She cracked the sea] on its brain pan. Nothing. Blowing out her breath in relief, she opened the bioelectronic brain the rest of the way. Not too bad. Desiccated, like a crust of algae on a mudflat. If all the artificials were like this, she could resuscitate them in short order. She hooked up a rehydration tube and watched for a few minutes. The rumpled surface engorged with saline and fructose and salicylic acid, responding to the rich mix of hormones and growth factors. The fissures deepened.
Esther patted the artificial.
'You're going to remember everything, aren't you?' she asked it hopefully. 'Arachne isn't going to be much help, so I'd appreciate it if you'd come out of this with your memories intact. You aren't gonna be much use to me as a stupid vegetable.'
She went on to the next artificial and broached its seal.
The brain case hissed and burst open. Esther jumped back. Putrid bits of bioelectronic conductor sprayed her chest. Esther gagged and stripped off her shirt. It fell with a soggy thud. Bioelectronics rotted with all the worst qualities of animal, vegetable, and fungal matter: the sweet and nauseating smell of decomposing meat and the slimy deterioration of plant cells, all held together in a yeasty matrix.
First she hosed herself down, then her shirt, and finally the artificial, sluicing the spoiled brain tissue into the waste digester. The smell hung thick around her. It was not very toxic, but it sure was nasty.
She was soaking wet. Now she was glad of the day's warmth. If she had been working in her jacket, the unofficial uniform of transport pilots, it would be ruined.
I bet Starfarer's storeroom doesn't have any fluorescent chartreuse baseball jackets, she thought.
Esther set to the laborious task of cleaning the brain case. She sterilized it, seeded and sealed it, and hooked it to a feeder tube. That one would be a week regrowing. Then someone would have to retrain it.
She had Arachne display the transmission from Nerno's chamber next to the AS brain schematics. It had not changed since the chrysalis hardened; Esther had practically memorized it. She asked for some music. Trash rock. At least the recent music archives had not been wiped out in the system crash.
She set to work on another brain.
After eight hours, she was cursing Infinity under her breath. The first artificial had been a stroke of cruel good luck. Of the five open ASes, only the first had survived with any usable brain at all. Eighty percent complete destruction rate. Hands on her hips, she gazed around at the hundreds of robots that waited for her attention.
She felt like a cross between Dr. Frankenstein and an AS housekeeper. Or, maybe, considering the spatters of gunk on her clothes, she was more like Dr. Frankenstein's assistant Igor. She wiped a smudge off her wrist, thinking, The doctor never got brains all over his nice white lab coat.
'I need some help here, guys,' she said to the deaf and blind and mindless robots.
She could hardly ask Infinity for help. He had more than enough to do.
But Esther knew almost no one else on board. Except Kolya Cherenkov, and she was not going to ask the cosmonaut to do this job.
She only got over to Starfarer once a month or so. Most of Esther's piloting had been between O'Neill colonies. She always accepted the Starfarer run with pleasure.
Esther travelled a lot, she seldom stayed long in one place, and she did not like to sleep alone. Whenever she
boarded Starfarer, all she wanted to do was take Infinity Kenjira Yanagihara y Mendoza to bed with her. He was one of her favorite lovers. But that had not left her much time for making other friends on board the starship.
She asked Arachne to send out a general request for help for tomorrow morning. She cleaned off her tools and put them away. She let the brain schematic fade, and took one last glance at Nemo's chamber. In all the time she had been working, the squidmoth's chrysalis had not changed.
Her shirt lay in a scummy puddle. She had hosed off most of the crud, but doubted she would ever want to wear it again.
Esther shrugged, grabbed her jacket, and left the shirt where it was. Outside the basement, the evening would still be hot. Too hot for her jacket, and she would not even need her shirt.
She ran up the basement stairs, eager to get outside. She was tired and hungry.
She emerged into air so cool it surprised her.
The chill felt wonderful on her bare shoulders and breasts. It had been too hot lately. She set off for Infinity's house with a spring in her step.
A cold breeze hit her. The skin on her arms turned all gooseflesh, and her nipples hardened. Even then she resisted putting on her jacket.
Don't be a jerk, she said to herself. It's dumb to feel so cold just because it was so hot earlier. She slipped into the lurid green satin. Arachne must be fixing the weather, she thought. Glad to hear it.
Stephen Thomas returned home, dirty and sore. It was very late-or very early-and he guessed Victoria and Satoshi had already gone to bed.
Instead oftaking a shower, he told the house to fill the bathtub. As he watched the water rise along the sides of the azure tub, he tried to remember when the
last time was that he had taken a bath. He usually showered, preferably with one or both of his partners. Sometimes they sat together and soaked afterwards, lounging in clean hot water.
He dropped his shorts and shirt on the floor and stepped into the big blue tub.
The mud swirled away from his dirty feet.
Oh, shit, he thought, I should have at least rinsed off. . . .
But the hot water felt so good, rising around his hips, sliding up his back and belly and chest as he lay down, that he could not bring himself to start over again. He stretched out and let himself relax.
He spread his hands out on the surface; the translucent webs between his fingers nearly disappeared. Today his skin was the color of strong tea. He pulled his hand through the water, feeling the new power of his swimming stroke.
Like his hands and his skin, his lungs were changing. Soon he would be able to store more oxygen, and hold his breath much longer than normal. If 'normal' meant anything anymore, in relation to Stephen Thomas.
When the changes were complete, he would possess an ability unique among aquatic mammals: he would be able to extract oxygen directly from the water. In an emergency, breathing like a fish would support the life of a mammal for a little while.
Stephen Thomas balfway expected to be possessed by an overwhelming urge to return to the primordial sea, but that had not happened.
Except, he thought, I'm taking a bath.
'The call of the sea,' he muttered sarcastically. 'Maybe I ought to add some salt.'
Zev talked about swimming all the time, but the talk was habit, and homesickness. Staying dry did not harm his health; he had no gills that had to stay wet.
Air bubbles caught beneath the fine new hairs on Stephen Thomas's arms and legs. They tickled. As they escaped and rose to the water's surface, they made a faint, cheerful crinkling noise. Stephen Thomas rubbed
his hands down his legs, down his arms, down his belly, currying the bubbles away.
His skin did not itch so badly, now that his transparent gold pelt had finished growing. His joints had stopped aching, though his shoulders hurt from digging Feral's grave.
He was beginning to wonder if the pains inside his body were all from his encounter with the silver slug. They should be fading. Instead, they had intensified. His pubic bone hurt with a sharp, hot stab and even his penis felt sore. Would he grow fur there, too? That would be too weird.
He knew as much about divers, or as little, as any average ordinary human being. He had never been fascinated with them, as J.D. was, and none of his work as a geneticist had included Changelings. No one worked on Changelings anymore. First it became impossible to get grants for the research, and then the changes themselves became illegal in the United States.
Stephen Thomas told the house to warm the bath. Warm water gushed from the faucet onto his feet.
His toes shot pain up his leg. He snatched his foot away, thinking the tub had burned him. But the water was only comfortably hot. He sat up in the tub and raised his foot to look at it.
Dark bruises arced across the base of each toenail, and the nails felt loose. Stephen Thomas wiggled the nail of his big toe. He grimaced.
