A voice speaks. We all recognize the gentle, precise tones. “I await a decision,” it says.
“About what?” I ask.
No answer. Nell moves forward. “We need to shut down Hull Zero Three. We don’t like what’s happening there. How can we do that without damaging Ship?”
“Ship is already damaged,” the voice says. Lights brighten. The darkness beyond the cylinder vestibule is filled with smoothly curved surfaces, volumes, in strikingly beautiful colors and patterns, some translucent, others pale and milky. It’s like nothing we’ve seen elsewhere on Ship, as if a mad artist began blowing huge glass shapes and arranged them to an irrational aesthetic.
But this is just one tiny part of the sphere, which is at least half a kilometer in diameter. It could be a greeting, meant to impress—or a distraction to hold and confuse us while examinations are made; a 3-D psychological test that might determine whether we live or die, are welcomed, or are flushed back into space.
“Did you make this?” Kim asks, and I see that of all of us, he’s the most affected by the unexpected elegance and beauty.
“This space was designed by Destination Guidance,” the voice says.
“Are you Destination Guidance?” Nell asks.
“No.”
“Are you Ship Control? You sound familiar….”
The voice asks, “What do you not like about Ship and its operations?”
This is a loaded question, obviously, and we need some time to think it over. We haven’t moved from the cylinder, our hole of relative safety on the edge of a coral reef of color and unfamiliar beauty. If we venture out, will something grab us while we’re distracted?
Put an end to all our worries?
“What do you not like about Ship operations?” the voice asks again.
Nell swallows, presses her hand against her lips, and looks to me. They’re all looking to me.
“We think there was a war to stop Ship from killing a planet. We’re refugees.” I stop, feeling foolish again and totally unprepared. And besides, who or what am I talking to? There’s nobody here, nobody visible. The space is warming quickly. Soon, we might be invited in… sit down for tea and cookies, discuss the local interstellar weather.
“What is conscience?” the voice asks.
But not until we pass our biggest test.
“The willingness to sacrifice for a greater good,” I say.
“Sacrifice what?”
“Dreams. Plans. Personal stuff.”
Nell is getting irritated. Tsinoy, on the other hand, is shrinking—pulling in, drawing back. I glance over my shoulder at her.
“She’s designed to be a Tracker, a Killer,” I say. “But she refuses to give in to her design. There’s something better inside her. Inside all of us.”
“Did she acquire that by herself, or was it put there?”
“I own my feelings,” Tsinoy growls. “I am what I want to be.”
“Absolutely,” I agree. “We’ve been through the wringer.”
“Tell me what that means.”
“Just wait a goddamned minute!” I shout. “We’ve been put through a living hell to get here. We’ve been chased and expelled and murdered and deceived….”
“You were created by Ship,” the voice says. “Would you rather not have been created?”
Tsinoy shrinks back as if kicked. We’re about to act like whipped dogs, all of us.
“You want our
“Ship has a mission. Would you have Ship continue on that mission if it guaranteed your personal survival— and if ending that mission meant your death?”
Tsinoy says, “We are not the only ones here.” She lifts her spines and delivers the babies, still in their bags, then hands them to the rest of us, like talismans or shields. She’s offering up the little ones she’s protected and making the rest of us their protectors as well.
Tomchin looks distressed and holds his bag out as if it’s a bomb. Kim tucks his in the crook of one huge arm. As we receive our own infants, Nell looks at me, and we move closer, until our arms touch. It’s an awkward, scary, strangely lovely moment. I almost don’t care if we live or die. We’ve made our peace with fate.
“We’re all human here,” I say. “You can’t judge us. You’re just a machine.”
“Machines have not been in control for a very long time. Come in. Finish birthing the young ones, and they will be fed. There is food for you as well.”
Nell opens her bag. “What do you think?” she asks me.
Tsinoy moves first. Her claw delicately slits one side of the membrane. The baby comes out, and along with it, a small stream of reddish fluid. Tomchin just about loses it and starts to babble a nasal protest, offering his gray bag—now quite active—to anyone. But he’s in this with all of us.
The other membranes are tough, but one by one, the sacs are carefully cut open and the babies withdrawn.
I massage mine instinctively, then turn it around with country doctor wisdom, hold it with one hand, and slap its bottom with the other. Fluid gushes from its mouth as it empties its lungs. Suddenly it draws breath and starts to pinwheel its arms, then cry.
“It’s a boy,” I say.
Nell follows suit, then the others—even Tomchin.
“Mine’s a girl,” Nell says.
We use the bags to wipe them down, dry them off. We compare our infants as if we’ve opened Christmas packages—another memory that only compounds my irrational joy. Three girls, two boys. My eyes stream with tears. It’s warm enough in the vestibule that we don’t feel the need to swaddle them.
I clean gunk from my boy’s mouth, swipe his eyes clear, pinch his nose to squeeze out the last fluid. Hold him out with the others, to our judge, our sponsor—whatever it may be. A desperate, defiant act. We hope for sympathy in a violent, damning, world, all that we’ve known and experienced in real life—as opposed to phantom memory. We long for confirmation and completion and justification—and we also long to survive and learn that our reckless existence has meaning.
The glass pillars light up and separate, showing a passage through alternating ribs of steel, into what might be a frozen jungle. I’m not sure I like that. And more glass, lit within by green sparkles, undulating through the interior of the sphere for a hundred meters or more.
We carry the infants and move cautiously toward the center. Streaks of green and pink ripple over the inner wall of some sort of sanctuary.
“Welcome,” the voice says.
The wall melts aside. Within, all is frost-covered, leafy green. Furniture comfortable for weightlessness has been shaped and positioned in and around branches, much as in Mother’s bower. I see for a moment small eyes, in pairs and triplets—many of them, staring out from between the leaves, and expect we are about to discover
But the eyes blink and withdraw. The lights rise, and a blue glow like terrestrial sky suffuses the glade, the tree house—that’s what this all reminds me of, a tree house deep inside a jungle.
And at the atrium where guests might be greeted, welcomed, or captured, a curling flash of silver moves between the branches in ways I can barely follow, as if its time flows in a way different from mine. It’s like trying to watch a ghost made of sky and chrome, a glinting creature all thin limbs and curves, glassy apparel flowing around its lithe body like spilled milk, decorated with jeweled beads, aquamarine and emerald. And rising above this splendor, a tall, slender head, humanoid in one respect—that there are eyes, nose, something like ears on the side of the head.
Not part of my memory—not part of Ship. Something far outside the Klados.
