Call and response. Communication.
The maggot was as close to the mine as it was going to get. This was my chance, my only chance, to destroy the maggot. All I had to do was voice the detonation command.
5.
We regarded each other.
The alien’s head was hidden inside a flanged metal helmet that had no faceplate or visible sensors, but still I felt the pressure of its attention, the slow tracking of its gaze as it studied me at close range. Even now, our theorists assured us, the maggots knew a lot more about our armour and weapons than they did about what was inside our suits. We had been careful not to
give them the luxury of prisoners, or too many intact bodies. But exactly what they knew–the hard limits of their knowledge and ignorance–no one could be sure of that, except the maggots themselves.
But now something scratched across my faceplate. It was a flash of colourless light, emanating from a point just under the Eight-Warrior’s head. I squinted, but the flash was much too dim to be a weapon discharge. And it was organising itself, forming into a pattern of symbols that my brain could not help but imprint with meaning.
Why?
“Why what?” I mouthed back, almost without thinking.
Why did you not kill?
“You weren’t worth the cost of a mine.” Then I blinked in irritation and confusion. “Wait. Are you understanding any of this?”
You create sounds. I read the sounds through your glass. I know your tongue. All Eight-Warriors know your tongue. You call us Eight-Warriors. “Yes,” I answered. “But you’re not meant to understand us. No one said you could do that.”
It is not an advantage we advertise.
It was just words, spraying across my faceplate. But it was impossible not to read a kind of sardonic understatement into the maggot’s reply.
“No, you wouldn’t, I suppose. Just as we wouldn’t want you to know if we could read your comms. You’d change your encryption methods and we’d have to … I don’t know, learn a new language or something. But you shouldn’t have told me, should you? Now I know.”
You know but you cannot report. Your signals will not penetrate this atmosphere, and even if they did there is nothing out there to hear them. Your fleet is dust. You will not see your kind again. Nor I mine. So there need be no secrets between us.
“You might be planning to die here, maggot. I’ve got other plans.”
Have you? I should like to hear them. Your squadron was destroyed. You are the last survivor of the last ship–as I am the last of my pursuit phalanx. We are alone now, and our suits are both failing us. We have no weapons, no means of harming each other. We cannot go deeper, and we cannot ascend. Our only fate is to die here.
“So what, maggot? You were made to die.”
And you were not?
“I was born. I have a name, a family. I am Battle-Mother …” But whatever I had hoped to say beyond that point died somewhere between my brain and my mouth. I had a name, I knew. I had been given one. But it was so long ago it was like some ancient blemish that had almost faded from sight. “I am Battle-Mother,” I repeated, with all the conviction I could find, as if that were indeed my name. “Battle-Mother. At least I have that. What are you, but an Eight-Warrior?”
I am Greymouth. And you are right, Battle-Mother. I was made for war.
But then which of us was not?
“We’re not the same.”
Perhaps. But you have still not answered my question–at least not to my satisfaction. You set the mine. I found it, of course, but by then it would have been much too late for me had you detonated it remotely. The blast would have destroyed me. So: why did you not kill?
“You know why.”
You learned of the native organisms. You realised that destroying me would damage them. But it was just one of these floating mountains. No great harm would have been done to the rest of the ecology.
“I couldn’t be sure.”
And if you had been sure, Battle-Mother? Would that have changed things?
“Of course. I’d have taken you out. I’d been trying to kill you all along.
Why would I have stopped?”
Because we are all capable of changing our minds.
“I’m not. We’re not alike, you and I. We’re different, Greymouth. I’d kill you now, if there was a way. After all the things the maggots have done to us, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
Crimes of war.
“Yes.”
We know well of those, Battle-Mother. Very well indeed.
6.
We had been silent for a while. When Greymouth asked me if I had noticed the changes I took my time answering, not wanting the maggot to think I was in any hurry for conversation. But the question nagged at me, because I had been making my own observations and a part of me had been wondering when I was going to get around to asking something similar of the alien.
“The glowing threads have developed. They seem to be concentrating around us, growing and branching near our bodies. Near us, I mean.”
Speak of bodies, Battle-Mother. It will soon be the truth. But I am glad we agree about the threads. I have been monitoring them, as best as I am able. They are definitely responding to our presence. We have made a discovery, then–the two of us.
“Have we?”
I think so. This is a more complex organism than we initially suspected.
“Speak for yourself.” But my answer was peevish and I forced myself to admit that the maggot was not entirely wrong. “Fine; there’s more to it than just some glowing infestation. It’s reactive, and obviously capable of fast growth when the need arises.”
Whatever the need might be.
After an interval I asked: “Have you encountered anything like this before, Greymouth?”
They do not tell Eight-Warriors everything, Battle-Mother.
