Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

of
mind as the shaping element in the mission’s destiny, Rusel’s own
role became still more important, as the only surviving element of
continuity, indeed of consciousness.
    Whatever, there was no going back, for any of them.
    Andres was still watching the Autarchs. ’You know, immortality,
the defeat of death, is one of mankind’s oldest dreams, But
immortality doesn’t make you a god. You have immortality, Rusel, but,
save for your crutch the Ship, you have no power. And these - animals
- have immortality, but nothing else.’
    ’It’s monstrous.’
    ’Of course! Isn’t life always? But the genes don’t care. And in
the Autarchs’ mindless capering, you can see the ultimate logic of
immortality: for an immortal, to survive, must in the end eat her own
children.’
    But everybody on this Ship was a child of this monstrous mother,
Rusel thought, whose twisted longings had impelled this mission in
the first place. ’Is that some kind of confession, pharaoh?’
    Andres didn’t reply. Perhaps she couldn’t. After all this wasn’t
Andres but a Virtual, a software-generated comfort for Rusel’s fading
consciousness, at the limit of its programming. And any guilt he saw
in her could only be a reflection of himself.
    With an effort of will he dismissed her.
    One of the adults, a male, sat up, scratched his chest, and loped
to the centre of the feeding pit. The young fled at his approach. The
male scattered the last bits of primary-colour food, and picked up
something small and white. It was a skull, Rusel saw, the skull of a
child. The adult crushed it, dropped the fragments, and wandered off,
aimless, immortal, mindless.
    Rusel withdrew, and sealed up the gnawed-through bulkhead. After
that he set up a new barrier spanning the Ship parallel to the
bulkhead, and opened up the thin slice of the vessel between the
walls to intergalactic vacuum, so that nothing could come through
that barrier. And he never again gave any thought to what lay on the
other side.

 
X
     
     
    Twenty-five thousand years after the end of his world, Rusel heard
that he was to be saved.
    ’Rusel. Rusel…’
    Rusel wanted the voices to go away. He didn’t need voices now -
not Diluc’s, not even Andres’s.
    He had no body, no belly, no heart; he had no need of people at
all. His memories were scattered in emptiness, like the faint smudges
that were the remote galaxies all around the Ship. And like the Ship
he forged on into the future, steadily, pointlessly, his life empty
of meaning. The last thing he wanted was voices.
    But they wouldn’t go away. With deep reluctance, he forced his
scattered attention to gather.
    The voices were coming from Diluc’s corridor-village. Vaguely, he
saw people there, near a door - the door where he had once been
barrelled into by little Tomi, he remembered, in a shard of bright
warm memory blown from the past - two people, by that same door.
    People standing upright. People wearing clothes.
    They were not transients. And they were calling his name into the
air. With a mighty effort he pulled himself to full awareness.
    They stood side by side, a man and a woman - both young, in their
twenties, perhaps. They wore smart orange uniforms and boots. The man
was clean-shaven, and the woman bore a baby in her arms.
    Transients had clustered around them. Naked, pale, eyes wide with
curiosity, they squatted on their haunches and reached up with their
long arms to the smiling newcomers. Some of them were scrubbing
frantically at the floor and walls, teeth bared in rictus grins. They
were trying to impress the newcomers with their prowess at cleaning,
the only way they knew how. The woman allowed the transients to
stroke her child. But she watched them with hard eyes and a fixed
smile. And the man’s hand was never far away from the weapon at his
belt.
    It took Rusel a great deal of effort to find the circuits that
would allow him to speak. He said, ’Rusel. I am Rusel.’
    As the disembodied voice boomed out of the air the man and woman
looked up, startled, and the transients cowered. The newcomers looked
at each other with delight. ’It’s true,’ said the man. ’It really is
the Mayflower!’ A translation whispered to Rusel.
    The woman scoffed. ’Of course it’s the Mayflower. What else could
it be?’
    Rusel said, ’Who are you?’
    The man’s name was Pirius, the woman’s Torec.
    ’Are we at Canis Major?’
    ’No,’ Pirius said gently.
    These two had come from the home Galaxy - from