Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

They leave the Knob-Crest in my care. Big Yellow also grimly plants the girl in my arms, where she squalls and squirms. “She smells one of her own,” he explains. “Keep her safe. I’ll get the others.” He looks admiringly at the Tracker, which has managed to sever the whipping cable and severely distract the combo—but not quite kill or cripple it.

The spidery woman passes in a gray blur of long arms and legs. “Where’s your goddamned laser savior?” she shouts.

Good question. I’ve got the girl in my arms, fighting like a hellion, and a Knob-Crest hanging on my feet and bobbing in the litter, hooting and groaning.

Something soft brushes my cheek. I snatch at it—a feathery strand that suddenly loops and stings my face and burns my fingers. The air is filling with more strands, all uncoiling from a leathery black mass oozing along the cables and draping from dead branches, scattering fragments of leaf dust. The mass is trimmed with a pale fringe of long, stinging tendrils, each tipped with a shining blue eye the size of a marble, all of which twitch and stare, directing the stripping, wrapping length behind.

At least five of those blue eyes turn on me.

That’s it. My legs pull up, hauling the Knob-Crest with them. I’m locked in a fetal curl, practically crushing the girl, rotating and falling to my left. The girl still clings to my waist. The Knob-Crest thinks better and drops loose, then flurries his arms and hands against more tendrils. Enough for all.

Still no saviors, no lasers. But the spidery woman is back. She’s pulled off her shoes and with her long black toes grasping a massive limb, swings a thorny branch like a quarterstaff. (I don’t give a damn about the new words.) She handily snatches and clears tendrils from around our group.

Big Yellow returns from the gloom with yet another body slung over his shoulder—a small one, head hanging limp, eyes glazed—looks dead. Another girl.

The girl around my waist stops kicking. A sister.

“Get out of here!” Tsinoy shouts from below, lifting its snout and shaking aside cracked fragments of shell. “More coming!” Then it sinks its snout in a large hole it’s dug in the red carapace, crooks each limb, and spins the shell around and around.

I look up. My eyes see better now. The dead forest is alive with shapes—all sorts, all different shades, too many to count. The hull aft must be dead, as all the beasts gather here to finish their job. If the hull can fill itself with wave upon forward wave of Killers, nothing will survive. Leaving is our only option.

Big Yellow hands off the second girl, then pushes all three of us toward the hatch. He lifts up the Knob-Crest and shoves him after.

“We’ll stop them here!” Big Yellow shouts.

The second sister lifts her head and thrusts out a scrawny arm to point. “One more,” she says, blinking rapidly. “I prayed for one! I found him!”

I encourage the Knob-Crest to crawl with me. We pass through the hatch, confused motives propelled by abject fear. If I live, this dead forest ball is never going to leave me—my slumber will forever fill with horrors. The girls cling to me, to each other, limbs twined, trying to caress and kiss—

And it’s all a haze of passages and acrobatics, clumsy enough to make me pull back my lips in a hideous grin, a mockery of mocking, humor my last resort now that fear has finally run dry.

We find the hatch to the transfer craft. The spidery woman is right behind us. She’s wiping her eyes and facial fur with a sleeve and a loose bag. When she sees the two girls, she scoops them to her breast, cooing in a strange, high voice—motherly instinct, I suppose—but then she spins around to find the panel that closes the hatch. It swiftly cuts us off from the rest of the hull. Breathless, she says, “We have to leave now. I never thought…”

She doesn’t finish. A slamming sound comes from outside. The spidery woman and I look at each other—no choice. We have to open the hatch again.

Tsinoy pushes through with another limp body. Big Yellow follows close behind, saying, “That’s it, let’s go,” and the hatch closes.

One of the sisters is the one who pulled me from the birthing sac, who fought to get me here. The other is regaining strength, crying lustily. She clambers over the netting to the limp, pale body in Tsinoy’s grasp and checks his neck for a pulse. The new girl clambers over the netting to a blue sphere, places both her hands on it, and murmurs something to its smooth surface.

The blue surface illuminates.

“Hey!” the spidery woman says in surprise.

The craft moves, shoving us inboard, and then spins around. The netting grips our hands, our arms, even loops around Tsinoy’s spiny limbs. We’re away, shoving off into space, weightless again. A humming starts. Air flows.

The little girl rubs the hemisphere with her hands, murmuring sweetly. The spidery woman looks on in stunned appreciation. “I didn’t know she could do that,” she says.

“They knew it was here all along,” I say, rubbing my shoulders, my knees. “Why wait until we’re nearly killed?”

Big Yellow says, “Our little group wasn’t finished. But now they miss their mother.”

The pale fellow’s eyes open. He looks at Big Yellow, the brightest thing in the room, then at me—half-blind. The Knob-Crest won’t stop hooting and writhing. I can intuit the whole situation. He feels betrayed, almost left behind. He was the girl’s companion, her partner—until she found the pale man, roughly my size, with roughly my color hair—though matted with blood and slime—and roughly my features.

“Glory,” the spidery woman says. “Looks like we have two Teachers.”

The rest of my group seems unremarkable now, compared to that owlish young man across the egg, who has roughly the same number of scabs, burn marks, and scars but arranged in different places and patterns—the same shape of mouth… eyes…

I don’t know which is more unsettling—meeting myself dead or meeting myself alive.

Big Yellow tends to the Knob-Crest. A little dab of water, a dirty gray bag, a little clean-up. After a few minutes, the Knob-Crest settles, watching us through sullen, pink-rimmed eyes. Traumatized but keeping still.

Somehow, we all grow quiet. Settle.

The egg-craft has been sent on some sort of automatic mission. The spidery woman has taken her former position near the hemisphere, one hand lightly resting on it—as if to affirm she has purpose.

Tsinoy has compacted near the tip, the hatch; it is quietest of all—giving the rest of the egg over to us. The two girls are wrapped tight and dozing in a loop of happy netting.

Finally, the other me pulls delicately loose and crosses the egg to enmesh by the port, nearer to me. I’ve been sneaking glances at the stars, the wisps, wondering just where we’re going—and whether any of us knows where we’re going.

“That’s a big blob of incandescent gas out there,” the other me says.

“Nova, or supernova, probably,” I say.

“Remembering much?” he asks.

“Trying,” I say.

“Well, if we’re dupes—duplicates—we can help each other. Speed things up a bit.”

“Probably,” I say. “Met me before?”

“Let’s not talk about that yet. You?”

“You’re my first… living dupe. Is that the right word?”

He lifts his hands. “How long have you been alive?”

“Tough to say. A hundred spin-ups, maybe.”

“Me, I’ve been counting, because the book suggested that was a good idea.” From his pocket, the other me removes a ragged, stained book, three times thicker than mine. “I’ve been here four hundred and twelve spin-ups, give or take ten.”