Artifabian was, of course, in the quarantined section as well, and that Kern cannot link to it does not bode well for Fabian’s research assistant. Viola is eyeing him, though, and he is aware that she is currently excused the traditional bold and venturesome female’s role. Not that she would likely have taken the chance to prove her valour, in his assessment. Viola is neither bold nor venturesome by temperament, and in the old days she would have had males scuttling about to perform her every whim, especially anything that involved the expenditure of energy or the assumption of risk. Or so his bitter thoughts run now, as he dons the cumbersome all-over hazard suit Viola finds for him. Most Portiid environment suits just focus on those parts of the exoskeleton that give ingress to the innards, but Fabian is more than happy to deny the hostile biosphere outside any access to him.
By using up most of the energy she has accumulated, Kern reforms a hull section into a cramped airlock and lets him in, and then out the other side. He checks the readouts: yes, probably there will be sufficient power for the reverse transition; yes, probably the atmosphere scrubbers and generators will be able to keep up with attrition if they have to traipse in and out a few times. Probably. Kern is being frighteningly vague on topics where Fabian would prefer a computer to be rigorous and exacting.
Higher functions restoration? he asks, none-too-tactfully.
I am very well, thank you. Kern’s reply is acid, a decided taste of her usual manner, and therefore infinitely reassuring. I am working on keeping you all alive. By all means continue to distract me from that.
Fabian goes outside.
The readouts from his hazard suit (which has its own power and seems almost painfully cheery in its enthusiastic reporting, compared to dour, wounded Kern) tell him that the atmosphere is thin and oxygen-deficient (a bigger problem to Fabian than to a Human but he has no intention of breathing it anyway), and he attributes this at least in part to altitude, because the Lightfoot’s remnants have come down on a mountainous altiplano, and in one direction the ground simply shears away to distant, hazy valleys. He sends a brief description back and Kern informs him, I selected a landing spot that seemed isolated and was also remote from the location of the earlier human colony on this planet, in the hope that the threat they faced was local. Her use of the concept ‘landing’ is reassuring.
Within a half-kilometre there is a slumped mess of hull material, partially unspooled into great drifts of filaments, which is the quarantine section. It plainly must have come down attached to the rest of the ship to be so close, either broken loose or intentionally jettisoned on impact. Fabian gives the intervening ground a careful look, because this high plain is not devoid of life. The ground is stippled with hollows, and each hollow holds something like an upturned nine-legged starfish, or perhaps a leathery flower. The face it presents to the wan sunlight is so uniformly black that it gives the impression of a hole into the darkness of space. The sides and underside, where the tendrils have curled up slightly, are dust-orange and rugged. They move very slightly, canting and flexing in extreme slow motion to make the most of the light. Between the hollows, there are groups of far smaller specimens which Fabian decides are juveniles, but which might be vagabond males seeking mates or hive-drones serving their sessile queens for all he truly knows. These little stars inch across the bare rock at a pace a slug would scoff at.
Fabian does not fancy the trip at all, but a moment later he is skittering madly for the quarantine section, vaulting high over any living thing in his way. When he is almost at his target a shadow ghosts over him and he quails, his upper eyes registering a long, trailing thing like a kite left to its own recognisance, rippling through the sky above. He guesses it is about twenty metres long, more than enough to make a meal of any Portiid or Human should it be so inclined. Like the starfish, though, it pays him no need at all, and perhaps its upper side is also a solar collector and it lives an endless, mindless round of sunbathing, following noon about the planet’s circumference.
Or perhaps not. He had believed himself fairly knowledgeable about the local biology before setting foot on the surface, given the recorded research diaries of Lante, but there is a world of difference between hearing a scientist’s analyses of protein formation and cellular structure and standing on an alien world, viewing its alien denizens with his own eyes.
It comes to him, as he reaches the quarantine pod, that this, this, is the Understanding he will bequeath to his species, should he survive. He is the first Portiid to be here, to see these things. His scientific genius may be lost, but this moment of fear and wonder will survive.
If he had considered that ahead of time, he would have been thinking brave and creditable thoughts throughout, instead of the panicky twitching he has given free rein to.
He finds an access to the pod, but he needs to know the conditions inside. Hopefully Zaine has been told to expect him. He links to the internal comms.
Arrived. Your situation?
Do you have suit?
He does, of course, and confirms it.
Will open small lock, comes the next message. No power for more. Put suit in. Wait.
He is receiving untranslated Portiid communication, he realizes, which seems precocious for Zaine, but the instructions are sound and he follows them.
Suit applied ready we are coming out.
Fabian skitters back a little, because he is not sure who or what he is talking to right now. Is it Kern? It doesn’t sound enough like her to inspire confidence. And then the wall of the quarantine section is unseamed and, just before it becomes obvious, he works it out: Artifabian, but an Artifabian that is not linking properly to his comms but operating the manual transmitter in the downed section. Then the slit wall bulges, and a suited figure slumps out: Zaine, but plainly not conscious or well. Fabian finds Human injuries hard to analyse even without a suit in the way – they are so fleshy and unfinished, with all their organs trapped between their hard skeletons and the hazards of the outside world!
How is she? he taps out for Artifabian, and the robot responds exactly as another male Portiid might, body language and all.
We were both harmed in the landing. She lives but has sustained injury. We must get her more substantial help.
Despite the medical emergency, Fabian is fascinated. The robot stands there just like the thing it feigns, moving its palps in a repeated idling pattern because being too still is, for the Portiids, a stance filled with emotional meaning, either predator or prey. Casual fidgeting is their smiling and nodding, a low-level reinforcement of their often-fraught social contracts. And obviously, simulating a Portiid is the point of Kern’s experiment with Artifabian, but it appears to have forgotten to simulate Kern. Its casing is dented in many places and one leg is askew, but there has plainly been some deeper damage with unexpected results. The scientist in Fabian twitches to study, but they have other priorities.
Two Portiids might just be able to move a Human, but not over rough ground in such a way as to maintain anyone’s suit integrity. Thankfully this problem solves itself as a tracked drone approaches them from the main body of the crashed ship, which now resembles little more than a gigantic half-deflated tent. The drone’s tracks are unkind to those starfish-things they grind over, leaving a dark, leaking ichor in its wake, but it has a flatbed that they can at least lever Zaine’s torso onto, and by unspoken agreement they fold her arms over her chest and each take a leg, the whole endeavour having the sense of some horrifying farce.