“Yes, ma—” Her eyes narrowed at him intensely enough that Geary halted in midword. “What I meant to say was, all right, Tanya.”
“Fifteen minutes,” she repeated sternly, then left.
He went to get cleaned up but paused for a moment to thank the living stars for her presence in his life. Even Black Jack needs a good kick in the rear every once in a while, and I’m lucky enough to have someone around who’ll do that when necessary.
Charban spread his hands, shrugged, and shook his head, all at the same time. “I don’t know! I don’t know what the Dancers think of us beyond the fact that they seem to see us as allies. It occurred to me as I was analyzing my own attempts to communicate with them that I was thinking of the Dancers as children. Perhaps because they can’t speak clearly to us, perhaps because they’re unpredictable, perhaps because it’s more comfortable for me to think of them that way. Do they think of us as children? It’s entirely possible. But is it true? I have no idea.”
“Has Dr. Shwartz mentioned any impressions like that?” Geary asked. They were in his stateroom, any evidence of Geary’s earlier depression put away and neatened up. Dr. Shwartz herself was on one of the assault transports, out of reach of all but the simplest communication while the ships were in jump space. There were other so-called experts on nonhuman intelligence with the fleet, but over time Geary had learned to trust in the insights of Dr. Shwartz far more than those of any other academic.
“No, she hasn’t.” Charban leaned back, looking up at the overhead. “Admiral, what do you see up there?”
“On the overhead?” Geary bent his head upward as well, seeing the welter of cable runs, piping, tubes, and vents that were a common feature of overheads throughout Dauntless and every other warship. “Equipment. It’s like an organ system in a living creature. The lifeblood of the ship flows through that junk up there, as does the air, all of the signals that make up what you could call the nerve system of the ship. We keep it uncovered so it’s easy to access if it needs repair.”
Charban nodded. “Do you see patterns? Pictures?”
“Sure. Sometimes. Doesn’t everybody?”
“Every human,” Charban said. “But what do the Dancers see? We haven’t been inside their ships. Do they have exposed ‘organs’ like those on human ships? Or is everything inside their ships as carefully smooth and clean-lined as the exterior of their ships? How would they describe what we are looking at? Would they see obscene clutter? Would they see pictures in that overhead? If they did, what pictures? Or patterns? We don’t know. And yet it is exactly those kinds of things that would help us understand the Dancers. We share those things with other humans, forming a connection, a shared understanding, even with humans we might detest. That allows us to guess at their motivations, their reasons for anything they do. But the Dancers? Why do they do anything?”
Geary stared at him for a while before answering. “What about the patterns? The way they seem to think?”
“I agree with Dr. Shwartz. The Dancers very likely do think in patterns, seeing everything in terms of interlocking components that form some image they can understand on their own terms.” Charban spread his hands helplessly again. “But where are we in those patterns? We still can only guess. I would interpret their interactions with me as being… polite. But you can be polite with a partner, or to a superior, or to someone far inferior to you. Noblesse oblige, as the very old saying has it. But there’s another alternative. That’s the possibility that the Dancers themselves are not certain of how to think of us, just as we are uncertain about them. In us, that produces contradictory impulses. We are in awe of the Dancers, yet we also view them in part as if they were irresponsible children who need constant supervision.”
“You’re saying the Dancers may be making it up as they go along?” Geary asked.
“It’s possible. They react to each event not in accordance with some unified image of us but in terms of what seems best to them when each of those events occur.” Charban paused, his face working as he thought. “I have an impression… Admiral, when someone has something they have to do, you can tell. There’s something about them, no matter who they are, that tells you they are preoccupied, driven, busy. Whatever term you want. I sometimes get that feeling with the Dancers. Before we left Midway, it was becoming stronger, a sense that the Dancers were eager to leave, to reach Alliance space, but refraining from saying so openly.”
It was Geary’s turn to shake his head. “Why would they be eager to go to Alliance space and yet not say so?”
“I don’t know. If you figure out the answer, could you tell me?”
Geary managed a smile. “What does Emissary Rione think?”
“Emissary Rione?” Charban asked. “What does she think? If you figure out the answer, could you tell me?”
Not everyone who was acting in unusual ways was an alien. After speaking with Charban, Geary realized something else had been bothering him, something that had been concealed under the stress that had been clouding his mind.
In this case, the answers might be found in the recent past.
He called up records, letting them scroll past, trying to give his subconscious the clues it would need to figure out what was going on.
When his hatch alert chimed, Geary absentmindedly granted entry, only gradually becoming aware that Desjani was back and glowering at him.
“What?” Geary asked, looking away from the display over his desk.
“I thought you were not going to get bogged down again this quickly in useless regrets about the past.”
“What?” he repeated, then understood. “I’m sorry, Tanya. Have I been out of communication for a while again?”
“An unusually long while,” she replied, eyeing him suspiciously. “If you’re not moping about mistakes, what are you doing? That’s a playback of the attack on Invincible at Sobek.”
Geary rubbed his mouth with one hand, looking at the recorded images once more as stealth shuttles were destroyed, and Marines counterattacked inside Invincible. “Something has shifted. I’m trying to figure out what.”
She came closer, studying the display. “The attack on Invincible was a classic special operation. Stealth approach and stealth suits, board a ship undetected, we’ve seen that before. We’ve done that as much as the Syndics have. It requires special circumstances to work, though.”
“But the suicide attacks. Those were different.”
“Yes,” Desjani agreed. “The minefield wasn’t different, but the way they tried to get us with it was unusual. You’re looking for some common element?”
He nodded, watching as the Marines once again annihilated the Syndics who had boarded Invincible. “These aren’t major attacks. It’s a series of small attacks, minor actions. They’re not marshaling as many forces in one place as possible. They’re not trying to defeat us in open battle.” Geary looked at her. “Do they still use the expression being nibbled to death by ducks?”
“Nibbled to—? Oh. We say cows,” Desjani said. “Licked to death by cows.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“How is it more disgusting than being nibbled to death by ducks?”
“I don’t know.” Geary scowled at the display. “The Syndics can’t hope to stop us or beat us. But what they’re doing is not just wearing us down ship by ship and encounter by encounter. These sudden attacks, without warning, seemed designed to also throw us mentally off-balance.”