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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

THE GREAT SHIP

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

THE INKWELL

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

DELUGE

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

CONCEPTION

Tiwenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty- five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Forty-five

Forty-six

Forty-seven

SALVATION

BOOKS BY ROBERT REED

He drove the blade into the tabletop

About the Author

Copyright Page

TO MY WIFE, LESLIE RENEE

THE GREAT SHIP

I have no voice that explains where I began, no mouth to tell why I was imagined or how I was assembled, and I no idea who deserves thanks for my simple existence, assuming that thanks are appropriate. I recall absolutely nothing about my exceptionally murky origins … but I know well that for a long cold while I was perfectly mute and only slightly more conscious than stone, sliding through the emptiest, blackest reaches of space, my only persistent thought telling me that I was to do nothing but wait … wait for something wondrous, or something awful … wait for some little event or a knowing voice that would help answer those questions that I could barely ask of myself … .

For aeons and a day, I felt remarkably, painfully tiny. Drifting through the cosmos, I imagined myself as a substantial but otherwise ordinary species of cosmic dust. Compared to the vastness, I was nothing. How could I believe otherwise? Unobserved, I passed through intricate walls woven from newborn galaxies—magnificent hot swirls of suns and glowing dust, each revolving around some little black prick of collapsed Creation—and among that splendor, I was simply a nameless speck, a twist of random grit moving at an almost feeble speed, my interior unlit and profoundly cold, my leading face battered and slowly eroded by the endless rain of lesser dusts.

Through space and through time, I drifted.

Galaxies grew scarce, and the void was deeper and ever colder … and when I might have believed that I would never touch sunlight again … when my fate seemed to be blackness and the endless silence … I found myself falling toward a modest disk of stars and dust and little living worlds … .

By chance, a young species—the human species—noticed me while I was still descending through the outskirts of their Milky Way. Brave as fools and bold as gods, they built an armada of swift little ships and raced out to meet me, and to my utter amazement, I discovered that I was enormous—bigger than worlds, massive and enduring, and in their spellbound eyes, beautiful.

Humans were the first species to walk upon my face, and with a quick and efficient thoroughness, they explored my hollow places. To prove my considerable worth, they fought a little war to retain their hold on me. According to law and practicality, I was salvage, and I was theirs. In careful stages, they began to wake me, rousing my ancient reactors, my vast engines and life-support systems, repairing the damage left by my long, long sleep. And they gave me my first true voice—in a fashion. A thousand mouths were grafted on to me. Radio dishes and powerful lasers, neutrino beacons and spinning masses of degenerate matter endowed me with the power to shout at every approaching sun and all the living worlds. “Here I am,” I would announce. “See me! Study me! Know me, then come visit me!” In a multitude of languages, my new mouths claimed, “I hunger for your company, your friendship, and your infinite trust.” I asked, “Are you, like so many technological species, a func-tional immortal?” Then I promised, “For a fair fee, I will carry your ageless and precious soul to a distant world. Or in half a million years, after circumnavigating the Milky Way, I will bring you home again. Can you imagine a greater, more ennobling adventure than to journey once around our galaxy? Or for a still greater payment, I can become your permanent home—a vast, ever-changing realm offering more novelty and sheer wonder than any other body in Creation.” Then with a barker’s teasing laugh, I would ask, “What kind of immortal would you be if you didn’t wish for such a splendid, endless fate … ?”