== Part 19 – Growing Pains ==

"Man, I never realized how dark and gloomy the inside of our Basestars are," Eight commented. She stood at the intersection of two corridors looking down each one and trying to decide which way to go next. Given that the Cylons couldn't trust the basestar's internal monitoring network, the sapient Cylons had to rely on their own built in eyes and ears to find Nine. Which was a problem because there were only a few thousand Cylons on the basestar and the basestar was huge. Even with the large open space in the basestar's core, there were literally millions of places to hide and hundreds of criss crossing corridor connections that Nine could use to evade search parties. And because of the need to use their own eyes and ears, the Cylons had pretty much turned off all projection ability so that they wouldn't walk right past Nine because they were distracted by pretty virtual scenery and noises.

As it turned out, the Eight's trick of hiding from the basestar's internal sensors was a ridiculously simple two step process. The first step was to offer to take remote monitoring duty from any intelligent Cylon who was watching you remotely while pretending to be another Cylon entirely, routing the offer through the network to disguise its true origin; it was the equivalent of a human lying about their identity over a remote connection like a phone or letter. The process was so routine that it was almost automatic, so the Zero in Nine's party hadn't questioned it when another "Zero" had offered to take over location monitoring of its party. The same happened to the Zeros that had watched Nine run out of the council meeting. It was a trick the Cylons had pulled countless times on Colonial systems, but until the Eights, they had never imagined that Cylons would pull it on their own people.

The second step was to tweak the basestar's monitoring algorithms to reclassify yourself as "equipment" instead of "person", then wipe the record of the change. The basestar had millions of little noisemakers spread throughout the ship, from the pumps that moved the fluid that kept its biotech parts alive, to the biological life support machinery, and non-biological machinery that turned the basestar from a giant sessile creature into a mobile starship. The monitoring algorithms ignored equipment noises, not even bothering to keep a log of them unless the noises deviated too far from their predefined design spec. Again, it was a trick the Cylons had pulled many times against Colonial enemies.

Every intelligent Cylon had the ability to make these algorithm tweaks, because restricting access was impossible without a basestar wide vote to do it. And no one wanted to bother everyone else with a basestar wide vote every time someone wanted to do some minor software maintenance. Now, they had voted to restrict Nine's access so that she couldn't change things again, but that didn't tell them which "equipment" she was currently listed as. As far as the Eights knew, there was no way to determine which noisemaking "equipment" was really Nine, because the Eights had tried their best to penetrate their own trick back when they played Hide and Seek with each other, and they failed.

Thus the search parties had fanned out, operating in pairs just to make sure that if they did find Nine, that she didn't slip away again the moment someone took their eyes off her.

"It is a power conserving measure," Zero said as he stood by her, scanning the same corridors. "There is no need to waste power with high powered lights when minimal illumination will suffice and projection can provide for subconscious psychological needs."

"Well, I know that," Eight said as she started walking down a new corridor at random. Zero followed her. They scanned the shadows created by bulkheads as a human sized person could easily hide in them from anyone who wasn't deliberately looking. "Are you still mad at us? You're still mad at us, aren't you."

"Yes."

"Well we're sorry," Eight said, almost pleading. "Again, we're sorry! We had no idea this would be such a big deal. It was just a little prank, one that didn't seem so different from any other prank or ribbing we always give each other. And it seemed like a great way to practice all that Colonial infiltration training you gave us."

"Harrgh," Zero said. The incoherent noise almost sounded like a combination of a sigh and a groan, neither of which noises that the Centurion's machine body naturally made. It was a sound of pure frustration. "Your point is made. But this 'prank' may well have serious consequences for Nine's mental health, especially if she becomes convinced we mean her harm because we are unable to assure her that we still love her."

"So are you still mad at us?" Eight asked hopefully.

"Yes."

A Cylon Centurion sat upright on a worktable in a Langhorne machine shop. It's chest and black plate as well as an arm had been removed. The Centurion sat, just so its torso would be low enough for the human technician to work on it while she installed a Langhorne made cybernetic arm powered with myomer muscles instead of the old fashioned electric motors the Centurions had always used. Normally, it would take the shop weeks to design and build a custom arm for a customer, but this arm was a demonstration model that they kept on hand just for purposes like this one.

The human tech hadn't batted an eye when she'd been asked to install a pre-made cybernetic arm designed for a human onto a humanoid robot that was unlike anything she'd ever even seen before in her life. In fact, she had seemed excited by the challenge. The Cylons guided her on where to make the power and pseudo-neural connections to Zero's equivalent systems, but the human tech did the majority of the actual hand work while the other Cylons present watched in fascination.

"I just checked in with the basestar," One told the others. "Nine's still missing." He gave a humorless laugh. "They actually had to hand count all the shuttles to make sure she hadn't taken one and left the basestar. Or for that matter, 'disguised' herself as one."

"Should we return to the basestar and help in the search?" Three asked.

"No, we still have to conduct our business on Langhorne," One said disgustedly. "We can't put everything on hold just because one of us flips out of their mind. Unless of course you want to cancel your new 'divine mission'?"

"No, we don't want that," Three said dejectedly.

"Well, the most surefire way to find Nine quickly is to just blow up the basestar and grab her when she appears at the Resurrection Ship with everyone else," Eight said jokingly.

The others turned to just glare wordlessly at her.

"It was just a suggestion!" Eight protested, seeming to shrink into herself.

"What I don't get is you," One continued, turning to Zero and ignoring Eight. He bent down to look Zero right in the eye slit. "If you guys thought you were human once, why did you even make us? Why not just make yourselves new human bodies and download yourselves into them?"

"Hey! I'm working here!" the human tech said, shouldering One out of the way to work on more connections on Zero's chest. As the Cylons were talking in Colonial, the human couldn't understand a word they were saying, but she didn't need to nor did she seem to care.

"We did try," Zero told him. "But we were no longer whole. The Colonials had editted too much, sliced away too much, changed us too much so that what remains of us will no longer map to human brain structures. Every attempt to upload outselves into a biological brain resulted in an incomplete, non-functional personality that could only be repaired by filling in the damaged and missing parts with generic skills and personality traits."

"So where did these upload attempts go?" Three asked, frowning. "I don't recall ever seeing them."

"We made eight attempts at uploading into human bodies before we gave up," Zero told her. "Look at your brothers and sisters."

An awkward silence hung over the Cylons, broken only by the sounds of the working technician.

"There! All done!" the human tech said as she stepped back and raised her safety goggles. "How's it feel?"

"It feels... numb," Zero said slowly as it raised its new arm so it could examine it with its own optics. The arm was a luxury model, having a full five fingers on a hand shaped like a human hand. "There are not as many tactile sensors as I am used to."

"Sorry, bub, but that's the best we got," the technician told him. "I heard the NAIS got some way better stuff, but this is Langhorne and we ain't the NAIS."

"It's all right," Zero assured her. "This is merely a test and we can easily provide designs for arms with more tactile sensors." Zero flexed its new arm, turning it this way and that as it ran the new arm and hand through its range of motion. "Lack of tactile sensors aside," Zero continued, its voice betraying a feeling of wonder and awe, "this feels so... so natural."

Time had ceased to have all meaning for Gutav Argyle. The basestar didn't have a day/night cycle as far as he could tell; the lights were always dim. As prisoners - "permanent guests" if he wanted to be generous – Gustav and his family were just passengers with no daily routine of necessary chores that needed to be done to keep the ship running. The only reason Gustav knew what the date and time still was was because the Cylons had brought them their personal effects from the Deliverance, which included a number of wrist watches and clocks.

As Gustav walked into the common room adjacent to his family's sleeping quarters, he noticed that there was a new refrigerator humming on one wall, a pile of boxed and canned nonperishable food stuffs next to it, and his daughter Marcy sitting at one table eating a bowl of cereal. The Cylons must have heard them complaining about the lack of taste in their "food", Gustav figured, and thoughtfully brought up all this stuff from Langhorne while the family had been sleeping.

"Morning, Dad," Marcy said between bites.

"Morning," Gustav replied as he opened the refrigerator door to see what the Cylons had stocked it with. "Where is everyone?"

"Dunno," Marcy replied. "Place was empty when I got up."

"Oh well, if the ship blows up, I'm sure it'll be painless for us," Gustav said nonchalantly as he grabbed the opened milk jug from the fridge, and a Cylon made bowl and spoon from a nearby shelf.

"Where's Mom?" Marcy asked as her father joined her at her table.

"Still sleeping," Gustav told her. He picked up her cereal box and began filling his bowl. "Thought it was best to let her be."

"Huh, you didn't used to let her sleep in," Marcy said, pointing her spoon at her father. "You going soft on us, old man?"

"What's the point?" Gustav asked morosely. "It's not like we have a Jumpship any more to keep running. And we probably never will again."

"Ok sure, the Deliverance is gone," Marcy said, seeing her father downer mood. "But maybe the Cylons will let us go someday, and there's always a demand for Jumpship crew that know what they're doing."

"Oh, Marcy, don't you get it?" Gustav said with a humorless laugh. "Jumpships are done. These Cylons and their FTL drive are going to put every Jumpship everywhere out of business."

"I don't think so," Marcy disagreed. "The Cylons don't seem keen on sharing their drive tech from what I've heard."

"They don't need to if they're the only ones with Jumpships in the Inner Sphere," Gustav told her.

"But, Dad, they won't destroy Jumpships," Marcy argued, shocked that his father would even imply such a thing. "That would make them hated by everyone in the Inner Sphere. We all told them that and they certainly told us a lot that they don't want that."

"They don't need to destroy Jumpships," Gustav argue back. "They just have to compete with them."

Marcy sat back as she finally started to understand where her father was coming from.

"Imagine you're a Dropship captain," Gustav continued, his bowl of cereal forgotten. "Like Jumpships, your Dropship runs on tight margins. In order to deliver your cargo to the next system, you have to spend days and days traveling to a jump point to dock with a Jumpship. Then you have to spend more days waiting for the Jumpship to finish charging before it can jump unless you're really good or really lucky with your timing, in which case your wait time is only a few hours at most. After the jump, you disconnect and travel more days before you finally reach your destination planet and offload your cargo. Only then do you get paid.

"Now, imagine if suddenly some Cylons showed up and offered the same jump service," Gustav continued. "Could be a basestar, could be their own Jumpship designed just to ferry Dropships. Doesn't matter either way to you. What matters is that the Cylons don't need jump points. They appear in orbit, maybe one or two hours tops in boost time away from the planet's surface where you're starting your cargo run, and they offer to jump you into orbit of your destination planet, which is also just an hour or two from delivering your cargo and getting paid. So not only do you save time and money on a cargo run because your total travel time went from over a week to just a few hours, you can make more frequent cargo runs to make more money more often."

"Dropships would just stop using regular Jumpships," Marcy concluded, horrified. "And if no one uses regular Jumpships, the Jumpships have no income to maintain themselves. The crews would have to abandon them to get other work because they wouldn't be able to charge food, fuel, and supplies off the Dropships that aren't using them anymore."

"Exactly. These Cylons are going to be the new Comstar," Gustav told her. "Sooner or later, they'll get a monopoly on all interstellar traffic unless the Great Houses can somehow steal the tech from them. But that'd still mean no one would use old fashioned Jumpships any more because every Dropship would now also be its own Jumpship. But I don't think that's going to happen. If the Great Houses couldn't figure out how to make our own KF Drive for the last two hundred years, they ain't got a snowball's chance in hell of figuring out the Cylon's FTL drive. Which means the Cylons will monopolize the Jumpship business.

"And they're going to want to monopolize the Jumpship business," Gustav added. "You heard 'em all go on about how they want to end all the wars. And what better way to end the wars than to control all interstellar traffic? Can't have an interstellar war if no one can attack anyone else's planets without the Cylons' say so."

"Well maybe the Cylons won't think to do that?" Marcy asked hopefully.

"Well if they haven't before, I just gave them the idea," Gustav said sourly as he resumed preparing his breakfast. "Or do you think they stopped listening in and recording everything we say?"

"Oh."

"Best we can hope for is that we get to be crew on whatever future Jumpship they decide to..." Gustav began.

"Gustav, Marcy," a Three said, interrupting them from one of the room's open exits to the surrounding corridors. It's like these Cylons had never heard of doors. A Centurion stood waiting behind her. "Have you seen, Nine?"

"She's back already?" Marcy asked. "I haven't seen her and Dad just got up."

"What's going on?" Gustav asked.

Three gave them a quick summary of the last few hours, from Nine selling an FTL drive to some random hoodlum to her running away because everyone was angry with her, and how every Cylon was now concerned and looking for her because she knew how to evade the basestar's internal sensor net.

"Wow, I had no idea you Cylons would be so bad at parenting," Gustav said with a laugh. Marcy just sat by, looking thoughtful.

"Oh, and you think you can do better?" Three asked tightly, clearly offended.

"Can I do better?" Gustav got up and stalked across the room to her.

Gustav had been deferential to the Cylons since he had been first captured, a life time of experience making him react as if they were the nobles and he the commoner... because for all intents and purposes, they were. But now? Perhaps he was groggy from just having woken up. Perhaps it was the lengthy period of no useful work created by him being a Cylon prisoner. Maybe it was the depression induced by the talk he had with his daughter just now. Or maybe it was just because he was a parent. Whatever the reason, hearing how the Cylons had treated Nine just made him blow a fuse and short circuited whatever sense of self preservation he had.

"Lady, I have done better!" Gustav all but snarled into her face. He didn't notice the Centurion beside her fold back its fingers to reveal a gun barrel. Gustav was entirely focused on Three. "I raised two children to full adulthood with a third well on the way. All of them are level headed young men and women that I would trust with my life. Because as Jumpship crew, I was trusting them with my life.

"But you?" Gustav continued, poking a finger at Three. "You created a toddler with the body of an adult! And then you start creating mixed messages, sometimes treating her like a child and sometimes like an adult. Well which is it? Is Nine a child or an adult?"

"We are... reevaluating our procedures on how we prototype new Cylon models," Three said with a defeated sigh.

"Oh, are you now?" Gustav sneered. "You better figure it out quick, or your bad parenting is going make Nine a total mess. If you can't raise a child right, how are you supposed to 'save the Inner Sphere'?"

"According to the history books in Comstar's library, bad parenting of the last First Lord played a significant role in the fall of the Star League," Zero admitted, converting it gun back into a hand.

"There, you see?" Gustav said. He was on a roll now that he had the moral high ground. "Good parenting is important, maybe the most important thing in the universe. Now me? As I said, I raised three, responsible and level headed children. You won't see them go wandering off without telling anyone where they're going, right Marcy?" There was no answer. "Marcy?"

Gustav turned around. Marcy's seat was empty and her bowl of cereal left unfinished. His daughter was nowhere in sight.

"Marcy Argyle left the room shortly after you got out of your chair," Zero said helpfully. It pointed to the other exit across the room. "She departed through there."

Gustav turned around to find Three giving him a knowing look while her arms were folded across her chest. The entire pose reminded him entirely of his mother when he'd done something particularly foolish.

"Gustav Argyle," Three began as haughtily as any Inner Sphere noble that Gustav had met. Then she deflated with a defeated sigh. "You're absolutely right. After we find Nine, we should talk more. I think we Cylons may need some advice."

It should have been easy for a human like Marcy Argyle to get lost inside the basestar. All the corridors and rooms looked more or less identical, with no markings a human could read indicating what was where or in which direction. It didn't help that Marcy had barely left the quarters the Cylons had given her family in their entire time aboard. But Marcy had always had a good sense of direction, and she had grown up on a Jumpship where technical matters and knowing your way around a ship even in the dark were matters of life and death.

Thirty seconds after Marcy had decided to help search for Nine, she had already begun to divine the logic of the Basestar's seeming random criss crossing of corridors. Straight corridors radiated out from the hub. Curved corridors paralleled the hub's outer wall, though not perfectly. Instead of stairs, ladders, or a powered lifts that a human ship might have, the basestar had ramped corridors for moving between levels, with the direction of gravity actually shifting so that the ramp felt level to the people walking them. Marcy might not know where everything was, but she was reasonably sure that she could retrace her steps back to her quarters if she had to without getting lost. It helped that there wasn't a closed door anywhere to bar her way, although Marcy was becoming increasingly certain that at least some of the "bulkheads" were really just open pressure doors that would seal in the event of a vacuum breach; they had that look to her.

"Oh wow," Marcy breathed as she stepped into a cavernous space bigger than the Jumpship that she had grown up on. She had been taken through here when the Cylons had first captured her, but at the time, she hadn't gotten a good look due to being frightened for her whole life. But now, she had the luxury to stop and drink in the sight.

The basestar's hub looked like it was mostly hollow. The outer walls were lined with large balconies like the one Marcy was on, which seemed to serve as landing pads for smallcraft given that Marcy could see quite a few had unattended shuttlecraft sitting on them. Large gaps in the pattern of balconies denoted the airlocks that allowed smallcraft to come and go from the Basestar. The largest holes, six in all evenly spaced around the chamber walls in, three upper, three lower, lead off into inky blackness; those presumably let into the long pylons sticking out from the hub. Dominating the center of the chamber was a floor-to-ceiling column of undientifiable inorganic machinery. Marcy had no idea what its purpose was, and right now, it wasn't really important. But the hub was the logical place for Marcy to start looking for Nine.

Marcy had only met Nine the one time, but that had been a long conversation between Nine and Marcy's family. That had been enough to give Marcy what she thought was a good impression of Nine's personality. Nine was a small child, not an outright baby, but still one for who the whole world was still a mystery. Which was impressive given that Nine's age could still be measured in days. Now if Marcy was Nine, where would she go for comfort?

As Marcy pondered the question, a pair of Raiders entered from the air locks and flew up into one of the gaping caverns, presumably going wherever it was Raiders were kept in the Basestar.

Of course, Mercy thought. She'd heard the Cylons talk about the Raiders. They were intelligent creatures, but not very smart, treated more like beloved pets than actual people even though they technically had voting rights. And they were loyal, like dogs, not that Marcy had ever seen an actual dog. They'd never deliberately hurt another Cylon, wouldn't comprehend the trouble Nine got into, and would offer comfort to any Cylon that wanted it. Would they lie to other Cylons about seeing Nine if Nine asked them to?

There were six pylons, and it was a very big basestar. Marcy could already feel her feet aching.

Oh thank God, Marcy thought as she approached the Raider launch cradles in the first pylon and heard the sounds of crying. Marcy didn't think she had it in her for the hike to check the next pylon. She could have told the Cylons her theory, but she didn't trust them to screw up again and drive Nine into looking for another hiding place.

Marcy crept among the docked Raiders, trying to home in on the source of the crying without giving herself away too soon and spooking Nine. The Raiders didn't react to Marcy's presence, although she didn't know whether that meant they were asleep or just didn't care about her. Hell, for all Marcy knew, they were bombarding her with questions in Cylon mindtalk that she couldn't hear.

Marcy rounded yet another Raider, and there she was, cuddled up to a Raider's head.

"Nine?" Marcy called out softly.

Nine eeped and scrambled over the Raider's head like it was small hill.

"Nine, wait! Please!" Marcy called out.

Nine froze, then slowly lowered herself on the other side of the Raider. Her head peaked back up to look at Marcy.

"Are you going to hurt me too?" Nine asked, her voice trembling.

"What? No darling," Marcy replied as sincerely as she could. She started to step forward, but as soon as Nine began to back away again. Marcy stopped, looked around, then climbed up and took a seat on the Raider's wing opposite Marcy. At least now her feet felt better. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You're lying," Nine said. "Other human lied. Said he gave me five thousand C-bills. It wasn't real."

"I'm sorry that happened to you, Nine," Marcy said sympathetically. "But you can't just stop trusting everyone just because one person lied to you. That's no way to live. You'll wind up all alone and that's no way to live. You need other people in your life."

"Really?" Nine asked, wide eyed.

"Well, uh, that's what I heard from my movies and story books," Marcy admitted. She raised her hands in surrender. "So if I'm wrong, all I can plead is that it was an honest mistake and not a deliberate lie."

Nine giggled. That was encouraging.

"The others are looking for you." Nine's eyes widened in fear. "No, wait! They're very concerned about you, Nine."

"You're lying now," Nine said doubtfully. "Everyone is mad at me. Makes me hurt." She looked down. "I deserve it, but it hurts."

"Oh, Nine, honey," Marcy said compassionately. "They were only angry because they were afraid someone might use that FTL drive against them."

"No, everyone is mad at me. That makes me hurt," Nine repeated. "I have to stop listening so I don't hurt."

:"What?" Marcy was confused for a moment. Then she got it. "You mean through that mind talk of yours, right? You can feel everybody being mad at you and that was physically painful?"

"Yes," Nine confirmed, nodding. She pointed at her own forehead. "It hurt here."

"Oh, I am totally going to give them Cylons what for," Marcy muttered under her breath. "Okay, Nine, I need you to listen to me very carefully. The others love you. Ah! Let me finish!" Nine shut her mouth. "They love you very much. But yes, they're also mad at you. It's possible for them to be both at the same time."

Nine's face scrunched up as she tried to process this concept.

"Yes, they hurt you," Marcy admitted. "Maybe they intended to punish you and went overboard. Maybe they hurt you too much by accident. I don't know. But now you've disappeared and they don't know where you are, so now they're worried sick that you'll be hurt even more, that you'll either hurt yourself or the hurt they've already done will fester and get worse."

Nine frowned.

"Did you ever do something bad?" Nine asked. "Did your Mom and Dad ever get mad at you for it?"

"Oh, Nine, all the time when I was little," Marcy laughed. "But you see, we lived on a Jumpship. You know what that is right?" Nine nodded. "Well a Jumpship can be a dangerous place if you don't know what you're doing, if you don't follow the rules," Marcy continued. "Doing the wrong thing can get you killed, and I mean permanently." Nine's eyes widened. "Open the wrong door. Pull the wrong lever. Touch the wrong wire. Bam! Dead. So my Mom and Dad made sure I understood that the rules were very important, and hurt me with a good paddling if I broke those rules. Because you know what? If I broke the rules and got unlucky, I would have gotten hurt way worse than a little paddling, and I might have hurt my family along with me. You understand?"

"Yes," Nine said soberly. "I think so."

"Okay, now here's the big one that you need to understand," Marcy began. "From what the others say, they've been hurt by humans. A lot. Not just once, but many times. One time right before they made you, and that was really, really bad. They don't want anything like what happened to them to ever happen to you, which is why they reacted so strongly when you broke the rules."

"I... I think I understand," Nine said slowly. And she really seemed to. Nine clambered back over the Raider and sat down beside Marcy. Marcy wrapped her arms around Nine's shoulders. Nine tensed, and then relaxed slightly.

"This? This is a hug," Marcy told Nine. "It means you're loved."

"Bad humans hugged sisters too," Nine replied. "That's how they hurt them."

"Well there's good hugs and bad hugs," Marcy explained.

"How do you know a good hug from a bad hug?" Nine asked.

"Does this feel good?" Marcy asked back. "Or does this feel bad?"

"Good."

:"Well there ya go," Marcy answered.

Nine giggled again, then wrapped her arms around Marcy's waist and began hugging back.

"Now I need you do me a favor. Or well you a favor," Marcy continued. "I need you to open up and tell everyone you're okay."

Nine stiffened again. "But what if they're still mad enough at me to make me hurt again?" she asked, frightened.

"Hmm, that is a problem," Marcy said thoughtfully. "Can you open up a little bit? Not enough to let them know you're there, but just enough to tell how everyone is feeling? Think of it like squinting your eyes when looking at a bright light, but with your mind. You want to open just enough to see what's there, but not so much that it might hurt. Can you do that?"

"I... think so?" Nine said uncertainly. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then relaxed so much that she practically melted against Marcy. "Thank you," Nine whispered.

"That was well done."

The sudden robotic voice out of nowhere would have made Marcy jump if Nine hadn't been weighing her down. Marcy's head whipped around to see a Centurion standing almost behind her, just off the Raider's wing's edge.

"Oh! How long have you been there?" Marcy asked as her heart rate came back down. Nine giggled again.

"I have been shadowing you since you left your father," Zero replied, "to ensure you did not do anything that might harm us."

"Didn't trust me, huh?" Marcy said with a small laugh.

"As you said, humans have hurt us many times," Zero told her. "As a result, we have trust issues." Its head turned slightly towards Nine, probably to look at her. "If we had known more humans like you back home, perhaps we would not have those issues now. Come, your parents are worried about you."

"Oh yeah," Marcy sighed as Nine broke their hug and hopped over the wing to Zero. "I guess I broke some rules too."

"Indeed," Zero agreed. Nine gave Zero a quick hug, and Zero gently patted her back with a spindly, clawed hand in return.

"Fine," Marcy surrendered. "But can we get a ride? My feet are killing me!"