Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

“You say that’s what I’m designed for,” Tsinoy says.

“Maybe. But now it’s starting to make sense.”

“And as Teachers, cultural instructors, you’d have to persuade the colonists they need to destroy the natives,” Kim says. “That’s total crap.”

“Yeah,” Tsinoy says. “Maybe they give you a fine-tuned moral compass.”

“And you?” I ask her.

She’s all bristle and no grace, and now her voice is low and not in the least musical. She sounds confused. “I don’t like what I’m made to do.”

“Well, here’s some relief,” my twin says. “From what we’ve been able to access, you’re not the worst this ship can do. Not by half.”

“Actually, we didn’t get that far,” I add. “We don’t qualify—we’re not total warriors. There’s a part of the Catalog that’s kept hidden—for a good reason.” My twin seems unhappy I’m telling them about this. I go on, anyway. “If our destination is super-bad, if there’s already a civilization with weapons that could hurt us, we’re given access to the most powerful and destructive points of creativity in the Klados—the Wastelayers. That’s what they were called. Our designers didn’t want us to carry that kind of history in our normal patterns. That kind of…”

“ Guilt ,” Nell says. She moves back and touches the hemisphere again, a light caress. Her eyes flutter.

“Right,” my twin says, with a glance in my direction. “Now you all know.” He seems regretful.

Nell lets go of the controls. “That’s enough for me,” she says. “The sequence that begins hull combination has three checkpoints. We can do it all from here, if we want. We can initiate, then hold—that should send some sort of message to Destination Guidance. Put back the shields.”

“How long would that take?” Kim asks.

“Total combination… at least ten hours. But the process starts right away.”

“And how long until this damned storm knocks us loose?” I ask.

“This part of the nebula is filled with protoplanetary dust, blown out from an exploding star,” Tsinoy says.

“Any minute…” Nell says. She stops, but we’re all immediately thinking the same thing. Destination Guidance must have steered us wrong—deliberately. Dropping the shields and letting the dust wear us all away was in the works from the very beginning.

They don’t want us to find a new home. They don’t need the hulls, they don’t need to travel, they don’t need to arrive. All they want to do is survive in their little sphere, sitting on top of all the fuel they could ever use.

With the engines shut down, hundreds of thousands of years’ worth.

“Do we vote,” Nell asks, “or just act?”

“Doesn’t take long to vote,” Kim points out.

Tsinoy agrees with a raised claw-paw-arm.

“Seconds count.”

“Do it,” everyone says, almost as one.

Tomchin adds a low whistle.

“Right,” Nell says, and slaps her hands on the hemisphere. “Starting combination sequence.”

She drops into eyes-up contact. It seems forever, but it’s probably just a few minutes, before the control chamber brightens, small alarms go off like little fairy bells. Then instructive lines and arrows glow, barricades rise, and a voice announces, “Find safe positions within the indicated outlines. When hulls begin to merge, additional safe areas will be created, and you will be instructed how to retreat and maintain.”

Rails and cables rearrange around us, and new controls rise to our right while others sink down to our left and inboard. It’s working. Or at least, something’s happening.

We look at each other, help each other to the safer positions in the chamber, but say very little, listening to the constant sound of our hull being sandblasted by the ghosts of unborn worlds. It’s a creepy sound. Twenty percent of the speed of light creates a hell of a slipstream.

At least two of us still have questions, of course. That’s our nature. But we don’t voice them. Maybe the girls have their own objections, their own agenda. But we don’t need to be any more frightened than we already are. As a team, we’ve matured at least to the extent that we know that much.

And that’s pretty impressive, considering how we all began.

Maybe the designers knew a thing or two after all , is one of the thoughts I’m thinking. But then there’s another: How could things have gone so wrong?

And part of my fictitious past comes up with a wise old professor teaching a literature class in starship prep: “If you want to ask how evil begins, just look to basic human nature. What’s good gets bent, and bad is the inevitable result.”

Right, but how do I have any respect for someone who may never have actually lived? I’m like a character in one of those plays we never studied—a character given flesh but no additional lines, and set loose on a weird, half-empty stage, in front of a critical audience we can’t see. Or don’t want to see.

“ Crapola ,” my twin says, and we nod and reach out and touch fingers, knowing we’re thinking much the same thoughts and reaching much the same conclusion.

“We’re real,” he says. “Just go with that much.”

“Amen,” I say.

Amen. Nell used it earlier but I didn’t connect. It’s a strange word with all sorts of connotations. Where’s the god we should pray to? Which direction? We do have a prayer, actually. We were taught one in that academy we never went to. There’s a religion that goes behind it, but I don’t want to cloud my thoughts with useless emerging details. The prayer, however, offers a hope of some relief from doubt and pain, if we can just say it right.

So I give voice.

By the third line, most of our group is following along—but not my twin. He’s watching closely but not saying the words. Our voices echo in the space. Common ground. We are family—most of us.

The girls have wandered off again.

We can feel the motion now—subtle and different. The noise is subsiding, though not by much, indicating that our forward profile might be altered, even reduced—whatever that implies. We don’t question small favors.

The forward viewports have become fogged and pitted. All it would take is something the size of a—

Grain of sand.

Crackling veins fly across the ports, and a squeal like something big and frightened draws our breath away, literally—air is being sucked from the bow. Then the panels fly up before there’s time to think. The squealing stops.

We can’t see outside now, except by venturing into the weird world of Ship Control, but we’re leaving that up to Nell for the moment. We huddle, all but Tsinoy, who is contented with just sticking a smoothed paw into the ring gathered within a safety zone.

Maybe we don’t want to know that we’re dying.

Maybe we’re shielded by the prayer.

Maybe…

After an indefinite time, Nell joins us. Fear leaves us empty. “First checkpoint,” she tells us. “They’ll have to talk if they want us to stop there.”

“Or?” Kim asks.

“Or we crush them and take our chances,” she says. “They got it wrong so far. Who can guarantee they won’t betray us all over again?” She looks at my twin, then at me. “Sound right?”

“Absolutely,” he says.

“We should find the girls,” Nell says.