by Dom Testa
“I think so, yes,” Lita said.
“I would say no,” Roc said.
Triana shook her head. “Wait a minute. One at a time here. Lita, go ahead. Why do you say yes?”
“Because it’s the brain that makes us who we are. It’s what houses the mind, the conscious entity that gives us the ability to reason. If this thing has a brain, I maintain that it’s officially a living being, regardless of the other parts.”
“Okay,” Triana said. “Roc, what are your thoughts?”
“This is not a discussion about whether our disgusting friend has a conscious mind; I’m willing to consider that it might possibly have a brain, but that’s not the same thing. Also, from what I conclude after studying the data, this is not a case where a living creature with a fully functioning brain had some of its parts replaced with machine parts or mechanical pieces; that was the original concept of the cyborg, by the way.
“In this case, it has all the signs of a perfectly designed and engineered space-roaming device that has simply had an organically developed brain dropped into the slot reserved for decision making.”
“So you think that the brain is simply a custom-made part?” Gap said.
“That’s one way to look at it,” Roc said. “And by the way, let’s not make the mistake of thinking this brain is anything like the ones you carry around. It’s quite different, and serves different purposes.”
“But we don’t know that,” Lita said. “Tree, with all due respect to Roc and everything that he has contributed to our mission, I don’t think we can automatically assume that the vultures’ brains are entirely different from ours. Who are we to say what consciousness really is, anyway? The greatest minds of our own species have never been able to clearly define it, even for ourselves, let alone an alien race.”
A heavy sigh escaped from Triana. She locked her fingers together on the table and looked at the other Council members. Both Bon and Gap were shifting their gazes between her and Lita; Channy, on the other hand, was sitting completely still, her eyes looking down at her hands in her lap. She didn’t appear to be listening to any of this. Triana felt a stir of irritation, but let it go for the moment.
“Roc,” she said, “you said the brain was ‘organically developed.’ What do you mean by that?”
“It’s not carbon based, and that already makes it different from every form of life on Earth. Instead, it has a silicon-crystal framework, which is extremely stable and efficient. As I mentioned, the creature itself is mostly mechanical; the one exception is the decision-making apparatus. Logic would tell us that it wouldn’t naturally spawn out of a matrix of artificial components; it would have to be put together, piece by piece, including the brain.”
“And why wouldn’t the creators simply put in a mechanical brain?” Triana said. “Like yours, for example. Why go to all the trouble of making artificial parts for most of it, then tossing in a crystal brain?”
“I think we would have to talk to the creators,” Roc said. “Which we might end up doing anyway, like it or not.”
He was right, Triana thought. They could discuss it, they could toss around theories, and they could analyze it to death; but they likely would never know for sure unless they asked the designers themselves, a thought that both excited and chilled her.
She bit her lip again and took another inventory of the faces around the table. Her gaze settled on Channy, and the same feeling of irritation swelled. It was obvious that Channy was paying no attention whatsoever. Triana addressed her.
“What do you make of all this, Channy?”
It was as if the words had to sink through multiple layers before registering. Channy sat still for several moments, her eyes cast downward. Triana didn’t know if it was the use of her name, or the silence that stretched across the room, that finally caused Channy to stir and look up.
“What? Oh…” She looked around the table and saw the stares directed at her. “I’m sorry, I was … my mind was on something else.”
Triana felt a wave of anger build. “Your mind has been on something else since you walked in here. You understand that this is rather important, right?”
“Yeah, no, definitely, I understand.” Her words sounded hollow, insincere.
Triana’s voice was bitter. “Is there something on your mind that we should discuss in this meeting?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you should go deal with whatever’s bothering you and let us finish our work here.”
Channy looked around the table again before settling on Triana. “No, I think I’m okay now.”
“I don’t think so. You were late for no reason, you’ve paid no attention to what could be a crucial discussion at a Council meeting, and I have no reason to believe that you intend to now. Why don’t you excuse yourself and we can talk later.”
The atmosphere in the room was monstrously heavy. No one had ever been kicked out of a Council meeting. Lita, Alexa, and Gap looked either at the table in front of them or at the vidscreens. Bon didn’t move, but his ice-blue eyes shifted back and forth between Triana and Channy.
Without another word, Channy pushed back her chair and fled the room. When the door had closed behind her, Gap said, “Something’s been bothering her for a while now. Do you want me to talk with her?”
“No, thanks,” Triana said. “It’s my responsibility.” She met the gaze of Lita, who silently conveyed with a look that she might know something. Triana made a mental note to discuss it later, but for now was anxious to get back to the business at hand.
“Let’s talk about the power source of these creatures. Roc, you’ve proposed a fairly exotic theory that involves dark energy; can you explain that?”
“I think I’d better,” the computer said. “Otherwise Gap’s going to think it has something to do with Darth Vader, and I can’t have that.”
“Very funny,” Gap said.
“Essentially, dark energy is the missing part of the equation used to explain the expansion of the universe,” Roc said. “If you take all of the observable matter in the known universe, all of the stars and galaxies and planets, their mass just doesn’t add up properly. They’re all not only speeding away from each other, but their speed is picking up. Gravity should be pulling them back together after the Big Bang, so that eventually you’d have a Big Splat. But that’s not happening. Instead, everything is accelerating, flying apart faster than it should. Many experts—and I tend to agree with them—believe that the missing part of the equation is a form of vacuum energy. We can’t see it, so the science guys conveniently called it dark energy.”
“And there’s a lot of it, if I remember my studies,” Lita said.
“That’s right. All of those stars and galaxies that I mentioned only account for about thirty percent of the mass of the universe. That leaves about seventy percent unexplained. That’s a lot of energy, even though it’s diffuse. That means spread out, Gap.”
“Very funny again.”
“And how does this apply with the vultures?” Triana prompted.
“I haven’t been able to prove it beyond a doubt—in fact, we might not ever be able to concretely prove it, unless we once again get to chat with the guy who drew up the plans—but it explains their efficiency. They take in exactly the amount of power they need, with no excess and no waste. They would need an unlimited supply, since there are no gas stations at the corner of Milky Way and Andromeda; and they would need to regulate when and where they process this energy.”
“The vents,” Alexa suggested.
“I believe so, yes,” Roc said. “They’re simple in design, almost archaic, I’ll grant you that. But they work.”
Gap stared at the vidscreen. “Wow. Just imagine if we could take one apart to study. What if we could incorporate that technology into the design of Galahad? Unlimited efficient power.”
“Take one apart?” Lita said. “It has a living brain, Gap.”
“So do a lot of the creatures you dissected in your
medical studies,” Gap said.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It just is. Besides, it’s not like I personally wanted to dissect anything. It’s about education.”
Triana jumped in. “Let’s hold off on the moral or ethical debate on dissecting. We’re not going to take anything apart. I can’t speak to exactly how evolved these things are, but I get the distinct impression that they are capable of fighting back. Don’t ask me how.”
Roc said, “I agree with Gap, however, that we should try to learn as much as possible about their energy conversion and their propulsion. Almost all of history’s great advances involved the theft of someone else’s work.”
“That’s fine, but in the meantime I still want to figure out how to get the other ones off the ship,” Triana said. “I’m just not comfortable with them stuck there. Let’s put a time limit on your studies of our specimen, and then I want to get it out of here, too. So, Lita, if you and Alexa could focus on that issue next, and figure out a way to repel them.”
Lita grinned. “As a matter of fact, I think we’ve already figured it out. We know exactly what it will take to brush them off the ship. And you won’t believe how simple it is.”
17
She ran. First toward her room, then, when she realized that her roommate, Kylie, would likely be there, she fled aimlessly down one corridor after another. Fighting back tears, she barely acknowledged the random waves and greetings of “Hello, Channy” from various crew members as she raced past.
Kicked out of a Council meeting. Now, in addition to the brain damage caused by her obsession with Taresh, and her inability to focus on her work and Council responsibilities, she could add a new element: shame. The look of anger, mixed with disappointment, that Triana had fired her way would sting for a long time. And yet, in her heart, Channy knew that she had deserved it.
She slowed to a walk, then pulled up and slumped against the curved wall. She slid to the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. The sprint had generated a bead of sweat, which she flicked away with the back of her hand. She buried her face in her knees and tried to marshal her rampaging thoughts.
Should she go straight to Triana and apologize? Not yet, she decided; Tree had so much to deal with at the moment, and was so irritated by Channy’s behavior, that it likely would be best to let it cool for a bit. Triana—and the rest of the Council, for that matter—deserved an apology, but they had more important issues for the time being. Besides, she rationalized, it made no sense to apologize until she had solved the original problem.
Which brought her thoughts back to Taresh. Why must this be so difficult, so complex? Why would he even consider following the old traditions of his family when he was part of a new beginning, an open horizon? Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he see how perfect they were together? Didn’t that trump antiquated customs?
Did everyone go through so much turmoil? She had set others up on numerous occasions, to the point that her reputation as a matchmaker was solidified; had she taken for granted that things always went smoothly?
What if it never did? What if, instead of spreading love and happiness, she actually was spreading pain and heartache? Perhaps it was best to stay out of it completely, to let others find their own way, forge their own relationships, suffer their own failings. How could she continue to be responsible for others feeling like this?
Or … was this simply her thoughts and emotions spinning out of control? What if Taresh had decided to pursue a relationship with her after all? How could she know until she talked to him again?
She lifted her head and sat back against the wall just as one of the girls from her dance class walked by and gave a quizzical look; Channy replied with the same artificial smile and wave. She thought of the time of day, and concluded that Taresh would likely be at his post in Engineering, his current assignment. Talking with him now seemed imperative; in fact, he might be waiting to hear from her, perhaps bursting to tell her that everything was fine, that he should never have even considered excluding her from his life.
All of this drama might have been for nothing, she thought. She could have saved herself the embarrassment in the Council meeting, could have saved herself the heartache and headache, if only she had relaxed and waited for Taresh to reach the only sensible conclusion.
Pushing herself to her feet, she started back toward her room, her mind suddenly at ease. She would send a brief note to him and request that they talk again, casually and with no pressure. It’s likely what he’d wanted to hear all along, she was sure of it.
* * *
Triana stared down the table in the Conference Room, her gaze fixed on Lita. In her mind, finding a way to defend themselves against the vultures had to begin with getting them off the ship. Now Lita had announced that she and Alexa had possibly found a way to do just that.
Gap jumped into the conversation. “When you say it’s simple to brush them off the ship, do you mean it’s simple to do, or it was simple to figure out?”
“Both,” Lita said, the smile still stretched across her face. “The first clue came as soon as you brought that thing into the Spider bay.”
Triana bit her lip and thought about that moment. Gap and Mira had taxied their small craft into the bay with the vulture firmly attached to the front window. When the room had sealed and pressurized, the vulture had dropped to the floor as if unconscious. She began to quickly run down the list of things that had changed once the creature was inside.
“Is this a guessing game?” she said to Lita. “Okay, I’ll play. Let’s see, there was a change in gravity once it was aboard the ship.”
“There’s intense light,” Gap mused aloud. “Pressure.”
“You’re both right about the differences, but those aren’t the answer,” Lita said. “I’m assuming that there was gravity around when the vultures were assembled, and probably light and pressure, too.”
Bon, who had been quiet during the discussion, spoke up. “It’s oxygen.”
The others seemed almost startled to hear from him. “We have a winner,” Lita said.
Gap nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense. Life on Earth has come to depend on oxygen, but it wasn’t always that way.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Lita said. “In fact, there was a time when Earth’s atmosphere only contained about one percent oxygen. To the early forms of life on the planet, oxygen was poison. In fact, when photosynthesis began releasing more and more oxygen into the oceans and then the atmosphere, it completely changed the way life developed on our planet.”
She looked at Alexa, who spoke up. “Every time we encounter something new on this journey, it reminds us that we’re one tiny little speck in the universe; we can’t assume that everything is designed the way we are, or that it behaves the way we do. If primitive Earth was able to support life that didn’t care for oxygen, we have to assume that there are countless other worlds that began the same way and yet never evolved into an oxygen-dependent world.”
“How did you find out?” Triana said.
“We gave our friend a little squirt of oxygen to see how it would react,” Lita said.
“Let me guess.” Gap chuckled. “It didn’t react too well.”
“That’s putting it mildly. One tiny wisp of the stuff caused it to shrink up against the far side of the box and start to go back into defensive mode. And it happened lightning fast. These things apparently have very good self-preservation skills, because it was against the glass and beginning to curl up in less than one second.”
Triana listened to the exchange, her mind skipping a step ahead. “So it becomes a fairly simple matter of firing a burst of oxygen at these things, and they should fly off the ship, is that right?”
“It looks that way,” Lita said. “Alexa and I can easily rig up some oxygen canisters for Gap to take out on another EVA. Even if they fly back after the first blast, I’m guessing that just a few shots will make them hesitant to land again. I’m te
lling you, they react like it’s acid.”
Gap spread his hands out, palms up. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s put something together and get out there.”
“Hold on, slow down,” Triana said. She looked back at Lita. “I want to get them off the ship, but I don’t want to damage them or, even worse, accidentally destroy one. How much oxygen is too much?”
Lita looked thoughtful. “Well, the one we have in Sick House was exposed for several minutes in the Spider bay before we got it into the vacuum container. When they curl up like that, I think it almost puts them into a … I don’t know, I guess you’d call it a standby mode. Like hibernation, in a way. So I don’t think a few shots will do any damage.”
Triana sat still for a moment, with Alexa and the other Council members silently watching her. She studied the display of the vulture on the vidscreen and considered all of the information that they had gleaned in such a short time. But what plagued her were all of the things they didn’t know about the creatures.
One question in particular.
“Roc,” she said. “I’m a little bothered by the fact that I’m so anxious to knock these things off the ship, and yet I still don’t know what they’re doing there. Any help on that yet?”
“One would automatically assume that they’re drawn here by my magnetic charm and sophistication,” the computer answered. “But I don’t think my reputation has had time to extend beyond our solar system … yet. So, putting that aside for the moment, I have compiled my own checklist of possibilities.
“One, they are nomads who are remnants of an earlier civilization, wandering the galaxy in search of a new master. They stumbled across us, and can’t let go.”
Gap wrinkled his brow. “Uh … that seems a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do. It’s on my list, but I have almost zero faith in it. Number two is a little more likely.”
“And that is?” Lita said.
“Number two is the possibility that they are cosmic hunters, similar to a pack of coyotes. They might not be used to anything our size, but are determined to bring us down. The weakness of this argument is the fact that we have yet to determine any damage they might be doing to the exterior of the ship. That’s not to say that they won’t do damage; in fact, they might be analyzing us, sizing us up before they begin the process of tearing away the flesh of our ship.”