Blindsight

I tapped ConSensus to hear them. James was speaking, quietly and without expression. “I noticed a new pattern in the form-constants. Something in the grating. It looked like a signal. It got stronger as I went down the tunnel, I followed it, I blacked out. I don’t remember anything more until we were on our way back. Michelle filled me in, as much as she could. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.”

A hundred degrees away in the no-gee zone, Cunningham maneuvered his predecessor into a coffin with different options than those up front. I wondered if it would embark on an autopsy during the debriefing. I wondered if we’d be able to hear the sounds it made.

“Sascha,” Sarasti said.

“Yeah.” Sascha’s trademark drawl infected the voice. “I was riding Mom. Went deaf dumb and stark fucking blind when she passed out. I tried to take over but something was blocking me. Michelle, I guess. Never thought she had it in her. I couldn’t even see.”

“But you don’t lose consciousness.”

“I was awake the whole time, far as I know. Just completely in the dark.”

“Smell? Tactile?”

“I could feel it when Michelle pissed in the suit. But I didn’t notice anything else.”

Cunningham was back at my side. The inevitable cigarette had appeared between his lips.

“Nothing touches you,” the vampire surmised. “Nothing grabs your leg.”

“No,” Sascha said. She didn’t believe Michelle’s stories about invisible monsters. None of us did; why bother, when dementia could so easily explain anything we experienced?

“Cruncher.”

“Don’t know anything,” I still wasn’t used to the maleness of the voice now emanating from James’s throat. Cruncher was a workaholic. He hardly ever surfaced in mixed company.

“You’re there,” Sarasti reminded him. “You must remember some—”

“Mom sent me patterns to parse. I was working on them. I’m still working on them,” he added pointedly. “I didn’t notice anything. Is that all?”

I’d never been able to get a good read on him. Sometimes Cruncher seemed to have more in common with the dozens of nonconscious modules working in James’s head than with sentient hubs comprising the rest of the Gang. “You feel nothing?” Sarasti pressed.

“Just the patterns.”

“Anything significant?”

“Standard phenomath spirals and gratings. But I haven’t finished. Can I go now?”

“Yes. Call Michelle, please.”

Cunningham stabbed at my wounds with anabolisers, muttering to himself. Faint blue smoke curled between us. “Isaac found some tumors,” he observed.

I nodded and coughed. My throat was sore. The nausea had grown heavy enough to sink below my diaphragm.

“Michelle.” Sarasti repeated.

“I see some more here,” Cunningham continued. “Along the bottom of your brain pan. Only a few dozen cells so far, they’re not worth burning yet.”

“Here.” Michelle’s voice was barely audible, even through ConSensus, but at least it was the voice of an adult. “I’m here.”

“What do you remember, please?”

“I — I felt — I was just riding Mom, and then she was gone and there was no one else, so I had to — take over…”

“Do you see the septum close?”

“Not really. I felt it going dark, but when I turned around we were already trapped. And then I felt something behind me, it wasn’t loud or harsh it just sort of bumped, and it grabbed me, and — and—

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m a bit — woozy…”

Sarasti waited.

“Isaac,” Michelle whispered. “He…”

“Yes.” A pause. “We’re very sorry about that.”

“Maybe — can he be fixed?”

“No. There’s brain damage.” There was something like sympathy in the vampire’s voice, the practiced affectation of an accomplished mimic. There was something else, too, an all-but-imperceptible hunger, a subtle edge of temptation. I don’t think anyone heard it but me.

We were sick, and getting sicker. Predators are drawn to the weak and injured.

Michelle had fallen silent again. When she continued, her voice only faltered a little: “I can’t tell you much. It grabbed me. It let me go. I went to pieces, and I can’t explain why except that fucking place just does things to you, and I was — weak. I’m sorry. There’s not much else to tell you.”

“Thank you,” Sarasti said after a long moment.

“Can I — I’d like to leave if that’s okay.”

“Yes,” Sarasti said. Michelle sank below the surface as the Commons rotated past. I didn’t see who took her place.

“The grunts didn’t see anything,” Bates remarked. “By the time we broke through the septum the tunnel behind was empty.”

“Any bogey would have had plenty of time to hightail,” Cunningham said. He planted his feet on the deck and grabbed a handhold; the subdrum began to move. I drifted obliquely against my restraints.

“I don’t disagree,” Bates said, “But if there’s anything we’ve learned about that place, it’s that we can’t trust our senses.”