A Darkling Sea

by James Cambias

  “I want everyone to know that nothing is going to make me fight the Sholen,” said Una. “You can all go along with Dickie’s stupid idea, but I’m not going to be a part of it.”

  “Can we at least agree that we will all abide by the decision of the entire group?” asked Dr. Sen.

  “No!” Antonio broke in. “What if the majority is wrong?”

  “What if you’re wrong?” someone shouted at him.

  “This is not getting us anywhere,” said Dr. Sen. The wall screen went live, displaying the common room on the surface, and the crew there holding coffee cups. “Dr. Castaverde, what do your people think about this ultimatum the Sholen have given us?”

  Rob was getting bored. He leaned over to whisper in Alicia’s ear. “I bet we could go away and have sex together and come back without anyone noticing.”

  “Robert, this is important!”

  “I know, but listening to Dickie and Una going back and forth with this did-not, did-too is really boring. Sex is more interesting.”

  “Wait until we are finished.”

  An hour of argument later, Rob’s patience was used up. He took advantage of a momentary silence after Antonio finished describing the moral hazard of any violent confrontation with the Sholen.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I know everyone thinks they have something really important to say, but I’m pretty sure everyone’s minds are already made up and nobody’s going to change their opinion. So why don’t we just go ahead and vote on what to do?”

  “Rob moves that we end debate,” said Pierre. “All in favor?”

  Nearly everyone raised a hand. Dr. Sen diplomatically abstained, and both Dickie and Una sat with arms crossed, glaring at each other.

  “Motion carries!” said Pierre Adler. “Thank God.”

  They voted. Dr. Sen handed out slips of scrap paper and asked everyone to fill in their choices, then collected them and announced the result with Pierre looking over his shoulder.

  “Dr. Castaverde? Would you please tell me the votes from the surface facility group? Send it privately to me, please? Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “We have a total of six votes for opposing the Sholen with force. Seven abstentions, including my own. Five votes for full cooperation. Fourteen for passive resis tance. It would appear to me that the passive resis tance plan has won by a clear plurality. We will not cooperate with the Sholen in dismantling this station or closing down the operations here—but we will not engage in any sort of violence. I will inform our Sholen guests of what we have decided, but I want to make it very clear to everyone that I expect you all to abide by this decision we have made.”

  TIZHOS began to notice an interesting change in the behavior of the humans, though at first she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. She returned to her room after reviewing some of the Terrans’ research findings, and discovered a pool of amber liquid on the floor. It had the distinctive odor of human liquid waste, along with various unfamiliar pheromones.

  She first assumed it was the result of a failure in one of the station’s systems, and contacted Dr. Sen to inform him of the incident. Robert Freeman came out to check, and quickly determined there was nothing wrong. “The sanitary lines are all in the center of the hab cluster,” he said. “You’re a good six or eight meters away from the nearest plumbing. I don’t see how a leaky pipe could put stuff over here without getting anything in the other rooms or the landing outside.”

  “Tell me how this substance got here, then.”

  “Well,” the young human’s face turned pink. “It sure looks like somebody came in here and took a leak on the floor.”

  “Explain the phrase ’took a leak.’ ”

  “Urinated. Peed. Um, excreted liquid waste. Don’t you guys do that?”

  “Not in the same way. Our bodies conserve water and expel all wastes in solid form.”

  “Oh. Well, you know how we’ve got two systems? This is a mix of water and waste chemicals. Nitrogen compounds, mostly. Don’t worry, it’s pretty sterile.”

  Tizhos was puzzled. On Shalina, the significance of the gesture would be obvious—marking someone else’s space as a form of challenge. But with humans it might simply be an error. “Tell me if this kind of accident happens frequently.”

  “Uh, well, sometimes. Maybe someone was confused about which one was the toilet, or maybe they just couldn’t hold it.”

  The next curious incident came later that same day, when Gishora and Tizhos were doing a follow-up interview with Simeon Fouchard. Tizhos brought along her bag containing personal items and her computer. But when she opened it to begin the session, she found everything inside wet. This time it wasn’t liquid waste, but a substance the Terrans identified as stain for microscope specimens. The stuff bonded to cellulose— which meant that the composite materials in the bag fabric and the case of Tizhos’s computer were now bright purple.

  At mealtime the two Sholen took their accustomed places in the common room, but found that their seats were coated with adhesive. Peeling themselves off the seats required the use of solvents and was quite painful, not to mention undignified. And when they returned to the room they shared, all the cushions they had piled up for sleeping were gone—they eventually turned up floating in the moon pool in Hab One.

  Twice they were informed of important messages, only to discover the source was an unattended terminal in one of the laboratories.

  As the humans were finishing their active period and preparing for their nightly hibernation, Tizhos decided to mention her suspicions to Gishora.

  “I suspect the humans of performing these acts deliberately.”

  She had expected suspicion, possibly derision or denial, but not Gishora’s obvious amusement. “Certainly. That you took so long to realize it surprises me. One or more of the humans has decided to harass us.”

  Tizhos really was surprised. “I do not understand why. It seems so unlike them.”

  “Because they do not want us here. They do these things to make us wish to leave.”

  Tizhos felt a rush of anger. The humans were challenging them! She willed herself to be calm, no easy feat under Gishora’s amused stare. For a moment anyway, Tizhos felt the strong half- sexual, half- childlike love of a subordinate for a leader.

  “If someone deliberately harasses us, we should complain,” she said.

  “Explain to me why. I doubt Vikram Sen knows of these things. If he does know, I am sure he wishes to end them. Complaining only weakens us.”

  “Then we should find the person ourselves!”

  “Not an easy task. Tell me if you volunteer for it.”

  “Yes!” said Tizhos.

  STRONGPINCER and his companions move easily along the old rift. Though it is coldwater, a few of the vents give off trickles of lukewarm flow, enough to support some mats and weeds, and a few grazing swimmers. They catch enough to keep going, and when they stop to rest the ruins of settlements provide lots of good places to hide.

  Strongpincer is determined no militia will catch him resting. He leaves one adult on guard, even taking a turn himself while Weaklegs and Shellcrusher have their rest.

  So it is Strongpincer who hears the sound of a towfin in the distance. It’s moving toward him, and as it approaches he picks up the sound of adults swimming along with it.

  Another militia band! His first impulse is to creep away quietly and then swim as fast as he can. But he can only hear a few adults, and they’re being so chatty it’s hard to imagine them as militia. Traders, then? Perhaps.

  He pokes the other two awake, then speaks to them softly. “Towfin coming. Three adults. Get your weapons and prepare to rush them.” Strongpincer wishes the other two understood numbers, so he could tap instead of speaking. He remembers wishing that many times.

  They take up their spears. Strongpincer listens. The towfin is less than a cable away now. He lets it get closer, holding back Shellcrusher and Weaklegs with a pincer on each one’s flukes. At a quarter of a cable he says “Go!” a
nd prods them, then grabs his own spear and surges out of the ruin.

  BROADTAIL’S little expedition cruises along above the seafloor, making the easy passage to the next ruined city. Sharphead is in the lead, listening more for any likely food animals than anything else, as bandits are few in these waters. The towfin follows half a cable behind, with Shortlegs steering it and Broadtail trailing behind on a rope, pinging down to study the bottom.

  Broadtail hears some interesting echoes from below—worked stone?—and lets go of the rope in order to drop down and get better echoes. From ahead he hears a loud ping. It sounds like Sharphead, but he can’t make out what the hunter is saying. Then he hears the towfin give a cry of alarm and realizes they are being attacked.

  There are three bandits, and Broadtail hopes that maybe if he can get together with Sharphead and Shortlegs the three of them can hold off the enemy. He swims hard toward the towfin, listening.

  Three bandits coming from ahead. Silence from Sharphead. Shortlegs and the towfin making an incredible racket as the youngster tries to turn the beast. Broadtail passes above the towfin and stops, waiting for the bandits to come on. He tastes blood in the current and realizes that Sharphead is probably dead.

  One large bandit splits off from the other two and swims toward Broadtail. He backs up, trying to stay near the towfin but it is thrashing about so much he doesn’t dare get too close. That may keep the bandits away, too. If he can just hold off this one, he hopes they get discouraged and leave.

  The big bandit shows no sign of that, though. She rises toward him like a stabbing spear, her pincers folded, aiming to ram. He turns to present his hard back shell, and then she hits. It almost feels like something cracks, but he can’t stop to check. Her pincers are out now, stabbing for his underside, looking for gaps. He grabs one of her pincers in his own and turns his head toward her. Broadtail gives a loud ping, hoping to deafen or confuse her, and pushes free.

  But she’s not going to let him go, and comes for him again. She’s trying to grab his shell from the side. Can she really be trying to crack him? He briefly recalls hearing stories of such feats, and she may be big enough to do it. He flexes his body and again gets free. For a moment he can listen.

  The towfin isn’t thrashing any more, it’s swimming slowly away. The other two bandits have Shortlegs. One has her pincers trapped while the other is methodically stabbing her.

  Then his opponent is on him again, her pincer tips feeling for the edge of his headshield. He locks his head back to close the gap and whacks her with his flukes. Before she can grab him again he swims hard for the bottom, going away from the towfin. He hopes that the bandits prefer to chase the beast loaded with food and supplies rather than hunt down a lone scholar.

  She doesn’t give up. He ducks around a cluster of old stones— automatically noting to himself that they seem to be part of a building, probably an outlying child-farm or fishing-station of the ruined city. He grabs a stone with his legs and freezes, hoping she’ll miss him, but she isn’t fooled and dives, pincers open wide.

  He doesn’t wait for her. Broadtail swims as fast as he can, not really caring which direction, as long as it’s away from these killers. The big one follows, and Broadtail is afraid that in a long chase she will catch him. Then he hears a faint call from the other bandits, and his pursuer slows, stops, and finally turns back toward them as they follow the towfin.

  Broadtail swims on, trying to put as much distance between himself and them as he can. He imagines they might follow him after looting the towfin. He swims and swims into cold silence.

  ROB’S double life was a lot of fun for the first couple of days. During the waking cycles he was mild-mannered Rob Freeman, video tech for a great metropolitan research station. But at night he stalked the mean streets of Hitode Station as the Midnight Avenger, righter of wrongs and foe of alien oppressors.

  The four of them had agreed to try at least one prank each per day, and Dickie had brought Angelo Ponti into the conspiracy. It rapidly became apparent to Rob that some of the plotters were much better at suggesting cool pranks than at actually doing them. Simeon in particular was a fount of ideas but claimed to be too busy to execute any.

  The four of them who actually did stuff had very different styles. Rob personally leaned toward high-tech pranks: the stain in Tizhos’s bag was his doing, and he followed it up by disconnecting the light switch in the aliens’ room. Josef’s ideas all had an appealingly direct vulgarity, based on body fluids. Angelo, in Rob’s opinion, was the one most likely to get caught. He’d been the one who stole the cushions from the aliens’ room, which meant that he’d gone through half the station carrying them.

  But it was Dickie Graves who really worried Rob. The ideas he suggested when the plotters were brainstorming were all very rough; some of them might have been recycled from the old “killing Henri” game. The glue on the chairs scheme was the mildest thing he proposed, and even then Rob had to insist that Graves use a dilute glue instead of the pure stuff, which would have taken the aliens’ skin off.

  Dickie’s second prank was equally harsh. He got some of the trypsin used to break up proteins and “accidentally” spilled a whole bottle on Tizhos’s smart environment suit. The suit’s adaptive surface and self-repair mechanisms did their best, but the damage was simply too great. Everything but the backpack and the helmet turned to goo.

  About half an hour after Tizhos discovered the damage, Dr. Sen posted a general announcement to the station network.

  To: Everyone From: Station Director

  Re: Accidents

  It has recently come to my attention that there has been a very extraordinary series of unfortunate safety lapses in the past two days. Several of these incidents have involved our two Sholen visitors, and it would be extremely unfortunate if they should come to harm or even depart with an unfavorable impression of this project. I would like to urge all station personnel to be extremely cautious and take pains to avoid any incidents of this kind in the future.

  IRONA sent them a request for a conversation over the secure link. Tizhos could see that Gishora wished to put it off as long as possible, but after two more messages from space, he asked her to set up a connection.

  “I wish you would explain to me what the humans have decided to do. You said they offer no violence, but also refuse to cooperate.”

  “That accurately describes the situation,” said Gishora. “It sounds like a paradox.”

  “Not at all. Tell me how many offspring you have, Irona.”

  “None,” Irona replied with a slightly indignant tone. “My

  community seeks to reduce its population, so we have agreed not to reproduce.”

  “I have one. When my child Giros does not wish to do something an adult has requested, she does not attack us. She merely disregards us. Sometimes she even makes herself limp if we try to move her bodily. The humans have chosen a similar tactic.”

  “Then you need help. Even a human gone limp does not sound like more than two adult Sholen can lift.”

  “Rather than going limp they have simply refused to do anything we request. In particular, the elevator capsule remains down here attached to the station. We cannot command it, so we have no way to evacuate them. I do not see how we can use physical force at all.”

  “Then it seems the humans have imprisoned you.”

  “Not at all. Vikram Sen informs me that Tizhos and I may leave at any time. For now I do not consider us to be in any danger. But we cannot bring down anyone to help us remove the humans.”

  “Tell me how many attacks the humans have made against you,” asked Irona.

  Gishora’s body stiffened, and in the chamber with him Tizhos could smell a wave of aggression. But he kept his voice neutral. “I know of no attacks, Irona. Tell me why you think they have made any.”

  “Your equipment requests. Material damaged by biological agents. Those sound like attacks to me. Add to that their stated refusal to leave. The human behavior seems incr
easingly hostile. I suggest you and Tizhos depart at once for your own safety, and leave the matter to myself and the Guardians.”

  “We have suffered no personal injury—”

  “Yet.”

  “—and the station director has expressed great regret about these incidents. I believe the majority of the humans mean us no harm.”

  “And I do not believe that,” said Irona. “Tell me if you have considered the possibility of a deception on their part. They may seem peaceful while actually preparing for violence.”

  “Of course I have considered that, Irona. Please do not insult my intelligence. Tell me if you have considered the possibility that Tizhos and I understand human behavior better than any other Sholen. I do not believe we face any danger. Tizhos, tell me if you agree.”

  Tizhos didn’t know what to say. She felt loyalty to Gishora, more than she had ever felt to anyone since leaving her parents. But . . . the damaged equipment did worry her, especially the destruction of her suit. Until the replacement arrived she would die if the station suffered any kind of life- support failure. That felt a little too close to a direct attack.

  “I—I do not believe the humans intend us direct harm,” she said. “If they did, a station like this presents a great many ways to kill us and make it seem accidental.” She could smell Gishora’s approval, and found it incredibly difficult to go on, but she hunched her upper shoulders and continued. “However, I must point out the risk that the damage to our possessions and our quarters could lead to a real accident. And I do not think that the station director can prevent the other humans from doing what they wish. I believe they have separated into factions, and at least one faction desires open conflict.”

  “There! Your own subordinate agrees with me, Gishora. You do face danger.”

  Gishora kept himself perfectly controlled, though Tizhos could smell his irritation. “Let us form a consensus, then. I agree that danger does exist here. Let us also agree, however, that any aggressive moves on our part might well provoke the humans.”