Robert Reed - Marrow

“Fine. I admit it.”

“Maybe you were afraid that nobody had found your mother, and you wanted to help her. A noble sentiment, always.”

Nothing.

“Because a long burn was coming,” Diu continued. “The longest in many centuries. And what if her remains were piped into one of the engines, then incinerated? What if that happened before you, the dutiful son, could pull her to safety?”

Locke took a new breath, holding it close to his panicking heart.

“Tell me that’s the truth,” Diu snapped.

“It’s true.”

The Diu said, “You’re lying,” with a crisp, dismissive confidence. “Don’t try to fool your old father, Locke. I know a little something about telling lies.”

Trembling hands tugged at the breechcloth.

“The fuel tank is a vast ocean of hydrogen—one of several—and what are the odds that Washen would be yanked out of her grave?” Diu rose and took a step toward Locke, and with the gray eyes staring, he asked, “What are the odds that she would ever be found? Shattered and scattered like she was… Washen could have lain in the depths forever, and except for you and Till, and Miocene… who would have known…?”

Locke didn’t reply.

“About your mother’s little clock,” said Diu.

Locke’s eyes grew large and simple, and exceptionally sad. Softly, almost too softly to be heard, he asked, “What do you mean?”

“You and Till cleaned the leech house. It took days and you had minimal resources, but you did an exemplary job of things. Considering.” Diu smiled as if he could see everything, and he remarked, “It’s so very odd, isn’t it? Such a good job of hiding your tracks, yet that one critical clue went unnoticed. Left behind, buried deep in the plastic leech wall—”

Locke gave a low, pained moan.

“It makes a person wonder,” his father continued. “Was it overlooked by chance? Or was it purposely ignored?”

Wide shoulders slumped forward, and Locke stared at his bare toes.

“Or did someone find her clock… hold it in his own hands, perhaps… then willfully leave it where someone else would have to eventually come across it…? Which is precisely what you hoped would happen, isn’t it…?”

“Am I right about that, son…?”

“Till wasn’t watching your work, because he trusted you. And you left behind a sign. A marker. Because you wanted very much for your mother to be found…”

Locke opened his mouth, then closed it. Then with a new defiance, he screamed, “No. I won’t tell you-!”

But Diu wasn’t standing before him. Not anymore.

Locke blinked and felt his body sagging, hopelessness mixed with relief. Then a warm hand took him on the bare shoulder, and he turned into her, knowing it was her, crying in the soft angry way of a man who knows that he has been fooled and who discovers that really, at the heart of things, he doesn’t even care…

“What is this place, and these dead men…?”

“Just another corner of the ship,” Washen assured him, holding him tight around his back and the back of his head. “Pamir found it before he found my clock. An AI lives here. With my help, it created Hazz. And your father. With its help, I watched your reactions, and parts of your nervous system.”

“You read my mind?”

She said, “Never,” and relaxed her arms, letting him pull away and look into her face before she confessed, “You didn’t see Wayward soldiers. No one shot at us. That was a different performance, existing as false data fed straight to your eyes and ears. And you’re certainly not dead now”

Relief bled into a guilty, self-aware grimace.

“It’s just us,” she promised.

“Pamir?”

“He’s doing other work now.” She sat on the petrified toadstool, never taking her eyes off Locke. “There’s nobody else. Tell me what you want to tell me. Then if you wish, I’ll let you go back to Till. Or just sit here.” She waited a half-moment, then added, “And if you don’t want to tell me, I’ll accept that, too. All right?”

Locke sighed, glancing at his own empty hands.

Finally, quietly, he announced, “I think I will. Explain things. Maybe.”

Washen struggled to say nothing and to choke down her excitement. Instead, she nodded, and with a gentle voice asked, “How is our home?”

“Changed,” he blurted. Wide, astonished eyes lifted. “You don’t realize, Mother. This has been a very long century…!”

Locke couldn’t stop talking, the words coming out under pressure.

“By the time I was home, the Loyalists were gone. Conquered. Dissolved. There were so many sympathizers and outright believers inside your borders that it was an easy invasion. Hazz City was clean and quiet, and very little had changed.” He paused, then said, “For a while.” He raked his golden hair with both hands, explaining, “Till and I returned, and Till had me detonate Diu s charges, closing the shaft overhead. Then Till gave a speech to everyone. Standing in your main temple, with Miocene’s head at his feet, he told everyone how our societies would join, and everyone would be stronger for joining, and we were part of the Builder’s ultimate plans, and soon, soon, soon everything would be explained.” He breathed quickly, deeply. Then, “You wouldn’t know Marrow. It’s a very strange place now.”

Washen resisted the urge to ask, “When wasn’t it strange before?”

But Locke guessed her thoughts. He tilted his head as if to reprimand, then with a despairing gasp, he announced, “Time’s very short now.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Locke confessed.

With a quiet, sharp voice, Washen asked, “Exactly what do you know?”

“There were timetables. Till wanted us to regain the ship before it changed course. Before today’s burn, if possible.” He shook his head, eyes lowering. “Since you left, our population’s grown tenfold. Factories as large as cities. We’ve been building weapons and training soldiers, and we manufactured enormous boring machines designed to dig upward. And downward, too.”

Washen said, “Downward,” and leaned closer.

Then with a breathless excitement, she asked, “Where do you find the power to fuel all of this?”

Locke examined his toes.

She prompted him, saying, “Till knew. About Diu, he knew. And probably from the earliest times. ‘Then because she might be completely mistaken, Washen added, “That’s the only way it makes sense to me.”

Her son gave the tiniest nod.

Washen didn’t have the luxury of feeling clever. Instead, she dropped to her knees in front of Locke, forcing him to look at her eyes. “Till knew about Diu’s secret caches. Didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“How? Did he see your father using them?”

Locke hesitated, considering. “When Till was young, just after his first visions, he found a cache. Found it and watched it, and eventually, Diu climbed out of it.”

“What else did he know?”

“That Diu was feeding him the visions. Diu was telling the stories about the Builders and the Bleak.”

She had to ask, “But why did Till believe any of it?”

A chiding look was followed by a sharp warning. “Father was an agent, he realized. A vessel.” Locke shook his head, adding, “The steel bowl doesn’t have to believe in the water that slakes a man’s thirst.”

“Granted,” said Washen.

“The day the Waywards were born…?”

“What about it?”

“That valley, that place I took you to… the hyperfiber cache was tucked inside one of those crevices… and we walked right past…”

Washen said nothing.

“I didn’t know. Not then.” A bitter little laugh leaked out of him. “Years before, Till asked his mother about security systems. How they worked; how they were fooled. Miocene thought it was good captainly knowledge, so she taught him. Then Till climbed inside the cache and convinced its AI that he was Diu, and he rode it into Marrow. Down beneath all that wet iron, and the heat, he found the machinery that powers the buttresses.”