“It’s fine. Biology’s better,” said Lily. “Biology looks back at you.”
“I think the astronomers would say that about astronomy.”
Lily shrugged. “Then I guess I’m not an astronomer.”
Hannah laughed and hugged her. “Have a good time at the beach with Grandma, then.”
Lily smiled her self-contained little smile. “Oh, we will.”
Later that night, when Lily was off typing homework answers into her handheld, Hannah sat down on the couch across from her mother’s armchair. Dee paused her book and looked expectant.
“Do you remember that microscope you got me when I was a kid? Maybe five years younger than Lily, maybe more,” said Hannah dreamily. Dee made an encouraging noise, so Hannah went on: “It came with one of those books showing what you would expect to see, and I looked at a drop of water—we were on Alpha Moncerotis Six then, remember? And it was so different from in the book. The little unicellular creatures swimming around on Alpha Mon Six were totally different from the Earth ones.
“And I loved it, I just loved it. I begged cultures from anybody who’d give me one. Cheek cells, hairs from whatever animal they were studying, plants from the colony, anything. It was the best present.”
“Funny, you remembering that after all these years.”
Hannah glanced down automatically, but her mother followed her gaze. “No, the unit’s fine. I really think the solder will hold it awhile longer. I just don’t remember. I didn’t before the injury, and I never will. I’m sorry I’ve forgotten it, because you sound like it was a hugely important piece of your childhood—I wish I could remember. But it’s like that, honey. There’ll be something Lily thinks is the worst thing you ever did to ruin her life, or the best thing you ever did to make it work, and you will blink at her and say, ‘I did? Did I? Oh.’”
“I suppose that’s how it works,” said Hannah. “I remember her first steps, and of course she doesn’t. Why shouldn’t there be things that are the other way around.”
“There have to be, or she wouldn’t be her own person,” said Dee.
“Well, she’s certainly that,” said Hannah ruefully.
“Oh yes,” said Dee. “She’ll surprise you. That’s what children are for.”
A few weeks later, Hannah looked up from the cephalid tank and its computer and found Lily and Dee standing there watching her.
“We have a surprise for you,” said Lily.
“Can it wait, honey?” Hannah cast her mother an imploring glance, but Dee looked as implacable as Lily. “I’m in the middle of work here.”
“Is it going well?” asked Dee.
Hannah glared at her. “You know it’s not.”
“A break will be good for you. Come.”
Hannah walked with her mother through their ocean-side research complex. Lily danced ahead of them like a much younger child. Hannah sighed. “You know I like to spend time with both of you, Mom, but—”
“Hush, dear. Watch Lily.”
Lily was peeling off her clothes; she had her wetsuit underneath. She climbed onto the lip of one of the cephalid tanks. Hannah and Dee caught up with her.
“Lil,” said Hannah, “I don’t think now’s the time.”
“This is what I wanted to show you, Mom.”
Dee passed a tiny flashlight and a little black box up to her granddaughter, who jumped in the tank with it. Hannah stepped forward ineffectually, knowing she couldn’t stop her. “Oh, Mom.”
“It’s not my unit, it’s the spare,” said Dee. “They’re waterproof. Lily’s tried this before.”
“And if the spare gets damaged—”
“Relax. This is important. We knew you wouldn’t approve right away, or we wouldn’t have done it without you.”
Hannah shook her head. “That my mother and my daughter should use that line against me, yy.”
Dee rolled her eyes. “It’s not against you, it’s for you. Just watch.”
A curious cephalid was approaching Lily. She held out the leads to the memory unit. He probed them with one slender tentacle. Lily gently guided the leads into the cephalid’s mouth orifice.
“It’s got a light display,” said Dee. “I’ve been working on getting it connected to the output.”
“A light display?”
The cephalid engulfed the leads, and the light display made itself known: every diode in it blazed. Then they rippled in a random-looking series of patterns.
“We think he’s trying to remember how to work it,” said Dee. “We’re not sure. We thought you could figure it out.”
“An external memory unit with built-in communications,” said Hannah. “Oh my.”
“It was Lily’s idea. I told the nanites where to solder.”
Hannah took a breath and spoke gently. “Mom, you know that the cephalid may not be able to use your device as memory as we would understand it, right? Being able to light up the panel doesn’t necessarily mean being able to store thoughts as memory.”
“Oh, I know, dear. We thought of that. But we thought at least it’d be something to find out.”
“Oh yes,” Hannah agreed. “Definitely something to find out.”
Lily flashed the flashlight at the cephalid, three times. It recoiled. She flashed again, and the light display went dark. Then it lit up with a blue pattern, three times. Lily repeated it.
“She’s a natural,” said Hannah.
“Nature, nurture, whatever!” said Dee, grinning.
After a few more flash-patterns, Lily swam back to the lip of the tank. The cephalid made a green pattern at her, but she climbed out anyway.
“You can do it like a real experiment,” she said, shaking her black hair out. “You know how to design that sort of thing. Granny and I just got it together for you.”
“I’ll want to have a light bank set up,” said Hannah thoughtfully.
Lily pressed the tiny diode flashlight into her hand. “To begin with.”
Hannah turned to the cephalid and squeezed the trigger on the flashlight twice.
Two ripples of light appeared on the modified implant’s screen: first the blue pattern and then the green. “Hello again,” said Hannah aloud.
They had no idea what they’d done, she thought. If the cephalid could deal with an external electronic system, there had to have been something in their past that allowed for it. Something evolved? More likely something created and lost—and perhaps not by themselves? There would have to be a lot more xenoarchaeology before they would know who had been there before, and what they had taught the cephalids about the use of these tools.
But there would be time for that later. For now there was a conversation Hannah had wanted to have for a long time. Smiling at the retreating backs of her mother and daughter, she flashed the little flashlight in response.
TOP SECRET, by David Grinnell
I cannot say whether I am the victim of a very ingenious jest on the part of some of my wackier friends or whether I am just someone accidentally “in” on some top-secret business. But it happened, and it happened to me personally, while visiting Washington recently, just rubbernecking you know, looking at the Capitol and the rest of the big white buildings.
It was summer, fairly hot, Congress was not in session, nothing much was doing, most people vacationing. I was that day aiming to pay a visit to the State Department, not knowing that I couldn’t, for there was nothing public to see there unless it’s the imposing and rather martial lobby (it used to be the War Department building, I’m told). This I did not find out until I had blithely walked up the marble steps to the entrance, passed the big bronze doors, and wandered about in the huge lobby, wherein a small number of people, doubtless on important business, were passing in and out.