Shenya the Widow has had much practice in ignoring her implant’s impudent questions, and she does so now. She is not old, she is barely in her second century. And she is not lonely. She is relaxed, she is carefree, she is lightyears from the pressures of civilization, and she is doing what she loves. And she is being paid for it! What more, quite honestly, could any Widow ask for?
“Hello?” gurgles a muffled voice beneath her. “About done here?”
[Uh-oh], says Shokyu the Mighty. [It’s intelligent, and it speaks Standard. This means paperwork.]
Of course it is intelligent, little idiot. Its obvious intelligence is the reason Shenya the Widow visited it like a thunderbolt from the treetops. And of course it speaks Network Standard; in all her travels Shenya the Widow has never met an intelligence who does not. Even out here, lightyears past the frontier of Networked space, one should expect to meet Standard speakers—if one meets anyone at all. No, there are stranger things about this creature than its intelligence and its language. The fact that it has only four limbs, for example: two upper and two lower. The fact that it is disgustingly soft, inside out from a Widow perspective, with the skeleton on the inside of its horrible pale flesh. Look at it, small and defenseless, not even a meter tall when it was standing. It stares at her with gleaming golden eyes under the white tuft of hideous growth atop its head—
—TRANSFER INTERRUPTED—
[Unexpected memory collision. Adjusting parameters…]
* * *
#
“Oh, hello,” says Observer from two mouths. “It’s you.”
“I know you, Sarya the Daughter,” says an Observer. “Though I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
* * *
#
[Parameters adjusted successfully. For best results, please do not dwell on existing memories during transfer.]
—TRANSFER RESUMING—
The small being stares at her, its gold eyes wide and unblinking. It is leaking red fluid from several places—quite a bit, it seems. Most likely, it is moments from death. She wonders what species it belongs to and misses, for easily the sixty-fourth time, the simple access to information that a Network connection would provide. That may well be the worst part of these long voyages, the absolute lack of contact with anyone and anything. But no! That is not loneliness, as her implant might suggest. One may call it isolation, if one must call it anything at all. Loneliness implies weakness, and Shenya the Widow is, well…Shenya the Widow.
[What do you think it is?] she asks, prodding the squishy little figure with the flat of a blade. Perhaps the ship Librarian is also unfamiliar with it. That would be convenient, for even Shenya the Widow becomes nervous when the Librarian goes hungry for too long.
[You should have asked it before you killed it], says Shokyu the Mighty.
“You know, I’ve known you were here for quite some time,” says the thing beneath her. It blinks its golden eyes up at her, seemingly quite cheerful for someone impaled and bleeding out into alien soil. “I saw you come in from the tunnels.”
“How many know of this place?” Shenya the Widow asks quietly.
“Oh, no sense in getting the galaxy in an uproar just yet,” says the figure conversationally. “Though I may have some ideas on that. So for now I’m the only—”
The rest of the sentence is lost in a gurgle. Shenya the Widow rises after the thing is done and cleans her blades in the rustling vegetation. The discovery is now hers, and once the Librarian has fed, Shenya will no longer have to fear for her life every time she opens its containment. That’s two rivals with one blade, as the saying goes.
[Killing won’t help your loneliness], says her Network implant.
[I did not kill it for therapy], snaps Shenya the Widow, hoisting the body onto her thorax. She releases a disgusted hiss as its skin touches her beautiful carapace, leaving it smeared with oil and goddess knows what else. [I killed it for purposes of research…and profit.]
[Ah, so you didn’t enjoy that.]
[I enjoy everything I choose to do. But in this case, I also have a little one to feed.]
[Do you think feeding the Librarian makes you feel less alone?]
Shenya the Widow hisses as she turns back toward the ship, preparing a devastating reply. If she hadn’t grown so accustomed to the constant voice in her head, she would have treated Shokyu the Mighty to a factory reset long ago.
“Whoops!” says a familiar voice. “You’ve accidentally killed one of Me!”
[Did you hear that?] asks Shokyu the Mighty, instantly and with more than a little fear attached. [You just killed a high-tier.]
This is one of the few times in Shenya the Widow’s life when her implant’s concern may be entirely warranted. She drops the body and whirls into stance four, low. She backs herself against one of the largest trees in the area and raises every available blade into a quivering fence of death. The tree is large, easily a meter in circumference, rough brown and massive enough to stop a good-size projectile from taking her out from the back. She sends out an ultrasonic ping, sifting its echoes for clues.
“I’m right here,” says the voice. “If You would stop killing Me for a second, we could oh, for My sake—”
Shenya the Widow is in the air as soon as she identifies the source and has silenced the second speaker as quickly as the first. She crouches over its body, blades buried eight centimeters in the soil beneath it. She fires another ping, but there are too many of these trees. She can detect the crunching sound of dry vegetation being crushed, and what sounds like soft speech, but both are too low for details. They could be coming from anywhere. In fact, after listening for a few seconds she begins to think that they are coming from everywhere.
[This is it], says Shokyu the Mighty. [This is how we die. Pointlessly. Painfully, probably—although I’m sure you won’t mind that at all.]
“It’s not very neighborly,” whispers the voice from beside the nearest tree.
Shenya the Widow whirls, but sees nothing but overgrowth.
“Nor very pretty,” says the voice, now behind her.
Widow reflexes respond, but again there is nothing to see.
“It’s hungry, maybe,” suggests the voice, directly above her. She cocks her head, but her nearly spherical field of view reveals nothing. Even in infrared nothing stands out; despite the cooling day, everything around her is nearly the same temperature.
“It doesn’t seem to be eating Me, though,” it muses.
Shenya represses a shudder. Eat a thing like this! No, she does not understand how the Librarian does it.