Women in Deep Time by Greg Bear

confusion. He had studied them too long. They had truly infected him. But here at least was a hint of purpose. A question needed to be answered.
    He made preparations. There were signs the brood mind’s flux bind was not permanent, was in fact unwinding quite rapidly. When it emerged, Aryz would present it with a judgment, an answer.
    He realized, none too clearly, that by Senexi standards he was now a raving lunatic.
    He would hook himself into the mandate, improve the somewhat isolating interface he had used previously to search for selected answers. He, the captive, and the shapes would be immersed in human history together. They would be like young suckling on a Population I mother-animal just the opposite of the Senexi process, where young fed nourishment and information into the brood mind.
    The mandate would nourish, or poison. Or both.
     
    —Did she love?
    —What—you mean, did she receive?
    —No, did she we I give?
    —I don’t know what you mean.
    I wonder if she would know what I mean….
    Love , said the mandate, and the data proceeded.
    Prufrax was twenty nine. She had been assigned to a cruiser in a new program where superior but untested fighters were put into thick action with no preliminary. The program was designed to see how well the Grounds prepared fighters; some thought it foolhardy, but Prufrax found it perfectly satisfactory.
    The cruiser was a million ton raider, with a hawk contingent of fifty three and eighty regular crew. She would be used in a second wave attack, following the initial hardfought.
    She was scared. That was good; fright improved basic biologic, if properly managed. The cruiser would make a raid into Senexi space and retaliate for past cuckoo seeding programs. They would come up against thornships and seedships, likely.
    The fighting was going to be fierce.
    The raider made its final denial of the overness of the real and pipsqueezed into an arduous, nasty sponge space. It drew itself together again and emerged far above the galactic plane.
     
    Prufrax sat in the hawks wardroom and looked at the simulated rotating snowball of stars. Red coded numerals flashed along the borders of known Senexi territory, signifying old stars, dark hulks of stars, the whole ghostly home region where they had first come to power when the terrestrial sun had been a mist wrapped youngster. A green arrow showed the position of the raider.
    She drank sponge space supplements with the others but felt isolated because of her firstness, her fear. Everyone seemed so calm. Most were fours or fives—on their fourth or fifth battle call. There were ten ones and an upper scatter of experienced hawks with nine to twenty five battles behind them. There were no thirties. Thirties were rare in combat; the few that survived so many engagements were plucked off active and retired to PR service under the polinstructors. They often ended up in fibs, acting poorly, looking unhappy.
    Still, when she had been more naive, Prufrax’s heroes had been a man-and woman thirty team she had watched in fib after fib Kumnax and Arol. They had been better actors than most.
    Day in, day out, they drilled in their fightsuits. While the crew bustled, hawks were put through implant learning, what slang was already calling the Know, as opposed to the Tell, of classroom teaching. Getting background, just enough to tickle her curiosity, not enough to stimulate morbid interest.
    There it is again. Feel?
    —I know it. Yes. The round one, part of eyes open…
    Senexi?
    No, brother without name.
    —Your…brother?
    —No…I don’t know.
    Can it hurt us?
    —It never has. It’s trying to talk to us.
    Leave us alone!
    It’s going.
    Still, there were items of information she had never received before, items privileged only to the fighters, to assist them in their work. Older hawks talked about the past, when data had been freely available. Stories circulated in the wardroom about the Senexi, and she managed to piece together something