“A hive mind.”
Elvi shrugged. “I’ve never understood that term, really. I mean, there was an electrochemical structure with a lot of semi-independent bodies. Describe it like that, and we’re hive minds of neurons. But did it find a way to build an emergent cognitive analogical system? Yeah. I think so.”
“And when they saw the stars, it was like hearing God talking in a language you could almost understand. But not quite. The BFE wanted to show me more. It didn’t want me—us, whatever— to go. It was trying to hold on. And then the thing happened, and . . . If they weren’t Xan, I don’t know who they were, but they feel right when I’m in there.”
Cara let go of Elvi’s hand. She focused on something Elvi couldn’t see, like she was hearing music that only played for her.
“Don’t worry about it,” Elvi said. “Not for now. We’ll have plenty of time for the full debrief after you’ve rested. I’m going to let the team know you’re all right, and Dr. Sanders wants to come by and make sure you’re solid. Once we hear what he has to say, we’ll make some plans for moving forward.”
“I don’t want to wait. I want to go back in.”
Elvi took a sip of her tea. “I want that too. But right now, rest.”
Cara nodded and closed her eyes. Elvi waited until she was sure Cara had fallen asleep before she slipped out of the bracing on the foothold and pushed herself toward the door.
Cara spoke at once, her voice perfectly lucid and awake. Not slurred at all. “Can Xan come see me?”
“Of course, if you want.”
“He does,” Cara said, and lapsed back into silence. Elvi left the medical bay.
All around her the Falcon was subdued. The crew that ran the ship and the scientific staff that worked in it all knew what had happened, and their unease made for whispered conversations in the corridors and hallways, tight mouths and hunched shoulders. Elvi made her way to the ops deck, forcing herself to smile and nod and greet people. She hoped she was being a good leader and projecting optimism. She was afraid that she just seemed fake.
Harshaan Lee was in ops, reviewing the dataset from Cara’s aborted dive. She moved beside him, looking over his shoulder. He shifted to the side, giving her a better view.
“She says there was someone else in there with her,” Elvi said.
“Hallucinogenic presences are very common. It can be induced with a few magnetic impulses to the temporoparietal region of the right lobe.”
“Of course, we weren’t doing that,” Elvi said.
“That doesn’t mean something else wasn’t.”
“Or maybe her right temporoparietal region was firing off because someone was in there with her. Sometimes you see your grandmother because you’re dreaming. Sometimes you see her because you’re at Grandma’s house.”
“It is a conundrum,” Lee said dryly. Then, “May I touch on a less pleasant subject?”
Elvi didn’t say no. Lee took it as consent.
“I don’t mean to step out of my place, but I think we’re starting to have a morale issue with the crew. I was hoping you’d consider making an address.”
“What kind of issue?”
He shook his head like he was apologizing for his own words, and he kept his voice low. “We are the only ship in a solar system. Half a dozen tightbeam boosters, couple of repeaters at the ring gate itself, and an alien artifact big enough that if we stood on it, the gravity would crush us. That’s all there is. There isn’t even a dust cloud we could mine for ice.”
“Are we short on supplies?”
“No. But when something . . . odd happens with the research protocol, there is a kind of multiplier. It reminds us just how tenuous our position is here. If the water recycler broke down in a way we couldn’t fix . . . It would be a long, hard burn getting someplace that could give us aid before we died of thirst, and we might not make it. If it was the air recycler, we’d die. There is no one who can reroute to our aid. We all understood that when we began the mission. But some days, we understand it more clearly than others, if you see what I mean.”
She reminded herself again that the vibration in her body wasn’t fear. She was just tired, with one critical thing more that she needed to do. “Of course, I’ll address the crew. Just let me think about what to say. And thank you for bringing this to me.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
She hadn’t started in physics. It was possible to spend a whole lifetime in the biological sciences and only have a nodding acquaintance with pure physics. It wasn’t possible to be the head of the Laconian Science Directorate without getting her feet wet, if wet meant abstract high-energy physical dynamics. One of the things she’d known without fully appreciating was that the second law of thermodynamics was the only one that cared about the direction of time. The heat death of the universe had mostly been a joke about how long her thesis was taking. The idea that heat was intimately related to time hadn’t seemed strange, and some aspects of the high weirdness of the alien rings had escaped her.