Thursday 17 May 2007

Symbiosis - Conversion part 3

2543 (17-2nd-6) New Calendar - Prima Centurai

“Well?”

“Well. Her intelligence levels certainly match the psychograph.”

Inge joined Groma at the two-way mirror and looked at the girl lying on the bed. She seemed restless, constantly moving her head from side to side and tapping her fingers. Groma watched her. If he paid attention, he thought he could almost discern a pattern in her movements.

“Is that part of the withdrawal?” he asked. Inge gave a graceful shake of the head.

“No. I’m pronouncing her physically fit today, Baroth is releasing her later. Right now, she’s just bored.”

“Well, if she is a genius,” Groma murmured. “How old is she, exactly?”

“Twenty six,” Inge said quietly. “The psychograph was made eighteen years ago, when she was eight. According to my calculations, if we handle her right, give her the right knowledge at the right time, her intellect will increase even beyond the current indication.”

Groma stared at the medtech, and turned back disbelievingly to the figure on the bed. It wasn’t that he’d never met a High Intellect before, but she was just so…different from them. The usual look was of a middle aged being, about seventy or eighty, with enough excess fat to feed a small planet and an ego big enough to be its own planet. The girl on the bed was as lithe as a cat from eighteen years as a worker, slender and muscular, with a remarkably delicate bone structure and, from the little Baroth and Inge had told him, a disposition as curious and eager as a child’s.

“Wow,” he murmured, and then grinned. “I love a woman with a brain.”

“You’re Fennorim now,” came Calin’s acerbic voice from behind them. “You love anything that moves.”

“Oh, Calin,” Groma said dramatically. “You wrong me so, and may I say how ravishing you’re looking tonight?”

“You may not,” she said flatly, swatting a barbel away as she took up position beside him. “Baroth’s just going in now.”

“Is that a new scent?”

"I'm imagining eating a tuna sandwich right now."

"I love a woman with imagination."

“Shut up, Groma.”

*************

The door slid open, and A4368A looked up hopefully. As Baroth walked in, she smiled widely.

“Can I get up today?” she asked. “I want to do something.”

“Really?” Baroth asked, interested. “What is it?”

“I want to look at that,” she said, looking at the pot he’d brought in last time. She noted his smile. “And I want to feel the mirror.”

“Are you bored?” Baroth asked delicately. She thought about it.

“Probably,” she concluded, and felt the warm glow of achievement as he grinned.

“Well, I have some good news for you,” Baroth announced. “You can get up now. Inge says you’re safe and well.”

“Really?” she asked, joy soaring inside her. “Now?”

“Of course,” he said, moving to the panel on the wall where he’d gotten the water. There was a sharp beeping sound, and then the metallic buckles on each strap clicked open, and the restraints fell from her limbs.

She rolled instantly onto her side, curling her legs up to her chest and revelling in the sensation of eased muscles. Her shoulders complained, so she pushed her arms above her head and felt the joints click softly. She stayed like that for a few seconds, enjoying the feelings her body was experiencing. Movement was underrated, she decided. She grinned at Baroth, who chuckled.

“Do you want to get up now?” he asked. “Just do it slowly, you might get dizzy otherwise.”

“What am I?” she asked. “Right now. I’m not bored.”

“Excited.”

Ah. Excited. She liked excited; it made her feel tingly, and happy. Abruptly she pulled her arms down and pushed herself up on them into a half-sit, her weight supported on her hands; instantly her vision swam, and her sense of balance tipped her back onto the bed. She giggled, tipsy on the adrenalin, and waited for the moment to pass before trying again more slowly.

Her body adjusted more quickly after that, until she was properly sitting up, no longer using her arms for balance. She carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed, and paused to readjust. When she looked up, Baroth was looking at her.

“Are you curious about the pot?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, and felt slightly proud of herself. She hadn’t even had to think about that one.

“Why haven’t you asked me about it?”

“Should I?” she wavered. Should she? Was that right?

Baroth smiled. “No, not at all. I just wondered.”

“Oh.” She felt relieved. Good. She thought about the question. “Because I want to find out when I get there.”

“More fun that way?”

“Fun?”

“Oh, you’ll see. You’ll like fun.”

She looked at the pot, and wanted an answer. Carefully, she pushed herself forward and off the bed, standing up. Her legs held her, and she smiled happily. She took a few steps towards the shelf tentatively, and picked up the pot in both hands.

It was heavier than she thought it would be, although not truly heavy still. It was quite dense, about the size of her head, and rounded. What was it made of? It felt like plasteel, but it was black, and cool to touch, and inside –

A4368A sat down abruptly, making Baroth jump. She ignored him, and placed her treasure reverentially on the floor in front of her.

- inside was a dark brown substance like earth, but richer in colour and free of the small stones and plasteel chips and other detritus that she associated with the dirt they used in the foundation blocks of new construction. She smelled it, inhaling deeply; it made her think of -

“Trees,” she murmured. Was that what they’d been called? Living wood, old and gnarled with green feathers that whispered. Where had she seen those?

Cautiously she put one finger to the stuff. It felt cool and slightly damp, and tried to stick to her skin, staining it brown. She giggled, and pushed the fingers of her right hand all the way in, feeling the way it got stuck under her finger nails and tried to resist her as she wiggled them about. She pulled them back out again, and examined her now browned fingers. They looked funny. Carefully, she pulled all of the excess out from her nails and replaced them in the pot.

Of course… she could always replace it all… Happily, she began pulling out the brown stuff, piling it neatly to one side. It had a sort of crumbly texture when handled out of the pot, although clumps of it remained resolutely amongst the rest. Her hands quickly became the wrong colour, which made her laugh; they looked funny, still –

Something hard brushed her finger and she froze. It was still under the brown stuff, so she couldn’t see it, but she could feel it nestled against her skin, solid and unyielding. Meticulously, she peeled away the layers above it with her free hand, not daring to move the other in case she lost it, whatever it was. Slowly, it came into view, and she pulled the rest of the brown away from it.

It was a small, once-spherical object, about the size of her thumb nail, and a mottled green. A4368A stared at it for a moment, taking in the colour. When had she seen that? When she saw the trees, rearing majestically over her head: the memory flashed by again, and she was left staring at the thing in the pot.

“Nut,” she said quietly. Gently, she reached in and pulled at it, but it resisted. She explored its exterior with her fingers. It seemed mobile, not touching anything around it, but then she couldn’t see underneath it – aha! Yes! Something was attached to the base of it, holding it onto the brown. She delicately excavated it, until her fingers scraped the bottom of the pot, and she found the end.

Deferentially, A4368A raised her prize up to the light. Now that she could see it clearly, the nut had obviously split, and the thing on the base had grown out of it. It was about three inches long and tapered, with tens of smaller ‘arms’ growing off it. Carefully, she rubbed it between her thumb and finger: it was almost rubbery to touch, and slightly slimy. It also seemed very delicate, so she let go, and laid the whole thing carefully to one side.

Removing the last of the brown from the pot proved that there were no more nuts, so A4368A picked it up again and considered it. Something in her memory was telling her that they came from the trees, so presumably it was made of tree. In which case… well, if the arms were at the top then they looked a bit like a very small tree. But it hadn’t been that way up… so…

It was a conundrum. She leaned back against the bed and crossed her legs, turning the nut over in her hands. Had Baroth buried it?

“Did you put it upside down?” she asked him. He looked momentarily confused.

“No, I…” His expression cleared. “Oh, I see. No, I didn’t. It was the right way up.”

Interesting. So… an upside down tiny tree in a pot. Although, why so tiny? Was that the point? Should it be bigger? Maybe it was a child. A child tree. Would it grow bigger? Maybe. But why was it upside down? Well… the arms had held it into the brown. It hadn’t come out when she’d pulled it until she’d freed the arms. That was like foundations. They built foundations on buildings because if not, they’d blow away and fall over. Was that what the arms were for? But why? The nut had been under the brown with them, it couldn’t have blown away.

Unless… if it grew bigger… maybe the arms did, too… in which case, when it grew as big as an adult tree and was above the brown, the arms would keep it upright, and stop it from falling over. Presumably, the arms on the top of the tree grew later, once it wasn’t a child anymore. Was she right?

“It grows bigger,” she told Baroth. “And then the arms stay in the ground and hold it up, like foundations. It’s a child at the moment.”

Baroth’s smile had never been wider. “Yes! That’s right!”

She felt flushed with the excitement of it. A child tree! And she’d worked it out, by herself.

“They’re called roots,” Baroth said, crouching in front of her and pointing to the arms. “They also suck water and food from the soil to feed the tree.”

A4368A glanced at the brown. “Soil?” she asked. “It looks wrong.”

“This is proper soil, rather than building dirt,” Baroth explained. “This is what plants grow in.”

“Will it be a big tree?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes, if you take care of it, water it every day. Do you want you?”

“Yes!” She thought for a moment. “Can I have water too?”

Baroth laughed. “Of course you can,” he said.

Happily, A4368A replaced the soil and the nut in the pot, as exactly as she could. It looked right once she’d finished, and a questioning look at Baroth received a reassuring nod, so she left it and stood up again. She liked standing. It felt good. It made Baroth less gigantic, although he still stood a head and a half taller than her, and was certainly wider however she positioned herself. She reinstalled the pot on the shelf, and looked at her hands. They were still brown from the soil.

Baroth directed her to the wash unit in the corner, and she smiled. She understood these. She had fixed many in her time. She placed her hands in the energy field, and smiled at the tingling as her hands returned to their normal colour. Then… there was something else that she wanted to do…

Ah, yes. The mirrors. She walked up to them, and ran her hands over them carefully, feeling the cool smoothness of the vitruvium. Slowly, she moved down the length of them until she reached the end; then she turned and moved back, stopping in the middle of the glass wall. She held her palms still and flat against them, and after a while pressed her ear to them as well. Yes; the vibrations were there. Quiet and indistinct, but there.

She wondered.

3 comments:

Jester said...

I like the fact that you've brought the other characters back into it: its good to mix it up and get a sense that there is a complicated and political world going on outside of the simplicity of the med room.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of the increasingly intelligent and sophisticated reactions that A4368A is beginning to have. I can't wait for her to get out of the lab! Although if I was Baroth and co. I'd be careful because she seems to be thinking like a child- and children are often self-centred- I can see her running off and doing her own thing.

Jom said...

How much fun did you have writing about trees, eh? You are such a hippy. There is absolutely no hope for you. Trees, be-gad. Tut!

Steffan said...

Such a lovely story. I like A4386A. She's very sweet.

And hurrah for using "outsider" characters to explore the human world. I love that the one thing she does know about here is the one thing that we as readers wouldn't recognise - a sci-fi washing unit.