Robert Reed: Marrow

To himself, staring out into that roaring blackness, the officer said, “Shit.”

He said, it’s not supposed to be this way.”

Then another voice joined him, close and familiar. Respected, if not loved. The voice asked, “What are you doing?”

“Miocene?” the man whispered. Then he explained, “Nothing. I am waiting.”

i don’t understand… what…!”

He said, “Madam,” and turned, confused enough to think that perhaps the Master was standing beside him. But she wasn’t there. It was just a familiar voice on his nexus, angrier than he had ever heard it before.

Miocene screamed, “What, what, what are you doing!”

“Nothing at all,” the man promised.

And again, he touched the window, feeling the brutal chill slipping through it… and there was a soft, almost inconsequential creak from somewhere close… and the man’s last act was to pull his eyes shut, something in that very simple, very ancient reflex lending him the strength to keep standing his ground…

“What, what, what are you doing?!”

The question roared out of every one of Miocene’s mouths and through every nexus, and it exploded from the flesh and spit and ceramic-toothed mouth inside the Great Temple. Her words were carried up the newly made Spine, then amplified, passengers and crew listening in a horrified amazement as the ship’s new Master seemed to be asking each of the cowering fools to explain what they were doing.

Billions answered.

In whispers, grunts, and farts, songs and violent shouts, they told the Master that they were scared and sick of feeling this way, and when would she get the shields to work again, and when could their lives be their own again…?

Miocene heard none of them.

Wild dark eyes stared at the watchful captains, and at Washen, and at Washen’s betrayer son. But the only face Miocene could see was streaking down the access tunnel, approaching the bridge now. That pretty face was smug, then hopelessly distracted, then it was enraged by something that it saw in the distance, then smug again when the problem resolved itself. And finally, with a strange, almost embarrassed smile, Till met his mother’s stare, looking up at one of the car’s security eyes, remarking to his companion, “I think she understands… finally, finally…”

Virtue shrank as if expecting to be beaten. Then with a low, desperate squawk, he said, “I had no choice, madam. My love. No choice, ever—”

Miocene fled the falling car.

Returning to the Temple, rejoining the captains, her oldest mouth took a deep, useless breath before declaring, “I’ve been an idiot.”

Washen nearly spoke, then seemed to think better of it.

Aasleen tried to comfort the Master. “We couldn’t have imagined it, much less believed it,” she remarked, thin black fingers caressing her own astonished mouth. “Assuming that there really is such a thing as the Bleak, and the ship’s its prison…”

Miocene put her arms around herself and squeezed hard, and sobbing, said, “No. No, I don’t believe this. No.”

How long had tears been running on her face?

Washen looked at the other captains, and quietly, with a comforting matter-of-factness, she explained, “This was a trap. Maybe there is a Bleak under us, and maybe not. But there are creatures called Waywards, and they’ve taken charge of my ship, and I want that to end. Now.”

In crisp, clear terms, she described the hydrogen river falling toward them, and she estimated when gravity would bring the river this far. Of course the base camp overhead would be obliterated. And the diamond blister. And the bridge. Then the cold fluid would turn into a horrific rain, static electricity or someone’s forgotten candle starting a great fire. Marrow’s oxygen would try to consume the flood, transforming hydrogen into sweet water and a fierce heat. But the fuel tank was vast, and eventually, there would be no more oxygen. Eventually the frigid rain would fall unencumbered onto the ash and iron, and the dead, and the Wayward civilization would be dead… and after a moment’s pause, Washen added, “There’s only one other choice. Or two.” She was staring at Miocene again, feeling enough confidence to bristle. “Your total surrender,” she offered. “Or I suppose, if you can, you could kick the wall of the access tunnel, kick it good and hard, collapsing it and destroying the Spine and plugging everything before the flood reaches us.”

A perverse pleasure took hold of Miocene.

She was still weeping, still miserable. But even as she pushed the tears across her swollen, unfamiliar face, she felt a smile forming. With a cold horrible joy, she told Washen, “You’re clever, yes. I see how you stole those pumps and valves. I couldn’t steal them back again. Not in time, probably. But when I look up at those pumps, do you know what else I see? Do you know what’s happening up there?”

Washen gathered herself, then asked, “What?”

Miocene linked with the chamber’s holoprojection, and she showed them. In an instant, after a silent command, the captains found themselves inside an observation blister on the ship’s backside, surrounded by towering rocket nozzles that were doing nothing. Except for the steep, almost lazy tilt to each of them, they seemed perfectly ordinary. But even as a dozen voices begged for explanations, fires large enough to broil worlds rose up out of them, plumes of gas and light racing for the stars.

Every nozzle was firing.

No captain could remember a day when every engine was needed, and with a confused amazement, they asked for explanations.

“It’s my son,” Miocene confessed.

Again, she grabbed hold of herself, and she squeezed, angry hands jerking at her swollen, useless flesh, yanking until vessels burst and blood flowed from beneath her hard fingernails.

“When we made the last little burn, I thought I was the one controlling the engines,” she muttered. “And Till let me believe whatever I wanted to believe…”

Washen stepped close enough to touch her. And with a crisp voice, she said, “I don’t care about Till. I want to know… why he is firing the engines… now !”

Miocene laughed, and sobbed, and laughed harder.

Then Washen swept her long hands through her dark hair, and in the words of every pilot about to crash, she whispered, “Oh, shit.”

A brutal chill took Washen by the throat and by the belly, and for a slippery instant she found herself waiting for the panic. Hers, and everyone’s. But the enormity was too much, and it hit them too suddenly. Among the captains, only Miocene seemed able to grieve with the proper anguish, collapsing to the steel floor, hands clawing at her thick neck as she sobbed, incoherently at first, then muttering to herself with a robust, unexpected confidence, “This is my catastrophe. Mine. The universe will never forget me. or forgive me. Ever.”

“That’s enough,” Washen growled.

The captains whispered to one another and moaned under their breath.

Washen yanked at the woman’s hands and hair, forcing the anguished eyes to look up at her. Then with the sturdiest voice she could manage, Washen said, “Show us. Exactly what’s happening. Show us now.”

Miocene closed her eyes.

The captains found themselves standing on the ship’s leading face, staring up at a senile red sun that seemed large and frighteningly close. But they had several billions of kilometers left to cross. At one-third lightspeed, the journey would take fifteen hours, and according to exacting plans drawn up centuries ago, they would miss that sun’s hot atmosphere by a comfortable fifty million kilometers.

With each passing second, their course was being changed. Was being mutated, and in dangerous ways.