Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

“We love all,” she says, high over our circle. “We have prayed you here. That is enough. Others will come later, if necessary.”

“Then who’s in charge?” Nell asks.

“Mother,” my twin suggests. “Maybe Mother and Ship Control are one and the same.”

“So far, no objections,” Kim says. “I’m going aft in case our host laid out a big spread and made up some beds, but forgot to tell us.” I follow Kim—such a little name for such a large fellow—and the girls seem to agree that exploration is in order.

Where the staging area had been in Hull Zero One, there’s a similar space, but—as we saw during our first reconnoiter—the interior architecture is nascent, rudimentary. Still, cables and rails are in place, and even ladders and crawling tubes with rungs. We can get around—we are being accommodated. We move aft and inboard, up, climbing through a tube to a hatch. The hatch opens as my hand grips the topmost rung. More warmth spills out. The smaller spaces are warming quickly. Then I smell something marvelous.

Food. Kim was right.

We enter a broad chamber, a giant pie section of the central bulge that pokes into the staging area. The chamber’s design is different from the broad, flat room in the other hull, but who cares? As we watch, teardrop extrusions rise from the floor and push out in rows from the walls. Little silver covers open in the rounded tops of each teardrop as we walk from one to the next.

Kim shakes his head and murmurs, “We can’t eat—not until we’re all here.”

“Right.” But my hands are twitching.

We go back and call the others. When all have assembled, we show them how the covers open and how food fills each dish. The food is in small cubes, beige and green and white, and smells delicious, but we are far from choosy. Each meal is enclosed in a flexible sphere. The sphere is transparent and allows our hands in and out, along with small bits—not burning hot. Something doesn’t want us to eat too fast or too much. Water and a sweet, reddish liquid are available from taps around the room, squeezing out little bulbs we can sip from.

The hull has laid out a feast.

Tsinoy eats what we eat and seems content.

Before we’ve had anywhere near our fill, the teardrops withdraw, but the spigots remain, dispensing smaller bulbs. We’re being rationed. We’ve been nearly starved ever since we were made—no sense overdoing it.

“Who do we thank?” Nell asks, licking her long fingers.

“ Whom ,” my twin corrects.

“Right. Whom do we thank?” she repeats archly.

The girls yell, “Teacher!” and laugh, musical tones that delight almost as much as the food—or the red drink. We all smile, even the Knob-Crest, Tomchin.

Now, soft, circular beds rise from the floor. On one side of the room, the teardrops and spigots are replaced by cylinders filled with running water. Steam puffs out from cuts in the pliable surround, slits that allow entry. Nearby, drawers open, with clothing folded inside. Small lights play across our faces, matching the color of our assigned shower stalls—and our drawers filled with changes of clothes.

We’ve each been measured and fitted.

“Mother provides,” the girls say. “All is well.”

One stall is even big enough for Kim, and a burning question is answered when another, bigger cylinder shapes itself, and Tsinoy climbs in to be sprayed down with water, like a great, horrible wolf.

The Tracker likes to keep clean.

“It’s not a big warm tub,” Nell says as she emerges, naked, furry gray patches slicked and glistening. “But it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt.” Then she adds, looking between me and my twin, “In my young life, of course.”

We lounge on the pads like campers under a giant tent—the pie-slice room even looks like a huge tent. We’re no longer hungry, we’ve had enough to drink, we’re clean, and still there’s electricity in our thoughts. We aren’t going to be sleeping for a while.

The time has come for stories. The girls, of course, choose the Teachers. I go first and tell what happened to me. I condense it into a few minutes.

My twin, oddly, departs from our campground script and shakes his head. “Later,” he says. “I’m not ready yet.”

Kim goes next.

“I don’t remember too much about being born. No girls, nobody—just me, alone. I’m in this long tube when I start to remember, like waking up, but I know I’ve got something I have to do—I have to go forward. I don’t even know where forward is, or what it is, but that’s where I have to go.” He looks at the rest of us. “Why don’t we come with instructions?”

Nobody knows the answer. We’d all like to be real people, after all—probably even Tsinoy.

Kim lifts his hands, examining them with a kind of wonder, and continues. “Being big turns out to be a good thing. Pretty soon, something even bigger and dark tries to stop me, so I break it or kill it. It happens so fast.” He flexes his fingers. “I guess it was a factor, maybe a cleaner—maybe it didn’t even want to hurt me. I don’t know, but I hate being interfered with.”

“Amen,” Nell says.

“Along the way, all I see are bodies or parts of bodies, and I think, this place is dying—or maybe it’s dead already. There are lots of burned areas. Once, I was moving through a place that smelled bad and had no lights at all, and something tried to take me from behind. I didn’t see it, but it left these marks.” He turns to show a circular collection of greenish welts, some still oozing reddish pus. Under his ragged clothing and the layers of grime, we hadn’t noticed them before. The circle is about three hands wide—his hands. His back is huge. “I don’t know how I got away, but I did, though I don’t think I hurt it much—I couldn’t even get a grip, really.”

“A big Killer,” one of the girls says.

“I don’t know how many times I went around the circumference, or doubled back, or reversed course and went aft again. It was all so confusing. I was still waking up. I knew I had to have a name, but I couldn’t remember it. I like Kim, mind you, but I don’t think it’s the name I should have….” He shakes his head with sad humor. “Sorry, girls. I must have spent dozens of spin-ups getting to the rotating sluices. That’s where the water gets channeled from the big central tank—I guess.”

“It is,” Nell says. They’ve heard this before, repeating their stories for our benefit, but also with a kind of hypnotic focus, like chanting old, comforting songs. The stories are all they have, really.

Kim and Nell don’t even have the emerging shadows of a personal Dreamtime. As for Tsinoy…

“Once, I caught a cleaner carrying a body and seven gray bags.” Kim looks at me, squinting with his emerald-green eyes. “I think it might have been you, actually—one of you, I mean. The body was cut in half—no legs—but there were still bags around its neck. I broke the cleaner—didn’t kill it, but it was pretty lame after. Then I stole the bags and ate my fill, drank four bottles of water. I was sick for a few spin-ups. I just floated and bumped in a long tube and made messes. Must have eaten too fast. The loaves haven’t affected me that way since.”

“Maybe they were poisoned,” Nell says.

“Maybe. Finally, I’m climbing up this shaft when I see a big glowing ball coming down at me, with a window or port in the front.”

“Did you see anything through the window?” my other asks.

“Yeah. Maybe. A kind of face—shiny, white.”

“Silvery,” I say.

“There are no—” Kim begins, as if in reflex, and that makes us laugh—all but the girls, who are definitely not amused.