Rashaqin do not use their mouths to speak; they communicate through a combination of stridulation and controlled breathing through the spiracles on their abdomens. So they have no taboo about talking with their mouths full.
Rilriltok flipped its wing coverts and buzzed, Helen, I am pleased to tell you that we have completed the DNA sequencing of your crew members without compromising the integrity of their compartments.
Helen looked from Rilriltok to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I do not have the vocabulary for what it just said. Can you help me?”
She seemed… calm. Maybe Zhiruo’s therapy was helping. I suppose nothing is likely to make you more anxious than feeling like you can’t handle the cognitive load that’s expected of you. That you’re used to handling.
I found her a dictionary easily enough. It didn’t take long to translate for Helen, who was still apparently compiling and integrating the code and assimilating the uplink that would give her access to real-time translation through a link to Linden’s functions.
Most of us ran translation through our foxes, under most circumstances, but the sheer volume of species and languages at Core made that impractical. The hospital probably played host to enough human languages alone to overload my fox’s storage capacity.
Zhiruo had provided the tools for Helen, and had assured me that the kit she’d issued was firewalled to Well and gone. Air-gapped, even. I told myself that if the Core General wheelmind and the head of AI Medicine thought it was safe, it was probably safe. And she was rebuilding her entire mind from a kit, so it wasn’t reasonable to expect her to have finished integrating.
Rilriltok picked up another slice of synthetic land prawn. I went back to my spaghetti. Friend Jens, why have you been avoiding me?
I choked on that spaghetti, which was very upsetting to the engineer ayatana, who was much more sensibly designed with regard to airways and food passages.
At least it didn’t come out of my nose. It’s a bad dia at work when that happens. Especially in front of an alien doctor who’s going to wind up asking a lot of interested and helpful questions about sinuses and be very confused why humans evolved so stupidly as to let our respiration and food nutrition use the same set of tubes.
It’s a bad design. I admit it. Nobody asked me for my input until it was far too late!
By the time I got myself under control enough to glare at Rilriltok, there was no sign of any mischief in its posture. There was no point trying to make eye contact—which eyes would I choose? All I would see in any of them was my reflection. Rashaqin do not have muscles in their faces to give them expression. The chitin is pretty, and excellent armor, and makes performing surgery on a Rashaqin an incredible pain in the ass involving a skill saw to open and epoxy to close. But it does not move.
It did scintillate with faint ripples of red and silver that might be laughter, and might just be enjoyment of the food.
It reached out a fine manipulator, and snagged a strand of my spaghetti. I broke the strand with my knife before it could weave my entire plateful into a braid and slurp it up.
After so many ans, I was wise to Rilriltok. For an obligate insectivore it certainly had a taste for Terran carbohydrates. It claimed that this was because synthetic land prawn didn’t have stomach contents, depriving it of important nutrients. I had told it repeatedly that it could order its own salad.
The gesture of food-stealing had special meaning when performed by a male Rashaqin (male being something of a misnomer, as even Terran species don’t limit themselves to two tidy sexes that always behave in the same predictable ways, but Rilriltok’s species has two sexes and its is not the one that lays eggs). It meant that Rilriltok saw me as a colleague and a competitor—an equal—and not a threat, or an inferior. It was a compliment and a display of affection.
I should have swiped its land prawn in response, but I wasn’t in the mood for sushi.
“I haven’t been avoiding you!” I protested. It had only been—well, less than two diar, right? I had possibly lost track of my actual assigned rest periods. “I’ve just been… very busy. And so has Helen, here.”
I looked at her to see if she needed that translated, but apparently she’d gotten the common vocabulary all right.
I had been very busy. Exhausted, and sleeping like the dead on the one chance I had gotten. Wedging research into a few spare hours. Running from meeting to meeting…
I don’t just mean since this last emergency call, Rilriltok said.
… And trying not to spend too much face-to-face time with my friends when I wasn’t on duty. Rilriltok was right. I had been hiding, and not just since this last mission. Hiding from my friends, because I was afraid that they would notice that my pain management was not what it should be. And then they’d want to do something about it, being doctors.
The way O’Mara had.
Doctors never want to hear that you’re sick and tired of being poked; that you want to be left alone; that you’ve had enough experimental cures and management strategies for one lifetime. Doctors always want to try this one last thing.
Doctors are an enormous pain in the ass. Trust me. I know. I am one.
Time to change the subject, in other words.
“What do you know about the safety issues since I’ve been gone?” I asked in what I hoped was a light, gossipy manner.
Male Rashaqins did not, historically, survive without a very well-honed sense of other people’s goals, motivations, and appetites. Part of why they made excellent doctors—and champion players of strategy games—was that they were fantastic at thinking outside the ordinary and at noticing patterns too subtle for most beings to detect.
I think they are concerning, Rilriltok said, after a moment of meditation. They are, I think, meant to look as if they are intended to look accidental. But they are not intended to look accidental.
I had to parse that one a couple of times before I was really sure what I thought it meant. “You think whoever is doing it is… acting out? Wants to get noticed?”
I think someone or someones are doing it. And it’s dangerous and constitutes an enormous risk, so either they’re severely damaged, or they have what seems to them an exceedingly good reason. It patted the antigravity belt strapped around its thorax with one feathery foot-tip. You could talk to the Goodlaw.
I hadn’t met Core General’s new lead law enforcement officer. I also knew that the sexes of Rilriltok’s species went out of their way to avoid interacting with one another. “But isn’t it a female Rashaqin?”
That consideration should give you context for how seriously I take this. Rilriltok picked up its beverage. It put a straw operated with a sort of squeeze bulb between its mandibles, not having the ability to suck, and seemed entirely focused on imbibing its drink. This was a mechanically fascinating process, involving manipulating the squeeze bulb until a honey-colored bubble, held together by surface tension, appeared at the top of the straw. Rilriltok then nibbled at it with the small wiggly mouthparts that were barely noticeable at the bottom of its wedge-shaped head.
“What is a Rashaqin?” Helen asked.
I waved to Rilriltok with the back of my hand. “The doctor here is a male one. Well, sort of male by Terran rules. The sort-of-females are bigger.”
Much bigger, the meter-long Rilriltok said, stridulation unaffected by its beverage.
“Oh.”
I could see Helen processing. I couldn’t get over how alertly she watched conversations, head moving as if she were following a zero-g jai alai match. “I think I would like to meet such a creature.”
Person, Rilriltok said, straight-facedly.
Which, okay, is another one of those anthropocentric terms, since we have this weird habit of using our facial muscles to communicate even nuanced emotions. Most sentients don’t go in for that sort of thing. Even if you limit your sample to systers with faces. Or even to systers with facial muscles.
Unlike my friend Rilriltok, for example.
“P
ardon?” Helen said.
“We say person,” I clarified. “Creature is impolite.”
“Oh,” Helen said. “I’m sorry. I… I would really like to meet such a person.”
It would be good for you.
I wondered if Rilriltok thought so for the same reasons I did. It niggled at me that O’Mara had recruited me when there was a perfectly good Goodlaw heading up hospital security. Was there some reason they didn’t think it could get the job done? Or was it O’Mara being turfy, and relying on their old and trusted associates, as they’d hinted? While I was wondering, Rilriltok set the beverage container on the tray, sorted my dishes into piles, and stacked them up.
Fortunately, I hadn’t wanted that last soggy cricket anyway. I placed my chopsticks across my fruit bowl and stood. So did Helen. She didn’t seem to have any trouble calibrating her motions to the shifting pull of simulated gravity. That was impressive. I was accustomed to switching back and forth, and it still took a while each time for me to acclimate.
I picked up the tray to take it back to the disassembler and said, “Come, on, Helen. The doctor here probably has to get back to work. Let’s walk with it, and check on your crew.”
* * *
Helen very quickly got her wish to meet the female Rashaqin.
Core General’s new Goodlaw was ahead of us in the admin and observation room when we arrived in the Cryo treatment center. It had hooked one foreleg over the safety rails that circled the lounge—as if an object the size of Core General was going to stop spinning—and was peering out into the Cryo unit with predatory fascination.
When we entered, the Goodlaw turned its head, faceted eyes glittering. It wore a dress uniform: a tidy, tailored little navy blue bolero jacket over its upper thorax, with cap sleeves cut to fit the upper joint of thorned killing limbs that I estimated would be a couple of meters long, extended.
I knew it was the Goodlaw, and not some other Rashaqin, because the jacket had a gold badge embroidered on its placket, and I could still read Judiciary ranks and uniforms.
Rilriltok had apparently not expected to report to work and discover an enormous natural enemy next to its desk. It came mandible-to-mandible with the mantoid—two-plus meters long even with its thorax held upright over its abdomen, and with raptorial forelimbs longer than Rilriltok’s entire body even when folded—and swiftly and prudently alighted on my back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that it had folded its wings tight and color-shifted to match my lab coat and scrubs.
I couldn’t blame it.
I wondered if the Goodlaw had been waiting for us, or if this was a chance encounter. I guessed this was my opportunity to find out.
Greetings, the enormous predator stridulated. I am Goodlaw Cheeirilaq. You must be Dr. Brookllyn Jens. And… Helen Alloy?
Politely, it pretended not to notice Rilriltok, who huddled closer to my spine. Rilriltok’s coverts clicked tightly closed, protecting its delicate wings. The barbs on its fine manipulators tangled so thoroughly in the dense springs of my hair that I worried it would take surgery to get us disengaged.
Rashaqin reproduction is harrowing. Their entire social order is built to keep adults well-separated, with lots of private space, so they don’t accidentally eat one another. The spawn are aquatic and generally not considered to be sentient until they pass through the nymph stage and emerge on land in their penultimate instar as miniature adults. At this point, they are taken into crèches and educated by carefully organized, regimented communities of adults.
This is probably for the best, as the spawn are both numerous and cannibalistic. On Rashaq, they’re left to fend for themselves until they molt out into that educable stage.
Swimming is not encouraged for tourists on Rashaq. Rashaqins, as responsible sentients, do their best to avoid reproducing elsewhere. It’s hard on the local ecosystem. Also on their colleagues, as the egg-laying sex generally eats the other during the reproductive interlude, unless they’re already extremely well-fed. I understand that in modern society, the—we’ll call them females, though it’s not entirely accurate—generally bloat themselves with food before intercourse or resort to technological intervention for fertilization. And the males—like Rilriltok—tend to feed everybody they meet.
When I was still Judiciary and visited Rashaq a couple of decans ago, they were in the midst of a natural child-rearing fad. There had been a lot of articles about how the egg-layer eating the progenitor was much healthier for the young and rendered them more competitive in the wild. As there are, demographically, significantly more of Rilriltok’s sex, competition for mates is pretty extreme, and a surprising-to-me number of males volunteered.
Things might have gotten even uglier than they did, but Core General and the Judiciary both sent crisis intervention teams, and eventually the fad blew over with only a few dozen casualties who hadn’t signed up to be eaten. We managed to catch all the perpetrators and remand them for rightminding.
Anyway, my interaction with the Core General medical team there was how I got interested in working here.
“You’ve identified me correctly,” I said. “We’re here to check on our patients.”
Well, the patients were mine and Rilriltok’s. They were Helen’s crew.
Close enough.
I stepped past Cheeirilaq toward the window, raising the arm on the far side of my body so Rilriltok could use it as a bridge to scuttle around to the front if it felt it necessary. My colleague seemed to be at the mercy of its freeze reflex, however.
Cheeirilaq kept a respectful distance, and I assumed if Rilriltok needed to leave it would let me know.
Beyond the windows, the familiar coffins lay side by side, raised on racks that brought them up to a convenient height for most species to work at. Doctors and technicians of several species moved calmly around them, reading instruments and peering at whatever lay behind open panel covers. All the coffins we had brought back appeared to be here, and appeared to be intact.
Helen’s relief was palpable even before she said, “None of the systems have failed.”
It was still too early to be certain of that, but it seemed like a terrible time to point it out, so I didn’t.
CHAPTER 13
RILRILTOK’S WEIGHT SHIFTED AS IT raised its eyes to peer over my shoulder. I turned slightly to give it a better view and more cover behind my torso.
Helen walked up to the glass and pressed both hands and what passed for her face against it. The body parts she pushed against the glass squished and flattened.
I guessed that left it up to me to carry the conversation.
I said, “What brings you here, Goodlaw?”
And almost jumped out of my scrubs when Rilriltok stridulated instead. The vibrations of its speech shivered up my spine and left my teeth aching in the bones of my skull.
Huh, it said. Well, that’s peculiar.
“Peculiar?” I echoed, grateful that the vagaries of senso translation hadn’t choked up an ambiguous word such as “funny.”
Rilriltok didn’t answer. It swarmed up my shoulder and stood balanced against the intervening window, giving me an unusual view of its feathery feet-hooks splayed on the transparent wall and the smooth, interlocking plates that made up the underside of its abdominal carapace. Its instinctive camouflage failed, and excited rills of blue and orange ran along its body from head to tail.
Pardon me, friend doctor, the Goodlaw said, in very careful tones. I apologize for addressing you directly, and if you find the situation too stressful I will withdraw the question. But, if you will pardon my rudeness, what is it that you have observed?
The scientist on my shoulder didn’t even flinch away from the predator it had been petrified of moments before. It shook itself with an excited buzz and flipped its wings as if ordering its thoughts.
These cryo units are not all identical, it said. They look similar, but let me draw your attention to these impedance readouts.
It tapped the glass, bringing up a display that
my senso translated into good old human symbols after a couple of annoying flickers. They would have meant nothing to me—I am not a cryo specialist—but they meant something to the ayatana of the engineer that I was wearing.
One of the pods was significantly more efficient than the others, and running at significantly safer tolerances.
“Can we go inside?”
Rilriltok turned its head to me with one of the sharp, unsettling gestures that used to make me jerk back in surprise, before I became accustomed to my friend. I don’t see why not.
Helen, who had been standing perfectly straight except that her face pressed against the glass, said, “What do you mean, they’re not all identical? Of course they’re identical. We made them all on the same plan—”
Linden, I said to Core General’s giant, quiet sentience. With almost limitless space and processing power, the wheelmind’s only job was to care for the well-being of everyone who lived within her hull. The hospital didn’t talk much, but she was always there. Abiding.
She didn’t really need a hint from me. I felt her moving to soothe Helen, to calm her anxious algorithms and tame her runaway emotion modules. Linden would also call Dr. Zhiruo, if needed.
The interrupt was a good thing, even though I felt bad that it was being used without Helen’s consent. But it was being used to keep her safe. Her, and her crew, and the staff of Core General.
Helen didn’t breathe. But the effect of Linden’s intervention on her was exactly as if she had taken one deep breath, centered herself, and settled. Rilriltok had already lifted off my shoulder, and was zooming toward the door. I followed it—not quite as swiftly as Helen did—and Cheeirilaq trooped gamely along behind us. We disinfected—we didn’t have to mask and glove up, because none of the coffins were open—asked the staff for permission to join them, and went inside.
The first thing I noticed now that there wasn’t a helmet between me and the coffins—well, and now that they weren’t in vacuum in a cargo hold—was that the cryo units had a smell. A particular tang, like ozone or something. Watching Rilriltok’s feathery olfactors wave, I got a sense that I wasn’t the only one smelling it.
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