“Let’s not keep our hosts waiting,” John said. He continued swimming in the direction they’d been told to go. Andrew followed close behind him.
They’d only swum a few hundred meters away from the Satori before the colony-fish came into view. At first they were distantly seen pools of shadow in the water, but John swiftly realized that those dark patches were growing larger by the moment. The Cyanauts were coming to them.
“WE ARE,” they said into his mind.
It wasn’t until the colonies were almost on top of him that he was able to fully grasp how huge they were. They were massive, each at least as long as the Satori. Larger than most whales on Earth, the things nonetheless cut through the water with grace and speed. They slid past him on either side and below before whipping about in a tight turn.
“My god,” Andrew said aloud.
John couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. These were remarkable creatures. They were dark colored, with long fins. John didn’t notice a blowhole on the one which passed beneath him. Perhaps they were true fish, not mammals like the whales they resembled? It was hard to know for sure.
“WE CANNOT SPEAK TO THE OTHER ONE,” the colony said to John. “WE MUST HAVE CONNECTION.”
The voice was loud, almost overpowering. It was a demand, not a request, and his immediate reaction was to obey. With an effort of will John gritted his teeth together and held his place, even though his body wanted to do as they told it. He was in command of himself, damn it!
He should have realized how hard it might be to resist their telepathic commands. They controlled these fish, after all - their floating cities. His mind might be different, even more complex perhaps. But the colony had so many minds pressed together into one voice. It was difficult to disobey.
“What’s wrong, John?” Andrew asked. He must have noticed something.
“They’re…very loud,” John said, working to steady his breathing. “This close to them, their telepathy is closer to mind control than it is to communication. They want you to take on one of them as a passenger.”
“What, so they can control me too?” Andrew snapped. He sounded furious, and John couldn’t blame him for the anger - or the fear which lay beneath it.
“I don’t think they are trying to,” John said. “They’re unused to this sort of communication. Let me see if I can ask them to temper it.”
Friends, your voices are very loud, John thought at them.
Contrition. Remorse. Sadness. And more than a little bit of guilt. All of these emotions came back at him, but with much less intensity than he’d felt from the colony before.
“They feel bad about it. I think they’re going to tone it down a bit,” John said. “Listen - Andrew - Andy - if you can’t do this, nobody is going to fault you for it. You can go back to the ship.”
“And leave you alone? Not happening,” Andrew replied. “What do they want me to do?”
“Swim down to the one beneath us,” John said. “One of them will board you from there.”
“OK.”
John hoped it really would be all right. Andrew had been wounded by one of these things before, hurt inside his head where healing was difficult. While he’d recovered a lot, asking him to go through it again was like re-opening the wound. It was hard to say if that would help the healing, or delay it.
Ten
Andy swam down toward the massive fish, dread warring with wonder. It was amazing just to be here and experience all of this. The Cyanaut community was incredible. It swam slowly beneath him, almost hovering in place so that he could make contact. Its back was almost flat, a gently rounding curve dotted with thousands of little slug-like beings.
He needed to stop thinking of them as slugs. That would help. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling he had when the Naga had captured him, pinned him in place and forced the thing into his ear. He could still feel the terror of that moment. He’d been certain that he was about to die, and probably in some horrible manner. The idea of another of those things slipping into his ear wasn’t just unpleasant. It was like revisiting that moment all over again.
He swallowed hard. This had to be done. He was close to the fish now, swimming alongside it as it drifted past him. Slowly, he reached out toward it to touch the smooth surface. As soon as his fingers touched, several of the Cyanauts began flowing across the fish’s smooth side toward him. He withdrew his hand immediately.
The giant fish flashed its tail fin back and forth in a wide, agitated sweep. It swept away from him, nearly spinning him around in the backwash from the swift movement.
“You OK?” John asked. “They say you’re being very loud.”
“They can hear me?” Andy replied.
“Sure. That’s how they translate for the Naga, right? They hear all of the thoughts nearby them.”
Right. “So why do they need to be in my ear?”
“They need contact to be able to speak with you,” John said. “Their communication ability is poor at best without contact. I’ll ask about the ear thing, though.”
Andy crossed his fingers. If any sort of contact would do… Maybe he could deal with that. Anything but the ear. After a short pause while he was speaking with the Cyanauts, John spoke again.
“They say the ear thing is a conceit of the Naga. Contact can be anywhere so long as it is skin to skin.”
Skin to skin. He could handle that. The big fish was circling back toward him again. With an effort, Andy calmed his mind. His anxiety was still through the roof, but he could do this. He had to do this.
The fish came up alongside him slowly, easing past him in a gentle manner. He had the feeling it was intentionally taking it easy on him, working hard not to frighten him more than he already was. If the fear hadn’t been so embarrassing he would have appreciated the gesture more.
Andy reached out with a bare hand toward the fish again. His palm touched down, sliding easily along the animal’s skin. It wasn’t slimy, just smooth. He’d never touched a dolphin, but he’d seen them and imagined it might have felt similar.
As the fish continued to slip past him, Andy’d hand brushed against a clump of the Cyanauts. They tickled his hand as it brushed over them. Then all at once one of the beings slid free from its resting point and reached toward his hand. He could feel it stretching out, oozing around one of his fingers as it tried to grab hold of him.
He couldn’t take it. Andy jerked his hand back again.
The Cyanaut lost its grip on him. But it had already relinquished its hold on the fish as well. Horrified, Andy watched as it tumbled free and began sinking. In another moment or two it would slide out of sight, falling into the crushing depths beneath them.
Andy didn’t even think about what he was doing. He dove straight down, kicking hard with his flippers to catch up with the little being before it slipped away. It was falling fast, and he had to struggle to keep up at first. Then he began gaining on it again. There was no way he was allowing something to die because if his fears. He was almost there…and…caught it! His fingers closed gently around its frail form. Almost immediately he felt it latch on to his skin and wrap itself around a finger.
And…contact.
Andy remembered how the contact had felt with the single Cyanaut. It had been subtle, the awareness of a presence in his mind. Barely there at all, except for later on in his dreams. But this experience was completely different. The Cyanaut colony was speaking to him as one now, through the one of their kind attached to him. The telepathic voice was a powerful force resonating in his head. If this was what it sounded like after they’d toned it down, no wonder John had been having trouble before!
“Our gratitude,” the colony said. “You went to save one not your own. Why?”
“Because I would not want to accidentally kill,” Andy replied aloud. He supposed he could just think the words and they’d hear them, but he was more used to speaking aloud.
“But you have intentionally killed,” the colony replied.
“You carry a weapon even now.”
“Sometimes, yes,” Andy said. He swam back upward slowly, closing back on the massive fishes. “But I prefer not to.”
“You are a warrior, then,” another colony voice said. Somehow Andy could tell this voice was coming from one of the sharklike fish. Was each animal its own colony, speaking in its own voice?
“Yes,” the shark colony replied to his thoughts.
That was going to take a little getting used to, the idea that anything he thought would be broadcast immediately. He felt ashamed now of all of his fear. These things had heard every one of his frightened thoughts, had listened to all his terror.
“And yet you still overcame those fears when you thought a life was at risk,” the first colony said. “Which shows honor and courage both.”
The thoughts were not quite honor, nor courage… Andy had the sense that his own mind was more or less translating their concepts into those words, but that it wasn’t quite a the right fit. Like those precise ideas were not echoed by the Cynaut species, but rather some trait similar but not quite the same was recognized and applauded by them instead.
Then John was beside him again, resting a hand on his shoulder. “He is both of those things.”
Andy smiled at the compliment beneath his SCUBA mask. “I try.”
“You have come a long way to return one of our kind to us,” the colony said. “And, it tells us, you have more news as well?”
“News that will let us throw of the damned shackles of the invader!” the shark colony spat out the forceful thought with a vehemence that hurt Andy’s head.
“Perhaps,” the first colony said. “But we must hear more about this, and consider together.”
“What’s to consider? If they have a cure for the threat holding us in slavery, then we take it so that we can be free again!” The shark colony was sharper in its thoughts, more direct somehow. Andy could see their motivation clearly. They wanted an end to the Naga, the sooner the better. Now that they’d been given hope that might be accomplished they’d latched on to the idea and were holding it close. He hoped that they wouldn’t do anything rash.
Eleven
John drifted a little closer to Andrew. This was a precarious moment for them, and for their potential future friendship with these beings. The way the Cyanauts were enslaved by the Naga was a terrible thing. That they had been forced to give away some of their people into isolation and servitude was atrocious, and he meant to put a stop to it.
But the very means of putting an end to the slavery might involve that relationship. He'd seen firsthand what impact the beings could have on the mind they were connected to. They could be a powerful weapon against the Naga, if the timing was perfect. They could also pass along intelligence, perhaps, or give the Naga false information. The possibilities were endless.
It was going to take more than a bacterium that could kill the ratzards to save these people. If the Naga wanted to crush this world they could simply bomb it from orbit, or drop a shower of asteroids on the place to boil the oceans and kill everything living in them. Which they might well do if they thought there was no other recourse to control these aliens.
"We understand your concerns," the giant, whale-like colony said into his mind. "And you have another worry, yes...? Something about contagion."
They understood the concept of infection, of bacterial life or fungus making something ill. They might not have microscopes, but the Cyanauts were deeply attuned to the life forms they inhabited. Coupled with what they were no doubt pulling from his mind, they seemed to have a good idea of the nature of the problem.
"Yes, it's a worry," John said. "The organism we have designed to fight the Naga bio-weapon seems to be effective. It eats away at the stuff, devouring it when it comes in contact. But it is a living organism. We have concerns about the impact introducing it might have on your environment."
"Surely you are introducing such organisms even now, with your very presence here?" the sharklike colony said.
"We took as much care as we could to decontaminate ourselves before coming here, but it is likely that some remain," John admitted. "The risk seems low from a few microbes which developed on our world, for our environment. This new thing we created is different though. It did not evolve; it was engineered. And to be effective we would need to seed it widely across your world."
John got a sense of consternation from the assembled colonies. There were more of them here than he'd first thought. The three whales were each a colony. The sharks were three more. And he heard wisps of thought from others, nearby but not directly part of the meeting. They were being listened to intently by many minds, each of them considering and judging his words. He needed to make a good case.
"What do you need to do, then?" the whale colony that was doing most of the speaking asked. John wished he had names for them. Their voices felt different in his mind, but naming was something that came naturally to humans but seemed to be an unnecessary value for the Cyanauts.
"We need to gather samples from your world," John said. "My crew is working to do this even now."
"And then...?"
"Then we bring those samples home and test the bacteria extensively, to ensure that it will not do harm to your world. We do not to seed your planet with something that might accidentally cause death or damage," John said.
The shark thrashed its tail and flashed in closer toward the meeting. John saw Andrew raise his spear-gun, and made a shushing motion with his hand. Andrew lowered the weapon, but John could still see the tension in his shoulders.
The shark stopped just a meter in front of him. Its maw was large enough that it could eat him whole, although the rows of sharp, hooked teeth implied the anything going into that gullet usually wasn't in one piece. It was hard to read body language in a fish, but the threat was clear.
"Delays! You hold out your help while our colonies are captured, the members culled and taken off world to other places!" It had given up on the semblance of quiet and calm, and was roaring into John's mind. "You will give us what we need to be free!"
The compulsion was so strong that John almost began swimming toward the Satori to fulfill the order. He checked himself, remaining in place with an effort. He closed his eyes, drawing his mind inward. The first calming image that came to him was of his wife, Satori - of a sunset they had shared together so many years before.
Another wave of thought washed over him, threatening to shatter the memory he was using as a shield. He held fast to the thought, clinging to it like it was a rock keeping him from being swept away in a tide.
The pressure vanished as suddenly and completely as it had arrived. John snapped his eyes open. Andrew had swum up next to the shark and was holding his spear-gun poised next to the thing's eye.
"I don't know what happens if your host animal dies while all of you are attached," Andrew said. "But I'm pretty sure this weapon will do the trick, and I don't think any of us want to find out. Back off."
The shark colony backed quickly away, and John was able to drift a little closer to Andrew and lay a hand on his shoulder. "I'm all right."
"You didn't seem to be, for a moment there."
"No, that was rough." John could hear chatter going back and forth between the colonies in his mind, catching snippets of the conversation but not enough to really understand what was being said. The whales were circling them now. The sharks were outside the circle, hovering in place some distance away and below them.
"We apologize," the whale colony said. "The actions of our cousin were brash, and rude. That will not happen again."
The last thought seemed to be directed at the sharks as much as it was at the humans.
"We understand their eagerness to be free," John said. "It is a trait we humans share with your kind. I promise we will help you as soon as it is safe to do so."
"We know this," the colony replied. "Waiting is hard, but we have waited this long for hope. We can be still a little longer."
>
"There is more we will need to do," John said. "The Naga cannot be stopped with this one tool. We will need to find a way to make your planet truly safe from them. Some way to prevent them from destroying all of you with a different weapon."
"We will simply kill all of them who venture here!" the shark colony snarled. "And we are done with delays! It is time for action!"
The three sharks sped away from the meeting. John wondered what their words meant. They couldn't beat the Naga that way, but they didn't seem to understand that. Or perhaps they were simply so frustrated with things as they were that they could not accept that.
"They are tired of patience," the whale said, with a thought that felt like a sigh. "Those colonies are young, and chose fearsome hosts in the hope that the Naga would be deterred by the forms. Instead they have become favored prey. If they have abandoned patience I fear for what they will do next."
John shivered a little, partly from the cold water and partly from worry. These people were at the cusp. With work, he could perhaps help them become free. But if they rushed the matter they might end up annihilated instead.
"I don't like this one bit," Andrew said, echoing his own thoughts. Then he added another worry. "They headed off in the general direction of the Satori."
Twelve
Beth drummed her fingers on the console, frustrated. Sure, she was safe aboard the Satori this time, which was after all what she had said she'd wanted. The last trip they'd take she had been with the ground team, and almost died. More than once. She was tired of being shot at, chased, and almost eaten by the things they ran into.
But sitting here like a lump while the others were out there facing who-knew-what was worse. The communications issue was maybe the worst of it. Things could be going horribly wrong up on the surface and they wouldn't even know it. At least they had some idea what was happening to John and Andy. They'd swum far enough away that they were barely visible on the ship's sensors, but there were detectable. She knew they were still out there, talking to the fishes.
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 47
