Why was that such an appealing image?
Because it did appeal to Miocene, particularly in her blackest moments.
After Till and the other Waywards abandoned her, she found the possibility comforting: total carnage. Billions dead. And what was her own tragedy but a small thing? A sad detail in the ship’s great history. And since it was only a detail, there was the credible, intoxicating hope that she could forget the horrible things that her son had said to her, and how he had forced her to banish him, and she would eventually stop having these poisonous moments when her busy, cluttered mind was suddenly thinking of him.
Miocene’s diary began as an experiment, an exercise that she gave little hope. At the arbitrary end of each day, sitting alone in the shuttered darkness of her present house, she would fill the long stiff tail of a tasserbug with fresh ink, then using her smallest legible print, she would record the day’s important events.
It was an ancient, largely discredited trick.
As a means of enhancing memory and recording history, the written word had been supplanted by digitals and memochips. But like everything else in her immediate life, this technology had been resurrected, if only for this little while.
“I hate this place.”
Those were her first words and among her most honest.
Then to underscore her consuming hatred, she had listed the captains who were killed by Marrow, and the horrible causes of death, filling the rough bone-colored paper with livid details, then folding each sheet and slipping it inside an asbestos pouch that she would carry with her when this house and setdement were abandoned.
The experiment gradually became a discipline.
Discipline bled into a sense of duty, and after ten years of fulfilling her duty, without fail, Miocene realized that she truly enjoyed this writing business. She could tell the page whatever she wished, and the page never complained or showed doubt. Even the slow, meticulous chore of drawing each letter had a charm and a certain pleasure. Each evening, she began with the day’s births and deaths. The former outnumbered the latter by a fat margin. Many of her captains were having new children, and their oldest offspring—the rare ones who had proved loving and loyal—were throwing themselves into their own brave spawning. Marrow was a hard world, but productive, and its humans had become determined and prolific. Births outnumbered deaths by twentyfold, and the gap was only growing. It was the rare captain who didn’t offer eggs or sperm to the effort. Of course if there was a shortfall, Miocene would have commanded total compliance. Even quotas. But that wasn’t a necessary sacrifice, thankfully. And more to the point, that freedom allowed Miocene to be one of the captains who chose not to offer up another son or daughter to this demographic tidal wave.
Once was ample; more than ample, frankly.
Another captain scarred by her experience was Washen. At least that was Miocene’s assumption. Both had sons running with the Waywards. Both knew the dangers inherent in giving birth to another soul. This was why humans so often embraced immortality, Miocene had decided. They wanted to keep responsibility for the future where it belonged, with finished souls who were proven and trustworthy.
“That’s not my excuse,” Washen had replied, anger framed with a careful half-smile.
Quiedy, firmly, Miocene had repeated that inappropriate word. “Excuse?” she said. “Excuse?” Then she shook her head and took a sip of scalding tea, asking, “What exactly do you mean by ‘excuse’?”
It had been an unusual evening. Washen happened by, and on a whim, the Submaster asked the woman to join her. Sitting on low stools outside Miocene’s house, they watched the nearly naked children, full grown and otherwise, moving about the public round. A low canopy of fabric and interwoven sticks supplied shade. But there were holes and gashes left by gnawing insects, little places where the skylight fell through. That light had barely diminished in the last one hundred and eighty years. It was still bright and fiercely hot, and on occasions, useful. The Submaster had set a parabolic steel bowl beneath one hole, focusing the raw energies on a battered, much-traveled teapot. The rainwater was coming to a fresh boil, and for her guest, Miocene used a rag, preparing a big mug of tea. Washen accepted the gift with a nod, remarking, “I already have a son.”
Miocene didn’t say what she thought first. Or what she thought next. Instead, she simply replied, “You do. Yes.”
“If I find a good father, I’ll have another one or two.”
Washen had difficulty picking lovers. Diu was a traitor. How else to describe him? But he was a useful traitor, finding ways to feed them information on the Waywards activities’ and whereabouts.
Washen said, “Mass-producing offspring… I just don’t believe that’s best…”
Miocene nodded, telling her, “I agree.”
“And I find myself…’ She hesitated, a smooth political sensibility causing her to shape her next words with care.
“What?” the Submaster prodded.
“The morality of it. Having children, and so many of them, too.”
“What do you mean, darling?”
The gift tea was sipped, swallowed. Then Washen seemed to decide that she didn’t care what Miocene thought of her. “It’s a cynical calculation, making these kids. They aren’t here because of love—”
“We don’t love them?” Miocene’s heart quickened, for just a moment.
“We do, of course. Absolutely. But their parents were motivated by simple pragmatic logics. First, and always. Children offer hands and minds that we can shape, we hope, and those same hands and minds are going to build the next bridge.”
“According to Aasleen’s plans,” Miocene added.
“Naturally, madam.”
“And aren’t those very important reasons?”
“We tell ourselves they are.” Marrow had changed Washen’s face. The flesh was still smooth and healthy, but her diet and the constant UV-enriched light had changed her complexion, her skin now a brownish-gray. Like smoke, really. And more than her flesh, her eyes were different. Always smart, they looked stronger now. More certain. And the mind behind them seemed more willing than ever to put a voice to its private thoughts.
“Shouldn’t we try to escape?” Miocene pressed.
“But what happens afterward?” the captain countered. “We need so many bodies in the next forty-eight hundred years. If we’re going to have the industrial capacity that Aasleen envisions, and assuming that Marrow continues to expand, of course. Assuming. Then we’re back home again, and let’s imagine that we’re heroes, and so on… but what happens to this raw little nation-state that we’ve spawned…?”
“Not everything needs to be decided now,” Miocene replied.
“Which is the worst problem, I think.”
“Excuse me?”
“Madam,” said the captain. “In the end, it’s not our place to decide. It’s our childrens’ and grandchildrens’ future.”
Suddenly, Miocene wished it was time for bed. Then she could excuse herself without losing face, and in her private darkness, she could replicate the day in her diary. A few lines of tiny script were enough. The paper was as thin as technically possible today, but as the years mounted, it was becoming increasingly difficult to carry the burgeoning history.
“Our ship,” said the Submaster, “has embraced every sort of passenger. An odd alien is more demanding than our children can ever be.”
Silence.
Miocene smoothed her uniform. It was a cool white fabric, porous to their fragrant, endless sweat, and sewn through it were threads of pure silver meant to symbolize the mirrored uniforms of the past. Out on the public round and everywhere else, the children wore nothing but breech-cloths and brief skirts and tiny vests. Miocene long ago accepted their near nudity, if only because it allowed the ancient captains, dressed in their noble garb, to stand apart.