before in her life—knew her very well. It knew her journeys, it knew what she had found, it knew what she had brought back. It knew, she registered with a shock, everything that her small Librarian knew. Of course she knew they were both Networked beings, but this was something beyond that; this was as if they were parts of the same being, two cells in a Networked mind that spanned the galaxy. That was when she began to wonder: could, perhaps, the entire Network be described this way? Could one think of it as a gigantic mind that lies atop the galaxy like oil on water, its scattered drops running together or separating as—
[Watch it!] cries Shokyu the Mighty.
Shenya the Widow whips her blades to her body, staring at the silver pseudopod that has grown out from the sphere. It extends farther, trembling, easily eight centimeters out…now twelve…sixteen. She fumbles for the manual controls with wayward blades, her sedated mind still very capable of imagining her ship being eaten from the inside out. She finally maxes the gravity field, but the limb only shortens slightly under twelve gravities. Panicking more than she would ever admit to her implant, she stabs a second control, and the continuous drone is cut off when the hatch slams shut.
She hovers a blade over a third control and watches the seal between the twin hatches. There is an automatic system in place, but she doesn’t trust it. If she sees even a hint of silver between those doors, the whole inner chamber is going straight into the void. It will be difficult to explain to corporate—and still more difficult to explain to any giant Librarians she might meet—but better that than a hungry flood of metal on the loose. She has no intention of arriving back at headquarters as nothing but a pattern in her own Librarian’s memory.
She watches the interior feed for a full minute. Nothing but a perfect sphere, floating in its gravity field. [That was odd], she says. [It has never shown a taste for me before.]
[It still hasn’t], says her implant.
And then, even in her slowed mental state, Shenya the Widow understands. In her peripheral vision, which extends nearly to the back of her head, a pair of eyes stares at her from the darkness of the common room. And the hatred of Shenya the Widow—for a few moments dormant under the innocent joy of feeding a dismembered Observer to a Librarian—is rekindled. A blade scrapes down the closed containment hatch, drawing sparks from the metal and a flinch from the Human. Ah, my Librarian, my shining one and the joy of my hearts. You want a Human, do you? Fear not, my little one, for you shall have one.
But you will need to wait your turn.
[AivvTech Mnemonic Restoration]
[Stage 1]
* * *
#
[You’re doing great! I have observed some complex reactions in your emotional state, but it should reassure you to learn that this is perfectly normal. However, to err on the safe side, I will now proceed with several Stage 1 memories of shorter duration.]
* * *
#
[Initiating memory transfer…]
* * *
#
The Human is screaming, clutching one of its upper appendages with the other. It is folded up on the floor, its stubby lower limbs pushing it as far back against the cargo bay door as it can go. Drops of a bright red fluid dot the deck in a scattered trail back to Shenya the Widow.
It hurts, but the unfamiliarity is worse than the pain. Everything is hard here, hard and dark and a demon lives here. It stalks around this place and clicks and hisses at her and she screams for her mother and father, but for the first time in her life no one comes. There is only the thing in the darkness—
* * *
#
[Parameters adjusted successfully.]
—TRANSFER RESUMING—
Shenya the Widow crouches in the center of the deck and examines the small figure. Her hatred of its symmetrical four-limbed form, bred into her since she was but a Daughter, has been subsumed into…annoyance. Yes. It is actually quite difficult to hate when one is this exasperated—and could there be anything more irritating than that goddess-awful racket that is coming from the wet hole in that head? Actually, as the stench reminds her, there certainly is. For example: the fact that it has just finished soiling the floor with its waste when there are two perfectly good sanitation stations on this