by Ben Bova
She realized that she was perspiring slightly. And her stomach hurt. Nerves, she said to herself. You’ve got to get rid of Devlin. You can’t have him here, knowing about the nanomachines. He’ll hold that over your head. He’s the type who’d blackmail you, threaten you, bring you down. Once they don’t come back from the ocean, once he realizes what I’ve done, he’ll have that over me for the rest of my life.
I can’t let him do that. It’s either him or me. And it’s not going to be me!
Still, her stomach ached. A dull, sullen pain, as if she’d eaten too many sweets. Nerves, Westfall told herself. Steady on. They’ll find Devlin and deal with him. Then you’ll be safe. Then there will be no one who can threaten you.
But the pain in her gut was getting worse.
FARADAY
Deirdre stared in open-mouthed awe at the two leviathans. The enormous creatures were swimming on either side of Faraday, flashing messages—she knew they had to be messages—along the lengths of their flanks.
Those hundreds of eyes looking at us, she said to herself. Those hundreds of fins paddling along. And the colors! Spectacular splashes of reds and greens, yellows, blues, and phosphorescent white. They mean something. They’ve got to mean something. They can’t just be simple displays. They’re trying to speak to us.
Dorn’s deep voice reverberated through the perfluorocarbon. “I have programmed the computer to repeat the shapes and colors that the leviathans are displaying.”
“Monkey see, monkey do,” Yeager muttered.
Corvus said, “Good. They’ll see that we’ve received their messages and we’re acknowledging them.”
“But what do they mean?” Deirdre wondered aloud.
With a wistful smile, Andy said, “You’re the artist, Dee. You tell us.”
She shook her head. “I wish I could.”
“We’re scheduled to send out a data capsule in fifty-three minutes,” said Dorn. “All of these images will be included.”
“But what do they mean?” Deirdre repeated.
* * *
Leviathan saw that the alien was repeating the images it was flashing. For more than a hundred beats of the flagella Leviathan and its replicate had been picturing to the alien the beauties of the Symmetry, explaining to this strange, cold, uncommunicative creature how the Kin dwelled in harmony with the world, feeding on the streams of food that came from the cold abyss above, staying well away from the hot abyss below, avoiding the darters that preyed on individual leviathans when they separated from the Kin to duplicate.
Nothing. The alien simply glided along, dark and silent, its hard round shape as uncommunicative as the tiny swimmers that also followed the food streams. To its replicate Leviathan flashed an image of the alien, a blank spherical shape. The replicate replied with the same.
Why doesn’t it answer us? Leviathan wondered. The replicate drew an image of one of the tiny swimmers. Its meaning was clear: The alien may be a living creature, but it is clearly not intelligent. It doesn’t picture images to us because it can’t. It is dumb, mindless.
But if that is so, Leviathan thought, then how did the alien suddenly appear here, in the world of the Kin? How did it get here? Why is it—
Wait! The alien’s spherical flank suddenly lit up with colors! It can communicate! Or at least it’s trying to.
Nothing but gibberish, flashed the replicate. There is no structure in its images, no meaning.
But it’s trying to say something, Leviathan pointed out. It’s displaying the same colors that we have used.
Imitation, pictured the replicate. That’s not intelligence, it’s merely mimicry. The lowliest swimmers can mimic images better than this hard-shell.
But it’s trying, Leviathan insisted. It’s trying.
* * *
“We’re scheduled to release a data capsule in ten minutes,” Dorn announced.
“Well, it’ll have something to show them,” Yeager said.
Deirdre noticed that Andy hadn’t spoken a word in nearly an hour. He merely stood beside her, his feet anchored in deck loops, swaying slightly in their all-encompassing liquid like a strand of kelp on the floor of the sea on Earth, staring raptly at Deirdre’s display screen. But every few minutes he kneaded the bridge of his freckled nose.
“Are you all right?” she asked him softly.
“Huh?”
“Do you feel okay?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Okay? Yeah, sure.”
“No aches or pains?” Deirdre pressed.
He shrugged crookedly. “Got a helluva headache, that’s all.”
She nodded. “It’s the pressure. I’ve got an ache in my chest. It started in my gut but it’s settled in my chest.”
“Yeah,” he said absently, his attention back on the screen.
Deirdre looked at the display again. The leviathans were flashing colors so quickly she could hardly follow them. It was like watching a fireworks display speeded up to a wildly supersonic pace.
She turned slightly and saw that Max was checking out the data capsule on the console beside Dorn. The cyborg had both hands on his control keyboard. Keeping up with the leviathans wasn’t easy: Dorn had to keep the main propulsion system running at nearly full power merely to stay even with them, and the currents generated by their flippers bounced their vessel like a cork in a typhoon.
“The data capsule’s ready,” Max said.
Dorn nodded, then tapped a prosthetic finger on the screen to his left. “Ejection in three minutes.”
Deirdre murmured to Andy, “If only we could make some sense of their messages.”
Corvus said nothing, still riveted to the display screen.
“Nothing but splotches of color,” Deirdre said.
“I don’t see colors,” Andy said, his voice low, his eyes not moving from the screen.
“I forgot,” said Deirdre. “This must be more pointless to you than to the rest of us.”
“Pointless?” Corvus seemed genuinely surprised. “You mean you can’t see the pictures they’re showing us?”
IMAGES
“Pictures?” Deirdre asked.
Corvus nodded and pointed at the screen. “In those gray splotches. Can’t you see the pictures?”
“No…”
“They’re showing images of themselves again. Now it’s changed to an image of us. Round little circle next to the two leviathan shapes.”
“You can see images?” Deirdre strained her eyes, staring at the rapidly shifting contours of color splashed along the sides of the two leviathans.
“Yep,” Andy replied.
“Capsule launch in one minute,” Dorn intoned.
“Wait!” Deirdre shouted. “Don’t send the capsule!”
Yeager turned toward her. “We’ve gotta send the capsule, Dee. It’s on the mission assignment list.”
“Wait,” she insisted. “Andy says he sees images in the leviathans’ displays. They’re sending messages to us!”
Dorn turned halfway from his post to look at her and then focused both his eyes on Corvus. “You see images?”
Andy nodded vigorously. “Don’t you?”
* * *
Linda Vishnevskaya stared at the screen in the center of her control console. Blank. She glanced at the digital clock display to the right of the screen: 0600 hours.
They’re launching the first data capsule, she said to herself. We should pick up its radio beacon in half an hour, as soon as it breaks out of the ocean.
She waited impatiently, fingers fidgeting in her lap. This early in the morning, the mission control center was manned only by Vishnevskaya herself. She didn’t need any of her team simply to monitor the emergence of a data capsule. The capsule was programmed to climb out of Jupiter’s atmosphere and establish itself in a circular equatorial orbit. From there it would beam the contents of its memory core to the communications satellites in stationary orbit around Jupiter, which would relay the data to the receivers
aboard station Gold. In less than two minutes after the capsule popped out of the ocean they would begin receiving its signal.
Vishnevskaya sensed someone entering the visitors’ gallery up along the top of the control center’s circular chamber. She didn’t bother to turn around, but instead moved her head slightly so she could see the newcomer’s reflection in the dark screen on her console.
It looked like Katherine Westfall. Vishnevskaya felt surprised. Why would Mrs. Westfall show up this early in the morning for something as routine as a data capsule?
* * *
“The mission time line calls for launching the capsule now,” said Dorn. “If we don’t—”
“You can delay the launch for a few minutes, can’t you?” Deirdre pleaded.
“Why?” Yeager demanded.
“Take out the color from the images the leviathans are showing,” she said.
“Take out—”
“I’m seeing images,” Corvus explained, his voice high with excitement even in the sound-deepening liquid perfluorocarbon.
Yeager frowned at him.
“I can’t see colors, but I’m seeing pictures,” Corvus insisted. “Drawings. Like stick figures, almost.”
Dorn’s face was impassive, but he muttered, “Canceling capsule launch.” His human hand reached for an orange-glowing button on his console.
Deirdre stared at her display screen while Dorn and Yeager leaned toward the central screen on the cyborg’s control console.
Pointing over Deirdre’s shoulder, Corvus said, “See? Can’t you see the images?”
The swaths of color along the leviathans’ flanks were now gray on the display screen. And Deirdre saw … pictures! Shapes. They were crude, almost like stick figures. But definitely shapes.
“That’s the two of them!” she yelped.
“With us in between,” Dorn said. “That round figure must be us.”
“God damn,” Yeager breathed.
“And there,” Corvus said, “that must be a stream of organics coming down from up above.”
Now the displays on both leviathans’ flanks showed many more creatures, a whole herd of them.
“They’re telling us that they eat the organics,” Deirdre said.
“And there’s lots of them!” Corvus added. “Dozens.”
“A hundred or so,” said Dorn.
As they watched, the leviathans’ displays changed so rapidly they couldn’t follow them. It was like watching a speeded-up video.
“The computer can slow it down,” Yeager said.
“Not yet,” Corvus snapped. “Let’s get it in real time first.”
“Is all this being recorded in the data capsule?” Deirdre asked.
“Yes,” Dorn replied. “Automatically.”
Deirdre felt her whole body quivering with excitement. The pain in her chest was still there, she could still feel it, but it was nothing but a minor annoyance now. The leviathans are speaking to us! She could see the meaning in their imagery!
“That looks like those sharks,” Andy said.
“And that’s us, rushing toward them,” Deirdre added.
Yeager muttered, “The charge of the frigging light brigade.”
“They’re replaying our little battle,” Dorn said.
“But they don’t show themselves splitting up, reproducing,” said Corvus.
“They don’t do leviathan porn,” Yeager said, with the barest hint of a chuckle.
It was difficult to make sense of the images, they flickered on and off so rapidly. It looked like the two leviathans charging at the sharks, but it was too swift for Deirdre to be certain, the images of the sharks flicked off so quickly. Then at last she saw the circular image of their own ship and the two leviathans on either side of it. The sharks were gone.
“They’ve replayed our battle, all right,” Corvus said.
The leviathans’ displays went blank. The enormous creatures swam on either side of Faraday in silence.
“What now?” Yeager asked.
“Maybe they’re waiting for us to reply,” Corvus suggested.
“So what do we say?” Yeager demanded, “ ‘Greetings from planet Earth?’ ”
“Replay what they just showed us,” Deirdre said.
“Replay their imagery?” asked Dorn.
Nodding, Deirdre said, “Show them that we received their message and we understand it.”
“We think we understand it,” Yeager corrected.
“At least show them that we received it,” said Deirdre.
“Very well,” Dorn agreed, turning back to his keyboard panel.
Andy’s lopsided grin went from ear to ear. “Well, they’re intelligent, all right. We’ve established that much.”
Dorn glanced at the mission time line displayed on the auxiliary screen on the left side of his console.
“We should have launched the data capsule ten minutes ago,” he said.
“Pop it now,” Yeager urged. “It oughtta make Archer and the rest of the scooters pretty damned happy.”
* * *
Linda Vishnevskaya stared at the digital clock display. Ten minutes, she realized. They should have launched the data capsule ten minutes ago. She felt a cold hollow in the pit of her stomach. Something’s gone wrong, she knew. Something’s gone terribly wrong.
Behind her, up in the otherwise empty visitors’ gallery, Katherine Westfall got to her feet and quietly stole out of the mission control center. She couldn’t suppress the victorious grin that curled her lips, despite the ache in her gut that still gnawed at her.
GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE
Archer was shocked when he slid back the door to his office and saw Rodney Devlin sound asleep in one of his recliners. The Red Devil was snoring lightly; he was in his usual white chef’s uniform, stained and wrinkled from use. Even in sleep his face looked lined with worry, his mustache bedraggled. In his right hand he tightly clutched his pocketphone. Glancing at his wristwatch, Archer confirmed that information from the first data capsule should be coming in within a few minutes. But what’s Red doing in my office? he wondered. And how did he get in here?
Archer almost smiled at that last question. Red can go anywhere he wants to, the station director realized. He’s got the combination to every lock in the station. Probably memorized every last one of them.
He made a polite little cough and Devlin snapped awake, sitting up so abruptly Archer feared he’d pop some vertebrae.
“Grant!” Devlin said, his voice slightly hoarse.
“What are you doing here, Red?”
With a slightly hangdog look, Devlin answered, “Hidin’ out.”
“Hiding out? From whom?”
“Westfall’s goons. They came after me last night. I think they were out t’ kill me.”
Archer sank into the faux-leather armchair next to the recliner. “You’d better explain all this to me, Red. Slowly.”
His expression turning rueful, Devlin said, “Westfall wanted me t’ provide her with some gobblers so’s—”
“Gobblers? Nanomachines?”
“Right. She wanted—”
“And you got them for her? Gobblers?” Archer felt his insides begin to shake with fear. And anger.
“Relax, mate,” Devlin said, holding up both hands as if to shield himself from attack. “I told you I wouldn’t do anything to harm the station. Remember?”
“But you provided her with gobblers!”
His old sly grin spreading slowly over his face, Devlin said, “I provided her with nanos, I did. But not what she wanted.”
“Then just what in blazes did you do?”
* * *
Linda Vishnevskaya drummed her fingers on the edge of the console. Nothing. No data capsule. They should have launched it fifteen minutes ago. We should be getting its beacon signal by now.
But there was nothing. No beacon from a data capsule. Nothing but silence in the nearly empty mission control center.
Vishnevskaya stared at the blank disp
lay screen as if she could make the capsule appear by sheer willpower. Nothing. Silence.
She waited another ten minutes. Then ten more, each second of the time stretching her nerves agonizingly.
Max, she thought. What’s happened to you? Why haven’t you sent out the capsule? What’s going on down there in that damned ocean?
At last she could stand it no longer. With the reluctance of a woman facing a firing squad, standing on a gallows, staring death in the face, she clicked the intercom switch on her console and said in a low, choked voice, “Mission report: The first data capsule scheduled to be released from Faraday has failed to appear. Reason unknown.”
She heard her own words: Faraday has failed. Oh Max, Max, she thought, fighting down the sobs that rose in her throat. Max, has Jupiter killed you?
* * *
Devlin was still explaining himself when the phone on the serving table next Archer’s recliner chimed. Glancing at the screen’s data bar he saw that it was Katherine Westfall calling.
Archer leaned close to the phone’s camera eye so that his image filled its field of view and commanded, “Answer.”
Mrs. Westfall’s face looked positively haughty. Without a greeting or a preamble of any kind she said in an almost sneering voice, “I suppose you know that they’ve failed to send their data capsule.”
Archer stiffened. “No, I didn’t know.”
“You realize what this means, don’t you?” Westfall demanded. “Something’s gone wrong down there.”
“Possibly,” Archer replied.
Westfall’s face hardened. “Not merely possibly. They were scheduled to release a data capsule and they haven’t done it. Something’s gone wrong. They could be dead. If they are, it’s your responsibility.”
Grant Archer pulled in a deep breath before replying. Then, “Perhaps you should come to my office. We can discuss this more fully here.”
“Yes,” Westfall agreed. “We need to discuss this disaster more fully, don’t we?”
