To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

And she remembered the dream she’d had during her long sleep. “You were trying to protect me, weren’t you?” she said, somewhat louder than before.

The greenish lights in the room seemed to pulse in response, but so faintly that it was hard to be sure. Feeling more comfortable, she moved to the bed and secured herself to sleep.

4.

Late next morning, over twenty-four hours after they had emerged from FTL, Kira and Falconi gathered in the galley to wait for the possible reply from the Knot of Minds. Itari joined them, taking up a position atop one of the two tables. The Jelly held itself in place with the small grasping arms that unfolded from its carapace.

Falconi was lost in his overlays, and Kira was watching a vid—one of the newscasts the Wallfish had picked up before leaving Sol—on the holo-display built into the table. The vid wasn’t very interesting, so after a few minutes, she turned it off and fell to studying the Jelly across the room.

The dusky, autumn colors of Itari’s tentacles were solid now, unshifting, though that would change were its emotions to rise. Kira found it interesting that the Jellies not only had emotions, but that they weren’t entirely alien to her. Perhaps, she thought, they were easier for her to understand because of the Soft Blade’s time spent joined with the graspers.

Graspers … Even in the small moments the xeno was inside her mind, it shaded her thoughts with meanings from another era. Once that had bothered Kira. Now she acknowledged and accepted the fact without judgment. She was the one who would decide the worth of things, not the xeno, no matter how strongly she felt its inherited memories.

A continuous cloud of scents emanated from the Jelly. At the moment, they were subdued—just a general I am here, like a low hum in the background—interspersed with an occasional spike of interest-driven odor, spicy and somewhat unpleasant.

Kira wondered what the Jelly was doing, whether it had implants of its own or if it was just thinking and remembering.

[[Kira here: Tell me of your shoal, Itari.]]

[[Itari here: What shoal do you mean, Idealis? My hatching? My co-forms? My Arm? There are many kinds of shoals. Does not the Idealis tell you of these things?]]

The Jelly’s question was close enough to her own ruminations, it gave her pause. [[Kira here: Yes, but as through muddy water. Tell me, where were you hatched? How were you raised?]]

[[Itari here: I was hatched in a clutching pool near the shore of High Lfarr. It was a warm place with much light and much food. When I was grown to my third-form, I was given to this current form, which is how I have served ever since.]]

[[Kira here: Did you have no choice as to your form?]]

Scent of puzzlement from the Jelly. [[Itari: Why would I have a choice? What choice is there?]]

[[Kira here: I mean … what did you wish to do?]]

The puzzlement deepened. [[Itari here: Why would that matter? This form was how best I could serve my Arm. What else would there be to do?]]

[[Kira here: Do you not have any desires of your own?]]

[[Itari here: Of course. To serve my Arm and the Wranaui as a whole.]]

[[Kira here: But you have your own ideas of how best to do that, yes? You do not agree with all Wranaui about the course of this … ripple.]]

A gentle flush crept down the Jelly’s limbs. [[Itari here: There are many solutions to the same problem, but the goal itself does not shift.]]

She decided to try a different tack. [[Kira here: If you did not have to serve, what would you do? If the Arms did not exist and there were no one to tell you how to spend your time?]]

[[Itari here: Then it would fall to me to rebuild our race. I would shift forms and spawn hatchlings every moment of the day until our strength was returned.]]

Kira released a small hiss of frustration, loud enough that Falconi noticed. “You talking with that thing?” he asked, nodding toward Itari.

“Yeah, but not really getting anywhere.”

“I’m sure it feels the same about you.”

Kira grunted. He wasn’t wrong. She was trying to communicate with an alien species. Just talking to a human from another city, much less another planet, could be nigh on impossible. Why should it be any easier with an alien? She felt like she had to try, though. If they were going to be dealing with the Jellies on a regular basis in the future, then she wanted to have some sense of what was important to them (outside of the memories from the Soft Blade).

[[Kira here: Answer me this: What do you do when there is nothing that needs doing? You cannot work all the time. No creature can.]]

[[Itari here: I rest. I contemplate my future actions. I honor the acts of the Vanished. If I have the chance, I swim.]]

[[Kira here: Do you play?]]

[[Itari here: Play is for first- and second-forms.]]

There was a curious lack of imagination to the Jellies that Kira found odd. How had they managed to build an interstellar civilization when they didn’t seem driven to dream the way humans so often were? The technology they had scavenged from the Vanished couldn’t have helped that much. Or had it?… She warned herself against making human-centric judgments. After all, the Jelly the Soft Blade had been joined with—Shoal Leader Nmarhl—had shown plenty of initiative during its time. Perhaps she was failing to understand a linguistic or cultural difference between her and Itari.

[[Kira here: What do the Wranaui want, Itari?]]

[[Itari here: To live, to eat, to spread to all friendly waters. In that, we are the same as you, two-form.]]

[[Kira here: And what are the Wranaui? What is the heart of your nature?]]

[[Itari here: We are what we are.]]

[[Kira here: The Idealis calls you graspers. Why would it think that?]]

The Jelly’s tentacles rubbed over themselves. [[Itari here: Because we have taken up the sacred pieces the Vanished left behind. Because what we can hold, we hold tight. Because each Arm must do as it sees fit.]]

[[Kira here: The Vanished were on your homeworld, were they not?]]

[[Itari here: Yes. We found their works on the land and deep in the Abyssal Plain.]]

[[Kira here: So there is solid land on your planet?]]

[[Itari here: Some, but less than most.]]

[[Kira here: What level of technology did the Wranaui have before finding the works of the Vanished?]]

[[Itari here: We had learned how to smelt metal by the heated vents in our oceans, but there was much that was beyond us by reason of our life under the water. It was only by the grace of the Vanished that we were able to expand beyond the vergeal depths.]]

[[Kira here: I see.]]

She continued to question the Jelly, trying to suss out what she could of its species and civilization, but too many areas of confusion remained for her to make much progress. The more she talked with Itari, the more Kira realized just how different their two kinds really were—and the differences went far beyond the already vast physical disparities.

It was nearing midnight ship time, and Falconi was picking up in the galley in preparation for retiring, when a tone sounded and Morven said, “Captain, incoming transmission.”

5.

An electric tingle crawled down Kira’s spine. Now maybe they would have a sense of what was going to happen—of where to go and what to do.

“On screen,” said Falconi, terse. He wiped his hands with a towel and pushed himself over to where Kira sat floating at the table.