Then Sasha Blaine was saying, quite loudly, “She was dead, Harley! Just yesterday!”
“Well, she’s back. We knew that was possible, didn’t we?”
“You’re pretty fucking casual about this—”
Weldon was still standing where he blocked Gabriel’s view. “She was killed, Harls. Murdered.”
“Okay, then, back from the dead, the perfect person to ask…who did it?”
Now it was Vikram Nayar’s voice, saying, “She said it was the girl. She said it was Camilla.”
Sasha said, “Oh, for God’s sake, she’s a nine-year-old girl. She’s probably still addled from whatever has happened to her—”
“Vikram,” Harley said, “get her to calm down.”
“She wants her child,” Nayar said. “And she wants us to punish Camilla.”
“Where is the baby?” Harley said. “Sasha—?”
“Sleeping with the Bangalores. I was just going to check on her—”
“Better get the baby.”
“Better find Camilla, too,” Weldon said.
“She shouldn’t be far,” Nayar said. “She’s been living right here with these bugs all afternoon.” He handed the food to Nayar and started for the opening.
“Wait a second,” Sasha said. “What are you going to do?”
“Bring her in for questioning, I guess.” Weldon turned to the others. “Right?” Then he was gone.
Sasha seemed upset. “Harley, is this spinning out of control?”
Harley laughed so loud it startled Gabriel. “When was it ever in control?”
Gabriel must have moaned, because suddenly Sasha knelt next to him. “What do we do about Gabriel?”
“Might as well let him rest.”
Gabriel rolled over and sighed. The woman was still crying about her baby. What was the passage from the Bible? “Rachel weeping for her children”? Gabriel felt that…weeping for Yvonne, for the stupid decisions he had made that cost her her life…had cost him his life.
More sleep.
MAKALI
“What are we expecting from this?” Dale Scott asked.
Makali and Zack and Dale and Valya had followed the Sentry farther into a Beehive chamber that was a good cousin to the one adjoining the human habitat.
Makali realized that she no longer found Scott’s comments irritating, likely because of fatigue, familiarity, and the realization that he was merely vocalizing her own thoughts. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could use water, then food.”
Makali had wondered about that, too. The skinsuit had tended to that vital need but was no longer available. It wasn’t as though they could melt ice and snow from the Keanu exterior….
What was Zack’s plan? Did he have one? It seemed that ever since turning away from the sealed vesicle passage, they had been reacting or running, grasping the only option available: flee the croc, dive into the goo, head for the surface.
Head for Mt. St. Helens.
“How about safe passage into the Sentry habitat?” Zack said.
“You make that sound almost reasonable,” Dale said. “But it just makes me ask, and then what?”
Zack was slow in answering. Makali was quite sure that their commander had not reached an accommodation with Dale Scott and probably wished he had been left dead on the surface like Wade Williams. Finally he said, “If there are other Sentries, maybe they’ll know how to get us back to our habitat.”
“Or how to control the NEO,” Valya said. She had cheered up considerably since shedding the skinsuit and finding a purpose in establishing communication with the Sentry.
After several turns they saw branching passages that seemed decayed and otherwise disused, except for a central one.
As the Sentry slipped out of sight, Dale hurried to keep up.
Makali and the others heard what sounded like a yelp and a splash.
They came around the corner to a central chamber, clearly a collection of Beehive cells…and a floor that was half-ground and half-pool.
Dale Scott was rising from the pool, which seemed to be about a meter deep.
The Sentry was looking at him with what Makali hoped was curiosity.
“Well,” Dale said ruefully, “I found some water.”
It was obvious that the Sentry lived here; around the pool were pieces of what had to be furniture, including a table and a stool, both of them too large to be of use to humans. The facings of the cells had been stripped—there were objects or substances stored in several. One of the larger cells was clearly a sleep or rest chamber for the Sentry.
In one corner were piles of organic material…some looked like tubers, others like flattened fish or animals.
“Home sweet home,” Dale said. All the humans could do was stand and watch as the Sentry went about its business, pulling objects out of one chamber, transferring them to another. It found one device, roughly the size of a Slate, and held it up to its chest. Apparently satisfied with the data revealed—if that was what happened—the Sentry replaced the unit.
Then it turned to the pile of food and supplies in the corner. Kneeling, it carefully picked through the material, finding what it wanted—first, a flask that contained some kind of liquid, which it drank. (“I hope that’s water it might share,” Valya said.) Then, a silvery morsel that looked to Makali like a flattened eel; it used one of its good middle arms to smash the thing against the chamber wall.
“Savage,” said Dale, who had, with Zack’s help, emerged from his soaking and was standing there dripping. Fortunately the temperature was tolerable, even on the warm side. Dale would be uncomfortable until he dried off, but he wouldn’t be in danger of catching pneumonia, at least. As for other alien bugs, Makali couldn’t say.
Zack suddenly stepped between them and the Sentry. “Careful, everyone—”
Makali could still see the giant being…it was removing another item from deep inside a chamber. Clearly the item had not been used in a while; the Sentry literally rubbed it against its chest and examined it.
Then it inserted it into the vest it wore. A middle hand touched various spots on the vest. Then the Sentry addressed them: “DSH,” it said. It was one syllable that seemed to contain two sounds, deh and sh.
The Sentry pointed to itself.
“I think that’s communication,” Makali said.
The Sentry pointed directly at Zack, who said, “Zack.” Then Dale, who said his name, then Valya, who did likewise.
Finally it pointed to Makali. She couldn’t speak. She knew what to say; she approved of the way the others had offered their names.
She just wanted to be sure. Don’t anthropomorphize!
“DSH,” the Sentry said, pointing to itself again.
“Help him out,” Dale said. “Its name is Dash; he wants yours.”
“Makali,” she said, drawing out the name. She hoped that was the right thing to do.
“The voice is coming from that unit on its chest,” Valya said. “I assume it’s a translator.”
Still focused on Makali, the Sentry—Dash—began speaking again, but it all sounded like grunts and whistles, with the exception of a sound that could have been the word help.
Oh. “It needs vocabulary,” Valya said. “I think the device records sounds and structure. I need to keep it speaking, then exchange sounds and words. We’ll build from there.” For the first time since Makali had met her, Valya seemed happy.
Over the next couple of hours, Valya Makarova worked her magic with Dash, carefully taking him through the Roman alphabet, then numbers, weights, measures, body parts, colors, directions, units of time—every word she could think of that would be useful in creating a vocabulary for Dash’s translator.
It didn’t take long for Dash, or its machine, to begin uttering brief phrases, offering its own story, bits of which registered with Makali, as she sat with her back against the nearest intact Beehive cell, either dozing from exhaustion or attempting to unlock Brahma’s black box recorder.
She wanted to give Valya and Dash closer attention but found it frustrating, like listening to a mother explaining something to a not-very-bright child.