They reacted by backing clear. Alternately fading and intensifying, the outer shell of the one before them pulsed in rapid sequence. Crimson fragments of unknown specialized function flared and raced within, a thousand living sunspots inhabiting a transparent sun. Their activity might signify anything from poor digestion to incipient sleep.
Or it might be a reflection of something as basic and sophisticated as anger.
Chapter XVII
Cora picked herself off the floor, found she had suffered nothing worse than a few bruises. Here, then, was the source of the baleens' madness, here the offstage directors of organized murder.
The headache faded and Cora and her companions received their second surprise. "CAN YOU UNDERSTAND us?"
"Yes, we can understand you," she heard Merced saying.
"IT is DIFFICULT FOR US," the voice in her head'said. "YOUR MINDS ARE MORE COMPLEX, YET YOU ARE NOT ATTUNED TO THIS METHOD OF COMMUNICATING. WE HAVE TO PUSH OUR THOUGHTS IN AND PULL YOURS OUT.
"THE SMOOTH-SIDES ARE SIMILAR OF MIND BUT EASIER TO PENETRATE. THERE IS NO RESISTANCE TO OUR EFFORTS AND NOT NEARLY THE COMPLEXITY."
"You're the CunsnuC?" Her head was beginning to throb again, this time with effort but not pain.
"I AM THE CUNSNUC. WE ARE THE CUNSNUC."
"Collective intelligence," Merced murmured. "Just like collective physical structure."
"ALL ARE COLLECTIVE. THERE IS NO INDIVIDUAL US."
"There is among our people," Cora said.
"THAT IS SO, AND IT FRIGHTENS US. AND HURTS. HURTS."
The communication might also be communal, she thought The voice in her mind did not exhibit changes of inflection. They had no way of tracing it to its source. It was simply there inside one's head, much the way a voice sounded in a dark room.
"Why have you directed the cetaceans, the smooth-sides, to attack our communities?" Hwoshien had no time to waste on biological speculation.
"YOUR THOUGHTS HURT, DAMAGE OUR MINDS. OUR SENSIBILITIES OF THOUGHT ARE EXTREMELY DELICATE AND PRONE TO PAINFUL INTERRUPTION. THE THOUGHTS OF THE SMOOTH-SIDES DO NOT PENETRATE OR HURT."
Cora tried to imagine something the size of a small starship having delicate sensibilities. "Static," she whispered aloud. "Something in our thoughts, some projection of our nervous system, causes static in their minds."
Then it came to her what the outstanding feature of the creature's attitude toward them suggested: fear. Fear and worry. For all their immense size, the CunsnuC were afraid of men.
"It hurts you even though you dwell in these deeps?"
"MUCH OF THE TIME WE MUST RISE TO THE SURFACE," the voice said, "TO FEED ON THE CREATURES
WHICH RISE WITH THE ABSENCE OF THE LIGHT ABOVE THE SKY. MORE THAN A FEW OF YOUR KIND THINKING IN THAT PRESENCE HURT US, DISRUPT OUR THOUGHTS AND ABILITY TO CONCENTRATE ON OUR FEEDING. YOU MUST ALL LEAVE, OR THE KILLING WILL NOT STOP."
A pause, then, "ONLY BY BRINGING SO MANY OF US TOGETHER HERE CAN WE STAND THE PAIN WELL ENOUGH TO CONVERSE COHERENTLY WITH YOU."
"Leave Cachalot?" Hwoshien muttered.
"YES. VANISH. GO BACK TO WHEREVER YOU WERE SPAWNED." Then a question. "WHAT is 'CACHALOT'?"
"This world," Cora explained. "We come from a world other than this."
"A WORLD OTHER THAN THIS? THERE ARE NO WORLDS OTHER THAN THIS, BY WHATEVER NAME YOU CALL IT."
So the sea-dwelling CunsnuC had no knowledge of astronomy, and had not gained any from their contacts with the Cetacea.
"But there are."
"THERE CAN BE NO WORLD WHERE THERE ARE NO CUNSNUC, AND ALL CUNSNUC ARE HERE OR WE WOULD KNOW OTHERWISE. THERE CAN BE NO CUNSNUC WHERE THERE ARE MINDS OF YOUR KIND."
"Humanity has been working on this world," Mataroreva said hotly, leaving aside for the moment the question of the existence of other worlds, "for hundreds of our years. You've never done anything to us before. Why all of a sudden this hurt, and this need for us to leave?"
"THE HURT IS NOT SUDDEN. IT HAS BEEN WITH US FOR AS LONG AS YOU HAVE SAID. BUT WE DID NOT UNTIL NOW HAVE THE MEANS TO RESIST."
Cora could believe that. For all their mass, the CunsnuC still appeared physically fragile. Only their size and mental defenses protected them against Cachalot's smaller but still sizable predators. They were plankton-eaters, like the toothless great whales.
"WE HAD TO DEVELOP PARTS OF US BEFORE WE COULD GAIN THE USE OF THE SMOOTH-SIDES' MINDS."
"So you could direct them to attack us," Hwoshien concluded.
"YES. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF WE COULD HAVE GAINED THE USE OF OTHER, MORE POWERFUL SMOOTH-SIDES, BUT THEIR MINDS WOULD RESIST."
"The catodons and the other toothed whales," Rachael murmured, fingering her neurophon.
"We cannot leave Cachalot," Hwoshien insisted.
"YOU MUST! ONE WAY OR THE OTHER, YOU MUST GO. OR YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED."
The transparent skin of the colossus pressed up against the ports. Cora forgot to breathe. Rachael gasped behind her.
Within the skin of the CunsnuC were several glowing green bubbles. Within those bubbles were a dozen people. They were alive and their mouths were working, their hands pressed against the fleshy envelopes that contained them and supplied them with air. Cora could see that they were screaming, though nothing could be heard inside the submersible.
Mataroreva recognized one of them and swore quietly. A member of his slim planetary command. The suprafoil and factory ship had not made it back to Mou'anui. Another bubble drifted nearer, and a horrified Cora recognized the short, dark-skinned man within. He flailed at the film of the bubble, and his eyes were wide and desperate.
As the CunsnuC moved away from the ports, the bubbles moved toward the epidermis. They passed through the skin, and thus unprotected by internal regulation, immediately burst under the tremendous pressure. The hapless humans contained within imploded before they could drown.
This explained the complete absence of bodies at the sites of the destroyed towns. Either the baleens carried them to the depths, where they could be transferred to the CunsnuC for disposal, or else the CunsnuC rose to the surface to perform the task themselves. Occasionally survivors were found. Hazaribagh and his companions and guards had been brought to provide an example for the crew of the submersible. Others had doubtless been ingested alive to be questioned.
As expected, it was Hwoshien who finally broke the silence. "Let us compromise." Cora gaped at him. He sounded as if he had not just witnessed the deaths of a dozen people and was bargaining as usual with a group of off-world traders for fishing rights to a particularly desirable reef.
"We humans will restrict our activities to prescribed areas of the surface. There is enough room on this world for all of us."
"THIS IS THE WORLD OF THE CUNSNUC. THE CUNSNUC ARE THE WORLD!" There was no hint of vanity or presumptuousness in that statement, Cora mused. It arose from a different approach to rationality, much as man and cetacean differed. The CunsnuC perception of reality was sculpted as much by their size and mental ability as by their ignorance of the greater universe beyond Cachalot
"WE DO NOT WANT YOU IN OUR WORLD, IN OURSELVES," the voice continued firmly.
"We'll retreat to only the few above-water islands," Hwoshien proposed. "We'll build nonthinking devices, machines, to do all of our work."
"NO. NO, NO, NO!" A spoiled child, Cora thought Spoiled and very dangerous. This time she had a faint impression, despite what the creature had said of collective thought, of several different CunsnuC joining to generate the chorus of negativity.
"Lie to them," Mataroreva suggested. "Tell them we'll do what they say. We can work out a way."
"No. Any agreement I make I will keep. Besides, I'm not sure you can produce a telepathic lie, Sam. Remember what they/it said about 'pulling out' our thoughts. I think they will tend to pull out the truth."
"THAT IS SO," the voice said, confirming the Commissioner's suspicions. "AS IT IS SO IN YOUR COMPANION'S MIND THAT HE WILL NOT AGREE TO LEAVE. AS IT IS IN YOUR OWN. BUT YOU WILL DIE
WITH HONOR."
In the darkness inside her head Cora found to her horror that Sam was beginning to remind her more and more of Silvio. Why now, why here? Why torment yourself with thoughts of that distant awfulness in moments of stress? she asked herself. And had no answer.
Hwoshien stood stiff-backed against a wall. "They can't hurt us in here. They've already tried and failed."
"ALSO TRUE. WE CANNOT PENETRATE YOUR ARTIFICIAL SHELL." Cora was knocked off her feet as the submersible was rocked once again. "BUT WE CAN PREVENT YOU FROM RISING. WE KNOW THAT YOU REQUIRE THE GAS BEYOND THE SKY IN ORDER TO EXIST. WE CAN KEEP YOU HERE, WILL KEEP YOU HERE, UNTIL THE QUANTITY YOU DESCENDED WITH HAS BEEN USED UP."
Mataroreva immediately moved to try the necessary controls. The submersible rocked several times, bouncing against the creature that hovered above it. Then he flipped the activation switch slowly, looked worriedly at his friends.
"We're not rising. I could try a full ballast drop, but if that didn't work…" He let the sentence trail away. Much as their air would trail away.
The submersible was caught in a gigantic box created by the six huge forms.
"Lie to them! Deal with them!" Mataroreva shouted at his superior.
Hwoshien looked at the big man uncertainly. "You're as crazy as they are!"
Mataroreva rushed the Commissioner, both massive hands raised to strike.
Cora found herself on his back, pounding at his ears with her tiny fists. He shook her off, threw her to the floor. She lay there, head ringing from the impact.
Merced slipped in between Mataroreva and his spindly quarry and did something Cora didn't see. Mataroreva grunted in surprise, then sat down, holding his middle. Merced stood nearby, hands in front of him, ready to defend himself or retreat depending on the larger man's actions.
But Sam's gaze was already clearing. "Th-thanks, Pucara." He smiled wanly. "They almost had me again." He looked up at Hwoshien. "Yu, I—"
"Never mind." The oldster spoke thoughtfully. "Evidently they won't wait for our air to run out They'll keep trying to control us that way. Eventually I think they'll get what they want." Then he frowned at the sweating, panting Cora. "Are you all right?"
"We're going to die. I know that now." She looked up and across to her daughter. "And since we're going to die, there's something you should know, Rachael."
"They're working on you now, Mother. Control…"
"No. No." She climbed to her feet, slumped into one of the control chairs. She rested the back of a wrist against her forehead, closed her eyes, and tried to force out the words. It was difficult She had worked to suppress them for twenty years.
"I've been hard on you, Rachael. I know that, and I'm sorry. I've been taking out on you the resentment I held against your father. I loved bun once, originally. I grew to hate him. Yet when he died I felt guilty. Maybe I should have been more of a woman… I don't know what it was. I've just been trying so hard ever since to see that you didn't make the same mistakes, that you didn't fail into the same traps that life sets for us. That…"
Rachael was shaking her head slowly, and smiling. "I know how you felt about him, Mother. Do you think children are blind?" Cora's arm slipped and her eyes functioned. Her daughter stood staring calmly down at her. "I noticed everything. I knew what was going on."
"So many years," Cora whispered. "Why didn't you ever tell me you knew?"
"I was afraid. Children don't mix in adult affairs.
It's an unwritten law of nature. I could see how it, how he, hurt you. So when you hurt me back"—she shrugged—"I took it. You had suffered enough." She bent, hugged hard. It was reciprocated. "I hated him, too."
"You never showed it. I always thought you loved him."
Rachael's expression twisted. "I hated him ever since I was old enough to understand how he was hurting you. But I thought that if I loved him enough, it would make him stop making you cry so much. You're very good at understanding the ways of echinoderms and teleosts and alien water-dwellers, Mother, but not so good with little girls." Then she started to sob. Cora joined her.
Mataroreva turned away, looked at Merced with great respect. "That's the second time they nearly made me kill someone. I would have, if not for you, Colonel. Maururu au. I thank you."
"Not as much as I do," Hwoshien murmured.
"Just trained." Merced winced. "There… they just tried me again. It's hard to fight. Sooner or later they'll turn subtle again and make us do something that we think we're doing because we want to. Everyone has to consider everyone else's actions from now on with the greatest caution.
"We can't surface," he observed, changing the subject. 'The first thing we should do is communicate all we've learned to the ship waiting above so they can relay it to Mou'anui. They'll be safe, with that herd of catodons to protect them from any induced baleen attack."
Mataroreva started to comply, then turned away disgustedly from the console. "Forget it. They're generating enough distortion at this range to jam any kind of broadcast we can make. I juggled frequencies like mad, but they're too fast. We're not getting through to the surface."
"Let me see. I remember a few broadcast tricks."
While Hwoshien and Mataroreva worked at the console, Merced divided his time between studying the internal galaxy of the CunsnuC outside the ports and watching his companions for signs of illogical action.
Time passed. Mataroreva and Hwoshien were unable to punch a word past the watchful CunsnuC. An hour of life remained to the inhabitants of the submersible. Outside, despite the brightness supplied by the CunsnuC, the watery dark and cold pressed close on the five travelers trapped in their metal bubble.
Cora found pleasure in those last minutes by watching her daughter, studying every smooth curve of her face and form. She listened to the soft music, wondered that it could ever have troubled her. A little understanding, and it would never have gotten on her nerves. She had pushed Rachael too hard in her own image. Let her have fun. You've spent twenty years not having any. Why deprive someone so full of life as she? Of course, it is likely that opportunity will now never be granted. So let her enjoy the music, and pretend you enjoy it even more than you do. Pretend—
She shifted so rapidly in the chair that Merced moved toward her from the port.
"No, Pucara, I'm okay. Rachael, show me how you work that thing."
"It's a little late to begin music lessons, Mother."
"It's not music I'm interested in, and the less musical I can be, the better I'll like it."
A puzzled Rachael explained the workings. "Be careful with these two, Mother. Amplitude on axonics is dangerous. These have a built-in override, of course. Otherwise you could seriously injure someone."
"Can you take out the override?"
"What? I—I don't know. I never considered it… I guess you could, but the failsafe might keep the instrument from playing."
"Then we'll just have to try it this way first." She snugged the device in her arms, trying to match Rachael's actions. Then she gritted her teeth and commenced a most distressing and atonal song. Her teeth screamed. Her legs twitched. One time the pain in her head was so great it felt as if her eyes would burst from the pressure.
But several minutes later the submersible tumbled sharply and they felt themselves rolling toward the ceiling. Mataroreva fought his way into a chair, worked frantically at the overwrought stabilizers. With his help, the automatics soon leveled them out.
Cora had not let go of the neurophon. She located the same setting, struck it once more. Again the submersible was jolted by outside forces, though not as severely as before. She pushed the power to maximum and held down the combination of controls she had located by chance.
Outside flowed an amazing display of energy and light. Colors far deeper than the gently pulsing pastels they had originally observed rippled through the CunsnuC. The chromatic storm raged through its substance as internal structures quivered and swelled. Then the creature was moving away, the violent displa
y fading only slightly.
Mataroreva jabbed several switches hopefully. Motion possessed the craft. "They're no longer above us."
"Fifty-five hundred meters. Fifty-four." Merced spoke triumphantly from his seat. "We're ascending!"
Now the mass of color drifted back toward them. Cora held her ringers on the controls of the neurophon, her muscles locked. How much longer, she wondered frantically, could the instrument continue to generate projections of such magnitude? The particular frequency she had hit upon produced only a slight tingle along her spine. The reaction in the CunsnuC was ten thousand times greater.
Again it fell away from them and they continued their unimpeded rise. Then there was pain in Cora's head, but it did not come from the neurophon. It was generated by the CunsnuC.
Her hands went to her temples and she fell over on her side. The neurophon, its controls locked, tumbled to the floor. It bounced hard on the metal but continued to function. Mataroreva had barely thrown the console on automatic before that intense blast of mental agony overcame him.
Dimly, Merced perceived the critical gauge through the red haze that filled his brain. Fifty-one hundred meters. Five thousand. They were still rising.
Blood and thunder filled Cora's head and she rolled over and over on the deck. Every image of nightmare, every sliver of pain she had ever felt since childhood, came back to her in those awful moments. Rachael sobbed with the hurt.
They were so overcome that they did not immediately realize the pain was not projected at them by the CunsnuC, but was instead the helpless broadcast of those great creatures' own torment.
One rose after them, a seething mass of antagonistic colors and thoughts. Millions of cilia drove it upward like a rolling moon as it strove to get above them, to force them back into the abyss. Its pain grew worse as it neared the craft, and those on board alternated red and yellow explosions with sharp-edged hallucination in their minds.
"YOU… MUST… LEAVE!…" a great voice thundered in Cora's skull, barely perceptible above the ocean of pain. Her head was a bell and her brain the clapper bouncing off the bone.
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