Hull Zero Three

agile escorts.

“They are us,” the voice says from all around, and the monkeys settle, some grooming each other, while the majority cling to the branches and watch with so many dark, shining eyes.

“Can we… put them away?” I ask. “They’re dead. They’re not coming back.”

The monkeys think this over. I see a ripple in their odd faces and bodies: muscular twitches, arms and hands shaping subtle gestures. The ripple passes from one side to the other. A monkey wave. They think in serial.

The ripple completes, and together they say, “We are not dead.”

Tsinoy seems to have unique insight into what we’re being told. She’s contemplated form and function and inner being for some time now, and she’s clued in. “They copied themselves… into all of you? Gave you their memories, their jobs, their duties so that you could replace them if they didn’t survive?”

A general light rustling as tails twitch, little hands relax and clutch again. This question is too strange and important for the voice to answer right away.

“Yes,” it says finally. “They are us.”

“Well, that’s fortunate,” Nell says. “Because they need to be disposed of, now that you don’t need them.”

I push toward Nell, and in her ear I whisper, “Who’s in charge, then?” She shakes the question off. It’s way beyond her capacity. Tsinoy hears, however, and makes another creative leap—with another, more important question.

“Why make the babies and bring them here?” she asks.

“They are pure. They will grow to make a choice,” the voice replies.

Tomchin hums to himself, too clearly expressive, and turns away. “Mad Szhib,” he says. We all understand.

“We’re lost,” Tsinoy says. “What is there for them to decide, if they even could decide?”

“They have no dreams. Ship has not patterned them. They are pure.”

The monkeys pull and tear foliage from the rear of the control area. This reveals a moss-crusted circular hatch, big enough even for Tsinoy or Kim. Nell rubs her hands on her pants, holds up her long fingers, then looks around with a plaintive expression. Pylons rise as if to greet her. She touches a blue hemisphere, but only briefly. “It’s the same here as in the hulls,” she says. “There are huge blank places, burned places. Ship is incapable of making decisions.”

“Ship is dead,” the voice says.

“Mother almost won,” Tsinoy says.

The monkeys move around Tsinoy, beckon her to approach a hatch revealed to our right. We try to stay with her, but with rather more vigor than before, the monkeys keep us back.

The Tracker is welcome—protector of infants, bringer of new life, new guidance. But only the Tracker. The monkeys seem to think we’ve done our bit, for now.

“What a mess,” I murmur.

“Amen,” Kim says.

Tsinoy floats calmly before the hatch. “Let’s not be too hasty,” she says. “Or too fatalistic. How many go in?”

“You and the infants,” the voice says. “No one else.”

“Forget it,” Tsinoy says. “Being alone is being in bad company. The babies need more than me. They need a real mother, friends, uncles, protectors—and a real teacher.”

The monkeys are at a loss. More stirrings, gestures, but no more speech.

“If there’s a chance you’ll make it without us…” I begin.

“We’re not important,” Nell adds.

“Forget it!” Tsinoy growls. “I’m nobody’s idea of a nursemaid. I’d give them nightmares.”

“Not if you’re all they ever know,” Nell suggests in softening tones.

“Forget it!” the Tracker growls again. “Believe me, if I were a baby, this body would scare me silly. And I’m being practical as well as selfish. I hate being alone.”

The monkeys listen.

Stalemate.

Balanced on the head of a pin. Maybe it will all fall apart again right here. Centuries of effort, blood and treasure across the ages, a withering seedpod torn apart by its own perverse conscience (and where did that come from? Will we ever know?)—a faculty that never should have blossomed. Had it not blossomed, however, we wouldn’t be here. The monkeys have to understand something about this, if they combine the intellects of those who ordered us made. If they were the ones who injected us with conscience.

The hatch slowly pulls and melts aside. Lights come on. We peer into a sanctuary beside the control area. Here, everything is brightly colored, warm, clean, preserved, though at first the air is stuffy.

The monkeys make one last effort to separate us. With Kim, the result is comical—a big yellow guy covered by clasping, chirping, snorting, fur-covered doughnuts.

Tsinoy howls. The monkeys scatter. Kim grabs for support. The Tracker regains her composure—I hope. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

“They will go first,” she insists, after something like a clearing of her throat. Everyone flinches at that, and the monkeys perform another wave of alert concern.

No dissent from our ranks. We’ve tried worse stratagems with greater chances of failure. I gesture to Nell, who gestures to Tomchin, and Tomchin enters, then Kim, then Nell. Then me. Tsinoy follows me.

The monkeys hang back, uncertain.

“What happens now?” I ask just inside the hatchway.

From outside the sanctuary, the voice says, “We stop delivery of fuel from the moon to the hulls. In a generation, the hulls will go cold. All will freeze and die, except for those gathered here.”

“What about the gene pool?” Nell asks behind me.

No answer. Six of the monkeys are pushed forward by their companions, and reluctantly—with more sad chirps—they join us.

The hatch closes.

MEET YOUR MAKER

The inner chamber’s walls still carry a coat of frost. We’re cramped, cold, and silent. A few dozen meters away, surrounded by bluish gloom, a crystalline oval lies at the center of a shadowy space. There’s a small cherry glow around the oval. The glow expands. Warmth radiates slowly outward. Thawing here is a more delicate task than with the monkeys and their foliage. Whatever lies inside the oval is not so robust. Nell and I move closer.

“Someone’s inside,” she says.

The light rises. The glow comes from a translucent capsule just large enough to hold one body—shorter than Nell, smaller than Tsinoy or Kim, smaller even than Tomchin. A body about my size.

“Another mummy,” Kim suggests.

“I don’t think so,” Nell says.

My skin tingles.

“It looks female,” Kim says.

I had thought for a moment it might be another version of me inside the capsule, and I feel both relief and disappointment when I see it is not. She is not. But dismay follows disappointment. Her naked limbs are skinny, emaciated, as if she has been starved of both food and time. Her face is deeply wrinkled. Her eyes, as they open, are bleary and yellow.

She looks at us slowly, still groggy.

For the first time, we are witness to a living human being who is not young, not fit—who is, in fact, very,