“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 passes, 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 Ship 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 passengers 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 assured. “The Great Ship 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 Ship. 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 Ship. 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 Ship 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 Ship’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 passed 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.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The voice said, “Listen.”
Alone remained silent, straining to hear any sound, no matter how soft or fleeting. But nothing else was offered. Silence lay upon silence, chilled and black, and he spent the next long while trying to decipher which language was used. No human tongue, clearly. Yet those few words were as transparent and simple as anything he had heard before.
Once healed, he seeped light.
The engine’s interior was complex and redundant, and most of its facilities were scarcely used. Except for the occasional crackling whisper, radio talk never reached him. He could wander again. Happy, he discovered a series of nameless places where the slightest frosting of dust lay over every surface, that dust never disturbed. Billions of years of benign neglect promised seclusion. No one would find him in this vastness, and if nothing else happened in his life, all would be well.
Centuries passed.
Technicians and their machines traveled through these places, but always bound for other, more important locations.
Hiding was easy inside the catacombs.
The Ship gave warning when the overhead engine was about to be fired. Great valves were opened and closed, vibrations traveling along the sleeping tubes. A deeper chill could be felt as lakes of liquid hydrogen were prepared for fusion. Alone always found three sites where he could quickly find shelter. His planning worked well, and he saw no reason to change what was flawless. And then one day, everything changed. Alone was sitting inside a minor conduit, happily basking in a pool of golden light leaking from his inexplicable body. He was thinking about nothing of consequence. And then that perfect instant was in the past. There was a deep rumble and the ominous feel of dense fluids on the move, and before he could react, he was picked up and carried along by a hot viscous and irresistible liquid. Not hydrogen, and not water either. It was some species of oil dirtied up with odd metals and peculiar structures. He was trapped inside juices and passion, life and more life, and he responded with a desperate scream.