Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

“What is conscience?” the voice asks.

But not until we pass our biggest test.

“The willingness to sacrifice for a greater good,” I say.

“Sacrifice what?”

“Dreams. Plans. Personal stuff.”

Nell is getting irritated. Tsinoy, on the other hand, is shrinking—pulling in, drawing back. I glance over my shoulder at her.

“She’s designed to be a Tracker, a Killer,” I say. “But she refuses to give in to her design. There’s something better inside her. Inside all of us.”

“Did she acquire that by herself, or was it put there?”

“I own my feelings,” Tsinoy growls. “I am what I want to be.”

“Absolutely,” I agree. “We’ve been through the wringer.”

“Tell me what that means.”

“Just wait a goddamned minute!” I shout. “We’ve been put through a living hell to get here. We’ve been chased and expelled and murdered and deceived….”

“You were created by Ship,” the voice says. “Would you rather not have been created?”

Tsinoy shrinks back as if kicked. We’re about to act like whipped dogs, all of us. Enough.

“You want our gratitude ?” I cry out. Nell touches my arm.

“Ship has a mission. Would you have Ship continue on that mission if it guaranteed your personal survival—and if ending that mission meant your death?”

Tsinoy says, “We are not the only ones here.” She lifts her spines and delivers the babies, still in their bags, then hands them to the rest of us, like talismans or shields. She’s offering up the little ones she’s protected and making the rest of us their protectors as well.

Tomchin looks distressed and holds his bag out as if it’s a bomb. Kim tucks his in the crook of one huge arm. As we receive our own infants, Nell looks at me, and we move closer, until our arms touch. It’s an awkward, scary, strangely lovely moment. I almost don’t care if we live or die. We’ve made our peace with fate.

“We’re all human here,” I say. “You can’t judge us. You’re just a machine.”

“Machines have not been in control for a very long time. Come in. Finish birthing the young ones, and they will be fed. There is food for you as well.”

Nell opens her bag. “What do you think?” she asks me.

Tsinoy moves first. Her claw delicately slits one side of the membrane. The baby comes out, and along with it, a small stream of reddish fluid. Tomchin just about loses it and starts to babble a nasal protest, offering his gray bag—now quite active—to anyone. But he’s in this with all of us.

The other membranes are tough, but one by one, the sacs are carefully cut open and the babies withdrawn.

I massage mine instinctively, then turn it around with country doctor wisdom, hold it with one hand, and slap its bottom with the other. Fluid gushes from its mouth as it empties its lungs. Suddenly it draws breath and starts to pinwheel its arms, then cry.

“It’s a boy,” I say.

Nell follows suit, then the others—even Tomchin.

“Mine’s a girl,” Nell says.

We use the bags to wipe them down, dry them off. We compare our infants as if we’ve opened Christmas packages—another memory that only compounds my irrational joy. Three girls, two boys. My eyes stream with tears. It’s warm enough in the vestibule that we don’t feel the need to swaddle them.

I clean gunk from my boy’s mouth, swipe his eyes clear, pinch his nose to squeeze out the last fluid. Hold him out with the others, to our judge, our sponsor—whatever it may be. A desperate, defiant act. We hope for sympathy in a violent, damning, world, all that we’ve known and experienced in real life—as opposed to phantom memory. We long for confirmation and completion and justification—and we also long to survive and learn that our reckless existence has meaning.

The glass pillars light up and separate, showing a passage through alternating ribs of steel, into what might be a frozen jungle. I’m not sure I like that. And more glass, lit within by green sparkles, undulating through the interior of the sphere for a hundred meters or more.

We carry the infants and move cautiously toward the center. Streaks of green and pink ripple over the inner wall of some sort of sanctuary.

“Welcome,” the voice says.

The wall melts aside. Within, all is frost-covered, leafy green. Furniture comfortable for weightlessness has been shaped and positioned in and around branches, much as in Mother’s bower. I see for a moment small eyes, in pairs and triplets—many of them, staring out from between the leaves, and expect we are about to discover another female like Mother, another trap, another challenge—followed swiftly by more Killers.

But the eyes blink and withdraw. The lights rise, and a blue glow like terrestrial sky suffuses the glade, the tree house—that’s what this all reminds me of, a tree house deep inside a jungle.

And at the atrium where guests might be greeted, welcomed, or captured, a curling flash of silver moves between the branches in ways I can barely follow, as if its time flows in a way different from mine. It’s like trying to watch a ghost made of sky and chrome, a glinting creature all thin limbs and curves, glassy apparel flowing around its lithe body like spilled milk, decorated with jeweled beads, aquamarine and emerald. And rising above this splendor, a tall, slender head, humanoid in one respect—that there are eyes, nose, something like ears on the side of the head.

Not part of my memory—not part of Ship. Something far outside the Klados.

A silvery.

“Welcome to Destination Guidance.”

The apparition is not speaking—it isn’t the being behind the voice. For a moment, it looks at me, lifts a finger to its lips, and smiles the most frightening, beautiful smile. It has no teeth.

It drops its hand—and melts away.

For my eyes only. The others saw nothing.

Nell notices my violent shiver. “Come on, it’s not that bad,” she says.

I want to throw up, but there’s nothing to expel.

Inner lights rise. A small space has been cut out of the branches. The space is partly walled with milky panels, slender wires forming what might have once been sleeping pods. Within two of the pods are dark brown robes, and almost hidden in the robes two figures, mostly black, with touches of grayish pink, still crusted with spots of ice and frost—but rapidly thawing.

“Are you here to relieve and replace Destination Guidance?” the voice asks.

I wonder how these shriveled bodies can make any sound. But it’s quickly obvious, from a rising sour smell, that neither of these cold husks is the one speaking. They’ve been dead a long time.

“I spoke with Ship,” Nell says. “We need pure Ship—the one that woke us up, that taught us how to access the Klados and Ship’s memory. No go-between. No tricks.”

“I am not that Ship,” the voice says. “A decision must be made, but I am not empowered to make it. A new destination has been found. Guidance team has been frozen and preserved. They will revive soon.”

Kim studies the corpses. Nell keeps back with Tsinoy. All of us feel the danger. What fought against our birth, our survival? What made creatures to kill us? Mother, Ship, or these corpses?

If I believed in the silvery, I might accuse it as well—but I refuse to believe. It’s my delusion, and mine alone. It is not part of Ship or my reality, thus outside blame.

“They will revive soon,” the voice drones. “They are in deep sleep.”

“Very deep,” Kim says under his breath.

Nell pulls herself forward on a long branch and reaches to touch the leaves, then pull them aside, as if looking for the source of those glinting eyes. “Don’t be afraid,” she murmurs, with a warning glance at Tsinoy—no quick moves. “You in the shrubbery—who are you? Did you make the babies, tell us where to find them?”