Her age-mates winked their fear.
She paused, confused, watching as they drew closer in an unnatural clutch, equidistantly spaced in orderly rows and columns. She inhaled with a great, fearful whoosh, preparing to take flight once again, when white light blinded her and she drifted, limp, uncaring, unknowing.
The world went dark again and Ei’Brai’s voice buzzed gently. “I had never known confinement in my short existence. It was an affront. But, like you, I learned much, and quickly.”
The light came on. Too bright. Jane wanted to squint, but her eyes couldn’t do that. Instead, she darted back, trying without success to find some way to shield her sensitive eyes, and came up painfully against hard glass. Somehow she knew that this was like the day before and the one before that. She felt intense, primal loneliness, longing for home, freedom, and age-mates.
A creature came to look at her through the glass. It calmly watched her scrabble and dart, fruitlessly looking for refuge from the painful, artificial sun. It took up residence, like it always did, draping its angular body over the single structure in the blindingly-unnatural, white place.
It waited, like always. For what? What did it want from her? Again and again, day after day, it turned the soothing darkness into a searing blaze and waited. There was no end to the repetition of it.
Stupid, stupid being.
She hated it, hated its shrouded body, its way of moving, always upright, always in a single plane. She especially hated its steady gaze, interrupted periodically by the fleshy folds of skin covering over its tiny eyes.
Finally, she shouted at it—a single, negative bleat of rage. To her surprise, the creature rose. It moved out of her view for the first time and her world plunged into blessed, soothing darkness once again.
She timidly moved forward to peer through the glass. The creature slowly came back and faced her, inches away, but for the partition between them. The fleshy lips parted and she could see stony structures there.
She sensed its pleasure. She felt it, too. It was wonderful. She wanted more.
“That was the beginning,” Ei’Brai murmured.
“That is…a man,” Jane said incredulously. He could never blend in on Earth, yet he was startlingly familiar. He was tall, incredibly slight, with sharp, spare features. His proportions were distorted, every bone longer, thinner.
“Sectilius.”
The man faded into black as they spoke.
“The people of this ship.”
“Yes. A brilliant, prolific race with complex genetic variety. One of few borne of a rare planet-moon combination, both habitable.”
Jane wrinkled her brow. “The Divided.”
“Yes. The moon-race, adapted to the gravity of the low-mass moon, displays this phenotype. The planetary race’s phenotype is far different. A world far larger than Terra gives rise to a shorter, denser form.”
Images and snippets of data illustrating his point flashed through her mind. She was astonished at the diversity of body types that evolved after the peaceful civilizations on both worlds, having communicated for centuries via radio waves, finally developed the technology to routinely traverse the distance and interbreed.
“This man, he was teaching you—”
“To communicate with his kind before I’d learned to properly communicate with my own, yes. A great gift.”
“The Sectilius speak to each other this way?”
“Only rarely. Masters of Anipraxia commit to many years of study. That was one such master—a high priest who devoted his lifespan to unlocking us, preparing us for service. My kind communicate over vast distances, over the span of my home world, effortlessly. I perceive your concerns, but you need not worry, Dr. Jane Holloway. You could not discern another’s thoughts without my assistance.”
He could sense that? Her worry, her fear that he was changing her into something that she didn’t want to be?
“You were taken,” Jane said. “Are you here against your will? Were you a slave?”
“I was taken, yes. Not as a slave. As an exalted guest. Had I evaded capture, inevitably I would have become a savage—a carnivore, consumed only with scrapping for food, grappling for a place within the hierarchy of my kind, struggling to maintain that position for a brief life expectancy. I would not trade my place for that feral existence. Not even now.”
“But why did they do this to you?”
“Do you not take sentient creatures into service on your world? To perform tasks that exceed your own capabilities?”
She wasn’t sure she fully understood what he was asking. She thought she knew what he meant, but cringed, uncomfortable with the answer she came up with. She felt like a school girl, put on the spot by a brilliant teacher that she was eager to please, struggling to think of a clever reply, but coming up short.
“The beast who pulls the cart? The dog who keeps watch over the flock? The cow, whose sole purpose is to manufacture surrogate mother’s milk? Are they not utilized for a purpose, to fill a need?”
She agreed immediately, chagrinned that humans did not consider the animals he mentioned to be sentient. There seemed to be multiple layers of reality that humans were too self-involved to fully realize. It was mortifying. What else were they missing?
“As do I. I am the Gubernaviti.” His voice rang with a smug note of narcissism.
“The governing navigator,” she said hesitantly. “They need you to fly the ship.”
“Just so.”
“They can’t do it without you?”
“Possibly. It is done, but rarely. No other race can perform to the same standard that the Kubodera have set.”
“Kubodera?”
She sensed a physical swelling within him, growing as he spoke, literally puffing with pride. “The princes of the stars. We are harvested from a secluded world by a devout priesthood, tutored and enhanced, groomed from infancy to take our place at the heart of every ship-community. We are capable of multi-tasking at a level no hominid can match, interface easily with binary processors, and are capable of calculating with nearly the same efficiency and accuracy, should such systems fail. We are capable of making longer, more accurate jumps than any hominid species. Eons ago we proved ourselves to be far superior navigators to any other sentient species.”
She felt awkward. What was she supposed to say to that? Did he expect some form of obsequience? Perhaps not, because he went on.
“For this we are adopted, embraced, and revered. In service and in leisure we extend Anipraxia to your kind. It is a great honor to be allowed to join Anipraxia with a Kubodera, to allow my mind to touch yours for our mutual benefit. The mating of minds goes far beyond any connection you have ever known, Dr. Jane Holloway. You sense this.”
She did. She couldn’t help but feel humbled, even as some aspect of her mind railed against his hubris.
And there was more. This encounter with Ei’Brai was very different. It was more than mere conversation. She was becoming more aware of his personality, getting glimpses of his world-view.
She sensed in him an emptiness that he wanted her to fill. There was no need to speak of it, because it was somehow glaringly obvious, pervasive in his every thought. She felt small and vulnerable in the face of it. What kind of commitment had she stumbled into? What did all of this mean?
“Allow me to demonstrate the wonder of it, Dr. Jane Holloway.” His voice was somber, hushed. Could he perceive every fleeting thought? She felt a small measure of shame that she might be hurting him with her reluctance, with her fear.
The darkness burst into life. Stars. Unfathomable numbers of stars in gorgeous, nebulous heaps and clumps flooded the darkness with pricks of light. It was incredibly, undeniably vast.