by Ben Bova
“Nothing,” the cyborg repeated. Then he added, “I’m afraid I’m not a good subject for your attempt to make contact with the dolphins.”
With that he pivoted like a machine and took a step toward Deirdre. She slipped aside and Dorn leaned a finger of his prosthetic hand against the elevator button.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he said as he stood facing the elevator doors.
“Are you all right?” Deirdre asked again.
“Yes. As all right as I can be.”
The elevator doors slid open and Dorn stepped inside the cab. He touched the control pad and the doors shut. Deirdre heard the faint hum of the electric motors that lifted the elevator upward.
“Wow,” said Andy. “That was weird.”
“It was scary,” Deirdre agreed. “He’s a very powerful man.”
Shrugging as if to put the whole episode behind him, Corvus held the optronic circlet out toward Deirdre.
“Would you like to try it?”
Deirdre could feel her eyes go wide. “Me?” she squeaked.
“What happened to Dorn isn’t normal, Dee,” Andy said, his voice faltering, uncertain. “I’ve never seen the linkage affect anybody like that.”
“Maybe it has something to do with his being a cyborg,” Deirdre suggested.
Corvus shrugged. “Maybe.” He offered the circlet to her again. “Do you want to try it?” he repeated. “Please?”
Deirdre decidedly did not. But as she looked at her friend’s soft blue eyes and heard the pleading in his voice she heard herself say, “Sure, I’ll try it … I suppose.”
CONTACT
With considerable misgivings Deirdre settled the slim optronics band onto her auburn hair. Andy nodded, satisfied, and made a few adjustments on the little computer.
“Now just relax,” he coached her. “Close your eyes and relax. Like you’re going to sleep.”
Easier said than done, Deirdre thought. In her mind’s eye she saw Dorn raging and flailing like a madman. That won’t happen to me, she told herself. It won’t. It can’t.
“Maybe you ought to sit down,” Corvus said. Opening her eyes, Deirdre saw him gesturing to the big aluminum case. “Here,” he suggested. “You can sit here.”
Deirdre sat tensely on the case. It felt cold, even through the fabric of her slacks. She closed her eyes again and rested her chin in her hands. Cold and hard. Not like the water. The water’s warm and soft, it covers you all over, smooth and warm and soft.
Small. Mother says this water is small. She remembers when she was young and the water stretched forever. You could swim for days and never see the same bottom. And out farther the bottom was so far away you couldn’t see it at all.
Effortlessly, she glided to the surface for a gulp of air. Mother and Father swam behind her, and they breathed, too. Through the hard wall that was the end of the world she saw a strange creature, neither dolphin nor fish. Land creature, Mother told her. But it was swimming with us a few breaths ago, she said to Mother. It played with me.
Land creature, Mother repeated. Not one of us.
She saw another land creature resting on a square rock. That’s me! she realized. But I’m here, safe with Mother and Father. It was confusing. How can that be me, outside the world, when I’m here where I’ve always been?
She decided to ignore the strange land creatures. They didn’t really matter. The world was good. Filled with fish. No dangers. Mother had told her more than once about the dangers in the big water, fish with sharp teeth who liked to eat baby dolphins. None of them here in this water. This is good water. Small, but good.
She emptied her lungs, popping a trail of bubbles from her blowhole, and rose swiftly to the surface. Bursting through, she jumped exuberantly into the not-water and splashed down again, nose first.
Mother chattered unhappily. Father, too. Don’t go off on your own, they warned.
But there’s nothing to be afraid of, she replied. This little water has no dangers in it. You told me so yourselves.
Still, be careful. Someday we might reach the big water, and there will be dangers there. Learn to be careful.
She thought Mother and Father were being foolish. They remember the old fears, she told herself. But then she thought how exciting it would be to swim in the big water, to travel on and on, never seeing the same bottom twice, racing through the big water. Father told her that his family chased fast-swimming fish that were so numerous their schools were wider across than all the dolphins of the family put together. The family hunted those fish.
Not like here, where the water was so little that the fish were few, hardly enough to keep the hunger away. So few that they had no place to run to, no place to hide. Even when they formed a school it was small and easy to slice through.
She glided unhappily through the stupid fish. This water may be safe, she thought, but it’s not much fun.
Maybe I can get Father to jump with me! She swam close to his sleek, powerful body and asked him. Mother immediately said no, but Father—
“That’s enough,” said Corvus.
Deirdre blinked and looked up at Andy. He was lifting the optronic circlet off her head, the expression on his face quite serious, almost grim.
“What…?” Deirdre felt confused. This isn’t Father, a voice in her mind said.
“You were under for five full minutes,” Andy said somberly. He looked worried, almost.
Deirdre sat up straighter and took a deep breath. I’m sitting on Andy’s case. I’m aboard the torch ship. We’re heading for Jupiter.
“Are you okay?” Andy asked.
“I think so,” said Deirdre. Then she smiled, remembering. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“You made contact.” It wasn’t a question.
“I was the dolphin!” Deirdre said, suddenly aware of what had happened. “It was … I … it was like I was the dolphin, swimming in the tank!”
“Great!” he said. Pointing to the laptop, open on the floor beside the case she was sitting on, Andy said, “I was monitoring your vital signs on the screen. You made the transition without a hitch.”
“It was strange,” she said. “It was like … I wasn’t me anymore. I was the dolphin. The little one.”
“Baby.”
Nodding, Deirdre said, “It’s a shame to keep them in that little tank, Andy.”
“Little? It’s the biggest we could build for them.”
“But it’s little for them. They’re used to swimming in the ocean, not a tank.”
“They’ve never been in the ocean, Dee. These dolphins were raised in cetacean laboratories on Earth. Baby was born in La Jolla, California. Her mother was taken from the Pacific when she was younger than Baby is now. They were transferred here to this ship a week before we left Earth orbit.”
“But Baby remembers the ocean,” Deirdre insisted. “The adults have told her about being in water where they could go day after day and never see the same bottom twice.”
Corvus ran a hand through his thick mop of hair. “Really? Baby remembers things she’s never experienced for herself?”
“Yes, she does.”
For a moment Corvus was silent. Then he said softly, “Dee, if Baby can remember things that she’s never seen, that means that she was told those things by the older dolphins. Like stories we pass down from one generation to the next.”
Deirdre said, “I suppose it does.”
Corvus licked his lips. “That means they’re intelligent, Dee! The ability to pass information from one generation to another is one of the key indicators of intelligence!”
MAIN LOUNGE
They had missed lunch. By the time Deirdre and Andy got to the main lounge, the doors to the dining area were closed, not to be opened again until the cocktail hour.
“I’m starving,” Deirdre complained. “I haven’t even had breakfast.”
Pointing to the row of automated dispensers off to one side of the lounge’s empty bar, Corvus suggested, “We can get a sandwich or something, I gue
ss.”
The dispensers’ offerings were limited, but Deirdre was so hungry that she took a salad, a sandwich, and a square dark object that was purported to be a fudge brownie. Plus a large cola. Corvus settled for a salad and a cup of lukewarm tea.
“I’m a vegetarian,” he explained when Deirdre looked questioningly at his meager tray.
The lounge was almost empty at this hour of the mid-afternoon. They found a table by the bulkhead, beneath a wide screen displaying a view of Saturn, with its gleaming broad rings.
As soon as they put their trays on the table and sat down, Corvus said urgently, “You’ve got to help me with this.”
“With what?” Deirdre asked.
“The dolphins!” he fairly yelped. “You made contact with Baby so easily. You’re a natural. You got more out of her in five minutes than I’ve gotten in two days. A lot more.”
“Beginner’s luck,” Deirdre murmured.
“No, you’re a natural. Wow! If we can show evidence that they’re intelligent … wow! What a breakthrough that’ll be!”
“I suppose it would be significant.”
“Significant! It’s monumental. Here we’ve been searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life for the past hundred and fifty years and there’s an intelligent species right on Earth with us!” His grin was ear-to-ear.
“Is what we’ve done today enough to prove it?” she asked.
Wagging his head, Andy replied, “Nope. Not by itself. All we’ve got is your unsupported word about what Baby was thinking. That’s not enough.”
“Why not?”
He smiled gently at her. “I think it was Carl Sagan who said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ ”
“Not just my word?”
“Nobody’s accusing you of lying, Dee. But the scientific community will need more solid evidence than your unsupported word.”
“So what—”
Her phone buzzed. Deirdre’s first instinct was to turn it off, but then she realized that the most likely person to be calling her was Dr. Pohan.
“Excuse me, Andy,” she muttered as she pulled out the phone and flipped it open.
It was indeed Dr. Pohan. And he was smiling broadly beneath his florid mustache. Without preamble he said, “I have good news, Ms. Ambrose. Please come to my office in the infirmary as quickly as you can.”
Dierdre clicked the phone shut and got to her feet. Half her salad and all of her sandwich and dessert still remained on the table.
“I have to go, Andy.”
“Who was that?” he asked, looking up at her.
“I’ll tell you later,” Deirdre said as she picked up her tray and headed for the disposal chute. She managed to gulp down two bites of the limp sandwich before she dumped what was left and hurried toward the infirmary.
* * *
Dr. Pohan was still smiling benignly when she sat down in front of his little desk.
“Good news, you said?” Deirdre asked.
“Indeed! Indeed.” Dr. Pohan’s head bobbed up and down.
“You can synthesize the vaccine?”
“It appears so,” the doctor said cheerily. “We need a donation of blood of a type that is compatible with yours. I have scanned the records of everyone aboard ship and come up with a potential donor.”
“A potential donor?” Deirdre asked. “Only one?”
“One should be sufficient, if he is willing to give us some of his blood. From a comparatively small amount we can synthesize the immunoglobulin you require.”
Her pulse speeding, Deirdre asked, “And is he willing?”
“We will find out shortly. I have asked him to join us here.”
At that, Deirdre heard a single sharp rap on the door behind her.
“Enter,” cried Dr. Pohan.
She turned in her chair as the door slid open.
Dorn.
* * *
Back in the main lounge, Andy Corvus chewed thoughtfully on his salad.
She made contact with Baby, he was saying to himself, I’m sure of it. She couldn’t just make up the impressions she told me about. The dolphins have language! They can actually communicate abstract ideas to one another!
But who’s going to believe it, without solid evidence to back up her word? I’d be laughed out of the business—or worse, accused of fraud.
Got to make Deirdre’s sensory impressions visible, recordable. Got to get her brain wave patterns into some form of reproducible data retrieval program.
But how?
INFIRMARY
Dorn took one step into Dr. Pohan’s compact little office, saw Deirdre sitting before the doctor’s desk, and froze into immobility.
“Come in, come in,” Dr. Pohan urged him, gesturing to the only other chair in the room, beside Deirdre’s.
He settled slowly, almost suspiciously, into the chair. It creaked beneath his weight.
Dorn said, “Your message said you required a blood sample from me.”
“Require is too strong a word,” said the doctor amiably, unconsciously brushing his curling mustache with one finger. “We request a blood sample. Request.”
“We?”
“Ms. Ambrose has a medical condition that can be alleviated with a donation of your blood, sir.”
Dorn turned his head toward Deirdre. “I’ll give you as much blood as you need, of course.”
“Why, thank you,” she said.
“A few cubic centimeters should do nicely,” said the doctor. “A few cc’s will be more than enough, I’m sure.”
Dorn nodded. Deirdre felt enormously grateful.
* * *
Katherine Westfall was on Australia’s bridge when her wristphone pinged. She glanced at its miniature screen briefly, saw that the message was from Dr. Pohan, and ignored it. The phone would automatically record his message for her to retrieve later.
Captain Guerra had invited her to the bridge and was showing it off to her with the glowing enthusiasm of a proud father.
She thought the bridge seemed surprisingly small, considering the size of the ship. The place seemed to vibrate subtly with the background thrum of electrical power. And it felt too warm, as if overly crowded. Yet only four officers were on duty, in addition to the captain. A cluster of display screens showed various sections of the ship’s interior; she could see passengers walking along passageways, crew personnel working at machinery she could not fathom. The multiple views reminded Katherine of the segmented eye of an insect. There was even a view of the empty beds of the infirmary, and Dr. Pohan’s office, with the wrinkled little leprechaun sitting at his desk.
On the opposite bulkhead a single broad screen showed a telescopic view of Jupiter’s slightly flattened disk.
“We’re getting closer every hour,” the captain said grandly. “You can see the planet’s oblateness clearly.”
“It looks much paler than I had expected,” Katherine said, remembering the pictures she had seen of vibrant bands of deeply colored clouds, swirls and eddies of storm systems the size of Earth and bigger.
The captain muttered something about false-color imagery.
The bridge had only half a dozen crew stations arranged in a shallow semicircle around the captain’s command chair, and two of the curved, instrument-studded stations were unoccupied, at that. Standing beside Westfall, Guerra pointed out consoles for navigation, propulsion, life support, and communications. Uniformed officers, two of them women, sat at each console.
“And these other two?” she asked, pointing to the empty consoles.
“Backup stations,” said Captain Guerra. “We don’t need to man them unless there’s some sort of emergency.”
“Indeed?”
“As a matter of fact,” the captain said, patting one hand on the arm of his command chair, “I could run the ship from my chair here, all by myself alone. The systems are so highly automated that I could do away with the crew altogether and she would still run perfectly well.”
Westfall mad
e herself appear impressed. But she couldn’t resist asking, “Then why do you carry the crew along with you, Captain?”
Guerra’s bearded face looked surprised at her question, then nettled. But almost instantly he broke into an accommodating grin. “You’re joking, of course.”
“Perhaps,” Westfall said, permitting herself a slight smile. “But if I were heading the corporation that owns this vessel I’d want to know why I had to pay for crew members who aren’t needed.”
Obviously struggling to maintain his pleasant expression, the captain replied, “They are needed”—he emphasized the word—“for two reasons. One, in case the automated systems fail or conditions exceed their programming limits.”
Westfall nodded.
“And two—well, frankly, it’s for the passengers. Our psychology consultants tell us that the passengers would be afraid to travel on a completely automated ship.”
“I see. It’s public relations, then.”
Guerra’s genuine smile returned. “Exactly! Public relations.” He paused, then added, “Besides, some of the passengers enjoy having dinner with a good-looking young ship’s officer. Eh?”
With a knowing arch of her brow, Westfall said, “I prefer older men, myself. Men of experience.”
The captain absolutely glowed. For a moment Katherine thought he was going to wink at her.
Instead, he asked, “In that case, would you join me for dinner this evening in my quarters?”
“Why not?” Westfall replied, thinking how predictable the captain was, how easy it was to get this man to do her bidding.
Once back in her own suite she immediately went to the desk in her sitting room and played Dr. Pohan’s message. The gnomish little doctor’s image looked very serious, almost grave, on the desktop screen.
“I met with Ms. Ambrose and the cyborg this morning. He has agreed to donate blood. He didn’t even ask what the reason was. All I had to do was tell him that Ms. Ambrose had a medical problem and he agreed without hesitation.”
