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“You are not,” I told her, and she frowned as I went on. “I would know. I’m reading your mind.”
She snorted. “Well, that’s comforting, at least. But someone else was here before me.” She started pacing again. “And I’m sure the man who sent me knows about this too, the billionaire who’s paying for all this,” she said, unsuccessfully plucking at one of her suit’s sleeves. “But why send me alone? Why hire you? Why build that whole damn lab, and then not give me any other scientists to talk to? I just don’t understand.” She’d turned to frown at the structure instead. “I don’t even know if it crashed right side up. Or what if their language is meant to be read top to bottom, back to front—or a million different other ways?”
I stepped up to the wall behind her, tilting my head. “May I come into your mind?” I asked her.
“Of course,” she said, relaxing, as I had trained her the prior night—and I gave her the three nearest symbols in front of me, in quick succession, only this time with the images inversed.
“What does that look like to you now, little pearl?” I asked her.
I felt her excitement flare. “The lines that we thought were at the bottom—you’re right—it makes more sense if they’re at the top! Like a water line! And if that’s the case, and these are upside down, then...” She reached out and held her thumb over one of the circles in the center of the symbols, without touching it. “I bet this is the ship. Under the waves.”
I inspected it more closely. “It looks like an egg.”
“Why not both?” she said cheerfully before sobering. “But Ceph—that’s Doctor Pearl to you.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not—but I suspected I’d been too familiar.
Before I could worry about it more, she went on.
“Can you pick me up again? Because if I can scan the entire thing now with my cameras, it’ll be a lot easier to flip the footage and see if any of it makes more sense that way.”
And now that I understood more about how her camera worked, having witnessed its output myself in her mind, it was easier to tease apart the images she’d sent me earlier, her learned fiction from her actual memories.
“May the force be with you,” I told her, reaching my arms out, as she stopped and crossed hers.
“Please say you are kidding.”
I grinned at her, and I saw her inside her helmet, grinning back. “But you sent it to me!” I protested. “It was brighter than all the other memories you shared, too,” I complained, letting my amusement trickle across our ’qa.
“Bonding with you was a mistake,” she complained, while also laughing, coming nearer at last. I picked her up again easily, and started ascending up the structure’s wall with strong, even strokes.
“It was not, Elle of the Air. You are exactly where you need to be,” I said—meaning nothing about the site surrounding us, and everything about the fact that she was held within my arms. “Although maybe when we are finished with this, you could explain more of your Star Wars to me.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
chapter 23
CEPHARIUS
This time she wriggled with excitement—and I longed to put many more of my tentacles upon her. Every sucker that didn’t touch a part of her felt bereft.
But I managed to contain myself. She was happier now, because of me.
I carried her slowly over the entire side of the structure, sweeping across it at an even speed, and I heard her counting along the way until we got to a place where there were no symbols at all at the very top.
“Why would they stop?” She put her hand to her helmet, as if it helped her think.
“Maybe they ran out of time?” I guessed. “There’s more on all of the other visible sides, but your cable won’t stretch that far.”
She groaned. “I can’t believe how limiting this is.”
“If they’d crashed somewhere more accessible, you wouldn’t be with me,” I teased, and felt her stiffen. I was worrying I’d said the wrong thing, when she agreed.
“Is it possible they landed in the ocean on purpose? Something this large hitting the ground, it should’ve left a blast radius, but there’s still deep cliffs on both this trench’s sides. So maybe if they didn’t crash. If they landed, did they come here to hide?”
I had no idea.
All I knew was I loved to watch her think.
