“I hear it,” Alanik said. She focused on the words as they repeated again—it was an ongoing signal being broadcast on a loop. As we listened, the words became more and more clear.
Spensa, human of Detritus! the message said. This is the Swims Upstream! We have your humans and would like to return them! Please respond.
“They have our humans and would like to return them?” I said.
“That’s what they said.” Alanik frowned. “Do they mean Cobb and Gran-Gran?”
“Or other humans,” I said. “We don’t know if there are other prison planets like ours, or if we’re the only ones left.”
“If they found an entire planet of humans, would they really be contacting Spensa to return them?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what ‘Swims Upstream’ is. I don’t have any idea who’s trying to reach us.” The Superiority knew about Spensa, and that she was connected to our planet. They knew she’d disappeared, and they were no doubt trying to find her. This might be an attempt to bait her into the open, the way they did to my parents.
I supposed there was some comfort in knowing that if she was stuck in the nowhere, she couldn’t fall into that trap.
“I can pinpoint the coordinates,” Alanik said. “I could give them to the taynix in your hypercomm, so you could respond.”
“Should we respond?” I asked.
“It’s a lead,” Alanik said. “The only one we have. And if they do have Cobb and Gran-Gran…”
I reached out for the message, listening to it play again. “Can you teach me how to pinpoint the message?” I asked. “Can we respond directly?”
“You said you weren’t sure you should respond. Don’t you want to run this by your commanders? I thought that was your answer for everything.”
Alanik had me figured out. “Yes,” I said. “But I want to know what’s possible. These are skills I need to learn, even if I don’t know if we should answer this particular message.”
“Listen then,” Alanik said. “You know how you can tell which mind is mine in the negative realm? You don’t try to speak to me and accidentally reach the taynix. You can even tell the individual slugs apart, can’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “At first I got them confused, but now I can tell one from another, as long as I’m familiar with them.”
“Places are like that too. They each have their own individual…feeling. And even if you can’t see the whole of the universe, you should be able to recognize the difference in sensation.”
“Like the vibrations,” I said. And…now that she said it, I did feel a distinct vibration coming from the message.
Could I use that to communicate with it? Could I speak to the recording as if it were a person? “If I tried to talk to it, would anyone hear me?” I asked. “It’s a hypercomm, not another cytonic.”
“It depends on whether there’s a person listening on the other end,” Alanik said. “But you could try.”
She was right that we should loop Stoff in on this. I wanted to keep an eye on things, make sure no one came up with any new terrible ideas in Cobb’s absence. But I couldn’t leave either the DDF or the National Assembly in the dark completely. I might be stretching the limits of my authority lately, but if I started keeping secrets from my superiors I’d be breaking them entirely.
Still, none of them were cytonics. Even if I looped in Stoff, Alanik and I would still be the only ones who could communicate with these people.
I focused on the vibration of the recording, trying to treat it as if it were the mind of another cytonic, or one of the taynix. Can you hear me? I asked.
The recording stopped abruptly, right in the middle of a sentence.
Hello? a voice said on the other end.
Scud. They’d heard me. The voice felt different than a full cytonic mind, but I was able to target the vibration.
Is this the human planet Detritus?
If I told them they’d reached us, would that give anything away? The Superiority already knew where we were. It is, I said, but I left it at that.
The message changed. Human! it said. This is Kauri of the kitsen, captain of the Swims Upstream! Can you put me in touch with Spensa?
“Interesting,” Alanik said.
“What’s interesting?” I asked.
“That they’re a kitsen,” she said. “Or they claim to be one. They’re another of the species the Superiority believes to be lesser. They’re small furry creatures, not unlike tree squirrels, but they’re as intelligent as UrDail. I’ve never met one, but I’ve seen a picture. They look…adorable.”
So I was either talking to a Superiority trap, or a tree squirrel that knew Spensa. I wasn’t sure which was more disturbing. “Okay,” I said. “You’re right that we should bring this to the attention of Command. This is too sensitive to handle on our own. We need to go to the comms people with this, and let Stoff know.”
“If you’re sure that’s wise,” Alanik said.
I wasn’t sure it was, but I also wasn’t ready to strike out entirely on my own. I was merely watching over the DDF for Cobb until we could find him.
Let me speak with my superiors and get back to you, I said.
We eagerly await your return! the voice said.
“If they are a squirrel, they’re a very enthusiastic one,” Alanik said.
“True.” I focused one more time on the vibration of the transmission. Alanik said she could give it to Fine in the hypercomm, but I wanted to learn to do this too. I waited until the vibration felt familiar, the way I could find Alanik’s mind quickly now that I knew her. And then I pulled my mind back to Detritus, where I could feel the buzz of the taynix all around, and then toward the room where I could feel Alanik sitting next to me.
As I drew inward, passing by the minds of the taynix on the platform, the area around me suddenly felt…denser. Bumpier, like it was filled with a hundred raised ridges in the otherwise empty space. They were there, and then as I focused on them, spontaneously absent.
“Did you feel that?” I asked.
“Feel what?” Alanik said.
“That…texture. Like there was suddenly something else in the nowhere with us.”
“Something in the nowhere? Like the eyes?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. Scud, I hoped what I’d felt wasn’t some sign of an impending delver attack. “Maybe it wasn’t in the nowhere exactly. More like I could feel something through the nowhere, all around us. Not more cytonics, but—”