Delicately she sampled the taste of a tall tumbler full of pale red fluid. Her eyes brightened and she quickly downed the contents entire, putting the empty container aside with a sigh.
“I was the lowest ranking qualified,” she informed them without prompting as she browsed among the other glasses. “They didn’t give me any choice.”
“I know how that is.” Hawkins let out a heartfelt sigh of his own.
“You’re all being awfully nice to me,” she purred. Iranaputra thought her winsome smile radiant.
“It’s not like you attacked us, young lady,” Heath harrumphed. “Not like those bellicose Chakans. Now, then: What world are you from?”
She beamed at him. “Yemanja.”
“Never been there, what?”
“It’s the Candomblean water world. Not much population, but very pretty.” Her expression sank. “I don’t imagine I’ll ever see it again.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Shimoda. “If your people won’t take you back, we’ll see about making other arrangements for you.”
“As I said, you’re very kind.” She favored Shimoda with a smile so lustrous he tried to suck in his colossal belly somewhat, a disruption of physical reality akin to reversing entropy.
“It was hypothesized by some,” she went on, “that you people somehow constituted some sinister cabal that was in league with the mysterious aliens. I can see now how silly that was. But I guess you can’t blame people. The appearance of this ship has been quite a shock to everyone.”
“Us too,” said Shimoda. “How are they reacting?”
“There’s a lot of incredulity on many worlds, in spite of the verified reports and the vids. The various governments are being evasive, whether to prevent panic or conceal their own intentions I can’t say. Candomble is no different.”
She sipped at a second drink, this one a bright lime green. “What are you going to do? What are your plans?”
“We have not decided yet.” Iranaputra stood with his hands behind his back, his toes dug into the sand. “So far we have been dealing with things as they happen.”
“Then your being aboard really is an accident?” Several of them nodded.
She considered the admission. “I didn’t want to do this. When the fire started, I was sure it was all over. That I’d never see my mother and father again.” Tears started to trickle from the corners of both eyes. She cried quietly, with hardly any noise. Heath offered her his shirt.
“Thank you.” She wiped at her face.
It was just a little, just a tiny bit, too much for Mina Gelmann. She was old, yes, but not senile. The manner in which her quartet of male friends was now fawning over their unexpected visitor inexorably led her to consider the possibility, however slight on the face of it, that the young woman they had rescued might be capable of as yet unsuspected subtleties.
AI dysynapsing? Multiple bruises, contusions, a bloody but minor head wound but nothing serious? Gelmann kept her slight suspicions to herself. Nor did she betray them through her tone of voice, since there was little need for her to say anything. Her four companions seemed more than anxious to do any and all talking that was required. Even the normally introspective Shimoda was posturing outrageously. Not that he was aware of it, of course. He was a man.
Could it be that after so many years as the center of attention she was jealous? Gelmann refused to countenance the thought. She was much, much too intelligent to succumb to something so subjective.
“Sand’s warm,” Ashili commented absently. “What other wonders does this artifact contain?”
“We’ve only explored a small portion.” Heath sounded almost apologetic. “The individual chambers and rooms are huge. The crew must’ve numbered in the thousands.”
“Tens of thousands,” Hawkins added emphatically.
“And you’ve done all this on your own. You’re quite a remarkable bunch, you know.”
“We have done no more than cope with the situation in which we have found ourselves,” Heath murmured. “Some of us have had a bit of experience in extraordinary circumstances, you know.”
“I’ve heard that this artifact is more than a million years old.” She had begun to examine her surroundings more thoroughly.
“So it claims,” Iranaputra admitted. “If you feel well enough, I would be glad to guide you around.”
With the exception of Mina Gelmann, Iranaputra’s companions were as willing as he to show their visitor the marvels they had encountered. Uncharacteristically the widowed computer specialist contented herself with watching, listening, and observing. She remained friendly toward the younger woman, but cautious.
As time passed, she found herself relaxing. The visitor’s distress seemed genuine, and Gelmann had several granddaughters of her own. But she never completely let her guard down. Someone had to maintain one, and her thoroughly pixilated companions clearly weren’t up to the task.
“Why do you stay here?” Ashili asked them the next day. “Why not try to find the central control, for example?”
A glistening, beached seal, Shimoda rolled over on the sand. “We’re all of us a little too old for month-long hikes. Besides, the Autothor functions equally well in every part of the ship. With the kind of setup it represents there’s no need to centralize functions.”
“I see.” She smiled prettily and wandered off up the beach to inspect Ksarusix’s sculpted sand schematic. She’d ingratiated herself with the serving robot by the simple expedient of agreeing with everything it said, including its stubborn assertion that the alien ship represented a different and higher form of intelligence despite the Autothor’s continued insistence to the contrary.
“At least one of you bipeds recognizes the obvious.” The robot added more sand to a dubious representation of an optical nexus.
“You have to excuse the others.” Hands on hips, head cocked slightly to one side, she studied the robot’s work. “They’re very old. Since you’re assigned to work with them, you should understand what that means and make allowances accordingly.”
Ksarusix spoke without looking at her. “I suppose. It’s the same with us. After extensive use systems begin to fail, internal structures to break down. Isolated memory gaps appear. Unfortunately humans have no backup capability. Blatant internal deficiency. Runs right down the whole evolutionary chain.” The small head simulated a negative head shake. “Too bad.”
“It’s sweet of you to be sympathetic.”
“Not sympathetic.” Ksarusix added a careful measure of water to the new sand. “Just honest.” It paused to admire its handiwork, glanced over at her. “It’s swell to know that there’s at least one human who’s not intimidated by reality.”
“Not me. My grasp on reality is as strong as yours.”
She joined her rescuers in testing the limits of the Autothor’s food-synthesizing capabilities, in asking it questions to which it often had no answer, in swimming in the warm ocean and running along the beach. Her wounds healed with the speed of youth and when the scabs and scars had disappeared, she was more beautiful than ever.
