Hull Zero Three

looks like a huge tent. We’re no longer hungry, we’ve had enough to drink, we’re clean, and still there’s electricity in our thoughts. We aren’t going to be sleeping for a while.

The time has come for stories. The girls, of course, choose the Teachers. I go first and tell what happened to me. I condense it into a few minutes.

My twin, oddly, departs from our campground script and shakes his head. “Later,” he says. “I’m not ready yet.”

Kim goes next.

“I don’t remember too much about being born. No girls, nobody—just me, alone. I’m in this long tube when I start to remember, like waking up, but I know I’ve got something I have to do—I have to go forward. I don’t even know where forward is, or what it is, but that’s where I have to go.” He looks at the rest of us. “Why don’t we come with instructions?”

Nobody knows the answer. We’d all like to be real people, after all—probably even Tsinoy.

Kim lifts his hands, examining them with a kind of wonder, and continues. “Being big turns out to be a good thing. Pretty soon, something even bigger and dark tries to stop me, so I break it or kill it. It happens so fast.” He flexes his fingers. “I guess it was a factor, maybe a cleaner—maybe it didn’t even want to hurt me. I don’t know, but I hate being interfered with.”

“Amen,” Nell says.

“Along the way, all I see are bodies or parts of bodies, and I think, this place is dying—or maybe it’s dead already. There are lots of burned areas. Once, I was moving through a place that smelled bad and had no lights at all, and something tried to take me from behind. I didn’t see it, but it left these marks.” He turns to show a circular collection of greenish welts, some still oozing reddish pus. Under his ragged clothing and the layers of grime, we hadn’t noticed them before. The circle is about three hands wide—his hands. His back is huge. “I don’t know how I got away, but I did, though I don’t think I hurt it much—I couldn’t even get a grip, really.”

“A big Killer,” one of the girls says.

“I don’t know how many times I went around the circumference, or doubled back, or reversed course and went aft again. It was all so confusing. I was still waking up. I knew I had to have a name, but I couldn’t remember it. I like Kim, mind you, but I don’t think it’s the name I should have….” He shakes his head with sad humor. “Sorry, girls. I must have spent dozens of spin-ups getting to the rotating sluices. That’s where the water gets channeled from the big central tank—I guess.”

“It is,” Nell says. They’ve heard this before, repeating their stories for our benefit, but also with a kind of hypnotic focus, like chanting old, comforting songs. The stories are all they have, really.

Kim and Nell don’t even have the emerging shadows of a personal Dreamtime. As for Tsinoy…

“Once, I caught a cleaner carrying a body and seven gray bags.” Kim looks at me, squinting with his emerald-green eyes. “I think it might have been you, actually—one of you, I mean. The body was cut in half—no legs—but there were still bags around its neck. I broke the cleaner—didn’t kill it, but it was pretty lame after. Then I stole the bags and ate my fill, drank four bottles of water. I was sick for a few spin-ups. I just floated and bumped in a long tube and made messes. Must have eaten too fast. The loaves haven’t affected me that way since.”

“Maybe they were poisoned,” Nell says.

“Maybe. Finally, I’m climbing up this shaft when I see a big glowing ball coming down at me, with a window or port in the front.”

“Did you see anything through the window?” my other asks.

“Yeah. Maybe. A kind of face—shiny, white.”

“Silvery,” I say.

“There are no—” Kim begins, as if in reflex, and that makes us laugh—all but the girls, who are definitely not amused.

Kim waits for a decent interval while we think this over, then continues his story up to the point where he’s made his way forward and meets the first little girl, then Nell and Tsinoy. We know the rest.

Nell goes next. The girls sit on either side of her. Each takes a long-fingered hand. The scene is at once touching and incongruous.

“The first thing I remember,” she begins, “is Tsinoy carrying me in a sac through a forest. The sac is slowly ripping, and I’m about to fall out. We get to a platform—I guess this is during spin-up. The platform is covered with dried stuff—blood, I think.”

“It was blood,” Tsinoy agrees.

“Where did you find her?” my twin asks.

“In a pile of bodies in a birthing chamber—most of them still in sacs. They were dead, freezing, but one sac squirmed, so I pulled it out and took it with me.”

“Why?” Kim asks.

“I did not want to be alone. I had questions, and for too long, nothing and nobody to talk to.”

“How did you know she would talk to you?”

“I didn’t.”

“Her story first,” one of the girls insists.

Nell resumes. “We were in a factor tunnel, somewhere outboard, maybe near the middle of the hull, near the cinch, when I fell out. Got born, I suppose. Tsinoy waited while I tried out my legs and arms. I managed to stand, and then I screamed. I’m embarrassed to say that.”

“Don’t be,” Tsinoy says in a soft grumble.

“But we were alone, it wasn’t attacking me. And then it spoke. I didn’t understand it at first. I had to integrate, bring language to the surface. I have other languages, potentially—maybe we all do. Maybe if we try hard enough, we can speak to others…” She casts a quick look at Tomchin. “Just as the girls do.”

The girls look somberly around the circle.

“Tsinoy was the first name I’ve ever heard. It knew who it was even then.”

“Not what, though,” Tsinoy adds. “No mirrors, but limbs look all wrong.”

“After a time,” Nell resumes, “Tsinoy guides me to a huge chamber—the biggest chamber we’ve seen. It’s full of a quiet, hissing rumble and big, long blue tubes… bigger than the water tank, I think. The tubes are lined up in a cylindrical shape, filled with whirling shadows, surrounded by sparkles, all flowing aft. The chamber might have been a kilometer wide. It was only a couple of minutes before we found more bodies, in terrible condition—not just desiccated, not injured, just crispy, burned. And we decided it wasn’t a good idea to stay there. They were like… like…”

She can’t quite put her thoughts into words.

“Like insects in a trap,” my twin finishes for her.

She agrees.

“What’s an insect?” Kim asks.

“Little living thing, hard shell,” my twin explains. I see the same image: little dead things with glassy wings in a kind of trap or bottle. The things that spiders eat—flies. “Radiation,” I say. “Bad place to be.”

“I think now it was part of the hull’s drive engine,” Nell says. “I started remembering some things. I know about engines, a little at first—engines and hulls and joining everything together. I know a little more now, but it still hasn’t all come to the surface. We left that part of Ship, found our way forward, through the cinch—felt sick for a few spin-ups but seemed to recover quickly… Maybe we’re tough that way. We blundered along, still moving forward, I think, until we met up with a Killer. A pack of them. I haven’t seen their like since. They were slender, barbed, maybe three times longer than I am tall, and about as thick through the middle, with four eyes at the end of a long stalk or arm, lots of bendy joints. The joints all have suckers on the outside.” She lifts a thumb knuckle and taps it. “They grip the walls and use leverage. Moved almost too fast for me to see—very strong. Made to clear the tubes, I think. They tried to get around Tsinoy—seemed to think it might be one of the team. I think they were surprised when it attacked them—before they could touch me. Tsinoy was very effective.”

“They hurt me,” Tsinoy said, showing a black, burned-looking area under its ivory spines, behind a temporary shoulder joint. “They use poison.”

“Why does everything want to kill us?” Nell asks suddenly. “Why are we even here, if Ship doesn’t want us to be here?”

I’ve been thinking about this but have no solid answers. I exchange a look with my twin, San-whatever. He takes this as a kind of encouragement. “Something went wrong with Destination Guidance,” he says. “That place