PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 205 Blindsight
except for those drifting arms. Navy-blue mosaics, almost black in
the longwave, rippled across their surfaces like the patterns of wind
on grass. Superimposed graphics plotted methane and hydrogen at
reassuring Rorschach norms. Temperature and lighting, ditto. An
icon for ambient electromagnetics remained dark.
I dipped into the archives, watched the arrival of the aliens from
two days past; each tumbling unceremoniously into its pen, balled
up, hugging themselves as they bounced gently around their
enclosures. Fetal position, I thought—but after a few moments the
arms uncoiled, like the blooming of calcareous flowers.
"Robert says Rorschach grows them," Susan James said behind
me.
I turned. Definitely James in there, but—muted, somehow. Her
meal remained untouched. Her surfaces were dim.
Except for the eyes. Those were deep, and a little hollow.
"Grows?" I repeated.
"In stacks. They have two navels each." She managed a weak
smile, touched her belly with one hand and the small of her back
with the other. "One in front, one behind. He thinks they grow in
a kind of column, piled up. When the top one develops to a certain
point, it buds off from the stack and becomes free-living."
The archived scramblers were exploring their new environment
now, climbing gingerly along the walls, unrolling their arms along
the corners where the panels met. Those swollen central bodies
struck me again. "So that first one, with the flattened..."
"Juvenile," she agreed. "Fresh off the stack. These ones are
older. They, they plump out as they mature. Robert says," she
added after a moment.
I sucked the dregs from my squeezebulb. "The ship grows its
own crew."
"If it's a ship." James shrugged. "If they're crew."
I watched them move. There wasn't much to explore; the walls
were almost bare, innocent of anything but a few sensor heads and
gas nozzles. The pens had their own tentacles and manipulators
for more invasive research needs, but those had been carefully
sheathed during introduction. Still, the creatures covered the
territory in careful increments, moving back and forth along