Reginri felt his heart beat faster. He kicked forward and reached out a hand to one of the encrusted folds. The delicate frosting glistened in his suit lamp. Here the meat was glassy, and deep within it he could see a complex interweaving network of veins and arteries, shot through with silvery threads.
It had to be a nexus; the pictures they had shown him were very much like this. It was not in a small pocket the way Vanleo said it would be, but that didn’t matter. Vanleo himself had remarked that there seemed no systematic way the nodes were distributed. Indeed, they appeared to migrate to different positions inside the pithole, so that a team returning a few days later could not find the nodules they had tapped before.
Reginri felt a swelling excitement. He carefully thumbed on the electronic components set into his waist. Their low hum reassured him that everything was in order. He barked a short description of his find into his suit mike, and Vanleo responded in monosyllables. The other man seemed to be busy with something else, but Reginri was too occupied to wonder what it might be. He unplugged his tapper cylinders and worked them upward from his waist, his elbows poking into the pulpy membranes around him. Their needle points gleamed softly in the light as he turned them over, inspecting. Everything seemed all right.
He inched along and found the spot where the frosting seemed most dense. Carefully, bracing his hands against each other, he jabbed first one and then the other needle into the waxen flesh. It puckered around the needles.
He spoke quickly into his suit mike asking if the signals were coming through. There came an answering yes, some chatter from the technician back in the sand dunes, and then the line fell silent again.
Along the tapper lines were flowing the signals they had come to get. Long years of experiment had—as far as men could tell—established the recognition codes the technicians used to tell the Drongheda they had returned. Now, if the Drongheda responded, some convoluted electrical pulses would course through the lines and into the recording instruments ashore.
Reginri relaxed. He had done as much as he could. The rest depended on the technicians, the electronics, the lightning microsecond blur of information transfer between the machines and the Drongheda. Somewhere above or below him were flukes, ventral fins, slitted recesses, a baleen filter mouth through which a billion small fish lives had passed, all a part of this vast thing. Somewhere, layered in fat and wedged amid huge organs, there was a mind.
Reginri wondered how this had come about. Swimming through deep murky currents, somehow nature had evolved this thing that knew algebra, calculus, Reimannian metrics, Tchevychef subtleties—all as part of itself, as a fine-grained piece of the same language it shared with men.
Reginri felt a sudden impulse. There was an emergency piece clipped near his waist, for use when the tapper lines snarled or developed intermittent shorts. He wriggled around until his back was flush with the floor of the pithole and then reached down for it. With one hand he kept the needles impacted into the flesh above his head; with the other he extracted the thin, flat wedge of plastic and metal that he needed. From it sprouted tiny wires. He braced himself against the tunnel walls and flipped the wires into the emergency recesses in the tapper cylinders. Everything seemed secure; he rolled onto his back and fumbled at the rear of his helmet for the emergency wiring. By attaching the cabling, he could hook directly into a small fraction of the Drongheda’s output. It wouldn’t interfere with the direct tapping process. Maybe the men back in the sand dunes wouldn’t even know he had done it.
He made the connection. Just before he flipped his suit com-line over to the emergency cable, he thought he felt a slight sway beneath him. The movement passed. He flipped the switch. And felt—
—Bursting light that lanced through him, drummed a staccato rhythm of speckled green—
—Twisting lines that meshed and wove into perspectives, triangles warped into strange saddle-pointed envelopes, coiling into new soundless shapes—
—A latticework of shrill sound, ringing at edges of geometrical flatness—
—Thick, rich foam that lapped against weathered stone towers, precisely turning under an ellipsoid orange sun—
—Miniatured light that groaned and spun softly, curling into moisture that beaded on a coppery matrix of wire—
—A webbing of sticky strands, lifting him—
—A welling current—
—Upward, toward the watery light—
Reginri snatched at the cable, yanking it out of the socket. His hand jerked up to cover his face and struck his helmet. He panted, gasping.
He closed his eyes and for a long moment thought of nothing, let his mind drift, let himself recoil from the experience.
There had been mathematics there, and much else. Rhomboids, acute intersections in veiled dimensions, many-sided twisted sculptures, warped perspectives, poly-hedrons of glowing fire.
But so much more—he would have drowned in it.
There was no interruption of chatter through his earphone. Apparently the electronics men had never noticed the interception. He breathed deeply and renewed his grip on the tapper needles. He closed his eyes and rested for long moments. The experience had turned him inside out for a brief flicker of time. But now he could breathe easily again. His heart had stopped thumping wildly in his chest. The torrent of images began to recede. His mind had been filled, overloaded with more than he could fathom.
He wondered how much the electronics really caught. Perhaps, transferring all this to cold ferrite memory, the emotional thrust was lost. It was not surprising that the only element men could decipher was the mathematics. Counting, lines and curves, the smooth sheen of geometry—they were abstractions, things that could be common to any reasoning mind. No wonder the Drongheda sent mostly mathematics through this neural passage; it was all that men could follow.
After a time it occurred to Reginri that perhaps Vanleo wanted it this way. Maybe he eavesdropped on the lines. The other man might seek this experience; it certainly had an intensity unmatched by drugs or the pallid electronic core-tapping in the sensoriums. Was Vanleo addicted? Why else risk failure? Why reject automated tapping and crawl in here—particularly since the right conditions came so seldom?
But it made no sense. If Vanleo had Drongheda tapes, he could play them back at leisure. So…maybe the man was fascinated by the creatures themselves, not only the mathematics. Perhaps the challenge of going inside, the feel of it, was what Vanleo liked.
Grotesque, yes…but maybe that was it.
VII.
He felt a tremor. The needles wobbled in his hand.
“Hey!” he shouted. The tube flexed under him.
“Something’s happening in here. You guys—”
In midsentence the com-line went dead. Reginri automatically switched over to emergency, but there was no signal there either. He glanced at the tapper lines. The red phosphor glow at their ends had gone dead; they were not receiving power.
He wriggled around and looked down toward his feet. The tapper lines and the com cable snaked away into darkness with no breaks visible. If there was a flaw in the line, it was farther away.
Reginri snapped the tapper line heads back into his suit. As he did so, the flesh around him oozed languidly, compressing. There was a tilting sense of motion, a turning—
“Frange it! Get me—” then he remembered the line was dead. His lips pressed together.
He would have to get out on his own.
He dug in with his heels and tried to pull himself backward. A scaly bump scraped against his side. He pulled harder and came free, sliding a few centimeters back. The passage seemed tilted slightly downward. He put his hands out to push and saw something wet run over his fingers. The slimy fluid that filled the trough of the pithole was trickling toward him. Reginri pushed back energetically, getting a better purchase in the pulpy floor.
He worked steadily and made some progress. A long, slow undulation began and the walls clenched about him. He felt something squeeze a
t his legs, then his waist, then his chest and head. The tightening had a slow, certain rhythm.
He breathed faster, tasting an acrid smell. He heard only his own breath, amplified in the helmet.
He wriggled backward. His boot struck something and he felt the smooth lip of a turning in the passage. He remembered this, but the angle seemed wrong. The Drongheda must be shifting and moving, turning the pithole.
He forked his feet into the new passageway and quickly slipped through it.
This way was easier; he slid down the slick sides and felt a wave of relief. Farther along, if the tunnel widened, he might even be able to turn around and go headfirst.
His foot touched something that resisted softly. He felt around with both boots, gradually letting his weight settle on the thing. It seemed to have a brittle surface, pebbled. He carefully followed the outline of it around the walls of the hole until he had satisfied himself that there was no opening.
The passage was blocked.
His mind raced. The air seemed to gain a weight of its own, thick and sour in his helmet. He stamped his boots down, hoping to break whatever it was. The surface stayed firm.
Reginri felt his mind go numb. He was trapped. The com-line was dead, probably snipped off by this thing at his feet.
He felt the walls around him clench and stretch again, a massive hand squeezing the life from him. The pithole sides were only centimeters from his helmet. As he watched, a slow ripple passed through the membrane, ropes of yellow fat visible beneath the surface.
“Get me out!” Reginri kicked wildly. He thrashed against the slimy walls, using elbows and knees to gouge. The yielding pressure remained, cloaking him.
“Out! Out!” Reginri viciously slammed his fists into the flesh. His vision blurred. Small dark points floated before him. He pounded mechanically, his breath coming in short gasps. He cried for help. And he knew he was going to die.
Rage burst out of him. He beat at the enveloping smoothness. The gathering tightness in him boiled up, curling his lips into a grimace. His helmet filled with a bitter taste. He shouted again and again, battering at the Drongheda, cursing it. His muscles began to ache.
And slowly, slowly the burning anger melted. He blinked away the sweat in his eyes. His vision cleared. The blind, pointless energy drained away. He began to think again.
Sasuke. Vanleo. Two-faced bastards. They’d known this job was dangerous. The incident on the beach was a charade. When he showed doubts they’d bullied and threatened him immediately. They’d probably had to do it before, to other men. It was all planned.
He took a long, slow breath and looked up. Above him in the tunnel of darkness, the strands of the tapping lines and the com cable dangled.
One set of lines.
They led upward, on a slant, the way he had come.
It took a moment for the fact to strike him. If he had been backing down the way he came, the lines should be snarled behind him.
He pushed against the glazed sides and looked down his chest. There were no tapper lines near his legs.
That meant the lines did not come up through whatever was blocking his way. No, they came only from above. Which meant that he had taken some wrong side passage. Somehow a hole had opened in the side of the pithole and he had followed it blindly.
He gathered himself and thrust upward, striving for purchase. He struggled up the incline, and dug in with his toes. Another long ripple passed through the tube. The steady hand of gravity forced him down, but he slowly worked his way forward. Sweat stung his eyes.
After a few minutes his hands found the lip, and he quickly hoisted himself over it, into the horizontal tunnel above.
He found a tangle of lines and tugged at them. They gave with a slight resistance. This was the way out, he was sure of it. He began wriggling forward, and suddenly the world tilted, stretched, lifted him high. Let him drop.
He smashed against the pulpy side and lost his breath. The tube flexed again, rising up in front of him and dropping away behind. He dug his hands in and held on. The pithole arched, coiling, and squeezed him. Spongy flesh pressed at his head and he involuntarily held his breath. His faceplate was wrapped in it, and his world became fine-veined, purple, marbled with lacy fat.
Slowly, slowly the pressure ebbed away. He felt a dull aching in his side. There was a subdued tremor beneath him. As soon as he gained maneuvering room, he crawled urgently forward, kicking viciously. The lines led him forward.
The passage flared outward and he increased his speed. He kept up a steady pace of pulling hands, gouging elbows, thrusting knees and toes. The weight around him seemed bent upon expelling, imparting momentum, ejecting. So it seemed, as the flesh tightened behind him and opened before.
He tried the helmet microphone again, but it was still inert. He thought he recognized a vast bulging bluish muscle that, on his way in, had been in the wall. Now it formed a bump in the floor. He scrambled over its slickness and continued on.
He was so intent upon motion and momentum that he did not recognize the end. Suddenly the walls converged again and he looked around frantically for another exit. There was none. Then he noticed the rings of cartilage and stringy muscle. He pushed at the knotted surface. It gave, then relaxed even more. He shoved forward and abruptly was halfway out, suspended over the churning water.
VIII.
The muscled iris gripped him loosely about the waist. Puffing steadily, he stopped to rest.
He squinted up at the forgiving sun. Around him was a harshly lit world of soundless motion. Currents swirled meters below. He could feel the brown hillside of the Drongheda shift slowly. He turned to see—
The Drongheda was splitting in two.
But no, no—
The bulge was another Drongheda moving slowly, close by. At the same moment another silent motion caught his eye. Below, Vanleo struggled through the darkening water, waving. Pale mist shrouded the sea.
Reginri worked his way out and onto the narrow rim of the pithole. He took a grip at it and lowered himself partway down toward the water. Arms extended, he let go and fell with a splash into the ocean. He kept his balance and lurched away awkwardly on legs of cotton.
Vanleo reached out a steadying hand. The man motioned at the back of his helmet. Reginri frowned, puzzled, and then realized he was motioning toward the emergency com cable. He unspooled his own cable and plugged it into the shoulder socket on Vanleo’s skinsuit.
“—damned lucky. Didn’t think I’d see you again. But it’s fantastic, come see it.”
“What? I got—”
“I understand them now. I know what they’re here for. It’s not just communication, I don’t think that, but that’s part of it too. They’ve—”
“Stop babbling. What happened?”
“I went in,” Vanleo said, regaining his breath. “Or started to. We didn’t notice that another Drongheda had surfaced, was moving into the shallows.”
“I saw it. I didn’t think—”
“I climbed up to the second pithole before I saw. I was busy with the cables, you know. You were getting good traces and I wanted to—”
“Let’s get away, come on.” The vast bulks above them were moving.
“No, no, come see. I think my guess is right, these shallows are a natural shelter for them. If they have any enemies in the sea, large fish or something, their enemies can’t follow them here into the shallows. So they come here to, to mate and to communicate. They must be terribly lonely, if they can’t talk to each other in the oceans. So they have to come here to do it. I—”
Reginri studied the man and saw that he was ablaze with his inner vision. The damned fool loved these beasts, cared about them, had devoted a life to them and their goddamned mathematics.
“Where’s Sasuke?”
“—and it’s all so natural. I mean, humans communicate and make love, and those are two separate acts. They don’t blend together. But the Drongheda—they have it all. They’re like, like…”
&nb
sp; The man pulled at Reginri’s shoulder, leading him around the long curve of the Drongheda. Two immense burnished hillsides grew out of the shadowed sea. Zeta was setting, and in profile Reginri could see a long dexterous tentacle curling into the air. It came from the mottled patches, like welts, he had seen before.
“They extend through those spots, you see. Those are their sensors, what they use to complete the contact. And—I can’t prove it, but I’m sure—that is when the genetic material is passed between them. The mating period. At the same time they exchange information, converse. That’s what we’re getting on the tappers, their stored knowledge fed out. They think we’re another of their own, that must be it. I don’t understand all of it, but—”
“Where’s Sasuke?”
“—but the first one, the one you were inside, recognized the difference as soon as the second Drongheda approached. They moved together and the second one extruded that tentacle. Then—”
Reginri shook the other man roughly. “Shut up! Sasuke—”
Vanleo stopped, dazed, and looked at Reginri. “I’ve been telling you. It’s a great discovery, the first real step we’ve taken in this field. We’ll understand so much more once this is fully explored.”
Reginri hit him in the shoulder.
Vanleo staggered. The glassy, pinched look of his eyes faded. He began to lift his arms.
Reginri drove his gloved fist into Vanleo’s faceplate. Vanleo toppled backward. The ocean swallowed him. Reginri stepped back, blinking.
Vanleo’s helmet appeared as he struggled up. A wave foamed over him. He stumbled, turned, saw Reginri.
Reginri moved toward him. “No. No,” Vanleo said weakly.
“If you’re not going to tell me—”
“But I, I am.” Vanleo gasped, leaned forward until he could brace his hands on his knees. “There wasn’t time. The second one came up on us so, so fast.”
“Yeah?”
“I was about ready to go inside. When I saw the second one moving in, you know, the only time in thirty years, I knew it was important. I climbed down to observe. But we needed the data, so Sasuke went in for me. With the tapper cables.”
The Best of Gregory Benford Page 7
