Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

“They know their way around,” Kim says, and Tomchin agrees.

There’s little to do. The noise keeps us from any rest. Our thoughts tumble. We’re half-delirious despite a ration of food from the tent-shaped chamber, brought to us by Tomchin and Tsinoy.

Nell keeps the hulls at the first checkpoint for what seems a very long time, and still, nothing has changed—nobody’s talking to us. Destination Guidance remains as aloof and unknown—and as silent—as ever.

Kim lets go of a guide cable and kicks across to me and my twin, landing midway between us and taking hold of another cable. Weightless, his movements are swift and efficient; I would have pegged him for the model of an occupant for a high-gravity world, stocky and strong, but surprises abound.

“We’re still being battered,” Kim says. “How much longer can we wait?”

Nell has stayed near the control panel and the hemisphere. She listens to our low voices through the grind and roar. The shivering suddenly increases, as if we’ve entered a particularly dense patch. The point is doubly made.

“Next checkpoint,” my twin says. “Show we mean business.”

I agree. “What have we got to lose? Nobody knows how much longer this can last.”

Tsinoy and Tomchin have collected the bulbs and spheres that held our meals and slipped them into a gray sack. Now they gather around. Tomchin is eager to ask questions, but we can’t catch his drift, and after a moment, he gives up, shaking his hands at the noisy air.

Tsinoy seems thoughtful. “I can’t be sure,” she says. “But I can almost feel the density out there. It’s very thin, but we’re moving very fast. There’s dust, there’s gas… There might be bigger chunks. If we hit one of those, we’ll be blasted to bits.”

“How long?” Nell asks.

“We’ve already survived for hours,” Tsinoy says. “I just don’t know how strong the hulls are.”

“The other hulls don’t matter,” Kim says.

“We can’t finish the integration if either of the other hulls is severely damaged—or lost,” Nell says. “Maybe that’s what they’re waiting for—one of the hulls to go.”

“Speed it up,” I say. “Can you?”

“Probably not, but I can move to the next checkpoint. An hour at most. We’re hunkering in, and from what I’m learning in the control space, parts of the hull are already adapting for the combination.”

“Maybe that’s making us more aerodynamic,” Kim says, but Tsinoy and Nell are unconvinced.

“Go for it,” I say.

“Go,” my twin says.

The others agree.

Nell immerses herself in the control space, and we don’t hear from her for a while. Her eyes are almost closed, showing just a low crescent of sclera, like a cat dozing. The hull seems to be moving again. Outside, the noise of the storm changes, but it’s neither more nor less this time.

“Where did the girls go?” my twin asks.

“To find their mother, probably,” Kim says from a short distance. “We have yet to be introduced.”

“Who is this ‘Mother,’ and what’s she like?” Nell asks. “Has anybody seen anything that could give us a clue?”

This reminds me of the sketch in blood left in the outboard shaft by one of our girls—the one, presumably, who helped me get born. “Maybe we don’t want to actually meet Mother,” I say.

The sound around us suddenly drops to a whisper, then to almost silence. The change is quick—a couple of seconds and we can talk without shouting, think without grating our teeth.

“We have a shield!” Nell calls out. “It’s off to one side, but it’s there. They’ve given in!”

But she doesn’t sound convinced. We gather beside her, clinging to cables and a bar near the control pylon. We know better than to slap our hands around hers on the hemisphere—the display doesn’t work that way; no more than three individuals at a time.

We let Tsinoy go first. The Tracker becomes completely still, except for the shivers that keep her curled-up paws on the hemisphere. Her spines are smooth and withdrawn, so as not to poke Nell, who still has that dozing-cat look, immersed in whatever the hull is feeding her in the way of information.

After a moment, Nell asks, “Shall I stop integration?”

Tsinoy pulls back her paws. “We’re protected,” she confirms. “The shields have moved, to be sure, but nebular material is being diverted around and behind the hulls—as designed.”

“I’m stopping, then,” Nell says.

“Why?” my twin asks.

“Because Tsinoy says we still need Destination Guidance.”

The rest of us are unhappy with that decision—we’d just as soon see the author or authors of our misery squashed or absorbed or otherwise obliterated. But Tsinoy’s warning is an unavoidable consideration.

“Sure,” I say, and Kim agrees. “Stop integration.” My twin, oddly, doesn’t chime in on this decision. He holds back, physically and verbally, putting a little distance between himself and the rest of us. I think that he’s been playing some sort of hand and does not want to overplay.

The hull’s motion along the rails on the moon far below, toward the moon’s forward end and the other two hulls, slows. We can detect very tiny changes in momentum through the gentle tug on our gripping hands and hooked feet.

“Done,” Nell says. “What now?”

“We have to talk, and they have to be willing to talk,” my twin says. Playing his hand again, very sly. “Otherwise, they’re no use at all—and we might as well wipe them out.”

“Maybe they want us to come to them ,” Kim suggests, with a shake of his big head.

“The controls don’t show anything alive down there,” Nell says. “The whole area is frozen. We’re in control… for the time being. They know they can’t get rid of us.”

“Maybe it’s all automated,” I say.

“Automation is sporadic. Ship’s systems are pretty shot. I say we hold as much information between us as we might find left in Ship’s memory.”

“Great,” Kim says. “Nobody’s in charge?”

“Can you send a message throughout Ship, to all the hulls?” I ask. “That might get through.”

“Only if there’s a connection in the first place. An emergency signal…” She pulls her hands away from the hemisphere and her eyes fully open. She shivers, then curls up on the bar next to the pylon. “Working this thing takes it out of me. I have to repeat everything ten times, learning and doing at once.”

“Then show me how,” I say. My twin grins and raises his arm. “Show us how.”

“Me too,” Kim says, and Tomchin indicates with another hand that he’s interested. Tsinoy is watching the covered forward viewports, like a dog waiting for its master—a dangerous, sad dog—and seems to be paying the rest of us and our situation no never mind.

“I’m not sure I can,” Nell says. “You two talk to the hull one way, I talk to Ship Control another way. Why somebody couldn’t have integrated our knowledge is beyond my understanding.”

“We’ve got company,” Kim says.

One of the girls has returned. She’s working her way forward from the staging area, a bright red sash floating around her neck.

“We’ve found her ,” the girl says, a big smile transforming her face. “She’s with our sisters. She will accept a meeting.”

We listen with something between skepticism and fascination. Mysteries on our sick Ship rarely turn out to be helpful. Mother is nothing if not a mystery—maybe the prime mystery, after Destination Guidance.

My twin seems more sanguine, but he leads with the obvious. “While you were away, we saved the hull and maybe the rest of Ship,” he says. “Nell can work some of the controls—and in time, maybe all the controls.”