Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

The girl takes my shoulders and peers at me. “Do you know me?”

I favor my arm. My eyes sting, my lips burn—corrosive drops on my face. “I’ve met you,” I say to the girl. “Two of you.”

The girl reaches into her own bag and hands me a bottle of water. “Wash your face,” she says. “We’ve got a place forward where we can fix you up. The others should be coming back soon.”

I’m sure she’s seen me before—this particular me. And I’ve seen her before. “You’re the one who pulled me out of the sac?”

She nods. I find the gesture strangely human, which implies that I’m beginning to regard the girl as something other, though I can’t say why.

“Midwife,” Big Yellow says. His voice is rich. I’d love to hear him sing. I’d love to hear any kind of music. Funny, to think of music now, but I lift the bottle above my head and rinse out my eyes. After a while, they don’t sting as much, and my lips feel better. I drink a little and return the bottle.

“That’s yours,” she says. “I left my book behind. Did you find it?”

“I found it in a bag. Something else stole it. A silvery shape—”

“They don’t exist,” the girl says with a stern look.

“Right. One of you—I think—drew something in the shaft. In blood. What was it supposed to be?”

Pique turns to embarrassment.

“Careful,” Big Yellow warns. “She’s your sponsor. You need her.”

I can accept that—for now. “The shapeless haystack thing?”

“A factor,” Big Yellow says. “I’ve never seen one like it before.”

“A Killer,” the girl says.

“What happened to Picker and Satmonk?”

The girl shakes her head. “They’re strong and friendly, but they don’t last long.”

“And your sister?”

“Don’t ask,” Big Yellow advises.

The girl ignores the question.

I rub my arm. The tugged muscles hurt more than the wound itself. It could have been worse—that shaft could have penetrated bone. “What did you shoot me with?” I ask.

Big Yellow lifts the apparatus, a bent piece of spring—a bow—strung with a twisted length of black fiber. The shaft is a thin, hollow tube; the barbs, more pieces of metal, spring-loaded in roughly cut notches at the tip. Pulling on the cord the right way retracts the barbs. He waggles the bow. It’s broken in two.

“Found it in a junk pile. Now it’s ruined.”

“Sorry,” I say.

He manages a grin. “Have to find another,” he says.

We appear to be in a space actually made for long-term human occupation—unlike the no-frills pads and lockers or even the boy’s tailored space. More style, something on the order of decorated, personalized, even pretty. Nets arranged along the wall support glassy objects of many shapes and colors. The curving inboard ceiling has been painted with pictures of trees and clouds, as if we’re sitting under a leafy bower. This arouses erratic memories of poetry and botany.

Big Yellow and the girl bob slowly up and down on their toes, watching me intently. Waiting for a reaction. I try to smile. “Nice.” I haven’t seen the entire scene, but the human touches are compelling—sympathetic. Somebody lived here for a while—not, I think, my present hosts. The centrifugal tug is no greater here than in the cap of the water tank. I rotate on one toe, like a ballet dancer, arms out, gently push off, rising, then drop to the outboard deck. Bobbing is pleasant. I like it.

Curved rails and cables have been raised and slung in strategic positions from floor and ceiling. The bottom edge of the farthest wall, intersecting the bulkhead to my left, with its hatch, is barely visible beyond the curve of the ceiling. Big. Deluxe accommodations.

We all like to live near the water.

The forward wall…

Whoever lived here (or would live here) wanted to keep a constant watch. Like the end of the water tank, this wall is transparent, but fogged by a layer of grime. Someone—perhaps the girl or Big Yellow—has wiped a big oval. Irregular shadows lurk beyond.

I bob and echo to the oval. I’m facing the bow. What I see is even more compelling than the décor behind me. At this point in the hull’s narrowing taper, the conical structure is visible almost in its entirety. The maximum width of the hull, outside where I stand, must be roughly a hundred meters. This room, and those that complete a circle of habitats forward of the water tank, fills about a third of that width and pokes forward toward the bow.

Ten big cylinders—each about fifty or sixty meters long—are ranked outboard to my right. Their skeletal frameworks barely conceal the graceful curves of the shipwrights and tenders and other machines that build and prepare for launch the seedships that will probe and examine the planet, returning with the information necessary to match us to the planet—and the planet to us.

This view awakens too many memories for me to process all at once. I know this place—I know it well. This is where my work always begins, where the relationships forged over long hours of training will blossom into magnificent results—love and adventure and hard, hard work.

But a few seconds are enough to show me that the machines in the nose of hull number three are in disrepair. They’ve suffered from much worse than simple neglect. Ship’s mad war has struck the tip of our spear—and severely blunted it. I see the damage mentioned in my book. The cylinders and the embryonic craft within are bent, pitted, burned, blasted. Inboard, training and education units—like the crystal and steel seedpods of giant trees—have been ruptured and left in glistening, weeping ruins. To my right, the processors that would have created all of our landing vessels have been dealt similar blows, as if smashed by angry children with hammers and torches.

“What happened here?” I ask, my voice breaking.

“You’re the teacher,” Big Yellow says. “You tell us.”

Movement behind me—the hatch opening and closing.

“You found one?”

I turn to see a gray figure so spidery-thin it takes me a moment to decide it’s human—and a woman. She’s more than two meters tall, with a long, narrow face and large dark eyes. A fine dark fur covers her cheeks and arms up to her bare shoulders. Her fingers curl and uncurl at the end of long, taut arms.

“He found his way here,” Big Yellow says.

“The girl helped—at the beginning,” I say.

The spidery woman moves along the rails and cables with the fluid poise of a ballerina . Somehow, her thinness doesn’t even come across as skinny. She’s just another unexplained type in our tortured menagerie. “So, she thinks you’re important,” she says, doubtful.

“He is!” the girl insists. “He’s Teacher.”

“I’ve brought Tsinoy,” the spidery woman says. She gives me a narrow look, like a warning. “It’s right behind me.”

“Watch out,” Big Yellow says with a chinless nod.

The hatch opens again, and this time, white upon ivory fills the shadow, as if painted by a wide brush. I push back and resist a strong urge to run and hide—if I could run, if there is anyplace to hide.

This one is almost too large for the hatch, and far from human. Shining ivory spines ripple and fold back like bristled fur. Slung low between canine shoulders, a long head shows small, pinkish-red eyes and a blunt, reptilian snout. When rime-white lips pull back, I see ice-colored teeth—teeth that I know are stronger than animal teeth, maybe stronger than steel.

I’ve seen this one before—in a part of the Dreamtime I’m not supposed to remember… don’t want to remember.

Its body, below ridges of pale bristle, is corded with glistening spiral bands of muscles connected to silvery-gray bones. The muscles find new connection points and the beast refashions its shape and increases its power as it braces ceiling to floor beside the spidery woman.