The Greatship Read Online Free PDF Page B

as his neural net absorbed the abuse.  But he never lost consciousness.  His shattered pieces flowed together.  Wounds were healed slowly, drenched in pain.  And he was still broken and helpless when a familiar voice found him.
    Lying in the dark, unable to move, something quiet came very close and said, “The cold,” before falling silent again.
    He didn’t try to speak.
    After a long while, the voice said, “Forever, the cold.”
    “What is cold?” Alone whispered.
    “And dark,” said the voice.
    “Who are you?”
    The voice said, “Listen.”
    Alone remained silent, straining to hear any kind of 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 had been as transparent and simple as anything he had ever heard.
    Once healed, he seeped light.
    The engine’s interior was complex and redundant, and most of its facilities were never used.  Except for the occasional crackling whisper, radio talk never reached him.  This was a realm where he could wander.  Happily he discovered a series of nameless places where the slightest frosting of dust lay over every surface—a dust never disturbed by limb or by breath.  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.
    Ages passed.
    Technicians and their machines traveled through these places, but always bound for more important locations.
    Hiding was easy inside the catacombs.
    Sometimes the overhead engine was fired, but there were always warnings.  Great valves were opened and closed.  Vibrations traveled along the sleeping tubes.  A deeper chill could be felt as lakes of liquid hydrogen were prepared for fusion.  Alone always knew three sites where he could quickly find shelter.  His planning worked well, and he saw no reason to change what was flawless.
    Then one day, nothing was the same again.  Sitting inside a minor conduit, Alone was happily basking in a pool of golden light leaking from his inexplicable body.  He was thinking about nothing, which was his favorite state of mind.  And then the perfect instant was in the past, lost.  A deep rumble announced dense fluids on the move, and before he could react, he was picked up and carried away by a hot viscous and irresistible liquid.  Not hydrogen, and not water either.  This 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 radio scream.
    Tendrils touched him, trying to weave their way inside him.
    He panicked, kicked and spun hard, pulling his body into the first disguise that occurred to him.
    Electric voices jabbered.
    A language was found, and what surrounded him said in the human tongue, “It is a Remora.”
    “Down here?”
    “Tastes wrong,” a third voice complained.
    “Not hyperfiber, this shell isn’t,” said a fourth.
    No voice ever repeated.  This oily body contained a multitude of independent, deeply communal entities.
    “The face is,” one said.
    “Look at the face,” said another.
    “Can you hear us, Remora?”
    “I do,” Alone allowed.
    “Are you lost?”
    Alone understood the word, but it seemed too full of implications.  So with as much authority as possible, he said simply, “I am not lost.  No.”
    An alien language erupted, the multitude debating what to do with this conundrum.
    Then a final voice announced, “Whatever you are, we will leave you now in a safe place.  For this favor, you will pay us with your praise and thanks.  Do this and win our respect.  Otherwise, we will speak badly of you, today and for the eternity to come.”
    “Yes,” he said.  “Thank you, yes.”
    He was spat into a new tunnel—a brief broad hole capped with