Элизабет Бир - Machine

I will handle the communication. She will not wish to accept that Master Chief Carlos does not wish to speak with her.

“I know,” I said. “Maybe it’ll help that Jones is excited to. Pity Zhiruo isn’t able to run interference. Any word on Zhiruo yet? Or Linden?”

Starlight says Linden is communicating in outgoing packet bursts. They say she says the situation is difficult and unstable, requiring constant interventions. She has hopes that if she finds the right code sequences, she will be able to stabilize herself and commence repairs. Once that occurs, she should be able to resume normal functions. She says that will be soon. Whatever soon is.

I have heard no updates on Zhiruo, but I assume that once Linden has solved her virus she will be able to tackle its other instances. Unless Zhiruo manages to repair herself first, which is possible.

“Good,” I said. I rubbed my eyes. “I’m going to get some food while supplies still hold out. Do you want anything?”

I am well-nourished. Tralgar tapped its breathing slits with a meaty appendage-tip. Don’t forget to take that mask off before you try to put anything in your food hole.

By the time I got to the cafeteria I was ready to slide into a booth, drink a beer, and never talk to another living being. But when I checked the statuses I saw that Rhym and Hhayazh had claimed a table against the windows, and amended my mood to “never talk to another human being.”

I sent a request to join them, but perhaps they were too busy eating to notice the ping, because no reply came. So, when I arrived at the caf, I stood where they could see me and waved, and pointed to their table. They waved back and pointed to the table as well.

We’d worked together long enough that I didn’t worry about a miscommunication. I just went and got my food.

Running into my colleagues in the cafeteria so often seemed a little odd, given prior experience and the size of the hospital, but with the lifts down until Linden came back online, nobody was moving around the bubble much. And, I reminded myself, even if the lifts had been running, people at Core General tended to stick to the areas closest to where they worked and lived—as with neighborhoods in a big city.

I wasn’t used to spending so much time grounded, so I’d never really had occasion to notice, before.

Sally’s slip, when she wasn’t unloading at the Emergency Department, was near the oxygen casualty section. Her crew all had our quarters nearby. The Ox Cryo unit was a few dozen meters along the same ring. The cafeteria was a few levels hubward.

When I came back, I was carrying a tray of salad, cloned steak tips, and butterscotch pudding. I also had a dark beer, a mug of tea, and a powerful fixation on the coffee I wasn’t going to be drinking any time in the near future, unless I climbed into a softsuit and made a trek around the outside of the hospital to get to the one humans-only caf that served java. To make matters worse, I’d been informed when I requested the alcohol ration that there wasn’t going to be much more available unless and until we got a supply run.

Maybe I could start a batch of hooch with some medical yeast and lactated ringers. I was sure it would be fine.

Rhym had long since demolished their dinner in the single-minded manner of their kind, so they must be here to keep Hhayazh company. Or possibly to soak in the ambiance: Who could tell? Hhayazh had some greenish slime with lumps in it that I identified from the smell as fermented legumes. Or, if not true legumes, whatever its planet used for lentils.

I raised the snifter of beer to my colleagues as I sat, and said, “Here’s to the inevitable beer riots.”

Hhayazh pointed its bristles at me and buzzed, Does your species immediately resort to social upheaval when threatened with a lack of intoxicants? I would think you would have rightminded that tendency out by now.

“It usually takes at least a couple of hours,” I admitted. The salad had little green flat crunchy seeds in it: an unexpected treat. And probably full of useful fatty acids.

My banter with Hhayazh aside, I was worried about food. Ox sector, at least, grew a lot of its produce on-site, supporting the ox/carbon dioxide biosphere and providing restorative environments for recreation, exercise, and hanging around with plants that didn’t want to argue about politics or sports teams.

It occurred to me that Ceeharens were the most common sentient vegetable on Core General, and that I didn’t know if they even had a preferred sport as a species.

A brief consult with senso informed me that they had several, each a little more incomprehensible than the last. Well, it was my own fault for wondering.

I brought my attention back to the table, where Rhym was fiddling a drinking straw with their tendrils and saying, Something weird is happening.

I swallowed salad. “What weird isn’t happening? We’ve got people from the deep past, a sexy robot with damaged memory cores, a ship full of Darboof with compromised foxes and brain damage, and a toxic meme infecting our AI staff like the technological equivalent of caterpillar fungus. None of this is normal.”

Caterpillar…? Rhym asked, in the tone of somebody who had tried to look it up but didn’t have the right search terms.

So I told them about the fungal parasites on Terra that hijacked the brains of insects and made them perform all sorts of self-destructive behaviors in order to spread the fungal spores.

They were incredulous and horrified. There’s something professionally gratifying about being able to gross out a tentacular tree stump who also happens to be one of the galaxy’s most experienced trauma surgeons.

Hhayazh won the digression—and horrified us both further—by telling us about a similar fungus on Rashaq that infected several species, including Rashaqin nymphs. Not the adults, at least, but the mental image of Rilriltok with a giant sporing body bursting from its back was bad enough that I resorted to tuning to erase it. I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy my pudding otherwise, and if we were facing food shortages, I certainly wasn’t going to waste it.

“But you were going to tell me something else,” I prompted. “Before I distracted you with mind-controlling fungus.”

Rhym leaned back, tendrils twitching. Their eyes narrowed. They had lens-type eyes with lids like humans, operating on very similar principles. Their lids closed from side to side, though, and they were lucky enough to have a nictitating membrane. I’d contemplated more than once getting one added, but I didn’t want to be out of work for the surgery and long enough for the eye to heal. Twice: once for each eye, because they didn’t do them both at the same time.

They said, Sally, will you establish a direct senso link, and handle the translation?

I’m here, Sally said, a little less fuzzily than was lately usual. She wasn’t reaching us through the hospital infrastructure then, but by direct transmission. You’re all encrypted.

Hhayazh leaned in to the table, clacking excitedly. Do you remember that private ambulance that cut us off when we were bringing Helen and her crew in?

“Sure.” My beer was finished. I switched to the tea.

It left.

“But we’re under quarantine.” I expected Hhayazh or Rhym to tell me that the ambulance had left before the quarantine started. I was already mentally preparing myself to ask something like, So what’s so weird about that?

But Rhym said, We know. And there’s something even weirder.

I waited. I sipped my tea. I looked from one colleague to the other.