PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 128 Blindsight
I realized something else, too. Surrounded by displays
documenting the relentless growth of the leviathan beneath us, I
could not only see why Sascha had objected to the word; I could
also see why Isaac Szpindel, no doubt unconsciously, had spoken it
in the first place.
As far as Earth was concerned, everyone on Theseus was an
alter.
Sarasti stayed behind. He hadn't come with a backup.
There were the rest of us, though, crammed into the shuttle,
embedded in custom spacesuits so padded with shielding we might
have been deep-sea divers from a previous century. It was a fine
balance; too much shielding would have been worse than none at
all, would split primary particles into secondary ones, just as lethal
and twice as numerous. Sometimes you had to live with moderate
exposure; the only alternative was to embed yourself like a bug in
lead.
We launched six hours from perigee. Scylla raced on ahead like
an eager child, leaving its parent behind. There was no eagerness
in the systems around me, though. Except for one: the Gang of
Four almost shimmered behind her faceplate.
"Excited?" I asked.
Sascha answered: "Fuckin' right. Field work, Keeton. First
contact."
"What if there's nobody there?" What if there is, and they don't
like us?
"Even better. We get a crack at their signs and cereal boxes
without their traffic cops leaning over our shoulders."
I wondered if she spoke for the others. I was pretty sure she
didn't speak for Michelle.
Scylla's ports had all been sealed. There was no outside view,
nothing to see inside but bots and bodies and the tangled silhouette
swelling on my helmet HUD. But I could feel the radiation slicing
through our armor as if it were tissue paper. I could feel the
knotted crests and troughs of Rorschach's magnetic field. I could
*