Then came the inevitable dinner when she announced with a booming, yet sorrowful voice that the captains’ vessel had struck a shard of comet, and they would not be seen again. Her toast was made with vinegary wine—the standard drink for such gloomy occasions—and dinner itself was the funeral feast borrowed from a species of cold deep-space aliens. The captains destroyed their mouths with a ritualistic bite of a methane-ice fruit. That was the last year when places were set for their vanished colleagues. For Miocene, and Hazz. And Washen. And for the rest of the much-honored dead.
More than forty-eight centuries had passed since the Vanishing.
One hundred and twenty-one feasts had been held since two ghosts had appeared suddenly, talking about a nonexistent world called Marrow.
Nothing had come of it. Someone’s stupid and very cruel joke had thrown the Master into an unseemly panic, and she had spent the last century trying to convince everyone that the apparitions were anything but real. They had to be someone’s cruel illusion. Because what other choice did she have? A Master Captain’s first duties were to her chair and her ship, and what kind of Master would she be if a holoimage and a handful of vague clues were to steer her away from traditions that had served both ship and chair for more than a hundred millennia…?
No, she didn’t want to think about the Vanished. Not tonight, or ever again. But she seemed unable to stop herself, and trying to purge her mind, to make herself stronger and inflexible, only seemed to make the ghosts stronger, too.
The Master’s long table was set on a grassy ridge, affording a view that improved when she slowly, majestically rose to her feet. Her goblet was filled with a blood-colored harum-scarum wine. Was that why she was thinking of the dead? Or was it because directly in front of her, practically mocking her, was the empty chair reserved for Pamir? Absent again. Just like last year, and the year before. What was wrong with that captain? Such a talent… questionable but quick instincts married to an admirable, almost transcendent tenaciousness… and despite his ugly temperament, a captain able to inspire his subordinates and the average passenger…
Yet he couldn’t let himself bend for these little captainly rituals.
It was a weakness of character, and spirit, that had always, even in the best times, crippled his chance to rise into the ship’s highest ranks.
“Where’s Pamir?” she asked one of her security nexuses.
“Unknown,” was the instant response.
“Are there any messages from him?”
The next response was slow in coming, and odd. The nexus’s sexless voice asked her, “Where do you think that captain might be?”
In frustration, she killed that bothersome channel.
Sometimes the Master found herself thinking that she had lived too long and too narrowly, and the simple grind of work had worn away the genius that had earned her this high office. If everyone in this room were suddenly set equal, she almost certainly wouldn’t be named the Master Captain. Even in her most prideful moments, she understood that others could fill her chair as well as she could, or better. Even when she felt utterly in control, like now, a wise and ageless and extremely weary part of herself wished that one of these worshipful faces would tell her, “Sit elsewhere. Let yourself relax. I’ll take the helm for you, at least for a little while.”
But the rest of the woman seethed at the idea of it. Always.
It was the steely, self-possessed part of her that was standing now, gazing across the hectares of smiling faces and mirrored uniforms and cold dead fish. For this feast, the local birds and the louder insects had been lured into cages, then taken away. Everything that could know better knew to be quiet. An unnatural silence hung over the room. With her right hand, the Master grasped the crystal goblet. She swirled the wine once, a dark red clot dislodging from the rim and turning slowly as she lifted the goblet to her face, inhaling the aroma before the hand raised the goblet higher, up over her head, as she said, “Welcome,” in a thunderous voice. “All of you who cared enough to be here today, welcome. And thank you!”
A self-congratulating murmur passed through the audience.
Then again, silence.
The Master opened her mouth, ready to deliver her much anticipated toast. Captains who dealt with the newest alien passengers were to be singled out this year. She would sing praises for their excellence, then demand improvements in the coming decades. The ship was entering a region thick with new species, new challenges. What better way to ready your staff than by feeding them congratulatory words, then showing them your hardest gaze?
But before the first word found its way out of her mouth, she hesitated. Her breath came up short, and some obscure sense tied to one of her security nexuses started to focus on something very distant, and small, and wrong.
Her eyes saw a slow, unexpected motion.
From behind the walkyleen flycatchers came several figures. Then dozens more. And accompanying their appearance was a growing commotion, the seated captains wheeling around to stare at these visitors.
They were captains, weren’t they?
Pamir and the other rude ones were arriving, at last and together. That’s what the Master told herself, but she couldn’t see anyone with Pamir’s build, and she noticed that most of the newcomers, no matter their color, had a smoky tint to their flesh.
For a better look, she tried to interface with the security eyes, only to learn that each of them had fallen into their diagnostic modes.
Like a clumsy person trying to hold a lump of warm grease, the Master struggled to find any working security system.
None were responding.
“What’s happening?” she asked every nexus.
A thousand answers bombarded her in a senseless, unnerving roar. Then she focused on the newcomers, on their nearest faces. The ship and everything else had vanished. The Master found herself staring at the handsome woman at the lead, the tall one with her constricted face and the slick, hairless scalp, who looked rather like someone in whom she had given up all hope…
“Miocene,” the Master blurted. “Is it?”
Whoever she was, the woman smiled like Miocene—a sturdy, almost amused expression leading her up to the main table. Flanking her were people who resembled the missing captains, in their faces and builds and in the confident way they carried themselves. One man in particular caught the Master’s attention. He had Miocene’s face and baldness, and a boyish little body, and bright eyes that seemed to relish everything he was seeing. He was the one who looked left, then right, nodding at his companions, causing them to stop next to the various tables, each of the strangers picking up the cold fishes, examining them with a peculiar astonishment, as if they had never before seen such creatures.
Miocene, or whoever she was, climbed the grassy ridge.
The bright-eyed man remained at her side.
Softly, the Master asked, “Is it you?”
The woman’s smile had turned cold and furious. Her uniform was mirrored, but too stiff, and the leather belt was totally out of place. She paused in front of the Master, and looking up and down the long table—staring at each of the Submasters—she said nothing. Nothing.
Earwig and the other Submasters were hailing the nonexistent security systems. Demanding action. Begging for information. Then, looking at one another, a wild panic began to take hold.
Softly, the Master asked, “How are you, darling?”
The reply came with Miocene’s voice and her cold firmness. She stared across the table, saying, “Earwig. Darling. You’re in my seat.”