Leviathans of Jupiter

by Ben Bova

  “Of course,” said Westfall. Then, choosing her words with special care, she added, “And when do you show me the station’s third wheel?”

  His smile actually brightened. “Ah! That’s where the team studying Jupiter itself is housed. Along with the dolphins and the engineering crew.”

  “Dolphins?”

  “It’s a holdover from Dr. Wo’s original work,” Archer said. “He had the idea that we could use dolphins to learn how to communicate with an alien species. He called them our intellectual cousins.”

  “But dolphins are from Earth.”

  “Yes, but they’re quite a bit different from us. Intelligent, no doubt, but they live in such a different environment that they might as well be from a different world.”

  “Dolphins,” Westfall repeated.

  Chuckling, Archer told her, “At one point, Dr. Wo had a gorilla here. Enhanced her intelligence with a brain implant. It used to be a regular hazing ritual for new scooters to be introduced to her.”

  “Scoopers? The people who run the scoopships?”

  “Scooters,” Archer replied, pronouncing the word with deliberate precision. “It’s a slang term for scientists.”

  “You actually keep a gorilla here?” Westfall could see the points she could score with the IAA council when she told them Archer was spending money on a gorilla in the Jupiter station.

  “Oh, Sheena’s long gone,” he said. “She lived happily in a preserve back in Africa. Died several years ago, of natural causes.”

  Westfall felt disappointed. “But you still keep dolphins.”

  Nodding, “A new batch came in on the torch ship with you. We’ve been making some progress in translating their language. We can talk back and forth with them, to some extent.”

  “Can you?”

  “It’s slow, but we’re making progress. The work goes back more than twenty years. Elaine O’Hara was one of the earliest researchers in that area.”

  Elaine O’Hara! Westfall could feel her eyes flare at the mention of her sister’s name. She immediately clamped down on her emotions and said merely, “How interesting.”

  * * *

  Deirdre slid back the door to her new quarters. Corvus, Dorn, and Yeager stood behind her, peeping through the doorway.

  She stepped in and looked around. “Very nice,” she murmured.

  The compartment was adequately furnished with a comfortable-looking bed, a small couch and two smaller reclinable chairs, a desk with a spindly typist’s chair, bureaus on either side of the bed, doors that Deirdre figured opened onto closets, and a lavatory. A built-in bar separated the minuscule kitchenette from the rest of the room. Deirdre’s one travel bag rested on the bench at the foot of the bed.

  “Not bad,” Yeager said, striding past her to stand in the middle of the room. He turned a full circle, then grinned at Deirdre. “Much nicer than the cubbyhole they stuck me in.”

  Dorn said, “All our quarters are quite similar, almost identical. This is a standard accommodation, according to the indoctrination video.”

  “You really watch that kind of stuff?” Yeager scoffed.

  “Our rooms are further along this passageway,” Corvus said. “We’ll be neighbors.”

  Yeager went over to the bed and sat on it, bounced up and down a few times. “This is going to be fun.”

  Deirdre decided he’d gone far enough. “Off my bed, please, Max. Go find your own. I’ve got to unpack.”

  “I could help you.” Yeager leered.

  Dorn took a menacing step toward the engineer.

  Corvus said, “I think we ought to get back to our own rooms and let Deirdre unpack.” He waggled a finger at Yeager. “C’mon, Max. Let’s go.”

  Yeager grumbled, “Spoilsports. You guys act like a couple of chaperones. I don’t need a chaperone.”

  “No,” said Dorn gravely. “You need a keeper.”

  They all laughed, Yeager the loudest, and filed out of the room, leaving Deirdre alone. For a long moment she smiled at the closed door, then remembered that she still carried the rabies virus inside her.

  The medical staff here will take care of it, she told herself, wishing she really believed that.

  As she began to unpack, a chime sounded. Looking up from her travel bag she saw that a yellow light was blinking beneath the smart screen on the wall above the desk.

  A message, she thought. Maybe from Dad?

  Still standing at the foot of the bed, she called out, “Computer. Display incoming message.”

  A man’s face appeared on the wall screen. He looked fairly young, except for his skullcap of silver hair and trim little beard.

  “Ms. Ambrose,” he said, “I’m Grant Archer, director of this station. I’d like you to meet me in my office at sixteen hundred hours. You can find the way with your pocketphone. If you have any problems, please call me.”

  His image winked out, immediately replaced by the figure of a woman’s face, sculpted, taut-skinned, her hair a perfect golden honey shade clipped like a helmet framing her countenance.

  “Deirdre Ambrose, this is Katherine Westfall. Please come to my quarters. At once.”

  KATHERINE WESTFALL’S QUARTERS

  Deirdre knew who Katherine Westfall was, and she saw that it was only 1410 hours: plenty of time to call on Mrs. Westfall and still make her appointment at Dr. Archer’s office.

  Why does she want to see me? she wondered as she swiftly changed into one of the few dresses she had brought with her, a short-sleeved flowered frock that her father had bought for her on her last birthday.

  Mrs. Westfall sounded very imperative, Deirdre thought. She said please, but she also said at once. With a shrug of acceptance, Deirdre said to herself, Well, I suppose a woman in her position is used to having people jump when she snaps her fingers.

  Using the map display of her pocketphone, Deirdre hurried along the station’s main passageway. She knew it ran along the circumference of the station’s wheel, but the structure was so large that the passageway seemed almost perfectly flat. It was only when she looked far ahead that she saw the deck curved upward and disappeared.

  She was grateful that the station was at lunar gravity, like Chrysalis II, one-sixth of Earth’s. After two weeks of a full g, it felt good to be back to normal again. Still, she appreciated the chance to exercise her body after lying asleep for more than a week.

  At last she found the door modestly marked K. WESTFALL and tapped on it.

  A lean, almost cadaverous young man in a dark tunic and slacks slid the door back. His head was shaved bald, his cheeks were hollow, gaunt.

  “Ms. Ambrose,” he said in a ghostly whisper, before Deirdre could speak a word.

  “That’s right.”

  The young man stepped aside to allow Deirdre to enter. The compartment looked more like an anteroom than living quarters. A desk, several sculpted plastic chairs, a display screen showing an image of a painting of a mother and child that Deirdre recognized from her art classes: a Renaissance master, she thought, Michelangelo or Titian or one of those. Then she remembered clearly: Raphael, the Madonna del Granduca. It had been in the Pitti Palace in Florence until the greenhouse floods.

  “Mrs. Westfall will be with you momentarily,” the young man whispered. Gesturing to the chairs, he added, “Please make yourself comfortable.”

  Deirdre sat, wondering why Mrs. Westfall had told her to come at once if she was going to have to wait. The young man sat behind the desk and stared into his computer screen, ignoring Deirdre entirely. There was an inner door beside his desk, tightly closed.

  “Mrs. Westfall asked me to come right away,” she said to him.

  Hardly glancing up from his screen, the young man said, “Mrs. Westfall is a very busy woman. I’m sure that she’s made a special disruption in her schedule to see you.”

  “But I—”

  The computer chimed. The young man pointed to the inner door and said, “Mrs. Westfall will see you now.” Without a smile, without a hint of warmth
.

  Deirdre rose and went to the door. “Thank you,” she said to the man. Silently she added, You flunky.

  The door opened onto a compartment not much bigger than Deirdre’s own quarters. But this was obviously merely the sitting room of a much larger suite. Comfortable couches, deep upholstered armchairs, an oval glass coffee table set with a tray that bore a beaded stainless steel pitcher and several metal cups. But no Katherine Westfall.

  Deirdre felt her brow knitting into a frown. Where could she be? Why did she—

  Katherine Westfall swept into the room from the door in the far wall, looking resplendent in a sheathed lounging suite of carnation red. She’s tiny, Deirdre realized. Petite. But she seemed to radiate self-confidence, poise, power. She was smiling graciously, but there seemed no warmth to it. Deirdre couldn’t help thinking that asps are tiny, too, but deadly.

  Mrs. Westfall reclined on the couch behind the coffee table, looking as if she were posing for a fashion ’zine.

  Deirdre picked up an aroma of … flowers? There weren’t any flowers in the room. Deirdre thought there might not be any flowers anywhere aboard the research station. But when you’re rich, she understood, you can have the scent of flowers wherever you go. Or anything else you want.

  “Deirdre Ambrose,” Westfall said, from the couch. “I am Katherine Westfall.”

  “I recognized you from the news nets,” said Deirdre.

  “Please do sit down. Would you like some juice? It’s a mix of orange and mango. Quiet nutritious, and very tasty.”

  “Thank you.”

  When Mrs. Westfall made no move to pour the juice, Deirdre picked up the pitcher and did it herself.

  “I’ll join you,” said Westfall. Deirdre poured a cup for her.

  Katherine Westfall took a measured sip of the juice, then said to Deirdre, “I’ve heard about your medical condition.”

  “Oh?”

  “Rabies. Very unusual. It could be troublesome if it’s not treated.”

  “It could be fatal,” Deirdre said, in a low voice.

  Westfall nodded. “Back on Earth there was some rumor about a biology laboratory that developed a genetically engineered form of rabies.”

  Surprised, Deirdre asked, “Why would anyone do that?”

  Westfall smiled thinly. “Scientists. They’re always into something. Like little boys digging in a mud puddle.”

  Do I have a gengineered version of rabies? Deirdre wondered.

  Westfall’s smile faded. “I understand that you accused Dr. Pohan of deliberately infecting you.”

  “Oh! Well, I’m not sure it was deliberate. But the only way I could have contracted the infection was from the needle he used for my blood test, when I first came aboard the Australia.”

  “The accusation upset him terribly.”

  Not knowing what else to say, Deirdre murmured, “I’m sorry for that.”

  More forcefully, Westfall said, “He’ll get over it. The question now is, how can we treat your condition? Especially if it’s an artificially mutated form of the virus?”

  “I discussed that with the medical staff earlier today,” Deirdre said. “They’re developing the necessary vaccine. Dorn has volunteered his blood.”

  “The cyborg,” Westfall said, with obvious distaste.

  Deirdre nodded.

  “Well,” Westfall said, “I want you to know that I am personally looking into your problem. If there’s anything you need, anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “Why … that’s very kind of you.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Westfall.”

  Katherine Westfall nodded graciously. Then she said, “Now tell me what your own work is all about.”

  Thrown off-kilter by the sudden change of subject, Deirdre confessed, “I don’t really know. Not yet. I have a meeting with Dr. Archer in about an hour.…”

  Her face hardening slightly, Westfall said, “Do you mean that you’ve come all this way without knowing what you are expected to do? Or why?”

  “It seems strange, doesn’t it? We got a message that they needed a microbiologist here at station Gold and I was asked to fill the position.”

  “But what will you be doing? Why does Archer want a microbiologist?”

  Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t know. Not yet.”

  Her flawless brow wrinkling, Westfall said, “I’d appreciate it if you told me about it, once you find out. As a member of the IAA council, I want to be kept informed about the work going on here.”

  “I’m sure Dr. Archer will—”

  “Not Dr. Archer,” Westfall said, steel in her voice. “You. I want you to keep me informed on what’s going on here. Fully informed.”

  “Me?”

  “You. And don’t let Archer know that you’re reporting to me.”

  “But I—”

  Westfall’s cobra smile returned. “Keep me informed and I’ll do everything I can to help cure your infection. Do we understand one another?”

  GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE

  Her mind still spinning from Katherine Westfall’s demand, Deirdre realized as she sat facing Dr. Archer that his beard made him appear older than the rest of his face suggested.

  Grant Archer’s office looked more like a comfortable sitting room than an executive’s headquarters. No desk, just an eclectic scattering of chairs, two of them recliners—which Deirdre instinctively avoided. The walls were glowing, soft gray smart screens.

  The station’s director was sitting in a slightly tattered old armchair, his feet propped on a round ottoman that looked to Deirdre as if it might originally have been a small oil drum. Now it was covered in putty-gray upholstered faux leather. A little table of clear plastic stood beside his chair; what looked like an electronic remote-control wand rested on it.

  “I really appreciate your coming all the way out here on such short notice,” Archer was saying.

  “The scholarship you’re offering is a very strong incentive,” she said.

  Archer shrugged. “It’s the least we can do. We’re in something of a bind. We suddenly lost the microbiologist who was scheduled to join our staff and—”

  “Frieda Nordstrum?” Deirdre asked.

  He looked surprised. “From Selene University, yes. Did you know her?”

  Deirdre hesitated, then said, “Only by reputation.”

  “Her death was a surprise to us all,” Archer said.

  “Rabies,” said Deirdre.

  He nodded somberly.

  “I’ve come down with it, too.”

  “Yes. I saw your medical file. How in the world did you ever contract rabies?”

  Deirdre hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said. That was the truth, she told herself. The rest is suspicion, guesses.

  “Our people here will take care of you, don’t worry,” Archer said easily.

  Deirdre wondered if she should ask him about Katherine Westfall’s mentioning a genetically engineered form of the virus.

  Before she could make up her mind, though, Archer brightened and said, “Well now, we ought to talk about what you’ll be doing with our team.”

  “I was wondering why you want a microbiologist.”

  “To tell you the truth, Ms. Ambrose, I’m clutching at a straw. And I have an ulterior motive for asking specifically for you, as well.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’ve done some work on Volvox, haven’t you?”

  Deirdre replied, “Volvox aureus, yes. I did my master’s thesis on that.”

  “That’s why you’re here,” Archer said. “One of the reasons, at least. Frieda Nordstrum was the world authority on Volvox.”

  Blinking with surprise, Deirdre objected, “Volvox are colonies of single-celled algae. What makes you so interested in them?”

  “The leviathans,” said Archer.

  “Those giant whales in Jupiter’s ocean? I don’t see what they’ve got to do with Volvox.”

  “Those gi
ant whales,” Archer said, “are colonies of smaller units. It’s hard to believe, but they are actually like Volvox and the Portuguese man-of-war: creatures that are composed of specialized independent organisms, living together cooperatively. I believe it’s called symbiosis.”

  It took Deirdre a moment to digest that idea. Archer was smiling at her. It makes him appear quite youthful, Deirdre thought, gray hair or no.

  Mistaking her silence for disbelief, Archer said, “I’m not a biologist of any stripe, but I was hoping that you might use what you know of Volvox to help us understand the leviathans.”

  Deirdre had to suppress a laugh. With a shake of her head, she replied, “A colony of fifty thousand Volvox algae might make a ball about half a millimeter in diameter. Those whales—”

  “Leviathans,” Archer corrected.

  “Those leviathans are kilometers across, aren’t they? The size of mountains?”

  “And then some.”

  “So where’s the connection?” Deirdre asked. “How can microscopic algae help you understand those enormous Jovian creatures?”

  Archer’s face settled into a thoughtful pucker. “As I understand your little bugs—”

  “Algae.”

  “Algae,” he conceded, with a dip of his chin. “As I understand it, their colonies have some specialized cells: flagella for propulsion, eyespots that sense light, that sort of thing.”

  “They have sexual cells, too,” said Deirdre.

  “They do? I thought they reproduced by fissioning.”

  “Also through sex. But alone. One colony can contain both sexes. They don’t have to find a partner.”

  Archer rubbed at his beard. “We’ve seen the leviathans disassembling, coming apart into component units which then bud off new units. And then they all reunite to form two beasts where there’s been only one before.”

  “You’ve observed that?”

  Without answering, Archer picked up the remote control unit on the table beside his chair and pointed it at one of the wall screens.

  “It’s very rare,” he said. “We’ve been studying the leviathans for more than twenty years and we’ve only seen this once. Of course, we can’t get down into that ocean and watch them continuously…”