A Darkling Sea

by James Cambias

  When they were a hundred meters away they went completely dark, and paused for up to a minute between movements. It took them half an hour to approach to where they could see the Coquille clearly.

  It was dark and silent. On passive sonar it was a hole in the ocean. The only noise was a very faint sussuration from the nuclear power unit as water convected through its cooling fins. Even damped down it was still about five degrees warmer than the ocean.

  Rob tapped Alicia’s helmet and made a “stop” gesture with one hand, then pointed at himself and then at the shelter. She signed “okay.”

  He braced himself against the broken stone pipe they were crouched next to and pushed off as hard as he could. He felt himself shooting through the water, slowing until he had to start kicking to cover the last couple of meters.

  Rob’s extended fingers touched the side of the Coquille, and he felt his way to the lower edge, then pulled himself under it until he came to the entry hatch. It opened easily enough, and Rob switched on his helmet lamp. The sudden light was startlingly bright after minutes in total dark. The motes of silt floating before his face made him jerk his head back in surprise.

  He risked a look around before climbing up the little ladder inside the hatch. The Coquille had acquired a coating of gray fuzz, growing in intricate six-branched patterns like moldy snowflakes.

  Just before his head broke the surface in the hatchway, Rob paused. What if Isabel’s body was still inside? He felt a sudden queasiness. The image of Isabel Rondon, all bloated and purple like a deer on the side of the highway, flashed into his head and he couldn’t dismiss it. He realized he was breathing heavily.

  I have to climb this ladder, he told himself. Very deliberately he moved his right hand up to the next rung and took hold. He forced himself to let go with his left and reach up to the top rung. His head moved from water to air, and he looked around the lower level of the Coquille.

  There were no corpses. He took a deep breath, then let it out in a powerful sigh as his arm muscles unclenched.

  The place was a mess, though. The lab space had been trashed by the fighting when the Sholen came. The walls and floor were covered with patches of mold—real, blue-green Terrestrial mold. Rob’s queasiness returned when he realized it was growing where Isabel’s blood had spattered. Suddenly Rob had absolutely no desire to open his helmet.

  He climbed back down into the cool water and turned on the laser link to signal Alicia. No response. His system couldn’t find her. Was she out of line- of- sight? He let himself drop to the sea bottom and tried again. Still nothing.

  Sonar wasn’t picking up anything but ocean sounds. Suddenly there was an explosion of noise and activity among the ruins. He heard Alicia shout “Robert! Sholen! Get away!” over the hydrophone. His sonar imaged four indistinct figures struggling together among the sharp stones.

  Rob clenched his teeth to avoid calling out a reply. They had her. That much was certain or she would not have given herself away by shouting. She was always very rational under stress. He moved as quickly as he dared, pulling himself along the underside of the Coquille to get it between him and the aliens. Then he pushed off toward an old broken dome.

  Why weren’t they shooting? He got behind a wall and paused to listen. There was no deadly little swish of the microtorps. Not even the sound of Sholen swimming after him.

  Either they were being ethical and didn’t want to kill anyone else, or they were being clever. “Put a tracer on me so I’ll lead you back to the rebel base, eh?” he said to himself. “Your advanced alien science is no match for our spunky Earthling pop culture.”

  But what about Alicia? He had to leave her. She would say the same thing. If he got himself captured trying to rescue her she would be brutally sarcastic. He still couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he was making up justifications for cowardice.

  But no—taking on a bunch of armed Sholen with nothing but his utility knife would be courage of the “strap a bomb to your belt and blow up a bus” variety. Rob had vague, lapsed secular Jewish ideas about an afterlife, and martyrdom wasn’t how he planned to arrive there.

  Rob took a roundabout way home to foil any trackers. He passed through the ruins, pausing in the shelter of a large standing stone to listen with the hydrophone at maximum. There were the usual noises of Ilmataran sea creatures, and a faint gurgle from the current washing through the ruins. He was safe.

  From there he set his course across the open water of the basin toward the camp at Longpincer’s house. It was a long trip, but the impeller’s fuel cells had enough juice. Barely.

  He had covered about a kilometer when he glimpsed something moving ahead. Passive sonar barely registered it, and he didn’t want to risk an active ping for fear it might hear and come to investigate. So he turned on his lights and had a look.

  It was a Cylindrodaptes—one of the largest creatures in Ilmatar’s ocean. Its body was simply a giant tube, open at both ends, with little steering fins around the mouth and another set at the tail. According to Rob’s computer, this particular Cylindrodaptes was sixty meters long and nearly eight meters across, cruising past at a leisurely two knots.

  Rob switched off his impeller and watched as it approached. The Cylindrodaptes was swimming low over the sea bottom, so Rob had a splendid view of its dorsal side as it passed. It was like watching the Hindenburg fly beneath him. The thing’s hide was pale gray, with faint ridges running its entire length. At the top of the mouth he could see a tiny bulge, about the size of a human head, which held the Cylindrodaptes’s sonar organs and brain.

  Cursing himself for an idiot he switched on his camera and started to record it. This wasn’t the first footage of a Cylindrodaptes—Henri had managed that shortly after arriving on Ilmatar. But Henri’s images were all of the front end and the mouth, intended to make the beast look as scary as possible for the viewers back home. Alicia would want him to gather better data.

  He turned up the gain on his hydrophone again, wondering if he could hear the Cylindrodaptes swimming. It made a very faint swooshing as it moved but was otherwise running silent.

  Then Rob became aware of another sound: a rhythmic swish-swish-swish, exactly like the sound of a mackerel swimming. Only there were no mackerel in Ilmatar’s ocean. It was a drone.

  He checked his sonar display. The drone was coming up from astern at ten knots. How had it tracked him? Some kind of chemical sniffer? No time to worry about that now. Rob gunned his impeller, trying to outrun the drone, cruising low and fast.

  Even at full throttle the drone could keep pace with him, and Rob knew that running the impeller flat- out wouldn’tleave him with enough juice to get back to camp.

  How to fool sensors? Merge, then separate. But what could he merge with? Rocks?

  Rob steered back toward the Cylindrodaptes, hoping to get it between him and the drone. The robot mackerel was about twenty meters behind him as he reached the great creature rippling its way through the water. He cruised over its back, close enough to trail his fingers along its skin, then dropped down on the other side and switched off the impeller, matching speeds with the Cylindrodaptes by kicking slowly and quietly.

  He heard the swish-swish-swish of the drone pass by, and for a second he felt hope, but then the drone swung around and came back, moving more slowly this time. Right now he was silhouetted against the Cylindrodaptes, and Rob hoped the drone’s brain couldn’t distinguish them. But then it gave off an active ping and sprinted toward him at close to twenty knots.

  Rob twisted the impeller handle viciously, steering under the Cylindrodaptes to shelter on the other side. The drone shot past, but then turned again. It could keep this up longer than Rob could. His one advantage was that they were too far from Hitode for a laser link. The drone was autonomous, which meant there was at least a chance of his outsmarting it.

  He dove again, ducking under the Cylindrodaptes and then forward along the length of the huge creature. The drone passed by and circled, homing in on
the noise of his impeller. He reached the beasts’s front end as the drone began another sprint.

  Then Rob simply cut his engine and waited.

  The mouth of the Cylindrodaptes gaped around him, too wide for him to even touch the sides with his outstretched arms. Lining the interior of the creature’s huge body were thousands of filmy fins, beating together in wonderful spiral ripples down its length. The fins drove the beast forward and filtered nutrients from the water as it swam.

  As the mouth moved past Rob could hear the drone swish by, searching for him on the far side of the Cylindrodaptes. A moment later, it passed again, circling back.

  Rob kept station in the center of the Cylindrodaptes’s huge body cavity, about three meters back from the mouth. He could keep up with the creature by swimming, and the longer he waited the longer the drone would have to lose him.

  After half an hour it still hadn’t found him, so Rob decided it was safe to emerge. He did risk a few seconds of light to get images of the interior, and was amused to notice a couple of fishshaped organisms tagging along among the Cylindrodaptes’s fins. Waving farewell to his fellow parasites, Rob stopped kicking and let the beast’s interior flow push him out its back end. When no drone attacked him, he dropped to the sea bottom and let the Cylindrodaptes cruise away. Then he switched on the impeller and set a course for Longpincer’s once again.

  TIZHOS began searching the memory of the captive human’s computer and quickly realized what a treasure it represented. The woman had so much data stored she hadn’t had time to encrypt it all. Tizhos found hours of video and audio, and pages and pages of notes. Where to begin? The section on animals and plants included spectrographic analysis and even—Tizhos gave an audible bark of delight—fragmentary translations of native Ilmataran studies on them.

  This led Tizhos to the language section. She found it very impressive how much the humans had accomplished, even allowing for the fact that the Ilmatarans did much of the work of translation. Very clever of them to use the written form as the basis for communication, rather than trying to analyze and duplicate the sounds.

  She did feel frustration along with her excitement. Each discovery raised dozens of questions, and of course the humans had not had the time to investigate any of them. Tizhos found herself wishing she could join them out there, surrounded by fascinating new things.

  But she could not. She prepared a rough summary of the data to give Irona, then went to eat in the common room. The Sholen foodmakers now stood next to the humans’ cooking equipment, and she constructed a meal that would relax her.

  The new captive, Alicia Neogri, sat with some of the other humans. Tizhos observed them surreptitiously. The four humans shared a large fruit from the garden and ate cooked roots. Their social behavior exhibited some interesting features. The majority of humans in the station had displayed happiness that the new captive had returned unharmed. A handful, however, seemed disappointed at her capture.

  Interestingly, her dinner companions all came from that second group. This seemed to contradict normal human reactions to those who broke their rules of behavior. Did this second group represent some kind of variant consensus?

  That could create difficulties. At present most of the humans seemed to accept the Sholen occupation, even if they did not necessarily agree with it. They did not cause any problems. But if Alicia Neogri had high status among them, they might want to emulate her behavior by causing disruptions.

  Tizhos did not want any disruptions. The station seemed too small, too isolated down here beneath kilometers of icy black water. Conflict could too easily damage something and kill everyone, Sholen and humans alike. During her time in Hitode, Tizhos more and more felt the weight of all that darkness around the station.

  With reluctance, she got up from her place in the common room and went to the operations office, which Irona had turned into his private command center. “Irona, I have some interesting new information.”

  “Go ahead, then.”

  “Two discoveries of note. First, I have reviewed the files in the computer of the new captive. They contain a great deal of value and I would like to send a copy up to the ship at once.”

  “As you wish.” She could smell Irona becoming impatient. “Among the files I discovered a large amount of material about communication with the native Ilmatarans. I believe the humans can speak with them. Their vocabulary already includes several hundred concepts.”

  A sharp scent of anger. “That strikes me as horrible news. Tizhos, tell me if you think the humans have contaminated the Ilmatarans with alien ideas and information.”

  “I consider it likely. Past statements by several of the humans indicate they approve strongly of sharing information with other species.” Irona’s angry scent is mixed with a faint whiff of despair at that news. Tizhos wants to comfort him. “Of course, we have no proof that they have done so.”

  “Ask the female about it. And if they have indeed transmitted alien science to the Ilmatarans, we must find a way to control or reverse the contamination.”

  THIRTEEN

  “I don’t know what we can do,” said Rob, using number-taps. “They’ve got the station, they’ve got the surface, and even if help is coming it’ll take months. I’m afraid we’re going to have to give up.”

  Broadtail was silent for a while. Rob couldn’t tell if he was thinking about what he’d said or if he’d just fallen asleep the way the Ilmatarans did.

  “I hold small echoes [of] stabbing,” said the alien. “Many cords I echo sound [of] stabbing twice adults-with-raised- pincers grasping carved stones.”

  Rob mulled that over. At times he wondered if he and the alien were having completely different conversations. He looked through the lexicon. “You think we should try to attack the Sholen? Stab them?”

  “I sound [of] stabbing twice. Sever many adults-with-raised- pincers outside a wall of ice.”

  “Cut them off! I get it! Yeah! Good idea. But how?”

  “Many large adults tie cords. Sever the cord tied to food.”

  “There isn’t a—you mean the elevator?”

  “You and I are a pair.”

  “That’s a great idea, Broadtail. I’ll tell the others. If we can figure out how to do it, will you help us?”

  “I and many adults swim beside you pincers extended.”

  “LOOK,” said Rob. “They can’t have an infinite supply of those drop capsules; even if they’re fabbing up new ones they’ll run out of feedstock eventually. So their only way of bringing in more stuff is the elevator. Cut that off and all of a sudden we’re on nearly equal terms. Broadtail suggested it.”

  There was a pause while Josef thought about it. “How will we get back up without it? I want to stay on Ilmatar, but not my entire life.”

  Rob waved his hand as if brushing an insect aside. “Trivial. We reconnect the cable later. Forget the cable. If the Sholen haven’t packed up the surface base we can fab a new one out of local matter. The important thing is to steal the elevator capsule itself. Without it the Sholen can’t go up and down at all—and we can use it as another shelter. Heck, it is another shelter: same structure, same life support and power. The only difference is that the elevator has a hard- dock adapter instead of legs, and the buoyancy control system.”

  “Very well,” said Josef. “If we do want to steal it—how?

  When? Elevator weighs tons.”

  “We have a sub. If it can carry one of the Coqs it can carry the elevator.”

  Josef looked thoughtful. “Is feasible, yes. As you say, load is comparable to a Coquille and elevator is neutrally buoyant. But taking cable is impossible.”

  “So we cut it as high up as possible and make sure it doesn’t fall on Hitode. If the Sholen want to go out in suits and impellers to try to reconnect it, bully for them.”

  “You forget about decompression. We need elevator to decompress going up. How can we capture it if we explode?”

  “Use the sub. That’s my answer for ev
erything. Take it up a kilometer next time the elevator comes down, so we can be in position when it’s on its way back up again. You and I can live aboard for a few days. Plus Broadtail says his people will help.

  Next time it goes up, we board the elevator, take control, cut the cable, and skedaddle.”

  “Elevator is probably guarded. Sholen are not stupid, you know.”

  “I know they’re not stupid, which is why I don’t think they’d do that. A guard going up has to come back down again, which means the whole capacity of the elevator is reduced by twentyfive percent. It’d be simpler to just send up humans and send down more Sholen techs and soldiers. If they want to keep the passengers going up from messing with the elevator, they can just disconnect the internal controls and send them up without suits.”

  “Hope the Sholen think the same. Robert, I have question for you. Do you want to find Alicia?”

  “Well—kind of. It would make sense for them to get her out of Hitode as fast as possible. But this isn’t hormones talking.

  Snatching the elevator makes sense no matter what.”

  “Good. Just making sure you know your own motives.”

  AND so Broadtail finds himself with Holdhard and half a dozen of Longpincer’s servants, clinging to the back of the swimming shelter like so many juvenile mudcrawlers on their mother. Just ahead of him Builder 1 is speaking to the human inside through a slender cord. Broadtail isn’t sure how they do it, but it seems to work. The alien turns and taps Broadtail’s head gently with one digit. His tapping is still slow and full of false starts.

  “Rises house approaches. Builds fights. Grasp.”

  The shelter starts to move through the empty water. Ahead Broadtail hears the faint echoes of something solid. As they get closer he can make out the echo of the great cable stretching from ground to sky. A few lengths below them an object the size of a small house is clinging to the cable.

  Builder 1 pushes off from the back of the ship and swims toward the object. Broadtail wishes he had some cord to take notes on how the aliens swim. Broadtail pings and takes up his spear. He leads Longpincer’s servants down and takes up station beneath the climbing house, where the door is. Their job is to prevent the other creatures from beyond the ice from interfering with Builder’s work. “If anything comes out, count the limbs,” he reminds the others. “Four limbs good, six limbs bad.”