To say that Basil was frustrated with the lack of information that zie was able to access on the planet was an understatement.
As an Oligochuno, zie prided zieself on getting along with most everyone. Zie hadn’t exactly volunteered to be a part of Arthur’s program—there had been that one hacking job that had gone unexplainedly wrong—but since then he’d been working on the ethical and moral side of the law, if not always the legal side.
Hackers gotta hack, ya know?
It wasn’t that the systems down here on Eptil were that good. Zie wouldn’t call them laughable. Not exactly. But they hadn’t really been much of a challenge. And zie had learned zir lesson on the Balmor station, and had checked for hidden, secondary channels.
As far as zie could tell, there just wasn’t anything to find.
Where did the Chonchu keep their data? Was it all air-gapped, so that only the queens had access?
Plus, there was no chatter. Kim had mentioned how quiet the planet had seemed to her. As someone who’d grown up on a space station, Basil hadn’t noticed.
Not until zie had started poking around the network and found that it, too, was quiet.
Too quiet.
Zie had understood intellectually that the Chonchu were able to communicate with each other without words. (Telepathy? Some neural net that extended past the physical? Were they all in communication with the queens somehow and that then extended to the rest of them? Zie might be willing to give up the last segment of zir tail to be able to answer those questions definitively.)
However, down here on Eptil, the phenomenon appeared to be planetwide. There was no chatter that he could casually listen in on. No broadcasts either, no vids or even old-fashioned radio.
Very little business appeared to be conducted online. And while Basil remembered Eleanor once mentioning that she enjoyed being in zir presence, how happy she’d been when the secondary engineering room became accessible to zim and the rest of the crew, zie hadn’t really thought anything of it.
Now, Basil wondered. Their guides had mentioned going to see live performances later that evening. Zie, like the others, had thought that was quaint.
Or was it? Was that how the Chonchu experienced everything? In person? Did the networks they privately chatted on only work when they were all together?
“What do you seek?” asked a melodious voice while Basil was (metaphorically) bashing zir tail, again, against the emptiness of the online community around zim.
It took just a few moments to identify that the voice came from a speaker hidden above the cabinets beside the door of the small room zie was staying in.
“The truth,” Basil said after a moment.
“The truth about what?” the voice said.
Though the others probably couldn’t tell, Basil knew that the voice was artificially generated. It didn’t have the right fluctuations to be natural. It came from a vast selection of phonemes and sounds, so that it appeared to be coming from a living creature directly.
But Basil understood that the queens didn’t necessarily ever speak out loud.
“About your people,” Basil admitted. “How you communicate. How you live. How do you queens direct the Chonchu. All manner of that.”
“Are you a scientist?” the queen asked.
Basil tilted zir head from side to side. Zie didn’t know if the queen had an optical pickup in the room but zie assumed so. “I dabble. As an Oligochuno, I understand more about the chemical nature of things than the others. But my primary focus has always been systems, computer systems.”
“There is not much for you to find in our databases,” the queen said, sounding amused.
“I’m very aware of that,” Basil replied, trying not to sound as frustrated as zie felt.
“I am Candelaria,” the queen said after a few moments. “I am the queen who is closest physically to your group, so Belaitha has passed your care into my fins.”
Interesting. Basil had known that the Chonchu were originally aquatic, and still had phrases that referred to that. Did the queens—who Basil was certain were a different species from the Chonchu—also originate in the great oceans? Given their size, that only made sense.
“How may I help you?” Basil said.
“You know the most about how Eleanor and the others were constructed, yes?” Candelaria asked.
“Masala, the original Oligochuno who worked for Arthur, knew the most,” Basil said. Zie still wanted to raise Masala back up, regrow zim from a single segment, just so that Basil could strangle the scientist. Slowly. “I only know what I’ve been able to piece together from studying Eleanor and the others.”
“You don’t approve of what Masala did?” Candelaria said.
Basil sighed. “I believe that Masala must have worked directly with scientists from the Chonchu in order to transform the pod as zie did. That work is fascinating, though with consequences that have yet to be understood. However, the ‘leashes’ zie put on the ship—deliberately causing it to malfunction regularly—some of those strike me as being both cruel and unnecessary.”
Lines of code suddenly started scrolling down Basil’s computer screen. The “leashes” that zie had already removed from the original code were highlighted in red.
Interesting. Seemed that zie had missed one. No, two.
Hopefully, zie would have the chance to fix those.
“We don’t really have the concept of ‘stealing,’” Candelaria said after a moment. “One might have a selfish member of a pod, who tries to accumulate more resources than the other members. But that is generally a phase that youngsters go through. As their bonds within the pod grow, they understand that the only healthy way forward is for the entire pod to succeed, not just an individual. So while we initially also disapproved of the ‘leashes’ as you call them, in the end, we agreed to them being placed. Was that a mistake?”
Basil tilted zir head from side to side. “The Chonchu require a cooler temperature in order to function. Adding heat when things broke down, without adding additional sensors for Eleanor and the others to be able to sense that heat, I feel was still unnecessary.”
“Maybe Masala believed that the pod could still feel the heat in their transformed state,” Candelaria said.
“Negative,” Basil said. “Zie would have known early on that the pod had very few of those sensors left. Plus, the heat wasn’t necessary. It is possible to adjust the nutrients that the pod relies on to remain cool even when something breaks down.”
“But that is only something you’ve determined after much experimentation, correct?” Candelaria said. “Masala might not have gotten to that point in zir experiments.”
“True,” Basil finally admitted.
Zie still wasn’t certain that zie was willing to forgive Masala for the other things zie had done.
After a few moments of silence, Basil had to ask, “How are Eleanor, Gawain, and Abban? Are they recovering?”
“They are,” Candelaria said. “We have been in deep discussions about what they need in order to be willing to leave our presence again.”
“What do they need?” Basil said. “If we can provide it, we will.”
“I do not know if you or the rest of your crew will be willing,” Candelaria admitted. “Or how feasible it physically is. My scientists tell me that it may be possible, but your crew would be the first to try it.”
Basil sighed. Zie was certain that zie wasn’t going to like the answer, but zie still felt compelled to ask.
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“The Jaimeng,” Candelaria said.
“Where we exchange one pod for another?” Basil asked cautiously.
“Yes. Though you aren’t technically in a pod, currently. So we would just focus on the second part of the ritual, where you travel to become part of Eleanor, Gawain, and Abban’s pod,” Candelaria said.
“What all would that entail?” Basil said, intrigued more than concerned. At least for now.
Candelaria put a chemical signature up on Basil’s computer screen. Zie recognized it as part of the chemical structure of zir blood. Fascinated, zie watched the metamorphosis that it went through as pieces were added and subtracted.
It was a type of genetic engineering, though it appeared to be a much more natural process than most of the races used, where they attached things as opposed to manipulating the genes themselves to change.
The end result was a tag, or marker, in zir blood that was truly alien. Separate, yet ubiquitous.
“Will this allow us to communicate as you do?” Basil asked.
“Our scientists don’t believe so,” Candelaria admitted. “That would require more intrusive changes, possibly adding a specialized organ that appears to be unique to the Chonchu.”
“I see,” Basil said. So perhaps it was a type of telepathy, made possible by specific evolutionary forces.
Such as the queens breeding the Chonchu for their own purposes? Possibly for centuries before they reached this current form? There had been hints that the Chonchu were ancient.
“However, it will enable the others—Eleanor, Gawain, and Abban—to sense you. We believe that their failing lies in their number. If a larger pod, more than three, had gone through the transformation, perhaps they wouldn’t have ended up so lonely. They might, however, still require regular trips to bathe in our presence.”
“And without undergoing such changes? If the rest of the crew doesn’t agree to this?” Basil asked.
“Then the ship Eleanor is no more,” Candelaria said. “The pod refuses to leave again, to face the universe on their own.”
“Not unless we are with them?” Basil said. “Physically part of them?”
“That is correct,” Candelaria said. “I will talk with the others of the crew this afternoon, each separately, then you will need to make a decision as to how close you choose to become.”
Basil didn’t hear an audible click, but zie could still tell that the channel which the queen had opened was now shut.
The chemical structure was still up on zir screen. Zie started to run theoretical experiments on it, to see what happened as blood cells renewed. Would it be transferable to any offspring? Zie doubted it—that didn’t appear to be the nature of change.
Zie remembered, a long time before, of longing to fall into a single gender when zie was mating. Those dreams had faded. Zie felt much more comfortable in zir segments than ever before.
Would zie ever mate again? Would that need ever arise? Would zie be able to “feel” the others of the crew, or at least the Chonchu, sense them as they sensed zim?
It was an entirely new set of “leashes” as it were, though this time, for the crew instead of the ship.
As zie poked at the models zie was running, the realization finally seeped into zir skin that regardless of what the others decided, zie had made zir decision.
For better or for worse, zie was already committed to Eleanor, and would be until the last of zir segments failed.