Free Asimov's Science Fiction: June 2013 by Penny Publications

When you came back to life the last time, you were talking to the children. You claimed that there was a reason why youthful souls interested me."
    "Young minds can't hide secrets," Pamir said.
    "But that isn't their major benefit." Iron knives struck one another inside that long throat. "Just finding the treasure may not be enough. A young mind, unburnished and willing, often proves more receptive to mystery."
    "And to madness," Pamir said.
    Tailor let one eye clear. "Whoever you are, you hold a strong mind."
    "Thank you," Pamir said.
    "On the whole," said the Kajjas, "I believe that strength is our universe's most overprized trait."
11
    Of course there were sovereigns. Pamir always knew that. The sovereigns were vast and relentless, and they were immortal, and he knew their faces: The kings of vacuum and energy, and their invincible children, time and distance. Those were the masters of everything. Their stubborn uncharitable sense of the possible and the never-can-be was what ruled the Creation. All the rest of the players were little souls and grand thoughts, and that was the way it would always be.
    The Great Ship was obeying the kings. It remained no better than a point, a conjecture, crossing one hundred thousand kilometers every second. Reaching the Ship was life's only purpose. Pamir thought of little else. The human-made AIs thought of nothing else. The hydrogen had been consumed until only a thin reserve remained, and then the streakship's corpse was thrown to oblivion, each bit unique in shape and composition. Calculations demanded to be made. Adjustments never ended. Slivers of a cabin wall exploded differently than the plumbing ripped out of a fuel pump, and while the Kajjas engine ate each gladly, there was sloppiness, and sometimes the magic would fail, leading to silence as the nameless ship once again began to drift.
    Every day had its sick machines.
    No week was finished without the engine dying unexpectedly, ruining the latest trajectory.
    Anyone less competent than Pamir would have been defeated. Anyone more talented would have known better and given up in this idiot venture on the first day. A soul less proud or more clear-headed would have happily aimed for one of the solar systems on the Kajjas' charts—a living place that would accept the relic starship and two alien species of peculiar backgrounds. But Pamir clung to his stations, and the AIs found new solutions after every hiccup, while Tailor filled his lucid moments moving from platform to cubbyhole, talking to the madness.
    Several decades of furious work brought them halfway home.
    And then the engine was silenced on purpose, and their ship was given half a roll, preparing to slow its momentum before intercepting the Great Ship.
    "You have to pay attention to me," said Tailor.
    Pamir was in earshot, barely. But his companion was talking to himself, or nobody.
    "I see your stares," the Kajjas said.
    Pamir ignored him. From this point on, they had even less play in their trajectories and the remaining time. The Great Ship was swift, but the Kajjas ship had acquired nearly twice its velocity. Very few equations would gently drop them into the berth at Port Beta, while trillions of others shot them ahead of the Great Ship, or behind.
    "Do you hear me?" Tailor asked.
    Yes, but Pamir pressed on. His companion was another one of the thousand tasks that he could avoid for the time being, and maybe always. What the captain needed to do next was prepare a test-firing of the hyperfiber fuel, and the fuel feeds begged to be recalibrated, and one of his AIs had developed an aversion to an essential algorithm, and he hadn't eaten his fill in three days, and meanwhile the small, inadequate telescopes riding the prow had to be physically carried to the stern and fixed to new positions so that they could look ahead, eating the photons and neutrinos that never stopped raining and never told him enough.
    Eating was the first priority.
    Pamir was finishing a huge