PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 170 Blindsight
most of his gender pronouns to an unforeseen glitch during the
work on his temporal lobe. But it went beyond that. The whole lot
of them threw English and Hindi and Hadzane into every second
sentence; no real scientist would allow their thoughts to be
hamstrung by the conceptual limitations of a single language.
Other times they acted almost as synthesists in their own right,
conversing in grunts and gestures that would be meaningless to any
baseline. It's not so much that the bleeding edge lacks social skills;
it's just that once you get past a certain point, formal speech is too
damn slow.
Except for Susan James. The walking contradiction, the woman
so devoted to Communication As Unifier that she'd cut her own
brain into disunified chunks to make the point. She was the only
one who ever seemed to care who she was talking to. The others
spoke only for themselves, even when they spoke to each other.
Even James's other cores would speak their own minds in their
own way, and let everyone else translate as best they could. It
wasn't a problem. Everyone on Theseus could read everyone else.
But that didn't matter to Susan James. She fit each of her words
to their intended recipient, she accommodated.
I am a conduit. I exist to bridge the gap, and I'd bridge nothing if
I only told you what these people said. So I am telling you what
they meant, and it will mean as much to you as you can handle.
Except for Susan James, linguist and Ringleader, whom I trust to
speak for herself.
Fifteen minutes to apogee: maximum safe distance, in case
Rorschach decided to hit back. Far below, the artefact's magnetic
field pressed into Ben's atmosphere like God's little finger. Great
dark thunderheads converged behind it; turbulent moon-sized
curlicues collided in its wake.
Fifteen minutes to apogee, and Bates was still hoping Sarasti
would change his mind.
In a way, this was her fault. If she had just treated this new
travail as one more cross to bear, perhaps things would have gone
*