As a loyal follower of a lofty cause, Locke lived as a Wayward. But there came a horrible moment when impossible choices had to be made: His mother was in mortal danger, and the only possible way to save her was to kill her assailant. With much grief but absolutely no hesitation, Locke murdered his own father. Then he marked his mother’s burial site with her own silver watch. And afterward, he managed to look as if he was still the loyal Wayward. But Locke was a guilt-ridden son, and whenever he stared at his faith, he saw its flaws and cruel failures. Then he found a second chance to help his surviving parent, and not only did he do everything possible to help her, he also turned his back on the Waywards.
Of course Washen was his mother.
In the days following the war, there was lazy talk about allowing Locke to join the ranks of the captains. Washen said it, as did Aasleen and a few of the other survivors of that mission to Marrow. But as Pamir pointedly warned, the young man still looked like a Wayward, and he spoke like one, and he had served their peculiar cause for centuries without complaint. Besides, how would it help the ship if the First Chair began grooming her once-traitorous baby for some lofty, undeserved position?
“Do you think he isn’t qualified?” Washen asked, her voice tight and a little prickly. “If he isn’t, say so.”
“I thought I just did.” Pamir laughed.
But it was Locke himself who put an end to the possibility. With a shrug and a gentle tone, he said, “Mother.” Then the busy dreamy eyes looked off into the distance, and he confessed to her, and to himself, “I don’t have the barest skills to be any kind of captain. And even worse, I don’t have a flicker of the fire that I would need.”
Washen was injured, and in ways she hadn’t imagined, she was impressed by his honesty and relieved to be free of her own motherly ambitions. Quietly, she asked Locke, “What do you have a fire for?”
Shrugging amiably, he said, “I’m usually clever, and in narrow ways, I can be very smart. Plus I see things from odd angles. And since I just abandoned the only belief system that meant anything to me for my entire life, my mind is temporarily free and empty.”
How would such a loss feel? Washen could only imagine that kind of devastation of purpose and place.
But Locke felt blessed instead.
“I am empty,” he repeated. “Rudderless, and lost. My soul is desperate to find something new to believe in. Something worthy, this time. Everywhere I look, I can almost see things that are great and true.”
“What things?”
With a casual ease, he said, “Here’s a notion, Mother.” Then with the most unremarkable words, he calmly asked if the Builders had constructed just this ship. Or maybe they had fashioned the universe, and the Great Ship was just another little mystery nestled inside an endless series of concentric hulls.
The purpose and meanings of the ship was a subject of relentless debate. A team of AIs had been built and educated to think about nothing else, and after nearly a thousand centuries of hard thought, they had come up with nothing substantial. But Locke’s little notion interested them quite a lot. The Waywards and their myths also held a certain fascination. A final decision was obvious enough that the machines and both humans came to the same inevitable conclusion. “Join them,” Washen urged her son. “Learn what you need about physics, cosmology, the high mathematics. Help them when you can. Or work on your own, if you’d rather.”
“That’s what I’m doing now,” Locke reported, with a narrow, somewhat wary smile. “Learning and working on my own, mostly.”
“Since when?” Washen sputtered.
“Since that day when we looked down on Marrow.”
One last time, just before the entranceway was sealed with fresh hyperfiber, they had traveled to the ship’s core.
“I didn’t know this,” Washen confessed. “Why didn’t I know?”
“You’ve been terribly busy, Mother.”
True enough.
“You’re usually distracted,” he observed.
“And very tired,” she added. “But really, we have to make a point of talking to each other. From now on!”
BUT THE FIRST CHAIR had always been a busy post, even in easy times. The War was finished, but there were immense repairs begging to be made. Like never before, there were civil concerns and economic barricades. A multitude of passengers had to be calmed and educated, and when necessary, kept distracted. A battered and suspicious crew had to be retrained and reenergized, and an entirely reconfigured army of captains had to be watched over, learning their stations and the subtleties that no school could prepare them to see, much less master. And always, there was the tireless need to make ready for the Inkwell, which would be followed by the next leg of the voyage. As a barrier, a cold nebula offered an endless array of hazards. Dust and the intermittent comet would test the ship’s shields and lasers. Even the most benign course would swamp their defenses, and the hull would again be battered until it was pocked and unlovely and a little bit weakened. That was why Washen decided to keep the repair missions at work, even when every system had been made fully operational again. On her authority, new lasers and enhanced shields were being constructed and deployed, and great fields of mirrors were scanning deeper into the Inkwell every moment. But even if they could conquer the crude monsters of nature—mindless ice and stone and the occasional sunless world—there were the simple and inescapable questions about who or what lived inside that cold black mass and what, if anything, they might want from the ship.
Washen was consumed by her work. With an army of nexuses to help, she manipulated grand plans and careful long-term schemes, always striving to make them play well with one another. To protect her sanity, she slept, but only in bites and little breaths, and only when Pamir or Aasleen fell into the breech. Seeing her son was a rare business, and for a long time she assumed that the long gaps were the fault of her office or some lack of discipline in her own self. But what else could she do? A relaxed dinner with Locke meant that she would have to plan the next major burn in a different hour, which meant delaying two meetings with the fef and the Remoras, and that meant that she would have to postpone her speech of comfort and well-wishing to one of the resident species until a less appropriate time, or she would simply have to go without sleep again, draining herself even more than she had anticipated. Speaking with Locke was too hard. Sometimes she didn’t see him for several years at a time. Yes, they traded messages and holos, usually once every week. But no technology had ever matched the intimacy and power of a relaxed supper. And when that meal arrived, often after a long absence, the entire evening could be spent just fighting to pick up the threads from their last dinner.
If they met in her quarters, the meal was simple but elegant—a gift from one of the local communities, perhaps. Human-prepared or otherwise, but always familiar to Washen. But if they met in Locke’s quarters, they ate grilled hammerwings and sweet lava nuts and other Marrow treasures. Her son had cultured those species from samples brought up by the would-be conquerors. In a private cavern several kilometers long and almost as wide, he had built a tiny but authentic model of Marrow, complete with molten iron spills and a sky gradually growing dark. His diet and the sky kept him looking like a Wayward, with the smoky gray skin and a slightly famished cast to the eyes. But at least in his mother’s presence, he dressed like a law-abiding passenger, in simple trousers and a light shirt. And when possible, Washen left her uniform elsewhere, matching his casual tastes—a touch of detail from the relentless and deft administrator.