“But Locke,” a second voice remarked, “don’t you realize? He was probably my father, too.”
Miocene recognized that voice.
Plainly stunned, Locke asked, “Was he? How do you know?”
The Submaster inhaled, and again she forced her eyes to open. Her son was kneeling before her, eyes focused on her eyes, that charming, pretty face breaking into a knowing smile. “Am I right, Mother? Was Diu my father?”
One of her most cherished secrets. All those vials of semen, and she selected a donor with gifts but minimal status. A father who wouldn’t be in any position to contest her role as the child’s sole parent…
Miocene nodded.
The whistling had stopped now. With blood on her tongue, she softly asked, “How long… have you known…?”
Till laughed for a moment. Then he said, “Always.”
Locke stumbled into view, at least as shocked as Miocene. “We’re brothers, and you always knew it,” he muttered, wrestling with the possibilities. Then he quietly and fearfully asked, “What else did you know?”
Miocene spat out the blood, then said, “It was always Diu. Always.”
Her son had deep cold eyes.
Locke stepped nearer, whispering, “But you knew that, too.” He was staring at Till, saying, “I saw you. While Diu was confessing, I saw it in your face. You already knew all about his deceptions!”
Till winked fondly at his mother.
Then he looked at his half brother, and with a smooth, untroubled voice, said, “Our father was an agent. A means. A great tool of the Builders. But Diu’s work was finished, and you did exactly what was necessary, and nothing has changed. Do you hear me, Locke? You had to kill that man, or he would have murdered someone in whom the Builders have all their great, glorious hopes…”
Locke glanced at new gray wall, his face slick with tears.
Till looked down and said, “Mother,” with a firm, low voice.
“I’ve been wrong,” said the shattered woman. “Wrong, and stupid.”
“You have been,” he allowed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t know how sorry.”
Till said nothing.
Then she whimpered, “Forgive me. Can you, please?”
His expression gave his answer. He smiled warmly, if only for an instant. Then he stood and remarked to Locke, “We need to hide our presence. As best as we can, then better. Then we’ll use Diu’s fancy machine to return to Marrow, and we’ll shut the tunnel as our father planned.”
Carefully, Locke asked, “What about my mother?”
Till sighed and said, “Let her sleep. For now, that’s all that we can do.”
Locke wiped at his tears, but he moved like a man who knew his duty, who understood what was expected of him.
Waywards could make wonderful followers, thought Miocene. Then she coughed, and with a stronger voice, she suggested, “You could go above… and look at the ship for yourself. Just once.”
Till regarded her with pity and with amusement. “What did you find up there, Mother?”
Miocene’s old anger fused with a new rage. Emotion helped her sit up again, her trembling hand grasping a piece of dead heart muscle, crushing it as she said, “The Master’s an idiot, unfit for her office… obviously, obviously…”
Till nodded knowingly.
“For my forgiveness,” he asked, “what are you willing to give?”
“Anything,” Miocene muttered. “Tell me what you want…!”
But her son merely shook his head, and with a sad, sturdy voice, he said to Locke, “Your laser.” Then with the weapon in both hands, he said to his mother, “You’re wrong. Don’t you see? I have never wanted you to follow me.”
“No?” she squeaked.
“That’s not my destiny,” he promised. “Or yours.”
Then she understood—suddenly; perfectly—and her eyes grew wide.
Till aimed the laser at her broken body, and with a flash of blue-white light, he destroyed everything but her tough old mind, plus enough skull and unburnt hair to serve as a trustworthy handle.
THE MASTER’S CHAIR
This was what it was: a trillion voices assembled into the least disciplined of choirs, every singer screaming its own passionate melody, each using some cumbersome, intensely personal language, and inside that mayhem and majesty, only one entity was capable of hearing the plaintive squeak of the softest, shyest voice.
Such was the Master Captain’s burden, and her consuming, exhilarating joy.
With perfect ears, she listened to the wind profiles over the enormous Alpha Sea. The Blue Sea. Lawson’s Sea. Blood-as-Blessing Sea. And those other five hundred and ninety-one major bodies of standing water. She heard the ship’s shield strengths. The health of its laser arrays. The repair status on its forward face: fair, good, excellent. (Never poor, and mostly excellent.) Plus the hydrogen harvests from the extrasolar environment, in metric tons per microsecond. She knew the oxygen profiles of every chamber, hallway, and inhabited closet. (Two tenths of a percent too high in the Quagmire, endangering its minimally aerobic passengers.) Carbon dioxide levels to the same warm precision. Biologically inactive gases, less so. And there were the ambient light levels. And voices that spoke of temperature. Humidity. Toxin checks. Photosynthetic rates, measured by direct means and by implication. Decay rates and decay agents. Biological; chemical; unknown. Census figures, updated with precision every seven seconds. Immigrants; emigrants; births; asexual divisions; and the occasional wail of Death. Comprehensive lists of passengers were complied and recompiled. By species. By home world. By audible name, or structured touch, or the distinct and enriching scent of an individual fart. And according to their payment, too. Ship currency, or barter, or through gifts of knowledge. Profit was as critical as hydrogen harvests and oxygen counts, and it was calculated on twenty-three separate and elaborate scales, none of which was perfectly accurate. But linked together, they built a comprehensive estimate that wasn’t too much of a shambles, and it was that heavy-shouldered estimate that was beamed toward the now distant Earth, once every six hours, along with a comprehensive sketch of the ship’s last quarter of a day: in essence, reminding whoever might be listening thirty thousand years from today that here they were and and their voyage was progressing according to schedule and the going was going quite well, thank you. Said the Master’s own voice.
The one-time derelict had evolved into a vibrant ship, rich and fundamentally happy—at least so far as a Master’s many nexuses could measure qualities as ethereal and private as happiness.
But one matter kept worrying both nexuses and the woman, and that was the nagging, impossible mystery about Miocene and the other missing captains.
When her captains first vanished, the Master’s response was a purposeful, magnificent panic. She dispatched security troops, uniformed and otherwise, who combed the vast ship, hunting for a few hundred women and men. At first the troops used subtle means, then after a barren week, random sweeps were implemented. And after another month of conspicuous failure, the troops gathered up known troublemakers and unlikable souls and held an assortment of surgical interrogations.
Yet the missing captains—the best of the best—still would not be found.