Hull Zero Three

to reduce the impact of simply telling it, You kill everything you meet. “Help prep the planet for human occupation.”

“I’m a Killer?”

You’re a Killer. I don’t say this out loud. I do say, under my breath, “I don’t know. Just stop staring.”

“Shit.” The Tracker stands down, moves away, seems to shrink, elongate, reduce its offensive posture even more. It appears almost smooth, sleek.

“It’s my beast, so be nice to it,” the spidery woman says softly. She doesn’t like what I’ve told them any more than I do. “It protected me, came here with me. No need to get it upset. The question is, who’s in charge—Teacher or me?”

“You left me out,” Big Yellow says, mocking disappointment.

“Teacher,” the girl insists.

“But you’re not actually a leader,” Big Yellow says.

“I don’t think so,” I agree.

“Can you talk to Ship Control and ask for help?”

“The Ship talked to me, I think—once.”

“Maybe he’s lying,” the Tracker grumbles.

The spidery woman stretches herself again to full length—very impressive. She and the Tracker make a formidable pair.

“Teacher knows everything, if he gets poked right,” the girl insists.

Big Yellow asks, “Is it true, Teacher? What else is in that catalog? Me?”

“I don’t know. Leave me alone for a while.” I avoid their eyes. I need to think, to rest. More of my head fog is starting to lift. I don’t like any of what memory shows me now. I’m supposed to be born after we find a planet, after we arrive—that’s the grand scheme of my Dreamtime. Arrival—planetfall—is a complicated job at the end of a hundred million processes, a trillion decisions, big and little. Getting there is most of the fun.

Maybe Dreamtime is all wrong, a convincing fairy story. What’s dawning on me—what should have been obvious from the beginning—is that if the planet isn’t hospitable, if there’s difficulty, Ship would have to adapt. I’m not born and raised. I’m made—like them. If big problems arise, I can be customized. I come in more than one variety. And now two of me—or more—are mixed together.

“Who’s been here longest?” I ask.

“Tsinoy and me,” the spidery woman says. “We met Big Yellow and the girl in front of the water tank and showed them this place.”

“None of you have books?”

“None of us has a book,” the spidery woman says.

“I had a book,” the girl says. “You lost it.”

“Right.” I don’t want to get into that again. “But I found one of my own,” I say, and take it out, opening to the page with the sketch. They crowd around—all but the Tracker, who seems aware that even folded, its spines might jab us.

“Three hulls, like you remember. To know what it all means, we need to see more, I guess.”

“That’s right,” the girl agrees. “He needs to be poked.” Why she focuses on me, I don’t know.

“You are what you see,” Big Yellow says.

“That’s deep. You’re our philosopher,” the spidery woman says.

Big Yellow stretches out massive arms. “Philosophers don’t look like me.”

“Join the club,” says Tsinoy.

“You drew this?” the spidery woman asks me, pointing to the sketch.

“No. Another me did—I think.”

“How many of you are there?” she asks.

“I’ve seen hundreds of bodies like mine… collected and frozen in lockers, aft.”

“Awful,” Big Yellow says. “Thankfully, I seem to be unique.”

An awkward pause.

“I’m exhausted,” I say. “Is there a place I can sleep? Is there any food?”

“Very little,” the spidery woman says.

“Less and less,” Big Yellow says. “On my way here, I saw a lot of folks who looked as if they’d starved to death.”

I take another drink. “There is a room aft,” I say, “outboard of the water tank… A boy and a woman live there. They were comfortable. The boy had plenty of food and water. He seemed to be able to tell the hull what to do.”

They all look at me with somber eyes, as if they don’t believe me. Then I see that they’re simply paying silent respect to a man who’s escaped certain death.

“There was another girl,” I say defensively. “She left first.” I pause and swallow. “She wasn’t you,” I say to this girl.

Big Yellow looks aside.

“We’ve heard about such places,” the spidery woman says. “After a few spin-ups, if you like it and stay, you start to think you’ve been there for years. You forget who you are… and then the room seals shut and never opens again. Traps you. In some other part of the hull, another room opens up… same thing, different people.”

Silence.

“They let me go,” I say.

“It’s just a story,” the spidery woman says. “We’ve got enough food for a few days, but we don’t have that much time. We need to find a way forward—a way out.”

“Where?” I ask.

“I don’t remember,” she says, crestfallen. “Not yet.”

Big Yellow moves in. “Right. If we don’t rest, we’ll start acting crazy. Let’s clean up, eat a crumb or two, sleep in shifts. We’ll stand watch one by one for a couple of hours, until next spin-down. Best to travel while there’s as little weight as possible—right?” He looks at the spidery woman with what passes for stubbornness.

She faces him down, then shrugs again, wide shoulders elegant, and curls up. “Who’s first on watch?”

“I’ll go,” Big Yellow says. “I sleep with my eyes open. Then the girl. She’s the most sensitive to noise.”

We scrub each other with a scrap of damp cloth. After, we feel better in a number of ways—and more connected. In the gentle tug of spin-up, the spilled bath-water slowly falls to the floor and forms viscous pools. We wipe it up and squeeze the cloth into an empty bottle. That takes a while—the water behaves like syrup. We can’t afford to waste anything.

The Tracker, of course, does not join this group, but watches with what I assume is a hint of sadness in its armor-lidded, ruby-pink eyes.

After a brief meal—a couple of chunks of loaf divided among us—we seek separate places in the chamber. I settle into the grippy couch. The Tracker finds a corner and wedges itself in, a peculiar process of grabbing hold of the walls and ceiling with three limbs and shoving until it’s compressed to almost half its former bulk.

The spidery woman chooses to lie unencumbered on the floor, a loose curl of limbs. She closes her eyes and relaxes. The girl stays close to her, happy with any substitute for a mother. Her legs are crossed, elbows out, hands together, as if praying—praying to the hull, perhaps, or Ship Control. She glances at me. Her eyes grow heavy, and she curls up, too.

I spend a few minutes penciling an update in the little book. My handwriting—hand-printing—is uniform throughout. It’s all me. I don’t write it all down. I concentrate on a few vivid scenes. Eventually, I’ll gather enough pieces of paper to make enough books to tell the whole story. Then I’ll…

I don’t know what I’ll do.

I write. When I get to a certain point—my rescue from the red-dot horror—I look up.

“Who has a laser?” I ask.

Big Yellow is near the hatch, standing his watch. “Nobody,” he says, and manages a look of surprise. His facial expressions are subtle but real, once you get used to them. “We thought you had one, but you don’t, do you?”