“Yes,” I answered, reflexively. But I hesitated. “What I mean is, we’re educated. We have to be, all the responsibility given to us. But I don’t know that much about planetary ecologies. If I could get back to my ship, my fleet, I could submit a query to …”
Yes, I could ask questions as well. To a Four-Planner or a Three-Strategist, or even a Two-Thinker, if my question were deemed vital enough. But like you I would need to return to my ship, and therein lies a slight difficulty.
“Neither of us is going anywhere,” I said.
No. That we are not.
Yellow light licked at the edge of my attention. I rotated my head, to the extent that I was able. My suit was stiffening up as its power levels faded. Around me the threads were branching and cross-weaving in a steadily thickening density, forming a sort of clotted, blurred outline of my form. The organisms” glow throbbed with strange rhythms, the colour shifting from green to yellow, yellow to green. The same process was happening to the maggot, with fine threads beginning to creep up the sides of Greymouth’s armour, concentrating around the seams and joints, almost as if they were looking for a way to get inside …
“You spoke of crimes,” I said, pushing aside the thought that the same process of infiltration must be going on with my own suit. “I won’t pretend that we haven’t hit you hard. But let’s not pretend that we chose this war. It was a maggot offensive, pushing into our space, broadcasting your militaristic intentions ahead of your fleets. If you’d kept to your sector there’d have been no war, no crimes of war …”
Even though I had altered the angle of my head, the maggot’s light was still able to splash across my faceplate.
We were pushed out of our homeworlds, Battle-Mother. Usurped by an adversary stronger than either of us. We fought back as best we could, but soon it became clear that we would have to move just to survive. But we did not wish for war, and we knew that our encroachment into your sector might appear provocative. Ahead of our evacuation fleets, we transmitted what we hoped would be recognised as justifications. We showed recordings of how valiantly we had struggled against the adversary, proving that we had done our utmost to avoid this encroachment. We thought that the nature of our entreaties would be plain to any civilised species: that we sought assistance, shelter, mutual cooperation. Slowly, though, we learned that our transmissions had been wrongly interpreted. You saw them as threats, rather than justifications. We attempted to make amends–modified our negotiating tactics. But by then the damage was done. Our evacuation fleets were already encountering armed opposition. Merely to survive, we had to shift to a counter-offensive posture. Even then our intention was to hold you at bay long enough for our peaceful intentions to become apparent. But they never did.
“You can say that again.”
We were pushed from our homeworlds . . .
“It’s a figure of speech, Greymouth. It means that I’m concurring with your words, while emphasizing that there’s a degree of understatement in what you say.”
Then you do agree. That is something, is it not?
“You’ve been told one story, one version of events. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. Obviously I don’t hold you personally responsible for the things your side did to mine …”
That is a relief.
“I’m serious.”
Then I will extend you the same courtesy, Battle-Mother. I do not hold you personally responsible. There. All our differences settled in one stroke. Who could have thought it could be so simple?
“It’s simple because we don’t matter.”
If we have ever mattered. I am not so much. For every Eight-Warrior that falls, a billion more are waiting. I suppose you were much more important to your war effort.
“My children looked up to me. That’s the point of a Battle-Mother.” I brooded before continuing. “But there were always more above me. Layers of command. Superior officers. They gave me a squadron … but it was just one squadron.”
Which you lost.
“Which you took from me.”
We have both suffered much. We have both known sadness. Shall we agree on that?
“What does a maggot know of sadness?”
A warning icon sprang up on my helmet. I turned my eyes to it with dull expectation. Hermetic breach, the icon said. Foreign presence detected in suit.
I thought of the glowing tendrils. They had pushed their way through my suit’s weak points. But the crush and heat of the superjovian’s atmosphere was still being held outside, or else I would be dead by now. The organism, whatever it was, had overcome my suit’s defences without compromising its basic ability to keep me alive and conscious.
Battle-Mother?
“Yes.”
There is something inside my suit now.
“I’m the same.”
What do you think it means to do with us?
“I don’t know. Taste us. Digest us. Whatever superjovian rock creatures do when they’re bored. We’ll find out in a little while. What’s wrong, Greymouth? You’re not frightened, are you?”
I have never been very good at being frightened. But you are wrong about us, Battle-Mother. A maggot can know a great deal of sadness.
7.
Before long it was in my suit, glowing and growing. It had burst through in a dozen places, infiltrating and branching, exploring me with a touch that was both gentle and absent of thought. A blind, mindless probing. The yellow-green glow was both inside and outside now, and I knew that it must be the same for Greymouth. For all our differences, all the many ways in which we were not alike, we had this much in common. The superjovian had bested us. Our suits were not made for these depths, nor for keeping out this determined, pervasive alien presence.
Us, I thought to myself. That was how my perception had shifted now. The maggot was no longer as alien to me as this thing that was fighting its way
