The Tribe

The Tribe is the name for the ship born engineers of the ark ship Gilgamesh and their descendants. They keep the ageing vessel running while much of humanity sleeps in its cargo holds. By the time the ship reaches Kern’s World, the suspension chambers are failing beyond repair and a large ship born population lives aboard.

Who they are

In chapter 7.1, Holsten sees young engineers in old shipsuits helping Vitas muster the recently woken. He guesses they are Lain’s legacy. Karst later calls them the Tribe and identifies Alpash as their liaison. Holsten understands the name to mean the engineers, or their descendants, who maintain the ship. Vitas says they have done a remarkable job keeping it together, though much of that work is damage control.

Alpash is a ship born engineer. He has an accent shaped by Lain’s speech, the ship’s automatic systems and changes of his own. Holsten wonders how many generations have passed since Alpash’s people had contact with anyone not born aboard. The text does not give a number.

Work and laws

The Tribe maintain the ship and its systems. Their consoles have been taken apart and rebuilt. The Tribe restored the best lasers fitted to drones, which they use against the satellite. Later, engineers gather around Lain’s console to carry out her instructions. Their work includes patching the hull; the need for these repairs lets Karst field an EVA team in chapter 7.7.

Alpash objects when Holsten asks whether they have learned to run the ship by rote. The Tribe learn from childhood and preserve manuals, lectures and tutorial modules. Alpash describes his people as descendants of those who gave their lives to preserve the vessel, carrying on that work until they reach the planet promised to them.

One of their laws requires them to respect Key Crew as their precursors. Alpash says Lain laid down that law. He will not argue over status while the ship is in danger.

Lain

The Tribe call Isa Lain Grandmother. They do not wake her lightly. Alpash says she ordered them to wake her only in an emergency, and that she wanted to walk on a green planet when she next woke. The Tribe has records of her later pronouncements.

Lain’s suspension chamber is kept in a former storeroom. A pedestal stands beneath it. At its foot, plastic icons moulded into approximations of the female form form a small shrine. Scraps of shipsuit cloth bearing messages hang above them. Holsten describes it as a shrine to a living goddess.

The attack on the ship

During the spiders’ attack, engineers work at Lain’s console and respond to calls across the ship. Some Tribe members go out in lightweight work suits to fight in the cargo holds. Others act as vigilantes, without orders. Alpash reports that his group is masked and using emergency equipment, then leaves his station when he learns that spiders have reached the Tribe’s living quarters, where his family and children are.

For Alpash and his people, the Gilgamesh is home. Holsten recognizes that he had thought of it only as a ship carrying humanity to another world.

Unanswered questions

• How many generations have passed since anyone in the Tribe spoke to a person not born aboard the Gilgamesh?
• Which members of the Tribe survive the attack, and what becomes of their records and shrine?