PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 206 Blindsight
parallel, invisible paths. Almost as if they were running transects.
James had noticed it too. "It seems awfully systematic, doesn't
it?"
"What does Robert say about that?"
"He says the behavior of honeybees and sphex wasps is just as
complex, and it's all rote hardwiring. Not intelligence."
"But bees still communicate, right? They do that dance, to tell
the hive where the flowers are."
She shrugged, conceding the point.
"So you still might be able to talk to these things."
"Maybe. You'd think." She massaged her brow between thumb
and forefinger. "We haven't got anywhere, though. We played
some of their pigment patterns back to them, with variations. They
don't seem to make sounds. Robert synthesized a bunch of noises
that they might squeeze out of their cloacae if they were so
inclined, but those didn't get us anywhere either. Harmonic farts,
really."
"So we're sticking to the blood-cells-with-waldoes model."
"Pretty much. But you know, they didn't go into a loop.
Hardwired animals repeat themselves. Even smart ones pace, or
chew their fur. Stereotyped behaviors. But these two, they gave
everything a very careful once-over and then just—shut down."
They were still at it in ConSensus, slithering across one wall,
then another, then another, a slow screw-thread track that would
leave no square centimeter uncovered.
"Have they done anything since?" I asked.
She shrugged again. "Nothing spectacular. They squirm when
you poke them. Wave their arms back and forth—they do that
pretty much constantly, but there's no information in it that we can
tell. They haven't gone invisible on us or anything. We blanked
the adjoining wall for a while so they could see each other, even
piped audio and air feeds—Robert thought there might be some
kind of pheromonal communication—but nothing. They didn't
even react to each other."
"Have you tried, well, motivating them?"
"With what, Siri? They don't seem to care about their own
company. We can't bribe them with food unless we know what