Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

There are five of us. Three look different, two of us look much the same—though one is smaller and apparently younger. (Why “apparently”? Because she knows a lot more than I do. I seem to be the young one in everything but size.)

And I now think that the three different-looking fellows have been together for some time, are perhaps even more knowledgeable than the girl, and can manage with effort to speak a little of the lingo the girl and I share. In turn, the girl knows some of Picker and Pushingar’s whistle-hoot-speak.

The space inboard—“up,” or above us, when weight returns—is so deep and dark as to be unfathomable. After a long while, I think I can make out big curving struts arranged in interlocking, slender, three-pointed stars. But I can’t be sure. It might be my eyes playing tricks.

Nothing around us is moving.

The rest period is quickly over. The girl has been floating in her lotus. Now she uncurls. I notice we’re moving again, with reference to the outboard surface—the “floor.” Air currents are increasing in the large space.

“Weight’s coming,” the girl says, and whistles something to Pushingar.

“We feel it,” Picker says.

“I think there’s going to be a big wind,” the girl says. “All the air in here will catch up with the spin. We should lie flat until it passes.”

And that’s just the way it is. As we fall the short distance outboard, “down,” the air around us not only gets colder, but also begins moving even more violently than the breeze over the channeled river. Soon it’s gale force— gale! —and we’re being dragged over the floor, no matter how we try to hold on. Not strong enough yet to lift us up and flip us over.

The real danger is freezing. My skin grows numb. I see Satmonk and Picker crawling ahead of me. The girl is behind Pushingar to my left.

“How far?” I shout. The girl shakes her head. Either she can’t hear me or she doesn’t know. Finally, despite the bitter cold, we all just lie flat on the smooth floor, our weight increasing, giving us better purchase. Besides, the floor is warmer than the wind.

I’m almost at eye level with the omnipresent little glowing beads that faintly illuminate everything. Glims. Glim lights. The whole chamber is spinning up—or the entire Ship. I don’t know which or why in either case.

I’m sick of it. All of it. If this is the way life is going to be, then I’m ready to chuck it all and freeze. But my body disagrees. I start cursing my biological stubbornness. Upon this provocation, new words enter my vocabulary—words a teacher should not pass along.

The wind subsides. There’s a fluting sound from high above, the structure inboard making its own noises, now audible in the slackening of the cold rush. The air above seems to still be pretty turbulent and even colder. Little beige flakes have been blowing around us for the last few minutes. I realize it’s snow. Snow is swirling.

We stand. We walk. One by one, beginning with Pushingar, we run forward—I think, I hope. I have no idea where we’re going and suspect neither does the little girl. Maybe Pushingar or the other two know something, but they’re not talking—just running.

The floor is getting very cold. It’s starting all over again, variations on a nasty theme. Chasing heat, staying alive, seeking food—seeking answers really low on the list of my frustrated basic drives.

Minutes of running. Maybe only seconds. But something visible ahead—a wall. A wall curving off in huge sweeps with the floor to either side, circumnavigating , like the tube and the channel but with actual hatches that have real doors—oblong, about my height.

One of the doors stands open.

The girl sings out her joy. “Forward!” she cries.

We all climb through the hatch, into a rectangular hallway—as at the beginning. The wall opposite is blank, no hatches. Satmonk points to the right. We resume running. I’m mostly stumbling. My head is swimming, my heart thumping. I’m close to the end of my tether.

This time, there are no bulkheads slamming shut to close us off from going back. After a time, I notice rags on the floor—scraps of clothing, bits of other things I can’t identify. I stop. Maybe it’s food. I bend over and pick up something small and brownish, a smashed cube.

The others move on without me.

I sniff the cube. No odor. Squeeze it. Feel it. It’s hard as a rock. I try to take a bite.

The girl has doubled back. She knocks it from my hands. “Not food,” she says. “Not for you to eat, anyway. But there’s probably food somewhere near. This is a place that’s made for people.”

Looking in angry frustration at the cube on the floor, at the girl, I realize I’m weeping, but my eyes are dry.

“Keep going,” she says, and tugs at my arm. “We need to get to a warm place. Come on.”

As we walk—she seems to know I’m too worn down to run anymore—she stoops and picks up a larger rag, shakes it out, hands it back to me. “Not too filthy,” she says. “Might fit.”

I look at the scrap in the dimness. It’s a pair of flexible shorts made of thin fabric. There’s a big blood stain on one leg—dark, dry.

“No, thank you,” I say. But I don’t drop it.

“Suit yourself. Nearly everything we’re wearing comes from somebody dead. Just enough to go around.”

If that’s meant to be encouraging, it doesn’t work. Again I feel like lying down, but I know the girl would kick me. We join the others. They’re sitting on the floor, lying against the walls. Satmonk and Pushingar appear to be sleeping. Picker is keeping an eye out ahead. The girl steps over them.

Picker covers his nose. “Been here?” he asks, and then sneezes and shakes his head. Its tough for him to talk this way.

“No,” the girl says. “Never this far forward.”

“Maybe add to book,” Picker says.

The girl makes a face. The others get up and we follow, but we’re not running. It’s not getting as cold here, though the air is chill. Maybe the girl is right.

Then we see the light up ahead is changing. Still dim, but bluer. The blue cast reaches back down the hall.

“Is that a bubble?” the girl asks.

“What’s ‘bubble’?” Picker asks.

Pushingar seems to understand, and a whistling, honking dialogue follows. If I wasn’t dying, I’d have laughed at the comical sounds.

But Picker concludes by saying, “They know of bubbles. Someone made it told.” He almost sneezes, looks sidewise at me, then adds, tapping his nose, “Learn honk!”

“Sure,” I say. I hold my own nose and sort of snort, then warble a horn note or two.

The others laugh—different kinds of laughter. And I thought I was dying. I’m not. I’m still capable of making a joke. Either that, or they’re making the noises their kinds make before they attack and eat you.

I’d sympathize if that was their plan.

But I know it isn’t.

These guys are human . Different kinds of my people. How I know this, I can’t say, but before I can catch up with the girl, we’re closer to the bluish light, and I see that the hallway no longer curves up but opens out on each side—expands. The floor ends, but a kind of bridge goes on, surrounded by a cage of rails. The rail on our left supports a ladder at shoulder level.

But none of that is important. The part of the bridge we’re currently walking on—let’s call it a floor, though it’s different from the floor of the hall—is not solid, but made of grating over crossbars and connected to the cage and the long rails.

We can see to either side, and down.

We have to stop and look. Below the bridge is an intense darkness, filled with little tiny lights—not at all like the glim lights. These are pointlike and bright, and there are so many of them I could spend a long lifetime just counting.