Functioning. “Why not an octopus? Squid are social creatures. In fact, isn’t it true that their consciousness arises from their social structures? Whereas octopuses, I’m told, are solitary, sedentary creatures anyhow who could stand the isolation and confinement.”
“But not so smart,” Dan said. “They work alone. They don’t need to communicate. And they rely on smell, not sight, to hunt. Thanks to those squid eyes — forward-placed for binocular vision — Sheena will be able to navigate through space for us. It had to be a squid, Ms. Della. If she’s a little uncomfortable en route, that’s a price we’ll have to pay.”
“And what about the return trip? The stresses of reentry, rehabilitation…”
“In hand,” Dan said vaguely. He blinked like an owl.
In hand. Sure. You’re not the one going to the asteroid, you charmless nerd.
Maura found herself convinced. Malenfant knows what he’s doing, right down the line. I have to force the approvals through, on Monday. Sheena — smart, flexible, and a lot cheaper than an equivalent robot, even when you took into account the launch costs for her life-support environment — was the item that had closed Reid Malenfant’s interplanetary design.
There were some things working in her favor. Behind the scenes Malenfant had already begun to assemble promises of the technical support he was going to need. His old buddies at NASA had started to find ways to free up deep-space communications and provide support for detailed mission design and other support facilities. And it would help, she thought, that this wouldn’t be solely a NASA-related project; cooperation from Woods Hole in Massachusetts and the research institute at Mon-terey Bay Aquarium in California diluted the hostility NASA always attracted on the Hill.
But, she thought, if I succeed I will be forever associated with this. And if the news about the brave little squid turns sour
enough I may not survive, myself.
“I’ve been working with Sheena for months now,” Dan said. “I know her. She knows me. And I know she’s committed to the mission.”
“You think she understands the risks?”
Dan looked uncomfortable. “We’re counseling her. And we’re planning to have Sheena make some kind of statement of her own. Something we can broadcast, of course with a translation. If something does go wrong we hope the public will accept it as a justified sacrifice.”
Maura grunted, unconvinced. “Tell me this,” she said. “If you were her, would you go?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “But I’m not her. Ms. Della, every moment of her life, from the moment she was hatched, Sheena has been oriented to the goal. It’s what she lives for. The mission.”
Somberly Maura watched the squid, Sheena, as she flipped and jetted in formation with her fellows.
I need to pee, she realized.
She turned to Dan. “How do I, uh…”
The old diver type handed her a steel jar with a yellow label that had her name on it. “Your Personal Micturition Vessel. Welcome to the space program, Ms. Della.”
Perhaps reacting to some out-of-shot predator threat, the squid shoal collapsed to a tight school and jetted away with startling speed, their motion three-dimensional and complex, rushing out of the virtual camera’s field of view.
Sheena 5:
The courting began.
The squid swam around each other, subtly adopting new positions in time and space: each female surrounded by two, three, four males. Sheena enjoyed the dance — the ancient, rich choreography — even though she knew courting was not for her: it never could be, after she had been selected by Bootstrap.
Dan had explained it all.
But now, regardless of Dan’s strictures, regardless of the clamoring mind she carried, he came for her: the killer male, one tentacle torn on some loose fragment of metal, bearing his
wound proudly.
She should swim away. But here he was next to her, swimming back and forth with her. She fled, a short distance, but he pursued her, swimming with her, his every movement matching hers.
She knew this was wrong. And yet it was irresistible.
She felt a skin pattern flush over her body, a pied mottling of black and clear, speckled with white spots. It was a simple, ancient message. Court me.
He swam closer.
But the other males, still orbiting her, began to encroach, their eyes hard and intent. The hunter, her male, swam up to meet the most bold. They met each other, arms flaring, heads dark, bright bands on the mantle. Get away. She is mine! The male refiised to back off, his body pattern flaring to match the hunter’s. But the hunter raised his body until his fins bumped the intruder’s, who backed away.
Now he came back to her. She could see that his far side was a bright, uniform silver, a message to the other males: Keep away, now. Keep away. She is mine! But the side closest to her was a soothing, uniform gray-black, a smooth texture into which she longed to immerse herself, to shut off the clattering analysis of the brain the humans had given her. As he rolled, the colors tracked around his body, and she could see the tiny muscles working the pigment sacs on his hide.
Now he faced her, open arms starfished around his mouth. His eyes were on her: green and unblinking, avid, mindless, without calculation. Utterly irresistible. And already he was holding out his hectocotylus toward her, the modified arm bearing the clutch of spermatophores at its tip.
For a last instant she remembered Dan, his rigid human face peering out of glass windows at her, the little panels he sent into the water flashing their signs. Mission, Sheena, mission. Bootstrap! Mission! Dan!
She knew she must not do this.
But then the animal within her rose, urgent.
She opened her mantle to the male. He pumped water into her, seeking to flush out the sperm of any other mate. And then his hectocotylus reached for her, striking swiftly, and lodged his needlelike spermatophore among the roots of her arms.
Already, it was over.
And yet it was not. She could choose whether or not to embrace the spermatophore and place it in her seminal receptacle.
The male was withdrawing. All around her, the squid’s flashing songs pulsed with life.
She knew, compared to a human’s, her life was short: flashing, bright, lasting one summer, two at most, a handful of matings. And she was alone: she did not know her parents, would never know her young, might never see this mate of hers again.
And yet it did not matter. For there was consolation in the shoal, and the shoal of shoals: the ancient songs that reached back to a time before humans, before whales, before even the fish. The songs, poetry of light and dance, made every squid aware she was part of a continuum that stretched back to those ancient seas, and on to the incomprehensible future; and that her own brief, vibrant life was as insignificant, yet as vital, as a single silver scale on the hide of a fish.
Sheena, with her human-built mind, was the first of all squid to be able to understand this. And yet every squid knew it, on some level that transcended the mind.
But Sheena was no longer part of that continuum. Dan understood nothing of the shoal — not really — but he had stressed that much to her. Sheena was different, with different goals: human goals.
Even as the male receded, she felt overwhelmed with sadness, loneliness, isolation.
Flaring anger at the humans who had done this to her, she closed her arms over the spermatophore, and drew it inside her.