He lectures it on naivety, puts on a grand performance of the horror and the dissolution the very thought of Nod brings on. And yet the human seems dead set on self-destruction, as passionate about giving itself to the infection as Ahab is to contain it. And that, too, is admirable. But it is not permissible.
Ahab confers briefly with his current opposite number aboard the Shell That Echoes Only. Even as he does, there is a new transmission from the downed wreckage on the planet’s surface, helpfully pinpointing the site for his Reach to target. Instantly, he knows he is now ready to destroy the aliens on the surface, and perhaps to rid them all of the orbital as well. The science faction are singing a new song of progress and freedom and escape, but Ahab feels the various parts of his mind fall into alignment. If he removes all of these threats then the human that has somehow achieved true sentience may not sacrifice itself, and that, it seems to him, is desirable.
And besides, the transmission from the planet was very short, and no more follows.
***
It has found us. The signal, from Viola. Then, nothing.
Portia is trying to hail Kern, as the last possible point of contact. Avrana Kern has been off comms for a long time, though, and Viola’s past prognosis was that the computer was irreparably damaged, spiralling in some kind of self-consuming data storm. Which means that the person of Avrana Kern, this instance of her, is probably dead and gone. Helena is surprised to find that she thinks of Kern in that way. She grew up with various Kern instances, including the grand one that still runs a great deal of the world she had named after herself, and sometimes the contact was greater than human, sometimes less. Now she discovers, when it is too late, that the Lightfoot’s computer intellect was right in the cerebral Goldilocks zone all along, human enough to be mourned.
Portia signals Viola, over and over, but there is no reply. Whatever the crew are doing, they have greater priorities than helping Helena prevent their utter destruction. A sobering thought. She is still receiving a torrent of data from the neighbouring warship Shell That Echoes Only, encapsulating reports on the far-off Profundity of Depth, which is currently slinging out of its lunar orbit, fixing its weapons systems on the crash site. Helena has frozen, now. The slate slips from her fingers to drift into the glue of the wall. She can only watch the data and hear Portia try over and over to raise their friends. She can only imagine how the last moments will be, for Viola and Zaine and Fabian, as their last refuge becomes a glowing monument to Helena’s inability to communicate. Helena always thought the linguist’s nightmare would be a scenario where communication was impossible. Now she has a clear channel, but nothing she can say that will help.
Which is when Portia leaps straight up, landing on the ceiling, because, just when all hope had seemed lost, Kern had contacted them.
‘Confirm you retain communication channels with the molluscs.’ There is just enough of Kern’s abrupt manner in the transmission for Helena to know her.
‘For what it’s worth,’ Portia sends back for both of them, as Helena scrabbles for the slate, dragging it loose, opening it for another pointless plea.
‘I require you to translate for me, then,’ Kern says, doing nothing so polite as asking, of course. ‘Ready?’
‘I . . .’ Helena signals the ambassador, which had drifted off after their last exchange. Out in space, past the visible hull of her own ship, the Shell That Echoes Only’s hull is a brooding storm-coloured wall riven with flashes of anger and fear like lightning. Abruptly, the overlaid window on the Profundity is a busy knot of arms as the vessel’s commander swims into view again, though whether to listen or pontificate she cannot know.
‘Tell it I bring a message for its species from the parasite.’
‘They won’t want to talk about it. The very mention—’
‘It wants a truce.’
‘What?’
Then Portia is signalling to her because the Profundity’s commander has been spurred into a paroxysm of agitation, arms coiling and its skin making jagged, fearful patterns.
‘Doctor Kern, they’ve detected your signal. They . . . they say you’re not communicating from the Lightfoot any more.’ The data channel is right there, and Portia marks out the mathematical proofs. ‘You’re coming from the station where the . . . where the thing is. I think they think you’re . . . not you any more.’
‘They’re right and wrong. I cannot be infected like an organic intelligence. Although if the parasite got into my ant colony on the Lightfoot, that would cause me considerable issues. However, as your hosts have divined, I am no longer operating from there. I am in much straitened circumstances, and I need you to do this for me while I am still capable of acting as intermediary. The organism – we need a name for it, really, something of the civilization, something of the petri dish . . .’
‘Launch,’ Portia says.
‘No!’ Helena begins throwing emotions into her slate, displaying them one on the heels of the last. No, no, no, do not do this, please, no! She tries to find something, some line connecting her with the angry cephalopod within the lens-like screen, some way of making her emotions leap across the void to it. In the back of her mind the missiles are cutting across the vacuum, off to cut through Nod’s atmosphere like busy knives.
‘Doctor Kern!’ Portia raps out, because Kern seems to be losing focus, seems to be diminishing. Helena isn’t sure what’s on the orbital that could even host something like Kern, but whatever is there doesn’t seem to be sufficient.
‘Present,’ Kern confirms sharply.
‘You have incoming—’
‘I am well aware. You must tell them to disable the warheads, divert the missiles, in some way hold off their attack. I am in communication with the parasite organism. It is sentient. It is capable of fabricating an interface with which to take in and process human-level concepts. I have reached a détente with it, on behalf of all of us.’
‘All of who?’
‘Us, life – life that isn’t it. The rest of the universe. Whoever we feel like speaking for. However, I do not want this hard work to get blown up by a pack of reactionary warmongers. I had plenty of that back when I was human. Helena, tell them it wants to talk. Tell them . . . it understands.’
‘We don’t understand,’ Portia complains.
‘I don’t require you to,’ is Kern’s imperious response. ‘You are a linguistics team. Translate for me, as I translate for it.’
Helena stares into the alien eye of the Profundity’s commander and clenches down on her emotions. It is for the octopuses to be free and ruled by their feelings. She must control hers, because no amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth will help right now. Instead she speaks hope into her slate. She speaks new horizons. She implores them to listen. She speaks patience as Portia plots out orbital holding patterns that will keep the missiles in play without sending them on their fatal errand to the surface.
‘Tell them this . . .’ And Kern speaks: the intentions of an alien culture, filtered through a once-human computer now rapidly running out of thinking room, through a Portiid spider, through a Human and into the world of the cephalopods that even now have their arms about the trigger. Kern speaks fast: she funnels a whole alien world through her narrowing perspective. Helena lets the concepts flood through her, turned from human thoughts to colours and patterns and sublime equations, and probably a third of it turns out as nonsense, but she thinks, They’re still watching. They’re taking it in. It means something to them. And the warship commander, her alien admirer, watches her face and her slate and most of all her eyes, and the missiles are still on their way.