For a moment he is gripped by a fierce yearning, a longing and excitement utterly alien to him, bigger than him, impossible to stave off or channel. He can only crouch down and press his palms to the sides of his head as though the feelings might erupt explosively out of his skull.
Then the sensation has passed; either that or his window on it has closed, the entire event just a momentary bleed from some vast well of howling sensation he brushed too close to. He stands unsteadily. Zaine isn’t looking his way. Possibly the two spiders are; with their lesser eyes, it’s hard to tell.
The human parts of the module have been built on, and the technology involved is plainly the same that contributed to the octopus vessels they encountered. Globes and bubbles are tacked on in ungainly profusion, with little regard for the structure and centre of gravity of the original. The module would have employed rotational gravity for the benefit of its human occupants; the new mishmash has none of that, but Meshner guesses aquatic creatures don’t have the same need to know which way is up; even Portiids are far more laissez-faire about such things than humanity, old or new. A detailed look reveals more method than the original madness might suggest. On the basis that it was adapted for aquatic use and filled with water, the ungainly structure’s rotation should result in a stable orbital tumble, no indication of decay for at least the next few centuries. Some speculative modelling from Zaine raises the possibility that the end-over-end spin would serve to generate water currents to circulate a clean and breathable medium inside.
Except that medium has very plainly left the building, because the entire structure is catastrophically damaged, torn open at one end, riddled with holes. Kern has a drone making a cautious fly-by, and its images show what Meshner can only characterize as ‘battle-scarring’. Kern’s analysis, and her own personal experience from the point of view of Kern-as-ship, matches this with the sort of armaments the octopus vessels deployed, and moreover places the damage as recent, as far as she can tell, perhaps even within a decade. There is sufficient ice still locked in the same orbit to testify as to the fate of the station’s innards, plus organic material that might once have been its inhabitants. And yet the signal persists, and it is not an octopus signal but something eminently human in format and content. Human, but antiquated.
‘So they went in and they woke up some systems. And then they had one of their sudden bouts of violence,’ Zaine proposes. ‘Or some other bunch tried to take it from the first lot, as they seem more than happy to fight each other.’ Her tone suggests an understandable lack of fondness for the locals.
‘They have awoken some manner of journal, from a scientist of the Old Empire,’ Viola puts in, via Kern. ‘I would very much like to believe so, although there are some discrepancies. The content is . . . not uniformly consistent with Old Empire academic style. Also, I have reservations about the validity of the dating system given the period that entries appear to cover. One interpretation suggests constant composition for far longer than your species would normally live.’
‘There was plenty of variance in dating conventions,’ Zaine starts, but Viola raps sharply on the console to cut her off.
‘There are sections in which meaning breaks down entirely,’ the Portiid notes primly. ‘There are repetitions. Some parts of the signal consist of random characters or words placed in a framework that resembles cogent language but is not, unless this is some Old Empire cypher we are not familiar with. However, it is plain that there is a trove of information of some sort available on this facility, and the facility itself will not last forever. The longevity of its orbit is in doubt now that the internal water has been removed.’
‘Hold on.’ Meshner raises a hand, hearing his own voice come out as a croak. ‘Sorry, not sure what you’re saying now, or where you’re going with it.’
Viola’s front legs twitch in irritation. ‘We are obviously going to go in and retrieve such information as remains accessible.’
Did we agree that? He would be entirely willing to accept that he’d simply glazed through the relevant crew meeting, except that Zaine and Fabian seem equally surprised by the contention. Zaine was against the whole business, wasn’t she?
Viola climbs a metre higher on the wall so she can look down on all of them, tilting her body left and right so that her major eyes can pin them all. Her palps lift with a self-important little flourish, obviously choosing this time to announce her ascension to the captain’s pre-eminence.
‘Let me be the bearer of bad tidings,’ comes Kern’s translation, and Meshner feels a stab of amusement at the slightly pompous tone the computer chooses. ‘The viability of our entire mission in this solar system is in doubt. The native civilization is both aggressive and potent enough to destroy us should it make a concerted effort. Only its inherent disorganization has prevented this from happening. Bianca is dead and Helena and Portia are lost, and the Voyager is preserved only because it is assiduously concealing its presence. We had hoped to find a counter-force to combat the octopus civilization but thus far nothing is apparent. However, we have found here an opportunity to salvage something of value. There are records here dating to the earliest era we know, that of the humans whose strange culture underlies us all. Moreover, there are records of an entirely other world, which plainly engaged the interests of those humans, and which contains within it biological systems and Understandings of potential use and relevance to our entire species.’ A pause, and then a hurried skitter of legs. ‘And Humans.’
Meshner mostly watches Zaine to work out how novel any of this is supposed to be to him, and she still seems just as clueless as he is. In the end it is Fabian who responds, a meek little question from the floor, his posture as crouching and inoffensive as a male can be.
‘Help me along the path to your conclusions, please. Understanding is a matter of Portiids. To what do you refer?’ The word Kern uses is given that specific spin, meaning Portiid inherited memories rather than simple grasping of concepts, and Meshner has the same difficulty in seeing the relevance.
Viola jerks with annoyance but starts sending data to the screens, a teacher with slow pupils. ‘Here is what our signaller has to say about the genetics of the native life of this planet. Here is the structure of their encoding molecules.’ Something other than DNA, alien proteins folding in uncomfortable ways, encrypting information in combinations of shape and chemistry. ‘Here is a genome-equivalent in situ.’ Something like a random scrawling revealed as a three-dimensional structure on the interior of a membrane. ‘Here is another. Another.’ Meshner’s eyes are starting to swim because Viola is letting her diagrams overlap, as Portiids tend to, until picking the new from the old is like disentangling old string. ‘Here is another.’
This one is huge. Viola keeps pulling out and pulling out, and if the others had been a few ditches and earthworks stuck to a cell’s inside wall, this is a city, a metropolis of compact protein-a-likes, molecules for which Old Empire science doesn’t even have convenient handles. Viola flags up various sections, comparing and contrasting to other examples. Meshner loses the ability to make anything of her diagrams at this point and must simply take it all as read.
‘According to the signaller the inheritable information is being encoded at an atomic level, meaning that the transmission of information can be accomplished at far greater energy-efficiency than our own genetic code. What, then, can this great assemblage of information be, if not an Understanding? It is plain to me that this alien biota has undergone a parallel evolution allowing it to encode its experiences just as we have, and in a manner that we could learn from and adapt to our own purposes. We need to download this station’s archives entirely and then get them, and ourselves, out of this solar system as fast as possible.’