He sighed.
Of all the people I thought would enjoy spending time around children… well, Loese wasn’t one of them. It goes to show how stereotypes can mislead.
“I didn’t know you knew anything about gravity generators.”
“I played around with them a little in my downtime. I like techy stuff.” He grinned.
From here, we could have accessed senso from the care team—filtered, so we didn’t wind up with their love lives…. Did Darboof or any of the methane breathers even have love lives? Hastily, I canceled the request for info that my wondering had automatically generated, before the answer chipped away any more of my battered innocence.
Accessing the senso would have come with partial immersion in their alien sensorium, however. Having worn Darboof ayatanas, I wasn’t in any hurry to experience that again so soon. They were too different to fit comfortably over my skin. For one thing, their nervous systems depended on supercooled superconductors to move electricity around. They thought with electrons—same as Sally, same as me, same as Rilriltok—but they thought awfully fast. And moved awfully slow.
Their experience was a particularly ill-fitting suit, for a human.
They probably would have felt the same way about me and my weird, hot, bright life. Although there were hobbyists who liked to try on other species recreationally. The more exotic and extremophile, the better. Not that I judge, but some subcultures are odd.
“I’m bored, too.” I had plenty to do, but none of it was what I loved doing. I contemplated my thumbnails, and the moonstone gleam of my exo against the skin of my hands. I was tempted to tell him about my conversations with O’Mara and Starlight. Did he know about the extent of the sabotage on Core General? Rilriltok had been cagey but informed. But from O’Mara I’d gotten a sense that they were keeping it quiet, and all I’d heard through the grapevine since I got back was a bit of muttering about unlucky happenings—or, depending on the personality of the mutterer, poor maintenance.
Cheeirilaq must know, being a Goodlaw. And Rilriltok had suggested I speak with it, though I hadn’t nerved myself up yet. I wasn’t sure it would want assistance from outside of its chain of command, especially assistance foisted on it by a former Judiciary noncom who now worked for an entirely different organization.
Its role was not quite judge, jury, and executioner, but beings that achieved the status of Goodlaw in the Judiciary were trusted by the Synarche to exercise reliable judgment in ethically complex frontier situations, when they could not rely on communication to higher authorities. That was a level of responsibility that went beyond solid rightminding and into strong personal moral development—not to mention an encyclopedic knowledge of legal precedents.
I trusted Sally and her crew with my life. But somebody had sabotaged Sally. And although it didn’t seem likely, I found myself circling back to consider the possibility that it had happened after we left Core General. So where did that leave me? Wondering if I could trust Tsosie. Wondering if I could trust Cheeirilaq enough to confide in it.
I refused to wonder about Rilriltok.
But as implications I had been sort of glossing over in a haze of busyness unpacked themselves, my heartbeat seemed to pulse in my belly rather than my chest, and my hands grew cold. I was suddenly rather scared.
“I’m still intrigued by the mystery,” I admitted. Then I rolled my eyes in irritation. “Oh, Void. I should have asked Zhiruo about Afar. I got distracted by Helen and all the discussion of corpsicles.”
Mystery? Cheeirilaq’s head bobbed forward, framed by the collar of its little blue jacket. Do you mean the potential law enforcement problem I am investigating?
“Maybe? You haven’t explained your interest in Helen and her crew. Is it acceptable to ask what your intentions are?”
As I formed the question, I realized that it had seemed natural to encounter the Goodlaw because we had been talking about it, so I hadn’t questioned the coincidence of it being interested in our historical and medical mystery.
Helen, her crew, Afar, and his crew, also. Allow me to set it forth thusly:
First, why and how was Big Rock Candy Mountain moving so quickly?
Second, why was Afar docked with the generation ship?
Third, why was Afar transporting—I should say, smuggling, because it does not appear on a manifest—what appears to be a privately designed and manufactured combat walker? Or a really overdesigned environmental suit, perhaps, because it does not appear to have weapons.
Fourth, who sent Afar, and where was Afar en route to?
Fifth, what incapacitated Afar’s crew?
“Wait,” I interrupted, connecting some dots that had seemingly been too apparent to the Goodlaw to warrant expositing. “Arms smugglers?”
It would appear so. Shall I continue?
There was more. Of course there was more. “Be my guest.”
Tsosie had his arms folded and was watching with an expressionless mouth and a little line between his eyes. The expression was familiar, and boded ill for somebody.
Not, I hoped, me. Or Cheeirilaq.
Cheeirilaq buzzed softly.
Sixth, what incapacitated Afar?
Seventh, if the thing that incapacitated Afar is not the same thing, what is causing the generation ship’s shipmind or shipminds to malfunction?
“I might have some answers on that one, actually. I’ve been talking to Mercy.” Quickly, I relayed what he had reconstructed from Helen’s information about the captain freezing his crew, incapacitating the shipmind, and then eventually dying alone—old age? illness? suicide?—in his command chair. I was aware of Rilriltok leaning close and listening intently, and the moment in which it buzzed and coruscated with excitement vibrated my jaw.
I might have some information to contribute on that front, it said. Our preliminary scans of the rescued patients indicate that many of them are infected with a human influenza-type virus. We will be vaccinating human hospital staff against it, and we have antiviral treatments available for the patients as they are rewarmed.
We all looked at one another in silence, humans and Rashaqins. Tsosie breathed out, an eloquent sigh.
“Out of curiosity,” I said, “was Specialist Jones one of the ones infected?”
Rilriltok hesitated, with the air of one consulting senso for its notes. She is not.
Cheeirilaq stretched its lime-green wing coverts wide, cocked its head, and continued, I have one more question.
“Let’s hear it,” Tsosie said, as if relieved for the break in tension.
Eighth, how can rock also be candy?
I blinked. Tsosie snorted. I pointed a finger at the Goodlaw, realizing too late that that might be seen as a very aggressive gesture by a species whose forelimbs were cavalry sabers.
I folded the finger back into my hand. “Was that a joke?”
Honest curiosity.
“Rock candy is crystallized sucrose,” Tsosie said.
Rilriltok’s antennae peeked over the back of its chair. Ninth, it interjected, how did an anomalous cryo pod wind up mixed in among the rest?