Greg Bear: Hull Zero Three

“We’re lost,” Tsinoy says. “What is there for them to decide, if they even could decide?”

“They have no dreams. Ship has not patterned them. They are pure.”

The monkeys pull and tear foliage from the rear of the control area. This reveals a moss-crusted circular hatch, big enough even for Tsinoy or Kim. Nell rubs her hands on her pants, holds up her long fingers, then looks around with a plaintive expression. Pylons rise as if to greet her. She touches a blue hemisphere, but only briefly. “It’s the same here as in the hulls,” she says. “There are huge blank places, burned places. Ship is incapable of making decisions.”

“Ship is dead,” the voice says.

“Mother almost won,” Tsinoy says.

The monkeys move around Tsinoy, beckon her to approach a hatch revealed to our right. We try to stay with her, but with rather more vigor than before, the monkeys keep us back.

The Tracker is welcome—protector of infants, bringer of new life, new guidance. But only the Tracker. The monkeys seem to think we’ve done our bit, for now.

“What a mess,” I murmur.

“Amen,” Kim says.

Tsinoy floats calmly before the hatch. “Let’s not be too hasty,” she says. “Or too fatalistic. How many go in?”

“You and the infants,” the voice says. “No one else.”

“Forget it,” Tsinoy says. “Being alone is being in bad company. The babies need more than me. They need a real mother, friends, uncles, protectors—and a real teacher.”

The monkeys are at a loss. More stirrings, gestures, but no more speech.

“If there’s a chance you’ll make it without us…” I begin.

“We’re not important,” Nell adds.

“Forget it!” Tsinoy growls. “I’m nobody’s idea of a nursemaid. I’d give them nightmares.”

“Not if you’re all they ever know,” Nell suggests in softening tones.

“Forget it!” the Tracker growls again. “Believe me, if I were a baby, this body would scare me silly. And I’m being practical as well as selfish. I hate being alone.”

The monkeys listen.

Stalemate.

Balanced on the head of a pin. Maybe it will all fall apart again right here. Centuries of effort, blood and treasure across the ages, a withering seedpod torn apart by its own perverse conscience (and where did that come from? Will we ever know?)—a faculty that never should have blossomed. Had it not blossomed, however, we wouldn’t be here. The monkeys have to understand something about this, if they combine the intellects of those who ordered us made. If they were the ones who injected us with conscience.

The hatch slowly pulls and melts aside. Lights come on. We peer into a sanctuary beside the control area. Here, everything is brightly colored, warm, clean, preserved, though at first the air is stuffy.

The monkeys make one last effort to separate us. With Kim, the result is comical—a big yellow guy covered by clasping, chirping, snorting, fur-covered doughnuts.

Tsinoy howls. The monkeys scatter. Kim grabs for support. The Tracker regains her composure—I hope. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

“They will go first,” she insists, after something like a clearing of her throat. Everyone flinches at that, and the monkeys perform another wave of alert concern.

No dissent from our ranks. We’ve tried worse stratagems with greater chances of failure. I gesture to Nell, who gestures to Tomchin, and Tomchin enters, then Kim, then Nell. Then me. Tsinoy follows me.

The monkeys hang back, uncertain.

“What happens now?” I ask just inside the hatchway.

From outside the sanctuary, the voice says, “We stop delivery of fuel from the moon to the hulls. In a generation, the hulls will go cold. All will freeze and die, except for those gathered here.”

“What about the gene pool?” Nell asks behind me.

No answer. Six of the monkeys are pushed forward by their companions, and reluctantly—with more sad chirps—they join us.

The hatch closes.

The inner chamber’s walls still carry a coat of frost. We’re cramped, cold, and silent. A few dozen meters away, surrounded by bluish gloom, a crystalline oval lies at the center of a shadowy space. There’s a small cherry glow around the oval. The glow expands. Warmth radiates slowly outward. Thawing here is a more delicate task than with the monkeys and their foliage. Whatever lies inside the oval is not so robust. Nell and I move closer.

“Someone’s inside,” she says.

The light rises. The glow comes from a translucent capsule just large enough to hold one body—shorter than Nell, smaller than Tsinoy or Kim, smaller even than Tomchin. A body about my size.

“Another mummy,” Kim suggests.

“I don’t think so,” Nell says.

My skin tingles.

“It looks female,” Kim says.

I had thought for a moment it might be another version of me inside the capsule, and I feel both relief and disappointment when I see it is not. She is not. But dismay follows disappointment. Her naked limbs are skinny, emaciated, as if she has been starved of both food and time. Her face is deeply wrinkled. Her eyes, as they open, are bleary and yellow.

She looks at us slowly, still groggy.

For the first time, we are witness to a living human being who is not young, not fit—who is, in fact, very, very old. Yes, she has been preserved, frozen along with the rest of the sphere. But she lived a long time before the capsule accepted her ancient frame, before she took this last option—this last outstretched voyage to our present, her future.

The capsule sections slide up, melt away. A sweet, musty scent rises from around the naked old woman, like perfumes from a grandmother’s dresser. I half expect to see round mirrors and blue jars of skin cream and combs felted with gray winter gleanings from ten thousand lonely nights.

She studies us one by one, showing no surprise, no dismay. Our appearance does not shock. Our forms do not concern her. The monkeys have allowed us to come here; the sphere has warmed…. She accepts us all, but perhaps she is too old—perhaps she can no longer summon enough energy to care whether we signal defeat or victory, or are simply another step in a plan she must have been integrally concerned with, hundreds of years before.

“Hello,” she says. She raises a thin arm, gestures with near-skeletal fingers. Four of the monkeys bring forward clothing worn, bleached, tattered, and still crisp with frost. She smiles and shakes her head. “Cold,” she says.

The monkeys pass the gown to us. Nell and I rub it with our hands to warm it.

“That’s fine,” the old woman says. She manages to float free of the capsule.

We dress her. She seems as light as a leaf. After her ancient nakedness has been concealed, she lifts her shoulders, squares them, shakes out her thin arms, and draws a finger along her lined cheek. Then she looks at us one by one and asks, “Which of you is Teacher?”

The others point. I’m too stunned to move or speak. Just touching her hands and limbs makes me ache. I’ve been through all sorts of suffering in my short existence, but not this—the painful prolonging of biological time.

“Is it really you ?” the old woman asks, her eyes moving up to my face. I realize her sight has faded. “Closer.” She reaches out to me, and the monkeys help her forward like faithful handmaids. “I hope you remember. We would have been important to each other, once.”

The old woman’s features take on new focus. I map her eyes, her cheeks, the shape of her jaw. I draw her face over two other memories—my Dreamtime partner, the one I was destined to go to planet with. And Mother, back in Hull Zero Three.