I heard Kuwale approach; ve tapped my arm, then took my elbow. I followed ver to a corner of the hold. Ve pressed my hand to the wall, about a meter up. Ve’d found some kind of utilities panel – guarded by a protective cover, a small spring-loaded door flush with the wall. I hadn’t noticed it when we were being lowered in – but the walls were heavily stained and spattered, an effective camouflage pattern.

I explored the exposed panel with my fingertips. There was a low voltage DC power socket. Two threaded metal fittings, each a couple of centimeters wide, with flow-control levers beneath them. Whatever they supplied – or whatever they were meant to pump out – they didn’t strike me as much of an asset. Unless Kuwale had visions of flooding the hold, so we could float up to the hatch…?

I almost missed it. At the far right of the panel, there was a shallow-rimmed circular aperture, just five or six millimeters wide.

An optical interface port.

Connected to what? The boat’s main computer? If the vessel’s original design had allowed for carrying cargo, maybe a crew member with a portable terminal would have fed in inventory data from here. In a fishing boat leased to Anthrocosmologists, I didn’t have high hopes that it was configured to do anything at all.

I unbuttoned my shirt, while invoking Witness . The software had a crude “virtual terminal” option – which would let me view any incoming data, and mime-type as if on a keyboard. I unsealed the interface port in my navel, and stood pressed against the wall, trying to align the two connectors. It was awkward – but after wriggling out of the fishing net, this seemed like no challenge at all.

The best I could get was a brief surge of random text – and then an error message from the software itself. It was picking up an answering signal – but the data was scrambled beyond recognition. Both ports were sockets, designed to be joined to an umbilical’s connector. Their identical protective rims kept them too far apart – their photodetectors a millimeter beyond the plane of focus of each other’s signal lasers.

I stepped back, trying not to vent my frustration audibly. Kuwale touched my arm, inquiringly. I put vis hand to my face, shook my head, then guided vis finger to my artificial navel. Ve clapped me on the shoulder: I understand. Okay. We tried.

I stood slumped against the wall beside the panel. It occurred to me that if I buried the ACs’ confession, EnGeneUity might still get the blame. If Helen Wu and friends, in hiding, tried claiming responsibility after the fact, they were more than likely to be written off as obscure cranks. No one had ever heard of Anthrocosmologists. Mosala’s martyrdom could, still, break the boycott wide open.