Aliena Too (16 page)

Surprised, he touched it. She delivered an intense jolt of pleasure. “Wow!” he flashed.

“You did good work today.” Then she put him to sleep.

When Lida and Star next visited, both were obviously pregnant. The one came to see her husband, the other to bring Maple to see her mother. Star nodded to Aliena, then retreated, staying out of it.

Aliena intercepted Lida, leaving Quincy to signal Maple to come to him. Curious about this change, the child went. Meanwhile Aliena spoke via the translators to Lida. “You have done well with Gloaming. I know it has not always been easy.”

“He is a good male. Obviously I decided to bear his child. But I confess to missing Quincy.”

“As I miss Brom, though I encouraged Star to bear
his
child. But what must be must be. Quincy has had some remarkable insights and I am becoming increasingly attracted to him.”

“And you want my leave for that,” Lida said a bit curtly. “You already have it. I would far rather have him be happy with you than alone.”

“There is more going on than that. Talk with Maple when you can do so privately.”

Lida gazed at her uncertainly. “There is a problem?”

“Not of your making. This is something else.” She could not safely be more specific.

Then Maple was through with Quincy, who put away his pictures. The child came back to talk with Aliena, and Lida went to talk with Quincy.

“Is Quincy going to be my other daddy?” Maple asked brightly.

Aliena flashed with humor, which she could more readily do now. “We do not have marriages or families in the manner humans do.”

Maple looked at her cannily. “You didn't answer.”

“Do you want him to be?”

She would not be diverted. “You still didn't answer.”

“He may be. We are developing mutual respect. You know I would have stayed with you and Brom if I could have.”

“And Quincy would have stayed with Lida. But Gloaming is all right too.”

“He is,” Aliena agreed.

“You kissed daddy.”

She was referring to the incident following the duet, when Lida had lent Brom her glasses. “I did, in my fashion.”

“Daddy and Star are going to have a baby.”

“They may,” Aliena agreed cautiously, uncertain what Maple would think of having a half sister. A full sister genetically, but that was only part of it.

“Gloaming and Lida too.”

“They may,” Aliena agreed again. Maple should not be jealous of that one.

“So they're going to be busy.”

“They are.” Where was this leading?

“Maybe too busy for me.”

“Oh, Maple, they'll never be too busy for you!”

The child ignored that reassurance. “So maybe it's a good time for me to be busy too, on my own.”

She was jealous of the attention that the new babies would take in the two families? Or was this something else? “What do you have in mind?”

“Travel. I want to show Alena everything.”

She had named her doll Alena, close to Aliena's name. She knew. “That would be nice. Will you lend her to us for a few minutes?”

“Sure.” Maple beckoned to an attendant robot, who approached. She handed it the doll. “Take care of Alena for a while.”

The robot gravely accepted the doll and walked away.

“You know Alena will not talk to you,” Aliena said.

“Sure. But she'll know what I show her.”

And the child would show her doll anything that might be of interest. “I'm sure she will like it.”

Maple shrugged. “Maybe. So can I go to interesting places?”

“You can. But you can't do it alone.”

“Maybe Martha can go with me. She likes to travel.”

The bodyguard. Maybe that would work. “Sam and Martha are due for a vacation. They could take you.”

Maple clapped her hands. “Great! I won't bother them at all at night.”

The child had caught on to the developing romance between the bodyguards, and approved. “That would be nice. But do not give them any trouble.”

“Oh, they like trouble. That's why they're bodyguards.”

Aliena lifted an arm warningly.

“But I won't give them too much,” Maple said hastily. Then they both laughed, Aliena by patterned flashes. “Anyway, I like Quincy. He should make a good other daddy.”

“Quincy is a starfish now.”

“So he can be with you. He wants to be, and it's okay with me.”

“I'm glad you approve of him, Maple. But such things are complicated.”

Again the child gazed at her with uncanny perception. “Not if you don't want them to be.”

What was she hinting? “Why do you say that?”

“Mom, I want you to be happy. I know you still love daddy, and he loves you, but it's time for you to move on.”

“As he has, with Star?” Aliena asked, trying to keep the edge down.

“Yes. You want him to be happy with her, and he is, and she is, and so am I. You sang when he agreed.”

“I did, and so did you.”

“So he moved on. But you didn't.”

“Maple, I have a ship to run! A mission to maintain.”

“You didn't answer, again.”

“How can I answer such a thing?”

This time Maple did not speak. But a tear formed in her eye. That made Aliena's human emotions roil painfully.

“Oh, Maple, how did I hurt you? I never want to hurt you!”

The child shook her head. “It's all right, Mom,” she said as if comforting another child.

“Maple—”

The robot returned with the doll. It looked unchanged. Maple took it and tucked it under her arm. “Time to go. I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you, Maple.”

Maple turned to go, then turned back. “Is it true I cost you your body?”

How had she learned that? Aliena's pregnancy had triggered an immune response against her brain, forcing her to give up the body. “That is a way of seeing it.”

“Was I worth it?”

“Oh yes!”

“I'm glad. Will it happen to Star and Lida?”

“No. We have made sure there will be no further immune rejections. They will have healthy babies, and will be able to stay with them.”

“That's good. It'll be like having a little sister and brother both.”

She had even picked up on the anticipated genders. “Yes. I hope you will not be jealous of them.”

“Oh, I will be, but I'll do what you do: carry on regardless.” But there was definitely an edge.

“We all do what we must, even when it is not always comfortable.”

“Yes,” Maple said seriously. Then Star came for her, and they departed.

Aliena felt foolishly depleted. Star was taking good care of Maple, yet these visits always made Aliena wish she could have stayed in the human host. At times like this she felt more human than was convenient. Worse, she was having increasing trouble understanding her daughter. She hated that. She was a genius relative to humans, including the child, but emotion could not be fathomed purely by intellect.

That night Quincy mentioned the matter. “Maple understands about the doll. She's a good girl; I like her.”

“She likes you too.” Then she put him to sleep before the dialogue could wander into uncomfortable territory.

Aliena spoke privately with Explora. “There may come a time when I am unable to run the ship. I will train you to run it in my stead.”

Explora, a good soldier, did not question this. She was ready to assume the responsibilities of adulthood as required. “Train me.”

Aliena did. It was largely a matter of tracking the assorted sensors that indicated the ship's functioning, and directing the robots when required. It might have taken a year for a human to train in, but Explora was a starfish. In a few days she had it down.

“Now I will provide you with ‘hands on' experience in my absence,” Aliena said. “I will retreat to stasis for a time. You may rouse me if there is need.”

Explora was not alarmed by the prospect. She simply flashed acceptance.

Aliena went to a stasis chamber. But she did not activate it. Instead she tuned in on Maple's doll, Alena.

Somehow the child knew, maybe because of the analogy Quincy had made with Lida's glasses. “Hi, Mom,” she whispered, kissing the doll.

Sam and Martha, now engaged, took their vacation, and Maple went along, conveniently leaving the two pregnant women to birth their babies without her supervision. Aliena suspected that neither Sam nor Martha would have been entirely at ease without someone to guard, even on their time off, and they did like Maple. It was a business relationship that felt more like family. They toured the world in a month, and Maple showed Alena all the sights. All the indications were that they all had a fine time.

And the alien motes were everywhere, including the ancient temples, pyramids, and palaces. They were down in the mines and on the metal ships. They had been present for thousands of years. So the proctors had been watching since long before mankind achieved space. The question remained: were the motes still “live”? Or had they or their makers long since died? She needed to know.

In due course Aliena emerged from her supposed stasis and checked with Explora. There had been no problems. The starfish had not expected to achieve this level of responsibility, but was, of course, competent.

Aliena fed the accumulated data into her equipment for a thorough statistical analysis. The verdict emerged: there was an even chance that the motes were live.

She put a watch on them. This was a trace field that would alert her if there were ever any sign of activity relating to the motes.

Then something odd happened: the motes pulsed. All of them, everywhere, together. It was only a microsecond, and would have been easy to miss had the field not been watching.

The verdict changed. Now the chance was 99%.

Stunned, Aliena sat on the information for a day, trying to decide what, if anything, to do. Should she announce it to the world? Or just to the select few who knew of this project? Or to no one? What could anyone do, regardless?

Twenty-four hours later they pulsed again.

Aliena went to Quincy. “The motes are pulsing.” She explained about the analysis and the machine's verdict. “It seems that my analysis of their likelihood of being still live triggered the proof of it. They are signaling us that they are active.”

“Or reporting to the proctors,” he agreed. “They are no longer secret.”

“Yes. That puts us on notice that they know we know. That may be mischief.”

“Why would they notify us that they know we know?”

That made her pause. “Maybe they don't realize that we are watching the sensors.”

“If I were a proctor, I would make sure to know.”

There was that empathy again. “But why?” she repeated.

“That's something I will have to think about.”

“Do so.” She left him.

Twenty-three hours after the second pulse, there was a third pulse.

“Are you sure of the timing?” Quincy asked.

“Yes.”

“We could guess that the timing is not exact, but that seems unlikely. It was exactly a day. Now it's slightly less. There must be a reason.”

“We need to fathom that reason,” she said.

“We do. I am beginning to wonder if they are playing cat and mouse with us. Toying with us to see how we react.”

“Why should they care how we react, after thousands of years?”

“That is another thing I will have to ponder.”

“Do so.”

Twenty-two hours after the third pulse there came the fourth. The pulses were definitely quickening.

Explora joined the dialogue. “Quincy and I have discussed it, privately. We think we are up against an automatic program designed to react in a certain manner to particular outside stimuli. Detection of the motes caused the pulses to commence. They decrease one hour each time, so that in about twenty-five Earth days from the start they will end. This puts us on notice to plan our response before that time expires. What we don't know is what our response should be, and what the consequence of error is.”

“What do you conjecture?” Aliena asked grimly.

“There are several options. One is nothing; that this is a protocol of machines that does not relate to us, other than our accidental triggering of it. Another is that a wrong response could lead to our destruction. A third is that it will set off a new series of reactions.”

“Such as?” Aliena asked.

“Such as waking the proctors, who we assume are presently in stasis while their sensors and machines watch. We might or might not welcome the animation of the proctors.”

“What do you think?” Aliena asked Quincy.

“If I were a proctor assigned to watch a backward planet, I would do what we have seen done here: set up sensors to monitor progress, and go into stasis, with certain events setting off alerts. If the primitives achieve enough sophistication to set off the sensors, I would have a second process be set in motion: the timed pulses. If they produce a result that meets my criteria for active verification, the machines would wake me so that I could attend to it directly.”

“And how would such attendance impact us?” Aliena asked.

“That depends on whether we are considered sapients or vermin. As a proctor I believe I would be more interested in sapients. This could be good.”

Aliena considered. Quincy's scenario seemed apt. “If they were prepared to wait thousands of years for the possibility of sapience, stasis does seem appropriate.”

“We gambled a century on finding sapience here,” Explora said. “We used stasis for the interim.”

“Mankind has been sapient for maybe a quarter million years,” Quincy said. “But only very recently has it become highly technological. It may be the technology they are waiting for. The ability to detect them.”

“As we now have done,” Aliena agreed. “That does seem likely.”