Blindsight

The major waved a dismissive hand. "Big ships turn slowly. If they were setting up to snooker us we'd see it well in advance." She looked around the table. "Look, am I the only one who finds this odd? An interstellar technology that redecorates superJovians and lines up meteoroids like elephants on parade, and they were hiding? From us?"

"Unless there's someone else out here," James suggested uneasily.

Bates shook her head. "The cloak was directional. It was aimed at us and no one else."

"And even we saw through it," Szpindel added.

"Exactly. So they go to Plan B, which so far amounts to nothing but bluster and vague warnings. I'm just saying, they're not acting like giants. Rorschach's behavior feels—improvised. I don't think they expected us."

"'Course not. Burns-Caulfield was—"

"I don't think they expected us yet."

"Um," Szpindel said, digesting it.

The major ran one hand over her naked scalp. "Why would they expect us to just give up after we learned we'd been sniped? Of course we'd look elsewhere. Burns-Caulfield could only have been intended as a delaying action; if I was them, I'd plan on us getting out here eventually. But I think they miscalculated somehow. We got out here sooner than they expected and caught them with their pants down."

Szpindel split the bulb and emptied it into his mug. "Pretty large miscalculation for something so smart, eh?" A hologram bloomed on contact with the steaming liquid, glowing in soft commemoration of the Gaza Glasslands. The scent of plasticised coffee flooded the Commons. "Especially after they'd surveilled us down to the square meter," he added.

"And what did they see? I–CANNs. Solar sails. Ships that take years to reach the Kuiper, and don't have the reserves to go anywhere else afterwards. Telematter didn't exist beyond Boeing's simulators and a half-dozen protypes back then. Easy to miss. They must've figured one decoy would buy them all the time they needed."

"To do what?" James wondered.

"Whatever it is," Bates said, "We're ringside."

Szpindel raised his mug with an infirm hand and sipped. The coffee trembled in its prison, the surface wobbling and blobbing in the drum's half-hearted gravity. James pursed her lips in faint disapproval. Open-topped containers for liquids were technically verboten in variable-gravity environments, even for people without Szpindel's dexterity issues.

"So they're bluffing," Szpindel said at last.

Bates nodded. "That's my guess. Rorschach's still under construction. We could be dealing with an automated system of some kind."

"So we can ignore the keep-off-the-grass signs, eh? Walk right in."

"We can afford to bide our time. We can afford to not push it."

"Ah. So even though we could maybe handle it now, you want to wait until it graduates from covert to invulnerable." Szpindel shuddered, set down his coffee. "Where'd you get your military training again? Sporting Chance Academy?"

Bates ignored the jibe. "The fact that Rorschach's still growing may be the best reason to leave it alone for a while. We don't have any idea what the—mature, I guess—what the mature form of this artefact might be. Sure, it hid. Lots of animals take cover from predators without being predators, especially young ones. Sure, it's—evasive. Doesn't give us the answers we want. But maybe it doesn't know them, did you consider that? How much luck would you have interrogating a Human embryo? Adult could be a whole different animal."

"Adult could put our asses through a meatgrinder."

"So could the embryo for all we know." Bates rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Isaac, you're the biologist. I shouldn't have to tell you how many shy reclusive critters pack a punch when they're cornered. Porcupine doesn't want any trouble, but he'll still give you a faceful of quills if you ignore the warning."

Szpindel said nothing. He slid his coffee sideways along the concave tabletop, to the very limit of his reach. The liquid sat there in its mug, a dark circle perfectly parallel to the rim but canted slightly towards us. I even thought I could make out the merest convexity in the surface itself.

Szpindel smiled faintly at the effect.

James cleared her throat. "Not to downplay your concerns, Isaac, but we've hardly exhausted the diplomatic route. And at least it's willing to talk, even if it's not as forthcoming as we'd like."

"Sure it talks," Szpindel said, eyes still on the leaning mug. "Not like us."

"Well, no. There's some—"

"It's not just slippery, it's downright dyslexic sometimes, you noticed? And it mixes up its pronouns."

"Given that it picked up the language entirely via passive eavesdropping, it's remarkably fluent. In fact, from what I can tell they're more efficient at processing speech than we are."

"Gotta be efficient at a language if you're going to be so evasive in it, eh?"