Jarn abandoned her needle-jabbing. ‘The Spline isn’t responding.’ She held up the emptied hypodermics. ‘This is the way you communicate with a Spline – in an emergency, anyhow. Chemicals injected into its bloodstream. Lieutenant Mace could tell you better than I can, if he were conscious. I think this Spline must be too badly wounded. It has withdrawn from us, from human contact.’
-Resplendent, "Breeding Ground"