Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

“Right.” I don’t want to get into that again. “But I found one of my own,” I say, and take it out, opening to the page with the sketch. They crowd around—all but the Tracker, who seems aware that even folded, its spines might jab us.

“Three hulls, like you remember. To know what it all means, we need to see more, I guess.”

“That’s right,” the girl agrees. “He needs to be poked.” Why she focuses on me, I don’t know.

“You are what you see,” Big Yellow says.

“That’s deep. You’re our philosopher,” the spidery woman says.

Big Yellow stretches out massive arms. “Philosophers don’t look like me.”

“Join the club,” says Tsinoy.

“You drew this?” the spidery woman asks me, pointing to the sketch.

“No. Another me did—I think.”

“How many of you are there?” she asks.

“I’ve seen hundreds of bodies like mine… collected and frozen in lockers, aft.”

“Awful,” Big Yellow says. “Thankfully, I seem to be unique.”

An awkward pause.

“I’m exhausted,” I say. “Is there a place I can sleep? Is there any food?”

“Very little,” the spidery woman says.

“Less and less,” Big Yellow says. “On my way here, I saw a lot of folks who looked as if they’d starved to death.”

I take another drink. “There is a room aft,” I say, “outboard of the water tank… A boy and a woman live there. They were comfortable. The boy had plenty of food and water. He seemed to be able to tell the hull what to do.”

They all look at me with somber eyes, as if they don’t believe me. Then I see that they’re simply paying silent respect to a man who’s escaped certain death.

“There was another girl,” I say defensively. “She left first.” I pause and swallow. “She wasn’t you,” I say to this girl.

Big Yellow looks aside.

“We’ve heard about such places,” the spidery woman says. “After a few spin-ups, if you like it and stay, you start to think you’ve been there for years. You forget who you are… and then the room seals shut and never opens again. Traps you. In some other part of the hull, another room opens up… same thing, different people.”

Silence.

“They let me go,” I say.

“It’s just a story,” the spidery woman says. “We’ve got enough food for a few days, but we don’t have that much time. We need to find a way forward—a way out.”

“Where?” I ask.

“I don’t remember,” she says, crestfallen. “Not yet.”

Big Yellow moves in. “Right. If we don’t rest, we’ll start acting crazy. Let’s clean up, eat a crumb or two, sleep in shifts. We’ll stand watch one by one for a couple of hours, until next spin-down. Best to travel while there’s as little weight as possible—right?” He looks at the spidery woman with what passes for stubbornness.

She faces him down, then shrugs again, wide shoulders elegant, and curls up. “Who’s first on watch?”

“I’ll go,” Big Yellow says. “I sleep with my eyes open. Then the girl. She’s the most sensitive to noise.”

We scrub each other with a scrap of damp cloth. After, we feel better in a number of ways—and more connected. In the gentle tug of spin-up, the spilled bath-water slowly falls to the floor and forms viscous pools. We wipe it up and squeeze the cloth into an empty bottle. That takes a while—the water behaves like syrup. We can’t afford to waste anything.

The Tracker, of course, does not join this group, but watches with what I assume is a hint of sadness in its armor-lidded, ruby-pink eyes.

After a brief meal—a couple of chunks of loaf divided among us—we seek separate places in the chamber. I settle into the grippy couch. The Tracker finds a corner and wedges itself in, a peculiar process of grabbing hold of the walls and ceiling with three limbs and shoving until it’s compressed to almost half its former bulk.

The spidery woman chooses to lie unencumbered on the floor, a loose curl of limbs. She closes her eyes and relaxes. The girl stays close to her, happy with any substitute for a mother. Her legs are crossed, elbows out, hands together, as if praying—praying to the hull, perhaps, or Ship Control. She glances at me. Her eyes grow heavy, and she curls up, too.

I spend a few minutes penciling an update in the little book. My handwriting—hand-printing—is uniform throughout. It’s all me. I don’t write it all down. I concentrate on a few vivid scenes. Eventually, I’ll gather enough pieces of paper to make enough books to tell the whole story. Then I’ll…

I don’t know what I’ll do.

I write. When I get to a certain point—my rescue from the red-dot horror—I look up.

“Who has a laser?” I ask.

Big Yellow is near the hatch, standing his watch. “Nobody,” he says, and manages a look of surprise. His facial expressions are subtle but real, once you get used to them. “We thought you had one, but you don’t, do you?”

“No.”

The spidery woman rouses. “Great. We have an unknown protector.”

“Or somebody was trying to kill you and missed,” the Tracker suggests, poking its head from the corner.

Spin-down rouses us too soon. We barely feel the difference—a nudge.

“I think I remember more now,” the spidery woman says with a yawn.

“Sleep can do that,” Big Yellow says. “That’s why I don’t sleep much.”

She scowls at him. “All the hulls start out the same. If my memory is accurate—and that’s a big if—there’s access to a control center in the bow, across the staging area. We should be able to get through that side hatch.” She points to an otherwise anonymous impression on the far wall, almost hidden by the ceiling.

“It’ll have to do,” Big Yellow says.

The Tracker comes out of its corner. It extends a paw-claw, a formidable appendage, and the little girl gives it her hand, dainty flesh almost lost in that multiply capable span of digits, gripping ridges, and horny extrusions. Her trust seems absolute.

The spidery woman’s memory is accurate, so far—there is forward access. We pass through into a corridor, railed and cabled, designed for people. At her touch, another hatch opens on the forward end, and we clamber and float out into the acrid air of the staging area.

The smell of burning and destruction is fierce, accompanied by a too-familiar, fine mist of stinging droplets. “More stink,” the little girl says, wrinkling her nose.

We form a chain and launch across the staging area, with the Tracker as our leading grapple. Crossing takes us several long, painful minutes, past tangles of broken supports and burned equipment, through a heartbreaking ring of useless landing craft. The masses all around shift and groan, wobbling after spin-down. Pieces are drifting loose.

The far wall, closer to the bow, is less than fifty meters wide. There can’t be much more forward left to go. My memories stop at the staging area. It makes sense that there could be an observation chamber, a blister, maybe even a command center, but what are the chances it’s going to be damaged as well?

It’s incredible that one of me reached this far and yet went back—why? Because he was alone, didn’t know where else to go? Teamwork. There has to be a group that combines all the right knowledge—I’m just not sufficient. But who puts us together?

Who decides who gets made and what they know?

A loose chunk of support frame revolves slowly between our party and the hatch, blocking the view, but Big Yellow joins the Tracker, leaving us for the moment to grip an I-beam bonded to a relatively stable bulkhead.

Together, the pair stops the frame’s motion, pushes it aside, where it collides with a tangled seedship cage and sticks.