Neal Asher: The Engineer Reconditioned

It took the ball of water ice apart, cutting away curiously-shaped ice blocks and stacking them. Abaron wondered if the blocks needed to be such odd shapes or if that was a quirk of this particular PSR. It looked to him as if the sphere could be reassembled from them and hold together like an interlocking Chinese puzzle. Probably there was a sensible explanation for this, though he was damned if he was going to ask Chapra.

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 The PSR had now withdrawn.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.”