Текст книги "Over a Torrent Sea "

Автор книги: Christopher Bennett

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

So he began to speak of Germu and her antics, and soon he was laughing even as he wept.

HEAVY SHUTTLECRAFT HORNE

Doctor Ree had locked Deanna and Nurse Ogawa in the Horne’s aft compartment, nominally for their safety, and had only come back intermittently over the past two days to check on the health of mother and child before returning forward. It had given the two women little chance to reason with Ree, but plenty of time to talk and figure things out. “We understand why you’re doing this,” Deanna told the doctor as soon as he entered for one of his periodic checkups.

“Try not to talk,” he advised. “You need to conserve your energy.”

“Doctor,” Alyssa said, “lying around like a lump and losing muscle tone won’t make delivery any easier for her. You know that.”

“She is also recovering from an injury. Remember who is the doctor here.”

“You’re not thinking like a doctor right now, Ree,” Deanna said. “You’re thinking like a Pahkwa-thanh male. In your species, the males do the main work of guarding the eggs, isn’t that right?”

“That is our privilege,” he conceded. “Which is why you should trust that I have your baby’s best interests in mind when I advise you to be quiet and rest.” There was an edge in his voice as he spoke.

Deanna swallowed, but kept on despite her visceral fear. “There are those fierce protective instincts of a Pah-kwa-thanh male. You’re in guardian mode, Ree.”

“That is unlikely, Counselor. I am obviously not the father of your child. And Alyssa,” he went on without turning, “I would advise you to put the hypo down and return to where I can see you. I would regret having to do anything to you that I do not have the facilities to mend.”

Alyssa quickly complied, but said, “Ree, we’re just trying to help you. You have to see that you’re behaving in an…extreme manner.”

“Warranted by extreme circumstances.”

“No,” Deanna said, keeping her tone gentle. “Triggered by extreme emotion. It started when we were in sickbay, when I felt Will…was in danger.” She knew he was still alive; she could feel it in the core of her being. And she wouldn’t even entertain the possibility that it was wishful thinking. “I feared losing him, and it triggered the memory of my grief at losing our first child, nearly losing this one. It was amplified by my awareness of Tuvok’s grief at losing a son.

“Somehow, my overwhelming fear for the safety of my child must have affected you, triggered an intense surge of paternal instinct—the instinct that evolved to protect your young from predators even larger and fiercer than you.

“But you must realize that we aren’t on the Pahkwathanh homeworld. That those instincts don’t apply here.”

“On the contrary, Counselor. Space can be far more dangerous than my homeworld at its most primitive.” He completed his scans, seeming satisfied with the results. “And you forget—I have no empathic sensitivity.”

“Just because most Pahkwa-thanh don’t have active psi abilities doesn’t mean your brains don’t have the potential to act as receivers. A strong enough telepathic projection can affect even non-psionic species. I’ve seen it happen,” she said, though patient confidentiality kept her from specifying the late Ambassador Sarek and the effects of his Bendii Syndrome—while sheer embarrassment kept her from mentioning the similar chaos her mother had inadvertently sparked on Deep Space 9 that one time. “And maybe your species’ latent potential makes you especially sensitive.”

She reached out to touch his arm, to appeal to his reason and mercy. But he grabbed her wrist tightly and turned it over, peering at her hand. Satisfied that it was empty, he released it. As Alyssa hurried to check her arm for damage, Deanna gasped and said, “No tricks, Ree. Please, you have to believe us. You’re not thinking clearly. Your hormones are out of control. You have to take us back to Titan, for all our sakes.”

“With respect, Counselor, you give me no reason to trust you. You have already used one distraction to try to attack me. Now you try to lull me off my guard, to prepare me for the next hand that will have a hypo in it.” He loomed over her, his sharp-toothed snout hovering over her neck. “And you wheedle and plead to be taken back to a ship where your child would be in constant danger. Your own child.”

After an alarming, Damoclean moment of silence, Ree turned his attention to Alyssa, who reflexively backed against the wall. “And you…” He let out a small growl. “You should know better. Sympathy with a patient is well and good, but you must not let it compromise your medical judgment.”

Controlling her fear, Alyssa met his eyes and said, “My child is on that ship too, Doctor. And I know my place is there, with him. Please, Ree. Let’s all go home.”

“Were that true, you would never have left him. You made your choice, Alyssa.” He returned to the hatch, saying, “Neither of you attempt to trick me again.” He went through the hatch, then paused, turned his head, and added, “Please.”

Once the hatch locked behind him, Alyssa slumped, and Deanna sat up to put a comforting arm around her. “He…almost forgot to be polite,” the nurse said. “He must be furious.”

“Worse,” Deanna told her. “He’s becoming paranoid—seeing any attempt to question his judgment as a threat against my daughter’s safety.”

Alyssa turned to her, great sorrow in her lovely dark eyes. “I don’t think any of us are very safe right now.”

DROPLET

The first thing Riker sensed was the sound of a gentle surf against a sandy shore. Opening his eyes, he saw that he was lying on a beach, gazing out at a calm, placid ocean which pulsed against the shore under the impetus of the morning breeze. The boldest waves pushed their way up to within inches of his arm, and he could almost feel the coolness of the water.

He realized he could also feel the shore beneath him bobbing with the larger waves.

Remembering where he was, Riker shot to a sitting position, bringing on a bout of dizziness. He lowered his head, and realized he was nude. His hand reflexively went to his chest—no combadge. He twisted his head sharply back and forth, scrambled to his bare feet, and made an intensive search of his immediate environs, but no combadge, uniform, or any other equipment was in sight.

His eyes went skyward. He knew Titanwould be searching for him—if it was still in any condition to do so. The last he remembered, the ship was damaged, and he had no idea how badly. But if they had any means at all to do so—

No. The sky was thick with clouds and a lurid red haze. Dust and vapor from the asteroid, he realized. And sensors had enough trouble before.Any search would have to be visual, from the shuttles. There were probably nitrogen oxides up there too, eroding the ozone layer. Given his lack of coverings, it was fortunate that Droplet’s sun was relatively distant and low in ultraviolet emissions.

He brushed the sand off his skin and turned his attention to the floater islet he occupied. It was obvious on first glance that he was the only sizable life form present. Hell, there weren’t even any trees or shrubs, just a smattering of mosses and grasses of various sizes. And no flint, no rock—how can I start a fire?

Riker ran the few dozen meters to the islet’s highest point—about as high above sea level as his midriff was above the ground—and scanned the sea out to the horizon. Nothing but ocean was visible in any direction. Floaters were usually found in clusters, but this one was all by itself. That smacked of the artificial. The squales—they saved me, but now…why have they brought me here?He remembered their hostility just before the impact. It occurred to him to be very concerned for Aili Lavena. What kind of prison might they have for her—if she’d even survived?

Warning himself against jumping to conclusions, Riker decided to test the most immediate possibilities first. Striding to the edge of the islet, he waded out into the shallows and circled its perimeter, periodically swimming down below the edge to see if Lavena might be somewhere on the underside.

But less than halfway around, his muscles began to cramp. He cursed himself for a fool, realizing that he didn’t know how long it had been since he’d eaten. And his muscles were stiff, weak, as though they hadn’t been used in days. He tried to force his body to take him back to shore, but just then a large swell hit and lifted the islet, the currents sucking him underneath it. He grabbed hold of the coraloid tendrils, probed for a crack, desperately hoping he could break his way through to a pocket of air. But the shell material would not budge, and he felt himself weakening….

After that was a montage of vague perceptions as he faded in and out of consciousness—a warm body against his, a rippling of feathery blue membranes, the shock of air hitting his face again, the ground rocking beneath his back once more. Returning to full consciousness, he turned his head to see Lavena crouched over him. She had no hydration suit, and indeed was as nude as he wa—

Clearing his throat, he sat up and folded his legs before him. “Ahh, Ensign. I, umm, appreciate the rescue.”

She giggled, and seemed immune to the resultant glare. “It was my pleasure, Captain. And don’t worry, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. More or less.”

“Ensign, remember your Starfleet decorum,” he told her. She lowered her head at his chastisement, kept her eyes averted as he retreated behind a stand of tall grasses nearby. In turn, she waded out into the shallows and lay on her side to submerge her gill crests, which had begun to shrivel a bit as the water drained out from between their filaments. He managed to break a blade of grass free with some effort, testing its strength and flexibility. I can do something with this.“Report,” he ordered, raising his voice to compensate for distance. “How long have you been conscious?”

“A few hours, sir. Long enough to discover I can’t swim too far without squales coming to stop me.”

“They’re holding us prisoner?” he asked, pausing in his efforts to tear more blades free.

Lavena propped herself partway up, considering. She was far enough out that most of her crests remained submerged—along with most of her other anatomy, which was a comfort to Riker. “I think it might be…protective custody. The deep sound chatter is angry. Hundreds died in the impact, and a valuable feeding ground or something was destroyed. Most of the squales blame us. But the research pod that made contact with us is keeping us safe…at least until the others decide whether we deserve punishment.”

Riker sighed. “Our equipment? Our clothes?”

“All scuttled, sir. They didn’t want any part of it. It’s…well, probably getting a lot more compact now,” she said, pointing down toward the bottom of what might as well be a bottomless ocean.

“That figures. They couldn’t at least have left me my swim briefs?”

“Sir…with respect, they didsave our lives. I think…they even gave us medical care somehow. I remember…being enclosed in a warm fluid. Something…pulsing, like a great heartbeat. I asked the squales about it, and they said something about…tending to life.”

“I remember the same thing,” he said. “I’d thought it was just…I didn’t know.” An atavistic memory of his mother’s womb? Maybe an empathic connection with his unborn daughter? Deanna…He reached out to her by reaching within. He couldn’t get any response, any clear sense of her presence. But he believed he could still feel a basic awareness of their connection. She was alive; he was sure of it. But somehow she couldn’t communicate with him. She could be injured, or very distant—but why would she be so far away?

“I think there must be even more to their bioengineering than we thought, sir,” Lavena said. “I was pretty banged up when I was knocked from the skiff, but I’m almost fully healed now.”

Riker remembered bleeding from his head. His hand went to his forehead, felt around—there was only the barest hint of a scar. “Normally I’d be fascinated,” he said. “But right now I’d rather be in Titan’s sickbay.” He fought off another wave of dizziness. “Make that the mess hall.”

“Oh!” Lavena cried. “Hold on, sir, I’ll get you something to eat.”

She was gone before he could stop her, no doubt foraging on the underside for something that was edible raw. Riker knew from the crew’s reports that Dropletian biochemistry was reasonably compatible with human, although lacking in mineral nutrients. It would tide him over for a few days, at least. He didn’t plan to be here that long.

By the time Lavena returned, Riker had successfully woven the grasses into a thong-type garment that covered him nearly as well as his briefs had. Lavena seemed even more amused by this than she had been when he was naked, though she struggled to keep her amusement in check. Wanting her attention elsewhere, he asked, “Did the squales tell you anything about the rest of our teams? Other survivors?” He was unsure if all the teams had been evacuated in time, though most would probably have been safely out of range.

Lavena shook her head. “I asked, but they won’t tell me anything. I don’t think they want us talking to anyone else. When I dove to the deep sound channel, the security pod intercepted me, made sure I didn’t make any loud noises. We’re not only in custody, we’re in a communications blackout.” She looked up at him. “I’m…a little nervous about what that might mean for our future.”

“I’m more worried about the rest of our people,” he told her. “You said this faction of squales is protecting us from the anger of the others.”

“The research pod, at least, yes, sir. I think it’s because they’ve established at least a tenuous relationship with us—with me. And the security pod is going along because, well, they’re on the same team for the duration, I guess.”

He met her dark-eyed gaze. “So who’s going to protect everyone else?”

CHAPTER E

LEVEN

SHUTTLECRAFT MARSALIS

Tamen Gibruch stared out at the endless ocean outside the Marsalis’s forward port, so unlike the wide, arid savannas of Chand Aad, and yet so similar in some ways. Here, as everywhere, life vied for survival, embracing every possible strategy—predation, social cooperation, flight, concealment—whatever it took to gain a march over oblivion. That, Gibruch reflected, was the impetus that drove Titan’s crew now, in their unrelenting search for a captain and chief pilot who were probably crushed to paste at the bottom of the ocean. Even when failure was nearly certain, they never gave up. It was a quality Gibruch admired, and one he had seen in Starfleet many times, most of all during the Borg invasion. They may not have had anything growing from the backs of their heads save hair and the odd gill crests or spines, but in their own way, Starfleet people had trunks.

But the instinct for survival drove the life of Droplet as well, and in recent days it had compelled the squales to overcome their timidity and swim closer to the aquashuttles, facing them down threateningly, restricting their movements (at least in the water) beyond the floater colony they’d made their base. They hadn’t attacked yet, still keeping a moderate distance, and Gibruch suspected they might retreat if pressed. But Commander Vale wasn’t ready to test that, feeling they had been antagonized enough.

Instead, Gibruch’s team was assigned to make one more effort to communicate with the squales. Y’lira Modan had taken over Lavena’s role of spokeswoman, brushing up her Selkie for the task; but her dense body structure made her a poor swimmer, so she was relying on hydrophones and submerged speakers, something the squales did not appreciate. It was not going well. Apparently this was a pod consisting of hermaphroditic “mothers” and their children, rather than one specializing in research or governance (if they had governance; the science staff was still uncertain of that). It wasn’t the ideal type of pod to try to communicate with, but it was what they had at the moment. Huilan had volunteered to go out into the water and try his luck; but Gibruch was reluctant to send out the bite-sized counselor under current conditions. In the three standard days since the impact—nearly five Dropletian days—the animal life of the planet had been agitated, aggressive.

“Don’t worry,” Huilan told him. “I can take care of myself. At worst, you can keep a transporter lock on me and beam me to safety.”

“I admire your determination,” Gibruch said. “But my duty is to keep you safe.”

“Our duty is to find the captain and Lavena, if we can. And to try to make amends for our mistakes here. We can’t do that without talking to the squales.”

“That may have to wait,” Y’lira told them, listening to her earpiece. “I’m picking up chatter from the squales. It sounds like a predator alert.”

“Confirmed,” said Eviku at the science console. “I’m picking up something approaching the squale pod. It’s big.”

Soon Eviku was able to call up a magnified image on his screen. He had been right about the creature’s size; it read as over ten meters long. A low-slung, brick-brown shell bulldozed through the water like a boat that had capsized and hadn’t realized it. Behind a heavy, nasty-looking prow, the shell presented a rough, bumpy surface like a magnified crab carapace. Right at the waterline in front were numerous glints suggesting tiny cabochon eyes. Behind the creature, the water roiled in slithering shapes, suggesting multiple vertical fins beneath the surface.

“The squales are forming a defensive circle,” Eviku reported, “protecting their young.” A pause. “Now the two largest hermaphrodites are—yes, they’re heading toward the creature. They’re going to intercept it!”

“Underwater sensors?” Gibruch asked. “What do they reveal of the creature’s underside?” He strode over to view the sensor feed. To his mind, eye and scanner complemented each other.

“Tentacles,” Eviku reported, interpreting the roiling, confused image. “Looks like hundreds of wiggling tentacles, pushing it forward. Several…roughly triangular tailfins. And two thick tentacles coming out of the front, several meters long.” His voice was tense, agitated. Gi bruch was surprised; he hadn’t known Eviku long, but had come to think of him as a reserved, level-headed officer.

“They’re not slowing down,” said Olivia Bolaji from the pilot’s seat. Gibruch looked out the window; now he could see firsthand as the largest of the squales and the dreadnought creature barreled toward a head-on collision. If anything, the dreadnought was picking up speed.

The entire audience winced as one at the mighty impact. Gibruch felt the sinus cavities tighten in his trunk as a bloom of bright vermilion stained the sea. “My God,” came Bolaji’s whisper as the dreadnought trundled forward, carelessly sloughing off the wounded squale’s bulk to push on with its attack.

As the underwater sensors showed, the second squale dodged a head-on crash, swerving around to slam its tail into the monster’s side. The dreadnought fishtailed, as it were, but quickly steadied and swung to meet its foe. “It’s bringing in the tentacles!” Eviku exclaimed.

The squale dodged with all the speed its bulk allowed, barely evading the first ropy limb; but the second brushed its flank and the squale went into convulsions, throwing the surface into turmoil. “I’m picking up electrical discharges!” Eviku reported. “Look at the voltage!”

Normally, Gibruch would have taken him to task for the imprecise and overly emotional report. But Gibruch was too caught up in the drama as the dreadnought wrapped both limbs about the squale, sending a still greater shock into its body. The tentacles managed to hold their grip despite the thrashing they induced. The water warped and crumpled under the onslaught of the squale’s throes, obscuring the scene from view. But before long, the turmoil subsided, revealing the squale motionless, burned, showing the unique limpness of death despite the water’s buoying.

And then the dreadnought moved in to feed. No one much cared to witness that. “What’s the status of the other squale?” Gibruch asked after a pause.

Another pause followed before Eviku responded. “It’s alive, but bleeding severely. The…the others seem to be…yes, they’re gathering around it. I suppose the predator is focused on its kill, so they’re getting their wounded away.”

“Commander?” the pilot spoke up. “They’re heading roughly in our direction.”

“Don’t make any sudden moves. I don’t think they’ll collide with us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you sure, Commander?” Eviku asked, still unwontedly nervous.

“Calm yourself, Lieutenant,” the Chandir replied, opening a sinus cavity in his trunk to add more resonance and authority to his voice. “Given the way the life on this world recoils from technology, I’m sure we have no cause for concern.”

As the diminished pod made haste to clear the scene, the crew spontaneously fell into a respectful silence. The pod left behind a thinning wake of blood that spread until it touched the hull of the Marsalis. It seemed symbolic to Gibruch, as though saying that all life is joined at the pith and that the life and death of one being will touch all others sooner or later, though worlds divide them.

And then the shuttle lurched, knocking everyone to the deck, and Gibruch instinctively knew that that baptism of blood had passed beyond mere metaphor. The second dreadnought had been drawn by the bouquet of blood spreading through the sea. Mistaking the shuttle for another squale, it had slammed its thick, battering-ram prow into the side, knocking the vessel into a drifting spin. The clang reverberated so loudly through the water that every squale for kilometers around must have looked up from what it was doing and thought, “What was that?!”

The dreadnought recoiled, the unexpectedly hard skin of the shuttle having given it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience a headache. But that apparently just made it mad, and it whipped its tentacles around the port-side hull, trying to deliver a fatal shock. The insulated hull kept its current from getting a foothold, but it went on trying with mindless determination. “No cause for concern, sir?” Eviku snapped.

“Belay that, Lieutenant,” Gibruch ordered. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances. “Bolaji, take us up.”

“My pleasure,” Bolaji replied. But it was a struggle to get the shuttle into the air; the leviathan held on relentlessly. Bolaji had to kick in enough power to lift the whole creature out of the water, yet still it clung, mindless in its frenzy. Soon he felt a tremble and a surge of speed, telling him the dreadnought had fallen away, and the sensors confirmed it. But there was still a thick tentacle adhering to the forward port by its suckers. The creature’s own weight had torn it free.

“I…I don’t understand,” Eviku said once the shuttle had gained some altitude and he had regained greater calm. “It’s not normal for predators to be so reckless. Their survival depends on being fit and intact. Sacrificing a limb like that, even after it should have known we offered no nourishment…what could drive it to that?”

“I don’t know,” Gibruch said. “But until we find out, I think going out swimming on this planet is definitely a bad idea.”

ELSEWHERE ON DROPLET

If there’s one good thing about this captivity,Aili Lavena reflected on more than one occasion, it’s that I get to do plenty of swimming.

Indeed, she could hardly do otherwise; without a hydration suit, she couldn’t function out of the water for long. Of course there was more oxygen in the air, but her gills needed water between their countless tiny filaments to function; otherwise the filaments would clump together and have too little exposed surface area to absorb sufficient oxygen. Out of the water, her membranes could only hold their moisture for a few minutes before shriveling up.

Which made it somewhat awkward to interact with Captain Riker—although she recognized that he would feel even more awkward if she could be up there on the islet with him, having no clothes of any kind. She’d declined to wear the kind of woven-grass garment he sported, stating that it would probably not hold up to the amount of swimming she had to do; besides, she imagined it must itch terribly, though she felt no urge to seek confirmation from him.

It was hard for Riker, she knew, being stranded on that little saucer of land with nothing to do, virtually no tools or resources to make anything with, virtually no food to forage for. He could swim reasonably well for a human, of course, and sometimes joined her in gathering food from beneath the floater or simply swimming for exercise. But he couldn’t last without air any longer than she could last without water. And he was still weak from his injuries; he seemed to have gotten hurt worse than she had in the tsunami, or else he was healing more poorly for some reason.

She kept him company as best she could, but there was only so much they could talk about: Academy stories, navigation problems, music, the Pacifican yacht races, the most tasteless Borg jokes they could think of. They both shied away from more serious topics, such as what might have become of Titanor what their chances were for rescue—and of course they avoided talking about their past.

So, truth be told, Aili was relieved to spend the bulk of her time either foraging for food or conversing with the squales. Luckily the members of the research pod were still interested in continuing the language lessons—although she soon realized that was because they still wished to interrogate her about the asteroid impact and her people’s role in it. She was saddened that they shared the defender pod’s mistrust of her. Indeed, when the lessons first resumed, she hadn’t felt so fortunate, for one of the defender squales had grabbed her bodily again and kept her under close, intimidating guard at all times. She was pretty sure it was the same pseudo-male that had restrained her before, and she was starting to think of him as “Grabby.” But over the past few local days since then, once it had become clear she was eager to participate in the conversation, the researchers had grown more comfortable with her and talked Grabby and his team into keeping their distance.

Well, “comfortable” might not have been the word. Aili had noted that all the squales were acting more tense and agitated over the past few days. She had soon discerned that they had reason, when the defender squales guarding the perimeter came under attack from a school of large chordate predators with broad, delta-wing fins, not unlike the rays of Earth but with long, scissorlike double beaks bracketing a flexible, prolapsing maw that shot out to engulf what the beaks severed. Grabby lost a tentacle and another defender lost a tailfin before the rest of the pod closed in and harried the scissor-rays off, firing bursts of intense concentrated sound to stun them. Aili was tempted to consider Grabby’s fate poetic justice, but she couldn’t bring herself to take pleasure in such a serious amputation and couldn’t help but be moved by the way his fellow defenders held and comforted him and the other injured male as they took them away for, presumably, medical treatment. She wondered if it would involve the womblike things she and Riker had apparently been placed in. But when she asked about it, the squales declined to answer.

The next day, Aili had found herself under attack from a large molluscoid that used its long, narrow conical shell to thrust at her like a jouster’s lance. Only quick reflexes saved her from being impaled, but she lost part of one gill fringe before two of the younger research-pod squales arrived and assailed the creature, crushing its shell and tearing out and consuming the innards. It was hard to be unambivalently grateful after seeing that, but she reminded herself it was simply the cycle of nature.

Those same two squales began spending an increasing amount of time with her, taking the lead in the language lessons. These two pseudo-males—one each of the two roughly masculine sexes—were apparently fairly new apprentices in the research pod, having left their maternal pod less than a Dropletian year before, and they were still rich with the open, inquisitive spirit that drove squales of their age to seek apprenticeships, often going through several specialist pods before settling on a preferred career. They watched with fascination as she swam, taking note of how her alien form functioned in the water, carefully examining the details of her body. She did her best to cultivate their curiosity, guiding the conversation toward a mutual exchange of knowledge, offering them a share of the food she harvested, even engaging with them in play. One or two adults always hovered nearby, ready to strike if she attempted anything untoward, but they allowed the young ones their freedom to engage her. What was the game Commander Vale mentioned when we were prisoners of the Hreekh? Are these the “good cops” I’m supposed to open up to?If so, that was fine, since she was here to be open.

Aili dubbed her young friends Alos and Gasa, after two of her younger siblings. But it turned out they were not related, or even part of the same specialist pod. What she’d thought of as the research pod was actually an aggregate of two. As Alos and Gasa explained, the squales had no pods specializing in studying newly encountered species, for they had long since catalogued all the species in the sea and air and domesticated many of them. (Aili wondered how long that would have taken; an ocean was vast, but Droplet’s fairly uniform ocean had more limited biodiversity than would be found on a planet whose seas were subdivided by land masses. And there was always the possibility that their knowledge was not as pervasive as they assumed.) So two specialist pods had combined their efforts. Alos was apprenticed to a pod that studied astronomy, using specially bred flying chordates and balloon jellies as probes that recorded visual information and encoded it into echolocation-like impulses. Gasa’s apprenticeship was with an animal-management pod specializing in interactions with their world’s more intelligent nonsquale species, making them the closest thing Droplet had to experts in interspecies communication or diplomacy. This was the first time those two pods had collaborated, and the two youngsters were enjoying the exchange of ideas, perhaps more so than the elders, who were more set in their ways.