He is talking about struggle, about experiment, unwise perhaps, condemned perhaps; resistance from others, pressing on regardless, a moment of wild maniac enthusiasm for the project of the moment, a moment of crushing depression because everything seems about to fail. A storm of feeling, but translated into human emotions, tagged with odd words that condense the denotations, polished until she can . . . see her face in it, a human face giving human import. And all the while the Octopus stares at her features, her eyes, everything visible within her mask, and perhaps it has magnified its view of that, looking for expression even as she tries to watch its colours.
And a part of her sits back, somewhat mulishly, and thinks: You couldn’t have done this before?
So far, so good. Now she has to speak back to it. Portia is already feeding her useful data flags to let her identify their own ship, the warship, the planets, the abstract concept of beyond to indicate their own origin. Helena takes it and begins speaking colours back to the ambassador. Repeating herself, mostly, save that this time it is watching her intently. This time she feels a connection – not just of one living thing recognizing another, which she had felt from their first meeting, but of another sentient mind fumbling with the same puzzle, trying to cooperate with her in the solving.
We come in peace. We need to speak with our friends. We need to help them.
And all the while the greater debate flashes in a thousand hues from the hulls of both vessels.
11.
Zaine is awake, but in pain. Fabian has some medical knowledge of Humans, but it is mostly neurology. The library of Understandings they would normally rely on is inaccessible, possibly gone for good unless they can get back to the Voyager. The synthesizing equipment that should produce things as basic as on-demand analgesics is not functioning, nor does it appear on the list of systems Kern is working on. Kern’s communications with the downed crew are steadily dwindling. It has been some time since anyone heard the familiar thrum of her voice through their feet. Viola has ordered and demanded and cajoled and even, when she thought Fabian was otherwise occupied, pleaded with the computer. Kern now communicates only through the consoles, giving brief, functional reports stripped of all personality. When Viola attempts a system-wide survey she discovers that, far from the minimal functioning she expects, Kern’s entire array is in furious activity, organic and inorganic both. Her electronic centres are running to capacity, slowly edging out the tasks required to maintain the crashed Lightfoot. Her ants, which deal with breadth of thought and parallel problem solving, are undergoing some kind of a crisis. The insects are in frenetic motion, constantly communing with each other as they shuttle data from antennae to antennae, each ant devoting its little collection of neurons to tiny subsets of reasoning, then recombining these with its neighbours, surveying, coming to decisions, going away to recalculate. The lightning speed of her electronic elements is Kern’s forebrain, making decisions and presiding over a vast and distributed decision-making engine housed in the various ant-colonies she commands. To Kern, it is all Kern, the illusion of a unified whole. To Viola, it is not clear how much of Kern is left, if any, but whatever is there is busy. She fears it is merely spinning the wheels, helplessly out of control. The ants are so ferociously active they have ceased to conduct their own regular maintenance. Dead workers are beginning to pile up, and that leads only to a dead colony (and the lobotomizing of Kern) if not remedied. And none of the crew can remedy it, only Kern.
Viola is a pragmatist, though. She is isolating sections of the computer architecture, stealing neurons from Kern’s frenzy. In this way she is hoping to sustain life support, hull integrity and their meagre repair efforts. She knows that if Kern – or some dysfunctional chaos currently occupying Kern’s place – notices then things may get ugly, because Kern may take it all back with extreme prejudice.
Working away, Viola remarks one conclusion to Fabian. Whatever the computer is doing is not mere chaos. She can see just enough to guess at patterns, and their comms array has been repeatedly modified to better allow it to transmit – not to the Voyager, but to the orbital drones and station. Kern is shunting a colossal amount of data up and down the gravity well and Viola cannot even begin to guess why.
Artifabian, the third member of their crew and still blessedly disconnected from Kern, is tending to Zaine. It has retained more vertebrate medical knowledge than either of its living fellows, and continues to behave like a polite, deferential male Portiid, which Viola finds comforting and Fabian annoying.
And then, unlooked-for, utterly beyond optimism, the comms light up with a signal.
Lightfoot, Kern, Viola, Fabian, Zaine, Meshner, anyone? A string of names in reassuring Portiid speech.
Lightfoot crew, he responds. Fabian present. Portia?
Viola rushes over to jostle knees with him, leaving Zaine across the crew chamber waiting anxiously for news.
Portia present, the speaker confirms. I don’t know how long we have. Tell me your circumstances.
Fabian does so, letting Viola dictate the briefest but most informative situation report possible, stressing just how little of everything they have left. And you? he adds at the end.
Despite her warning about time, Portia hesitates for just enough to set Fabian’s nerves twanging again. We are travelling towards you in a ship controlled by some kind of scientist faction amongst the molluscs. Their purpose is not currently to effect a rescue but Helena and I are attempting to persuade them. Her speech is coming over crudely, shorn of the proper interface that would add character and subtext to it, but Fabian can pick up from the very rhythms that she is not confident about the outcome of such persuasion. There is a complication, also. Another vessel is accompanying us. Its purpose is hostile, and it is linked with the vessel that attacked you. Currently however, there is a dialogue.
At Viola’s urgent palp-waving, Fabian asks, with creditable calmness, Expand, please.
Our crew have some manner of scientific purpose that the enemy ship wants to prevent, but thus far it is all . . . leg measuring. Posturing with colours. If they were not so powerful and their ships so large, it would be amusing. If we were not so helpless. Portia’s frustration is clear through any number of technical limitations. But there is a dialogue.
And the ship that attacked us?