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

meal when the first note of a warning bell arrived, followed immediately by two others.
    Those bells were announcing intruders.
    Pamir made himself enjoy his dessert, a slab of buttery janusian baklava, and then, keeping his paranoia in check, he examined the data and first interpretations. The half-roll had revealed a different sky. The telescopes had spotted three distinct objects traversing local space. None were going to collide with Pamir, yet each could well have been aimed at this ship while it moved on an earlier tangent. Each was plainly artificial. The smaller two were the most distant, plunging from different directions, visible only because they were using their star-drives. Measuring masses and those fires, Pamir guessed about likely owners. An enormous coincidence was at hand, three strangers appearing at the perfect place for an attack. The roll-over left him predictable, exposed. It would be smart to conjure up a useful dose of fear. But the fear didn't come. Pamir wasn't calm, and he couldn't recall the last time when he was happy. But he wasn't properly worried either. A thousand ships could be lurking nearby, each with their engines off—invisible midges following his every possible course. But that possibility didn't scare him. His heartbeat refused to spike, right up until the nearest vessel suddenly unleashed a long burn.
    Their neighbor was a huge, top-of-the-line streakship, and if Pamir followed the best available trajectory, that luxury ship and his own thumping heart would soon pass within twenty million kilometers of one another.
    But the heart was quiet, and Pamir knew why: The universe did not care about him, or this relic, or even crazy old Tailor.
    A loud transmission arrived thirteen hours later, straight from the streakship. In various languages and in data, its owners were named as well as the noble species onboard, both by number and their accumulated wealth. Then a synthetic voice asked for Pamir's identity, and with words designed to sound friendly to as many species as possible, it asked if the two of them were perhaps heading toward the same destination? "Are we joining on the Great Ship together, my lovely friend?"
    Pamir invented new lies, but he didn't use them. Instead, he identified himself as Human Jon. With his own weary voice, he explained that this was a salvage operation and he was alone, and his ship was little better than a bomb. That's why he kept trying to maneuver out from the path of others. Invoking decency, he decided to delay his test firings, watching the interloper, wondering what it would do in response.
    Devoted to its own course, the other voice wished him nothing but the best and soon blasted into the lead.
    And three weeks later, the streakship's central engine went wrong. Containment failed or some piece of interstellar trash pierced the various armors. Either way, the universe was suddenly filled with one spectacular light, piercing and relentless, along with the wistful glow from a million distant suns.
    Pamir knew a thousand sentient species well enough to gather with them, drinking and eating with them, absorbing natures and histories and the good jokes while sharing just enough of his blood and carefully crafted past. Bioceramic minds didn't merely absorb memories. They organized the past well enough that sixty thousand years later, a bored man doing routine work could hear the song from a right-talisman harp and the clink of heavy glasses kissing each other, and with the mind's eye he saw the face of the most peculiar creature sitting across from him: A withered face defined by crooked teeth and scars, fissures where the skin sagged and sharp bones where muscle had once lived.
    Pamir was younger than many captains, while his companion was a fraction his age and probably no more than ten years from death. She was as human as Pamir, though he had trouble seeing her that way. Archaics living on the stormy shore of the Holiday Seas had sent delegates to meet