Элизабет Бир - Machine

Tsosie had his arms folded and was watching with an expressionless mouth and a little line between his eyes. The expression was familiar, and boded ill for somebody.

Not, I hoped, me. Or Cheeirilaq.

Cheeirilaq buzzed softly.

Sixth, what incapacitated Afar?

Seventh, if the thing that incapacitated Afar is not the same thing, what is causing the generation ship’s shipmind or shipminds to malfunction?

“I might have some answers on that one, actually. I’ve been talking to Mercy.” Quickly, I relayed what he had reconstructed from Helen’s information about the captain freezing his crew, incapacitating the shipmind, and then eventually dying alone—old age? illness? suicide?—in his command chair. I was aware of Rilriltok leaning close and listening intently, and the moment in which it buzzed and coruscated with excitement vibrated my jaw.

I might have some information to contribute on that front, it said. Our preliminary scans of the rescued patients indicate that many of them are infected with a human influenza-type virus. We will be vaccinating human hospital staff against it, and we have antiviral treatments available for the patients as they are rewarmed.

We all looked at one another in silence, humans and Rashaqins. Tsosie breathed out, an eloquent sigh.

“Out of curiosity,” I said, “was Specialist Jones one of the ones infected?”

Rilriltok hesitated, with the air of one consulting senso for its notes. She is not.

Cheeirilaq stretched its lime-green wing coverts wide, cocked its head, and continued, I have one more question.

“Let’s hear it,” Tsosie said, as if relieved for the break in tension.

Eighth, how can rock also be candy?

I blinked. Tsosie snorted. I pointed a finger at the Goodlaw, realizing too late that that might be seen as a very aggressive gesture by a species whose forelimbs were cavalry sabers.

I folded the finger back into my hand. “Was that a joke?”

Honest curiosity.

“Rock candy is crystallized sucrose,” Tsosie said.

Rilriltok’s antennae peeked over the back of its chair. Ninth, it interjected, how did an anomalous cryo pod wind up mixed in among the rest?

That should have been first , the Goodlaw said. I’m slipping.

Rilriltok was obviously terrified, but nothing as small as mortal peril could inhibit that vast curiosity and intellect.

Most doctors don’t get to serve at Core General. A few might come here for an exomedicine rotation or a residency. Only the very best are invited to stay. Any given attending physician here is, in general, among the galaxy’s best in their specialty.

I can say that without embarrassment because I got in by having a very narrow and unusual specialty. And I have an advantage in that my background in the military—Judiciary Search and Rescue—is why I serve on Sally. I’m a rare subspecies of doctor: I started my medical training by ministering to people who were already in difficult and dangerous situations, and my treatment goal was getting them out of those difficult and dangerous situations in no greater number of pieces than I had acquired them in. So rescue ops hold no terrors for me.

By contrast, Rilriltok did not obtain its position through any sort of special standing. It’s just a really excellent cryonics doc—a really excellent doc in general. This fact, I found reinforced in my understanding as it launched itself from the chair, buzzed up to the window, and rested feathery forelimbs against the monitors.

I stepped up beside it.

It asked, What kind of technology do Darboof use for senso, emotional regulation, and translation? Is it something like a fox? They think with electrical channels, don’t they?

Rashaqins had more distributed neural networks than humans did. Those tiny heads held a cluster of ganglia and sensory processing equipment, but their neurons were spread throughout their thorax and abdomen in addition to the head. I happened to know, because Rilriltok was such a good friend, that their fox design wasn’t that different from a human’s. Just more spread out. Rashaq and Terra had at least grossly compatible biochemistry.

Compatible enough that it could have eaten me without indigestion, though I imagine it would have felt bad, afterward.

I had gotten rid of the Darboof ayatanas. But I was still carrying around my friendly hospital engineer, and they knew a few things. “They use a fairly standard cold-methane extremophile model,” I said. “The fox circuits are etched in, kind of like a smart tattoo—oh.”

“Oh,” Tsosie agreed. “You think they’ve been rendered dormant by electrical interference in their foxes?”

It is the only thing that makes sense of a shipmind and all his crew being simultaneously comatose without multiple proximate causes in evidence.

“We should talk to Dr. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo,” Tsosie said, making less of a hash of the good doctor’s name than I usually did. My accent for blowhole noises is terrible.

“They’re not our patients,” I reminded him.

Our patients are a related case, however. I think I can make the suggestion without causing offense, Rilriltok said. Apparently, it checked in with its own team, because after a pause it commented, Dr. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo has inspected the ox-environment patients from Big Rock Candy Mountain ’s crew, and the team is ready to initiate the rewarming process. This is your last chance to put a hold on it, Llyn, should you wish to. Once we start, we can’t stop without killing them.

“It’s Helen’s call,” I said. “And she’s made it. Asking her to revisit the decision would only be cruel.”

Shall we see if Dr. Zhiruo thinks she can be roused? She may wish to be present. I’m going to return to the Cryo unit in order to be available for any emergencies.

It buzzed up into the air.

We can ask Dr. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo what she thinks about the Darboof when we get there.

“I’ll join you,” I said. I checked senso. Dr. Zhiruo was not presently available, but I left a message for her about Helen. While I was there, I asked if any progress had been made in determining what was wrong with Afar.

I felt certain it wouldn’t take her long to get back to me.

The four of us walked, scuttled, and buzzed down the corridor two by two. Cheeirilaq and I were in the front. Rilriltok hovered a little behind me. And Tsosie went on its left.

Cheeirilaq seemed genuinely interested as it asked, Your preferred pronoun is she , is it not?

I allowed that this was the case.

Will I be invading your privacy if I ask more questions?

“I’m comfortable with questions,” I said.

In observing other humans, I have noticed that your sexes seem very much alike. This is very different from my own species. And in observing your species-mates, I have come to realize that despite this similarity, many humans see themselves as very strongly gendered. And many others do not. So… why does your species subscribe to a gender binary?

“Do you mean me? For myself?”

Was that a rude question? I am terribly sorry. The enormous mantoid paced along on feathery feet, moving noiselessly.

“No,” I said. “Not a rude question, exactly. I mean, some would find it so. But I don’t.”

Thank you for forgiving my ignorance.

I laughed. It was charming, for a creature entirely out of nightmare. Comparing it to the almost embarrassingly adorable Rilriltok, I could see what it meant about my species’s lack of dimorphism. “I don’t think of myself as very strongly gendered. And I could elect a genderless identity, or a mixed-gender identity, if I preferred.”