Robert Reed: Marrow

“If the engines keep burning,” said Miocene, eyes still clamped shut.

The image leaped ahead fifteen hours. The ship dipped into the sun’s outer fringe—a warm plasma, thinner than most worthy vacuums. The hull could absorb both heat and trillions of little impacts. But simple friction had to alter the ship’s velocity even more, and in another blink, the captains were falling toward the dying sun’s tiny, infinitely dense partner, its mammoth gravity twisting the hull until it shattered, the ship’s ancient guts strewn into a hot accretion disk, every lump and particle destined to fall into that great black nothingness, leaving the universe entirely.

“No, no, no!’ Locke cried out.

“What about the Bleak?” asked dozens of voices.

With a doubting voice, Aasleen suggested, “It’d be destroyed, maybe.”

But black holes existed in the earliest universe, created in the swirls and eddies of hyperdense plasmas. Washen reminded everyone, “The Builders could have done this. But they knew best, and what they did instead, whatever the reason, was throw the ship out where there were very few, if any, black holes.”

The overhead image dissolved, the Temple surrounded them again.

Washen glanced at the high ceiling and base camp. Then she stared at Miocene, and she quietly asked, “Are you sure you can’t stop the engines?”

With a vivid anger, Miocene said, “What the fuck do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to stop them now. But the engines don’t know me, and I can’t cut Tills hold on them!”

“Then why is he coming here?”

Silence.

“If there’s nothing we can accomplish,” Washen continued, “why doesn’t Till just huddle close to the engines, and wait?”

The crying woman’s face grew calm. Reflective.

After a long moment, astonishment took her. “Because it isn’t my son,” she sputtered. “Of course. He isn’t the one who’s controlling the engines.”

The Bleak, Washen realized. Fifteen billion years as a prisoner, and of course you’d want the helm at this pivotal, perfect moment!

Miocene gazed up at the diamond bridge, at the blister and the Spine. The Spine was allowing something in the depths of Marrow to give captainly commands, and as she accepted that impossibility, she asked, “If I can bring down the bridge, Washen—cut the connection with Marrow—do you think you and your allies could sabotage enough machinery quickly enough to save us…?”

Washen started to say, “I don’t know”

An abrupt, almost gentle whump was heard, and felt, and the steel floor moved just enough to make people look at their feet.

“What did you do?” Locke asked.

Miocene rose with a tired majesty, her reddened eyes blinked a few times, and with an exhausted voice, she said. “The array that controls the quakes. It’s an old system, and it’s always been mine. They couldn’t steal it from me without my feeling the thief’s damp fingers.”

A second tremor passed through the Temple.

Smiling at her own wicked, nearly infinite cleverness, Miocene announced, “The iron’s tired of sleeping, I think. And I don’t believe we have that much time.”

A word and glare gave the captains every available lift-car, and every car on the bridge, empty or filled, immediately began falling toward the Temple.

“Did you know the array has failed?” the administrator squeaked. “That’s the city’s plate had already shifted five meters?”

Miocene considered, then said, “I know. Yes.”

“Do I put key staff’ on the cars? To save them?”

The woman meant herself, naturally. And with a quiet indifference, Miocene told her, “Yes. Of course. But remain here until the others can assemble. Understood?”

“Yes, madam. Yes—”

They boarded the largest car. Washen sat between Miocene and Locke, and she took a half-breath before the car jumped skyward, the air squeezed out of her. Then the entire bridge jerked sideways. The car’s walls scraped against the tube. Someone gave a shout, and Washen realized that it was her own voice. She had cried out. And Locke reached up against the acceleration, finding the strength to lay a massive hand on her hand, a sad sturdy voice telling her, “Even if we die, we might win.”

“Not good enough,” she replied. “Not nearly’ Again, the bridge bucked and rolled around them. Miocene made a sound, a low voice whispering to someone.

Washen let her head fall sideways. But no, the old bitch wasn’t speaking to her. She was muttering to someone only she could see, her face simple and composed, and in a strange, chilling way, happy.

Washen started to ask, “What are you doing-?”

But then they were inside the buttresses, and insane, and the car was yanked and kicked, and an unreal screech dwarfed every holler and curse, the tube surrounding the car twisted by the shaking, and slowing, nearly stopping entirely before some auxiliary system found the muscle to carry them to the top.

Doors opened with a soft, anticlimactic hiss.

Captains vomited bile and unfastened themselves, then vomited bile-scented air when they stood. Then everyone staggered out onto the open diamond platform, into the dim gray light of the nearly deserted base camp.

Two men stood waiting. Virtue wept without dignity or the smallest composure. Till, in perfect contrast, was staring at Miocene, his cold expression growing colder as he quietly remarked, “You don’t have any appreciation for what you have done, Mother. None.”

“What I’m doing,” Miocene replied, “is saving the ship. My ship. That’s all that matters here. My ship!”

The boyish face stiffened.

Then, softened.

The bridge screamed beneath them, and it pulled, and the platform plunged a full meter, then caught itself.

Washen looked down. What resembled rain clouds at first glance were billowing columns of smoke, countless fires started by the brutal, endless quakes that were tearing through the thick crust, shattering the iron plate along every weakness.

She looked up again.

A comforting hand fell on Virtue’s shoulder, and Till said, “Into the car.” He gave a soft shove, then added, “If you wish, Locke. You can return with us, too.”

Locke straightened his back. He didn’t reply.

“Then die here,” was Till’s pronouncement. “With the rest—”

Miocene lifted a hand.

Stuck into that swollen mass of flesh and nexus and bone was a small laser. It looked insubstantial. Worse than useless. Almost pathetic. But Washen knew that it could incinerate a man with a shaped flash, leaving nothing. And she knew from Miocene’s face that she meant to kill her son.

The shot was never fired.

Another bolt of light came from above, evaporating her weapon and her hand. But instead of shock or pain, Miocene seemed filled with a wild, indestructible power. Bending forward, she screamed and drove with her legs, with her new bulk, slamming into her son exactly as the bridge twisted again, a seering of purple light obliterating her trailing leg.

Washen dropped down.

Then looked overhead.

She saw the Wayward soldier. Golden, was it? She saw him standing on a high catwalk, aiming the big laser with a professional calm. Quick bursts, too fast to count. Then she looked back at Miocene, watching as the woman wailed, vanishing in whiffs of boiled blood and white-hot ash.

Dying, she clung to her son.

Near death, she still managed to mutter, “Till,” with a desperate voice. Soft, in the end. Doomed, and sorry. “Please,” her boiling mouth whispered. And then, nothing.

A last surgical burst of light obliterated the head and the Masters mirrored cap, and late by a half-moment, her son turned to see the car and its sole occupant drop away without the slightest warning.