Элизабет Бир - Machine

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.

“Pardon?” 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.