Hull Zero Three Page 25

  But we have stopped transport of ice from the moon to the hulls. Soon, there will no longer be heat to chase. The liquid within the hulls’ central tubes will also freeze, for a time, and Ship will drift without power, except for the reserves within this sphere.

  PERCHANCE

  The old woman died a few days after our arrival. She did not tell us all we needed to know, but she gave us the keys to what was left of Ship’s original instructions, almost eroded away after centuries of fighting.

  Nell has learned this much after careful study of the remnants of Ship’s memory and after careful questioning of the monkeys, who have grown a touch dotty over time:

  It was the original choice of the first Destination Guidance team to set the course for a system that observation showed was already inhabited by intelligent beings. Honorably enough, they died, their work done—but done badly, as it turned out.

  As Ship approached its intended destination, the first Mother was created, and the first consorts. They prepared Ship to destroy, replace.

  But Ship was somehow pushed into a minute diversion, away from its intended destination and toward a dangerously unstable star. That star exploded in a supernova, washing Ship in deadly radiation and damaging the hulls and memory.

  As Ship’s memory degraded, emergency procedures dictated that memory and function would be diverted to biological components able to carry out basic functions, including preserving and re-creating the gene pool. Ship then entered the dusty outer clouds of the resulting nebula.

  With the original destination no longer in reach, another Destination Guidance team was born—into the worst imaginable conditions. Ship Control was intermittent, the hulls were filling with monsters, the birthing chambers were either being perverted to Mother’s demands or, failing that, being shut down.

  The old woman and her colleagues—then little more than adolescents—somehow reached the decision that Ship must not continue in its present form. Destination Guidance infiltrated hull communications and assumed control of some birthing chambers, creating counter-crew and subverting some of Mother’s Killers by mixing components of biology and memory.

  They fought Mother in all her many different incarnations.

  Thus began the war.

  AT THE END, the old woman met with me alone in a small room the monkeys had arranged for her. She took my hand, her fingers as light as bird wings, and said, “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

  I’m not willing to admit I’ve seen anything.

  She then adds, “Our Ship is haunted. Not just by the dead of ancient wars, oh no—but by something not from Ship. Something I believe set us a great challenge. When I told Selchek and Grimmel what I saw, they did not believe me. They joked, calling it my avenging angel. Puroy called it the Judge. She, too, did not believe it was real. But it was—I know. It’s been with us for hundreds of years.”

  She regards me with a gaze growing strong and steady—an assured but also frightened gaze. I can barely look at her my body is trembling so.

  “In time, others saw it as well. Those of us who saw felt that we were indeed being judged. We believed it diverted Ship toward the supernova. In part, seeing it—fearing its judgment—we knew that if we didn’t clean up our act and prevent the destruction of other innocent worlds, Ship would be utterly destroyed.”

  I have to ask, “Where does it come from?”

  She smiles, pats my wrist. “I do not know. It never told me, nor anyone else. It does not want to interfere any more than it has to.” The old woman then whispers, “Reach into your memory… Tell me what you think it might be. Look into the mirror. Engage your imagination. I know you have one.”

  Her last words to me.

  MAYBE WHEN I look into this mirror, I draw out a story, awakening not memory, not history, but fable.

  I can’t express this at all well.

  Ship can never return home. The designers who originally equipped it knew that it was far too capable, far too dangerous: a true slaying seed.

  Intelligent life in other systems, sensing the approach of such a danger, might mount defenses to protect their homes. But they would likely take no risks, expending the least amount of effort, and do all they could to simply destroy us.

  Who else from outside would care for such a large, clumsy, deadly contraption as Ship? Who else would care enough to challenge it, rather than to just safely destroy it and be done with us all?

  Those who followed us from Earth would have built faster ships—or traveled using no ships at all. They would have spread out into a broad galaxy, perhaps going through their own hells of destruction and learning. And then, finding our Ship and perhaps others, vast capsulated samples of an ancestral world, they might have marveled, studied—valued. They might have felt sympathy for their primitive ancestors and wanted us to succeed, as a pilot flying a jet might feel for a lost family in a Conestoga wagon.

  But they had no desire to watch Ship wreak ancient havoc. And so they appointed a chaperone, a guardian who chastised and protected at once, but who also conveyed a subliminal warning, a chance at reflection—a chance to discover our only place in space and time.

  THE OLD WOMAN was my true mother. And my true partner. She made me. She saved me. After she was gone, I carried her to the forest, with Tsinoy’s help, and gave her over to the monkeys, who took her where they took the last of the mummies, to a place we do not know and do not care to find.

  Eventually, I tell the others. Nell and Tomchin do not judge. Tsinoy and Kim, to my surprise, prove the most reluctant to accept the old woman’s story—my fable—or any part of what I think I saw.

  Even when I remind them of the laser that saved my life. They have no answer for that.

  This much seems clear. Ship has to earn the right to live. The only way to pass this test is to defeat Ship’s original design.

  Ship has to find a conscience, or the chaperone could still destroy it utterly.

  CENTURIES HAVE PASSED since we left Earth. It’s taken me this long to write about it. The books are almost full. This is the last of them.

  We place the children in the old woman’s capsule. Tsinoy is despondent. She misses them. We will assign her other work. The monkeys have gone into hiding, preparing for what comes next. There is still much for the rest of us to do.

  We will not be allowed to grow old together.

  PENANCE AND GUIDANCE

  Nell has found us a star, within the degrees of freedom left as Ship coasts. Once, apparently, this sun was hidden by an arm of nebula, invisible to those who made our first desperate choice. Only in the last few months has it emerged.

  Perhaps something knew all along.

  The calculations seem to fit. In a hundred years, Ship will send fuel to the hulls. It will warm the engines, make a slow turn of a fraction of a degree, then cool again and sleep. We must conserve fuel in the sphere to power the shields, but even they will be weaker than they have been through our time of trial.

  Our chosen is beautiful. A sun with at least twelve planets, two of them in a zone of habitability, and a decent halo of outer ice—something like the Oort cloud.

  In two hundred years, after traversing a clear, calm void, almost empty of stardust, Ship will rise from cold slumber. Long before, Kim and Tsinoy and I will have purged the Klados of the dark pages of the Catalog. The hulls will finally join, and Ship will perform its last, century-long braking maneuver, sacrificing nearly all that remains of the moonlet; then it will take the long plunge into the inner system.

  The infants will be awakened—raised, educated, and placed in charge. They will be the first new crew. Some of us will freeze down to become teachers. Perhaps one will be me, but that is no longer important or essential.

  And in the end, once the final decision has been made—go or no go—the infants, now old, will pass away, as will those who raised and taught them, making room for Ship to grow a fresh crew and create landing vessels, seedships….

  Oh, there will still be decep
tion. The fresh crew will emerge as adults, will have memories of past training and lives. Our stories, our lives, will go on. I refuse to allow that love to die, just because it was never real.

  The sphere is growing cold. Nell and I seek last warmth together.

  I saw it again last night. Shining and lithe, like polished moonlight. Nell was beside me but saw nothing. I thought it knew me, acknowledged me, but I could have been dreaming. I’m half-dreaming now. I can barely write, and the pages of this eleventh book are almost full. There will be no others.

  I see our world so clearly. Cloud modest

  I feel the warmth

  she’s waiting

  she smiles she’s all I ever wanted

  WE

  ARE

  HERE

  END SHIP’S ARCHAEOLOGY REPORT

  Table of Contents

  FRONT COVER IMAGE

  WELCOME

  DEDICATION

  PART ONE: THE FLESH

  LIFE START

  CHASING HEAT

  WAKE UP

  COLD FOLLOWS HEAVINESS

  TEACHER LEARNS

  BIG IDEAS

  REST AND DIE

  REASON IN SLEEP

  TRICKS OF THE TRADE

  RULES AND DECORUM

  AN UNEXPECTED PLEASURE

  TEACHER LEARNS TOO MUCH

  PART TWO: THE DEVIL

  THE MAN OF THE BOOK

  TIME RUNS OUT QUICKLY HERE

  CENTERING

  CORE

  TAKING THE BOW

  STARSHIP

  A BRAWL

  DOUBLING

  THE LAST HULL

  DANGEROUS HOPE

  THE NAMING, PART ONE

  STORYTIME

  THE BIG VIEW

  HULL MEMORY

  CORE MEMORY

  BAD NEWS, WORSE

  NEW WORLDS AFT

  THE BRIEFING

  TALES BETWEEN MY LEGS

  HERITAGE

  BAD WISDOM

  PART THREE: THE WORLD

  SURVEY TEAM PERSONAL ADDENDUM

  ELEVENTH BOOK

  SILVER AGE

  MEET YOUR MAKER

  JUDGMENT AND DESTINATION

  PERCHANCE

  PENANCE AND GUIDANCE

  BY GREG BEAR

  COPYRIGHT

  By GREG BEAR

  Hegira

  Beyond Heaven’s River

  Psychlone

  Strength of Stones

  The Wind from a Burning Woman (collection)

  Corona

  Songs of Earth and Power

  Blood Music

  Eon

  The Forge of God

  Tangents (collection)

  Sleepside Story

  Queen of Angels

  Eternity

  Anvil of Stars

  Bear’s Fantasies

  Heads

  Moving Mars

  New Legends (anthology)

  Dinosaur Summer

  Foundation and Chaos

  Slant

  Darwin’s Radio

  Collected Stories of Greg Bear

  Vitals

  Rogue Planet

  Darwin’s Children

  Dead Lines

  Quantico

  City at the End of Time

  Mariposa

  Hull Zero Three

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 Greg Bear

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Orbit

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  First eBook Edition: November 2010

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-12302-0