[You don’t think that contact with atavistic humans was an unnecessary risk?]
My species’s premodern behavior has left us with something of a reputation, I’m afraid. “I was wearing some vintage ayatanas—”
[And their information didn’t convince you to leave?]
They weren’t unrightminded humans, and Starlight knew it. They were calling my bluff.
Starlight didn’t have eyes, per se. So I wasn’t quite sure how it was that I felt them studying me. Perhaps vast branches bent subliminally toward me as they focused their attention. Perhaps I was merely self-conscious as all get-out.
“That’s not what you want me to defend, is it?”
[You are capable of self-criticism,] they said. [That is good.]
Well, if the military taught us anything, it was how to accept discipline and how to accept praise. Often at the same time.
It was a skill that I saw coming in handy right now. I nodded to accept the compliment, if it was a compliment. You could never be sure. Starlight’s senso would translate the gesture for them as a form of human communication. Whether they understood me any better than I understood them—well, who could tell?
After a few moments, as if to see if I would fill the silence, Starlight said, [You brought a weapon into this hospital.]
Helen? Were they talking about Helen? The machine?
I would presume they were. If I had misunderstood, we could backtrack. I had come to understand that Starlight’s seeming aggression and rapid-fire sequences of contextless questions weren’t intended to give offense. It was just… how Starlight communicated.
I said, “Helen? A person. A patient. I brought a patient into a hospital. That’s what hospitals are for.”
Starlight seemed not to notice my indignation. It’s hard to tell, when dealing with really alien systers, what they do or do not comprehend about any communication, even if it’s translated for them. And the frustration, naturally, flows both ways. It’s hard to translate experiences outside of context.
The Administree said, [It’s a threat.]
I still wasn’t sure if they were talking about Helen, but they hadn’t contradicted me. “So are a lot of things we handle here. The machine is a person in need of healing. Should I have turned her away?”
[You also brought crew members of an unknown vessel, and a vessel that had met with an unknown accident, back with you.]
“We can help them, too. And you—well, the hospital, the Synarche, anyway—sent me to get them.” I paused and thought. “You could have refused us docking privileges.”
[We considered it.]
Ouch. “It was a weird trip,” I said.
[Be that as it may. She wants you as a care liaison.]
“She… what?”
[Helen wants you to be her liaison. Apparently she trusts you.]
I did not have time to be anybody’s care liaison. One of the physical symptoms of panic to certain members of my species is a coppery taste, if you were wondering. “Is she ready to be released on her own recognizance?”
[Dr. Zhiruo offered her an uncorrupted, air-gapped space within the Core General architecture in which to rebuild and update her personality modules under Dr. Zhiruo’s supervision and with her help. Dr. Zhiruo says she’s already more integrated. She’s going to bring in the hospital archinformist as well, to work with integrating the machine once Helen is stable. Messages will be going out to the other archinformists serving on I Rise From Ancestral Night at the site of the generation ship. So, no, she’s not ready to be released. But it’s Dr. Zhiruo’s professional opinion that it is safe to let her observe the care of her crew, and start integrating her into society.]
“I’m not qualified to be a care liaison.”
[Technically,] they said, with a pedantic tone that carried even across senso translation, [you’re extremely overqualified to be a care liaison. But the job should not be a problem for you. Which is good, because we are dealing with a dual first-contact situation. A form thereof, anyway. Helen’s encountered Terran humans before, but not the Synarche. And her crew, if any of them live, might as well be aliens.]
“At least we can figure out how to speak their language.”
[Your reports indicate that you already have studied their language and attempted speaking it to Helen when you met her. See?] Starlight rustled. [We are confident in your ability to do this job. We’re only formalizing a role you’ve already adopted.]
“What is she going to do when Sally goes out again?”
[Sally is under repair.]
“That won’t last forever.” I felt like I was having the conversation I’d had with O’Mara all over again, and not in a good way. Going over their head was never going to work, anyway: hospital administration might disagree among themselves, but they knew how to present a unified front once a decision had been reached.
Usually, I enjoyed the lack of politics. Usually, I enjoyed not reporting directly to the Administree, whose conversational style was, well, branching. Discursive. And I couldn’t always see how one topic hooked up with the previous one.
Starlight rustled, [Right now, Dr. Jens, you are needed here.]
I bit my lip and decided, for the time being, to save my ammunition. “I wanted to talk to you about this mission anyway. Something about this doesn’t add up.”
[Elaborate?]
“I’m worried about the coincidences,” I admitted. “I’m worried about the operations of three different shipminds, if we count up Sally and Helen and Afar, being affected, their memories—and in one case their consciousness—being damaged. I’m confused about the timeline, but it seems very strange that Sally’s memories would be sabotaged before she encountered two other ships with damaged shipminds. While she was on her way to find them. Responding to their distress beacon, in fact.”
[Yes,] the administrator agreed. [That is odd. I give you permission to enjoy exploring this question in your new role.]
“You’re asking me to play detective?”
[We understand that Master Chief O’Mara already has made such an investigative request of you. They believe you are suited to the task, and we trust their judgment.]
They really were all conspiring against me. “I don’t want to lose my berth. I have no ambitions to be anything but what I am, Starlight.”
[You’ll have your job. This is not a punishment, though you seem to think it is.]
I sighed, and blew a straggling coil of hair out of my eyes. “It’s been a long dia.”
[Get some rest,] Starlight said kindly.
And that was how, after a rest period that I was surprised to spend deeply asleep without any self-interventions (and without interruptions from other members of the hospital staff), I wound up playing secret agent/detective/tour guide to a sexy robot. If that sounds like the sort of punishment that would be handed out in a particularly surrealist purgatory, congratulations. You’re not wrong.
And I wasn’t as familiar with a lot of the hospital as I should have been, because I hadn’t spent very long grounded since I first came to the hospital for training.
Do they still say “grounded” when you’re on a spinning platform in space?
I imagined that my grounding wouldn’t really sink in until the first time Sally, having completed repairs, left without me. Left with a different rescue specialist in place. Somebody, I knew, who might want to keep that berth when I was free to fly again.
O’Mara had been very careful to withhold certain things from me. From what they’d said—and what they’d chosen not to say—it seemed likely Sally might be docked for longer than the dia or two it would take to get her back up to spec. But how much longer was the question.