Quietly, he said, “Puzzleboys.”
“That’s a human name. A translation, and like most approximations, inadequate.”
With a burst of radio, the species’ name was offered in its native language.
“Do you recognize it?” asked Aasleen.
He admitted, “I don’t, no.”
“All right.” She nodded. A thin smile broke and then vanished again. “Let’s have some fun. Try to imagine that somebody we know, some familiar civilization, dreamed you up and sent you to the Great Ship. Maybe they borrowed puzzleboy technologies. Maybe you’ve sprung from a different engineering history. Right now, I’m looking at a lot of data. But despite everything I see, I can’t pick one answer over the others. Which is why this so interesting. And fun.”
Alone said nothing.
She laughed briefly, softly. “That leaves me with a tangle of questions. For instance, do you know what scares me about you?”
He took a moment before asking, “What scares you?”
“Your power supply.”
“Why?”
Aasleen didn’t seem to hear the question. “And I’m not the only person sick with worry,” she admitted. She closed one of her eyes and opened it again abruptly. “Miocene,” she said, and sighed. “Miocene is an important captain. And you’re considered a large enough problem that, right now, that captain is sitting inside a hyperfiber bunker three kilometers behind me. Three kilometers is probably far enough. If the worst happens, that is. But of course nothing is going to go bad now. As I explained to Miocene and the other captains, you seem to have survived quite nicely and without mishap, possibly for many thousands of years. What are the odds that your guts are going to fail today, in my face?”
He considered his nature.
“Do you have any idea what’s inside you?”
“No,” he admitted.
“A single speck of degenerated matter. Possibly a miniature black hole, although you’re more likely a quark assemblage of one or another sort.” She sighed and shrugged, adding, “Regardless of your engine design, it is novel. It’s possible, yes, and I have a few colleagues who have done quite a lot of work proving that this kind of system might be used safely. But to see something like you in action, and to realize that you’ve existed for who-knows-how-long, and apparently without demanding any significant repair…
“Alone,” she said, “I am a very good engineer. One of the best I’ve ever met, regardless of the species. And I just can’t believe in you. Honestly, it’s impossible for me to accept that you are real.”
“Then release me,” he begged.
She laughed.
He watched her face, her nervous fingers.
“In essence,” she continued, “you are a lucid entity carrying a tiny quasar inside your stomach. A quasar smaller than an atom and enclosed within a magnetic envelope, but massive and exceptionally dense.”
“Quasar,” he repeated.
“Matter, any matter, can be thrown inside you, and if only a fraction of the resulting energy is captured, you will generate shocking amounts of power.”
He considered her explanation. Then with a quiet tone, he mentioned, “I have seen the Ship’s engines firing.”
“Have you?”
“Next to them, I am nothing.”
“That’s true enough. In fact, I’ve got a few machines sitting near us that can outstrip your capacities, and by a wide margin. But as Submaster Miocene has reminded me, if your magnetic envelope is breached, and if your stomach can digest just your own body mass, the resulting fireworks will probably obliterate several cubic kilometers of the Ship, and who knows how many innocent souls.”
Alone believed her. But then he remembered that good lies have believable details and he didn’t feel as certain.
Aasleen smiled in a sad fashion. “Of course I don’t know exactly what would happen, if your stomach got loose. Maybe it has safety mechanisms that I can’t see. Or maybe its fire would reach out and grab my body, and everything else in this room would be consumed, as well as Miocene…and with that, the Great Ship would be short one engine, and the survivors would have an enormous hole in the hull, spewing poisons and nuclear fire.”
“I won’t fail,” he promised.
She nodded. “I think that’s an accurate statement. I know I want to believe that both of us are perfectly safe.”
“I won’t hurt the Ship.”
“All right. But why do you feel certain?”
He said, “Because I am.”
Aasleen closed her eyes, once again concentrating on the machines inside her head.
“Please,” said Alone. “Let me go free.”
“I can’t.”
He changed his shape.
Aasleen’s eyes opened. “I know that story about you and Wune. My guess? That you’d take on my appearance like you did hers.”
But he hadn’t. He had no limbs now, no face. To the eye, he looked like a ball of hyperfiber with giant rockets on one hemisphere, thick armor on the other. Using a hidden mouth, he promised, “I won’t do any harm. I shall not hurt anyone and I will never injure the Ship.”
“You just want to left by yourself,” she said.
“Nothing else.”
“But why?”
He had no response.
“Which leads us to another area of deep concern,” she continued. “A machine built by unknown hands is discovered wandering inside another machine built by unknown hands. But there seems to be two mysteries, there might be only one. Do you understand what I mean?”
He said, “No.”
“Two machines, but only one builder.”
He didn’t react.
She shook her head. “We don’t know how old the Great Ship is. Not precisely, but we have informed guesses. And no matter how well-engineered you appear to be, I don’t think you’re several billion years old.”
He remained silent.
Aasleen took one step closer. “There’s the third terror involving you: a captain’s nightmare. Maybe you are the puzzleboys’ machine. Or you’re somebody else’s representative. Either way, if you arrived here on the Ship before any human did, and if there’s a lost soul inside whatever passes for your mind…well, then it’s possible that a different species might legally claim possession over the wealth and impossibilities that the Great Ship offers. And at that point, no matter how sweet your engineering is, your fate is out my hands…”
Her voice trailed away.
She took a tiny step forward.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t know what I am. I know nothing.”
The tiny machines inside Aasleen were speaking rapidly again.
“I’m watching your mind,” she confessed. “But I’m not at all familiar with its neural network. It’s a sloppy design, or it’s revolutionary. I don’t know enough to offer an opinion.”
“I wish to leave now,” he said.
“In the universe, there are two kinds of unlikely,” Aasleen warned. “The Great Ship is one type—never attempted or even imagined, but achievable, provided someone has time and the muscle to make it real. And then there’s the implausible that you imagine will come true, and one day your worst fears turn real. If the Great Ship belongs to someone else, then my species has to surrender our claim. And even though I believe that I am a good and charitable soul, I don’t want that to happen. Facing that prospect, I would fight to keep that from happening, in fact.”
Alone did nothing, gathering his strength.
“And even if you are safe as rain,” she said, “I don’t relish the idea of you wandering wherever you like. Not on my ship. Certainly not until we can find the answers to all these puzzles.”
Without warning, Alone lost his shape, turning into a hot broth that tried to flow around the grasping arms.
The arms seemed to expect his trick, quickly creating one deep bowl that held him in place.