The autodoc was custom built with decades of Cortázar’s observations of Cara’s and Xan’s baselines. The screens were crowded with real-time blood analysis and neural activity profiles as the system tried to match Cara now with Cara where she usually was, and look for ways to bring those two datasets together. A standard bed would have been baffled, but this one showed Cara slowly returning to her standard range of function as Elvi watched and drank tea from a bulb and trembled.
They’d been in the middle of another dive, sifting through the hallucinatory sensations and inhuman memories for pieces to the puzzle of how the gates had been built and if they could be made safe. Elvi was fairly sure they’d reached the part of the alien species’ development where they’d become aware of a broader universe beyond the ice shell of their world. She’d expected Cara to get there, and that it would open the door to some of the practical answers they needed. But then Cara had started screaming that she’d been shot, or if not her, that someone had. The monitors had spiked, and her brain activity lit up like someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail into her mind.
They had restrained the panic, Harshaan Lee barking the steps of the shutdown checklist over Cara’s screams and vomiting. By the time they’d shut the dive down, Cara had lost consciousness. She hadn’t regained it until now.
Cara’s lips moved, and she swallowed. Her eyes shifted under closed lids, and then opened. Black on black, Cara’s gaze found her, and the girl tried out a weak smile.
“Hey, Doc.”
“Welcome back,” Elvi said. “How are you feeling?”
Cara paused, but it wasn’t one of the eerie, alien frozen moments. It only seemed like she was trying to find the right answer to a difficult question. “Wrung out. I’ve never been drunk, but maybe hung over? This feels like what a hangover’s supposed to feel like.”
“Extrapolating from the literature?” Elvi said, taking Cara’s hand. It felt fever-hot.
“Something like that.”
“Do you remember what happened? What went wrong?”
“It wasn’t the grandmothers, I don’t think,” Cara said. “They felt the same as always. Deeper, maybe, but the same. It was . . . one of the others.”
“All right. Tell me about that.”
Cara frowned and shook her head the way she did when she was searching for some very precise word. “I’m not just myself when I’m in there. I mean, I am, but I’m not just Cara. There’s more of me?”
“Like the aliens.”
“No, like me watching the aliens. I feel aliens too, but that’s like I’m watching a feed. Seeing something that’s already recorded. These others are like being everyone in the room who’s watching?”
“Like the connection you have with Xan.”
“Yes, but more. There are more of them. Only I think something happened. Something bad. I don’t know if they died. And then another one of me was trying to calm me down.” Cara’s eyes went wide, and her grip on Elvi’s hand squeezed hard enough to hurt. “Xan? Is he all right?”
“Fine,” Elvi said, not flinching. “He’s worried about you, but that’s all. He was in the isolation chamber when it happened, and it didn’t seem to affect him one way or the other.”
Cara relaxed. “Okay. Okay. All right, that’s good then.” She took a breath, settled into herself. “I saw them see stars for the first time.”
“We don’t have to do a debriefing now. You can rest first.”
“Let’s talk a little. Please. While it’s still fresh in my head.”
Elvi felt a little wave of pleasure, then guilt at the pleasure. “Only a little. Then you rest.”
Cara settled into herself, remembering the memories of others. There was a joy in her when she did. Or no, that was wrong. Not joy, but a relief. Like Elvi was pouring cool water over a burn.
“They were changing. The sea slugs or jellyfish or whatever? They were taking other bits of life, animals or plants or whatever was down at the hot core of that icy cold world. They sent them down into the vents so that they could change. Or it could change.”
“That’s been a consistent point. And, judging from how the protomolecule functioned, they kept that strategy for a long, long time,” Elvi said.
But Cara wasn’t listening. Her voice had a faraway, almost dreamy quality. “The important thing was the light.”
“You were saying that. I’m thinking that was the creation of mind.”