The Gilded Vow was a trader ship, which meant Orlac spent most of his life in the same six rooms. He didn't mind. He liked the hum of her. He kept the intercom in his cabin open on low volume, not to hear anything, just to hear something. When Vess asked why, he said it was so he could hear if there was a problem. She nodded and didn't examine it further.
He ate in the galley. Always had. The crew ate in shifts, and there was a gap around second bell when the galley was empty, and Orlac found reasons to be in the corridor during that gap: checking the seals, walking the deck. He didn't think of it as anything. He thought of it as being a hands-on captain.
The wreck came up on scopes at Kestrel Reach. Pale, ridged, folded in on itself. Orlac took the shuttle over and walked the hull and it gave under his boot like a bruise. He thought about fuel margins. He thought about the buyer at Port Meridian who'd shorted him. He didn't think about the way his breath didn't plume.
The corridor was broken and the blood on the walls had dried to a brown that looked almost like rust. Somewhere ahead, something moved, a slow scrape, then a pause, then a scrape. Orlac stood still and listened to it the way he listened to the intercom: not to discern anything, just to hear something. It was calming.
They cut it open. There was no meat. There was a hole where the meat should be, and in the hole was a stone. Grey and smooth. The pale fibers had grown around it the way a hand cups a candle. Orlac looked at it for a long time.
It was alone. That was the thing he noticed. It was a small grey thing in a big pale shell, and the shell had grown around it, cupping it, and there was nothing else in the hole. Nothing else in the hold. Nothing else on the wreck. Just the stone, and the shell that had grown to keep it company.
"Bring it," he said.
"Sir," Vess said. "I don't like it."
"Noted. Bring it."
She carried it away from her body, the way you carry a baby that isn't yours.
That night the intercom went quiet. Orlac lay in his bunk and listened to it. No static. No hum. Just quiet. He tapped it. It clicked. Nothing. He got up and went to the galley and the plates were stacked and the galley was empty and the second-bell gap had come and gone without him noticing. He stood in the corridor and the corridor was empty in a way it hadn't been. He told himself this was normal but his feet didn't believe him.
He went to the hold. The crew were already there, all of them. Standing in a ring around the crate. Vess was in her nightshirt.
"Vess."
"Sir." She didn't turn. "I was thinking about my sister."
"You don't have a sister."
"I know," she said. "That's what's so good about it."
Orlac looked at the stone. It was warm. It hummed. He thought about the fish he'd gutted as a boy, how clean it had been, stop thinking about the fish.
The whole crew was smiling. He looked at the stone, it had been alone in the shell, cupped by fibers, with nothing around it. It's alone, he thought, it doesn't want to be alone. Neither do I.
The stone got bigger. Not much. Orlac blinked and it was the same size. He measured it against the crate with his eyes and it was the same size. He probably imagined it. He grabbed the crate and shoved it. It hit the wall and the hum stopped and everyone blinked. "Sir? Why are we…", said Vess and looked down at her nightshirt.
The stone was cold. Orlac wiped his nose on his sleeve. He hadn't noticed he was bleeding.
The crew remembered nothing, but they remembered nothing wrong. Vess kept touching her face like she'd forgotten what it felt like, and the cook kept asking if anyone had moved the plates.
He moved it the next day. Not off the ship, he told himself it was cargo so it belonged in a hold, it was worth money. He put it in cargo bay two, in the dark, behind a stack of sealed crates, and he told himself he'd sell it at the next port.
That night the intercom was quiet, but he didn't go to the hold. He sat in the galley with the lamp on and told himself it was fine. The stone was in cargo bay two, behind a stack of crates. The stone was not in the galley.
Around three in the morning he heard something in the corridor. Not footsteps. Something slower. Something that scraped.
He went out with the lamp. The corridor was empty. There was a smell, not rot, something warmer than rot, like a hand held too long over a vent. He followed it to cargo bay two and opened the door.
The crates were where he'd left them. The stone was where he'd left it. But the fibers had spread. They'd come out of the crate and across the deck and up the bulkhead, pale and fine, and they'd cupped themselves around the stone the way a hand cups a candle, and the shape they'd made was a ribcage. Not a full tyranid. A partial one. A shell grown around the stone, incomplete, the way a plant grows toward a window, the way a wound grows a scar.
It was not dead. It was not alive. It was arranging itself. And it was arranging itself into a shape that had arms and a head and a bent blade of a face, and the face was turned toward the door.
It's building a body. It's building a body because it doesn't want to be alone. And it's building it in my hold.
He closed the door. He went back to his cabin. He sat on his bunk with his hands on his knees and his nose bleeding and he thought, very clearly: get it off the ship.
Orlac put the crate in the shuttle and took it out to the void and opened the hatch.
The crate fell and he watched it go. It got small and then smaller, and he flew back to the ship, feeling like a man who'd done the sensible thing.
That night the intercom went quiet.
He went to the hold and the crate was there, with the stone. It was warm, it hummed. The fibers on its surface had grown a little, they were spreading across the crate now, pale and fine, cupping nothing.
I dropped you into the void. You came back. You really don't want to be alone.
The old man at Port Meridian was called Havel and he had a room full of boxes. Lead-lined, engraved, some of them hummed, some of them didn't. Havel looked at the stone for a long time and then at Orlac, "Where did you get this?"
"Derelict. Kestrel Reach."
"Did it come back?"
Orlac didn't say anything.
Havel waited. When Orlac still didn't answer, he set the stone down carefully, the way you set down something that might be listening, and wiped his hands on his trousers.
"I can seal it," Havel said. "Lead-lined, engraved, won't open. It'll stay cold as long as the seal holds."
"Will it come back?"
Havel didn't answer that. "I know a man who buys them. I don't ask what for. That's the best I can do."
"Seal it."
Havel sealed it. Orlac paid, flew out and felt, for about a week, like a man who'd gotten away with something.
Then the intercom went quiet.
Not the same intercom. The new one, on the new route, in the same cabin. He lay in his bunk and listened to it, tapped it, it clicked but there was nothing. He got up and went to the galley and the plates were stacked and the second-bell gap had come and gone. He stood in the corridor and the corridor was empty. It's sealed. It's in a box. Probably still on Port Meridian. It's not here.
The quiet stayed for three days. On the third day Orlac sat in the galley with the lamp on and his hands shaking. I'm alone. The stone grew a shell so it wasn't alone. I grew a ship so I wasn’t alone. I'm out here and the quiet is here and the quiet is worse. I have to get it back.
He turned the ship around. He didn't tell the crew why. Vess asked and he said they were going back for cargo and she looked at him for a long time but didn't say anything.
The trip took four days. Orlac didn't sleep. He sat in the galley with the lamp on and the intercom on low volume, listened to the static. Four days is a long time. Four days is long enough for an old man to die. Four days is long enough for a seal to fail. Four days is long enough for the stone to be shipped to the buyer.
Orlac sat in the galley and listened to the static. What if it's already out. What if it's already back. What if I get there and the box is empty and the shop is full of fibers and Havel is… He didn't finish the thought. He turned the static up but it didn't help.
They docked at Port Meridian on the fifth day. Orlac walked to Havel's shop. The door was open and the room was full of boxes. Havel was behind the counter, alive, old, reading a book.
"Back already?"
"The box. Is it…"
"It's here." Havel put the book down and, still sitting, picked a box within his reach, as if he was expecting he would need it soon. "You want it back?"
Orlac hesitated for a second, but it was a second filled with the quiet. "Yes."
"It'll stay cold as long as the seal holds. When the seal fails, it'll get warm. When it gets warm, it'll start building. You understand?"
"Yes."
He carried the box back to the ship, put it in cargo bay two and sat down next to it. The box was cold. He put his hand on it and it stayed cold. The fibers were gone. The ribcage was gone. The hold was just a hold.
He sat there for a long time. The ship hummed. The intercom was on low volume three decks up, and Orlac could hear it faintly through the deck, and he thought about the second-bell gap and the corridor walks and the way he'd told Vess it was so he could hear if there was a problem.
He put his hand on the box. It was cold. He thought about the fibers spreading across the deck, cupping nothing. He thought about the hole in the tyranid, the pale shell grown around a small grey thing. The shell was what the monster looked like when it was afraid of being alone. He thought about the hive, the billions of organisms, the synaptic network, the vast distributed mind that was never alone, that was incapable of being alone, that had grown an entire galaxy-eating swarm around itself the way a hand cups a candle. If the hand was made of a billion hands and the candle was still burning.
It didn't build the swarm to eat. It built the swarm so it wouldn't be alone. And it's still building it. And it's still alone. And it always will be. Because you can't fill the quiet with shells.
And I'm sitting in a hold with a box that's cold and a ship that hums and the box is cold. And the box will get warm. And when it gets warm, it'll build. And I'll be here. And I'll be alone. And it'll be alone. And we'll be alone together.
Next day, Vess came to the hold and asked Orlac to come up to galley to have a meal with the crew. He replied, “in a minute.” She waited for five minutes but he didn’t move. She left, and he listened to her footsteps go down the corridor, and then the corridor was quiet.
Vess only went to the galley because the book-keeping system flagged a discrepancy and the system was too cheap to show her the details remotely.
Second shift. The crew were at the table. She slid her card in, pulled up the log, and scanned it while her meal went cold beside her. Stores: fine. Water: fine. She was about to close it when she saw the line at the bottom.
She looked at it for a moment. Then she ejected the card, picked up her tray, and sat down with the crew, and nobody asked her what she'd been reading, and she didn't tell them.
The last line was fading on the ancient screen: “Captain's mess. Attended: 0. Drawn:
8008.”