Hull Zero Three

hand them over to Mother…”

“No,” Tsinoy says. “Forward.”

BAD WISDOM

The cables web outward several hundred meters from the huge bulkhead’s center. We climb hand over hand across the transparent face, like insects on a great blue-green eye. Within the water-filled tanks, gelatinous blue curtains undulate between diamond-glinting spans of turbulent air. I’m intent on following the Tracker, paying little attention, when something dark slips past on the other side. A sharp angle throws sapphire drops that are absorbed in another curtain, and the whole—as I try to make out what I just missed—slops into oblivion, hiding all. There’s more than water in these tanks. I concentrate on the depths beyond, confused. There might or might not be greater shadows lurking there.

“You saw that, right?” I ask. My voice clips itself around the cap chamber, impossible to predict where a sibilant or a consonant will return next.

Tsinoy and I exchange a look. Her eyes are dull red, tired, discouraged.

In our last few meters traveling across the bulkhead, I peer through a mass-saving deletion and see for the first time that a shining, transparent access tunnel leads down the center line between the tanks, thrusting through the middle of the hull, perhaps its entire length, like a glass rod suspended between six huge, sluggishly fizzing bottles.

At the center of the bulkhead, the tube ends in a round, jade-colored hatch. “We’ll return this way,” Tsinoy says, and moves her hands over the hatch surface. It splits in thirds, and the parts pull up and out, revealing an entrance to a clear transport sphere about three meters wide. We slide into the sphere. Its surface is hard and cold. In our presence, a small blue cube begins to sigh, stirring fresh air. The hatch closes. Tsinoy fixes her eyes on mine, then casually folds all but one of her limbs, and with that one grabs a curved bar. I do the same. There’s no warning before the sphere seals shut and begins to move down the tube.

“This way, we’ll reach the bow in a few minutes, rather than a few hours,” Tsinoy says.

That makes architectural sense. Everything around and outside the water tank is a complicated tangle of piping and corridors—like those leading to the revived birthing chamber. “A tramway,” I say, as if bigger words have the power to dispel my ignorance. I’m pressed back as the bubble accelerates, arms and legs fanned, hands clutching—comic.

The surrounding beauty is extraordinary but alien, utterly marine. I feel as if the container around all that melted, refined moon-water is as evanescent as soapy film, a bubble that will maliciously pop and we’ll be lost in blue suffocation.

Tsinoy seems to hang over me. She does not like this place. Neither do I. Her eyes scrutinize me. “This is the journey Mother didn’t want you to make. Look well, Teacher.”

So I’m being judged again—about to pass or fail yet another of an infinite variety of challenges and tests.

More shadows within the churn… My throat constricts.

I see another. Alive and huge. It’s swimming through the tank to my left, at the sphere’s one o’clock, tracking our motion. It resembles a gigantic rubbery spring, tens of meters wide, pulling forward with a jerky, screwlike twist. The outer edges of the thick coils push out fins that sweep like fishermen’s nets through the liquid. Red-ruby eyes—like the Tracker’s, only bigger, with oblate dark centers—poke out from the sweeping fins.

It’s at least a hundred meters long, though that’s hard to judge—it can contract, after all, like a spring. Within the helix long, flexible blades thrust in like pale bony swords or teeth—baleen, perhaps. The blades trail bubbles as the monster swims along with us, following our motion.

I can easily imagine the helix-knife’s eyes are watching, eager for me to join its slicing frolics in a world’s endless blue ocean. It doesn’t matter that I’m tiny. Tiny things are its business.

As it slowly loses our dreamlike race, I notice white, fleshy shreds trailing from the baleen. It has already twisted and chewed its way through something alive. And where there is one Killer on Ship, there have always been more.

Ship has rotated to begin years of deceleration. The secret parts of the Catalog offer complete suites of alternatives for desperate travelers. Pick and choose from a prearranged list. Find answers to all your problems.

A terminal solution.

“We picked a star,” I tell Tsinoy. “We’ve found our new planet. It’s rich with life-forms—even intelligent beings. We can’t stop now. We can’t go back.”

Tsinoy’s snout flexes. Her eyes close. The infants are silent. I hope they haven’t been smothered.

I think of our friends in the bow. “What the hell are they doing up there?” I ask.

“Nell has taken control—partly. She sent me aft to find you and retrieve the new ones.”

“New ones? Not enough crew?”

“I don’t know,” Tsinoy says. “I don’t think she asked for them.”

“Who told her the babies would be there? Why bring me back and not Kim?”

“She says that after the first system was chosen, Ship was damaged. The conflict began.”

“Damn it, Ship’s memory was damaged or nearly destroyed, so Ship unloaded all its dirty secrets into us. But something happened. Some of us didn’t go along with the picture. We split up to fight it out. Did Destination Guidance start the war?”

“I don’t know,” Tsinoy says.

I’m ripening like a fruit, connecting the dots on my interior map. Nell wanted me to see this. I am a key part of the plan. Long before arrival—after Destination Guidance has made its choice and is presumably dead and gone —Ship creates imprints for prep and landing crew, complete with all the necessary instincts, emotions, and patriot love of life—Ship-bred life. All imbedded with the patterns of Earth.

Ship would have been instructed to prepare detailed and customized imprints for the arrival crew. My imprinting would have included an updated, in vitro education about the nature of the chosen system, the star and its world or worlds. I’ll help Earth’s children understand why we have to destroy a planet in order to live on it. Someone else will make the monsters, the factors, the killing organisms… someone given the proper hormonal flows and mindset, a master of biology—shaped for a desperate time and unwavering in her protective passion.

Mother was put in charge of exploring the most hideous Kladistic phase spaces, selecting, creating the necessary factors, and testing their efficacy.

And here they are, all around us. Planets have oceans, which can harbor competitive life—competitive, intelligent life. Solution: turn your shipboard water supplies into artificial oceans, filled with Killers.

Me? I’m the Teacher. I’ll justify their use. I’ll join in the abomination, wholeheartedly, without guilt….

Except that there is guilt. Some of us are at cross-purposes with our intended design and function—Kim, Nell, Tomchin. And Tsinoy.

Most tellingly, Tsinoy.

I jerk and twist my head around. In my quest for large shadows within the tanks, I’ve missed schools of little black shapes, equipped with sharp, rotating fins like sawblades with shining diamond teeth. Then—finger-sized things that seem to be nothing more than eyes and depending tiny mouths. I have no idea how they kill. Perhaps they act as scouts.

And scattering these schools, as if in festive play—agile torpedoes equipped with nightmare, head-mounted arrays of fangs or scythes or other cutting implements. There are also aqueous variations on the spiny claw- claspers with grinding mouths. They don’t make sense in any sane ecological system. All of them are pure assassins. Liquidators.

Grim humor seems inescapable. Teacher is supposed to be cheerful, clever, charismatic. All the girls love Teacher. But my body is numb, my thoughts like icy needles. I simply want to be Never Born. Never Made.

I turn my head right, to another tank, and witness the passage of a ponderous, gray-green eel more than