But whom had he promised? Till, obviously. Till had conscripted Locke into joining this game, ensuring that Miocene would eventually learn of the meetings, her authority suddenly in question. And it was Till who lay in his mother’s arms, knowing exactly what would happen next.
Miocene stared at her son, searching for some trace of apology, some faltering of courage. Or perhaps she was simply giving him a moment to contemplate her own gaze, relentless and cold.
Then she let go of him, and she picked up a fat wedge of dirty black iron—the quakes had left the round littered with them—and with a calm fury, she rolled Till onto his stomach and shattered the vertebrae in his neck, then swung harder, blood and shredded flesh flying, his head nearly chopped free of his paralyzed body.
Washen grabbed an arm, and yanked.
Captains leaped on Miocene, dragging her away from her son.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
A few backed away, but not Washen.
Then Miocene dropped the lump of bloody iron and raised both arms, shouting, “If you want to help him, help him. But if you do, you don’t belong with us. That’s my decree. According to the powers of rank, my office, and my mood…!”
Locke had just emerged from the jungle.
He was first to reach Till, but barely. Children were pouring out from the shadows, already in a helpful spring, and even a few of those who hadn’t vanished in the first place now joined ranks with them. In a blink, more than two thirds of the captains’ offspring had gathered around the limp, helpless figure. Sober faces were full of concern and resolve. A stretcher was found, and their leader was made comfortable. Someone asked which direction the captains would move. Daen stared at the sky, watching a dirty cloud of smoke drifting in from the west. “South,” he barked. “We’ll go south.” Then with few possessions and no food, the wayward children began to file away, conspicuously marching toward the north.
Diu was standing next to Washen.
“We can’t just let them get away,” he whispered. ‘Someone needs to stay with them. To talk to them, and listen. And help them, somehow…”
She glanced at her lover, her mouth open.
“I’ll go,” she meant to say.
But Diu said, “You shouldn’t, no,” before she could make any sound. “You’d help them more by staying close to Miocene.” He had obviously thought hard on the subject, arguing, “You have rank. You have authority here. And besides, Miocene listens to you.”
When it suited her, perhaps.
“I’ll keep whispering in your ear,” Diu promised. “Somehow”
Washen nodded, a stubborn piece of her reminding her that all this pain and rage would pass. In a few years or decades, or maybe in a quick century, she would begin to forget how awful this day had been.
Diu kissed her, and they hugged. But Washen found herself looking over his shoulder. Locke was a familiar silhouette standing at the jungles margins. At this distance, through the interlocking shadows, she couldn’t tell if her son was facing her or if she was looking at his back. Either way, she smiled and mouthed the words, “Be good.” Then she took a deep breath and told Diu, “Be careful.” And she turned away, refusing to watch either man vanish into the gloom and the gathering smoke.
Miocene stood alone, almost forgotten.
While the captains and the loyal children hurried south together, making for the nearest safe ground, the Submaster remained rooted in the center of the round, speaking with a thin, dry, weepy voice.
“We’re getting closer,” she declared.
“What do you mean?” Washen asked.
“Closer,” she said again. Then she looked up into the brilliant sky, arms lifting high and the hands reaching for nothing.
With a gentle touch, Washen tried to coax her.
“We have to hurry,” she cautioned. “We should already be gone, madam.”
But Miocene picked herself up on her toes, reaching even higher, fingers straightening, eyes squinting, as she leaked a low, pained laugh.
“But not close enough,” she whimpered. “No, not quite. Not yet. Not yet.”
Sixteen
One of the sweet problems about an exceedingly long life was what to do with your head. How do you manage, after many thousands of years, that chaotic mass of remembered facts and superfluous memories?
Just among human animals, different cultures settled on a wide range of solutions. Some believed in carefully removing the redundant and the embarrassing—a medical procedure often dressed up in considerable ceremony. Others believed in sweeping purges, more radical in nature, embracing the notion that a good pruning can free any soul. And there were even a few harsh societies where the mind was damaged intentionally and profoundly, and when it would heal again, a subtly new person would be born.
Captains believed in none of those solutions.
What was best, for their careers and for the well-being of their passengers, was a skilled, consistent mind filled with minute details. “Forget nothing,” was their impossible ideal. Ruling any ship required mastery over detail and circumstance, and nobody could predict when her trusted mind would have to yank some vital but obscure fact out of its recesses, the captain—if she was any sort of captain—accomplishing her job with the predictable competence that everyone righdy demanded of her.
Miocene was forgetting how to be a captain.
Not in a serious or unexpected way. Time and the intensity of her new life naturally shoved aside old memories. But after more than a century on Marrow, she could feel the erosions of small, cherished talents, and she found herself worrying about her eventual return to duty, wondering if she could easily fill her old seat.
Which captains last earned the Master’s award, and for what?
Past the most recent fifty winners, she wasn’t certain.
What was that jellyfish species that lived in the cold ammonia-water Alpha Sea? And that robotic species that lived in special furnaces, and that at room temperature would freeze rigid? And that software species, dubbed Poltergeists for its juvenile sense of humor… where did it come from originally?
Little details, but to millions of souls, utterly vital.
There was a human population in the Smoke Canyons… antitechnologest who went by the name of… what…? And they were founded by whom…? And how did they accept living entirely dependent upon the greatest machine ever built…?
Five course adjustments should have been made in the last hundred-plus years—all previously scheduled, all minor. But even though the ship’s course was laid out with a delicate precision, stretching ahead for twenty millennia, Miocene could bring to mind only the largest of the burns.
Little more than an informed passenger, she was.
Of course plenty will have changed before she returned. Ranks and faces, and honors, and perhaps even the ship’s exact course… all were subject to contingencies and hard practicalities, and every important decision, as well as the trivial ones, were being made without Miocene’s smallest touch…
Or perhaps, no decisions were being made.
She had heard the whispered speculations. The Event had purged the ship of all life, leaving it as a derelict again. That explained the lack of any rescue mission. The Master and crew and that myriad of ill-matched passengers had evaporated in a terrible instant, every apartment and great hallway left sterile and pure. And if there was a local species that was brave enough or foolish enough to board the ship today, it would probably take aeons for them to find their way down to this horrible wasteland.