healing on permanent repeat. “And there’s a whole base of these things somewhere nearby?”
“So it would appear. Why, what are you thinking?” Dash asked. He knew how Conover’s mind worked and just waited in silence for him to get his thoughts to wherever they were going.
“I think that before we go into a bug’s nest, we should have insecticide. Or a trap, at least,” Conover finally said.
“Okay. Can you be more specific?”
Conover walked around the display. “Kristin and I have put a lot of effort into decoding Deeper comm transmissions. What makes it tough is that there aren’t any.”
“What do you mean?” Viktor asked.
“Just that. The Deepers don’t seem to use any sort of conventional comms. Not radio, not comm beams, not unSpace transmissions, nothing. And yet they’re obviously communicating. Their actions are coordinated, with an overall purpose behind them.”
Leira, who’d been listening over the comm, cut in.
“Well, based on what’s been said, are we even talking about individual organisms that have to talk to one another? Or are the Deepers really just one big organism? And all the individual parts are like the cells in our bodies? We’re each made up of a multitude of bits, but it all comes together in one person, right?”
“The ultimate hive mind,” Lomas said.
But Elois shook her head. “A hive mind still implies individual organisms, just all sharing one mind. This seems to be more fundamental than that. I think calling the Deepers one big organism is more accurate.”
“That doesn’t matter, though,” Conover said. “Even if you use our own bodies as an analog, our cells still have to talk to one another. There’s all sorts of communication going on, all of it biochemical or bio-electric. You stub your toe, and the nerve cells transmit the pain message from one to the next by releasing chemicals, right? It happens really fast. I mean, you feel your smashed toe instantly after it happens—but it still happens.”
Dash said, “So there’s still some sort of communication going on among all these different parts, even if, in the end, they’re just all one, big creature?”
“That’s right. We just need to figure out what that communication actually is.”
“Psychic bugs?” Leira said. “We know there are some species around the galaxy that seem to have some sort of psychic abilities. Look at the mood squids on—oh, where are they again?”
“Oriskan’s World,” Amy said. “I ferried a ship there once and spent a few days waiting for a ride back to Passage. The mood squids were cool. They change their colors based on how you’re feeling.”
“Right. And I recall those things have been studied a lot,” Leira went on. “And the conclusion is that it’s not pheromones or anything like that—it’s an actual psychic thing.”
“That fits pretty well, actually,” Conover said. “These bugs are chatty. It would help if we could short circuit their internal comms, like—like a signal jammer.”
Dash rubbed his chin. A solution seemed tantalizingly close even to him, unversed as he was in the nuances of biotechnology. “Okay, so we need something like bug spray. Something that we can apply to all of them. Something that spreads.”
“Bug spray? Could’ve used that on about a dozen planets,” Leira muttered. “Including—no, especially—the one that had spiders with wings.”
“Not a spray,” Dash said. “More like—” He looked at Elois and Grunne. “How about something more like a code?”
Grunne stared for a moment, then a sly grin spread across his round face. “Ah, yes. I see where you’re going with this.”
“Elois, can you and Grunne get everyone who has a background in system engineering or bio-medical experience—and especially anyone with both—and work on that,” Dash said. “The resources of the Forge, including Custodian, are at your disposal.” He looked at Lomas. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”
Lomas looked puzzled. “Sure, but someone want to clue me in on what this is all about? Maybe it’s the painkillers I’m still on, but I’m just not getting this.”
Dash nodded. “The Deepers aren’t really alive, but they’re not really not alive, either. They’re somewhere between a living thing and a machine, in a much more fundamental way than something like the Golden ever were. There’s only one kind of thing like that in our world—a virus. So we’ll design a virus of our own, one made specifically for Deeper physiology. If we can make it so that it disrupts that bond between the organic stuff and the inorganic stuff, we should be able to stop them dead. Bonus points if we can make