Conscious?
“Sort of. Drifting. Jen, I don't mean to alarm you, and I can't tell you why, but if you notice yourself slowing down, at all, or feeling… unwell, bring it to my attention immediately.”
Dick, are you insinuating there's some kind of problem with the nanotech?
“I can't confirm that.” He seems to sense my protest before I articulate it. “And no, before you go there, Alan and I don't have the capability to watch each individual nanite constantly.”
I hope you're watching mine! And Patty's, and Min-xue's. And especially Genie's, even if her load is lighter by about half.
“I will take the best care of you that I can.” Which isn't much of a promise, if it's meant to be soothing.
Jeremy blinks at me owlishly. He must have learned to pick out the talking-to-Richard expression by now. “The AI?”
“Who else? He's worried. About the Benefactor tech.”
“Ah,” Jeremy says. He leans away from me, gangling arms crossed over his chest. His teeth dimple his lower lip, and—
Dammit, he knows something I don't. But Richard's silent, too, and for a moment the only sound I can hear is Charlie breathing in and out and in again. It's not a soothing kind of silence. It puts my nerves on edge, and the sight of Jeremy distractedly straightening Charlie's sheet does nothing to ease the worried tightness under my breastbone.
Then I hear what I'm hearing, and I reach out with my metal hand and grab Jeremy's wrist lightly, just below the projecting bones. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” His head comes up on his long inelegant neck like a wiry old stag scenting the breeze. He strains to pick whatever threat I've noticed out of the hum of ventilation and the soft endless rasp of an unconscious man breathing.
Except I'm hearing something else. An echo. An overlay. As if another person were breathing in unison with Charlie, in perfect rhythm, in and out and in again.
“Bugger,” Jeremy says. “I don't hear anything.”
“I do,” Dick says, activating the motes in the room so Jeremy can hear him. “Breathing. Not exactly hear. Feel.”
Jeremy's eyes get big. He looks at me, and I look at him, and we both glance reflexively toward the port, which shows nothing currently but blackness. “Oh, bugger,” he says quietly. “It's Les you two are hearing, isn't it? He's alive out there.”
I don't answer, but I don't look down.
“We must fetch him back.”
I ain't arguing. “Dick,” I say out loud, for Jeremy's benefit. “How much longer do you think it will be before Charlie is modified enough for you to talk to?”
He uses the wall speakers. “I'll see if I can expedite matters. Without putting them in any further danger, of course. If what I'm reading is correct, I am getting signal from Leslie over the worldwire, strongly enough that Jenny and the rest of the pilots are picking up an echo. It appears that most of his and Charlie's body processes are synchronizing — heart rate, brain function, and so on. Very interesting. All I can postulate is that the birdcages have some method of sustaining his life, and they've infected him with their nanotech as well. Since Charlie's carrying both their bugs and ours — well, Leslie should be safe out there. As ridiculous as it is to say he's safe.”
“Of course,” Jeremy says. But he does not sound convinced, and that downward drag twists the corner of his mouth one more time as he meets my eyes and glances quickly away.
Dr. Tjakamarra.
Dr. Tjakamarra.
Leslie's hands weren't cold anymore, because he couldn't feel his hands. He wasn't sure what he could feel, exactly, but his hands weren't part of it. He felt… adrift, buoyed as if in a calm enormous sea, except if he had been floating, the currents would have pushed his skin, the sea would have sounded in his ears over the beat of his own heart. And there was no susurrus of white noise, no silken stroke of water.
In fact, he couldn't feel the boundaries of his body at all. He had no skin, no bones, no tactile sensations. Just warmth, boundlessness, quiet. Nothing breathed in him, and what moved did so on a stately, formal, predetermined pattern; he imagined he felt the way the air must feel, on a still, humid afternoon. Alive, heavy. Electric.
Waiting for the storm.
And somewhere, someone was speaking poetry: Death closes alclass="underline" but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks…
Dr. Tjakamarra.
Leslie concentrated on his hands. Hands made the man — no. Hands made man. There were other animals just as smart; nothing in his studies had ever contradicted that bias. Unless the bias itself had led him to dismiss the contradictions.
Always a possibility that a good scientist should consider. Was he a good scientist? Or was he a crackpot, some sort of half and half creature walking neither the songlines nor the white man's path? Uncommitted?
Homeless?
Elephants came closer to H. habilis than anything nonprimate he could name — tool-using creatures of social complexity and intricate language. He could have made a life's work of studying their culture, if they still existed outside of zoos.
Dr. Tjakamarra. Leslie, can you hear me? It's Alan.
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows…
It went beyond hands. Elspeth Dunsany had a theory that the Benefactors were interested in humans because humans had the habit of wanting to talk to anything, everything. It made a certain amount of sense: Leslie himself had often suspected that Homo sapiens would better be rendered as Homo loqui… Homo loquacis? Homo something, anyway, and leave it to cooler Latinate heads to decide what, or—
Homo garrulitas. There. That made him giggle. Or would have, if he could make any sound. If he could hear if he were making any sound.
Of course, people themselves had always known that talking was the important thing. The real people, the chosen people, God's people are the people who talk our language. The barbarians — are those creatures over there, little better than animals, who make those disgusting noises. It was a human bias that hadn't changed in millions of years — and judging by the continuing tension between the English-speaking USA and recent immigrants, and English-speaking and Francophone Canada (to name two examples at random), it wasn't about to change anytime soon.
For my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die…
Dr. Tjakamarra. Leslie. Les. Can you hear me?
Voices. Two voices, not just one. Familiar voices. Sort of. One a man's, and one a woman's. Except they sounded like voices inside his head. Like the voice of his own conscience. Like the voices heard in a dream.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew…
Leslie, I can hear you thinking. Talk to me.
Les?
Floating. And then the feather-light brush as of fingertips against his face, and a third voice, another familiar one, babbling nonsense the way he knew he would be babbling nonsense if he could find his mouth, if he had a mouth, if he—