Hull Zero Three

I can’t pull up from the vision. I do not want to. We are ready to go. We are simply saying farewell to our world.

The forest watches. I can’t see the eyes of the animals who know we are here, but they are the eyes of the Earth, and soon we will move far away and will not be seen again, until we make this place anew, around another star, very far away.

At any cost.

Sitting beside me, weary after our hike, she looks young and vulnerable, with her short bobbed hair and square, frank eyes, deep blue, and her wide, slightly ironic smile. I have felt over and over the honor and the depth of her care, her attention to detail both scientific and emotional; her concern for my parents, saying good-bye forever to their only son. Her parents died years before, and this only makes her more eager to establish a chain of posterity.

All of Earth is her family.

It is here that she gives me a real book, small and beautiful—a paper diary bound in faux leather. The paper is creamy and beautiful. “Write it all down, Teacher,” she tells me. “When you figure out the poem, write it down, and let me know.”

At any cost.

Her body I am also aware of, picturing it beneath the winter coat, remembering the sheen on her thighs and shoulders as we swim almost naked in the warm waves off an atoll’s coral beach in the South Pacific. I remember our lovemaking, our murmured talk beneath soughing palms and warm breezes under a densely starry sky; talk about having children. She wants daughters. She believes daughters understand their mothers. She laughs at this, admits it’s silly, sons are wonderful, but she wants daughters.

My head spins at the extraordinary power put into this woman’s hands. When we arrive, she will be not just the shepherd but also the mother of another Earth. And I will be there with her, protecting her against danger, helping her succeed….

At any cost.

I am suddenly back in the hidden pages of the Catalog.

Others may be there. Aboriginal life-forms. We may be out of fuel, with no other place to go. They may not want us, when we arrive. They may try to kill us. Kill me. Kill Earth’s seed and memory. And what will we do then, lover?

———

MY EYES BLINK open and I groan. All of those emotions lie beneath my love, hidden like the monsters we’ve seen, only to be activated if the situation arises.

It has arisen.

Mother is watching me, brows arched, that ironic expression familiar and so clear.

I sneeze and rub my nose.

She turns to Kim.

Kim looks at her, then at me, his expression heavy-lidded. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I have no idea what more he’s recovered, rediscovered in himself, after looking into the mirror of Ship’s memory, and now, seeing Mother herself.

“Are we done yet?” he asks, stretching as far as the leafage allows. His eyes shift left and right, embarrassed. “Could you, like, cover up? I can’t focus.”

The girls who are awake murmur disapproval, but more of the bower grows to cover all but Mother’s shoulders and head.

“Do you know your reason?” Mother asks him.

Kim says, “I work with the Klados.”

“I am Klados,” Mother says, her eyes on mine. And for the last time, I see in the angle of her brow, in the sadness, that she also remembers something of what we would have had, if the times had been good, if our luck had held, if decisions had been made correctly. Part of her is still my Dreamtime partner.

Her long body slowly ripples.

Kim says, “There used to be a gene pool in each hull. Now there’s only one. But… you weren’t born here.”

Mother is silent for long seconds. “We came to be in the first hull, where we were attacked. Many died. We crossed to this hull. Once I arrived, I gave birth and raised daughters.”

“Ship was split into factions,” Kim says. “Ship Control broke down.”

“I am Ship Control,” she says, this time with some fire. “How do you think you came here, and why do you think Ship listened to you? Teacher, you are the other half, the one I cannot give birth to. You are prayed into existence. With the help of our daughters, you come to me and tell me what you have seen. You bring your books and read them to me after we lie together. And if you perish, my daughters collect the books… all of the books. They bring them here, and I grieve.”

I gave her one, they gave him two,
You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.

My eyes fill with tears for what we’ve all lost. And why? What did this to us? How did we come to be this way?

The girls are still. They have never seen her like this.

“You don’t know how it happened, do you?” Kim asks. “You don’t know any more about the war than we do. You should look into Ship’s memory—you should look into the mirror.”

“I have,” Mother says. “I saw Klados. I am Klados. That is all that I am.”

Suddenly, Kim seems to understand. “Someone wanted Ship to fail, to die. They locked away—maybe they even destroyed—the other gene pools. Why would they do that?”

His face darkens and pinches down with this awareness. This is Big Yellow when he loses all that remains of his innocence. “Just before the other gene pools were shut down, you were made, shaped into a reservoir, a movable backup for the Klados. But not all of it. Just selections. This hull was meant to be pristine. A final refuge. But you came here and took it over, then reconstructed your portion of the gene pool to continue Ship’s mission.”

“The early times are dim,” she says. “Many births, many deaths.”

“You came here. You grew…” He looks up, distressed. Something in the air, the company, has made him too blunt, too honest. He would prefer not to discuss these matters… not in front of his boss. But he can’t help himself. “That’s why it’s so large, so inefficient. It came out of you. Some of us are born biased, bent, distorted… grandiose. Your memory emphasizes the secret parts of the Catalog. Did you pray for the Killers?”

“Hurt. Burned. Dying,” Mother says. Her look at me is… what? Disappointed? What does she remember out of the Dreamtime? What ideal life does she dream of as she suckles all her daughters?

“What’s still not clear to me is who was in charge in the best of times,” Kim says.

“Destination Guidance,” I say. “They pick where we will go. Ship and all aboard are subservient to the goals of the mission, which have to be determined based on where we’re going, when we’re going to arrive… what the situation might be when we arrive. Everything depends upon decisions made by Destination Guidance.”

The girls do not like this at all. I am surprised as well by this blunt declaration. Mother’s expression does not change. I had hoped for a more indicative reaction to guide what I say next.

“They chose a world already inhabited. It wasn’t the best choice, was it? A desperate decision. That started the war. A war of conscience.”