Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  “I’ve been looking for an opportunity to tell you.”

  She nodded. “I know,” she said.

  That threw him off-balance. “You know?” He had never said anything.

  “Sure.”

  He got to his feet, driven to some form of action, but he settled for stirring the fire. “May I ask how you feel about me?” He blurted it out, and immediately knew it sounded clumsy. But there was no way to recall it.

  “I like you,” she said quietly.

  He waited.

  She seemed lost in thought. He wondered whether she was searching her feelings, or looking for a way to let him down gently. “I don’t know,” she said. “The circumstances we’re under… It’s hard to see clearly.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “I’m not sure you do, Chiang. Everything’s compressed now. I don’t trust my feelings. Or yours. Everything’s very emotional. Let’s wait till we’re back on Wendy. When it’s not life-and-death anymore. Then if you want to take another plunge at this, I’ll be happy to listen.”

  Nightingale assumed guard duty. He surveyed the campsite, saw right away there were too many places where something could come up on them unseen, and decided to position himself near the riverbank, where the ground was clear. Chiang picked up the water container and went to the river’s edge. MacAllister gathered some branches and started a fire. The women began trying to work out what the raft should look like.

  Nightingale studied the water. It was shallow inshore, but muddy and dark. He watched Chiang make a face at it and venture out a few steps. Nightingale asked what he was doing, and Chiang explained he was after clear water. He scooped up some and it must still not have looked very good because he got rid of it and went out a bit farther.

  “That’s a mistake,” said Nightingale. “Forget it. We’ll figure out something else.”

  “It’s not a—” Chiang’s expression changed, and he cried out. Something yanked his feet from under him. He went down and disappeared into the current.

  Nightingale whipped out the cutter, ignited it, and charged after him. He couldn’t see why Chiang had fallen, but he caught a glimpse of blue-gray tendrils.

  Something caught him, whipped around his ankles, and tried to drag him down. Then it had his arm. Nightingale sliced at the water. Mud-colored fluid spurted from somewhere.

  He almost dropped the laser.

  MacAllister arrived, cutter in hand, at the height of the battle. He lashed around like a wild man. The water hissed and tendrils exploded. Nightingale came loose, and then Chiang. By the time the women got there, only seconds after it had begun, it was over.

  “It’s okay, ladies,” said MacAllister, blowing on his cutter as if it were an old-style six-gun. “The shooting’s over.”

  That night they could see Morgan’s disk quite clearly. It resembled a tiny half-moon.

  They assembled the raft in the morning. They lined up the logs and cut them to specification. Hutch, unsure of her engineering, required crosspieces to hold the craft together. They fashioned paddles and poles, and there was some talk about a sail, but Hutch dismissed it as time-consuming on the ground that they didn’t know what they were doing.

  It appeared that they were at a drinking hole. A few animals wandered close from time to time, looked curiously at the newcomers, kept their distance, dipped their snouts in the current when they could, and retreated into the forest.

  The sun was overhead by the time the raft was ready. Relieved to be under way again, they climbed aboard and set off across the river.

  The day was unseasonably warm. In fact, it was almost warm enough to turn off the suits. MacAllister sat down in front, made himself comfortable, and prepared to enjoy the ride.

  They’d scouted out a landing spot earlier. It had a beach and no rocks that they could see and was a half kilometer downstream.

  Chiang and Hutch used the poles, Kellie and Nightingale paddled, and MacAllister allowed as how he would direct. They moved easily out into the current.

  Nightingale watched the banks pass by. He turned at last to Hutch. “It was criminal of them,” he said, “simply to abandon this world.”

  “The Academy claimed limited resources,” she said.

  “That was the official story. The reality is that there was a third-floor power struggle going on. The operations decision became part of a tug-of-war. The wrong side won, so we never came back.” He gazed up at the treetops. “It never had anything to do with me, but I took the blame.”

  MacAllister shielded his eyes from the sun. “Dreary wilderness,” he said.

  “You didn’t know that, did you, MacAllister?” said Nightingale.

  “Didn’t know what?”

  “That there were internal politics involved in the decision. That I was a scapegoat.”

  MacAllister heaved a long sigh. “Randall,” he said, “there are always internal politics. I don’t think anyone ever really thought you prevented further exploration. You simply made it easy for those who had other priorities.” He looked downriver. “Pity we can’t get all the way to the lander on this.”

  Kellie was watching something behind them. Nightingale turned to look and saw a flock of birds hovering slowly in their rear, keeping pace. Not birds, he corrected himself. More like bats.

  They were formed up in a V, pointed in their direction.

  And they weren’t bats, either. He’d been misled by the size, but they actually looked more like big dragonflies.

  Dragonflies? The bodies were segmented, and as long as his forearm. They had the wingspread of pelicans. But what especially alarmed him was that they were equipped with proboscises that looked like daggers.

  “Heads up,” he said.

  All eyes turned to the rear.

  MacAllister was getting to his feet, getting his cutter out. “Good,” he said. “Welcome to Deepsix, where the gnats knock you down first and then bite.”

  “They do seem to be interested in us,” Hutch said.

  There might be another problem: They were well toward the middle of the river, and the current was carrying them faster than anyone had anticipated. It was obvious they were going to miss their selected landing place.

  The river had become too deep for the poles. Chiang and MacAllister took over the paddles and worked furiously, but they made little headway and could only watch helplessly as they floated past their beach.

  The dragonflies stayed with them.

  They were operating in sync, riding the wind, their wings only occasionally giving vent to a flurry of movement. “You think they could be meat-eaters?” Hutch asked Nightingale.

  “Sure,” he said. “But it’s more likely they’re bloodsuckers.”

  “Ugly critters,” said MacAllister.

  Hutch agreed. “If they get within range, we’re going to take some of them out.”

  “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” said Chiang, “that this world is going down the tube.”

  MacAllister laughed. It was a booming sound, and it echoed off the river. “That’s not a very scientific attitude,” he said. “But I’m with you, lad.”

  “Oh, shut up, Mac,” said Nightingale. “It’s the efficiency of these creatures that makes them interesting. This is the only really old world we know of, the only one that can show us the results of six billion years of evolution. I’d kill to have some serious time here.”

  “Or be killed.” MacAllister shook his head, and his eyes gleamed with good humor. “Your basic mad scientist,” he added.

  Chiang drew his paddle out of the water and laid it on the deck. “They’re getting ready.”

  Nightingale saw it, too. They’d been flying in that loose V, spread out across maybe forty meters. Now they closed up, almost wingtip to wingtip.

  MacAllister watched Nightingale draw his cutter. “I’m not sure,” he said, “that’s the best weapon at the moment.” He put his own back into his pocket and hefted the paddle. “Yeah.” He tried a practice swing. “This sho
uld do fine.”

  The dragonflies advanced steadily, approaching to within a few meters. Then they did a remarkable thing: They divided into three separate squadrons, like miniature fighter planes. One stayed aft, the others broke left and right and moved toward the beams.

  Hutch held up her hand. Wait.

  They began to close.

  The boat was completely adrift now, headed downriver.

  “Wait.”

  The ones in the rear moved within range. Kellie and Chiang were in back, facing them.

  “Not yet,” said Hutch. “If they come at us, be careful where you fire. We don’t want to take any of our own people out.”

  Hutch was on the port side, MacAllister to starboard. Nightingale dropped to one knee beside Hutch.

  The flanking squadrons moved within range.

  “On three,” she said. “One…”

  “You know,” said Nightingale, “this isn’t necessarily aggressive behavior.”

  “Two…”

  “As long as they don’t actually attack, there’s no way to know. They seem to be intelligent. They might be trying to make contact.”

  MacAllister shifted his position to face the threat. “Say hello, Randy,” he said.

  “Three,” she said. “Hit ’em.”

  The ruby beams licked out.

  Several of the creatures immediately spasmed and spiraled into the water, wings smoking. One landed in what appeared to be a pair of waiting jaws and was snatched beneath the surface.

  The others swept in to attack. The air was filled with the beat of wings and a cacophony of clicks and squeals. One of the creatures buried its proboscis in the meaty part of Hutch’s arm. MacAllister threw himself at it, knocked her down and almost into the water, but he grabbed the thing, pulled it out, and rammed it against the side of the boat. Laser beams cut the creatures out of the air. Nightingale took a position at MacAllister’s back and killed two of them in a single swipe.

  Mac meantime stood over the fallen Hutchins like a Praetorian, swinging his paddle, and bashing the brains out of any and all attackers. Amid all the blood, shouts, screams, and fury, and the electric hiss of the weapons, Nightingale grudgingly realized that the big dummy was emerging as the hero of the hour.

  And quite suddenly it was over. The dragonflies drew off. Nightingale could count only five survivors. They lined up again, and for a moment he thought there would be a second assault. But they lifted away on the wind, wings barely moving, and turned inshore.

  He looked around, assured himself that no one had been seriously injured, and listened to Hutch reassure Marcel. She was sitting on the deck of the raft, holding her injured shoulder.

  “Hurts,” she said.

  Marcel listened to it all and never said a word. When it was over he took a seat near one of the wallscreens where he could look down on Maleiva III’s surface.

  He had never felt so utterly helpless.

  XVI

  If there is one characteristic that marks all sentient creatures, it is their conviction of their own individual significance. One sees this in their insistence on leaving whatever marks they can of their passing. Thus the only race of starfaring extraterrestrials we know about distributes monuments dedicated to themselves in all sorts of unlikely places. The Noks, with their late-nineteenth-century technology, put their likeness in every park they have. Earth has its pyramids. And we pay schools and churches to name wings, awards and parking areas after us. Every nitwit who gets promoted to supervisor thinks the rest of creation will eventually happen by and want breathlessly to know everything about him that can possibly be gathered.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, “The Moron in the Saddle,” Editor at Large

  Hours to breakup: 180

  There was no single space on board Wendy that was large enough to accommodate everyone. So Beekman compromised by inviting a half dozen of his senior people to the project director’s meeting room. Once they were assembled a technician put them on-line to the rest of the ship.

  Beekman started by thanking them for coming. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he continued. “You’re all aware of the situation on the surface. If we’re fortunate, there’ll be no need for an alternative course of action. But if we don’t have one, and we need it, five people will die.

  “We were invited to make this flight because somebody thinks we’re creative. This is an opportunity to demonstrate the validity of that proposition. I’ve been telling the captain all along that, if the plan to retrieve and install the capacitors doesn’t work, there is no alternative to saving the lives of our people I’d like you to prove me wrong.

  “I don’t need to tell you that we’re running out of time. And I also don’t need to tell you that I personally see no way to do it. That’s why we need you. Stretch what’s possible. Devise a course of action. Find a solution.

  “I won’t waste any more of your time here. But I’ll be standing by. Let me know when you have something.”

  They beached the raft, limped ashore, and collapsed. Kellie got the medkit out and Nightingale set to work repairing the wounded. No toxin or biological agent could penetrate the field, so the only problem was loss of blood.

  Despite the optimistic report that had gone up to Wendy, Nightingale alone had come away uninjured.

  Fortunately, the wounds were superficial, but Kellie and MacAllister had both lost too much blood to continue.

  The attackers had gotten Kellie twice in the right leg. Hutch in the shoulder, MacAllister in the neck. That one looked painful, but Mac just grimaced and did the kind of thing he usually did, commenting on the ancestry of the dragonflies. Chiang had taken bite wounds to the stomach and an arm.

  They felt entitled to a rest and, once safely away from the river, they took it. Everyone fretted about losing time, but there was simply no help for it. Nightingale felt emotionally exhausted and would have liked to sleep, but as the only member of the group who hadn’t been injured, he was assigned the watch.

  They rested for four hours. Then Hutch roused them and got them on the road again.

  The forest was filled with insects and blossoms and barbed bushes and creeper vines. Insects buzzed flowers, transferring pollen in the time-honored manner they’d found in every other biosphere. It was evidence once again that nature always took the simplest way. The external appearance of many of the creatures was different, but only in detail. Animals that resembled monkeys and wolves put in brief appearances. They were remarkably similar to kindred creatures elsewhere. The monkeys had long ears and hairless faces and looked very much like tiny humans. The wolves were bigger than their distant cousins, and were equipped with tusks. There was even an equine creature that came very close to qualifying as a unicorn.

  The differences weren’t limited to appearance. They watched a group of wolves give wide berth to a long-necked pseudo-giraffe which was munching contentedly on a tree limb and paying them no attention. Was the animal’s meat toxic? Did the creature possess a long-range sting? Or perhaps skunk scent? They didn’t know and there was neither time nor (except for Nightingale) inclination to linger long enough to find out.

  Two more potential threats emerged. One was a python-sized serpent with green-and-gray coloring. It watched them with its black marble eyes. But it was not hungry, or it sensed that the oversized monkeys would not prove an easy quarry.

  The other was a duplicate of the feline they’d seen from the tower. This one walked casually out of the shrubbery and strolled up to them as if they were old friends. It must have expected them to run. When they didn’t, it hesitated momentarily, then showed them a jaw full of incisors. That was enough, and they cut it down with little trouble or regret.

  Plants everywhere react to light, and a patient observer can watch them turning their petals toward the sun in its journey across the sky. There were occasional shadings here, structures, odd organs, that led Nightingale to suspect that this forest had eyes. That it was possibly aware, in some vegetative manner, of their passage
. And that it followed them with a kind of divine equanimity.

  In another few centuries, give or take, Maleiva and its attendant worlds would be out of the cloud and conditions would return to normal. Or they would if the land was still going to be here. The woods felt timeless.

  He wondered if the forest, in some indefinable way, knew what was coming.

  And whether, if it did, it cared?

  “Hey, Hutch.” Chiang’s voice. “Look at this.”

  Chiang and Kellie had gone out to gather firewood. Hutch was seated on a log, rotating her shoulder. She got up and disappeared into the woods. MacAllister, who was security, stayed nearby, but his eyes strayed toward Nightingale, and there was a weariness in them, suggesting he had little patience left for anyone’s enthusiasm. They could find a brontosaurus out there, and he wasn’t going to care. The only thing that mattered to him was getting home. Everything else was irrelevant.

  “It’s a wall,” said Kellie. Nightingale could see their lights moving out in the darkness.

  MacAllister looked at the time, as if it had any relation to the current progress of days and nights. It was almost twelve o’clock back in orbit, but whether noon or midnight, Nightingale had no idea. Nor probably had MacAllister.

  Nightingale was desperately weary. He sat with his eyes closed, letting the voices wash over him. A wall just did not seem all that significant.

  There was nothing more for several minutes, although he could hear them moving around. Finally, unable to restrain his curiosity, he asked what they’d found.

  “Just a wall,” said Chiang. “Shoulder-high.”

  “A building?”

  “A wall.”

  There was a brief commotion in the trees. Animals fighting over something.

  “Lot of heavy growth around it,” said Kellie. “It’s been here a long time.”

  Nightingale thought about getting to his feet. “Is it stone?”

  “More like bricks.”

  “Anybody see the end of it?”

  “Over here. It turns a corner.”

  “There’s a gate. With an arch.”

  For several minutes they clumped around in the underbrush with no sound other than an occasional grunt. Then Chiang spoke again, excited: “I think there’s a building back there.”