Blindsight, page 119 by Peter Watts
<< Return to Title Details & Download120
What if there is, and they don't like us?
"Even better. We get a crack at their signs and cereal boxes without their traffic cops leaning over our shoulders."
I wondered if she spoke for the others. I was pretty sure she didn't speak for Michelle.
Scylla's ports had all been sealed. There was no outside view, nothing to see inside but bots and bodies and the tangled silhouette swelling on my helmet HUD. But I could feel the radiation slicing through our armor as if it were tissue paper. I could feel the knotted crests and troughs of Rorschach's magnetic field. I could feel Rorschach itself, drawing nearer: the charred canopy of some firestormed alien forest, more landscape than artefact. I imagined titanic bolts of electricity arcing between its branches. I imagined getting in the way.
What kind of creatures would choose to live in such a place?
"You really think we'll get along," I said.
James' shrug was all but lost under the armor. "Maybe not at first. We may have gotten off on the wrong foot, we might have to sort through all kinds of misunderstandings. But we'll figure each other out eventually."
Evidently she thought that had answered my question.
The shuttle slewed; we bumped against each other like tenpins. Thirty seconds of micromaneuvers brought us to a solid stop. A cheery animation played across the HUD in greens and blues: the shuttle's docking seal, easing through the membrane that served as our entrance into Rorschach's inflatable vestibule. Even as a cartoon it looked vaguely pornographic.
Bates had been prepacked next to the airlock. She slid back the inner door. "Everybody duck."
Not an easy maneuver, swaddled in life-support and ferroceramic. Helmets tilted and bumped. The grunts, flattened overhead like great lethal cockroaches, hummed to life and disengaged from the ceiling. They scraped past in the narrow headroom, bobbed cryptically to their mistress, and exited stage left.