Hull Zero Three

The others agree.

Nell immerses herself in the control space, and we don’t hear from her for a while. Her eyes are almost closed, showing just a low crescent of sclera, like a cat dozing. The hull seems to be moving again. Outside, the noise of the storm changes, but it’s neither more nor less this time.

“Where did the girls go?” my twin asks.

“To find their mother, probably,” Kim says from a short distance. “We have yet to be introduced.”

“Who is this ‘Mother,’ and what’s she like?” Nell asks. “Has anybody seen anything that could give us a clue?”

This reminds me of the sketch in blood left in the outboard shaft by one of our girls—the one, presumably, who helped me get born. “Maybe we don’t want to actually meet Mother,” I say.

The sound around us suddenly drops to a whisper, then to almost silence. The change is quick—a couple of seconds and we can talk without shouting, think without grating our teeth.

“We have a shield!” Nell calls out. “It’s off to one side, but it’s there. They’ve given in!”

But she doesn’t sound convinced. We gather beside her, clinging to cables and a bar near the control pylon. We know better than to slap our hands around hers on the hemisphere—the display doesn’t work that way; no more than three individuals at a time.

We let Tsinoy go first. The Tracker becomes completely still, except for the shivers that keep her curled-up paws on the hemisphere. Her spines are smooth and withdrawn, so as not to poke Nell, who still has that dozing- cat look, immersed in whatever the hull is feeding her in the way of information.

After a moment, Nell asks, “Shall I stop integration?”

Tsinoy pulls back her paws. “We’re protected,” she confirms. “The shields have moved, to be sure, but nebular material is being diverted around and behind the hulls—as designed.”

“I’m stopping, then,” Nell says.

“Why?” my twin asks.

“Because Tsinoy says we still need Destination Guidance.”

The rest of us are unhappy with that decision—we’d just as soon see the author or authors of our misery squashed or absorbed or otherwise obliterated. But Tsinoy’s warning is an unavoidable consideration.

“Sure,” I say, and Kim agrees. “Stop integration.” My twin, oddly, doesn’t chime in on this decision. He holds back, physically and verbally, putting a little distance between himself and the rest of us. I think that he’s been playing some sort of hand and does not want to overplay.

The hull’s motion along the rails on the moon far below, toward the moon’s forward end and the other two hulls, slows. We can detect very tiny changes in momentum through the gentle tug on our gripping hands and hooked feet.

“Done,” Nell says. “What now?”

“We have to talk, and they have to be willing to talk,” my twin says. Playing his hand again, very sly. “Otherwise, they’re no use at all—and we might as well wipe them out.”

“Maybe they want us to come to them,” Kim suggests, with a shake of his big head.

“The controls don’t show anything alive down there,” Nell says. “The whole area is frozen. We’re in control… for the time being. They know they can’t get rid of us.”

“Maybe it’s all automated,” I say.

“Automation is sporadic. Ship’s systems are pretty shot. I say we hold as much information between us as we might find left in Ship’s memory.”

“Great,” Kim says. “Nobody’s in charge?”

“Can you send a message throughout Ship, to all the hulls?” I ask. “That might get through.”

“Only if there’s a connection in the first place. An emergency signal…” She pulls her hands away from the hemisphere and her eyes fully open. She shivers, then curls up on the bar next to the pylon. “Working this thing takes it out of me. I have to repeat everything ten times, learning and doing at once.”

“Then show me how,” I say. My twin grins and raises his arm. “Show us how.”

“Me too,” Kim says, and Tomchin indicates with another hand that he’s interested. Tsinoy is watching the covered forward viewports, like a dog waiting for its master—a dangerous, sad dog—and seems to be paying the rest of us and our situation no never mind.

“I’m not sure I can,” Nell says. “You two talk to the hull one way, I talk to Ship Control another way. Why somebody couldn’t have integrated our knowledge is beyond my understanding.”

“We’ve got company,” Kim says.

One of the girls has returned. She’s working her way forward from the staging area, a bright red sash floating around her neck.

“We’ve found her,” the girl says, a big smile transforming her face. “She’s with our sisters. She will accept a meeting.”

We listen with something between skepticism and fascination. Mysteries on our sick Ship rarely turn out to be helpful. Mother is nothing if not a mystery—maybe the prime mystery, after Destination Guidance.

My twin seems more sanguine, but he leads with the obvious. “While you were away, we saved the hull and maybe the rest of Ship,” he says. “Nell can work some of the controls—and in time, maybe all the controls.”

The girl accepts this with complacent cheer. “Of course,” she says.

“You’re not in the least impressed?” I ask.

“You have done what you were chosen to do,” she says.

“Maybe,” I say, pulling closer on a cable, stopping an arm’s length away. “What’s Mother got to offer our little group that we don’t already have?”

“Love,” the girl says. She turns. “Now we will head aft.”

“Nobody with love in her heart would choose to make us,” Tsinoy says, breaking her concentration on the covered bow. “A lot of us have died—sometimes hundreds of times. As any sort of team, we’re a strategic, tactical, and even a logistical nightmare. We know so little, and whenever we think we’re about to learn something important or solve all the puzzles, we hit the most infuriating obstacles—head-on. Maybe love isn’t enough.”

This is the longest speech I’ve heard from the Tracker. Not to my credit, I’m still surprised that such sophistication and reason can be found within a corded mass of ivory and rubies and steel.

“What Tsinoy seems to be suggesting,” Kim says, ever the moderator, “is that we need persuading. Even from your mother, we need evidence.”

Nell moves in next. The girl tracks her with earnest eyes. “If Mother is capable of choosing us from the Catalog and having us birthed in another hull, then she has to have some connection with Ship Control. Maybe she should join us—up here, where we’re reasonably safe.”

Scandalized, the girl regards me sternly, then turns to my twin. “You two are Teachers,” she reminds us. “Mother chose you to lead and make decisions.”

“We all make decisions together,” I say. “And we’re happy to rotate the role of tiebreaker.”

After a pause for several seconds of reflection, the girl’s eyes widen and she asks, “Why assume you are safe here?”

We don’t have a good answer.

“What you mean to say is you are comfortable,” she adds. “And you believe you are taking charge.”

“Stop jerking us around,” Nell says tightly. “Tell us what’s going on, or what you think is going on. You’re part of the team, aren’t you? Act like it.”

The girl is unruffled by the spidery woman’s tone. For perhaps the first time—or perhaps not, but more forcefully—I’m made aware that what seems like a little girl is in fact anything but. She is as cool and calm as anything we’ve encountered in the hulls—and perhaps more frightening for that reason.

My twin seems more willing to go along. “Clearly, we’re not communicating our needs,” he says. “Yes, we’re comfortable—but we’re way beyond being scared by threats or dark implications. Is that clear?”

The girl nods.