Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

Kim waits for a decent interval while we think this over, then continues his story up to the point where he’s made his way forward and meets the first little girl, then Nell and Tsinoy. We know the rest.

Nell goes next. The girls sit on either side of her. Each takes a long-fingered hand. The scene is at once touching and incongruous.

“The first thing I remember,” she begins, “is Tsinoy carrying me in a sac through a forest. The sac is slowly ripping, and I’m about to fall out. We get to a platform—I guess this is during spin-up. The platform is covered with dried stuff—blood, I think.”

“It was blood,” Tsinoy agrees.

“Where did you find her?” my twin asks.

“In a pile of bodies in a birthing chamber—most of them still in sacs. They were dead, freezing, but one sac squirmed, so I pulled it out and took it with me.”

“Why?” Kim asks.

“I did not want to be alone. I had questions, and for too long, nothing and nobody to talk to.”

“How did you know she would talk to you?”

“I didn’t.”

“ Her story first,” one of the girls insists.

Nell resumes. “We were in a factor tunnel, somewhere outboard, maybe near the middle of the hull, near the cinch, when I fell out. Got born, I suppose. Tsinoy waited while I tried out my legs and arms. I managed to stand, and then I screamed. I’m embarrassed to say that.”

“Don’t be,” Tsinoy says in a soft grumble.

“But we were alone, it wasn’t attacking me. And then it spoke. I didn’t understand it at first. I had to integrate, bring language to the surface. I have other languages, potentially—maybe we all do. Maybe if we try hard enough, we can speak to others…” She casts a quick look at Tomchin. “Just as the girls do.”

The girls look somberly around the circle.

“Tsinoy was the first name I’ve ever heard. It knew who it was even then.”

“Not what , though,” Tsinoy adds. “No mirrors, but limbs look all wrong.”

“After a time,” Nell resumes, “Tsinoy guides me to a huge chamber—the biggest chamber we’ve seen. It’s full of a quiet, hissing rumble and big, long blue tubes… bigger than the water tank, I think. The tubes are lined up in a cylindrical shape, filled with whirling shadows, surrounded by sparkles, all flowing aft. The chamber might have been a kilometer wide. It was only a couple of minutes before we found more bodies, in terrible condition—not just desiccated, not injured, just crispy, burned. And we decided it wasn’t a good idea to stay there. They were like… like…”

She can’t quite put her thoughts into words.

“Like insects in a trap,” my twin finishes for her.

She agrees.

“What’s an insect?” Kim asks.

“Little living thing, hard shell,” my twin explains. I see the same image: little dead things with glassy wings in a kind of trap or bottle. The things that spiders eat—flies. “Radiation,” I say. “Bad place to be.”

“I think now it was part of the hull’s drive engine,” Nell says. “I started remembering some things. I know about engines, a little at first—engines and hulls and joining everything together. I know a little more now, but it still hasn’t all come to the surface. We left that part of Ship, found our way forward, through the cinch—felt sick for a few spin-ups but seemed to recover quickly… Maybe we’re tough that way. We blundered along, still moving forward, I think, until we met up with a Killer. A pack of them. I haven’t seen their like since. They were slender, barbed, maybe three times longer than I am tall, and about as thick through the middle, with four eyes at the end of a long stalk or arm, lots of bendy joints. The joints all have suckers on the outside.” She lifts a thumb knuckle and taps it. “They grip the walls and use leverage. Moved almost too fast for me to see—very strong. Made to clear the tubes, I think. They tried to get around Tsinoy—seemed to think it might be one of the team. I think they were surprised when it attacked them—before they could touch me. Tsinoy was very effective.”

“They hurt me,” Tsinoy said, showing a black, burned-looking area under its ivory spines, behind a temporary shoulder joint. “They use poison.”

“Why does everything want to kill us?” Nell asks suddenly. “Why are we even here, if Ship doesn’t want us to be here?”

I’ve been thinking about this but have no solid answers. I exchange a look with my twin, San-whatever. He takes this as a kind of encouragement. “Something went wrong with Destination Guidance,” he says. “That place we don’t want to think about… The occupants took control of almost everything. They did something wrong—bad for Ship.”

“Fair enough,” Nell says. “I can see that as a possibility. But where do the monsters come from? Why can’t we remember anything about them?”

“Present company excluded,” Tsinoy says, and looks at me—then at my twin. “Something made me different. Why? What am I made to do?”

“Originally, you’re designed to help clear a planet,” my twin says. “But you’re not supposed to have a human personality. You’re just a tool. You’re…” He hesitates.

“ Expendable ,” Tsinoy finishes. “But what about you two—how is it you both know about me?”

We’ve been through this before. I thought we’d explained ourselves, as much as we could, but now I’m not so sure. All this thickens our mood, helps spread a new gloom that overcomes even full bellies and clean bodies. And it’s interrupted our story telling. Nobody wants to pursue these questions—not now, not yet.

Nell lounges back. “We need to talk this through. But we also need to rest. Ladies?” She looks at the girls. “You’re in charge here, right? Along with the Teachers?”

“Sleep,” the girls say. “More later.”

“Dim the lights,” my twin says. “Sleep mode, whatever.”

The hull complies. The lights under the tent-shaped chamber dim until we’re bathed in a shadowy golden glow.

“Which one am I, again?” I ask my twin as we lie down next to each other. We don’t touch. I’m not even sure I like him, actually.

“Sanjay,” he says.

“And you are… Sanjim.”

“Right.”

I close my eyes. I don’t realize how truly tired I am, but it seems just a blink before Nell pokes me.

Sanjim and I rise up.

“Noises,” she says. “Grinding noises aft.”

We can hear them, too—we all can. The sounds are deep, harsh, big. They set my teeth on edge. The deck vibrates and now we feel a jerky sort of spin-down. We start to slide as the hull slows its rotation. We’re away from the cables and rails, so we flatten and press our hands on the smooth deck, or grab hold of a cot frame, or slip up against a bulkhead, as Tsinoy does, all bristled.

The girls are nowhere to be seen.

Kim and Tomchin crawl back toward us. The hull is jerking, spinning up again—then down. More grinding. The whole frame around us shudders.

“We should look at the control center and see what we can learn—then, what we can do,” Kim says. “It’s coming quicker than we thought.”

“What?” I ask, still dopey.

“More bad.”

For a moment, it seems that the entire hull is about to shiver itself to pieces and blow us all out into space. Maybe this is intentional. Maybe this is the last part of Ship they can’t control, so they’re going to destroy it completely—but then, where will that leave them , whatever they are?

Surely they wouldn’t destroy the entire Ship just to purge us. Would they?

But we do have Tsinoy, who understands something about what lies all around us. And Kim, who has more than a normal sense of finding his way around. And Nell, who seems to know something about engineering and hull operations—and who desperately needs to recover all she knows.