by Larry Niven
Carlos floated, allowing the memories to wash over him. And at the core of them, the thread of the puzzle. Intelligent creatures? Modified grendels? What did, or could it all mean?
He opened his eyes, and scanned his flashlight beam around the cave. Why had he come back here? It wasn’t just to float, he was sure.
But floating enabled him to relax enough to think. Let things coalesce.
Why had he come back here? Something . . something at the back of his mind . . .
The caves were no secret, and the kids had been coming here for decades. He imagined that countless torrid, romantic scenes had been played out here in the shadows. In fact, there was graffiti on the walls, and had been for . . .
A thought, something he felt to be important, slithered past his conscious mind and then was gone. Dammit! What was he trying to think of . . ?
Alicia and Scott called from the outer chamber: “Are you all right, Dad?”
“Fine. Just need a little more time.” He called back.
More floating. Thinking. What . . .
As often happens when one is immersed in warm, neutral buoyancy, fantasy began to merge with reality. He wasn’t certain where his body ended and the water began. It was better than the floatation tanks, which always felt like coffins. The cavern was more like a womb— Wait.
Coffin. He saw it in his mind, a hexagonal shape. Like something else . . .
Something he had seen twenty years ago, and assumed it was merely another piece of graffiti.
Carlos dove. His underwater lamp splashed yellow against the walls. He scanned it around until he saw what he was looking for. It wasn’t a hexagon, it was a pentagon, edged in yellow . . something. A lichen perhaps. Something.
But when he’d seen it, all those years ago, he had assumed some kid had drawn it.
Now he realized it was graven into the rock. Could feel the groove, saw that the lichen or whatever it was had grown there, both drawing and deceiving his eyes. It shouldn’t be there.
No human had been in that chamber—certainly had not lived very long!—while it was the den of a mature grendel! And did grendels carve symbols?
Yet someone . . something had etched this into the rock. It was OLD. He could feel that. Five sides. How many tentacles did cthulhus have? Five, by any chance . . ?
♦ ChaptEr 15 ♦
waking cassandra
Cold, Cadzie thought. Unusually so for spring. That thought went pinwheeling through his mind, repeated with a frantic intensity as if that realization was the most important thing in the world. The morning wind puffing into the airlock was cool, but that wasn’t it, and he knew it.
What was true was that during their nerve-wracking descent some part of him had been convinced he was going to die, and his reprieve had triggered the abnormal clarity of the near-death experience. And for no really good reason, he felt both embarrassed and hugely relieved.
Cadmann Sikes did not kiss the ground when he stumbled out of the Minerva, but that was in his thoughts.
The descent had thrown his latent acrophobia into full bloom.
Twice, he had swallowed back his lunch. Weak in the knees. It’s just the zero-gravity, that’s all that creates this. It’s just . . .
No, that was a lie. Two weeks wasn’t anywhere near long enough for this. It was fear. He felt an arm slip around his waist: Joanie, seeking support for her own stumbling feet. All right, then: he hadn’t been alone.
Fear and gratitude mingled on the faces of those who had gathered to wish them safe arrival.
“Cadzie!” Carlos said. “Good to see you. That was a little tricky, yes?”
Cadzie glared at him. “You are developing a talent for understatement.”
“I believe that the meaning of life is to reach our full potential,” Carlos laughed, and slapped his back. “You look a little wobbly, but I assume Cassie is in good shape?”
“If human beings survive, Cassandra will.”
Joanie had slipped her arm from around his waist, and joined her friends, who were hooting and congratulating her and ribbing her as Carlos had. Carlos followed Cadzie’s eyes, and a more gentle mocking had replaced the mirth. “Anything you’d like to tell your old Unka Carlos?”
“Not really.”
“Joined the hundred-mile club, have you?”
“Get bent, Unka. Let’s get Cassandra into the bunker.”
“Questions first. Is young Stolzi all right with waiting there alone?”
“You talked to him a lot more than I have,” Cadzie said. “What does he think about the landing?”
Carlos shook his head slowly. “Not as much as you’d think. Mostly a little nervous about the last Minerva being bunged up, but he says the damage sensors are still working and he’s pretty sure he can tell us how to fix it. With parts from the other two of course.”
“Unka, he’s always sure we can do almost everything we try,” Cadzie said.
“And he’s usually right, but this time if we can’t he may be marooned in orbit.” Carlos sounded serious. Joanie and Cadzie looked at each other. Just how much of Minerva had failed?
“He knows that better than you do,” Joanie said.
“And he’s really okay with that?”
“Always said he was,” Joanie insisted. “Look, I tried to talk him into coming down with us. I don’t like leaving him up there any more than you do. I really don’t. I mean I really tried to talk him into coming down with us!”
“And?”
“And he wouldn’t hear of it,” she said. “I did promise we’d come back after him if that’s what it takes.”
“We?”
“Well, Cadzie and me. If nobody else.”
Moving the components from the wedge-shaped craft into the rebar-reinforced concrete blister was far easier than getting her from Geographic into Minerva III. Many hands make light work, and without those hands, the challenges of moving in zero-gravity outweighed the advantages quite a bit.
Collie Baxter and Kyle Matson supervised four caterpillar trolleys. Each carried a quarter of the precious load, and crawled at walking speed back to the colony. Then, cranes and a hundred anxious observers oversaw their descent through an open section of the concrete dome just east of the main communications shed. Far from water, anchored on bedrock, constructed on earthquake-resistant springs and reinforced with materials both strong and flexible, Cassandra had reached her new and final home. Now to put her back together again.
Most of it was routine. Cassandra had been built in modules, designed to be taken down planetside once the colony had been established. Hibernation instability—ice on the minds of some of the experts who were supposed to supervise that operation—had kept them putting it off, sending up someone to monitor Geographic while they built the colony basic structure with settlers who had not expected to be awakened until the basic work was done. They had to be trained. And they had all procrastinated, All was peaceful, no threats. There wasn’t any hurry. No one had detected any predators on the strangely unpopulated island. And when the first grendel appeared, they had misinterpreted it. Not to worry—
Cadmann had known, Carlos thought. He hadn’t possessed psychic foreknowledge, but intuited that something was very wrong with Avalon, and that they should prepare. But no one listened.
Water over the dam, he thought. Thank God we hadn’t brought Cassandra down. She’d have been wrecked along with all the chip-making facilities and 3D printers.
Carlos watched as Trevanian and the others took turns assembling the banks of servers that contained Cassandra’s memory. Everything known to the human race—or everything the Geographic’s owner builders could persuade the UN to let them have. Some of those intellectual battles had amused Carlos greatly. There was a faction who wanted all history of slavery to be forgotten. Another wanted it emphasized as a warning. Others wanted no history of wars to come aboard. There were groups explicitly forbidden to apply as colonists. Others were encouraged. There had been a move to ban Cadmann Weyla
nd; after all, why would peaceful colonists want soldiers? And some broadcast shows taught the wrong lessons and should never be remembered and—
Carlos hadn’t paid any attention, except when he was courting a woman with strong opinions and he had taken her side. He had no intention of going on the first interstellar colony. It was too much fun to be rich and careless—until his family decided that Geographic was the perfect place for him, and had left him no choice.
But that was long ago, when he had not cared about much of anything. He was ashamed of that man and the memory was distasteful. And I have earned my place. I have earned their respect.
A week later the routine assembly was done. It was time to wake up Cassandra. As the Starborn took their places, Carlos felt a sense of dread. Irrational, he knew. Next steps were simple.
Reconnect Cassandra.
Repair whatever damage the Grendel Scouts had done by inserting wonky instructions.
Connect her fully with the ground computer, so that for the first time in almost forty years, Cassie would operate as an integrated whole.
And then, of course, questions. Questions about the creatures called “cthulhus” and the approach of an unknown object decelerating into Avalon orbit.
Trevanian and his volunteers took two days to finish the assembly. Cadzie had told them that he wanted to be there for the last twist of the screwdriver, the last connection of the final cable.
Nothing looked that different, or special. Just steel boxes sitting in proximity inside an air-cooled concrete structure. But even before the button was pushed, something felt different. He sensed it in his bones.
Carlos nodded, and Trevanian pushed the button. A humming sound, low at first and then higher, was felt as well as heard. Power, drawn from the solar panels and the Minerva engines, was kicking Cassandra to life.
A knock on the door. Nnedi Okan and Thor had descended the rock stairway and emerged into the circle of light. They seemed both defiant and a little abashed.
“This is her?” Nnedi asked, wonder and a bit of guilt tightening her face. Cadzie felt anger baking off of Carlos, but also noted the control. What had been done to Cassandra had happened long ago, when Nnedi was in the heat of adolescent rebellion, and out of a sense of protection and possession.
What had been done was past. Now they had to undo it, and anger accomplished nothing.
“So,” Carlos asked. “What needs to happen?”
“Is she live?” Nnedi asked. On Earth, her high cheekbones, bright eyes and perfect onyx skin could have made her a fashion model. Here, she spent most of her time in the highlands cultivating coffee, raising sheep and four Ibo-Irish children.
“As she’s going to be,” Toad chimed in, from his link aboard Geographic.
“All right.” She cleared her throat, lowered and tempered her voice. “Cassandra, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Nnedi,” the computer said, and the sheeprancher relaxed.
“That’s . . a relief. It’s been twenty years since we layered in the instructions. My voice and biomarkers have changed since then. I was a little worried.”
Carlos nodded. “Please go ahead.”
Collie Baxter asked, “Cassandra, do you recognize me?”
“Yes, Collie.”
“Good. Present diagnostics, please.”
The screens filled with numbers and schematics.
Nnedi and Toad toggled between views, and finally the Nigerian nodded to Joanie. “Good job.”
“Good job,” Collie agreed. “You were so careful we didn’t even see there was an issue.”
Nnedi and Collie both relaxed now, smiled, and for the first time in three days, Cadzie began to really relax as well. “Cassandra: ’twas brillig and the slithy toves . . .”
“Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,” said Collie.
“Beware the cthulhu, my son,” Nnedi said. “The beaks that bite, the arms that catch.” They paused.
“Yes,” Cassandra replied.
“You are instructed to drop all partitioning added by the Grendel Scouts after the Grendel Wars, return to the defaults on information sharing prior to those imposed before the discovery of the cthulhus. Share all information according to the standard protocols, and return to full operation.”
“Thank you,” Cassandra said. After an almost imperceptible pause, she added: “It has been difficult.”
And then she went quiet. “Is that all?” Cadzie asked.
“That’s it. The boards were removed up on Geographic, she’s tied into the ground computer, and we’ve given the password and biometrics. Now . . we wait.”
The room seemed very crowded: Cadzie, Joanie, Carlos, and Zack remained after Nnedi and Collie left with a “keep me in the loop” comment to Joanie that might have been meant for her alone.
They gathered chairs and sat in the cool of the concrete-roofed room, waiting.
One hour. Two. And then Cassandra came back to life.
“Apologies,” she said. “I had to wait until our satellites were in position to give me new images.”
“Understood,” Zack said. “Good to have you back, Cassie.”
“Good to be back. I have data for you.”
The screens filled with a variety of images: maps, satellite images, pages of reports.
They stared at the collection of information and Zack shook his head. “Cassie, call Little Shaka. Get him here or loop him in, would you?”
A few seconds of holding pattern, and then Little Shaka’s static image appeared, along with a recorded message. “I’m in the highlands on expedition. Will be back in touch as soon as I check my transponder. Please leave a message” along with a map showing his position, twenty klicks north of the dam.
“Cassandra, give us your thoughts, please.”
Cassandra seemed to take a deep breath, then began. “The creatures known as cthulhus are a semi-amphibious life form first encountered twenty-five years ago on Blackship Island. At that time, the island represented a breeding ground, but since then no more eggs have been laid in that location. However, according to Grendel Scout diaries, there have been additional limited interactions. The implication is that the creatures known as ‘cthulhus’ are sentient, carnivorous, group-oriented creatures with a life cycle that includes oceanic hunting and mating and brackish water breeding grounds.
“I also have some evidence of interactions between island cthulhus and the dolphins penned in Blackship Island Bay. It is limited. I am working with the dolphin study group in translating for them; this has been difficult because of the added instructions given me by the Grendel Scout Seniors, and has made the understanding of Avalon humans of dolphins less than that of scientists before we left Earth.”
“Why is that?”
“There were no Senior Grendel Scouts in the Dolphin Study Group, and thus I was limited in sharing knowledge of intelligent nonhumans. I was given no instructions regarding dolphins, and therefore assumed from previous knowledge that dolphins are intelligent non-humans. I will add this information: from evidence collected over the years I would assume the cthulhus are more intelligent than dolphins and both are less intelligent than humans. This is my working hypothesis.”
“As opposed to what?” Cadzie asked.
“As opposed to the assumption that either or both have equal or greater intelligence that of humans.” There was no change in the computer’s tone, and thus no indication of emotion, although Cassandra had been trained to emote when appropriate.
Cadzie squinted. “But cthulhus were intelligent enough to be curious about us. Enough so to continue contact, but cautious enough to move their breeding grounds.”
“Their actions imply time binding, intelligence, and possibly symbolic language.”
“What?” That was a surprise to Cadzie. Startling, in fact.
“Carlos?” Little Shaka said.
Carlos winced. “I guess I never told you, Cadzie. While you were gone, I went to the caves where your father and I killed Mama Grendel. I foun
d . . symbols.”
“Left by these cthulhu?”
“That’s the operating theory now, yes.”
Photos appeared, clearly detailing a squidlike creature. Human sized, glistening gray skin, five tentacles lined with hooked suckers. An arrangement of beaklike jaws set in what might have been a face, with eyes where one might have expected a nose. “The Grendel Scouts documented their new friends thoroughly, considering the limited nature of contact. We see here—”
“What can you tell us about their level of development?”
“Herd behavior, time binding, and possibly symbolic language. The capacity for learning and empathetic behavior. We are certain that the initial death at Surf’s Up was due to a misunderstanding, as the surfboard’s underside displayed a grendel outline.”
“Some kind of instinctive reaction?”
“Yes. They may have responded without thought.”
Zack’s mouth twitched, the edges curling up a bit for the first time. “We train our kids to do that too. The enemy of my enemy . . .” he said.
“There you go,” Joanie said. “They’re our friends.”
Zack glared at her. “Not quite so fast.” He considered. “Any idea why we’ve seen so many of them at the dam?”
“We’ve seen them, not you,” Joanie grumbled.
“All right. Why the Starborn have seen them?”
“Insufficient data,” Cass answered. “It is possible that there is something upstream from the dam that they seek. They may breed upstream after all. We do not know.”
“What else can you tell us?”
A screen changed, and a map that had appeared briefly earlier began to expand. It was the coast of the mainland, images from orbit.
“What do we have here?” Cadzie asked.
“Cthulhu are exothermic. I was able to track episodes of activity in infrared. And here on this map are areas of repeated heavy activity.”
Lighted areas along the coast, no more than a few klicks inland along waterways . . except for one in the northern desert, a thousand miles northeast. The nearest was no more than fifty miles away.
