Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

It isn’t part of any Klados I should ever have to deal with. It’s from the wrong part of the Catalog.

Catalog. Klados. Oh, God. Too much all at once. I’m backed up against the long window. My body is soaked in sweat. The girl grabs a cable with one hand, legs folded. She looks at me and then at the ivory beast, judging what, I don’t know. The beast shakes and shivers with a clatter.

Ivory and silver and ice.

“He doesn’t like me,” it says to the spidery woman. The voice is dreadful, deep, grating in an oddly musical way—terrifying.

“You scared the hell out of me, first time I met you,” Big Yellow says.

“Talk Teacher down,” the spidery woman tells the girl.

The beast says, “Shit,” but doesn’t press the issue.

More memory bobs to the surface—more nightmare information. The fact that I do recognize it causes a nauseating sensation of being two people in the same body. It’s one of Ship’s dark secrets—a Tracker. Trackers are biomech weapons of incredible versatility and power. They can live off almost any combination of gases or liquids found in organically fertile environments.

But Trackers are not supposed to be able to talk. Dropped into any situation, all a Tracker does is track, clear, and kill.

It shouldn’t be here.

It shudders with another clatter. I worry that I’ve angered it, expecting it to change shape again at any moment. Why hasn’t it killed them all, killed me?

“Do we trust him?” the Tracker asks.

“Do we have a choice?” Big Yellow asks.

The girl looks between us, eyes sharp. The spidery woman shrugs.

“How’d you all get here?” I croak.

“We were pushed,” the spidery woman says. She’s casual, unafraid of any of us—least of all the ivory beast. “Factors moved forward and burned out the birthing rooms, the living quarters aft. No more newbies. We’re the last.”

“They’ll find us if we stay here,” Big Yellow says.

The girl pulls herself along the cable and reaches to take my wrist. “I prayed for you,” she says. “So you came.”

“She always prays for you,” Big Yellow says.

The Tracker sees something in my expression and moves closer, paw-claws clenching, stretching. I definitely feel threatened.

“You see me, you know what I am. I’m not just a freak,” it says. “Tell me.”

Before my eyes, the spines drop and the pale, glistening muscles rearrange on the screw-shaped bones, reassigning lift and load and balance. It’s looking more and more like a four-legged tank—or something called an armadillo . An armadillo with the head of an awful, lizardlike wolf. Three animals I’ve never seen. “Do you have a name?” it asks me.

“No,” I say. “I don’t remember.”

“I’m the only one here with a name,” it says. “Why?”

“Beg pardon,” the spidery woman says. “Introductions. Teacher, this… is Tsinoy.”

“I’m not supposed to look like this,” the Tracker says. Its voice drops an octave—something out of a deep, deep cave. “I look awful.”

“I’m not supposed to look the way I do, either,” Big Yellow says.

“I am what Mother made me,” the girl says.

“Of course,” Big Yellow says with what I take to be a wry face, allowing for the waxy stiffness of his features.

“What about you?” I ask the spidery woman.

“No name,” she says. “But I know that I work best in low gravity.” She stretches her arms and adds, “I also know a lot about the hulls. Especially what Ship will look like when all three hulls join. The Triad.”

“Good for her,” Big Yellow says. “For me, it’s all a mystery.”

The spidery woman approaches the window. I drop back to give her a chance to look through the cleaned oval and survey the wreckage of our hopes. Her large eyes turn sad.

The girl tugs me to a big curved brown blob that might be a chair. It seems to suck me down and relax me at the same time, holding me with a soft, polite grip. “Tell us,” she says. “You’re Teacher. Tell us what you remember.”

“If you know something, teach us, Teacher,” Big Yellow says. “We’re hungry for knowledge.”

I swallow. Again, I feel as if I’ve split into two people, two Dreamtimes twisted together. The Tracker has kept its focus on me, like a cat watching a bird.

“What do I do?” it asks. “What’s my purpose?”

I don’t want to ignore this question, but I also have no desire to disappoint—and what I’ve involuntarily and hazily recovered won’t make any of us happy. The spidery woman passes me a squeeze bulb of water. I drink. “You’re called a Tracker,” I say. “Sometimes we send Trackers down to a planet in the first seedships. Or others like Trackers.”

“Why would Ship do that?” the spidery woman asks.

“If there’s a major problem with our destination planet, crew improvises from the Catalog.”

“What catalog?” Big Yellow asks.

“How would they use me?” the Tracker overrides him.

I answer the Tracker first. Whatever it has in its soul, it still terrifies me. “You clear the ground,” I say, trying to reduce the impact of simply telling it, You kill everything you meet. “Help prep the planet for human occupation.”

“I’m a Killer?”

You’re a Killer. I don’t say this out loud. I do say, under my breath, “I don’t know. Just stop staring.”

“Shit.” The Tracker stands down, moves away, seems to shrink, elongate, reduce its offensive posture even more. It appears almost smooth, sleek.

“It’s my beast, so be nice to it,” the spidery woman says softly. She doesn’t like what I’ve told them any more than I do. “It protected me, came here with me. No need to get it upset. The question is, who’s in charge—Teacher or me?”

“You left me out,” Big Yellow says, mocking disappointment.

“Teacher,” the girl insists.

“But you’re not actually a leader ,” Big Yellow says.

“I don’t think so,” I agree.

“Can you talk to Ship Control and ask for help?”

“The Ship talked to me, I think—once.”

“Maybe he’s lying,” the Tracker grumbles.

The spidery woman stretches herself again to full length—very impressive. She and the Tracker make a formidable pair.

“Teacher knows everything , if he gets poked right,” the girl insists.

Big Yellow asks, “Is it true, Teacher? What else is in that catalog? Me?”

“I don’t know. Leave me alone for a while.” I avoid their eyes. I need to think, to rest. More of my head fog is starting to lift. I don’t like any of what memory shows me now. I’m supposed to be born after we find a planet, after we arrive—that’s the grand scheme of my Dreamtime. Arrival—planetfall—is a complicated job at the end of a hundred million processes, a trillion decisions, big and little. Getting there is most of the fun.

Maybe Dreamtime is all wrong, a convincing fairy story. What’s dawning on me—what should have been obvious from the beginning—is that if the planet isn’t hospitable, if there’s difficulty, Ship would have to adapt. I’m not born and raised. I’m made—like them. If big problems arise, I can be customized. I come in more than one variety. And now two of me—or more—are mixed together.

“Who’s been here longest?” I ask.

“Tsinoy and me,” the spidery woman says. “We met Big Yellow and the girl in front of the water tank and showed them this place.”

“None of you have books?”

“None of us has a book,” the spidery woman says.

“I had a book,” the girl says. “You lost it.”