, smiling with an unconscious charm. The other man was larger and simple-faced, and Washen made the obvious mistake. Once the door was closed and locked by twenty means, she said to that larger man, “Hello, Pamir.”

But the simple face peeled away, exposing a second face identical to the smaller man. Pretty in the same way. And charming. And most definitely not Pamir.

“Sorry,” said a laughing voice. “Try again.”

The smaller man was Pamir. He peeled away his disguise, and the rumbling deep voice explained, “I got an autodoc to peel away thirty kilos. What do you think?”

“You look wonderful anyway,” she allowed.

Pamir’s face was rugged, like something hacked from a block of dense dark oak, an asymmetric tilt to the rough features and his dirty, badly matted hair tilting things even more. The man looked as if he couldn’t remember when he last slept. Yet the bright brown eyes were clear and alert. When he looked at Washen, he smiled. Looking anywhere else, his expression grew distant, distracted. To no one in particular, he said, “I’m famished.” Then his gaze returned to Washen, and the smile swam up from the massive fatigue, and with a familiar bite, cynical and wise, he said, “Don’t thank me. Not yet. If these grandchildren of yours find us, you’ll wish that you were still at the bottom of that hydrogen sea.”

Probably so.

Yanking off the rest of his disguise, Pamir asked, “Where’s my prisoner?”

“In the garden,” Quee Lee replied.

“Has he grunted anything important?”

Both women said, “Nothing,” in the same breath.

A bare hand pushed through the dirty hair. Then Pamir allowed himself a smile, and he confessed to Washen, “I wanted to be with you. When you came back to us. But I had to see to this and to that first. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“Then I won’t,” he grumbled.

Quee Lee asked her husband, “What is happening out there?”

The pretty man rolled his eyes and thrust his tongue into one cheek.’In a word?” he said. “It’s awfully and weirdly and relentlessly quiet.”

She asked, “Where did you go, darling?”

The men glanced at each other, and Perri said, “Darling,” as a warning.

Then Pamir shook his head, saying, “Food first. I want my thirty kilos back.” He peeled away the false flesh on his hands, saying, “Then we’ve got to go somewhere. Just us, Washen. I’ve got a trillion questions, and barely enough time to ask ten.”

Pamir was clean and wearing new clothes. He and Washen were inside a guest suite. The suite’s floor diamond was inlaid with sun and holo generators. Looking between their feet, they could see into Quee Lee’s garden room, and in particular, they could watch the blond-haired man who sat in the largest clearing, who never yanked at the restraining straps, and who carefully watched each motion of every bird and bug and half-tame monkey.

“Tell me,” Pamir began. “Everything.”

Nearly five thousand years were crossed in what felt like a single breath. The false mission. Marrow. The Event. Children born; Waywards born. The rebirth of civilization. Washen and Miocene escaping from Marrow. Then Diu caught them and brought them to the leech home, and Diu explained that he was the source of everything that had happened… and just as she was about to finish the story, she paused to breathe, and nod, telling Pamir, “I know what you’ve been doing these last days.”

“Do you?”

“You were trying to decide if I was genuine. If you could trust me.”

He took a last bite of half-cooked steak, then watching her, asked, “How about it? Can I trust you?”

“What did you find out?” she pressed.

“Nobody mentions you. Nobody seems to care. But Miocene and your grandchildren are searching hard for him .” Pamir pointed at the floor. “They nearly found him, and me, inside the fuel tank. But don’t let his glowering silences fool you. Locke told me enough to narrow our search site enough…”

“How many captains are running loose?”

“My count is twenty-eight. Or twenty-seven. Or maybe it’s down to twenty-six.”

Quietly, she said, “Shit.”

“Not including you,” he added. “But your commission was dissolved long ago. And if that doesn’t make you crazy, listen to this. Right now, you’re sitting with the ship’s legal Master Captain. Isn’t that a frightening thought?”

Washen did her best to digest the news. Then she bent and placed the palm of her new hand on the floor, as if trying to grasp her son’s head. “All right,” she whispered. “Tell me everything you know. Fast.”

He told about his search for her and Miocene. About Perri’s help and the mounting frustration, and how at the end, moments before he gave up, he stumbled across that archaic silver-encrusted clock.

“Do you still have it?” Washen blurted, her head lifting.

And there it was, dangling on a new silver chain. Pamir didn’t have to say “Take it” twice. Then, as Washen opened the lid and read the insignia, he told more of his story—the neutrino source; the hidden hatch; the collapsed tunnel—and he stopped where he and Locke were facing each other above the leech house.

With a soft click Washen closed the silver lid.

With a tone of apology, Pamir said,’If I’d expanded the search radius, and chased down every small target—”

“I’m not disappointed,” she interrupted, showing a warm smile.

“I was distracted,” he continued. “First, the neutrinos. Then we found Diu’s secret hatch, and I was doing nothing but digging.”

Washen cupped her hands around her clock, concentrating.

Pamir said, “Diu,” with a firm contempt. Then he shook his head, adding, “I honestly can’t remember the little prick.”