Blindsight

We were blind and helpless, jammed into a fragile bubble behind enemy lines. But finally the whisperers were silent. The monsters had stayed beyond the covers.

And Amanda Bates was out there with them.

“What the fuck,” Szpindel breathed.

The eyes behind his faceplate were active and searching. “You can see?” I asked.

He nodded. “What happened to Bates? Her suit breach?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then why’d she say she was dead? What—”

“She meant it literally,” I told him. “Not I’m as good as dead or I’m going to die. She meant dead now. Like she was a talking corpse.”

“How do—” you know? Stupid question. His face ticced and trembled in the helmet. “That’s crazy, eh?”

“Define crazy.”

The Gang floated quietly, cheek-to-jowl behind Szpindel in the cramped enclosure. Cruncher had stopped obsessing about the leg as soon as we’d sealed up. Or maybe he’d simply been overridden; I thought I saw facets of Susan in the twitching of those thick gloved fingers.

Szpindel’s breath echoed second-hand over the link. “If Bates is dead, then so are we.”

“Maybe not. We wait out the spike, we get out of here. Besides,” I added, “she wasn’t dead. She only said she was.”

“Fuck,” Szpindel reached out and pressed his gloved palm against the skin of the tent. He felt back and forth along the fabric. “Someone did put out a transducer—”

“Eight o’clock,” I said. “About a meter.” Szpindel’s hand came to rest across the wall from the pod. My HUD flooded with second-hand numbers, vibrated down his arm and relayed to our suits.

Still five Tesla out there. Falling, though. The tent expanded around us as if breathing, shrank back in the next second as some transient low-pressure front moved past.

“When did your sight come back?” I wondered.

“Soon as we came inside.”

“Sooner. You saw the battery.”

“Fumbled it.” He grunted. “Not that I’m much less of a spaz even when I’m not blind, eh? Bates! You out there?”

“You reached for it. You almost caught it. That wasn’t blind chance.”

“Not blind chance. Blindsight. Amanda? Respond, please.”

“Blindsight?”

“Nothing wrong with the receptors,” he said distractedly. “Brain processes the image but it can’t access it. Brain stem takes over.”

“Your brainstem can see but you can’t?”

“Something like that. Shut up and let me — Amanda, can you hear me?”

“…No…”

Not from anyone in the tent, that voice. It had shivered down Szpindel’s arm, barely audible, with the rest of the data. From outside.

“Major Mandy!” Szpindel exclaimed. “You’re alive!”

“…no…” A whisper like white noise.

“Well you’re talking to us, so you sure as shit ain’t dead.”

“No…”

Szpindel and I exchanged looks. “What’s the problem, Major?”

Silence. The Gang bumped gently against the wall behind us, all facets opaque.

“Major Bates? Can you hear me?”

“No.” It was a dead voice — sedated, trapped in a fishbowl, transmitted through limbs and lead at a three-digit baud rate. But it was definitely Bates’ voice.

“Major, you’ve got to get in here,” Szpindel said. “Can you come inside?”

“…No…".

“Are you injured? Are you pinned by something?”

“…N — no.”

Maybe not her voice, after all. Maybe just her vocal cords.

“Look. Amanda, it’s dangerous. It’s too damn hot out there, do you understand? You—”

“I’m not out here,” said the voice.

“Where are you?”

“…nowhere.”

I looked at Szpindel. Szpindel looked at me. Neither of us spoke.

James did. At long last, and softly: “And what are you, Amanda?”

No answer.

“Are you Rorschach?”

Here in the belly of the beast, it was so easy to believe.

“No…”

“Then what?”

“N…nothing.” The voice was flat and mechanical. “I’m nothing.”

“You’re saying you don’t exist?” Szpindel said slowly.

“Yes.”

The tent breathed around us.

“Then how can you speak?” Susan asked the voice. “If you don’t exist, what are we talking to?”

“Something…else.” A sigh. A breath of static. “Not me.”

“Shit,” Szpindel muttered. His surfaces brightened with resolve and sudden insight. He pulled his hand from the wall; my HUD thinned instantly. “Her brain’s frying. We gotta get her inside.” He reached for the release.

I put out my own hand. “The spike—”

“Crested already, commissar. We’re past the worst of it.”

“Are you saying it’s safe?”

“It’s lethal. It’s always lethal, and she’s out there in it, and she could do some serious damage to herself in her pres—”

Something bumped the tent from the outside. Something grabbed the outer catch and pulled.

Our shelter opened like an eye. Amanda Bates looked in at us through the exposed membrane. “I’m reading three point eight,” she said. “That’s tolerable, right?”

Nobody moved.

“Come on, people. Break’s over.”

“Ama—” Szpindel stared. “Are you okay?”

“In here? Not likely. But we’ve got a job to do.”

“Do you — exist?” I asked.

“What kind of stupid question is that? Szpindel, how’s this field strength? Can we work in it?”

“Uh…” He swallowed audibly. “Maybe we should abort, Major. That spike was—”