Hull Zero Three

very old. Yes, she has been preserved, frozen along with the rest of the sphere. But she lived a long time before the capsule accepted her ancient frame, before she took this last option—this last outstretched voyage to our present, her future.

The capsule sections slide up, melt away. A sweet, musty scent rises from around the naked old woman, like perfumes from a grandmother’s dresser. I half expect to see round mirrors and blue jars of skin cream and combs felted with gray winter gleanings from ten thousand lonely nights.

She studies us one by one, showing no surprise, no dismay. Our appearance does not shock. Our forms do not concern her. The monkeys have allowed us to come here; the sphere has warmed…. She accepts us all, but perhaps she is too old—perhaps she can no longer summon enough energy to care whether we signal defeat or victory, or are simply another step in a plan she must have been integrally concerned with, hundreds of years before.

“Hello,” she says. She raises a thin arm, gestures with near-skeletal fingers. Four of the monkeys bring forward clothing worn, bleached, tattered, and still crisp with frost. She smiles and shakes her head. “Cold,” she says.

The monkeys pass the gown to us. Nell and I rub it with our hands to warm it.

“That’s fine,” the old woman says. She manages to float free of the capsule.

We dress her. She seems as light as a leaf. After her ancient nakedness has been concealed, she lifts her shoulders, squares them, shakes out her thin arms, and draws a finger along her lined cheek. Then she looks at us one by one and asks, “Which of you is Teacher?”

The others point. I’m too stunned to move or speak. Just touching her hands and limbs makes me ache. I’ve been through all sorts of suffering in my short existence, but not this—the painful prolonging of biological time.

“Is it really you?” the old woman asks, her eyes moving up to my face. I realize her sight has faded. “Closer.” She reaches out to me, and the monkeys help her forward like faithful handmaids. “I hope you remember. We would have been important to each other, once.”

The old woman’s features take on new focus. I map her eyes, her cheeks, the shape of her jaw. I draw her face over two other memories—my Dreamtime partner, the one I was destined to go to planet with. And Mother, back in Hull Zero Three.

My mouth is as dry as dust. “I remember,” I say.

“If something had gone wrong with your making, you wouldn’t remember anything about me. I’m so glad you do. I always remember you.”

“You’re Destination Guidance?” Nell asks.

“The very last,” the old woman says. “Now, please, you’ve brought me such lovely gifts, these odd creatures tell me. I didn’t design them, you know. That was Selchek. He’s gone by now, surely. There were three others. They’re gone, too, by now.”

“Yes,” Nell says.

The bodies.

“They brought themselves back one by one, to live out their lives and fight for the soul of the Ship. I presume that’s how it happened,” she says. “None of us was supposed to live forever, or even longer than a normal human being. So we had to cobble together an apparatus and carry it piecemeal from the hulls… along with these creatures!”

The monkeys do not seem offended by her appraisal. “She is the last,” they agree.

She grasps Kim’s huge arm in frail hands. “I’m sure there are better clothes somewhere. The monkeys care nothing for dress, you know. Please take me someplace warmer.”

Nell grimaces at me, but the sphere is merciful, and the monkeys have been busy cleaning, clearing, and preparing. I get the impression that in the monkeys, something remains of the others and that they are attendant on this meeting, listening. Perhaps they are pleased and finally willing to waste a few resources, for however short a time we will be here.

It has taken us so long to be created and gathered.

“Someplace warm,” the old woman repeats. Then, to the monkeys, the sphere, she calls out, in a surprisingly loud and firm voice, “Light the fires. Bring out the feast. It’s time!”

My heart thrills. We’ve never met, but knowing her is my validation.

JUDGMENT AND DESTINATION

Tsinoy, I think, fell in love with the old woman right away and cared for our infant successors with a quiet enthusiasm. She did not need to protect the rest of us.

We had already initiated the final cooling of the hulls. Essentially, this meant the destruction of most living things aboard Hull Zero Three, the other hulls being nearly dead already. Some might survive for a time—Mother is always resourceful, and the gene pool is a never-ending source of ingenuity.

But we have stopped transport of ice from the moon to the hulls. Soon, there will no longer be heat to chase. The liquid within the hulls’ central tubes will also freeze, for a time, and Ship will drift without power, except for the reserves within this sphere.

PERCHANCE

The old woman died a few days after our arrival. She did not tell us all we needed to know, but she gave us the keys to what was left of Ship’s original instructions, almost eroded away after centuries of fighting.

Nell has learned this much after careful study of the remnants of Ship’s memory and after careful questioning of the monkeys, who have grown a touch dotty over time:

It was the original choice of the first Destination Guidance team to set the course for a system that observation showed was already inhabited by intelligent beings. Honorably enough, they died, their work done—but done badly, as it turned out.

As Ship approached its intended destination, the first Mother was created, and the first consorts. They prepared Ship to destroy, replace.

But Ship was somehow pushed into a minute diversion, away from its intended destination and toward a dangerously unstable star. That star exploded in a supernova, washing Ship in deadly radiation and damaging the hulls and memory.

As Ship’s memory degraded, emergency procedures dictated that memory and function would be diverted to biological components able to carry out basic functions, including preserving and re-creating the gene pool. Ship then entered the dusty outer clouds of the resulting nebula.

With the original destination no longer in reach, another Destination Guidance team was born—into the worst imaginable conditions. Ship Control was intermittent, the hulls were filling with monsters, the birthing chambers were either being perverted to Mother’s demands or, failing that, being shut down.

The old woman and her colleagues—then little more than adolescents—somehow reached the decision that Ship must not continue in its present form. Destination Guidance infiltrated hull communications and assumed control of some birthing chambers, creating counter-crew and subverting some of Mother’s Killers by mixing components of biology and memory.

They fought Mother in all her many different incarnations.

Thus began the war.

———

AT THE END, the old woman met with me alone in a small room the monkeys had arranged for her. She took my hand, her fingers as light as bird wings, and said, “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

I’m not willing to admit I’ve seen anything.

She then adds, “Our Ship is haunted. Not just by the dead of ancient wars, oh no—but by something not from