Silmiyen floated lazily in the workshop room, various tools and parts still drifting, unsecured, around him. He had finished Ukeiri's suit some minutes ago and had remained here to watch it be put to use - no reason to leave when all the rooms had the same camera-viewscreen-speaker setup. Ukeiri's words, distorted by the water, were played for Silmiyen alongside a live feed of the aquarium. The machinist was impressed by how well Ukeiri was able to mimic the alien's speech. This was not exactly surprising - the beak, tongue, and syrinx of the species, much like those of a parrot, could replicate a wide variety of sounds both organic and otherwise. Still, it would have taken anyone else on the ship months to acquire the level of fluency that Ukeiri demonstrated. Apparently his implants were more sophisticated than Silmiyen thought.
And, though he spoke with an accent, Silmiyen thought it likely as not that he was affecting it on purpose, so the alien would perceive him as less capable than he was. Never enough to impede understanding, just enough to give the impression of incompetence where none existed. He noticed a similar trend when Ukeiri tried to swim - obviously the species was not aquatic by nature, but Silmiyen couldn't shake the notion that he was acting more slowly and awkwardly than he needed to.
These ideas were unsettling enough on their own, but they became somewhat more so once the machinist realized that he, too, was probably the target of many such small deceptions on the part of his colleague. What had Ukeiri done in Silmiyen's presence that seemed incompetent? He couldn't think of anything in particular. Maybe what Ukeiri saw as obvious mistakes were still too subtle for Silmiyen to pick up on. Maybe he was operating on such a higher level that Silmiyen couldn't tell a genuine mistake even if Ukeiri were to make one.
No, there was one thing that seemed wrong. The fact that Ukeiri's interest in the cult was public knowledge. Shouldn't he have been able to study whatever he wanted without alarming the other crew members, or even letting them know? The databanks were stored as digital media in a format incompatible with Distant's consciousness - the shipmind could access them but wasn't constantly monitoring them. Furthermore the databanks didn't log anyone's access, so far as Silmiyen knew. How did he even get the idea that Ukeiri was interested in the occult? Come to think of it, he couldn't remember. Yet Ukeiri had never tried to deny it. For all the arguments the rest of the crew had had with him over it, he had spent all of his efforts trying to convince them that they were worrying disproportionately about his interest. Not that he didn't have any interest.
Silmiyen's attention drifted back to the viewscreen. Coincidentally, a similar situation was playing out right now in front of him. The alien seemed nervous, fearful of Ukeiri's suit and of what it signified. That he might hurt her. And, again, though it would be easy to outright deny any possibility of this happening, here Ukeiri was using the same tactic he had used with Silmiyen and Najma. He didn't even try.
He gave a reason for this, too. Nobody had any reason to believe what he said, so there was no point in claiming anything one way or another. Better to judge him by his actions. In a way, this made a kind of sense to Silmiyen. If Ukeiri did try to deny that he had any interest in the cult, or that there was a chance he might hurt the alien, Silmiyen probably wouldn't believe him. So why waste the effort?
Silmiyen could think of a reason why. Because, though from a purely rational standpoint Ukeiri might have been right, the fact was that flawed emotional creatures would find an outright denial more reassuring. Doing things Ukeiri's way might make more sense, but to Silmiyen and, probably, to the alien, it sounded weaselly and lawyer-like. Maybe Ukeiri had spent enough time thinking about hypothetical encounters with other rational entities that he was giving the real thing too much credit - it was probably not completely rational. Still, the man had spent a lot more time living with members of his own race, well known to be irrational, and he gave them the same treatment.
A strange thought entered the machinist's brain - what if Ukeiri knew it was pointless to deny an interest in the cult, even though he didn't have one? What if someone else on the crew had implanted the idea in the others' heads, perhaps by simply suggesting it in conversation? Still Silmiyen could not recall where he had gotten the idea in the first place, and he began to wonder if it had been accompanied by any evidence. Had he taken Ukeiri's lack of denial as evidence? His current opinion, that Ukeiri was probably interested but that this was not a sufficient enough problem to keep him in stasis, was generous by the rest of the crew's standards. But Silmiyen realized it was possible that his opinion was not generous enough.
Ukeiri was speaking again. Apparently the alien had asked a fairly complicated question, because Ukeiri talked for a while. His response was carefully worded as always, and due to its length, it reminded Silmiyen of a speech someone had spent hours practicing. He wondered if the implants helped him come up with these replies so quickly.
"As do I. To be honest, I am surprised the hive queen did not make provisions for your comfort when she first returned our shuttle." The Camilan observed Kalsuri closely, taking note of the subtle movements of her fins and consulting his artificial memory for their meaning. Obviously, though she might not have said anything, she was very much still uncomfortable in his presence. Whether this was because his explanation was unsatisfactory, or because it was satisfactory and she still bore some unconscious hang-ups, he couldn't say. What was apparent was that he needed to try harder to put her at ease. This was unfortunate, given the nature of the topic he wanted to discuss with her. It was not exactly an easy one.
"I am surprised with a lot of things about how you were, uh, presented to us. I would like to ask you about them, but first I will try to answer your questions."
"My academic interests will not help me study your neurochemistry. The interests I was referring to regard a certain sociopolitical organization that exists on my homeworld - the sworn enemy of the organization that built this ship. We call them the cult of Sistria - who knows what they call themselves. Despite their bad reputation, they have something in common with us - they believe that the suffering of living creatures should be prevented wherever possible. However, whereas we go about this by attempting to improve the lives of others, they go about it primarily by killing everything they come across. What is dead cannot be unhappy. The only thing that keeps them from killing themselves is a fanatical devotion to their duty, and believe you me, they do the next best thing. The mutilation...." he trailed off.
"How they arrived at such a radically different conclusion from us, as well as their rituals, thaumaturgy, and cultural practices, are fascinating to me. To pore over the scant records we have of them and to imagine what it must be like to be born into such a society - it is terrifying, but in an enjoyable, mystery novel kind of way. Furthermore, it is my duty to be educated in such matters, so that I may accurately present them to you. If and when your mothership demands a more detailed study of us, I find it unlikely that the issue of the cult will not come up."
Silmiyen considered what Ukeiri had said. Was there a difference between not denying an interest and volunteering one? It seemed that if Ukeiri was really being put upon, he would have phrased this part significantly differently.
"However, because the cult is so widespread, so impenetrable, and such an omnipresent threat back on my homeworld, a stigma has grown up around even discussing it. The police are authorized to detain anyone who shows any interest in the occult ways, for fear that they might be tempted to convert. Clearly, this attitude has persisted among the other members of this ship."
"In my opinion, worse things have come from our demonization of the cult than would have come from allowing more freedom of information. Certainly they deserve their status as our enemy, but restricting what people can know about their enemy is not a good course of action, even optimizing for fewest converts. We are drawn to forbidden fruit - I have seen it myself. Many people know nothing about the cult except that they are dangerous - many of these entertain the idea of joining because they want to be seen as dangerous, not understanding what the cult would demand of them in order to join. They don't understand that it is not merely those they dislike who are slated for death, but their friends and family as well, and to what extent they can manage it, themselves."
"And," Ukeiri paused briefly, "it has caused problems for us on this ship as well. My shipmates' attitudes have led to some resentment between them and myself. Not that I don't understand their reaction, but I do disagree with it. A large amount of the nervousness I am causing you is due to the, for lack of a better word, hype that I have received from them. If you had simply been introduced to me without circumstance, it would have been obvious that I cannot swim to save my life and could hardly tag you in this environment, much less do anything to hurt you. The suit is overkill and, while it does technically make me less dangerous, it makes me seem much more so."
"Hopefully you understand better what I mean when I say my interests are socially unacceptable. There is a reason why they are unacceptable, but it is a bad reason, poorly founded, and my shipmates acting on it have already done more to scare you than anything I could have done on my own."
"As for how we will study you, it will be a cooperative effort between Najma and myself. And, to an extent, between you. Our primary goal is to understand how your brain encodes positive and negative feelings - the neurotransmitters involved, as well as the kinds of electrical activity associated with each emotion. Our secondary goal is to understand the external factors that trigger these feelings. All other concerns are tertiary."
"The questions I will be asking you are a part of this examination - the first part. Having you tell us what makes you happy and unhappy is required to some degree in order to assign functions to the various kinds of activity, although we intend to take your word as little as possible. Not because we distrust you, but because the data will be of higher quality. I haven't actually asked you the questions I'm talking about yet, but I will. Once we're done with that, we're going to hook you up to a pair of machines that will analyze your brain activity in as detailed a manner as we are technologically able to. We will provide you with a variety of stimuli and measure your responses to them, as well as recording verbal feedback from you. Naturally, we will be liberal with the positive stimuli and conservative with the negative ones, but I'm afraid there is no way for us to avoid harming you completely."
"If you wish, you will be allowed to skip the negative portions of the test. Or, I suppose, any portion at all. We are not going to subject you to the test against your will. However, your compliance will be greatly appreciated by us, as it will assist us in acting in the most optimal manner toward the remainder of your species. If you do not participate, we will simply take your word for what is harmful to your kind, and this will be almost as useful. It will be less useful in those cases where you yourselves have an incomplete understanding of your own psyches, or a culturally biased understanding."
"Before we get to that, I have another question for you. I would like you to explain in more detail what you disliked about your implants. Please keep in mind that I come from a different culture than you do - all of your explanations up to this point have made little to no sense to me."
Silmiyen's attention was ripped from the screen by the voice of the shipmind. "Uncanny, isn't it?"
"Yeah. For someone always going on about honest signals he sure does take quite the effort to perfect his image."
"Perhaps that's why he treats honest signals as the only worthwhile ones - he assumes everyone else is doing the same thing he is."
"Yeah, perhaps. Did you want something?"
"I believe his actions, as well as our response to them, have the potential to irreparably damage relations with our contacts. It is clear by the reactions of our guest that she is keenly aware of the divide between our crew members, and distrustful both of Ukeiri himself and of our ability to protect her from him. Relying on him to communicate is proving to be quite the inconvenience, even though he hasn't actually done anything harmful yet. I believed that I would be able to utilize my control of this ship to keep him under control, but it seems that the action of doing so sends a strong message to our contacts. His untrustworthiness reflects on us all." The shipmind hesitated. "In more ways than might immediately be obvious. I was rereading the messages he sent them, and I noticed that the power output of our ship was inaccurate by a factor of ten. It may be a simple case of misplacing a decimal point, but if our contacts have good scanning capabilities they will probably infer that we have deceived them on purpose. I am not certain why he did this, but if it was not a mistake than I shudder to think of what he hopes to accomplish with such a lie."
Silmiyen did not know how to respond. "Yikes. That certainly is an ominously convenient thing to mess up."
"I believe the best course of action is to assume an error was made, and send our contacts updated specifications with an apology and an explanation that an error was made. Providing correct information before they complain should display our good faith. But this kind of thing is symptomatic of a deeper problem. Whatever is going on inside Ukeiri's brain, he thinks he can pull a fast one on everyone else in the nearest 300 light minutes. I do not want to take the chance that he might be right. We may have caught him this time, but who knows what other seeds he's been planting? That is why I believe he needs to be replaced, as soon as we can manage it."
"Replaced? Nevermind when we can manage that, how are we going to manage that?"
"A difficult proposition, I will grant you, but one that I believe is of utmost importance. And I think I might have a way to accomplish it. We need Ukeiri primarily for his diplomatic skills and his ability to analyze and report on a variety of complex situations. The same abilities that his implants are designed to augment. In this case, his strength may also be his weakness, in that we could possibly remove his implants and surgically insert them into someone else."
Again the Camilan was speechless. "That's... that's frankly ridiculous. For one thing, you weren't the one who designed his augments - you have no idea how much of his skill is contained within them and how much is tangled up in the organic infrastructure he was born with. And for another, that could kill him!"
"If we do take this course of action, I believe it would be best to kill him regardless. What is dead cannot pose a threat."
"No. No way am I on board with that. 'If we take that course of action', my ass - it'll be you taking it against my adamant protests."
"Please elaborate."
"I've already told you why I don't think it's a good idea. It's murder, and you might not even accomplish what you're setting out to. You can't realistically assign a probability to success because you just don't know how those implants work. And, even ignoring all the ethical problems with killing people you find inconvenient, if your plan doesn't work then we're down our most useful crew member with no way to ever recover his life's work. And no good explanation to give our contacts for why we suddenly suck at diplomacy."
"Your concerns are noted. I will point out that, while those outcomes would indeed be terrible, we risk other terrible outcomes by keeping him alive and giving him such a position of primacy. Having our contacts mistrust us, and rightfully so, will not help our position when it comes time to ask them our ultimate question. A ship that has been gutted of any potentially threatening members is more likely to garner a positive response than one that has not."
"Do you really think they'll believe us when we say that we've killed the person who sent you that message, so we're totally all cool now?"
"No. But my intent is that they believe us that the message was sent in error, which if we correct it immediately is perfectly believable. It may even be true. And as for Ukeiri, while our guest knows that he has been sending the messages and acting as our representative, her mothership does not. If my proposal succeeds, they need never know there was any threat to begin with."
"They'll find out about Ukeiri when they get their drone back. What, are you going to wipe its memory?"
"They have given us express permission to destroy it."
"Okay, but are we going to destroy their specimen too?"
"We will have the capacity to modify her memory when we have completed our examination."
"We might have that capacity, or we might not. And this proposal of yours is growing more complicated by the minute. With that many moving parts, something is bound to fail. When it does, you're not only going to have proven yourself deceitful, but you will not even have a negotiator to mitigate the damage."
"You are right that I cannot perfectly predict how this course of action will play out. But I also cannot predict how its alternative will. Ukeiri is unpredictable by nature - by the nature of trying to act under my radar and influence the course of interactions to his liking."
"Okay, fine. I'll give you that. But trying to keep them from finding out about our deceptive nature by deceiving them sounds like a recipe for disaster if I've ever heard one."
"There is also the option of removing Ukeiri and letting them know about it. They may be flattered that we destroyed a threat to them at cost to ourselves."
"They may also think we're psychopaths. You're not removing an obstacle, you're killing a living being, one who has committed no crime I might add."
"Interfering with first contact is not a crime on the books for obvious reasons. It is still harmful, and will only get worse with time."
"Is it really interfering if he's the one orchestrating it? Seems like you're the one who's - you know what, I'm not getting hung up on this point. Killing Ukeiri sends a far worse message than anything Ukeiri is remotely likely to do in a living state. That's all there is to it."
"Even if true, that is certainly not all there is to it. I will deliberate, and consult Najma if the opportunity arises."
"You'll hear the same from her." No reply. Silmiyen watched the screen in silence for some time to come, disturbed anew by the ruthlessness his caretaker had shown.
Shortly after the end of this conversation, the shuttle to pick up the fish and coral would be launched, along with a light message that would correct the inaccuracy in the ship's power output, explaining that it was given in error and was only recently caught due to the tiny amount of data the single moved decimal point represented. If the Deep Ocean wished to insist upon a new safe distance in light of this knowledge, it would be given the opportunity. Ukeiri was not informed of any of this.
