PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 243 Blindsight
"It's still growing. It's not finished."
"That's supposed to reassure me?"
"All I'm saying is, we don't know," James said. "We could have
years yet. Centuries."
"We have fifteen days," Sarasti announced.
"Oh shit," someone said. Cunningham, probably. Maybe
Sascha.
For some reason everyone was looking at me.
Fifteen days. Who knows what had gone into that number?
None of us asked aloud. Maybe Sarasti, in another fit of inept
psychology, had made it up on the spur of the moment. Or maybe
he'd derived it before we'd even reached orbit, held it back against
the possibility—only now expired— that he might yet send us back
into the labyrinth. I'd been half blind for half the mission; I didn't
know.
But one way or another, we had our Graduation Day.
The coffins lay against the rear bulkhead of the crypt—on what
would be the floor during those moments when up and down held
any meaning. We'd slept for years on the way out. We'd had no
awareness of time's passage—undead metabolism is far too
sluggish even to support dreams—but somehow the body knew
when it needed a change. Not one of us had chosen to sleep in our
pods once we'd arrived. The only times we'd done so had been on
pain of death.
But the Gang had taken to coming here ever since Szpindel had
died.
His body rested in the pod next to mine. I coasted into the
compartment and turned left without thinking. Five coffins: four
open and emptied, one sealed. The mirrored bulkhead opposite
doubled their number and the depth of the compartment.
But the Gang wasn't there.
I turned right. The body of Susan James floated back-to-back
with her own reflection, staring at an inverse tableau: three sealed
sarcophagi, one open. The ebony plaque set into the retracted lid
*