So if they come across one of last night’s goblins, McQueen will take the shot while she and Phillips run whatever interference is needed. Then the scientists will slice and dice, and they will all be home in time for tea. That’s the plan, if you can call it a plan.
But they don’t get to implement it, because they don’t find anything. It seems they are all alone out here with only the squirrels and the crows for company. For the first hour or so, that doesn’t bother anyone. It’s a crisp autumn day painted in crazy colours. The fresh air is a novelty and the freedom, the sense of space is intoxicating.
A couple of hours later, though, they’re starting to get a little sick of it.
If Foss hadn’t seen the goblins herself the night before, she would be thinking that they were an illusion. A glitch. A false sighting. But she did see them, and there is no way she could have been mistaken. So either the little bastards are deliberately avoiding them or else they’ve actually left the building.
And if it’s option A, then they’re pretty damn good at it. They’re not just staying out of eyeshot, they’re hanging far enough back not to show on the thermals.
It is possible, of course, that the goblins have an agenda of their own. Suddenly uneasy, Foss climbs to the top of the nearest rise and radios back to Rosie for a status update. It’s less than half an hour since she spoke to Sixsmith and obviously there is nothing new to report but she does it anyway, just for peace of mind.
“Nothing going on down here, either,” Sixsmith confirms. “Quiet as the grave. Except that the Robot was having a little cry a while back.”
“He was?” Foss feels a little sad about that, after last night’s show of (relative) strength. “What about?”
“No idea,” Sixsmith says. “He’s stopped now. Khan gave him a cuddle, I suppose.”
But a cuddle wouldn’t have done the trick, of course. It would just have made Greaves cry harder.
Khan bides her time until Dr. Fournier has retreated once again into the engine room, which he was inevitably going to do. The colonel is up in the turret, Sixsmith is in the driving seat and Penny is sulking in her bunk.
Stephen hasn’t stirred from the shower, where he went immediately after the hunting party evicted him from the airlock. There is no sound of running water and there are no clothes on the rack outside the shower door.
“Stephen?” she says quietly. “Are you in there?”
“Yes.” Greaves’ hoarse mutter is even lower than her own, and there’s a crack in it.
“Will you come out and talk to me?”
He goes so far as to pull the curtain aside. He is sitting fully clothed on the floor of the shower, his knees drawn up to his chest. Clearly he is using it in the same way he uses the airlock, as a space in which he can reliably be alone. Khan feels a little pang of remorse at disturbing him. He has the hollowed-out look of someone who hasn’t slept.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“No,” Greaves admits. “I don’t think so.”
Khan sits down facing him, putting a towel between herself and the cold metal before she carefully lowers her awkward bulk to the floor. “Is it about what you were going to tell us last night? Is it still weighing on your mind?”
“Yes.”
“And you still think it’s important?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell Dr. Fournier?”
Stephen grimaces, unaccustomed anger showing in his face. “Dr. Fournier doesn’t want to know.”
Khan is surprised at the accuracy of that assessment. Maybe Stephen is getting better at reading other people’s emotions.
“No,” she agrees. “He doesn’t. But I do. Was it something you saw before we started heading south again?”
Stephen makes a fending-off gesture with his hands, palms out. He is not agreeing or disagreeing; he’s just asking for space. Khan waits patiently. It’s a long time before he speaks. “Something I did,” he says eventually.
“Tell me,” Khan suggests, and then when that elicits no response, “or show me, if it’s something you can show?”
Unexpectedly, Stephen starts to cry. Ragged, unwieldy sobs that sound like hiccups. “Hey,” Khan whispers. “Hey. Stephen. It’s all right. You haven’t done anything wrong. Just show me. Come on.” She rubs her fingertip gently against the back of his hand until at last he wipes his eyes and pulls himself together.
Stephen climbs slowly to his feet, his breathing still ragged. “I wanted to show you before,” he says, sounding lost. “There wasn’t a time when I felt like I could do it.”
“Show me now,” Khan prompts him gently.
He nods, and walks past her through the mid-section into the lab. There is a faint thud of bass from Penny’s bunk: it seems she has retrieved her CD player from the engine room. They won’t be disturbed or overheard, which feels like a good thing. Stephen’s state of agitation is worrying Khan, even though she is still more than half convinced it will turn out to be nothing.
Then he opens freezer cabinet ten, and it’s not nothing. It is very definitely something. Khan stares at the diminutive corpse in amazement, then in blank dismay. There is no grey threading anywhere on the body, no sign of fungal outgrowth. For a moment, she’s just looking at a dead child. It is—it has to be—a hungry, but that doesn’t make this okay. It hasn’t been logged. It has no reason to be here.
And in the light of last night’s alarm, it’s a question mark a mile high.
“Stephen,” she demands, “what is this? What am I looking at?”
“I think it might be a second-generation hungry.”
“A … A what?” She stares at him blankly. The words make no sense. Hungries don’t breed. They don’t do anything except eat.
“I don’t know, Rina, that’s only a guess. But there were children in Invercrae, and they were different. They’re infected but they’ve got normal brain function. Behavioural repertoires like primitive humans. And Private Lutes found them. That was what started the fight. He shot one of them—this one—and then they killed him. I felt bad because I’d seen them first and I could have told everyone they were there. I should have said. I should have told all of you, but I didn’t and then it was too late.”
He points out the bullet wounds, his face crumpling with sorrow. For the dead hungry, or for the damage done to its brain? Khan isn’t sure. “I found this body right after Private Lutes shot it. I thought I should take it and bring it on board and study it, because the children were so different. I thought this might be the breakthrough we’d been looking for. I was going to tell you, but Lutes was dead and I felt like it was my fault so I wanted to wait until there was something to show you all. Something solid. Their brains are—” His voice catches and he swallows. “I should have told you, Rina. I’m sorry.”