Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

He said, “No.”

“Two machines, but only one builder.”

He didn’t react.

She shook her head. “We don’t know how old the Great Ship is. Not precisely, but we have informed guesses. And no matter how well-engineered you appear to be, I don’t think you’re several billion years old.”

He remained silent.

Aasleen took one step closer. “There’s the third terror involving you: a captain’s nightmare. Maybe you are the puzzleboys’ machine. Or you’re somebody else’s representative. Either way, if you arrived here on the Ship before any human did, and if there’s a lost soul inside whatever passes for your mind…well, then it’s possible that a different species might legally claim possession over the wealth and impossibilities that the Great Ship offers. And at that point, no matter how sweet your engineering is, your fate is out my hands…”

Her voice trailed away.

She took a tiny step forward.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t know what I am. I know nothing.”

The tiny machines inside Aasleen were speaking rapidly again.

“I’m watching your mind,” she confessed. “But I’m not at all familiar with its neural network. It’s a sloppy design, or it’s revolutionary. I don’t know enough to offer an opinion.”

“I wish to leave now,” he said.

“In the universe, there are two kinds of unlikely,” Aasleen warned. “The Great Ship is one type—never attempted or even imagined, but achievable, provided someone has time and the muscle to make it real. And then there’s the implausible that you imagine will come true, and one day your worst fears turn real. If the Great Ship belongs to someone else, then my species has to surrender our claim. And even though I believe that I am a good and charitable soul, I don’t want that to happen. Facing that prospect, I would fight to keep that from happening, in fact.”

Alone did nothing, gathering his strength.

“And even if you are safe as rain,” she said, “I don’t relish the idea of you wandering wherever you like. Not on my ship. Certainly not until we can find the answers to all these puzzles.”

Without warning, Alone lost his shape, turning into a hot broth that tried to flow around the grasping arms.

The arms seemed to expect his trick, quickly creating one deep bowl that held him in place.

“I promise,” said Aasleen. “You’ll be somewhere safe. We will keep you comfortable. And as much as possible, you’ll be left alone. Not even Miocene wants to torment you. And that’s why a special chamber is being prepared—”

A new talent emerged.

The liquid body suddenly compressed itself, collapsing into a tiny dense and radiant drop hotter than any sun. And as the bowl-shaped limbs struggled to keep hold of this fleck of fire, Alone stole a portion of their mass, turning it into energy, shaping a ball of white-hot plasma.

And with that, he shrank into an even tinier, hotter bit of existence.

Aasleen turned and ran.

The arms were pierced. Not even the hyperfiber floor could resist his descent. He struck and sank out of sight, and when he was beneath the floor, hyperfiber turned into a bed of pale pink granite, and much as a ship passed between the stars, he was slicing quickly through what felt much like nothing.

Creating a narrow hole, Alone fell.

The hole was lined with compressed, distorted magma that flowed and bubbled and soon hardened above him. But despite the minuscule trail, his enemies would follow. He felt certain. Alone had value in their eyes, or he was dangerous, or they simply could not approve of his continued existence. Whatever their reasons, Aasleen and the captains would go to considerable trouble to chase him. But the Great Ship was full of holes and tunnels, and it occurred to him that his enemies would simply gather below him, waiting inside the next chamber.

To fool these hunters, Alone let his body balloon outwards, one final burst of blazing heat leaking out before his descent was finished.

Fifteen kilometers beneath Aasleen, the machine built a new chamber. It was a tiny realm, the spherical wall glowing red as the residual heat bled away, and he lay silent in the middle for long minutes before sprouting delicate fingers, pushing their tips into the cooling magma. Falling from above were vibrations—bright hard jarrings marking the closing and sealing of every hatch and orifice and superfluous valve. Then something massive and quite slow passed directly beneath him. But the subtle noises were never regular, never simple, creating distortions and echoes as the waves broke around empty spaces deep within the cold rock. Swim in one downward angle, and a large chamber would be waiting. Another easy line promised a more distant but far more extensive cavern. But what caught Alone’s interest was a line that might be an illusion, a flaw in the rock, perhaps, or it might be a tunnel leading nowhere. But that target was close. Alone pulled his body into a new shape. Looking like the worms common to a hundred billion worlds, he began slithering and shoving his way forward.

He missed his goal by eighty meters.

But instinct or a wordless voice urged him to pause and think again. What was wrong? An urge told him what to do, and he obeyed, following a new line until he was not only certain that he was lost but that the Great Ship was solid to its core, and his fate was to wander this cramped darkness until Time’s end.

Suddenly the rock beneath him turned to cultured diamond.

With the worm’s white-hot head, he pushed through the gemstone. The Great Ship was laced with countless tiny tunnels, and this was among the most obscure, barely mapped examples. He glowed brightly for a long moment, new eyes probing in both directions before one was chosen. Then inside a space too small for a human child to stand, he began to run—sprouting limbs as necessary, pushing off the floor and the sides and that low slick diamond ceiling. With every junction and tributary hole, he picked for no reason. Eventually he was hundreds of kilometers from his beginning point, random choice his guide until the moment when he realized that he was beginning to wander back toward his starting point. Then Alone decided to pause, listening to the diamond and the rock beyond. The next turn led to a dead end, and he backed out of that hole and hunkered down, and with a soft private voice asked, “What now?”

“Down,” the familiar voice coaxed.

Nothing else was offered. No other instruction was needed. He burned a fresh hole into the diamond floor, and after plunging three kilometers, his fierce little body exploded out into a volume of frigid air that stretched farther than the light of his body could reach.

Alarmed, he made himself black as space.

He fell, and a floor of water and carbon dioxide ice slapped him when he struck bottom.

The cavern was five kilometers in diameter, bubble-shaped and filled with ancient ice and a whisper of oxygen gas. Except for the dimpled footprints of one robot surveyor, there was no trace of visitors. No human had ever stepped inside this place. But as a precaution, Alone erased his tracks, and where his warmth had distorted the ice, he made delicate repairs.

A walker’s existence gave way to the sessile life. He moved only to investigate his new home. Every sealed hatch leading out into the Ship was studied, and he prepared three secret exits that wouldn’t appear on the captains’ maps. Sameness made for simple memories. The next seventeen thousand years were crossed without interruption. Life was routine, and life was silent and unremarkable, and the old sense of fear subsided into a slight paranoia that left each sliver of Time sweet for being pleasantly, unashamedly boring.