It wasn’t easy.
Then, from somewhere in the howling confusion, a single word surfaced, and she/he/it heard it spoken in a voice not their own: “Kira.”
… Kira. The name rang like a struck bell. She wrapped herself in it, using it as armor to defend her core, using it as a way to give her/him/it some sense of internal consistency.
Without that consistency, she was no one. Just a collection of disparate urges devoid of meaning or narrative. So she held to the name with a fierce grip, trying to maintain a semblance of individuality amid the ongoing madness. Who Kira might be wasn’t a question she could answer yet, but if nothing else, the name was a fixed point she could center herself on while she tried to figure out how exactly to define herself.
2.
Time progressed in strange fits and starts. She couldn’t tell if moments were passing or eons. Her flesh continued to expand, as if precipitating out of a cloud of vapor, building, bunching, becoming.
Limbs she felt, and organs too. Blistering heat and, in shadows sharp and stark, brittle cold. Her skin thickened in response, forming armor sufficient to protect even the most delicate of tissues.
Her gaze remained turned inward for most of the time. A chorus of competing voices continued to rage through her mind, each fragment struggling for dominance. Sometimes it seemed her name was actually Carr. Other times Qwon. But always her sense of self returned to Kira. That was the one voice loud enough to hold its own with the others—the one voice soothing enough to calm their frenzied howls and ease their distress.
Larger she grew, and then larger still, until at last there was no more material to add to her flesh. Her size was set, although she could change its arrangement at will. Whatever felt wrong or out of place was hers to move or mold as she wished.
Her mind began to settle, and the shape of things began to make more sense. She remembered something of her life on Weyland, long ago. She remembered working as a xenobiologist, and meeting Alan—dear Alan—and then, later, finding the Seed on Adrasteia. And yet, she also remembered being Carr. Julian Aldus Carr, doctor in the UMCN, son of two not-so-loving parents, and avid collector of carved beryl nuts. Likewise she remembered being the Wranaui Qwon, loyal servant of the Knot of Minds, member of the strike-shoal Hfarr, and ravenous eater of the delicious pfennic. But the memories from both Carr and Qwon were hazy, incomplete—overridden by the far more vivid recollections of their time spent joined together in hungry fashion as the Maw.
A shiver ran through her flesh. The Maw … With that thought, more information rushed into her mind, full of pain and anger and the torment of unfulfilled expectations.
How was it she and they were still alive?
3.
At long last, she turned her attention to her surroundings.
She hung in the void, seemingly without motion. No debris surrounded her, no gas or dust or other remnants. She was alone.
Her body was dark and crusted, like the surface of an asteroid. The fibers of the Seed bound her together, but she was more than just the fibers; she was flesh too, soft and vulnerable within.
The eyes she had now grown allowed her to see the bands of magnetic force throughout the system. Visible also was the shimmery haze of the solar wind. The sun that illuminated all was a dim blue-white that reminded her of … she didn’t know, but it felt familiar, nostalgic—though the nostalgia came not from her/Carr/Qwon but from the Seed itself.
She extended her gaze.
Scores of glittering ships populated the system. Some she seemed to recognize. Others were unfamiliar but of a familiar type: vessels belonging to graspers or else to two-forms … or else to the misplaced flesh of the Maw—which was her. She was responsible. And she saw how the flesh of her flesh had resumed attacking the other ships, spreading pain, death, and destruction throughout the system.
She did not understand the situation, not fully, but she knew that this was wrong. So she called to her wayward children, summoning them to her side that she might end the conflict.
Some obeyed. They flew toward her with great banners of flame streaming from their engines, and when they arrived, she clasped them close and healed their hurts, calmed their minds, returned their flesh to whence it came. For she was their mother, and it was her duty to care for them.
Some rebelled. Those she sent parts of herself racing after, and so caught them and chastised them and carried them back to where she hung waiting. None escaped. She did not hate her children for misbehaving. No, rather she felt sorrow for them and sang to them as she eased their fears, their angers, and their many pains. Their agony was so great, she would have wept if she could.
As she corralled her unruly offspring, some of the graspers and the two-forms shot at her sendings with lasers, missiles, and solid projectiles. That would have incurred the wrath of the Maw, but not of her. The attacks bothered her little, for she knew the graspers and the two-forms did not understand. She had no fear of them. Their weapons could not harm what she had become.
Many of the beings’ ships followed as she drew in the leavings of her flesh. They formed a grid in front of her, at what they must have thought was a safe distance. It was not, but she kept that knowledge to herself.
Hundreds of signals emanated from the ships, aimed toward her. The electromagnetic beams were dazzling cones of prismatic energy flashing in her vision, and the sounds and information they carried were like the buzzing of so many mosquitoes.
The display was distracting, and it made thinking harder than it already was. Annoyed, she spoke a single word, using means that every species would understand:
“Wait.”
After that, the signals ceased, leaving her in blessed silence. Satisfied, Kira again turned her focus inward. There was much she still didn’t understand, much that she still needed to make sense of.
4.
Piece by piece, she worked to assemble a coherent picture of recent events. Again she lived the visit to Bughunt. Again the escape from Orsted Station and then the long trip to Cordova and the battle that followed.
The Casaba-Howitzer had exploded. That much she felt sure of. And somehow—somehow—the Seed had salvaged something of her consciousness, and that of Carr and Qwon, from amid the nuclear inferno.
She was … Kira Navárez. But she was also so much more. She was part Carr, part Qwon, and also part the Seed.
For a lock seemed to have opened in her mind, and she realized there was a storehouse of knowledge she now had access to—knowledge from the Seed. Knowledge from the time of the Vanished. Only, that wasn’t what they had called themselves. Rather, they thought of themselves as … the Old Ones. Those who had come before.
In the process of saving her, she and the xeno had finally become fully integrated. But there was more to it, and this too she now understood: there were layers to the Seed’s abilities, and most of them remained walled off, inaccessible until the xeno reached a certain size (which she had now far exceeded).
So she who had once been just Kira and was now far more, far greater, hung there in the blackness of space, and she thought, and studied, and contemplated the branching possibilities that lay before her. The path had grown tangled as a thicket, but she knew that the Seed’s guiding principle would help guide her, for it was her own principle as welclass="underline" life was sacred. Every part of their moral code rested upon that fundamental principle. Life was sacred, and it was her duty to protect it and, where reasonable, disseminate it.