"You're revolting!" Ceredin spits, wondering if her mouth and vocal chords actually responded this time.
She doesn't care if she sounds insane for talking to the air. Bialar and the others are out of earshot, and besides, she wants to be heard, wants someone to know she's being held hostage in her own head.
"Merely pragmatic," Harvey replies.
This time, she can feel her mouth move and sense the vibration of her own voice, though she did not initiate the sounds. She can also feel her legs moving in a brisk, unnatural gait. Her hips are held at an odd angle that will make her back ache if she is forced to keep it up much longer. Her damaged leg screams agony each time her weight is forced onto it, but Harvey propels her body forward as if unaware of the pain, or at least indifferent to it.
"I was going to let you help. I wanted your help! There was no need for... this." She wants to make a sweeping gesture that includes her whole body, but her arms simply continue to swing in cadence with her walk.
"And you were about to announce my presence because you felt the need to explain your actions." Harvey snorts through Ceredin's nose. "They never would have given us a chance."
"I would have explained that you have nothing to gain, that you're only doing this out of-- what?-- gratitude? Guilt? The goodness of your self-regulation algorithms? And I would have been wrong, wouldn't I?"
"Spectacularly wrong. My motive is simple self preservation, a concept I learned from you." She feels her mouth curl into a half-smile.
"I only felt sorry for you because I thought you could be something better. There are so frelling few of us, Harvey! And you turn out to be a monster after all. It makes me sick!" She feels an overwhelming need to tug on her hair, and to her surprise, her hand responds to the impulse. She soon has a lock twined around her index finger, the ends of it stuffed into her mouth. Her body relaxes into its usual gait, and she sighs in relief.
So few of... us? Harvey muses.
"Yes, us. You're a created mind, a pseudo-consciousness, like me, and Sikozu, I suppose, but she's... different. She's always been in that bioloid; she's too grounded in the physical world."
So it is a... 'program thing', Harvey says, his mind-voice imitating Crichton's odd, twangy accent when he says the last two words.
"Oh, alright! If you insist on taking it to its basic level, then yes, I saw one of my own kind and I thought I could help you be more than Scorpius's tool. And in return, I get held prisoner in my own frelling body."
In return for your misguided sentiment, you obtain my assistance in freeing Moya, Ceredin. And you have control of your bioloid now. If I were exerting my influence, you would not have a mouthful of hair.
She takes the hair out of her mouth and lets it drop. "Interesting. I suppose you could have this bioloid if you wanted to take it by force. Maybe you are capable of caring for someone other than yourself."
They have reached the neural cluster. Ceredin takes the paraneural connective cable from her pocket and pinches one end of it with her left thumb and forefinger.
Perhaps I have other ambitions. As John would say, the simplest explanation is most often correct.
"And showing basic compassion is more complicated than whatever self-serving scheme you're trying to imply you have?" Without waiting for an answer, she raises her right hand to her eye. "Harvey, will you help me make the connection, like you did with Bialar?"
She spends the next half-macrot in one of Harvey's Earth mock-ups, dangling her feet into brackish water as she perches on the edge of a wooden platform. Then, without warning, she slides into the abstract eddies of Moya's data streams.
A Leviathan's mind has no need for symbols. The landscape of Moya's mind is composed of matrices and vectors, and Ceredin navigates them with no need for an avatar. Without exchanging words, she and Harvey agree that he will quarantine the corrupted version while she attempts to restore control to Pilot.
Creating a second instance of herself, she manifests her hologram on Pilot's console, even as she systematically searches for the treacherous code that keeps him comatose. The giant golden eyes that always regarded her with suspicion are closed, and the claws that used to flick through her insubstantial body now lay still. Even his skin looks faded.
"You'll be calling me a parasitic program again soon, I--"
A power surge shudders through Moya's circuits, and for a moment, Ceredin's existence is disrupted. Her hologram blinks on and off like a distant transmission being broadcast on the clamshell. When she returns to awareness, she is bombarded by failure signals from throughout the ship; pumps, life support systems, and lights are all flickering in confusion, as if an overactive child were sitting at Pilot's console, happily punching arbitrary buttons.
Harvey and the corrupted version are locked in combat, exchanging destructive bursts of data, each able to deflect the other's attacks. Ceredin fumbles through the active processes, searching for the one that control's Pilot's nutrient stream, but finds herself repeatedly slapped away. She calls out to Moya, but the Leviathan is silent, having sunk into despair.
Talyn enters the den, moving at a run, and stops only when he collides with Pilot's console, catching himself on his hands. He climbs onto the console and kneels on top of it, laying both hands on Pilot's head.
"He's alive," Ceredin says softly. Out of habit, she drapes an arm around Talyn's shoulders, though with her in her electromagnetic form neither she nor Talyn can feel the contact.
"Can't you do something to help him? Life support's down in Gemmi's lab and about half the corridors. I haven't checked command, but that's where Aeryn and Crichton were headed. If we don't get some control over the systems..."
"I know! Don't you think I'm trying? We're-- I'm in there, in Moya's control mechanisms, but so is the corrupted version."
Obviously ignoring her, Talyn stares past Pilot's immobile form and mouths the words "Moya" and "Mother" several times before shaking his head and facing Ceredin again. "She's not answering! Frell, Cer, what do we do?"
"I don't know!" She grabs a handful of her insubstantial skirt, twisting it around her fingers and tugging so hard that the simulated fabric begins to rip. "I wasn't programmed to handle this sort of--"
"That's it!" Talyn claps his hands together and breaks into a broad grin.
"Ah, what's 'it'?"
"You weren't programmed to handle this. It's not a problem that can be solved by analyzing data streams!" Still grinning, he swings his legs over Pilot's console and kneels amidst the tangle of wires and tubes that connect the symbiont to his Leviathan. With a grunt, he yanks out a cable and waves it in the air like a trophy.
"Oh, Talyn!" Ceredin's voice trembles, and a sudden flood of holographic tears course down her cheeks. "That connected the control panel to the nutrient pumps. Why..."
"Trust me, Cer. This--" he raises both hands and then taps his chest. "This is what's going to save Pilot. Just be ready. When he's back in control, he's going to need help staying that way." With that, he jumps over the console again and runs from the room.
Ceredin falls to her knees, her insubstantial body overlapping with Pilot's arms, her glittering tears disappearing in mid air before they reach the surface of the console. The battle between Harvey and the corrupted version still rages, and her instance within Moya now flounders, unable to help Pilot.
"Trust..." The soft mind voice carries a note of hope.
"Moya?" Ceredin whispers.
"Trust Talyn."
"Hm. You don't think he's gone fahrbot then?"
"Look for yourself." Moya directs Ceredin to an internal data stream that includes visuals and coordinates from several of the DRDs.
Ceredin gasps and then smiles. "He has them running Pilot's food supply pumps, and he's... he's helping, digging through the tubes, finding the right ones, showing the DRD's what to pump where. Oh, Moya! He's frelling brilliant!"
"Frelling brilliant," Moya repeats solemnly, her entire being reverberating with pride.
"Augh! Get away!" An angry claw sweeps through Ceredin's hologram with enough force that her bioloid form would have been thrown across the room.
"Pilot!" Ignoring his flailing limbs, she stretches out her arms as if embracing him. "It's alright. It's me, Ceredin--"
"I know who you are! You're the one who--" his eyes widen and then narrow. He cocks his head to one side and squints at her as if examining her in minute detail. "Very well, then. Moya says you're not the corrupted version."
"That's right. I'm here to help you. So is Harvey."
Pilot's eyes narrow again. "The neural clone?"
"I prefer to call him a pseudo-consciousness." Ceredin flashes a smile she learned from Chiana and frame's Pilot's face with her hands. "I trust him to do whatever it takes to save his own main function, and that means getting you back in full control of Moya. We can do it together, Pilot, the four of us."
"Five of us," Moya interjects, loading the word with an image of Talyn directing his unit of DRDs.
"Mmm..." Pilot growls and leans backwards, putting distance between himself and Ceredin's hologram.
"Pilot, please! We have to work as a team! Otherwise the corrupted version is too entrenched. If we don't stabilize Moya, all the fully organic lifeforms are in danger. That means Crichton, Aeryn, Chiana, D'Argo, Noranti, Rygel, and Gemmi. Mina could lose her pilot if you don't let us help!"
Pilot sighs and mutters something under his breath in his own language. Ceredin knows just enough to recognize the words as a prayer to both the Builders and the Primal Sea. He nods slowly. "I will agree to this as long as all extraneous programs will be removed from Moya once this ordeal is over."
"Yes, fine!" Ceredin snaps. She feels hurt and a bit angry at the idea of being forced to remove the instance of herself from Moya, but this is hardly the time to argue.
Sensing the change in Moya's systems, the corrupted version flees, darting from sector to sector, sabotaging processes in order to distract Pilot, who hastens to repair each problem as it occurs. The symbiont is growing stronger by the microt, nourished by the fluids that Talyn and his DRDs are forcing through the tubes. With Harvey's help, he begins seizing control of various subfunctions, fortifying them against interference and then turning them over to Moya.
Ceredin chases the corrupted version, easily able to anticipate her next move by virtue of the fact that they share ninety seven point four five percent of the same code. Within a tenth arn, the corrupted version is cowering on a tiny sector of one of Moya's aft consoles.
"I'm sorry about this," Ceredin whispers. "Really."
The length of time that it takes her to assimilate and neutralize the corrupted version is so small as to be unquantifiable, and is known only as epsilon. Moya's relief and gratitude flow through her circuitry, needing no words to be expressed. Ceredin sits on the edge of Pilot's console, prepared to jump off in a symbolic gesture as she leaves.
"Wait," Pilot sighs. "Ceredin... thank you."
"Hm. You're welcome, Pilot. And I can see why you and Moya need to be alone for a while. I suppose I don't mind removing myself."
"Moya hopes-- Moya and I hope you will visit us in your bioloid form." Pilot reaches out a claw, but instead of flailing through her hologram, it merely touches her hand.
"Of course! And often." She bends forward and brushes illusory lips against his head.
"Before you leave, would you like to... announce yourself over the comm?" Pilot offers.
"What? You mean, 'I am the goddess in the machine, I have delivered this Leviathan from the fell clutches of a corrupted pseudo-consciousness'?"
"Ah, yes, something along those lines." Pilot's mouth twists as if he has just tasted something sour, but he does not retract his offer.
"No, Pilot." Ceredin shakes her head. "I think everyone wants to hear from you. Go ahead."
He nods, looking relieved. "Very well." One claw flicks at the comm button, and he says, "Crew of Moya, I regret the recent... disturbances. Moya and I are once again in full control of all functions, including life support, and--" Pilot freezes as he listens to a voice only he can hear, his eyes going wide.
"What is it?" Ceredin demands, annoyed that Moya is communicating with Pilot on a special shared frequency.
"Mina's long range reconnaissance sensors have detected a Scarran dreadnaught that appears to be locked on to our location," Pilot finishes.