The Engineer Reconditioned by Neal Asher Page A

might want of it."
    "What do you think it might learn?"
    "Everything it is possible to learn from my DNA. Being able to build and alter DNA to the extent it does it must be able to decode it down to the atomic level."
    "I think you're right," said Chapra. She thought a lot else but wasn't going to spoil his moment.
    "Box," said Abaron. "What happened after the ... worm ... bit me?"
    "It swam very fast to the inside of the Jain's machine. The Jain is now wrapped around its machine. There is much nanomechanical activity."
    "There," said Abaron to Chapra.
    Just then the door to the medlab hissed open and in walked the Jain's probe beast, closely followed by Rhys.
    Box said, "There was an ultrasound communication between this probe and the Jain six minutes after the sample was taken from your arm."
    The beast squatted on the floor, facing towards Abaron, who sat on the edge of the examination couch.
    "It is scanning you," said Box, then, "Your graft is ready."
    "Perhaps it has come to see this," said Abaron as he lay back on the couch. The doctor, which was a close relation to the PSR but deliberately less threatening in appearance, gripped Abaron's arm above and below his biceps. What might be described as its head came down against the muscle. It quickly gobbled up the dressing. In a glare of sterilizing ultraviolet it pressed a circle of skin into place with a flattened white egg on the end of one many jointed arm. The egg had the words 'Cell Weld Inc.' printed on it. It hummed mildly. The probe beast got up, turned, and left the room.
    "It's satisfied you're all right," said Chapra.
    When Abaron had nothing to say to that Box said, "You may be interested to know that prior to coming here the probe beast, as you call it, was in an observation blister, looking at the stars, and seeing our arrival at system DF678.98 and the world with the name Haden. It is now returning to the isolation chamber."
    "We have to see this," said Abaron. He inspected his arm as the doctor took the cell welder from his arm. There was no sign of a wound.
    "The world?" asked Chapra.
    "No, what the Jain does with its probe beast."
    When the doctor released him Abaron headed quickly for the door. Chapra followed calmly after, faintly smiling. She let Abaron get ahead of her; out of hearing.
    "Where's the xenophobe?" she asked.
    "There is nothing more fearful than fear itself," said Box.
    "Yet you would have thought the opposite effect."
    "Human psychology. Go figure," said Box.
    Rhys opened the lock doors for the probe creature. It walked out along the jetty and dropped into the water. Chapra cleared the projection of surface refractivity and they watched the beast walk across the bottom to its creator. The Jain, still clinging around its machine, turned its strange head, then after a moment let go. It coiled out a triangular-section tentacle and plugged into the probe beast's back.
    "It's down-loading it, reading it," said Abaron.
    Chapra was glad to hear fascination in his voice rather than the suppressed horror she had heard before. They sat watching. Chapra expected nothing more than the tentacle to detach in a few minutes, perhaps in a few hours. She did not expect what happened next. The Jain convulsed, its tentacle cracking like a whip. It broke the probe beast on the chamber floor and let it go. Leaking green blood and fizzing like sherbet the beast floated to the surface. The Jain convulsed again and coiled hedgehog fashion, all its tentacles, its head, its arm, and its tail hidden away. Nothing but a crescent of ribbed body, sinking to the bottom.
    "Hell, what happened?" wondered Chapra, her hands blurring over her touch console. Abaron just studied the projection, his hands folded in his lap. "It just discovered how long it was in stasis I reckon."
    Chapra gaped at him. That had not even occurred to her.
    The Jain remained coiled for twenty hours and when it finally uncoiled it swam around aimlessly for another eight hours. Chapra and Abaron