"Imperial data processors use quantum wells, correct?" he asked.
"Some do, sir," Tyre explained. "The Lynx's processors certainly use quantum bits--data are stored in the spin-state of electron pairs in trapped phosphorus atoms--but that's not a quantum well. Those are real phosphorus atoms."
Zai sighed.
"But we do know how to create quantum wells," he stated.
"Yes, sir. That's pre-starflight technology."
"In that case, and please put this simply," he said, "what can the Rix do that we can't?"
Ensign Tyre looked pleadingly at Hobbes, and the executive officer nodded and looked upward to gather her thoughts.
"Sir, we can only create wells with fixed electron counts, and under relatively controlled circumstances. But the Rix have found a way to add and subtract electrons on the fly, to change the wells' elemental characteristics at will. Apparently, the object can address its pseudoatoms as if they were registers in a computer's memory. In some sense, the object is a quantum computer."
"A computer that can change itself into whatever it wants?"
"Yes, sir. The process of the object's thoughts is transubstantiation."
"Mind and matter, one," he mused.
Hobbes narrowed her eyes. "I suppose so, sir."
Laurent Zai dared another look into the airscreen. Since his last question, Ensign Tyre had put up a representation of a quantum well. It looked like any number of three-dimensional graphs: a terrain of spiky mountains arranged with an odd symmetry, like a wedding procession of volcanoes, or the spinal ridges of some exaggerated trilobite.
Thoughts of evolutionary past turned over the soil of Zai's growing disquiet. His staff seemed insufficiently alarmed by the object's abilities, as if they'd captured some alien and charming children's toy. Ensign Tyre seemed to view this as an intellectual game, as if it were one of the reverse-engineering conundra that DA officers composed and swapped like chess puzzles. For Hobbes, this new Rix technology translated into nothing more than a set of tactical advantages, like a new form of armor or an improved gravity effect.
But Zai saw a greater danger. Not only to the Empire, but to humanity itself. This was a revision of matter, for god's sake. He had to make them grasp the enormity of this development.
"Tyre," he said, "would this work at higher temperatures?"
"Absolutely, sir. It might improve its operation. Frankly, we have no idea how they've managed to get the silicon to semiconduct at deep-space temperatures."
"And it would work in a hard-gee field?"
"It should, sir. We've poked at it with easy gravitons, anyway, and there seems to be no disruption. This all happens in the electromagnetic domain; gravity is a relatively trivial force."
"So this object could exist on a planet?"
Tyre and Hobbes were silent. Other officers around the table straightened, awakening from the stupor of the physics lesson. Zai waited a few more moments as the idea sank in.
Then he asked more directly. "This object might well adapt itself to terrestrial conditions?"
"I see no reason why it couldn't, sir," Tyre admitted.
"Could it propagate itself, like nanotechnology?"
"Possibly, sir. If there was sufficient silicon in the environment."
"What percentage of the average terrestrial planet is silicon, Tyre?"
Hobbes shook her head as she interrupted. "We don't know if propagation is even remotely possible, sir. And we do know the object has limitations. It can change itself, but it hasn't turned into a starship and attacked us."
Tyre spoke. "It seems to be unable to create complex objects, ma'am, as far as we've seen. And, of course, the object has only its own silicon substrate for reaction mass; acceleration would gradually consume it. Without nuclei, of course, it can't make a fusion drive or nuclear weapons."
"I hope you're right, Tyre," Zai said. "How many megatons of silicon do you think exist on Home?"
"We can keep it physically distant from any planets, sir," Hobbes said.
"I wouldn't bring it within a billion kilometers of Home, orders from the Emperor be damned," he stated flatly.
The disloyal words brought a look of shock to the officers' faces. Good, he had their attention. They were going to have to be very careful with this war prize.
Tyre spoke up, back with an answer to his previous questions. "Silicon is universally prevalent, sir. In terrestrial planetary crusts, only oxygen is more plentiful by mass. And in cosmic terms, only a few gases and carbon exceed silicon in abundance."
Zai was finally satisfied by his staff's reaction to this information.
"Listen carefully," he said. "We seem to have a tiger by the tail. Emergent minds have existed for a long time. As the Rix Cult insists, they are the natural result of any petabyte-scale data system, just as biological life seems to be the natural result of oxygen, carbon, and a billion years of steady sunlight or geothermal. But however threatening compound minds are, so far they have always depended on humanity for their existence. We formed the substrate for their thoughts."
Zai looked around the command bridge, catching his officers' eyes one by one.
"But we are no longer necessary," he said slowly.
Laurent Zai watched their faces carefully. The trip to Home would take almost two subjective years. To keep his crew alert during that long passage, he needed to illustrate the threat that this enigmatic cargo posed to the Lynx and the Empire, and to humanity. The space-born mind was a new species, an altogether unknown entity that would test this crew sorely.
A strange look passed over Hobbes's face. She put a hand to one ear.
"Sir," she said quietly. "I'm getting double-priority from the Rix prisoner's marine guard."
"An escape attempt?" Zai asked. He had feared that having a commando on board would cause trouble, no matter how carefully she was guarded.
"Negative, sir. A message."
"She's decided to speak?"
"Not her, sir. The message . . . it's from the compound mind. For you personally."
Laurent Zai glanced around at the shocked faces of his officers. He didn't allow himself to show surprise. They would have to learn. Over the next two years, the unexpected would be the norm.