The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 18

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I know so little about myself," confessed the walker.

"That is sad," Wune said. "I'm sorry for you."

"Why?"

"Life is the past," she stated. "The present moment is too narrow to slice and will be lost with the next instant.And the future is nothing but empty conjecture. Where you have been is what matters. What you have done is what counts for and against you on the tallies."

The walker concentrated on those unexpected words.

"I have a telescope with me," Wune said. "I used it when I first saw you. But I'm trying to be polite. If you don't mind, may I study you now?"

"If you wish," it said uneasily.

The Remora warned, "This might take some time, friend." Then with both gloved hands, she held a long tube to her face.

Alone waited.

An hour later, Wune asked, "Are you a machine?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I am."

"Or do you carry an organic component inside that body?"

"Each answer is possible, I think."

Wune lowered the telescope. "I'm a little of both," she allowed. "I like to believe that I'm more organic than mechanical, but the two facets happily live inside me."

Alone said nothing.

The Remora laughed softly, admitting, "This is fun."

Was it?

To her new friend, she explained, "Thousands of years ago, humans learned how to never grow old. No disease, and no easy way to kill us." The hands were encased in hyperfiber gloves. One of those fingers tapped hard against her diamond faceplate. "My mind? It's a bioceramic machine. Which makes it tough and quick to heal and full of redundancies. My memories are safe inside the artificial neurons. Whenever I want, I can remember yesterday. Or I can pull my head back five centuries and one yesterday. My life is an enormous, deeply personal epic that I am free to enjoy whenever I wish."

"I am different than you," Alone conceded.

Wune asked, "Do you sleep?"

"Never."

"Yet you never feel mentally tired?" The purple face nodded, and she said, "Right now, I'm envious."

Envy was a new word.

"I'm trying to tell you something," she said. "This old Remora lady has been awake for a very long time, and she needs to sleep for a little while. Is that all right? Do whatever you want while my eyes are closed. If you need, walk away from me. Vanish completely." Then she smiled, adding, "Or you might take a step or two in my direction. If you feel the urge, that is."

Then Wune shut her misplaced eyes.

During the next hour, Alone crept ahead a little more than three meters.

As soon as she woke, Wune noticed. "Good. Very good."

"Are you rested now?"

"Hardly. But I'll push through the misery." Her laugh had a different tone. "What's your earliest, oldest memory? Tell me."

"Walking."

"Walking where?"

"Crossing the s.h.i.+p's hull."

"Who brought you to the s.h.i.+p?"

"I have always been here."

She considered those words. "Or you could have been built here," she suggested. "a.s.sembled from a kit, perhaps. You don't remember a crowd of engineers sticking their hands inside you?"

"I remember no one." Then again, with confidence, Alone claimed, "I have never been anywhere but on the Great s.h.i.+p."

"If that was true," Wune began. Then she fell silent.

Alone asked, "What if that is so?"

"I can't even guess at all of the ramifications," she admitted. Then after a few minutes of silence, she said, "Ask something of me. Please."

"Why are you here, Wune?"

"Because I'm a Remora," she offered. "Remoras are humans who got pushed up on the hull to do important, dangerous work. There are reasons for this. Good causes, and bad justifications. Everything that you see here...well, the hull is not intended to be a prison. The captains claim that it isn't. But now and again, it feels like an awful prison."

Then she hesitated, thinking carefully before saying, "I don't think that was your question. Was it?"

"Like me, you are alone," it pointed out. "Most of the humans, Remoras and engineers and the captains...these humans usually gather in large groups, and they act pleased to be that way..."

With a serious tone, she said, "I'm rather different, it seems."

Alone waited.

"The hull is constantly washed with radiation, particularly out here on the leading face." She gestured at the galaxy. "My flesh is immortal. I can endure almost any abuse. But these wild nuclei crash through my cells, wreaking terrible damage. My repair mechanisms are always awake, always busy. I have armies of tiny workers marching inside me, trying to lift my flesh back to robust health. But when I'm alone, and when I focus on my body's functions, I can influence my regenerating flesh. In some ways, with just willpower, I can direct my own evolution."

That seemed to explain the odd, not quite human face.

"I'm out here teaching myself these tricks," Wune admitted. "The hull is no prison. To me, it is a church. A temple. A rare opportunity for the tiniest soul to unleash potentials that her old epic life never revealed to her."

"I understand each of your words," said Alone.

"But?"

"I cannot decipher what you mean."

"Of course you can't." Wune laughed. "Listen. My entire creed boils down to this: If I can write with my flesh, then I can write upon my soul."

"Your 'soul'?"

"My mind. My essence. Whatever it is that the universe sees when it looks hard at peculiar little Wune."

"Your soul," the walker said once again.

Wune spoke for a long while, trying to explain her young faith. Then her voice turned raw and sloppy, and after drinking broth produced by her recyke system, she slept again. The legs of her lifesuit were locked in place. Nearly five hours pa.s.sed with her standing upright, unaware of her surroundings. When she woke again, barely twenty meters of vacuum and hard radiation separated them.

She didn't act surprised. With a quieter, more intimate voice, she asked, "What fuels you? Is there some kind of reactor inside you? Or do you steal your power from us somehow?"

"I don't remember stealing."

"Ah, the thief's standard reply." She chuckled. "Let's a.s.sume you're a machine. You have to be alien-built. I've never seen or even heard rumors about any device like you. Not from the human shops, I haven't." After a long stare, she asked, "Are you male?"

"I don't know."

"I'm going to call you male. Does that offend you?"

"No."

"Then perhaps you are." She wanted to come closer. One boot lifted, seemingly of its own volition, and then she forced herself to set it back down on the hull.

"You claim not to know your own purpose. Your job, your nature. All questions without answer."

"I am a mystery to myself."

"Which is an enormous gift, isn't it? By that, I mean that if you don't know what to do with your life, then you're free to do anything you wish." Her face was changing color, the purple skin giving way to streaks of gold. And during her sleep, her eyes had grown rounder and deeply blue. "You don't seem dangerous. And you do require solitude. I can accept all of that. But as time pa.s.ses, I think you'll discover that it's harder to escape notice out here on the hull. The surface area is enormous, yes. But where will you hide? I promise, I won't chase after you. And I can keep my people respectful of your privacy. At least I hope I can. But the Great s.h.i.+p is cursed with quite a few captains, and they don't approve of mysteries. And we can't count all the adventurers who are coming here now, racing up from countless worlds. Maybe you don't realize this, but our captains have decided to take us on a tour of the galaxy. Humans and aliens are invited, for a fat price, and some of them will hear the rumors about you. Some of these pa.s.sengers will come up on the hull, armed with sensors and their lousy judgment."

Alone listened carefully.

"My reasons are selfish," Wune admitted. "I don't want these tourists under my boots. And since you can't hide forever in plain sight, we need to find you a new home."

Horrified, he asked, "Where can I go?"

"Almost anywhere,"Wune a.s.sured. "The Great s.h.i.+p is ridiculously big. It might take hundreds of thousands of years just to fill up its empty places. The caverns, the little tunnels. The nameless seas and canyons and all the dead-end holes."

"But how can I find those places?"

"I know ways. I'll help you."

Terror and hope lay balanced on the walker's soul.

With those changeless human teeth, Wune smiled. "I believe you," she offered. "You say you know nothing about your nature, your talents. And I think you mean that."

"I do."

"Look at the chest of my suit, will you? Stare into the flat hyperfiber. Yes, here. Do you see your own reflection?"

His body had changed during these last few minutes. Alone had felt the new arms sprouting, the design of his legs adjusting, and without willing it to happen, he had acquired a face. It was a striking and familiar face, the purple flesh shot with gossamer threads of gold.

"I almost wish I could do that," Wune confessed. "Reinvent myself as easily as you seem to do."

He could think of no worthy response.

"Do you know what a chameleon is?"

Alone said, "No."

"You," she said. "Without question, you are the most natural, perfect chameleon that I have ever had the pleasure to meet."

5.

Simply and clearly, Wune explained how a solitary wanderer might secretly slip inside the s.h.i.+p. Then as she grew drowsy again, the Remora wished her chameleon friend rich luck and endless patience. "I hope you find whatever you are hunting," she concluded. "And that you avoid whatever it is that you might be fleeing."

Alone offered thankful words, but he had no intention of accepting advice. Once Wune was asleep, he picked a fresh direction and walked away. For several centuries, he wandered the increasingly smooth hull, watching as the galaxy- majestic and warm and bright-rose slowly to meet the Great s.h.i.+p. Now and again, he was forced to hide in the open. Practice improved his techniques, but he couldn't shake the sense that the Remoras were still watching him, despite his tricks and endless caution. He certainly eavesdropped on them, and whenever Wune's name was mentioned, he listened closely. Never again did her voice find him. But others spoke of the woman with admiration and love. Wune had visited this bubble city or that repair station. She had talked to her people about the honor of serving the Great s.h.i.+p and the strength that came from mastering the evolution of your own mortal body. Then she was dead, killed by a shard of ice that slipped past every laser. Alone absorbed the unexpected news. He didn't understand his emotions, but he hid where he happened to be standing and for a full year did nothing. Wune was the only creature with whom he had ever spoken, and he was deeply shocked, and then he was quite sad, but what wore hardest was the keen pleasure he discovered when he realized that she was dead but he was still alive.

Eventually he wandered back to the s.h.i.+p's trailing face, slipping past the bubble cities and into the realm of giant engines. Standing before one of the towering nozzles, Alone recalled Wune promising small, unmonitored hatches. Careless technicians often left them unsecured. With a gentle touch, Alone tried to lift the first hatch, and then he tried to shove it inwards. But it was locked. Then he worked his way along the base of the nozzle, testing another fifty hatches before deciding that he was mistaken. Or perhaps the technicians had learned to do their work properly. But having little else to do, he invested the next twenty months toying with every hatch and tiny doorway that he came across, his persistence rewarded when what pa.s.sed for his hand suddenly dislodged a narrow doorway.

Darkness waited, and with it, the palpable sense of great distance.

He crawled down, slowly at first, and then the sides of the nearly vertical tunnel pulled away from his grip.

Falling was floating. There was no atmosphere, no resistance to his gathering momentum. Fearing that someone would notice, he left the darkness intact. Soon he was plunging at a fantastic rate, and that's when he remembered Wune cautioning, "These vents and access tubes run straight down, sometimes for hundreds of kilometers."

His tube dropped sixty kilometers before making a sharp turn.

The impact came without warning. One moment, he was mildly concerned about prospects that he couldn't measure, and the next moment saw discomfort and flashes of senseless light as his neural net absorbed the abuse. But he never lost consciousness, and he soon felt his shattered pieces flowing together, making healing motions that continued without pause for three hours.

A familiar voice found him then.

Lying in the dark, unable to move, something quiet came very close and then said, "The cold," before falling silent again.

He didn't try to speak.

Then after a long while, the voice said, "For so long, cold."

"What is cold?" Alone whispered.

"And dark," said the voice.