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Peter Watts 204 Blindsight
keep it in sight. We had specimens now, things to be examined
under conditions of our own choosing; no point in risking any
more close approaches until we'd wrung every useful datum from
what we had.
Cunningham had expanded his lab space during my time in the
sepulcher. He'd built holding pens, one for each scrambler,
modules partitioned by a common wall and installed in a whole
new hab. The microwaved carcass had been sidelined like a
discarded toy from a previous birthday, although according to the
access logs Cunningham still visited it every now and then.
Not that he visited any part of the new wing in person, of course.
Not that he was even able to, not without suiting up and jumping
across the hold. The whole compartment had been disconnected
from its spinal lock and pushed to a tethered anchorage midway
between spine and carapace: Sarasti's orders, given to minimize
risk of contamination. It was no skin off Cunningham's nose. He
was happier leaving his body in pseudogravity anyway, while his
consciousness flitted between the waldoes and sensors and bric-abrac
surrounding his new pets.
Theseus saw me coming and pushed a squeezebulb of sugary
electrolytes from the galley dispenser. The Gang didn't look up as
I passed. One forefinger tapped absently against their temple, the
lips pursed and twitched in the characteristic mode that said
internal dialog in progress. I could never tell who was on top
when they were like that.
I sucked on the squeezebulb and looked in on the pens. Two
cubes suffused in pale red light: in one a scrambler floated center
stage, waving its segmented arms like seaweed in gentle surge.
The occupant of the other cage was squeezed into a corner, four
arms splayed across the converging walls; four others extended,
waving again, into open space. The bodies from which those arms
sprouted were spheroids, not flattened disks as our first—sample
had been. They were only slightly compressed, and their arms
sprouted not from a single equatorial band but from across the
whole surface.
Fully-extended, the floating scrambler was over two meters
across. The other seemed roughly the same size. Neither moved,