A Darkling Sea

by James Cambias

  “It sounds like you’re breaking orders in order to wait for orders.”

  “Perhaps it is a paradox, but that is something to discuss at another time. Now, as I said, I cannot order you to do this. I am only suggesting it, do you understand? You may call it dishonesty if you wish, but I prefer to think that I am encouraging my people to use their own initiative. I do need to know, though: are you willing to crew one of the Coquilles?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Sen sighed. “Robert, this is a very important moment. Not merely in our lives, but possibly in history. Would it be too much to ask for you to say something a bit less bathetic? If I am to write my memoirs someday I would like to have good material to work with.”

  Rob smiled at that. “Okay. Um—’If the Sholen want me to leave Ilmatar they’re going to have to drag me.’ How’s that?”

  “It is good action-film dialogue, which I suppose is really the best one can hope for,” said Sen. He looked at Rob over his little Gandhi glasses. “I hope you are sincere. As I said, there is a great deal of risk.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Rob. “I’m in.”

  “That is good. Oh, I expect you will be interested to know that Dr. Neogri has said she would like to participate as well. I believe the two of you are good friends?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “I did not want your decision to be affected by your hormones. While war for love is inspiring in legends and epic poems, we must be governed by cynical pragmatism. Now please excuse me as there are others I must speak with.”

  ONECLAW takes Broadtail out on a long patrol to where a current flows through the abyss. The water of the current is just barely warmer than the cold sea around it, but that is enough to support a faint bloom of tiny organisms and a layer of slime on the rocks of the bottom. Those in turn feed a population of small crawling animals and little swimmers, and those are food for some larger hunters and a pack of wild children.

  The two teachers sit half-buried in the mud of the bottom, listening to the children and communicating by quiet shelltaps. There are nineteen young ones in all, but most are too small, little creatures no bigger than Oneclaw’s good pincer and incapable of language. The six large ones are about the right size for schooling.

  The children are trying to hunt, but are doing it very badly. They can spread out to trap and drive prey well enough, but they cannot agree on which is to be the catcher. As soon as there are some swimmers clumped together, all the children rush forward and the hunt dissolves into separate chases and fights among the hunters. Broadtail hears some swimmers thrashing as the children’s pincers snatch them, but he also hears plenty of them getting away. And in the middle of one brawl between a large older child and a little one, he hears a call of distress cut off by the sound of a pincer being snapped off.

  “Listen. The waters are getting quiet,” taps out Oneclaw. “I expect they are sleeping. Are the nets ready?”

  The nets are ready. Broadtail has them slung on his back, all neatly folded, with weights to make them spread out when thrown. The two teachers move forward very slowly, staying on the bottom and trying not to make any noisy movements.

  The children are on the bottom, sleeping off their tiring hunt. Some of the older ones have concealed themselves, burrowing into the silt to blur the echoes off their smooth shells. The younger ones just curl into balls and sleep anywhere. Broadtail touches one little one fast asleep atop the shell of an older child. He gently shoves the little one off, then drops the net over the big one while Oneclaw grabs the trailing ropes.

  The youngster comes awake frightened, and tries to flee. The net wraps around it, and its terrified struggles only get it more tangled up. When it tries to swim, it gets only a few arm lengths before the rope goes taut. Oneclaw has the other end, and is braced against some rocks. The child darts this way and that, but the old teacher keeps his grip, letting the panicked youngster wear itself out before hauling it in and trussing it tightly.

  The struggle awakens the rest, and Broadtail picks out one healthy-looking one—a female by the shape of her palps—and gives chase. She is frightened and has a nice smooth shell, but he is bigger and has more reserves. She darts away but soon tires, tries a sudden burst of speed, then some violent maneuvers—but Broadtail isn’t going to get drawn into that. He hangs back, keeping her in hearing but not bothering to match her increasingly jerky moves. When she drops exhausted to the bottom, he moves up, pinging so she can’t creep away silently. She crawls a bit, but he can see she’s on the verge of collapse. When the net goes over her, she doesn’t even struggle. Broadtail tows his new student back to where Onepincer is waiting.

  They capture a total of five, including one big stupid child who sleeps through the whole thing until Oneclaw starts winding a rope around its tail. One of them is malformed: what should be the big final joint of its left pincer is just a tiny nub, making the whole limb nearly useless.

  “Hold that one while I pith it,” says Oneclaw, working his one good pincer under the back of the child’s headshield.

  “Why not let it go?”

  “I imagine it living an unhappy life,” says Oneclaw. “There are few places in the world for one with such a deformity.” With a sudden thrust he drives his single pincer into the child’s brain.

  Some of the little ones gather around the corpse and begin to feed while the two schoolmasters confer about names.

  “I leave that to you,” says Oneclaw. “Names are but temporary identities, as easily discarded as a shell. The number is the meat and soul. You bestow their names, but I number them.”

  “As you wish. The female there: I suggest calling her Smoothshell.”

  “No shell stays smooth once one leaves the cold water. I imagine her as encrusted as any pipe-farmer.”

  “Perhaps. But as you say, the name is only the surface.”

  “A piercing jab! Very well. A number to go with that name. I propose 13. A difficult number for some, as it is prime and thus has no interesting factors, but 13 is appropriate for a fast one like her. And it is auspicious, since it combines Food and Property. Choose another.”

  “The big sleepy one. I name him Broadbody.”

  “Fitting. Broadbody 27, as it seems he likes to sleep in silt. It is 3 cubed, so I expect to make him swim and swim and swim. Also, 27 is 21 plus 6, as befits one with a body as heavy as stone. And it holds out the good thought of Warm Property in 18 plus 9. What about the little male?”

  “Smallbody is the obvious choice.”

  “Such a small fellow needs a good number to compensate. I propose 54: Wealth. It is 3 times 18, which means much warmth, and it combines Solidity and Abundance. There is hardly a better number, excepting always 94.”

  “I name the last one Sharpclaw, because I remember getting a painful jab from her.”

  “She needs a number to keep her from fighting too much. I suggest 39. Boundary stones prevent conflict.”

  Broadtail doesn’t say much as they head back to the school compound. Herding the children keeps him and Oneclaw busy, and he doesn’t want to offend his new employer. But, privately, he is scornful of the old schoolmaster’s reverence for numbers.

  To be sure, Oneclaw isn’t the only adult to become fascinated by the ordering of words in the dictionary. Some writers go so far as to use mathematics to guide their choice of words, or encode hidden meanings in books through spacing and numerical intervals. Others grope for secret messages in ancient texts, or assign prophetic meaning to numbers found in nature.

  Broadtail is a skeptic. He knows that dictionaries are composed by adults, and that different communities use different systems of numbering words. He recalls studying ancient sites and trying to tease out the meaning of archaic writings and carvings. Speech is universal—even wild children speak—but writing is a made thing, and varies as much as ways of making nets or laying pipe.

  About halfway back to Oneclaw’s school, he catches an odd flavor in the water and dro
ps back from the group to taste it better. A very odd flavor indeed—something like rock oil and something like some of the mats that grow on rocks, but much more complex than either taste. What’s especially maddening is that he is sure he remembers tasting it before, but not when or where.

  That reminds him of something, and he swims hard to catch up with Oneclaw.

  “Everything all right?” asks Oneclaw.

  “Fine. I remember you mentioning odd sounds and flavors in the water around here. There’s a funny taste just back there. Do you know what it is?”

  “Ah, yes. The ruins upcurrent are home to many strange phenomena. I hear noises, sometimes sense things moving about. I have a theory about the cause.”

  “I recall you saying something about that.”

  “Yes. You are an educated adult, so I assume you know all about the shape of the world. In the center, rock giving off heat. Outside that, the oceans we know. And surrounding all is the infinite ice, cold and lighter than water. But is the rock beneath our legs really solid? We know there are vents and rifts, some quite deep. There must be channels for water to return to the vents. I believe that within the rock below us there are vast tunnels and chambers filled with hot, rich ventwater.”

  “It is certainly plausible. I remember reading books of speculation along those lines.”

  “As do I. But I do not recall encountering anywhere the idea that those caverns may be inhabited!”

  “Inhabited? But how? Most vents are too hot to approach. Adults die in agony in a channel full of ventwater.”

  “I don’t mean adults. At least, not adults precisely like ourselves. You know about animals, yes?”

  “Yes, a great many kinds.”

  “And they are different in different places—some suited to coldwater, some suited to the rocks around a vent, and so forth. Now imagine creatures—maybe even creatures like ourselves— who come from the boiling world underground.”

  Broadtail ponders this. “They would be very hot themselves,” he says. And then it hits him like a bolt. “Oneclaw! I remember finding a strange creature near the Bitterwater vent—large and utterly unlike anything I remember touching before. And I remember the great heat of its body!”

  He can hear Oneclaw’s hearts race with excitement. “Is this true? You really recall such a creature? You need not lie to humor me, Broadtail.”

  “No, I remember it perfectly. The scholars of the Bitterwater Company all know about it.” Broadtail feels a surge of hope. He imagines returning to Longpincer in triumph, with valuable data about the odd creatures. “Promise me that once these children are sold, we spend time seeking these strange noises and flavors. It is of tremendous importance.”

  “Of course. I am making a note of it.”

  SEVEN

  TWO days after Dr. Sen recruited him, Rob was ready to leave Hitode Station. He couldn’t pack a bag or do anything obvious, but he did gather up a few essentials and tuck them into a waterproof pouch to bring along—his computer and one of the little people Alicia had made for him.

  The last thing he collected before leaving was the drones. They were just too useful to leave behind. The teams going into hiding could use them to communicate, to keep an eye on the Sholen, and doubtless some things Rob hadn’t thought of. And for the same reason, it was a good idea to keep them away from the Sholen. Without drones they’d be limited to the area they could search themselves in suits. Swimming Sholen were a lot easier to spot and hide from than the drones.

  He avoided the common room. There were always a couple of the Sholen soldiers there, and he didn’t like the way they sniffed the air whenever a human came in. Could they tell if he was nervous by the way he smelled? Dogs could do that, he remembered reading somewhere.

  So Rob made his way through the labs and work areas on the lower level. Everything was a mess down there now. The human staff weren’t helping with the evacuation—but the scientists all hated the idea of leaving their precious specimens behind. They had worked out a bit of benign hypocrisy: all the important specimens were carefully packed up and labeled for shipment—so that if and when the Sholen finally did remove the whole base from Ilmatar, there would be at least a remote chance that someday the specimens could get to Earth.

  To Rob’s surprise, the female Sholen envoy, Tizhos, was in the workshop when he got there. She had one of the fishshaped drones on the worktable, and was poking at its innards with some of the micro- scale tools.

  “What’s up?” Rob asked her. He did still think of it as his workshop, and even though he was about to leave the station he didn’t like the idea of some alien messing the place up.

  She looked up and her posture shifted—Rob couldn’t tell if it was the cramped room or some Sholen social thing. “I wish to understand the operation of these devices. They seem very cleverly made.”

  “Yeah. We use them a lot. They’re pretty much off-the-shelf stuff. Plenty more just like them in Earth’s oceans, Europa, anyplace there’s liquid water.” He was careful not to mention that the primary users on Earth were navies. “Don’t you guys use them?”

  “I believe past cultures on my world employed such devices. At present we prefer to employ tailored organisms, with technological implants as needed.”

  “I think that some . . . organizations back on Earth tried that. People just think the idea of cyborg sharks is a little scary.”

  Tizhos put down the tools she’d been using and moved aside. “Tell me if my presence interferes with your work.”

  “Oh, no problem. I was just . . .” Rob thought frantically. “I was just going to make sure the drones are safe for shipment. I mean, we’re not going to be using them here any more, right?”

  “That seems a sensible precaution.”

  Rob took a seat at the worktable and started to safe the first drone. He took out the power cells, primary and backup, and made sure that all the pressure seals were open.

  As he worked, he could feel Tizhos hovering, watching him. She finally spoke up. “I have a question. Please explain why you open up those valves inside the device.”

  “Oh, that’s just to make sure there’s no pressure seals. Remember we’re at the bottom of an ocean here. Take a sealed system up the elevator and then to a spacecraft in orbit, and something’s going to pop.”

  “I understand. Very prudent.”

  “Thanks. The power cells get packed up separately, so there’s no risk of anything getting turned on accidentally, maybe generating heat and starting a fire.”

  There were a total of sixteen drones, but half of them were unusable due to damage, corrosion, or incurable software problems. Rob had put those aside to scavenge for parts. He finished safing the eight active ones and packed them up, four to a case. He was extremely aware of Tizhos’s gaze as he stuffed the power cells into the cases next to the drones. It seemed painfully obvious that they weren’t made to fit, but if he left the cells behind he wouldn’t be able to use the drones himself.

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me I’ll just put these away.” He hefted the two cases and was very glad of Ilmatar’s low gravity. At ten kilos each, carrying eight drones at once was quite a load.

  Tizhos stepped out into the hall, but didn’t move out of his way when he got to the door. Did she know? He was pretty sure that he couldn’t overcome a female Sholen unarmed, even without two cases of drones trying to pull his arms out of their sockets.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Tell me why you need to move the drones. Tell me where you intend to take them.”

  “Ah—this is a workshop, not a storage room. Can’t leave them in here to clutter things up.”

  She considered that for a moment, and it wasn’t just exertion that made Rob’s arms tremble. Finally the Sholen stepped out of his way. “Forgive me for interfering in your work,” she said. “I wish to know about things.”

  He grunted and edged his way along the narrow passage toward the moon pool. He could feel her watching him but didn’t da
re look back.

  Alicia was already there, looking annoyed. “What took you so long?”

  “Tizhos wanted to watch me pack up the drones.”

  “Josef has been waiting in the sub for an hour already.”

  The two of them suited up and rolled into Ilmatar’s icy ocean. The drone cases were considerably lighter out in the water. The other three conspirators were already outside: Dickie Graves, Simeon Fouchard, and Isabel Rondon, all puttering about as if they were doing something useful. As soon as Rob and Alicia left the station the five of them swam over to where the Coquille modules were stacked.

  The modules had never been used—when the Sholen got word of them they had filed a strong protest, and UNICA had decided not to press the issue then. They were still in their shipping configuration, folded into giant hockey pucks four meters across. The smooth white plastic of the shipping shroud was coated with a centimeter of silt on the downcurrent side. As Josef moved the sub into position overhead, the downblast from the steering thrusters filled the water with a cloud of particles.

  Rob swam up out of the soup, then over to the sub. He found the hoist and pulled the cable free, then let himself sink down onto the stacked Coquilles. He could see nothing but silty water, brightly illuminated by four divers’ shoulder lamps. Holding the hook in one hand, he felt for the lifting point in the center of the Coquille shroud.

  There! He hooked on the cable, then switched his hydrophone to broadcast. “Okay, we’re hooked on.”

  They backed off to about ten meters while Josef turned on the hoist and took up the tension in the line. The Coquilles were mostly composites and plastic, so in the dense water of Ilmatar they were pretty close to neutral buoyancy. The sub bobbed a bit, then it and the Coquille began to rise until the folded shelter was hanging a good ten meters above the seafloor.

  “You three: take hold!” Josef broadcast over the hydrophone. Rob and Alicia let themselves settle to the bottom as the other three grabbed the landing skids, and the sub moved off ponderously.