“Yes, Colonel Riggs?” Marvin asked calmly. He sounded remarkably unconcerned despite the fact he was orbiting us now in the swirling, dark mass of dust, smoky-aerogel and stiff winds. Only by using our repellers were we able to maintain our relative positions.
“Link arms,” I shouted to men I could no longer see, “form a circle and hold on tight. Marvin, contact this smoke-monster of yours.”
“Reference unclear,” he said, drifting past me. “Do you possibly mean the entity known as Introspection?”
“Yes, dammit. Get in contact with him.”
“Referring to him as male may be inappropriate for these beings-”
“I don’t care, Marvin. Just connect me to him and translate.”
“Done. Converse when ready. I simply wanted to point out that avoidable cultural misunderstandings might-”
“Point taken. Transmit this: being known as Introspection, we respectfully request that you stop blasting us with wind.”
“Done. However, wind isn’t an accurate description, Colonel Riggs,” Marvin said. “I believe we are experiencing the creature’s digestive processes.”
We’d managed to get into a circle now, and I peered from side to side to count noses-or rather faceplates. Kwon had them sound off. I thought some were missing.
“Two lost, sir,” Kwon said. “No response on their com-links.”
I now understood why the area was empty of other Macros. Usually, the region around Macro factories was churning with small, worker-type machines. The only ones I’d seen in this pit had been a few huge earth-movers. Maybe the smaller models had been off-handedly crushed by this creature when it became angry-or hungry. It was a chilling thought. If we couldn’t get this crazy thing to settle down, it might well kill us.
“What’s it saying, Marvin?” I shouted.
“It is projecting an emotion, rather than strings of symbolic concepts.”
“What emotion?” I demanded, my voice cracking to be heard over the wind. My helmet was slashed with handfuls of grit every few seconds now. The sound reminded me of being in an automatic carwash.
“Disinterest.”
“Marvin, you know a little about these creatures. Tell it we can free it from the Macros. Tell it we can free the entire system, and allow the Blues to roam the cosmos again.”
“Ah, a new emotion is coming through now, Colonel: fear. Concern-for-safety and- determination, I think. Yes, that’s it.”
The storm grew in intensity. I felt my arms slipping now and then. “Tighten up, men!” I shouted. I thought I heard Kwon relay the order, but no one needed to be told what to do now. We all clung to one another in the most powerful dirt-storm I’d ever imagined.
I was one second from ordering my people to abandon their kits and fly straight up to exit this cloud of angry debris. Maybe some of us could make it. But I held on, and tried to think of what would get through to a creature that called itself Introspection.
“You are an unjust being!” I shouted. “I want you to know that. It was your people who released this plague upon the universe! You created the Macros and the Nanos, and let them destroy countless biotic beings such as ourselves. They killed my children, and millions of others. We are here to fix your mess, to right your wrongs!”
Marvin didn’t have to translate the answer to that one. The storm intensified. I could no longer see anything. It was all black with occasional flashes of gray, as if I’d been buried under ashes. I couldn’t hear anything either, other than the roar of the endless, angry winds.
But then, just when I’d given up hope and decided I would die here in the churning guts of an angry Blue, the living storm relented. I looked around, and saw my men were in a huddled mass. We were up to our waists in fine, swirling dust.
“What did you do, Colonel?” Kwon asked when we could hear each other again.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I made it feel bad.”
— 16
“What is this thing, sir?” Sloan asked me. “Some kind of freaking jinni? We heard about those while we were out in the deserts on earth, you know. The locals believed in them. But I never did. Until now…”
I glanced at him, wondering about aliens and earthly legends. Could the two be connected? I’d always thought those fake documentary shows on the topic were full of crap, but now, I wasn’t entirely sure. What was a demon, after all, but an alien?
“I don’t know, Sloan. But it isn’t trying to digest us right now, so let’s quietly move closer to the dome.”
All of us helped one another out of the sifting pile of ash the region had become. Kwon lifted a man out with each of his arms, but it took four more men to pull him up in turn. We stayed in a tight group and walked calmly toward the dome. It was still dark, but not pitch-black, and we could see the shimmer of the smooth walls ahead.
“What are you getting from Introspection now, Marvin?” I asked. I almost whispered the question, not wanting to piss it off again.
“Anger is dropping in volume now,” Marvin said. “Regret has risen, and possibly crested.”
“What do you mean by dropping and crested? Doesn’t it just send one concept at a time?”
“Not exactly, sir. It provides a list of variable intensities. Mixing them in a blend, I can read its emotive state.”
“Is that all it does? Transmit emotions? What about concepts? You must have sent it something akin to words in order for it to understand my meaning.”
“Yes, that is true. But I don’t think we’ve yet become interesting enough for it to communicate with us at that level.”
I thought about that. I supposed, to a huge thing like this, we were like prissy insects, taking ourselves very seriously. I was glad it wasn’t an abusive monster, as it might have enjoyed our pain. Fortunately, it seemed capable of empathy.
Now that the winds had died down to a whistling, swirling mess instead of a thundering hurricane, I found it easier to think. The being knew it had released the Macros, or so it would seem. It felt regret for doing so. I suddenly had a thought.
“Marvin, is this creature really talking to us? I don’t feel like I’m having a conversation.”
“The entity doesn’t view us as worthy of notice. It does not consider this interaction to be a conversation between peers.”
I snorted. “That’s great. What are we, then?”
“Difficult to describe.”
“Try me.”
“I’ve made a study of humans. They have two essential states of mind.”
“Two states? That’s all?” I asked.
“Yes. One you refer to as sleep. The other is primary, and might be described as consciousness.”
“Are you telling me we are talking to a sleeping Blue?”
“No, but from its point of view, we are errant thoughts in its unconscious mind. We are too small to be thinking individuals. We are concepts-ideas.”
I rubbed crusted filth from my visor. This was one strange beast, and I’d dealt with a number of them. “Let me see if I have this straight, it thinks we are ideas in the back of its mind?”
“That is a good analogy. Remember, it is not human. It is not remotely like you in composition. I find this interchange between the two of you to be fascinating.”
“I’m so happy for you,” I said.
We now stood at the edge of the shimmering dome. Above us was a hanging mass of smoky nothing, which
