Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online Page B

resting place.
The dirty snowball again rotates into view and passes beneath, but more slowly. We all feel the now-familiar sensation of Ship reducing its spin—the push forward, making us grip the rungs of the ladder, the bars, each other. As the forward shove lessens, so does our downward tug.
We’re weightless again.
A wind sighs through the larger bubble, swirling around the bridge rails and decking. Without thinking, I realize that I had put on the shorts before crossing the bridge. I didn’t want to die naked and exposed.
The girl lets go of the ladder and floats in front of me. The last of the wind shoves her forward toward the glassy sphere. I let go of the ladder and follow.
The three other humans—Picker, Pushingar, Satmonk—not exactly like me or the girl but capable of laughter and kindness and solidarity, the best human traits of all, follow close behind. REST AND DIE
    The first thing I see in the sphere is a floating body—fully clothed, slowly rotating on an axis through its shoulders. It’s an adult female, I think, but badly decayed or eaten away. There’s no way of knowing what type of human she once was.
    “The cleaners aren’t very active here,” the girl says, her lips prim in disapproval. She shoves away from the end of the bridge and intersects the body, then, as the others move toward the opposite side of the sphere, clambers around it and shows us that it’s wearing a kind of backpack. Thrusting her hand into the pack, she pulls part of it inside out—it’s empty. “No book,” she says with a chuff. She kicks violently away from the body, and both go in opposite directions, just as Newton intended—
Newton.
    The first name I’ve recovered—a name apparently more important than my own.
That big outboard mass of gray and brown and white very slowly comes back into view, then stops, parking itself “below” us at about two o’clock as I look outboard and forward. Clockwise. Clock hands. Rotation. Degrees and radians. That starts to make visual and other kinds of sense.
I shake my head in mixed wonder and sorrow, and precess until my hand clenches the end of the railing and stops me. I’m looking inboard now, away from the spectacular view, “up” toward a dark, shadowy section of the sphere. There’s stuff way up there—smaller clumped spheres, like magnified foam, each filled with one or more couches, chairs—and dark boxes. Places to rest. Places to explore.
The girl grabs hold of my shoulder. We wobble together until my wrist tightens and damps our motion.
“That woman was coming here for a reason,” she says. “Something didn’t want her here.”
“What?” I ask.
“Not a friend.”
Already Picker and Satmonk have kicked away from the end of the bridge to ascend toward the glimmering cluster. The girl joins them. With my usual finesse, I follow and arrive after a couple of clumsy rebounds.
The cluster’s curved, pushed-together surfaces are fogged by a layer of staticky dust. The cluster looks more and more like a bunch of soap bubbles pushed together—but with an access hole cut between each bubble. More scraps of clothing float in their quiet confines.
The girl is working on opening one of the boxes. She succeeds, but it’s empty. Satmonk is in another bubble, his leg wrapped around a couch as he breaks a box loose of some sort of stringy glue. The lid comes open, and he gives a bird warble and shows it to the rest. I’m at a bad angle, but the others instantly move into his sphere of influence and generosity.
Once again, I’m the last to join them. The girl has managed to save me a large gray bag. Other bags, liberated from the box, have been apportioned, first come, first served.
“Just say thanks,” she tells me, and pulls her own bag close.
The bags are all tied shut with a drawstring. I watch the others, then pull the bow knot—
And out comes a loaf of heavy brownish cake ten or so centimeters long and half as wide and deep—a really big chunk of