Chapter 11: Mutual Curiosity

“Good morning,” Selkie said as she slithered through the wavering force field. “I have brought you breakfast.”

David was still putting on his suit, Selkie’s eyes lingering on his bare chest for a moment as he finished zipping it up. The Broker’s gaze soon wandered to the food wrapper on the desk.

“Oh, I hope you don’t mind,” David added. “I got pretty hungry last night, so I raided your kitchen. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Please do not touch my things without permission in the future,” she replied, her hue darkening a little. “If you require more nourishment, I can have some food stored inside the habitat for you.”

“Thanks,” he said as she placed a tray down on his desk. “Most important meal of the day, so they say. You gonna ... stick around?”

“I shall,” she replied, settling in to sit on her squishy tentacles.

“What changed your mind about the whole communal eating thing?” he asked as he sat down in his odd patio chair. She lifted one of the packets with her suckers and sliced it open for him, observing him as he began to eat. “Was it the picnic?”

“I merely needed a break from social interaction for a time,” she replied.

“I get it,” David said with a nod. “It’s almost like physical exertion for you, isn’t it? You ran a marathon, so you need to rest and recuperate before you can do it again.”

“That is an apt metaphor,” she replied.

He lifted a crunchy seaweed wrap with one hand, turning his attention back to his laptop as he typed with the other, wanting to finish up some work before they set off. She followed the movements of his fingers, watching as they darted across the keys with practiced speed. He noticed, pausing his chewing to glance back at her.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Your hands are so strange,” she muttered. “I will admit that they hold an odd fascination for me.”

“I feel the same way about your tentacles,” he replied. “We both have brains, hearts, and stomachs – as far as I know. We both have eyes and ears that are in some way comparable, but our limbs are so different.”

“I spent a little time reading more about human anatomy from the research material I was provided with before sleeping,” she admitted, her complexion mottling subtly. “I knew that humans had an extensive mineralized skeletal system, of course, but seeing it move makes me appreciate how your whole body is just a system of levers. Each joint is a fulcrum – each muscle and tendon acting upon it like a piston or a pulley. In many ways, you have more in common with our machines than you do with us, mechanically speaking.”

“I never really thought about it like that,” he mused over a mouthful of something that tasted like shrimp. He made a fist and flexed his arm experimentally. “We must seem like automatons compared to someone who’s made entirely of muscle. How does it work for you if you have no bones? Well, save for the supporting structure in your torso that you mentioned. I’m not a marine biologist, and I didn’t know what you looked like, so I wasn’t exactly poring over cephalopod anatomy articles before I got here.”

“Our limbs move using muscular hydrostats,” she replied, curling one of her leaf-shaped hands in on itself with remarkable flexibility. “Muscle fibers run down the length of each arm, which are arranged into three columns, the contraction and expansion of which gives us our range of motion.”

“So, there’s no support structure at all?” David asked as he watched her many limbs wriggle on the floor. “It’s all just muscle and flesh?”

“Correct,” she replied. “The only rigid parts of our bodies are our beaks and claws, our brain cases, and the support structures in our torsos that allow up to remain upright on land, which are all comprised of carbonate minerals.”

“I guess the closest analog humans have is our tongues,” David added. “Each tentacle can taste, too, which furthers the comparison.”

He extended a hand towards Selkie, wiggling his fingers. She recoiled, a pattern of pointy papillae spreading across her darkening skin in a wave.

“You can feel for yourself,” he offered, watching her horizontal pupils dart between his face and his digits. “It’s alright. I know you’re curious. It’s like you said – try not to think of me as another Broker. I’m just a weird alien with totally different social conventions, more like an animal in a petting zoo, really. You can poke me and prod me all you want.”

He could see the conflict in her – it was painted on her skin – but after a few moments of hesitation, he saw some brighter bands of excited color. Curiosity won the internal battle, and she reached out with a tentacle hand, brushing its tapered end against his fingertip. She almost seemed as though she wanted to withdraw again, but she pressed on, sliding the flat of her tentacle against his palm like a handshake. It was just large enough to fill his hand, its texture cool and slimy, the mucus that coated her shining skin making her slippery to the touch.

He could feel her suckers probing, all six of them moving independently with all the finesse of a human’s digits. They almost seemed to be kissing his palm, perhaps tasting him or investigating the texture of his skin. There was no trace of the wicked talons that had so worried him, suggesting that they could be retracted rather deep.

Moving slowly so as not to startle her, he closed his fingers around her fleshy hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. The tissue was rubbery and firmer than it had looked, like taut muscle had somehow been liquefied and poured into a mold. Selkie squeezed back with surprising strength, the way that her suckers glued themselves to his skin meaning that she had to peel her hand off him like a piece of tape when they separated.

“See?” he said, watching a few thin strands of her slime dangle from his fingers. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? You know, humans greet each other that way all the time.”

“You are so ... warm,” she mumbled. Though her skin was mottling again, its hue was still bright and vibrant, perhaps suggesting she was flustered. “Your skin is dry.”

“Not anymore,” he muttered, trying to rub off some of the goo on the leg of his suit. It had the consistency of liquid soap. “You said this stuff helps trap moisture so you can breathe on land?”

“It has antiseptic qualities that constitute part of our immune system, too,” she added.

“Yeah, I guess exchanging gasses through your skin would make you pretty prone to infection without it. Weird, I expected it to have some kind of odor, but it just smells faintly of salt water.”

“You mostly taste like salt,” she added.

“Well, that’s good to know. Here,” he continued, rolling up the sleeve of his suit. “Take a look at my wrist – you can see the tendons moving beneath the skin when I move my fingers.”

“Amazing!” she chimed, leaning close to watch as he clenched and unclenched his fist. “It really is just a pulley system.”

He raised his wrap and took another bite, Selkie watching him chew intently. Now that she had warmed to him a little – cold-blooded creature that she was – she seemed to be letting her inquisitive nature bubble to the surface.

“You’re not putting your tentacle in my mouth,” he said, pausing to swallow. “I’m not eager to find out what that slime tastes like.”

“That was not my intention,” she said with an amused click of her beak, taking it in good humor.

“I take it that your beak is just anchored to muscle?” he asked. “So, if I were to squeeze your face...”

“I would not advise it,” she replied as she flashed her beak in a smile.

“You want any of this?” he continued, gesturing to a couple of the remaining food containers. “Usually, people eat together in these circumstances.”

“I will not need to eat again for two or three phases,” she replied, but her eyes wandered to one of the green fruits as he offered the container to her. She caved and plucked it from the box, David hearing her beak shear into the hard pit.

“That will never get any easier to watch,” he said with a grimace.

“We must head to the facility as soon as you are done,” she said. “I am eager to resume our conversations with Weaver.”

“Yeah, I’ve been writing up some more questions to ask it,” he replied as he typed at his keyboard with one hand. “It’s a delicate process, but I expect today will be quite elucidating.”

“I’ve been thinking about our conversation last night,” David said as their shuttle drifted over the barren sea floor.

“How so?” Selkie asked. She was sitting serenely on a pile of tentacles as usual, almost like a yogi stretching before their next session. “We spoke of many things.”

“If nothing goes spectacularly wrong today, do you think we can make an excuse to get away a little before third phase? You said you’d let me use the hologram machine – show me some cool stuff.”

“I recall telling you that I might do that,” she replied with a disapproving snap of her beak. “But, if you insist, we can leave the facility early. The Administrator will surely make allowances for your ... alien proclivities.”

“Tell him that I need to drain my swim bladder every few phases – he won’t know any better.”

“I will not lie on your behalf,” she chided, her coloration showing that she was amused all the same.

Their vessel cruised into the facility’s docking bay, and they exited the sleek machine under the watchful eye of the two Krell guards. The armored reptiles were always in the same place and seemingly the same position, as though they hadn’t even moved since the previous day, floating just off the deck. David didn’t know enough about the Krell to say whether they were being cycled out – it was hard to tell them apart.

“I see these guys every day, and I don’t know their names,” David mused as he and Selkie approached the eighteen-foot crocodilians. “This one can be Abbott, and you can be Costello.”

Like a statue being reanimated, one of the Krell slowly shifted, a yellow eye ringed with a blue membrane turning to examine him. The creature let out a low, resonating pulse that he could feel in his bones – a subsonic rumble that rattled his teeth even inside his helmet. He lurched away in alarm, assuming that the alien was growling at him, but the huffs that followed sounded more like laughter.

“They will not hurt you,” Selkie said, trying to reassure him.

“Do you speak Krell?” he asked, eyeing the creature warily as he passed by.

“They understand our language, though they rarely have much to say in reply.”

“Why is it that the Krell are allowed to be here when no other species are?” David asked as they made their way deeper into the building. “The Brokers are so shy that you didn’t even let a human see what you looked like until a few days ago. Is it just because they helped you in the war?”

“The Krell have been our staunch allies for hundreds of your years,” Selkie replied as she scuttled along beside him. “Generations of Brokers have grown to maturity never knowing a world without them. They are long-lived creatures, and many that you encounter in the Trappist system are veterans who fought for the Coalition during the Reclamation. They were permitted to relocate to Broker worlds as a reward for their efforts.”

“The reclamation?” David asked.

“As the Administrator mentioned during the tour, our drones were ineffective against the insects when their hive ships began to invade our colonies. Before the founding of the Coalition, my people were fighting a losing battle, ceding ground each time the insects forced them off a planet. Our empire was contracting world by world, until Trappist itself was threatened.”

“And that’s when you met the Krell?”

“We recognized their martial prowess, and unlike our drones, they were intelligent and adaptable. Equipped with Broker technology and led by our generals, they helped us push back the hives and reclaim our abandoned worlds.”

“Hence the reclamation,” David mused. “So, those two guys in the docking bay...”

“They are hundreds of years old and may have fought during the Reclamation,” she explained. “They are loyal creatures and likely chose to continue serving the Board.”

“We have translators that allow us to communicate with the Krell now,” David said as they stepped into the tube station, his brow furrowing. “You’d think one of them might have let slip that you’re squids.”

“The Krell rarely saw us outside of our suits,” Selkie replied, swimming into one of the translucent pipes. “Of course, this is merely what I have been taught in school. I am too young to have seen it for myself.”

“And those that chose to live in Trappist don’t get out much, I’m assuming?”

“I believe most Krell who serve as auxiliaries with the UNN are sourced from their homeworld,” she replied. “I have little interest in military affairs, however. I may not be the best person to ask.”

“Don’t you work for a weapons manufacturer?” he chuckled.

“Believe me, if a medical corporation had been doing these experiments, I would have been happy to work for them instead.”

The current swept them down the tube and out onto the sea bed, David watching the facility’s many dome-shaped buildings flash past beyond the glass. They entered another structure, then made their way to Weaver’s containment chamber, David letting himself float down the empty shaft that led below the ocean floor. The ever-dutiful Jeff was waiting for them in their cubicle, looking up from his console to give them a tentative greeting.

“Anything happen while we were away?” David asked, setting his laptop down on the table.

“Our engineers completed the repairs to the containment unit,” Jeff replied. “They removed as many damaged probes as they could without risking damage to the lattice.”

“Have there been any anomalies resulting from the thermal event?” Selkie added as she began to switch on the terminal.

“None have been recorded. There were some infrared emissions, but nothing that could not be explained by the intense heat.”

“Excellent!” David chimed, his laptop flickering to life. “Let’s see how our friend is doing.”

Selkie placed the flat of her hand against the terminal’s display, typing in a greeting.

[YOU HAVE RETURNED. I AM GLAD.]

“Good morning to you too, Weaver,” David said with a jaunty wave to the camera. He returned to his laptop to check the feed from the probes, noticing that something was stressing his system. He felt a pang of dread as he watched the outgoing bandwidth and the drive activity climb. He had only just connected to the facility’s servers, and it looked like they were sucking up data from his laptop. Was it some kind of automated security measure designed to check his activity? Was the Broker virtual machine dumping all of his browsing history?

He glanced up at Selkie warily, wondering if he should say anything. Even if they found out that he had been browsing the city’s intranet surreptitiously, they had no way of knowing about the Admiral’s hidden storage device, so his cover wasn’t totally blown. Maybe he could play it off as simple curiosity.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, turning her head to glance at him.

“N-no,” he stammered, turning his eyes back to his display. “Just gonna load up some of those questions I was working on last night. I’m eager to get started.”