Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

Saga gingerly felt her nose. It was bleeding, but didn’t seem broken. Novik stepped back from the wall. He looked at Saga over his shoulder.

“You’ll have to do the captain’s job now,” he said.

“What?” Saga asked.

“That’s how it works. You read the map to me while I steer her.”

“What do I do?”

“You go up to the captain’s cabin. There’s a map. There’s a city on the map. It’s on the lower levels. It’s abandoned. Tall spires. You’ll see it.”

Saga went up to the captain’s cabin. The door was open. The space inside was filled by an enormous construction. Orbs of different sizes hung from the ceiling, sat on the ground, were mounted on sticks. Some of the orbs had little satellites. Some of them were striped, some marbled, some dark. In the space between them hung swirls of light that didn’t seem attached to anything. Close to the center, a rectangular object was suspended in the air. It looked like a tiny model of Skidbladnir .

There was a crackle. From a speaker near the ceiling, Novik’s voice said, “Step into the map. Touch the spheres. You’ll see.”

Saga carefully stepped inside. The swirls gave off small shocks as she grazed them, and though they seemed gossamer, they didn’t budge. She put her hand on one of the spheres, and her vision filled with the image of islands on green water. A red sun looked down on pale trees. She touched another, one that hung from the ceiling, and saw a bustling night-time town, shapes moving between houses, two moons shining in the sky. She touched sphere after sphere: vast desert landscapes, cities, forests, villages. The lower levels, Novik had said. Saga crouched down and felt the miniature worlds that littered the floor like marbles. Near the far corner, a dark sphere was a little larger than the others. As she touched it, there was an image of a city at dawn. It was still, silent. Tall white spires stretched toward the horizon. There were no lights, no movement. Some of the spires were broken.

“I think I found it,” she said aloud.

“Good,” Novik said through the speaker. “Now draw a path.”

Saga stood up, ducking the electrified swirls. She made her way into the center of the room where Skidbladnir hung suspended on seemingly nothing at all.

“How?” she asked.

“Just draw it,” Novik replied.

Saga touched Skidbladnir . It gave off a tiny chime. She traced her finger in the air. Her finger left a bright trail. She made her way across the room, carefully avoiding the glowing swirls, until she reached the sphere on the floor. As she touched the sphere, another chime sounded. The trail her finger had left seemed to solidify.

“Good,” said Novik in the speaker. “Setting the course.”

Saga wandered through the empty ship. There was no telling how long the journey would take, but on the map it was from the center of the room to the very edge, so perhaps that meant a long wait. She had gone back to the engine room, but the door was shut now. Whatever Novik did inside, while interfacing with Skidbladnir , he wanted to do undisturbed.

The main doors in the lobby had buckled inward, but not broken. The captain had used considerable force to try to get back in. The passenger rooms were empty. In the lounge, the pool table’s balls had gone over the edge and lay scattered on the floor. There was food in the mess hall; Saga made herself a meal of bread and cheese from the cabinet for human food. Then she went up to her quarters to wait.

Season 2 finale: “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.”

The station is closing due to budget reasons; Earth has cut off funding because station management refuses to go along with their alien-unfriendly policies. No other race offers to pick up the bill, since they have started up stations of their own. In a bittersweet montage, the captain walks through the station and reminisces on past events. The episode ends with the captain leaving on a shuttle. An era is over. The alien navigator puts a claw on the captain’s shoulder: a new station is opening, and the captain is welcome to join. But it’ll never be an earthlike place. It’ll never be quite like home.

Skidbladnir arrived in a plaza at the city’s heart. The air was breathable and warm. Tall spires rose up into the sky. The ground beneath them was cracked open by vegetation. Novik got out first. He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the plaza. He nodded to himself.

“This will do,” he said. “This will do.”

“What happens now?” Saga asked.

“We stand back and wait,” Novik replied. “ Skidbladnir knows what to do.” He motioned for Saga to follow him.

They sat down at the edge of the plaza, well away from Skidbladnir . Saga put her bags down; she hadn’t brought much, just her clothes, some food, and the first season of Andromeda Station . Perhaps she would find a new tape player somewhere.

They waited for a long time. Novik didn’t say much; he sat with his legs crossed in front of him, gazing up at the spires.

At dusk, Skidbladnir ’s walls cracked open. Saga understood why Novik had positioned them so far away from the building; great lumps of concrete and steel fell down and shook the ground as the building shrugged and shuddered. The tendrils that waved from the building’s cracked roof stiffened and trembled. They seemed to lengthen. Walls fell down, steel windows sloughed off, as Skidbladnir slowly extricated herself from her shell. She crawled out from the top, taking great lumps of concrete with her. Saga had expected her to land on the ground with an almighty thud. But she made no noise at all.

Free of her house, Skidbladnir was a terror and wonder to behold. Her body was long and curled; her multitude of eyes gleamed in the starlight. Her tendrils waved in the warm air as if testing it. Some of the tendrils looked shrunken and unusable. Saga also saw that patches of Skidbladnir ’s body weren’t as smooth as the rest of her; they were dried and crusted. Here and there, fluid oozed from long scratches in her skin.

Next to Saga, Novik made a muffled noise. He was crying.

“Go, my love,” he whispered. “Find yourself a new home.”

Skidbladnir ’s tendrils felt the buildings around the plaza. Finally, they wrapped themselves around the tallest building, a gleaming thing with a spiraled roof, and Skidbladnir pulled herself up the wall. Glass tumbled to the ground as Skidbladnir ’s tendrils shot through windows to pull herself up. She tore through the roof with a thunderous noise. There was a moment when she supported her whole body on her tendrils, suspended in the air; she almost toppled over the side. Then, with what sounded like a sigh, she lowered herself into the building. Saga heard the noise of collapsing concrete as Skidbladnir ’s body worked to make room for itself. Eventually, the noise subsided. Skidbladnir ’s arms hung down the building’s side like a crawling plant.

“What now?” Saga said.

She looked sideways at Novik. He smiled at her.

“Now she’s free,” he said. “Free to go wherever she pleases.”

“And what about us?” Saga asked. “Where do we go?”

“With her, of course,” Novik replied.

“There’s no map,” Saga said. “Nothing to navigate by. And the machinery? Your engine room?”

“That was only ever needed to make her go where we wanted her to,” Novik said. “She doesn’t need that now.”

“Wait,” Saga said. “What about me? What if I want to go home?”

Novik raised an eyebrow. “Home?”

A chill ran down Saga’s back. “Yes, home.”

Novik shrugged. “Perhaps she’ll stop by there. There’s no telling what she’ll do. Come on.”