151: SET

The light from the robot eye is even more distracting the next morning. I drag myself out of bed and stumble into the main living area, where Tal is already at the computer.

“Did you sleep?” I ask, fumbling around for breakfast.

“Yep! But now I’m doing this. How’s your eye?”

“Nnngn. I have to see Doctor Kim again today. I bet she’ll want to scan my brain every day over this.” I find a brick of food, take a moment to try to summon up enough energy to marvel over the fact that it was teleported here from sixty five light years away, fail to summon that energy, and sit down and start to eat it.

“I bet I could make it go faster, if we still had access to the Courageous stuff. It is so not fair that we only found this program after leaving the ship. We should’ve woken Asteria way earlier.”

“Found something interesting, huh.”

“I found some controls for influencing the synnerve growth with a feedback system. Y’know, to make sure they get into the right part of the brain? Amy was so cool.”

“I think that part of the system probably predates Amy. By a long while. They’d need to do that with normal chronostasis, too.”

“Yeah, well, get me a chronostasis pod and the right hardware for this program and I could drive those synnerves right into your visual centre or whatever it’s called. Bam, done.”

“That’s the most horrifying thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Also, it wouldn’t help,” the Friend says, sitting next to me with its own brick of food. “The visual centre is in the back of the brain, the synnerves are already interfacing with it. Aspen’s problem right now is feedback; the synnerves and the real nerves learning to talk to each other and interpret information in a useful way. The brain needs to do that part. What Aspen needs is time.”

“And I’m sure we have plenty of that,” I say. “If this place doesn’t fall apart around us first. Those guys were literally biting each other yesterday over that radio breakage. I have no idea what to expect any more. There’s a real possibility of us being attacked.”

“If anyone comes for any of you, I’ll put them right down,” Tinera says, striding in with Captain Klees.

“Or maybe don’t do that,” the captain says. “Maybe don’t go starting a war as our first act on this planet. If anyone goes after anyone, we get our people to safety doing as little damage as possible and let the Hylaran legal system sort it out.”

“You could connect that eye cable to different stuff,” Tal says.

“Huh?” Experienced in the art of Tal Conversation, I mentally skip back through the last few conversation topics. “For my bionic eye?”

“Yeah. It’s just a cable connected to your cerebral port and interfaced with your brain. You could like, get an extra robot arm. Or plug into a scooter controls and drive it with your brain. If you wanted.”

“Uh-huh. I’m probably going to use it to see, I think. I think learning to control a robot arm or a motor scooter via synnerves connected to my eye might not be the best return on effort when I can use my hands to do both of those things.”

“Yeah, but are your hands incredibly awesome? No. They are not.”

“The amount of exposure necessary would render it prohibitive,” the Friend points out. “An eye is simple enough because it’s in operation all the time. If Aspen wanted to control a motor scooter via their eye socket, they’d have to spend large stretches of time driving it around with their eye socket, very regularly. Preferably every day.”

“Also,” Tinera points out, “we’re on a lot of sand out here. Not great scooter weather.”

“The Hylarans have those trucks,” Tal says. “We could use one of those.”

“Do you guys think this discussion is the best use of our time?” Captain Klees asks.

“Do you want to control a truck with your brain, Captain? You’re a DIVR like Aspen. We could – ”

“I absolutely do not want to undergo surgery and an untold amount of rehabilitation time learning through trial and error to possibly control a truck with my brain, no.”

“Your loss. If I was a DIVR, I’d be asking Dr Kim to do my plug and I’d build a mech suit. With enough training, I bet I could control a whole body with my brain.”

“You already control your body with your brain,” Tinera points out.

“You guys are no fun.”

“Whelp,” I say, finishing breakfast, “I’m going to shower and head into town to see whether we specifically are fucked in any way.”

“Do you want company?” Captain Klees asks.

“I think people are more likely to talk to me if we don’t keep walking around as a pack. I have to presume they think of us as a set and I need to observe what that means in practice so we don’t accidentally cause any scandals or social fuckups.”

“Good luck. Don’t get kidnapped by political extremists. Maybe take Tinera, just in case?”

“If anyone was willing to attack us directly, they would have done so. If I’m not back in two hours, panic. Do we know when that new radio will be prepared?”

“They said tomorrow morning,” the Friend says.

“That’s too long,” Tal says. “There’s nothing in there that should take more than an hour or two. They have the right printers. They’re stalling.”

“Politics, probably,” Captain Klees shrugs.

It always is. I shower and head out.

The town seems more normal than I’d expected. I assume. I’m not sure what ‘normal’ is on Hylara. People are going about their business and the novelty of our appearance seems to have worn off, since nobody stares at me. There’s also not all that much to see. Very little activity takes place in the too-thin atmosphere of the open air; most Hyalarans spend their time underground, at home, or in the central meeting area. Most of the people I see out and about are on their way somewhere.

On my way to the central meeting area, a kid stops me. No, not a kid, not here. She looks about ten years old, and she hands me a scrap of fabric with an intricately embroidered flower on it.

“The Cumulous set thanks you,” she says, handing it over. “My setmate is the chief distributor. Thanks to the medical information and supplies your ship brought, the doctors can grow him new feet.”

This is tricky. Different cultures have very specific customs about gifting and thanking people, and I don’t know the Hylaran ones. Stupid to be out with Max, whose job is exactly this sort of thing. Stupid of me not to have asked, when we were learning to wear the clothes and greet people and soforth. It’s such a vital question! Why didn’t I ask? I should know better! I can’t expect this ten yer old who has never seen, nor expected to see, a foreigner before, to automatically grasp that I’m unfamiliar with the proper behaviour in this situation. Am I supposed to gift something in return? Does embroidery had a specific relevance as a token, that I’m supposed to do something specific with it? It might, given how much they work it into their dome repairs. Or maybe they just find it pretty!

When in doubt, be as polite as possible and apologise later. Even if reciprocation is expected, she can’t be expecting it on the spot; embroidery takes time to make. I’ll get out and ask Max about it later.

“Thank you,” I say, taking some time to admire the fine work. (I’m no embroiderer, but you don’t study different cultures without getting at least somewhat of an eye for good craftsmanship, and the flower is well made.) “This is very beautiful.”

She touches my arm, briefly, and nods. “You bring us a treat,” she says. “My setmate will walk again.” And then turns and leaves without a goodbye.

Well. Someone else who thinks our arrival is a good thing.

In the central meeting area, I see the footless old distributor with his supply of crates, surrounded by people wanting goods. He looks busy and doesn’t notice, or at least doesn’t acknowledge, me. I reach up to brush my temple, where the tiny cable, too flexible and thin for me to feel, enters the side of my eye socket. Kim had no problem installing this, but that man doesn’t have artificial feet. My surgery was a million times easier, obviously; I had the port already, installing the cable was nothing. But they had the eye on hand. They don’t have feet on hand? Interesting. I’ll ask Dr Kim about it later.

I’m out of my depth here. Usually I investigate the social norms of a place pretty thoroughly before going there, and my questioning of Max feels really inadequate. A couple of people who look to be about my age are playing some kind of game with coloured stones at a small table; they wave me over.

“You’re Aspen,” one of them says, the term a little sharp in a direct sort of way, not unfriendly. “Courageous set.”

“That’s right,” I say cautiously.

“I’m Dennet. This is Kye. Cattail set, just down the hill.”

“You’re Hive’s fam – Hive’s set?”

“Hive is also Cattail set,” Dennet says after a momentary pause, and the careful wording makes me feel like I’ve committed a faux pas. Maybe ‘Hive’s set’ is wrong, implying that they’re in Hive’s group instead of all of them being in the same group? Maybe. Or maybe they’re just embarrassed about their setmate’s recent actions.

“And Celti,” Kye adds. Kye’s tone is slower, more relaxed. He puts a red stone on top of a blue one. “Things are tense at home.”

Celti and Hive, setmates? I wouldn’t have predicted that. I file that information away.

“Do you want to play?” Dennet asks.

“I don’t know how.”

“We will teach you.”

So I sit down and learn ‘dips’. It’s not a complicated game, just different enough from checkers to throw me and just similar enough to feel a bit off to play, like I’m doing checkers wrong. We talk as we play, and I learn that their set has five surviving members (one lost when they were still children, which isn’t completely unheard of; one lost in the famine; one, one of their elders, lost a few years ago to simple age and failing health), that their other setmate is named Lorna,that the pair of them are trying to stay out of the issues that are causing a rift in their set (notably, our appearance and supply of growing things), and that they don’t know anything about either sabotaged radio beyond what’s common gossip. I answer their questions about space, and Earth, and interesting differences between cultures I’ve seen, and what living trees are like. Their limited supply of textures makes it difficult to explain what leaves feel like; I end up explaining them as feeling sort of like the fabric used to make their tunics, but far more fragile. Natural fibres are either extremely rare on Hylara or absent entirely; synthetics that are easily moulded and shaped by their machines make more sense to send through the Vault.

Would wool survive a trip through the Vault? Presumably, yes. They receive food and medicine presumably intact enough to be useful. The dome canvases aren’t reliably airtight in the long term, but there’s plenty of canvas around that was probably sent through as canvas. No reason wool or cotton fibres, threads or cloth wouldn’t make it; mouldable plastic is just more efficient, I suppose. I glance at the wall next to me, where the fabric has been patched with an elaborate design of flowers that no Hylaran has ever seen in real life, and wonder if spinning would catch on if these people had wool.

Then the door opens, and someone comes into the dome, and everyone near the door turns to stare. And everyone else looks over, seeing those people suddenly on high alert.

They’re not staring at the young woman who entered. They’re staring at the door behind her.

“Couple of hours,” she tells them, apparently knowing what’s gotten their attention, although I have no idea. She heads for the crates of supplies.

Someone else peeks outside for a moment, then nods. “Couple of hours.”

“A couple of hours until what?” I ask.

“Rainstorm.” Dennet grins. “You have rain on Earth, right?”

“There’s rain on Earth.”

“This’ll be a nice reminder of home, then.”