Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [188]
Fear.
Desperation.
Oh, my children, my children....
“Karril?”
No answer.
The ship hurtles through the blackness of space like a spark of life, its substance hot in the emptiness. Its walls are not flesh but a living equivalent, energies bound in the place of matter, the skin of a sentient creature that knows nothing of blood or of bone or even of material tools ... but a creature nonetheless. Born for this mission, raised for it, trained for it, the creature-that-is-a-ship hurtles through the wasteland between the stars, her precious children gathered inside her....
“Karril!”
Each child bred for a single purpose, focused and pure in its substance. One to read the stars and choose a course. One to gather up the thin energies of the void and make food from them. One to steer and one to record and one to dream and one—moreprecious than any other—tocarry the patterns of inheritance of their race, so that when the time is right, a whole new world can be peopled with her children.
He had a spasm of coughing and for a moment the images scattered. His lungs were refusing to admit enough air. The images that reformed in his head when the spasm was done were swimming with black spots.
How fragile they are, her children, her crew! How they struggle to adapt to this new place, how they fight to serve her . . . all in vain. They were not made for this strange planet, where forces that have no name wreak havoc with every living process. First the seeker dies, and then the dreamer, and the gatherer, and so on through alltheir number Child afterchild submitting in his turn, either to anaturaldeath or to such mutation that she herself must kill them to keep the family pure.
The veil. It had fallen from his face, leaving him exposed to Shaitan’s poisons. With a shaking hand he pushed it back into place, praying that it would ease the constriction of his lungs as well as protecting him from fresh assault. And it seemed to. Thank God, it seemed to.
The death of the breeder is the most devastating loss of all. Without his storehouse of reproductive patterns she will live out eternity on this hostile planet without hope, without purpose, her only comfort the memories that slowly fade as year fades into year,century into century. Periodicallyshe wonders if it might not be more peaceful to follow them all into death, to end her suffering forever. But though the fantasy of suicide is tempting, it isn’t really a choice for her. Like all her people she has been born for a purpose, and hers is to give life to others, not to take her own.
And then, when hope has been lost for so long that she’s all but forgotten the flavor of it, she becomes awareof something new on the planet. Not acreature born to its hateful currents, but astranger, like herself. A traveler. In joy she reaches out to it, to the thousands of individuals that make up its racial consciousness ... and comes up with silence. Painful, hateful silence! The newcomers can’t hear her. They lack the senses. The structure of their life is so different from her own that interface between them is all but impossible. Surrounded by ahost of creatures who would welcome her as a fellow explorer on this hostile planet, she is more alonethan ever.
The images were all over him. Not only before his eyes, but in his brain as well. Images so alien that at first he could hardly interpret them, but one by one they sorted themselves out so that he could understand. And he trembled inside, as that understanding came.
She will try one last time. In the period before she came to this planet she had given birth to children who would serve her needs: she will do the same here, in order to reach these people. She has to wait long years for one to come close, for the place that best supports her own life is hostile to theirs. But at last one comes, and she lifts the pattern of his soul from his flesh with a mother’s sure skill, and uses it to make anew kind of child. Half-breed, maverick, enough like her to understand her need, enough like this new species to communicate with it directly. Alas, though