“Sir?” the machine squeaked.
“Calculate this for me. Imagine the strongest known hyperfiber, then tell me how thick it would have to be to show what we’re seeing.”
The answer came quickly, wrapped in an easy doubt. “One hundred and ninety-seven kilometers thick, and without purpose. Sir.”
Pamir began to run, one hand and then the other rubbing against the tunnel’s diamond walls. “Assume it’s real,” he barked. “Would that much hyperfiber be strong enough to withstand the ship’s own mass?”
Silence.
“It would be, wouldn’t it?” He ran to his left, then down a narrow steep set of stairs, a leech grayness taking hold now. And laughing with a giddy nervousness, he told the distant machine, “You’re embarrassed, aren’t you?”
He cried out, “This big old ship still has secrets. Doesn’t she?”
But the AI wasn’t responding, and in that half-moment when curiosity should have turned to concern, Pamir reached the bottom of the stairs, and staring down the last few meters of the gray tunnel, he saw a stranger.
A human, and male.
The stranger had grayish skin and no hair whatsoever, and he seemed to be wearing, of all things, a captain’s uniform. Clenched in his left hand was a tool or weapon, and his right hand and eyes were examining the sealed door-way to the leech habitat. He must have heard Pamir’s boots on the gray plastic, but he didn’t react. He waited until Pamir was close before he spun around, his face almost smiling, the left hand lifting the device—some kind of soldier-class laser—with a practiced nonchalance.
Pamir pulled to a stop and held his breath.
The stranger indeed wore a captain’s uniform, but with odd embellishments. A rich golden hair was woven into a decorative braid, and there were tall leather boots and a leather belt cluttered with tools, some familiar and some not. He was a short man, but thickly built. A strong finger gripped what was obviously a mechanical trigger, and quietly, almost softly, the man said to him, “Keep still.”
His voice had an unexpected accent.
Pamir told him, “I’m not moving anywhere.”
“Good.”
There was no way to escape, and very little chance to attack the stranger. Wearing a dress uniform, Pamir had minimal armor. In a whisper, he said, “Emergency channel. Now”
The stranger shook his head, remarking, “That won’t help.”
Sure enough, no one seemed to hear him. What was happening?
Pamir curled his toes inside his boots, then uncurled them. And he breathed deeply, twice, before saying, “You look lost, Captain. And frankly, you smell a little odd.”
The man shrugged, then gestured with his right hand. “Open this door for me.”
“Why?”
“I want to see the aliens’ house.’Then with a controlled but palpable alarm, “The house is still there, isn’t it?”
Pamir titled his head, and smiled.
“It has to be there,” the strange captain decided. “Don’t try to confuse me!”
“I can open the door for you,” said Pamir.
The man had gray eyes that easily turned to suspicion. Some calculation was made, a decision was made. He aimed his laser at Pamir’s chest, telling him, “I don’t need you. I can break your little lock myself.”
“So do it.”
“Stand still,” the stranger advised, gray eyes narrowing. “I’ll cripple you if you behave. If not, I’ll have to kill you.”
Reflexively, Pamir took a half-step backward.
Then those gray eyes dropped, and quietly, with a mixture of surprise and thick awe, he asked, “What is that?”
Pamir slowly unfastened the silver clock, then opened it.
“What are you doing with that?” he asked. “Did my mother give it to you-?”
“Washen’s your mother?” he blurted.
The stranger nodded, then asked, “Where is she?”
“Why? Don’t you know?”
The man couldn’t help but glance at the sealed doorway, and that was the moment when Pamir threw the watch, aiming for the shaved back of the head, and with all of his speed and desperation, he threw himself, too.
Thirty-four
The Grand Hall was a hemispherical compartment more than a kilometer tall at its apex and exactly twice as wide. Its ceiling had arching bands of hyperfiber riding next tonthe greenish olivine, the former lending a glittery brightness to the room’s floating lights and to every echoed sound. The original floor was simple stone, but the humans had pulverized it, then mixed compost into the rock dust, creating a rich deep soil in which grew ornamental trees from a thousand worlds, and a soft green grass known as Kentucky for no reason other than that it had always been. For most of the year, the room was a public garden. In a ship jammed with spectacles, this was a quiet, sober place where frayed nerves found solace and a few despairing souls had gone to attempt suicide. But as the captains’ feast drew near, robots set up tables and chairs in careful patterns, and the tables were covered with intricate linen designed for this single occasion, and ten thousand place settings were arranged according to conventions older than anyone could calculate. Plates whiter than bone were flanked by heavy goldware utensils, and perfumed cloth was folded in artful patterns, waiting to wash dirty faces and fingers. Crystal goblets filled themselves through hidden nipples, every liquor and molten drug grown somewhere inside the ship, and every sip of chilled water was brought up from the famous artesian wells next to the Alpha Sea, celebrating the first impromptu captains’ feast held more than a hundred millenia ago.
Each captain had her place, or his, marked with a handwritten placard, the Master Captain’s loud script obvious at a distance. The placement of one’s chair was everything. Rank mattered, but so did the quality of the officer’s year. Captains to be bestowed new honors sat near the Master’s own table. Captains who needed humiliation were assigned more distant seats than expected, the worst of them set behind a bank of walkyleen flycatchers. The meal itself was meant to be a surprise, and in an attempt to honor their passengers, it was usually an array of alien dishes, their amino acids and stereochemistry left untouched—a grand tradition that made a few bellies uncomfortable, and some years, more than a few.
Today’s meal was cold uncooked fish from the sunless depths of the harum-scarum sea. Vast dead eyes stared up at the hungry captains. The eating mouths were clamped shut while the gill mouths slowly opened and closed, the flesh too stubborn to stop its useless search for oxygen. Inside every fish stomach was a salad of purple vegetation and sour fruits and tenoil dressing that resembled, in texture and in odor, unrefined petroleum. Hidden elsewhere inside the corpse was a golden worm, smaller than any finger and treasured by the harum-scarum as a delicacy to be consumed one lucious segment at a time.
Every active captain had a place set for her and for him.
Even the absent captains were given a plate, a fish, and the honor of a seat. Though cynics liked to complain that the apparent honor only underscored their absence, giving their snobbish peers the opportunity to say whatever they wished about those who weren’t present to defend themselves.
Centuries ago, when the captains vanished abruptly, their seats remained, and placards with their names written by one of the Master’s automated hands, and their meals were prepared in the captain’s galley, delivered by crew members in dress uniforms, and left there for the flies.
For years, the Master would rise to her feet, beginning the evening with a vague yet flowery toast to those missing souls, wishing them well as they fulfilled the mysterious duties of some unmentionable assignment.