The Well of Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

plus. And besides, it would make this moment considerably less funny if he had the criminal thrown into the brig.
    “Thank you,” said the grateful technician. “Sir. Madam.”
    With the scrape of wood against tiles, Washen pushed back her chair and stood again. If she had heard a word in the last couple minutes, she didn’t mention it. Instead, she adjusted the tilt of her mirrored hat, and with a distant little smile, she asked, “How long have you lived here?”
    The woman swallowed, then confessed, “For the last seventeen centuries. Madam.”
    Washen nodded.
    After a moment’s consideration, she said, “That’s ten times longer than I lived here.” Then Washen smiled, and winked. “This is your house now. Do what you want with it. Remodel it. Tear it down and build another. Whatever you wish to do, you may.”
    “Madam—?”
    “But if you find anything interesting … anything that seems old and odd … please, send it to me, please?”

Two
    Humans began as perishable apes, but aeons ago they infused their bodies with synthetic genes and bioceramic minds, creating souls more durable than the exposed face of any simple rock. This basaltic hill was a prime example. Since the first day of her rule, the Master Captain and her highest officers had met on this ground, and during that tenure the shoreline had eroded noticeably, the original black boulders gnawed down to mere stones that quietly rolled off into the patient surf. What began as a proud high hill seemed rather less impressive today, and much the same might be said of the Master Captain. To the eye, she looked as everyone would expect—massive and queenly and cold-faced—but her enemies had grievously injured her during the Wayward War. Her body was only recently reborn, golden flesh and tough bone reconstituted beneath her comatose head. Newly minted nexuses had been implanted, her body swelling in response, linking her mind to the widest possible array of systems and sensors. In narrow terms of schematics, she was the same as she had always been. Yet despite her very narrow survival—indeed, because she was fortunate to be alive at all—she had been changed. Transformed, even. The Master sat on the traditional black chair, high-backed and thickly varnished, carved from a single piece of polished
kallan teak; but except for a veneer of authority and moral certitude, this was an entirely different person. Reconstituted from the brink of nothingness, she had been reinvented in a thousand ways. And even more important, virtually every one of her Submasters was new to the office, and oftentimes new to the ranks of the captains. Most were human, yes. But not all, and who would have imagined such a thing? A pair of fierce harum-scarums sat on convenient boulders. Dressed in a water suit, a gillbaby stood at mock attention, while a little fef and a Janusian hermaphrodite amiably traded stories of the war. Three decorated members of the AI corps were scattered among the organics, each buried inside a rubbery face and humanoid body. Aliens and machines now wore the mirrored uniforms of captains, each displaying the epaulets of the highest offices—an honor won when they helped defeat the Waywards. But stranger even than their appearance was their mood: In every past meeting, the Master had set the tone and defined the heart of every discussion. Her orders were usually cast beforehand, and sitting on this hilltop was meant to be a tidy dance of ego and pride and enduring traditions. Yet on this bright warm illusion of a day, the reborn Master appeared just a little bit unsure of herself. While her officers talked among themselves, often in nonhuman languages, her vast hands clung to one another, and her new face turned almost transparent, blank eyes gazing off into the distance while a voice that could just be heard above the quiet surf asked nobody in particular—with a distinctly nervous honesty asked nobody in particular—“Where are my first two