Chapter 25

Charon paced ahead of them, shouldering aside foliage. Each footfall was solid now, quite audible. Occasionally he held a branch out of the way so that Xen could pass without it hitting her in the face. She could hear Bell right behind her. Changeling seemed to be circling around to their left, trying to avoid low-hanging branches. For her, at least, footing was not an issue.

They passed two dead yao guai, already cooling in the warm night and stinking of blood and musk. Each one had been shot in the face from in front. Twice.

"Error," Bell said at the second one. "Data inconsistency. Please leave the area immfuck. Sorry. I have a base predisposition to consider dead organisms in a high-radiation environment as an indicator for evacuation. Just ignore it. I'm editing the damn protocol now."

"It's not a problem," Xen said. "Charon wouldn't be making so much noise if there was anything dangerous nearby. He can tell things like that."

"Really? How the Hell does he do that?" Bell asked.

"I don't know," Xen said. Glancing back, she saw the light blinking behind Bell's left iris again. It made a small, cold pinpoint in the dark, light without heat. "But if I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with the fact that situational hyper-awareness isn't uncommon in very traumatized humans. Does that reflect your experience, Charon?"

"Yes," Charon said. He had no temperature response to the question. But then, he didn't really seem bothered by being asked personal questions. There was, after all, no privacy clause in his contract.

"And 'traumatic' is a good description of Charon's life to date," Xen went on. "And he's been doing what he does for more than thirty years, and he's still alive. So whatever it is, it works for him."

"Thirty years," Bell said, and Xen felt rather than saw her shiver. "I can't imagine this going on for that long. I think I'd start erasing core data long before that."

"That is not dissimilar to certain organic coping mechanisms," said Changeling's voice from off to the left. "Although memory leak leading to overfocus on the traumatic record is far more common."

"She means those nightmares you have, right?" Bell said.

"Right," Xen said. "Oh. My..."

Charon had stopped at the lip of a large depression in the ground. There were no trees in the hollow, though bushes and grass grew up here and there. The waxing moon shone brightly down on the elegant curve of a corroded gray hull. The roughly saucer-shaped craft lay tilted against the other side of the depression. Two small wings protruded forward on either side of the shattered cabin. The cockpit was a round bubble of starred and shattered transparent material that surely was only superficially like glass. Earth had mounded up around it with the impact, though it had now been long enough that there were plants growing up out of it.

There were no plants growing on the empty space suit that lay nearby. In fact, the ground around it was bare stone for several inches, which was why the silvery material was so easy to spot. There was still a dark smear on the cracked material of the bubble helmet. They might have been in a hurry, but the Doctors had not been destructive. Though the suit lay flat and empty, they had clearly sealed it again after extracting its precious contents. It had red boots. Xen wasn't sure why.

She started slowly down the steep side of the hollow, watching her footing. There was plenty of time, she told herself, wiping her sweaty hands on her pants.

Don't get overeager and damage the data.

"Everyone be careful," she said. "I'm after information here. I don't want anything destroyed."

"I am receiving a radio transmission," Changeling said. The packbot glided easily down into the depression. "Probable origin is inside the craft."

"Really?" Xen said. "I wonder what its power source is." That wasn't so very unusual in itself. There were prewar technologies from this planet that still worked fine after two hundred years; twenty or thirty was nothing. "Can you replay it?"

"Affirmative," Changeling said. "But I doubt it will be informative." There was a brief sputter, and then a burst of speech. The voice was slow, measured, and completely incomprehensible. Xen listened to the message run through once, then repeat itself. She had hoped she might somehow grasp some part of the xenolanguage if she heard it. Perhaps there would be some part of her brain that belonged completely to her third contributor, some alien organ that contained racial learning or memory. It didn't happen. The words remained unknowable.

"All right," she said finally. "You have a recording?"

"Affirmative," Changeling said.

"Good. Find a place to drop your cargo. Write your sensory data to permanent memory from this point until we leave the area. Even with your oversized AI in there, you should have room."

"Acknowledged. Recording continues." Changeling moved to a relatively clear space that was still several yards from the containment suit. She lowered her three arms and let go of the edges of the cargo net. It dropped onto the grass with a thump and a rustle.

"I'm going to need some apparati." Xen went to the resulting pile to dig out a couple of her smaller tools and the precious padded box of sample jars. "Bell, will you be all right here for a while? I have a lot to do."

"I'm okay," Bell said. She was still looking around. "I've got some reprocessing to do again anyway. I can see hanging around you is going to require a lot of rebuilds."

"I've had to do a few myself," Xen said absently, and went to walk around the ship with Changeling close behind. The hull had surprisingly few markings, no trace of writing or anything that might mark the craft individually.

But this is a reconnaissance vehicle, Xen thought. It was probably built with anonymity in mind. Especially if they didn't want Earth to know they were watching. I wonder what kind of shielding it has.

"Changeling," Xen said. "Assess. Where are the rads are coming from?"

"Best hypothesis is that a propulsive mechanism was damaged by the crash," said Changeling. "It would have to be very stable to continue leaking consistently for twenty years without total loss of containment. The Doctors' records indicate the leak was present at the time they arrived."

"I know. I've read them. I admit, I'm a little surprised the craft is still here."

"It is a reasonable conclusion from the available data," Changeling said. "The vehicle is large and heavy, it is partly concealed by the terrain, and the return of foliage after Project Purity has undoubtedly served to conceal its position further. Human xenophobia would also discourage potential looters where the radiation would provide only a temporary deterrent."

"I'm sure," Xen said. "Ah hah. The source of our radiation leak." A panel was missing from the back of the craft, and a long skein of tangled wire dangled down to the ground. With her inner lids open and her goggles off, the purple bloom of gamma was quite obvious, though it diffused into the general tint of her surroundings within a few feet.

"Geiger count is consistent with that view," Changeling said. "If you remain in proximity you will need to take another Rad-X in 30 minutes."

"Acknowledged," Xen said. "Let's see what we can see." She knelt to peer inside the cavity. It presented, as expected, a mass of semi-corroded wires and tubes. Some of the tubes were transparent, still carrying dark-colored liquids (Coolants? Lubricants?) around the inside of the ship.

If it's anything obvious, it will be near the outside, Xen thought. Something that took a hit when the ship crashed.

The glow of gamma was broad and diffuse inside the compartment. Given how long the leak had continued, this was not surprising. Xen squinted, looking for any suspicious brighter spot. She found it behind another tangle of wires as she moved them aside with a probe. The tube actually glowed faintly even in the ordinary visual spectrum, a pale green. A thin drip of liquid fell out of it and splattered on the wires below as Xen watched.

"Glue dot," Xen said, holding out the probe. Changeling applied a small blob of adhesive to the end. Xen dabbed it over the leak until the dripping ceased. "Well, that's stopped the leak. Query: Can we decontaminate?" she asked.

"Negative. Not with available resources. Irradiation of the surrounding area will fade within ten to twenty years."

"That doesn't help us," Xen said. "But I'm glad, anyway. I might be able to come back with heavier equipment some day. I'd just as soon nobody found the site before then. Here, you should at least be able to decon the probe with your laser."

"Affirmative." Changeling saw to this as Xen walked back around the hull to see what the others were doing. Charon stood at the lip of the hollow. As Xen watched, his head tracked slowly from side to side, surveying the surrounding area. The shotgun was still on his back. Bell squatted near him on the rim, lips moving without sound. Neither seemed disturbed by the proximity. They seemed to be operating under a silent agreement that each would ignore the other.

"I stopped the rad leak," Xen said. "Changeling says the contamination will take years to fade, though."

"Please evacuate -" Bell refocused abruptly on Xen. "Sorry. I thought I got that one. What are you going to do now?"

Xen shrugged. "Look at everything. Have Changeling make recordings. I'd like to haul that suit home, but if it was too heavy for the Doctors – for the last people here – it'll probably be too heavy for me, too. Anyway, I'm going to try and get samples of the materials. From the cockpit, too, if I can."

"What about the mechanisms?" Bell said. She straightened up slowly, looking down at the ship. "Do you think it has any systems active still?"

"It looks bad," Xen said. She turned to survey the torn and rusted state of the cockpit's interior. "But I'll have to check. Computer records from this thing would be worth more than caps. Even if I get nothing but pics of a screen scrolling. I'm sure there's nothing there Changeling can interface with. I couldn't take the risk of damage to her AI, even if there was."

"I remind you that in the event of severe damage to my artificial intelligence, I have been instructed to dump all records to a secured internal device," Changeling said from behind her. "It will eject with my medical supplies if the emergency button is triggered. But I agree that avoidance of damage would be a preferable solution in terms of transportation and convenience."

"More than slightly," Xen said. "I suppose you have no emotional reaction to the fact that you'd be dead if that happened."

"I do not," Changeling said. "And in any case, death is an insufficiently applicable term to an artificial intelligence."

"You mean Tori will still be functional," Xen said. She added to Bell, who was watching with apparent curiosity, "Tori is the robot who copied herself into the packbot's chassis. Originally, it was meant to be a much more primitive AI. I made my other bots stay behind when I left. Tori found a way to come along. She's not prissy, like the copy is, but she's always been a stubborn bot." Xen smiled sadly. "I guess that's where I got it from. My reading says those things are more learned than innate."

"I guess they are, in organic people," Bell said. "I envy that a little bit." She walked slowly down into the hollow, keeping her balance easily even on the steep slope. "You change yourself all the time, sometimes without even knowing it – just like walking and breathing. I have to do it on purpose, step by step." She illustrated with a firm step forward into the grass.

"But sometimes things change when we don't want them to," Xen said. "And I don't have your degree of control over my error processing. I wish I did."

"The time is 11:20 p.m.," Changeling said. "Another Rad-X is recommended."

"Oh. Right." Xen went to swallow another pill. Bell watched her. Xen almost choked when she said,

"So you're doing this because you're part alien, right?"