Danger! Defend! Flee! Stay!
Mer rumbles, trying to wrest his instincts under control by force. He focuses on the server drone on the other side of the room, the one failing to bring him his order. It drifts through the crowd of patrons with a stack of food bars on its tray, wobbling on its budget grav system. It’s small. It’s almost unnoticeable. Some would say it’s an idiot. And yet, inside that small drone is technology that only a Network mechanic could appreciate. How does a Network intelligence work? How does a grav system work? Nobody on this entire Gor-damned Blackstar could tell you—maybe nobody in a thousand lightyears.
But if you’ve got instincts, you don’t need to know.
Or a starship, to pick another example. Everybody’s been on one, but nobody thinks about how they’re riding in a bubble of atmosphere strapped to enough energy to atomize a major city. Just like that drone, each piece of technology in a starship is a Network-provided, Network-regulated black box. There is no process for repairing an intelligence core. You do not, for any reason, open a grav assembly. Even if someone wanted to crack an artificial gravity generator—and was not stopped by legions of frantic Network drones—they would find themselves unable. Inside those indestructible white casings lie mechanisms as mysterious and unknowable as the Network itself. Hell, maybe it is the Network. Mer has often wondered if all Network technology isn’t just some magical substance, portioned out and poured into unbreakable containers.
Mer sighs, clicking another pattern on the table. Sure, his gut has been telling him bad things since he pulled her out of that academy ship, but it wasn’t until he met the Human that he realized: his instincts hadn’t even gotten started.
Run! Fight! Freeze! Move!
And weirdest of all: Watch the Human!
He should have killed it when he had the chance. But the suit—Gor damn it, the suit convinced him not to. It convinced him he ought to be grateful. Which is why he is sitting here on a Blackstar, waiting for his order and shaking like a—
He nearly puts the talon through the table when his helper intelligence messages him. He pulls himself together, avoiding the glances of his fellow patrons. [What?] he sends to his implant, attaching several irritable emotions.
[You said to message you when there was news], says his implant.
[Well?]
[There’s news.]
Mer taps a talon several times before responding. He has long suspected that the small intelligence in his Network implant hates him—or at least goes out of its small way to annoy him. [What is it?] he asks, as calmly as his instincts will allow.
[I’m seeing a Network response], says his implant. [It is centered in the arboretum across the bridge. The one that you, in your high-tier wisdom, asked me to watch.]
Like the magic of the Network itself, a Network response is one of those things that you often miss if you’re not looking for it—unless you happen to be a Network mechanic. Outside, Mer can see a slow crosscurrent forming in the continual drifting of traffic. The legal intelligences continue on their individual oblivious ways, but the sub-legals are beginning to drift out of their lanes and toward the arboretum. Something in there is upsetting them, some irritation in the Network, and they cannot rest until it is fixed. And whatever it is, Mer would bet good credit that it’s centered around the Human.
[Maybe you should follow them], says his Network implant. [Whatever the problem is, I’m sure they could use a big strong individual like yourself.]
It’s mocking him. Again. But Mer has larger concerns. He stands, the table groaning as he leans his weight on it long enough to get on his feet.
You’re in danger! cry his instincts. Watch the Human!
[You seem tense], says his helper intelligence.
Mer takes a breath, talons rattling against the table. Tense is not the word. He is not the Mer he used to be. He’s not the relaxed Mer of his village, or even the dutiful Network mechanic who spent the last year as the sole legal employee on a lonely waystation. He has become a wound and trembling spring, a torqued titanium rod, an overpressurized plasma container—
[It’s over], says his helper intelligence. [Whatever it was, it’s resolved. I suppose you can go back to sitting and thinking high-tier thoughts.]
It’s not over! Something is wrong! You’re in danger! Watch the Human!
Mer does not reply. He stares out the front of the establishment, listening. Something is touching the edge of his hearing, a maddeningly subtle sound. It’s unfamiliar, but it instantly raises the fur along his spines. It’s metallic, he can tell that much. A continual ringing, like several tones sliding on top of each other—
And now he can feel it through the floor. The slight ringing becomes a trembling in the very atmosphere. One by one, nearby eyes and sensors are raised to the front of the establishment. Now someone stands, the better to see. Outside on the bridge, intelligences are falling over one another to get out of the way of…something. And then that metal roar crests and a silver tide rolls by, shaking the air with its call.
[Now that is an intelligence], remarks his helper intelligence. Unlike you, it does not add.
Mer ignores the message. “A four,” he whispers, reading the registration off his overlay. He’s never even seen a four before, but here’s one in the metallic flesh. It’s gorgeous, an ever-changing rainbow of reflections and flashes of light. It gives him the same vibes as the Network equipment he used to work on: something so far above him it might as well be magic. He extricates his talons from the underside of his table—which he seems to have wrenched out of the floor—and drops the whole mess with a clang that would have been ear-punishing if this thing were not flowing by outside. He makes his way to the front of the establishment, standing in the doorway as it pours by. He marvels, with the rest of the bystanders, as the entire bridge resonates.
A small highlight appears in his vision, up near the front of the silver wave. In it, bobbing about as if drowning, is a tuft of fur.
Sandy.
And suddenly Mer is at peace.
This, he knows without a doubt, is the thing he has been waiting for. This is what his instincts have been warning him about. Sandy and the Human and a Network response and a tier four, coming together in the same place at the same time—after spending so long feeling like he’s in danger, it’s an actual relief to actually be there.
Watch the Human.
He is out on the bridge in seconds. He has no plan; he barely has conscious thoughts at all. His instincts have focused. They scream go, and Mer goes. Call it destiny, call it instincts, call it the galaxy itself. Mer can’t stay away.
His gait is thrown off by an impact he can feel through the floor, but still he comes. He hears the perfectly spaced clatter of his talons on the floor as he picks up speed. Other intelligences scatter as he careens through their midst. He prepares himself as he gallops, dropping himself into that near-trance he always uses when diagnosing Network issues. It’s easy, once you’ve learned. You ignore your intellect. You spread your senses out, give your instincts every piece of data you can, and then you listen to them. Something is happening in that arboretum, something far above him, something his small mind will never understand—