Элизабет Бир - Machine

Sigh.

My gamble worked, and I reserved a four-top by a viewport, with the bustling space of the Core on one side and the bustling cafeteria on the other. We arrived, I left Helen to hold it down, and I went through the line.

I scanned the metabolic codes and consulted the food preferences of my inner engineer. It’s a terrible idea to nauseate a simulated passenger who is using your body for its physical responses. Which is how I wound up with spaghetti and fruit salad with a healthy sprinkle of freeze-dried crickets.

Simulated crickets, obviously. We’re not barbarians.

We returned to Helen. I was a little surprised that she had cheerfully plunked herself down with her back to the room. I realized I had expected her to be stereotypically paranoid, like a character in a spy story. She seemed contented, though, and I started scarfing up my lunch as fast as I could ply my chopsticks.

Helen picked up a pair of chopsticks as well, and began experimenting. It was interesting watching her practice with them. She was a fast learner, and got measurably better at it over the course of one meal, even when she was lifting squish-ripe mango, slippery as a liver, before putting it back in the bowl so I could eat it.

Helen did not consume organics, obviously.

“Any questions so far?” I asked, around a mouthful of spaghetti. My mother and my old CO would both be horrified by my table manners.

Luckily they weren’t here.

Helen turned her unsettling suggestion of a face to me. “Can I see my crew?”

I swallowed quickly. “I should have made arrangements to take you there first. I’m sorry. Give me a moment.” I tapped into senso and filed a request to visit.

It was while my attention was turned inward that my old friend Dr. Rilriltok fluttered up, with the kind of timing that makes less savvy species accuse male Rashaqins of being telepathic.

The cafeteria was in an inner portion of the wheel, so the force of its simulated gravity barely affected Rilriltok, and it could even fly on its dazzling, crystalline wings—without using the gravity belt to compensate. It did mean that those of us who were eating had to be gentle when we gestured with our utensils, lest we send a dollop of mashed potato or globroot floating into an unsuspecting colleague’s airspace. But there was enough spin to keep your orange juice in the glass. After twenty ans in and out of space, that was almost a luxury.

“Don’t be alarmed,” I said to Helen as Rilriltok approached. “A giant bug is about to land on the table.”

A moment later a giant bug landed on the table, wings buzzing to a gentle halt while their breeze stirred my hair. I balanced a cube of cricket-sprinkled melon between my chopsticks, shielding it from the wind with my other hand. Nobody wants surprise cricket in their air intakes.

Helen was staring unabashedly. Can you stare without eyes? Anyway, her focus was locked on Rilriltok.

She asked, “Is there any news of my crew?”

Greetings, friend Jens, said Dr. Rilriltok. Greetings, Helen. One moment and I will acquaint you with the status of your crew. There has been no immediate change and there is no immediate danger I see that Dr. Jens has filed a visit request for you; may I assist you in preparing psychologically?

“Do I require psychological preparation?” She was looking at me.

“Hospital visits can be stressful,” I said, with as little irony as I could manage.

Rilriltok set a tray in front of where it perched. As its head dipped forward, its large raptorial forearms craned up and out of the way. The blades were delicate-looking and translucent as fine porcelain, and as glitteringly sharp as a ceramic knife blade.

The smaller manipulator arms began selecting pieces of what looked like raw sliced lobster, shell and all. I’d been known to eat the cooked version—they were synthetic land prawns—but I still averted my eyes as the crunching and squishing started.

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.