The sergeant accompanied Festina and me as we proceeded toward the room where we would record our broadcast; and although he was not discourteous, his presence was still a Burden. This was my first time alone with Festina since we had been reunited, and there were many personal subjects we might speak of… but not with a stranger dogging our steps. In addition, I could not reveal my conversation with the Pollisand: bargaining with aliens is just the sort of thing a keen-edged Security person might take amiss, believing me to have become a Tool Of Hostile Powers.

Festina clearly felt the same inhibitions as I, stifled under the sergeant’s gaze. Instead of relating how she had grieved while believing me to be dead, or describing the joy she felt to have me back, she seemed at a loss for words; after an awkward silence, she simply began to name the rooms we were passing. "Main Engine Room. Secondary Engine Room. Hydroponics. Gravity generators…"

The lack of conversation might have been more tolerable if I had been allowed to look into any of the rooms as we passed. After all, the engines of a starship must be quite a sight: great fiery furnaces tended by muscular persons with sweat glistening over their rippling torsos. But every door we passed remained shut and unwelcoming… until finally one hissed open just ahead of us.

Festina and Aarhus halted — they must have assumed someone was coming out into the corridor. When no one did, they simply shrugged and started forward again; but I remained frozen where I was, for I had heard a familiar voice.

The voice was distressingly nasal, coming through the open doorway. When the door began to hiss shut again, I dashed forward and grabbed the edge of the sliding panel. The door fought against me for a moment; then it grudgingly slid back into the wall.

"Hey," Aarhus said, "that’s the main computer room. Off-limits to civilians."

I ignored him. Striding into the room, I searched for the source of the voice. It was coming from behind an array of computers so tall and wide I could not see past them. I could, however, hear the voice’s words quite plainly: "What did you think you were doing? Why didn’t you test the code first? Did you really think an undebugged program would work perfectly the first time?"

Festina grabbed my arm. "Oar, where are you going? What’s wrong?"

"That is the Pollisand!" I whispered.

My friend’s eyes grew wide. "Oh fuck!"

Then she and the sergeant sprinted forward.

15: WHEREIN I TAKE CHARGE OF OPENING DOORS

Logic Scum

We rounded the bank of computers at a run… then stopped in the face of chaos.

First, there was the Pollisand: exactly as I had seen him in the lava garden. Indeed, I could still detect reddish stains on his feet, obtained when he peevishly stomped the scarlet flowers. This was definitely the same creature I had met hours earlier… or else such a perfect copy I could not tell the difference.

The Pollisand was not the only one with crimson stains on his skin. In front of him stood a human dressed in dark brown attire: a woman whose flesh was dark brown too, except for the fingers of both hands. Those fingers were smeared a vivid red — not blood, but a scarlet dust that sifted off flakes whenever she moved. Speckles of that dust lay scattered across the floor at her feet… and red chalky fingerprints glowed on the access panels of the computer in front of her.

Though those panels were shut, something bubbly leaked out around their edges: a charcoal gray foam, forcing itself through the seams of the computer’s casing, trickling down the machine’s exterior, and pattering onto the floor tiles. The glup had a musty smell, like human feet enclosed too long in stockings. When a clot of the stuff slopped down near the brown woman’s boots, she jumped back fearfully as if the foam could hurt her.

"Bloody hell!" Festina said. Shoving the brown woman aside, my friend drove a kick into the junction between two of the computer’s access panels. The kick must have snapped whatever locking mechanism held the panels in place; both doors swung open, propelled by great gouts of foam that had built up inside. Gray bubbles spilled and gushed to the floor, releasing such a wash of musty odor I nearly gagged.

"What is that?" I asked, feeling choked.

"Logic scum," Festina said. "Chunks of the ship’s data get encoded in organic molecules: DNA, long chain polymers, stuff like that — then all those chemicals are packaged into a single living cell. A data bacterium. The only problem is that bacteria can be killed."

She nodded toward the red powder on the floor. "That’s a chemical called Modig — a bio-poison that rips data bacteria to shit. This foam is the result: a slurry of bacterial corpses. All that’s left of the logic circuits."

Festina booted another kick into the left access door, cracking it off its bottom hinge. The impact splashed back a flurry of foam that spattered onto the leg of her trousers. She retreated a quick step and shook her foot, endeavoring to throw off every speck of foam clinging to her pants. As she did so, she said, "Oar, break that panel off. Try to stay clear of the scum."

"Yes, Festina." I pulled down the sleeve of my jacket so it completely covered my hand, then slammed my forearm against the remaining hinge of the access door. The hinge was flimsy indeed — it broke with a ‹PING›, and the door flew several paces before clattering to the tiles. Sergeant Aarhus ran after it; snatching it up, he hurried back to the computer and began using the panel to shovel foam onto the floor. Although he still wore his armor, Aarhus flinched whenever the froth splashed against him.

"Is logic scum poison too?" I whispered to Festina.

"Not the scum itself," my friend said. "But mixed in with the dead bacteria are traces of the Modig that killed them; and Modig is an utter bitch."

She glanced toward the woman in brown… particularly at the red dust on the woman’s hands. The woman was looking at the dust too: lifting her hands in front of her eyes, staring at her crimson fingers. Bits of gray foam had begun to bubble from beneath the woman’s fingernails — the same type of foam that was flooding from the computer, only this came from the woman herself. Festina opened her mouth as if to tell the woman something; then she shook her head. Turning away sharply, she headed in the oppositedirection, toward a console at the far end of the computer bank.

The Pollisand Follows His Trade

"The circuits are shot," Aarhus said, still scooping foam out of the computer. "Electronics as well as biologicals. Must have been a feedback surge." He glanced at a label on top of the machine. "Unit 4A51," he told Festina. "What is it? Navigation? Engine control?"

Festina had reached the console. She bent over it, tapping buttons. "4A51 is the primary security module. Damn… the readout says it’s in master mode."

Aarhus growled. "How the hell could she put it in master? Only the captain and the XO know the privileged access codes."

"Not true," Festina told him. "Admirals on the High Council know the codes too… or backdoors to get around the usual security. Obviously, some admiral ordered this woman to sabotage us, and gave her the codes to do it."

"But why did she follow such an order?" said a nasal voice. "And why so incompetently?"

We had forgotten about the Pollisand. He stood exactly where we had first seen him… but by some disquieting coincidence, that position was conveniently out of the way of everything we had been doing. He had not been in the flight path of the panel I knocked across the room, nor Aarhus’s rush to grab the panel, nor Festina’s route to the control console. When the woman in brown stumbled back from the foam, the white headless creature had been just a bit to one side of her retreat.