“And which life is that?”

  “Talk,” said Pamir.

  “Onboard your Great Ship, I once met a Vozzen historian of considerable age and endless learning. The two of us spent months discussing the oldest species of intelligent life, those bold first examples of technological civilizations, and what caused each to lose its grip on Forever and die away. The historian’s mind was larger and far wiser than mine. I admit as much. But you can appreciate how the same principles are at work inside both of us, and inside you. The bioceramic mind is the standard for civilized worlds. It was devised early, and several founding worlds have been given credit, although none of them exist anymore. And since the mind’s introduction into the galaxy, no one has managed more than incremental improvements on its near-perfection.”

  “The brain works,” said Pamir.

  “One basic design is shared by twenty million species. Of course intellect and souls and the colors of our emotions vary widely, even inside the human animal. At first look and after long thought, one might come to the conclusion that it is as you say: We have what’s best, and there isn’t any reason to look farther.”

  “We don’t look farther,” Pamir agreed.

  “Humans don’t. But the Kajjas once did. That is the point: Our nameless fleet was buried inside a great frozen dwarf world, every pulse engine blazing, driving that shrinking world toward our Second Eye, your Andromeda. The survivors of that epic were under orders to investigate what kind of minds those natives employed, and if another, perhaps worthier mind was found, the fleet would return home immediately.

  “At the very most,” said Tailor, “that mission would have demanded eight million years. I was born near the end of that period, and I spent my youth foolishly watched for those heroes to return and enlighten us. But they did not appear, even as an EM whisper. Ten and twenty and then fifty million passed, yet just by their absence, much was learned. We assumed that they were dead and the ships were lost, or the explorers had pushed farther into the void, seeking more difficult answers.

  “Few civilizations ever attempt such wonders. I have always believed that, and the Vozzen happily agreed with my assessment.

  “Don’t you find that puzzling? Intriguing? Wrong? The resources of a galaxy in hand, and few of us ever attempt such a voyage.

  “But my brethren did. And afterward, living inside my galaxy, I have tried my best to answer the same questions. It is the burden and blessing of being Kajjas: Each of us knows that he rules only so much, and every ruler has worthy masters of his own, wherever they might hide.”

  “Sovereigns to the galaxy,” said Pamir, his voice sharpening.

  “You don’t believe in them,” Tailor said.

  “Have you found them?”

  “Everywhere, and nowhere. Yes.” The laugh was brief, accompanied by a sad murmuring from the translator. “Everywhere that I travel, there are rumors of deeds that claim no father, legends of creatures that wear any face and any voice. There is even talk about invisible worlds and hidden realms, conspiracies and favored species and species that diminish and succumb to no good opponent.

  “About our masters, I have little to say. Except that they terrify me, and because I am Kajjas, I wish that I could lie between their mighty feet and beg for some little place at their table.”

  Pamir had too many questions to ask or even care about. His crew was noticing his absence. One nexus rewarded him with a string of obscenities from the twins, and with those words, promises to turn him over to the Great Ship’s captains as soon as they arrived home.

  It was no secret that Pamir could hear them, and Rondie and Maxx didn’t care.

  And all that while, G’lene said nothing.

  “Suddenly,” said Tailor, almost shouting the word.

  “What?”

  “Just two million years ago, suddenly and with the barest of warnings, our old fleet began to return home.”

  Pamir nodded, and waited.

  “The ships appeared as individuals. I won’t explain how a person might know in advance where such a derelict will show itself, but there is a pattern and we have insights, and there have been some little successes in finding them before anyone else. The crews are always missing. Dead, we presume. But ‘missing’ is a larger, finer word. Empty ships return like raindrops, scattered and almost unnoticed, and their AIs are near death, and nothing is learned, and sometimes tragic events find the salvage teams that come out to meet these relics.”

  “Your enemies strike,” Pamir said.

  “Yet disaster isn’t certain,” the alien said. “That might imply that there are no masters of the galaxy. Or it means that they are the ultimate masters, and better than us, they know what is and is not a threat to their powers.”

  Pamir drifted closer, placing his body in a submissive pose.

  Long feet pulled away from the display panel, surrounding the human head. “The old fleet had one additional command,” Tailor said. “If no equal or at least different mind could be found in the wilderness, then the Kajjas had to assemble at some sunless world, preferably a large moon stirred by a brown dwarf sun, and there, free of interference and ordinary thoughts, our finest minds would build a colony. Then in that nameless place, they and their offspring would kill preconceptions and create something else.

  “They were to build a different way of thinking, yes.

  “And that is what they were to send home, however they could and in the safest way possible.”

  Approximating the Kajjas language, the human said, “Shit.”

  Tailor stroked the panel with one hand, watching a thousand shades of blue swirl into fancy shapes that collapsed as soon as the fingers lifted. “I don’t know this language,” he said. “It is older than me and full of odd terms, and maybe it has been corrupted. There are fine reasons to believe that there is no meaning inside these machines. But it is possible, weak as the chance seems, that the truth stands before me, and my ordinary mind, and yours, are simply unable to see what is.”

  The alien was insane, Pamir hoped.

  The hand released the display, and Tailor said, “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “I will help make the ship ready for flight. Obviously, nothing I do here can be confused for good.”

  10

  A brick of metallic hydrogen plunged into the first collar, the widest collar, missing the perfect center by the width of a small cold atom. Compression accompanied the hard kick of acceleration, and then a second collar grabbed hold, flinging it through ten of its brothers. Neutronium wire wrapped inside high-grade hyperfiber made the choke points, each smaller and more massive than the ones before, and the cycle continued down to where the brick was burning like a sun—a searing finger of dense plasma that still needed one last inspiration to become useful, reliable fuel.

  Pulse engines relied on that final collar of degenerate matter. From outside, the structure looked like a ceramic bottle shaped by artisan hands—a broad-mouthed bottle where it began and then tapering to a point that magically dispensed the ultimate wine. Plasma flowed into the bottle’s interior, clinging to every surface while being squeezed. But what was smooth to the eye was vast and intricately shaped at the picometer scale—valleys and whorls, high peaks and sudden holes. Turbulence yielded eddies. The birth of the universe was replicated in tiny realms, and quantum madness took hold. Casimir fields and antiproton production triggered a lovely apocalypse that ended with the obliteration of mass and a majestic blast of light and focused neutrinos.

  Then the next moment arrived, bringing another brick of hydrogen.

  Twelve thousand and five bricks arrived in order. There were no disasters, but the yields proved fickle. Then the ship’s captain killed the engine, invoking several wise reasons for recertifying a control system that was, despite millions of years of sleep, running astonishingly well.

  But who knew what a healthy pulse engine could accomplish?

  The human captain wasn’t sure, and he confessed that loudly, often and without any fear of looking stupid.

  Pamir had settled into a pattern. His nameless ship would accelerate hard, pushing at four gees for ten minutes or three days. Bodies ached. Muscles grew in response to the false weight. Then they would coast for a few minutes or for an hour, except the time they drifted for a week, every easy trajectory slipping out of reach.

  The ship’s sovereigns must have done this good work once, but they remained uncooperative. The streakship’s AIs had been salvaged to serve as autopilots, but they weren’t confident of their abilities. Pamir gave his crew reasons that wanted to be believed. He offered technical terms and faked various solutions that were intended to leave the children scared of this ancient, miserably unhappy contraption. Tailor required a bit more honesty, and that was why the captain invoked the Kajjas’ faceless enemies. Pamir explained that he didn’t want other eyes knowing where they would be tomorrow and thirty years from now. “The wounded bandelmoth is hunted by a flock of ravenous tangles,” Pamir explained. “The moth flies a quick but utterly random course, letting chance help fend off the inevitable.”

  “Why not tell the others what you tell me?” the Kajjas asked. “Why invent noise about ‘damned stuck valves’ and ‘damned chaotic flows’?”

  “I don’t trust my crew,” he said flatly.

  The Kajjas tapped one foot, agreeing with the sentiment.

  “If our children thought they could fly home, they might try it.”

  “But what I wish to know: Do you have faith in our new captain?”

  “More than I have in the rest of you,” Pamir said. “I don’t believe what you believe, old friend. Not about the galaxy’s mysterious rulers. Not about the peculiar sameness of our brains. Not about mysterious foes diving out of the darkness to kill us.”

  “I believe quite a lot more than that,” Tailor said.

  “Of course our enemy could be more treacherous than you can imagine. For example, maybe toxic memes have taken control over me, and that’s why I took charge of this primordial ship.”

  “I hope that isn’t the case,” said the Kajjas.

  “And I’ll share that wish, or I’ll pretend to.”

  “And what’s your impression of Tailor?”

  Pamir shrugged. “The ancient boy dances with some bold thoughts. He sounds brave and a little wise, and on his best days profound. But really, I consider him to be the dodgiest suspect of all.”

  “Then we do agree,” said Tailor. “I trust none of us.”

  They laughed for a moment, quietly, without pleasure.

  “But again,” Pamir concluded. “I don’t accept your galactic sovereigns. Except when I make myself believe in them, and even then, I always fall back on the lesson that every drive-mechanic understands.”

  “Which lesson?”

  “A reliable star-drive doesn’t count every hydrogen atom. The machinery doesn’t need to know the locations of every proton and electron. No engineer, sane or pretending to be, would design any engine that attempts to control every element inside its fire. And for all of their chaos and all of their precision, star-drives are far simpler than any corner of the galaxy.

  “Maybe I’m wrong. You’re right, and some grand game is being played with the Milky Way and all of us. But you and I, my friend: We are two atoms of hydrogen, if that. And no engine worth building cares about our tiny, tiny fates.”

  * * *

  Robots could have been trusted with this work, if someone brought them and trained them and then insulated each of them from clever enemies. No, maybe it was better that the crew did everything. They worked through the boost phases, and they picked up their pace during the intervals of free fall. G’lene was the weakest: Clad in an armored lifesuit, suffering from the gees, she could do little more than secure herself to the hull’s scaffolding, slicing away at the scrap parts set directly in front of her. Complaining was a crucial part of her days, and she spent a lot of air and imagination sharing her epic miseries. By comparison, the twins were stoic soldiers who reveled in their strength, finding excuses to race one another between workstations and back to the airlock at the end of the day. But Tailor proved to be the marvel, the prize. The Kajjas world was more massive than the earth, but his innate physical power didn’t explain his dependability or the polish of his efforts. Pamir told him what needed to be cut and into what shapes and where the shards needed to be stored, and looking at the captain as his sovereign, he never grumbled, and every mistake was his own.

  One day, Tailors’ shop torch burped and burnt away his leg. He reacted with silence, sealing the wound with the same flame before dragging himself inside, stripping out of the lifesuit and eating one of the bottled feasts kept beside the airlock, waiting to supercharge any healings.

  “Captains have a solemn duty,” the twins joked afterwards. “They should sacrifice the same as their crew.”

  “Yeah, well, my leg stays on,” said Pamir.

  The laughter was nearly convincing.

  Two years were spent slowly dismantling the streakship. Every shard of baryonic matter had been shaped and put away, waiting to be shoved down the engine’s throat after the hydrogen was spent. The only task left was to carve up the streakship’s armored prow. Better than hydrogen, better than any flavor of baryonic matter, a slender smooth blade of hyperfiber would ignore compression and heat, fighting death until its instantaneous collapse and a jolt of irresistible power. But hyperfiber was a better fuel in mathematics than it was in reality, subject to wildness and catastrophic failure—a measure waiting for desperate times.

  Shop torches were too weak. Sculpting hyperfiber meant deploying one of their plasma guns. Pamir ordered his crew to remaining indoors, the humans maintaining the lights and atmosphere while Tailor was free to return to his obsessions. For five months, Pamir began every day by passing through the airlock to wake a single gun. A block of armor was fixed into a vice, waiting to be carved into as many slips of fuel as possible. The work lasted until his nerves were shot. Then the gun had to be secured, and he crawled back inside the ship. G’lene always threw a smile at him. The twins pretended to ignore him, their curses still echoing in the bright air. Tailor was muttering to the sovereigns or searching for cargoes that didn’t exist, or he did nothing but sit and think. Pamir needed to sit and think. But first he had to kick his way to the engine, attacking its inevitable troubles.

  When the sixth month began, the twins stopped cursing him.

  Even worse, they started to smile. They called him, “Sir,” and without prompting, they did their duties. One evening Rondie was pleasant, almost charming, grinning when she said that she knew that his jobs were difficult and she was thankful, like everyone, for his help and good sense.

  Pamir wasn’t sure what to believe, and so he believed everything.

  Tailor continued fighting with the sovereigns.

  “I have a verdict,” he said one day.

  “And that is?” asked Pamir.

  “These machines are not insane. They pretend madness to protect something from someone. And the problem is that they won’t tell me what either might be.”

  “Can you break through?”

  “If I was as wise as my ancestors, I would, yes.” The Kajjas laughed. “So I am convinced and a little thankful that I never will be.”

  Three years and a month had passed since their launch, the voyage barely begun. Pamir shook himself out of a forty minute nap, ate a quick breakfast and then donned a lifesuit that needed repairs. But the hyperfiber harvest would end in another nine days, and the suit was still serviceable. So alone, he trudged through the airlock and onto a gangway. The plasma gun was locked where he had left it six hours ago. The gun welcomed him with a diagnostic feed, and while it was charging, Pamir used three nexuses to watch the interior. The twins were sleeping. G’lene was studying a mechanic’s text, boredom driving her toward competency. And Tailor was staring into a display panel, trying to guess the minds of his ancestors.

  Sensors were scattered around the huge cabin. Some were hidden, others obvious. And a few were self-guided, wandering in random pathways that would surprise everyone, including the captain who let them roam.

  The peace had held for months.

  But Pamir had been strangled and packed away with the luggage, and every day, without fail, he considered the smart clean solution to his worries. Three minutes, and the problem would be finished, with minimal fuss.

  Kill the crew before they killed him.

  Temporarily murder them, of course.

  But those cold solutions had to be avoided. Despite temptations, he clung to the idea that kindness and compassion were the paths to prove your sanity.

  Everybody seemed to hold that opinion. G’lene still flirted with the only available man. Maxx offered to drink heavily with his friend Jon, once his hard work was done. And just last week, his sister tried defining herself to this tyrannical captain: Rondie and her brother shared very weak but wealthy parents. They had wanted strong children. Genes were tweaked, giving both of them muscles and strong attitudes. Rondie said that she was beautiful even if nobody else thought so. She said that her parents had wisely kept their wealth away from their children, which was why they joined the military. And then in the next breath, the girl confessed to hating those two ageless shits for being so wise and looking out for their souls.

  At that point she laughed. Pamir couldn’t tell at whom.

  He said, “In parts of the multiverse, both of you are weak and happy.”

  “A Luddite perspective,” she said.

  “It is,” he agreed.

  “Who are you really?” she asked.

  “I’m you in some other realm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Think,” he said, liking the notion then and liking it more as he let it percolate inside his old mind.

  That was a good day, and so far this day had proved ordinary.

  The twins slept but that didn’t keep them from conversing—secret words bouncing between each other’s dreams. Tailor was on a high platform, muttering old words that his translator didn’t understand. G’lene was the quiet one. She studied. She fell asleep. Then she was awake and reading again, and that was when the pulse engine fell silent.