Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2)

Paul is fiercely unhappy. Confinement is seldom a positive thing, but his species was never content to live in a cage even back when they were just semi-sentient molluscs and the pets of one Disra Senkovi. To keep an octopus was all too often a constant battle of the captor’s technology against the captive’s ingenuity. That love of freedom—the knowledge, perhaps, that if danger looms there is always a way out—runs deep in the species. As a captive, of his own kind no less, Paul cycles through feelings of despair, anger, misery, confusion and bitter betrayal—or at least emotions akin to such human feelings. His implants have limited access to the wider system and without the tactile company of his own kind his logical subconscious is starved of information and unable to contribute and express itself. He is left only with the whirl of his dominant id, making demands of the universe that the rest of his neural structure cannot fulfil.

And he fears. He does not quite know why he fears: he is living a nightmare where his impenetrable cell contains a horror he cannot see but feels the shadow of always. It is a horror his fellow cephalopods entirely share, which is why he is quarantine to this cell. The aliens—the humans in particular—are inextricably linked to the plague that stole their world from them. And, should anyone be inclined to forget, that world hangs below them, visible from any porthole and screen, writhing with remembrance.

The others have gone, now. He is left only with the unkind light, with few hiding places, with the aliens crouching in the next cell, all angles and muteness on the floor of their sterile, waterless chamber.

Paul had hidden himself from them at first, not wanting to attract their attention because of an instinctive aversion for making things worse. He understands by now that the aliens are as helpless as he is; moreover his courage is beginning to return as the spectre of infection recedes: he would know by now if he were sick with it.

And so he flicks himself into the truncated water column of his cell and gives the aliens a piece of his mind, squirming at the transparent barrier between their chambers, his skin flickering and glaring with angry colours that still contain an undercurrent of fear and bewilderment. Whilst back on his ship he had been a volunteer diplomat, filled with mercurial temerity; all that is forgotten now and he only knows that these ugly, static creatures are the source of his discomfort.

They watch him display—his colours, his skin drawn up into creases and jags, the threatening attitudes of his arms as the rest of his scattered brain does what it can to enforce his strangling desires. Then the human-looking one is holding up its device again, showing colours and shapes that are like slurred, mumbling speech. It signals peace, friendship, unhappiness, submission—that last as close to an apology as an octopus can really make. Paul is not swayed, only emboldened, finding a victim he can truly vent his spleen on without fear of repercussion. He has never been the strongest or most charismatic of his kind, and now these aliens will hear him out, for all the good it will do.

And midway through his theatrically furious display, Paul sees something recognizable and familiar happen to the human alien. It snaps. It has a temper—something Paul would have said was a natural prerequisite for intelligence if he could form such an analytical thought. The human has apparently been restraining itself (an alien activity for an alien creature) but now it snaps. Its skin tone is darker, blotchy, which at least indicates some manner of internal emotional life Paul can relate to. Its mouth (is that slack hole a mouth?) opens and shuts and there is wet on its face. Its awkward limbs spasm into recognizable threat postures and it strikes the barrier between them. The colour device is often not properly angled for Paul to see it, but when he catches glimpses, the colours are very angry, very sad.

It is grieving. Paul has been out of the loop but now he realizes that its fellows have died or undergone a misfortune. This is something he understands.

Actually receiving meaningful communication from the alien is profoundly disconcerting. It makes Paul think of the creature as a fellow living thing in a way he hadn’t before. And can he be blamed for such prejudice? What is this creature, after all? It shows speech through a machine, and that is appropriate because everything about it is mechanical and ungainly. Its skin is dark and mute, its movements sharp and graceless, stupid as a crab or a fish, nothing of its outer show speaking of intelligence or beauty.

But in the throes of its rage, overtaken by its emotions, it becomes real to Paul.

The other one, the crab one, is watching, and now it begins to move, its many legs shuffling and dancing in a most un-crab-like manner. Paul understands it is trying to show attitudes, as though those jointed legs are its Reach. The meaning comes through poorly, but it is plainly coordinating with its human fellow, and between them there is almost half a mind talking to him.

He calms, feeling himself the master of this situation, less estranged from his fellow prisoners. They calm, too—such heights of emotion are alien to the aliens, they cannot sustain them like a real mind can. Paul essays a few calming colours and gestures of his own, attaching to the barrier and eyeing the pair of them. They respond in kind. The human one puts a limb against the glass, little jointed appendages splayed. The gesture is oddly familiar, almost comforting, though Paul does not consciously register it as something his arch-great-creator Senkovi used to do.

With a start he realizes they are not alone. An observer has descended stealthily into the far chamber. Feeling a curious solidarity with the aliens now, Paul unleashes a storm of angry demands towards her, leading the attention of the aliens to the newcomer.

She ghosts back and forth in the observation tank, her skin strumming with muted, thoughtful colours. Something about her attitude unsettles Paul. When she descends to the console and begins making demands of the aliens, her Guise seems furtive, sly. He does not receive what her Reach transmits but she is plainly someone who has a use for these aliens. She is asking questions relating to… forbidden things. Forbidden places. The things the humans are always linked to, and most likely the things that had brought doom to these aliens’ friends.

But the aliens seem eager, and Paul’s ill-feeling towards the newcomer intensifies. He cannot put the feeling into concrete words, but Paul’s social life is one of constantly shifting factions, and there is one such faction he has never been a part of—a group that is ostracized, excised, but which never quite goes away. The octopuses eschew inflexible labels for anything, but the closest human concept might be the Extreme Science Party.

Paul feels only profound misgivings about the Extreme Science Party, but at the same time he is in a cage and wants to be free, and if anyone will overturn the order sufficient to procure his release, it might be those anarchist heretic experimenters. He watches the newcomer closely.