by Neal Asher
Eventually the PSR exposed the creature, and held it up underneath its scanning heads to confirm what it must next do. Held by the huge machine like that the creature looked terribly vulnerable. Abaron jumped when the robot suddenly started to move again. It reached in with new limbs and, with that high-pitched whining, drove needles as thin as hairs into frozen flesh.
“At last count there were a hundred and fifty variations on the trihelix. We have to catalogue where the samples come from in its gut. Obviously some of them will be from its equivalent of bacteria, E-coli and the like, and other parasites that live on its food.” Chapra’s voice was entirely analytical.
“We’ll get more idea of its environment this way as well,” said Abaron. Chapra turned to regard him and he found it difficult to analyse her expression behind her visor. She pointed at the blocks of ice. “We can’t even assume that it lived in water. That might have been some kind of protective amniote.”
“Quite,” said Abaron, then impatiently, “Why did we come down here?” Chapra pointed at the creature. The PSR had now withdrawn.
“Permit me to lecture,” she said. “I’ve studied alien life forms for a hundred years more than you, Abaron, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it is that all our superb-technologies are not enough. They can in fact be a hindrance. It is far too easy to wall yourself in with AIs and their information. It’s too easy to distance yourself from your subject. That way leads to sterility and a lack of intuition. Look at it, and remember that it is alien and alive, not equations in a computer. Always remember the one unique thing humans bring to the study of alien life: imagination.”
Abaron glanced up at the creature, then back at Chapra. “I haven’t got time for this. I’ve a million tests to run.” He turned and marched stiff-backed from the chamber.
Bloody woman and her touchy-feely shite, he thought.
* * * *
Chapra watched Abaron go then returned her attention to the creature. As she studied it, she heard the lock behind her open, and guessed it was not him returning. She glanced around as in walked someone without a coldsuit, but then Judd had no need of such protection.
“He refuses to learn from you,” said the Golem.
“He’s stubborn and proud, but he does have a good mind. He’ll learn eventually—we all do.” Judd folded his arms and looked up at the alien. “He is a fool and he is frightened.”
“Yes, but perhaps you should remember that foolishness and fear are things you can only emulate, Judd.”
“Anything I can emulate, I can understand.”
“You may be Golem,” she replied, “but you’re young as well.”
“Meaning?”
Chapra smiled. “Your knowledge grows, Judd. It would seem you have made a good start on understanding pride.”
There were four tanks arrayed in the room like library shelves: each stretching from ceiling to floor, two metres wide and five metres long. Their glass walls had a very low refractivity and, because of this, it seemed as if three walls of water stood there. It would have been possible to do this with the field technology, but the contents of the tanks were very precious, and not even the ship AI wanted to risk the incredibly unlikely event of a power failure.
Each tank contained plants consisting of free-floating masses of blue spheres bound together with curling threads. Around these swam shoals of small strangely-formed pink shrimp-creatures. There were those with a tail fin, one central row of leg flippers, one hinged arm to pick and feed with. Others were tubes with the flippers and feeding parts inside. And still others were distorted hemispheres of shell with limbs and mouth parts arranged radially underneath. On the floors of these tanks their larger and more heavily-armoured brethren crawled over and occasionally dismembered each other. Abaron walked between the tanks carrying a notescreen. There were dark marks under his eyes and his movements were jerky and slightly out of control.
“It’s the temperature. Perhaps it’s the temperature,” he said to his screen, and put his hand against the glass. Quickly he snatched it away and shook it. The water in the tanks was as near to boiling point at Earth atmospheric pressure as it was possible to get without it becoming volatile.
“Pressure,” he said, staring into a tank. After a moment he looked around as the Golem Judd stepped into view from behind one of the tanks. They stared at each other for a moment then Judd nodded his head in acknowledgement. Abaron backed away a couple of steps then quickly left the room.
* * * *
Chapra leant back in her swivel chair and put her feet up on her touch console. This caused a flurry of activity on the holographic display for a moment. She smiled to herself when the display settled on an alphabetical list of xenological studies of alien genetic tissue. After a moment she frowned and took her feet of the console.
“Box, how come we’re not overrun with experts?” she asked.
The voice of the ship AI was omnipresent and faintly amused. “I wondered how long it would take one of you to notice. You are not overrun because I closed the runcible gate.”
“Well, tell me. I don’t need to be led like a child.”
“Within ten minutes of your discovery being announced on the net there were over a quarter of a million priority demands for access to this vessel. Many of the demands could not have been refused at the transmission end. Had the runcible remained open this ship would have been filled to capacity. Too many cooks.”
“I would have thought a few would have got through before you shut the runcible down.”
“No. I shut the runcible down before your discovery was announced.”
“How long before?”
“As soon as I detected the sphere.”
“Ah,” said Chapra, and put her feet back up on the console. “Are all our findings being relayed, all our studies?”
“Yes.”
“How many official complaints so far?”
“Just over two million. You have been charged with everything from unhygienic practice to xenocide. I have put a hold on all communications.”
Chapra grinned delightedly. Abaron would hate this of course. But Abaron did not see the joke of her coming aboard this ship as a partial catadapt. Then again, perhaps he didn’t know what Schrödinger’s box was.
“What about you?” she asked. “Is what you are doing legal?”
“I have unrestricted AI mandate.”
That was enough. Everyone knew it was not humans who made the important decisions in the human polity: they could not be trusted. Chapra shrugged then called up a projection of the creature suspended in icy stasis in the isolation chamber. She glanced across the room when Judd entered, then returned her attention to the projection. A skating of her fingers across the touch controls brought into focus the subatomic mechanisms of life in the grip of absolute cold.
“You are studying the mechanisms of stasis,” said Judd.
“That could be said,” she replied. “It could also be said that I’m studying the mechanisms of…resurrection, awakening. They are the same.”
“Can you wake this creature without killing it?”
“Yes and no. We can wake it and if there is any problem we can throw it back into stasis so fast there will be little damage done.”
“There are no problems of environment?”
“None. Abaron would say there are, but he is being perfectionist. Any living creature of this complexity has a broad range of environmental tolerance. The differences he is quibbling over are the differences between Winter and Summer for a human. The only way to find the optimum is by waking the creature and studying its reactions.”
“You have seniority,” observed the ship AI.
“I am reluctant to hurt his feelings.”
“There is pressure,” said the AI. “Answers are required.”
“We’ll be lucky if we get anything,” said Chapra. “You know the difficulties of communication with aliens—points of reference, all of that. This creature doesn’t have eyes. Its prima
ry senses seem to be related to taste and smell but on a level so complex that it might even be capable of decoding individual molecules. Add to that it living in water at a temperature that would nicely cook a human and you find a lack of common ground. We need so much more information: its technology, where it comes from…ah.” Chapra paused for a moment then stabbed her fingers down again, deleting the projection of the creature and calling up something else. The result was a shifting, and slightly nauseating greyness. She quickly cancelled that. “I see…I didn’t feel us drop into U-space. How long until we leave the Chasm and enter the Quarrison Drift?”
“Twenty-two hours,” replied Box.
Judd added, “It will be a solstan week before we reach the system that may be the system of origin.” Chapra shifted one finger aside and pressed down.
“Abaron,” she said. “You best get to the control room. We’re going to do it now.”
* * * *
“We’re up to zero now. Everything stable,” said Abaron.
“That was to be expected,” said Chapra. “The problems start as soon as all that body ice turns to water.”
“The freezing was exceptionally efficient,” Abaron allowed.
“I would say nigh perfect,” said Chapra. “There’s no apparent cell damage to the creature. I wonder just how much of our interference is necessary.”
“The weta,” said Abaron suddenly.
“Pardon.”
Abaron could not help smiling; he knew something she did not know. “It’s a cricket that lives in New Zealand on Earth. It has adapted itself to night-time freezing and a morning thaw without substantial damage.”
“Yes, but the weta evolved to it. I doubt that is the case with this creature. What we see here is advanced cryogenics.”
Annoyed Abaron said, “Or genetic manipulation.”
Chapra regarded him and raised an eyebrow.
“Quite,” she said, her surprise evident. “Now, let’s move on to the next stage.” Her hands fled over the touch keys. The holographic display showed much of the isolation chamber. It was as if they sat at their consoles just to one side of it.
“One degree above zero. Flooding chamber,” said Abaron. As he said this the floor of the chamber dropped a couple of metres below the entrance lock, from below which a jetty extended. Water poured into the chamber from holes all around the wall. When it reached the nil gravity area below where the creature floated, just held in place by the tips of some of the PSR’s limbs, it splashed up and floated too, in seemingly gelatinous masses.
“Deep scan is showing cell chemistry initiation. Heat generated. It is primitively warm-blooded, which is surprising considering its environment,” said Chapra.
“Brief neural activity,” said Abaron.
“Okay, let’s shut down the null-field.”
The field, created by two opposing gravplates, collapsed when Abaron shut off the plate in the ceiling. A growing column of water collapsed and the creature sagged as it gained weight.
“Enzyme activity is too fast for anterior cell chemistry. I’m taking the temperature up five degrees. Use a microwave pulse, we want all that ice thawed quickly,” said Chapra, her voice urgent.
“Done,” said Abaron.
“Christ! Look at that activity,” said Chapra.
“It moved,” said Abaron.
“The chemistry is almost too fast for scan to follow!”
“It moved,” Abaron insisted.
“What?”
“I said it moved.”
“Put it in the water,” Chapra said.
The PSR lowered its charge into the water, which was now a metre deep. Abruptly the creature jerked away from the PSR, then feebly began paddling.
“Get the temperature up! Quick, it’s going into hypothermic shock. Use the microwave pulse again if necessary.”
“Ten, twenty, thirty…it’s coming out of it.”
The PSR retreated from the chamber. The creature continued to propel itself around and around. Abruptly it broke the surface with a triangular section tentacle, angled over like a periscope. The water lay two metres deep now. The creature moved to the edge of the jetty, then underneath.
“Dim the lights fifty percent,” said Chapra.
“Eighty degrees,” said Abaron. Wisps of steam were now blowing off the water’s surface.
“Hold it at ninety and keep the pressure at one atmosphere.”
“Surely it needs more.”
“As I said, it’ll likely have as much an adaptive range as a human. We want it tolerable enough for us to go in there.”
“Why?”
Chapra glared at him. “We have to learn to communicate.”
“Send a Golem in,” said Abaron.
Chapra turned away. “Just do as I say.”
* * * *
It was the first time she had ever felt truly angry with Abaron, and was beginning to realise it might not be the last. She returned her attention to the chamber and watched as the creature slid out from under the jetty. It moved fast now. An underwater view showed that it propelled itself with a tail fin like a sharp propeller that pulsed in alternate directions. It changed direction and halted by gripping the bottom with its tentacles. It stabilized itself with two fleshy rudders jutting from its sides. The arm—it had only the one—it kept folded to its ribbed body. The head was that of a nightmare crayfish, but without eyes.
“I think you can open the way into one of your tanks now.”
“That will raise the temperature,” said Abaron tartly.
“Let it,” said Chapra. “It’ll only be for a while.” She did not allow herself be drawn. His turn to get under my skin, she thought.
At Abaron’s instruction an irised hatch slowly opened in the wall. Water poured in and the chamber filled with steam. The creature turned toward the disturbance, then backed away. Abruptly it darted to its disassembled sphere and turned one of the inner segments over on top of itself. Crustaceans and plants poured in with the water. The tank emptied and Abaron closed the hatch. Then he and Chapra watched anxiously. Eventually one of the larger crustaceans ventured over near the creature. There was a flicker of movement and the crustacean was up against the creature’s mouth parts, a faint cloudiness in the water, then a cleaned shell and emptied bits of exoskeleton drifted to the bottom. The creature slowly came out of its hide.
“Yes!” yelled Abaron happily.
Chapra watched with increasing fascination as the creature took up the empty shell and used it to scrape at the bottom of the tank. When this had no effect, it carefully picked up all the shell fragments in its single hand, swam over to the jetty, then reached out of the water and deposited them on the jetty.
“I think now I can sleep,” she said, and wondered if that was true. The creature’s response had been perfect, disturbingly perfect.
PART TWO
Kellor took the crodorman’s pawn then grinned at him across the board before picking it up. The crodorman had a look of real fear on his whorl-skinned face. It had taken a while to get that look there, since Kellor had appeared to be a perfect mark when he entered the tent. He looked young and a trifle depraved, his pouting mouth and pretty face the cosmetic choice of a certain contemptible type. His clothing, the tightly tailored white uniform of a preruncible ship captain, was also the choice of that type. The crodorman grunted in pain at the penalty shock, his eyes closed and the bigger whorls of thick skin on his face and wrists flushing red. Kellor studied him with interest. He reckoned on check in another five moves. It would be fascinating to see what level the penalty shock went up to then. The shock from checkmate killed people with a weak constitution. He wondered if the crodorman might die, and he smiled at the next expected move.
“You’re Kellor,” someone said.
Kellor glanced around at the man who had elbowed himself to the front of the ring of spectators. They shushed him but he ignored them. Kellor inspected the uniform and recognised the man as a General in the Separatist Confederation.
Now there was a contradiction in terms. He looked up into the bearded face and saw there the harshness of rigid self-control, a mouth like a clam, and eyes a black glitter amidst frown lines.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, off-handedly making another move. He took no pieces this time, so there was no penalty shock. But Kellor was aware that his nonchalant attitude was scaring the crodorman. The General could not have come at a better time.
“I am David Conard,” said the General.
How very interesting, thought Kellor. Here was the Butcher of Cheyne, the man reputedly responsible for the deaths of over two million Polity citizens. He turned from the board, a flick of a smile on his face when he saw the sweat squeezing out between the folds in the crodorman’s forehead. Over ten seconds and the penalty shocks would start. You had to think quick in this game.
“You want my ship?” he asked, noting how the people who had been shushing the General had now moved back from him.
“We can’t discuss this here.”
Kellor nodded then glanced aside and moved his castle directly after the crodorman’s move. The crodorman rapidly followed that move, a look of relief on his ugly face.
Oh silly silly crodorman.
“No problem,” he said to General Conard. “I’m finished now.” The crodorman lost his look of relief and stared at the board, then he looked up at Kellor. There was no pleading in his expression, just fear and a braced expectancy. This was the bit that Kellor liked; the moment his opponent realised he had lost and that he was about to experience pain, or die. He had enjoyed this moment so often, yet it never palled; the gun pointed or the blade of a knife paused at the skin. But it could never be protracted in a real fight as it could in penalty chess. Kellor grinned at the crodorman and slowly reached out for his queen.
“This will be checkmate, I believe,” he said.
