Helen, who had been standing perfectly straight except that her face pressed against the glass, said, “What do you mean, they’re not all identical? Of course they’re identical. We made them all on the same plan—”
Linden, I said to Core General’s giant, quiet sentience. With almost limitless space and processing power, the wheelmind’s only job was to care for the well-being of everyone who lived within her hull. The hospital didn’t talk much, but she was always there. Abiding.
She didn’t really need a hint from me. I felt her moving to soothe Helen, to calm her anxious algorithms and tame her runaway emotion modules. Linden would also call Dr. Zhiruo, if needed.
The interrupt was a good thing, even though I felt bad that it was being used without Helen’s consent. But it was being used to keep her safe. Her, and her crew, and the staff of Core General.
Helen didn’t breathe. But the effect of Linden’s intervention on her was exactly as if she had taken one deep breath, centered herself, and settled. Rilriltok had already lifted off my shoulder, and was zooming toward the door. I followed it—not quite as swiftly as Helen did—and Cheeirilaq trooped gamely along behind us. We disinfected—we didn’t have to mask and glove up, because none of the coffins were open—asked the staff for permission to join them, and went inside.
The first thing I noticed now that there wasn’t a helmet between me and the coffins—well, and now that they weren’t in vacuum in a cargo hold—was that the cryo units had a smell. A particular tang, like ozone or something. Watching Rilriltok’s feathery olfactors wave, I got a sense that I wasn’t the only one smelling it.
Rilriltok hovered up to its closest colleague—a gigantic Thunderby with three trunklike legs that stepped around the smaller medicos like a large human picking their way among cats—and said, Tell me about the differences in the units.
The specialist—a Dr. Tralgar, from its fox signature—waved a brick-red, tentacular appendage in an untranslatable gesture and said, Well, one of these is much better designed than the others. And there’s something odd about the cranial scan on the person inside.
“None of these people should have foxes, right?” I asked.
None of these people do have foxes, Dr. Tralgar trumpeted softly. At least, I assumed it was trying to keep its voice down, as I was only lightly deafened. The bugling and subsonics made an unpleasant counterpoint to the lingering buzz from Rilriltok’s stridulations. But this one has intracranial scarring.
“Brain damage?”
They’re not my species—a tentacle waved apologetically—but I’m wearing an ayatana from a human neurosurgeon. And I’m reasonably certain the scarring is surgical in nature.
“You’re not saying somebody lobotomized this patient?”
The scarring is not consistent with a lobotomy. It may be the result of a tumor removal or an aneurysm repair.
“May I have a look, Doctor?” I asked.
It wriggled in compliance. Of course, Doctor. You were on the retrieval team, were you not?
I nodded, confident that senso would translate the gesture.
Rilriltok had not awaited protocol. It buzzed the cryo pods, waving its antennae near open and closed panels. When it circled back, it hovered excitedly and said, The electrical signatures are slightly different, friend Llyn, between this unit and the others.
I had forgotten that the Rashaqin sensorium had the ability to detect electromagnetic fields.
They’re also different colors, Cheeirilaq said. There’s more infrared in the one your colleague mentioned. It extended a raptorial forelimb and waved the razorlike tip very gently, near the closest of the anomalous units. I would say this one was manufactured separately and integrated into the lot.
“I made them all. The machine and I did. I would know if one was different,” Helen said, with great certainty. Then she squared her shoulders and repeated, more forlornly, “If that had happened, I would know.”
What if someone modified your program? Cheeirilaq asked. This capsule is demonstrably different. More advanced than the others. And yet it seems you cannot recognize that.
Helen twisted from the waist, inhumanly, a colloid contained in a person-shaped skin. A ripple passed through her, as if she was thinking of doing the swelling-up trick again.
I like mysteries, Cheeirilaq said. Maybe this one is modern. Maybe Afar brought it. Maybe they were hiding a criminal.
Cops are cops. “A human criminal on a methane ship?”
Its wing coverts rippled. Do you have a more interesting solution?
“Maybe Helen and the machine got lucky and turned out a really good one.”
Cheeirilaq bobbed its thorax. Dr. Tralgar, is there any chance we can wake these people up?
“Let’s discuss that further somewhere else,” I suggested, before Tralgar or Rilriltok could comment on the likelihood of any of the patients surviving rewarming.
Oh, Rilriltok said, jerking in the air as if suddenly remembering that Cheeirilaq was there. Oh dear. Have you eaten? Can I offer you something to eat?
Cheeirilaq bowed its elongated thorax very close to the deck and folded its raptorial arms tightly against its body. Thank you, friend Rilriltok. I am quite satiated. Now, Doctor, about these patients. Would it be ethically acceptable under these circumstances to type the DNA of these individuals for identification purposes?
Questionable, said Dr. Tralgar.
I ducked a waist-thick tentacle.
Tralgar continued, Eminently ethical, and in fact even necessary, to do so in order to develop a treatment plan and begin growing replacement organs. We have already done so. What is not ethical, unfortunately, is releasing that information to law enforcement without either a warrant, or the patient’s permission. Since I assume you want to run it against your databases.
Cheeirilaq nodded its triangular head. I’m reasonably certain that I can come up with a Judicially acceptable argument that there is evidence of some sort of a crime committed here—kidnapping consisting of cryonic suspension without consent—and obtain such a warrant.
Good. Then come back when you have it. I’m going to bring Dr. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo to consult. She’s a specialist in brain damage, and she might have some ideas about this patient’s intracranial scarring.
I said, “I’d hate to think that somebody intentionally damaged this person’s brain.”
Before
