Элизабет Бир - Machine

“Brain damage?”

They’re not my species —a tentacle waved apologetically— but I’m wearing an ayatana from a human neurosurgeon. And I’m reasonably certain the scarring is surgical in nature.

“You’re not saying somebody lobotomized this patient?”

The scarring is not consistent with a lobotomy. It may be the result of a tumor removal or an aneurysm repair.

“May I have a look, Doctor?” I asked.

It wriggled in compliance. Of course, Doctor. You were on the retrieval team, were you not?

I nodded, confident that senso would translate the gesture.

Rilriltok had not awaited protocol. It buzzed the cryo pods, waving its antennae near open and closed panels. When it circled back, it hovered excitedly and said, The electrical signatures are slightly different, friend Llyn, between this unit and the others.

I had forgotten that the Rashaqin sensorium had the ability to detect electromagnetic fields.

They’re also different colors, Cheeirilaq said. There’s more infrared in the one your colleague mentioned. It extended a raptorial forelimb and waved the razorlike tip very gently, near the closest of the anomalous units. I would say this one was manufactured separately and integrated into the lot.

“I made them all. The machine and I did. I would know if one was different,” Helen said, with great certainty. Then she squared her shoulders and repeated, more forlornly, “If that had happened, I would know.”

What if someone modified your program? Cheeirilaq asked. This capsule is demonstrably different. More advanced than the others. And yet it seems you cannot recognize that.

Helen twisted from the waist, inhumanly, a colloid contained in a person-shaped skin. A ripple passed through her, as if she was thinking of doing the swelling-up trick again.

I like mysteries, Cheeirilaq said. Maybe this one is modern. Maybe Afar brought it. Maybe they were hiding a criminal.

Cops are cops. “A human criminal on a methane ship?”

Its wing coverts rippled. Do you have a more interesting solution?

“Maybe Helen and the machine got lucky and turned out a really good one.”

Cheeirilaq bobbed its thorax. Dr. Tralgar, is there any chance we can wake these people up?

“Let’s discuss that further somewhere else,” I suggested, before Tralgar or Rilriltok could comment on the likelihood of any of the patients surviving rewarming.

Oh, Rilriltok said, jerking in the air as if suddenly remembering that Cheeirilaq was there. Oh dear. Have you eaten? Can I offer you something to eat?

Cheeirilaq bowed its elongated thorax very close to the deck and folded its raptorial arms tightly against its body. Thank you, friend Rilriltok. I am quite satiated. Now, Doctor, about these patients. Would it be ethically acceptable under these circumstances to type the DNA of these individuals for identification purposes?

Questionable, said Dr. Tralgar.

I ducked a waist-thick tentacle.

Tralgar continued, Eminently ethical, and in fact even necessary, to do so in order to develop a treatment plan and begin growing replacement organs. We have already done so. What is not ethical, unfortunately, is releasing that information to law enforcement without either a warrant, or the patient’s permission. Since I assume you want to run it against your databases.

Cheeirilaq nodded its triangular head. I’m reasonably certain that I can come up with a Judicially acceptable argument that there is evidence of some sort of a crime committed here—kidnapping consisting of cryonic suspension without consent—and obtain such a warrant.

Good. Then come back when you have it. I’m going to bring Dr. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo to consult. She’s a specialist in brain damage, and she might have some ideas about this patient’s intracranial scarring.

I said, “I’d hate to think that somebody intentionally damaged this person’s brain.”

Before dropping them off in an intentionally primitive cryo pod? And somehow convincing Helen here that the patient was a crew member whose presence had always been logged in her manifest? I’d hate to think that, too. Although I suspect that everybody who survives rewarming will have a little brain damage to contend with. Tralgar waggled its upper torso back and forth. We are also inspecting the samples for archaic pathogens. Measles, influenza, Y. pestis , and so on. The cultures and scans are extensive and will take several diar to process fully. We cannot begin rewarming procedures until we are certain we have appropriate vaccines and treatment available for any bugs we may be importing from the distant past.

It made a noise that senso translated as a chuckle. Not that I need to be worried. But Dr. Jens here would probably prefer not to die of scarlet fever or something equally romantic and premillennial.

Surgeons are not notoriously great at bedside manner.

“That patient is Specialist Jones,” Helen said.

She’d told me about Jones on the way in. The historian. The one I wanted to introduce to our archinformists, if she lived. That level of confidence and backstory seemed to contradict Cheeirilaq’s theory that she’d been stuck in with the other corpsicles as a kind of frozen Trojan horse.

I nibbled my lip, trying to decide how to respond to Helen’s statement.

“I give permission,” Helen said suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?” I’d understood her perfectly. But I had expected her to say something quite different, based on available evidence and her behavior patterns so far.

“I give permission,” Helen said. “They are my crew. I am in authority over them, in the absence of a commanding officer. I give you permission to examine them, and to release such information as may be relevant to an ongoing investigation to Constable Cheeirilaq.”

I guessed all that extra storage and the personality reconstruction were having an effect already. Dr. Zhiruo was the best at what she did, and Helen must not have been as intractable a case as I’d feared.

Well, boomed Tralgar. That conveniently settles that. Now about the rewarming— It abruptly bent all three enormous legs at surprisingly sharp angles and dropped its posterior end to the deck, sitting down. It folded its tentacles and seemed to scrunch in on itself, widening and thickening throughout the muscular gumdrop of its body. This brought the conical head with its circle of bright violet eyes and walrus whiskers to my eye level, more or less.

This may be distressing information, it admitted, leaning toward Helen. She did not step back. Are you prepared to internalize bad news?

I’m here, Linden whispered in my senso.

“I am prepared,” Helen said.

Dr. Rilriltok? the Thunderby offered.

Rilriltok hovered gently over my shoulder. The breeze it generated was pleasant on my neck. It buzzed.

We can at best expect a thirty percent success rate based on the level of technology of the cryo units. Some of the patients who survive are likely to have severe deficits, possibly permanent ones. In those cases—survival, with brain injury—we can repair the organic damage, but in the absence of ayatanas—

“What are ayatanas?” Helen asked.

I realized I’d never heard her interrupt before.

“Machine-stored memories,” I said.

Helen nodded, an odd, crisp gesture that bobbed her head like the stride of a connecting rod.

In the absence of ayatanas, Tralgar continued, we cannot restore their memories or personalities. They will essentially be new people in the same bodies. The patient in the better capsule is much likelier to make a full recovery.