“Have you talked about this with Typhon?” I asked.
“He only tells me not to waste my time or energy on wishing.”
“That sounds like him.”
Even though that sounded encouraging, it didn’t solve our early-warning problem. I put it on the back burner. Wasting time was against my religion, so I moved to the next thing. When I’d let Xyll live, I thought it might offer some insight into the Phage, give us an edge we desperately needed. Since then, I didn’t have the time to learn much about it, other than the fact that it could tap into the hive mind and cause trouble. I spun from the viewport and went in search of our resident Phage cell.
Thankfully I found Xyll in its room, though it had done some major redecoration. I’d thought the webs were bad, but now there were . . . pods too. Or maybe cocoons? It had made weird-shaped furniture out of the sticky thread it extruded. It had tweaked the lighting too, so it was gloomy as hell in here and it took my eyes a minute to adjust.
“You visit?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell it I was here to do field research on what made it tick, what it wanted, and how we could ultimately destroy its kind. “Uh, sure. You have everything you need?” That wasn’t what I wanted to ask, but I had to start somewhere.
“Needs are met.”
There was no way to read its expression, and the translation matrix didn’t provide for tone, but it had to want something. That was basic for all sentient life. They wanted food, peace, profit, security, love, some damn thing. And if I could figure that out, oh shit. Learning what Xyll wanted—enough to awaken it from its mindless eating frenzy—might help me rouse the rest of them to free will. Maybe we didn’t have to annihilate them if we could turn them into proper, rational beings. The Phage would be much less dangerous as separate cells thinking individually.
“Before, when I gave you the flaff, you said it was home food. What’s your home planet like?” I sat down near the door, trying to act like I was ready for a deep conversation.
Xyll approached in chitters and clicks, and I swallowed hard. Bea would be screaming by now, and I did draw back against the wall, hopefully not enough of a movement for it to notice. Trying to establish rapport here.
“Home planet?”
“Yeah, um, where you were born.”
“Born in the black,” Xyll answered.
And for some reason, that struck me as sad. I mean, I wasn’t expecting a heartwarming story with a family or anything, but I thought its kind came from somewhere. But these things dropped offspring out in vacuum? That was . . . hardcore.
“You don’t have anywhere to go back to, then. Do you spend your whole lives wandering?” Wandering and eating, damn. Oh, and reproducing, can’t forget that. I wasn’t about to ask about its mating cycle, though. If there was a benevolent force in the universe, I would never learn how these things got down.
“Wandering? Yes. We roam, before. Now they go where they are told.”
Right, the god-king changed everything.
Damn, I still hadn’t learned anything helpful. I touched the wall behind me, lightly calling Nadim’s attention. I knew he was listening—he always was unless I asked him not to—and asked, Any ideas?
I understand what you’re trying to accomplish, but they make me . . . His revulsion churned through me, souring my gut, accompanied by a barrage of images. Yeah, Nadim couldn’t help with this, and Bea would rather not.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about?”
Was that an actual question or was it repeating words? I tried to clarify. “You’re not bound by the hive mind anymore. What do you want to do?”
“Want? What is want?”
I’d never had to explain such a basic thing. “It’s like, when you’re hungry, you want food. But there should be more to life, right? I haven’t thought about the future a whole lot, but now, all I really want is to travel with Nadim and Bea. Keep having adventures.”
Maybe not on this scale, but damn if I could picture myself living on a planet forever after this. I might die of missing Nadim.
Xyll spun a fresh rope and twirled up it, circling above me, and maybe I was reading into it, but this felt like a thoughtful pause, like it was digesting what I said. Finally, it answered, “Home.”
“You want a place to belong.” There might be an unoccupied planet someplace where we could stash the Phage. The way they ate and bred, though, it probably wouldn’t be long before they depleted all the natural resources. Could they get back to vacuum on their own? I guessed probably not. But Xyll was managing its flaff without problems, so the rest might be able to learn. I imagined dumping them on some terrible planet with a shitload of uncontained flaff. Hell, it might even work, if we could awaken the rest of the Phage.
“Belong. Yes. Would also like to be . . . not Xyll.”
“You want to be somebody else?”
“Not alone,” it said.
I remembered it telling me that Xyll meant “alone” in Abyin Dommas. Okay, so this thing wanted a friend and a place to go back to? If this was a cute, cuddly alien, it would be an easy get with that plan. But a nightmare was clicking above me, and I could see all the spikes on its insectile legs. Still, I had to try to put myself in its position.
“Tell me about flaff. How did you know about it? Why did you call it home food?”
“Born in the black, but the big mind remembers, long before this one was born. Flaff on that world, endless flaff.”
Now I was getting somewhere. There was a Phage homeworld, and it seemed like Xyll had access to a sort of . . . collective unconscious?
“Why did you leave that world?” I asked.
“Taken.”
The god-kings had rounded up their kind to use them. It stung a little when I started connecting this to how the Leviathan rolled up and got humans involved in their secret war. Nadim stirred uneasily in my mind, softly protesting that mental connection.
“Could you find that planet again? It was your people’s home before. Maybe it could be again.”
My mind was racing. If Xyll said yes, this seriously might solve the Phage problem. I’d always been good at building stuff. Maybe I could build a signal device that would call the Phage to their homeworld and—well, I didn’t have it all figured out yet. Getting them down to the surface might be a problem . . . and it was weird that I was trying to find a nonviolent solution, instead of imagining how to wipe them out. My psychologist back at Camp Kuna, Dr. Yu, would be pleased to hear it; probably this qualified as personal growth.
“Cannot. The big mind remembers what, not where.”
Ah well. My idea wasn’t completely worthless. Might still work with a different planet and a bunch of flaff.
This was all the time I could stand in Xyll’s company, though. My skin prickled with goose bumps from watching its movements, no matter how lonely it was. Right now, I’d rather be drinking that stuff Suncross loved so much that tasted like corrosive drain cleaner.
“Okay, well, good talk, Xyll. I’ll visit you again later. Let me know if there’s something special you want to eat.” Other than us.
“Visit, yes? You return?”
“Sure, definitely. We’ll be here for a bit while the Leviathan power up. I can stop by.” If I thought of something else I needed to ask.