Kira thought on that for a while. So the Jellies were uploading their consciousness, or at least their memories, into different bodies. But they didn’t seem bothered by their actual deaths.… She couldn’t understand Itari’s seeming indifference to its individual fate.
[[Kira here: Don’t you want to live? Don’t you want to keep this form?]]
[[Itari here: So long as my pattern endures, I endure.]] One of its tentacles reached out, and Kira struggled not to recoil as the rubbery appendage poked her in the chest. The Soft Blade stiffened as if it were about to attack. [[The form is unimportant. Even if my pattern is erased—as Ctein did to Nmarhl’s, long ago—it will continue to propagate in the ripples that follow.]]
[[Kira here: How can you say that? What do you mean by ripple? What do you mean those that follow?]]
The Jelly flashed red and green, and its tentacles wrapped tighter about its carapace, but it refused to answer. Kira asked her questions twice more, to no response. And that was all she could extract from the Jelly on the subject of ripples.
She asked a different question then: [[Kira here: I am curious. What is the tsuro, the summons that I felt when the Knot of Minds arrived at the resting place of the Idealis? I’ve felt it from all your shells, except here in this system.]]
[[Itari here: The tsuro is another of the sacred artifacts of the Vanished. It speaks to the Idealis and coaxes it forth. Were it not bonded with you, the Idealis would answer of its own accord and move to present itself at the source of the summons. By use of the tsuro, Wranaui shells everywhere search for the Ideali.]]
[[Kira here: And have you found any more since the end of the Sundering?]]
[[Itari here: Since then? No. Yours is the last surviving. But we live in hope that the Vanished have left more of their makings for us to find and that, this time, we will treat them with greater wisdom than before.]]
She stared at the weave of fibers on the back of her hands: black, gleaming, complex. [[Kira here: Does your form know—does the Knot of Minds know—how to remove the Idealis from the one it is joined with?]]
The Jelly’s skin roiled with the colors of affront, and its nearscent acquired a mix of shock and outrage. [[Itari here: In what ripple would that be desired? To be joined with the Idealis is an honor!]]
[[Kira here: I understand. It is a matter of … curiosity.]]
The alien seemed to struggle with that, but in the end it said, [[Itari here: The only way this form knows to separate from the Idealis is death. Lphet and the other ruling forms of the Knot may be aware of other methods, but if so, they have not scented them.]]
Kira accepted the news with resignation. She wasn’t surprised. Just … disappointed.
Then the ghost of Gregorovich’s voice sounded from the speakers, and he said, “Retracting radiators. Transitioning to FTL in four minutes. Prepare thyselves.”
Only then did Kira notice how cold it had gotten in the antechamber. Frustrated that she didn’t have any more time for questions, she informed Itari of the impending jump and then retreated from the doorway and closed and locked the airlock door.
The lights switched to the dull red of ship-night, a whine sounded near the back of the Wallfish, and the exposed skin on Kira’s cheeks tingled as the Markov Drive activated and they set out on the last and longest leg of their journey: the trip to Sol.
5.
Through the airlock window, Kira watched with interest as Itari wound a cocoon around itself with goo secreted from the undersides of its tentacles. The viscous substance hardened quickly, and within only a few minutes, the Jelly lay hidden within an opaque, somewhat greenish pod stuck to the floor of the airlock.
Kira wondered how the alien would know when to wake up.
Not her problem.
She retreated to her own little nest, secured herself to the webbing, and wrapped herself with blankets. The antechamber was dark and intimidating in the nighttime lighting; hardly a friendly place to spend the next three months.
She shivered, finally feeling the cold.
“Just you and me, headcase,” she said to the erstwhile ceiling.
“Worry not,” whispered Gregorovich, “I shall keep you company, O Varunastra, until your eyes grow heavy and the soft sands of sleep dull your mind.”
“How comforting,” Kira said, but she only half meant the sarcasm. It was nice to have someone to talk to.
“Forgive me for my irrepressible curiosity,” said Gregorovich, and he chuckled, “but what strange scents did you exchange with our be-tentacled guest? You stood there for quite some minutes, and you seemed most affected by the stench afflicting your delicate nostrils.”
Kira snorted. “You could say that.… I’ll write a proper account later. You can see the details there.”
“Nothing immediately helpful, I take it,” said Gregorovich.
“No. But—” She explained about the Nest of Transference and ended with, “Itari said, The form is unimportant.”
“Bodies do tend to be rather fungible these days,” the ship mind said dryly. “As both you and I have discovered.”
Kira pulled the blankets tighter. “Was it difficult becoming a ship mind?”
“Easy certainly isn’t the word I would use to describe it,” said Gregorovich. “Every sense of mine was stripped away, replaced, and what I was, the very foundation of my consciousness, was expanded beyond any natural limit. ’Twas confusion piled upon confusion.”
The experience sounded deeply unpleasant, and it reminded Kira—somewhat to her distaste—of the times when she had extended the Soft Blade, and in doing so, extended her sense of self.
She shivered. The soft sway of her body in zero-g caused her to swallow hard and focus on a fixed spot on the wall while she tried to calm her inner ear. The darkness of the antechamber and the abandoned, empty feeling of the Wallfish affected her more than she liked. Had it really been less than half a day since they’d been fighting through the streets on Nidus?
It seemed as if it had been more than a week ago.
Trying to fend off her sudden loneliness, she said, “My first day here, Trig told me how—in your last ship—you crashed and got stranded. What was it like … being by yourself for so long?”
“What was it like?” said Gregorovich. He laughed with a demented tone, and at once, Kira knew she’d gone too far. “What was it like?… It was like death, like the obliteration of the self. The walls around my mind fell away and left me to gibber senselessly before the naked face of the universe. I had the combined knowledge of the entire human race at my disposal. I had every scientific discovery, every theory and theorem, every equation, every proof, and a million, million, million books and songs and movies and games—more than any one person, even a ship mind, could ever hope to consume. And yet…” He trailed off into a sigh. “And yet I was alone. I watched my crew starve and die, and when they were gone, there was nothing I could do but sit alone in the dark and wait. I worked on equations, mathematical concepts you could never comprehend with your puny little brain, and I read and watched and counted toward infinity, as the Numenists do. And all it did was stave off the darkness for one more second. One more moment. I screamed, though I have no mouth to scream. I wept, though I have no eyes for tears. I crawled through space and time, a worm inching through a labyrinth built by the dreams of a mad god. This I learned, meatbag, this and nothing more: when air, food, and shelter are assured, only two things matter. Work and companionship. To be alone and without purpose is to be the living dead.”