Odd Girl Out

I shrugged noncommittally. 'So what went wrong? I assume something went wrong?'

'Very wrong,' Rebekah agreed. 'No one knows exactly how it happened, but one day we all just … changed.'

For a long moment the word hung in the air like a tethered sports zeppelin. 'What do you mean, changed?' Bayta asked at last.

'We weren't connected to the group mind anymore,' Rebekah said. 'We were our own, brand-new person. Or rather, we were our own persons, plural. We were still connected together in a group mind like the Modhri, but at the same time we were also still individuals.' She looked at Bayta. 'Like you and the Spiders.'

'Not exactly,' Bayta said. 'I'm not connected to the Spiders in any permanent way. I can communicate with them, but we certainly don't form any kind of group mind.'

'Oh,' Rebekah said, sounding a little nonplussed. 'Interesting. The Modhri always assumed the Spiders worked the same way he did.'

'They don't,' Bayta said. 'Actually, it sounds to me like your group—what do you call yourselves, anyway?'

'The Melding,' Rebekah said.

'It sounds like your Melding is almost a hybrid in itself,' Bayta continued. 'Partly like the Modhri, partly like the Spiders.'

'Maybe,' Rebekah said. 'At any rate, as I said, everything's changed for us now. We can't connect with the Modhri, though we can still sense his presence and I'm pretty sure he can sense ours. And of course, we have more personal freedom and individuality than any of his own mind segments.'

'The Abomination,' I murmured.

'What was that?' Rebekah asked.

'It's the Modhri's pet name for you,' I explained. A perfectly reasonable assessment of the situation, too, at least from his point of view. Maybe from ours, too. 'So after that happened, you decided to get out while the getting was good?'

'Basically,' Rebekah said. 'There were only a few normal Eyes in our colony. We overpowered them—I say we, though of course I was only a baby at the time—collected everything, and escaped to the Quadrail.'

'Taking your coral outpost with you,' I said. 'That is what's in your boxes, isn't it?'

'The last segments of it, yes,' Rebekah said. 'We've been gradually moving it to our new home.' She winced. 'We were almost done when the Modhri found us. You know the rest.'

'Not so fast,' I admonished her. 'We're not done with the history lesson yet. How did you come to pick New Tigris?'

'I don't really know why we chose it over the other options,' Rebekah said. 'It was still a fairly new colony, I know, with a lot of construction still going on and people coming and going, both Humans and work-contracted non-Humans. We knew the Human restriction against importing Modhran coral, but our leaders decided it was worth the risk.'

'Your leaders?' I asked.

'Yes, of course,' Rebekah said. 'As I said, we're not a single mind like the Modhri. We all have our individual personalities and talents. Some have the talent of leadership, others don't. I do know that part of their thinking was that a small Human colony would be the last place the Modhri would look for us.'

I snorted. 'Little did you know.'

She winced. 'Yandro. That irony wasn't lost on us. Once we realized what he'd done, we knew we had to move again.' She swallowed. 'As I said, we were almost finished when he found us.'

'Using genetically altered Fillies,' I commented.

'Yes, and that was a new one on us,' Rebekah admitted. 'We could detect the presence of his walkers, and certainly knew when Mr. Veldrick brought in his coral. But the Filiaelians were completely unexpected.'

'How does that work?' Bayta asked. 'They need a piece of coral with them, right?'

Rebekah nodded. 'As I said, we don't operate on the same wavelength as the Modhri anymore. Lorelei's theory was that the presence of the Filiaelian walkers was somehow able to shift the coral's frequency enough to be able to get direction instead of just a sense of our presence.'

'And they needed to use actual coral because their own internal polyp colonies were too small?' Bayta suggested.

'Probably,' Rebekah said. 'But that's just a guess. All the others except Lorelei and me were already gone by then, and we didn't have any way of doing any experiments.'

'So why didn't you leave when Lorelei did?' Bayta asked. 'She seemed to slip out without any trouble.'

'It wasn't quite as easy as you make it sound,' Rebekah said, a shadow crossing her face. 'And the only reason she made it at all was because she didn't have any of our coral with her. I think the coral is what they mostly detect, not us.'

Though she hadn't been sure enough of that to move freely around her hideout once the Fillies had zeroed in on Karim's bar. Still, as she'd said, she hadn't exactly been set up for field tests. 'So what does he want from you?' I asked. 'This seems way too much work just for vengeance.'

'Especially since most of the Melding is already gone,' Bayta added.

'This isn't about vengeance,' Rebekah said soberly. 'This is an attempt to learn the Melding's new location from the outpost.' Her eyes flicked sideways, in the direction of her cabin. 'If he does, then he'll move in and destroy us.'

I had an odd mental image of a bunch of white-jacketed aliens strapping a chunk of coral to an interrogation chair and trying to find somewhere to attach the thumbscrews. 'You think the Modhri can make him talk?'

'Make her talk,' Bayta corrected me.

'Actually, we still refer to the coral part of the Melding as he,' Rebekah said. 'The shift to female characteristics only happens to the colonies inside female symbionts. And yes, I'm very much afraid the Modhri can get the information if he can move enough of his coral around or near a piece of ours.'

'From what, the sheer overwhelming mental pressure?'

'Something like that.' Rebekah hesitated. 'There's also some thought that if one of us doesn't stay physically close to our outpost it might revert back to being part of the Modhri. In that case, he wouldn't have to use any mental pressure at all. But we don't know that for sure.'

'That's what you get for aborting an experiment before it's finished,' I told her. 'You'll have to do better next time.'

Rebekah stared at me. 'Are you saying we should have—?'

'He's joking,' Bayta assured her. 'Where exactly do you need to go?'

For a moment Rebekah didn't answer. 'Sibbrava,' she said at last. 'It's a small colony system in the Cimmal Republic.'

'Is that where the rest of your group is?' I asked.

She hesitated just a split second too long. 'That's where we need to go,' she said.

In other words, I gathered, we were heading there but not actually going there. 'We need to know the truth, Rebekah,' I warned her. 'All of it.'

'I know,' she said. 'I'm doing the best I can.'

'That's not an answer,' I countered. 'If you want our help—'

'Frank,' Bayta interrupted quietly.

I looked at her, then back at Rebekah's drooping eyelids. The girl was exhausted, I remembered.

As were the rest of us, I suddenly realized. For the past twelve hours or so I'd been running on pure adrenaline, and I could feel my whole system poised on the brink of physical crash. The rest of the interrogation, I decided, could wait. 'We'll talk about this later,' I told Rebekah. 'Right now, we all need to get some sleep.'

'Yes,' Bayta agreed. 'You'd better get back to bed, Rebekah. Before you fall over.'

'I will,' Rebekah said gravely as she got a bit unsteadily to her feet. 'And thank you. Thank you both. For everything.'