by Ben Bova
Then she thought, Of course, if those creatures actually are intelligent, Archer will be the darling of the scientific world. He’ll be unassailable. For years to come. Patience, she told herself. Patience. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Suddenly her innards cramped painfully and she practically hobbled toward the lavatory.
DECISION
Leviathan saw that the alien was moving deeper, although it was painfully slow. It is a creature of the cold abyss above, Leviathan reasoned. The warmer regions are not its natural domain.
Then why is it pushing downward? it asked itself. What is it seeking?
It isn’t feeding, Leviathan saw. The plentiful stream of food particles drifted down past the alien, who ignored them. It is pitifully small, it thought. It must be hungry. If we offered to let it feed off us, how much could it eat? Not enough to weaken us, surely.
But such a thought stirred revulsion in Leviathan’s mind. To let another creature feed off our flesh! Even if it merely devours some of our hide, the inert armor members of our outermost layer, it would be … monstrous.
Leviathan pondered the situation while watching the alien slowly, slowly forcing its way down toward the realm of the Kin, trailing a stream of hot bubbles behind it.
What does it want? Leviathan asked itself again and again. Why is it here?
* * *
Dorn floated through the hatch from the sleeping area, flexing his prosthetic hand slowly.
“Max, you may be right,” the cyborg said. “My arm needs lubrication. I think the perfluorocarbon is reacting with the joints.”
Standing before the control console, Yeager shook his head. “Those joints are sealed, aren’t they? The gunk can’t get into them. Besides, perfluorocarbon is pretty much nonreactive, that’s why we chose to use it.”
“Then what is making my arm feel so stiff?”
“Pressure,” Yeager said, tapping the data screen on the right side of the console. “Look at that pressure curve. We’re getting damned near our design depth limit.”
Dorn made a sound that might have been a grunt. “Eight hundred and thirty-eight kilometers deep. We still have a long way to go.”
Corvus emerged from the sleep area, a dejected frown on his unbalanced face.
“Your headache?” Deirdre asked.
“Sleeping didn’t help,” he said. “If anything, it’s worse now than before.”
Taking up his place at the control console, Dorn said, “We are all suffering from the increased pressure. This will get worse as we go deeper.”
“I’m all right,” Corvus said, trying to grin.
“Dee?” the cyborg asked. “How do you feel?”
“I’m all right,” she echoed. In truth, Deirdre’s chest pain seemed worse than before. Not a lot worse, she told herself. It’s bearable. I can stand it.
“Max,” asked Dorn, “how is your back?”
Yeager grimaced slightly. “I wouldn’t want to play handball right now, but it’s okay … just kind of stiff.”
“Like my arm,” Dorn said.
“We could both use a lube job,” Yeager muttered.
The four of them stood at their posts. Deirdre slipped her feet into the deck loops in front of the sensor display console, Corvus took his place on Dorn’s other side at the DBS station. Yeager floated slightly behind Dorn, scanning the systems status board.
“All systems in the green,” he said to no one in particular. “No, wait. One of the thruster jets just went yellow. Self-repair initiated automatically.”
Anchoring his feet before the control console, Dorn scanned the displays. “Our medical readouts are all within acceptable limits,” he announced.
Yeager quipped, “Acceptable to who?”
“Whom,” Deirdre corrected.
Yeager shot her a mock scowl.
Looking back at her screens, Deirdre blurted, “One of the leviathans is approaching us!”
Corvus twisted around to look at the sensor screens. “Yeah! Look at it!”
Dorn had the same image on his center screen. “It’s flashing signals at us.”
“How do you know it’s signaling at us?” Yeager demanded.
“Nobody else around,” said Corvus. “The other critter isn’t in sight.”
“I think it’s trying to tell us something,” said Deirdre.
* * *
Leviathan felt maddeningly frustrated. It had swum back to the alien and clearly signed that it would allow the strange little creature to feed off it. But the alien made no response.
It was as if the alien were blind and senseless, as if it were as stupid as the fish that swam dumbly unaware of anything except feeding and reproducing.
No, wait. Leviathan’s sensor members saw that the alien was signaling back. Perhaps it isn’t stupid after all, Leviathan thought, merely unutterably slow.
But the alien’s signals meant nothing. It seemed to be repeating Leviathan’s own message, a dull-witted repetition that seemed to be mere mimicry, not true intelligence.
Or is this the way it communicates? Leviathan asked itself. Through mimicry? Could that be possible?
It wasn’t mimicking anything we showed it when it displayed that it wanted to feed off us, Leviathan remembered. That wasn’t mimicry. It was more like a request. Or perhaps a demand?
Play its game, Leviathan thought. Meet mimicry with mimicry. But go one step farther.
* * *
“It’s coming awfully close,” Deirdre said, trying to keep her voice calm, keep the fear out of it.
The huge creature was moving nearer, so close that the ship’s cameras could no longer display the beast in its entirety. So close that she could feel their ship dipping and jouncing in the currents surging around them from the huge creature’s motion. Her sensor screens showed its mountainous flank gliding closer and closer, row upon row of flippers working tirelessly, hundreds of unblinking eyes staring at her, bright splashes of color flickering along its hide.
“It’s signaling again,” Corvus called out, needlessly.
Deirdre adjusted the display to remove all color and once again the intricate line drawings appeared, like the blueprints of some vast alien building, huge and bewildering.
“What’s it trying to say to us?” Dorn asked.
“Earthling go home,” said Yeager.
“I’ve got the computer slowing down the imagery,” Deirdre said. “It flashes its pictures so fast I can hardly tell one image from another.”
Her central screen began to display the leviathan’s pictures at a slowed pace.
“Earthling go home,” Yeager repeated.
“No! Look!” Corvus wrenched himself free from his foot loops and surged over to Deirdre. Slipping one hand across her shoulders, he pointed with the other. “Look! That’s the image we sent out before!”
Deirdre nodded. The leviathan was repeating the picture they had displayed, the image showing the DBS probe emerging from their vessel.
“That’s when they took off,” Yeager commented.
“But now one of them’s come back,” said Deirdre.
As they watched, the screen displaying the drawings along the leviathan’s flank showed the DBS probe connecting with its hide.
“It’s telling us it’ll let us probe it!” Corvus yelped. In the sound-deepening perflourocarbon his yelp sounded more like the coughing grunt of a stalking lion.
Corvus launched himself back to the DBS console as he cried, “Dorn, reel out the probe! Do it now, before he changes his mind!”
It’s not a him, Deirdre thought. Nor a her. The leviathans are asexual. No genders. They’re all neuters. Or maybe they’re like the Volvox, hermaphrodites.
She stayed silent as she watched her screens. The thin fiber-optic line of the DBS probe snaked out toward the huge, all-encompassing flank of the leviathan.
“This is it!” Corvus said.
Turning from her screens, Deirdre saw that Andy had already settled the optronic sensor circlet on hi
s shaved head. It looked a little too loose for him, ridiculous, almost, pushing down on his ears. But the expression on his face was taut concentration, eyes wide, mouth a thin slash of a line, hands hovering over his keyboard.
“This is it,” he repeated, in a grim murmur.
Deirdre realized that Andy’s entire life was bound up in this moment. His reason for existence was about to come to fruition.
MISCOMMUNICATION
Leviathan watched in growing dread as the alien’s feeding arm slowly, slowly snaked toward its flank. Several of the flagella members shuddered involuntarily, ready to dissociate. We must stay together, Leviathan commanded. If the alien’s contact is painful, we will move away from it.
The sensor members on that side of Leviathan showed that the alien’s feeding arm ended in a small circular mouth. But they could see no teeth in the mouth, only a set of minuscule flat squares arranged in orderly rows.
It took all of Leviathan’s self-control to allow that alien mouth to touch its flesh. It made contact with the thick armor of Leviathan’s hide, between two of the sensor members. The nearest flagellum froze for a moment, but Leviathan’s central brain commanded it to resume stroking, and it did, obedient despite its naked fear.
Leviathan waited for some sensation: pain, discomfort at least. Nothing. The hide members were armored and deadened against sensation, that was their function, their part of the Symmetry, to protect the inner members against the slashing attacks of darters. The alien can’t get through our hide, Leviathan realized. It can’t feed on us.
* * *
Corvus floated in a half crouch, his arms bobbing buoyantly at chest level, his eyes closed. The optronic ring was slightly askew on his head.
“Is he conscious?” Yeager asked.
Deirdre shushed him, but in the perfluorocarbon it came out as a gargling stream of bubbles.
Corvus’s soft blue eyes snapped open. “I’m conscious,” he said tightly. “I’m not getting a thing. Not a damned thing.”
“Nothing?” Deirdre asked.
“Nothing!” he cried. “To come all this way, to actually make physical contact with the beast, and then … nothing!” His face showed bitter disappointment, almost despair.
Deirdre suggested gently, “Maybe if I tried…”
Corvus shook his head. “It won’t do any good. There’s no contact at all.”
“Perhaps your probe is placed in a poor spot,” Dorn said.
“Yeah,” Yeager added. “That critter’s brain must be pretty deep inside its body someplace. Your probe doesn’t penetrate deep enough, most likely.”
Corvus’s face went from anguish to anger to misery, all in a moment. He looked close to tears. Bleakly, he asked, “So what do you want me to do, burrow through the bastard, skewer him like Captain Ahab harpooning Moby Dick?”
Yeager started to reply, thought better of it, and simply shook his head. Dorn stared at Corvus wordlessly. Deirdre wondered what she could say, what she might do, to help Andy.
“It’s a failure,” Corvus moaned. “A complete flop. The creature’s too big. We can’t make contact with its brain.”
Out of the corner of her eye Deirdre saw her screens flickering. Turning, she saw images flashing across the leviathan’s enormous flank.
“It’s signaling again!” she said.
* * *
The alien’s arm is not for feeding, Leviathan decided. It isn’t cutting at our hide member. It has no teeth to cut with.
Then what is the purpose of its arm? If not for feeding, then what?
A possible answer formed in Leviathan’s brain. The alien is slow and weak, yet it was pushing its way deeper, trying to get closer to the domain of the Kin. But its progress is pitifully slow. Perhaps it is asking our help in going lower. Perhaps it wants us to tow it down to the Kin.
Leviathan remembered the other alien, long ago, who had helped it fight off a pack of darters and been grievously hurt in the battle. Leviathan had lifted that smaller alien on its back and helped it to return to the cold abyss above, from which it had come.
Of course! Leviathan felt that it understood the alien’s request. It has come down from the cold abyss to meet with the Kin, to communicate in its limited way with the Elders. Why else would it be here? It doesn’t feed on the particle streams. It doesn’t feed on our flesh. It isn’t seeking food, it’s seeking contact, communication.
We can’t understand it, Leviathan thought, but perhaps the Elders can.
With that revelation, Leviathan turned and headed deeper, down toward the realm of the Kin, with the strange, hard-shelled alien in tow behind it.
* * *
Faraday suddenly lurched like a tiny dog being tugged hard by a brutal master. The bridge tilted so suddenly that all four of the crew were jostled against one another. Deirdre’s feet were wrenched out of their deck loops and she banged painfully against her console.
“What the hell was that?” Yeager shouted, steadying himself by grabbing Dorn’s broad shoulders.
“It’s dragging us deeper,” the cyborg said, his normally impassive voice edged with surprise, even fear.
“Disengage,” Yeager snapped.
“No!” said Corvus.
They all turned to Corvus, who was hanging on to the handgrips of his console as the vessel plunged steeply downward. Deirdre saw something close to panic in Max’s wide eyes; even the human side of Dorn’s face looked pasty, unsure. They’re as frightened as I am, she realized. But Andy looked—indomitable, doggedly determined, like a man refusing to back down against impossible odds.
“We came here to communicate with them,” Corvus said, grim as death. “That’s what we’re here to do. Ride it out.”
“But it’s dragging us deeper,” Yeager said, his voice almost cracking.
“Good,” said Corvus.
“How deep can we go?” Deirdre asked.
Regaining his self-control, Dorn said, “We’re nearing our performance limits. Pressure is rising steeply.”
“Can we disengage when we have to?” Yeager asked.
Corvus’s pale blue eyes snapped at the engineer. “The problem is, Max, will the connection to the beast hold? He’s putting a lot of strain on the connection.”
“Where’s it taking us?” Deirdre asked.
“To the rest of its kind, I hope,” said Corvus.
Deirdre felt the pain in her chest burning. Don’t take us too deep, Andy, she begged silently. Don’t follow that beast down so far that we can’t get back.
“Temperature rising,” Dorn called.
“Pressure, too,” added Yeager.
Corvus’s lips curved slightly into a tight smile. “We’re here to make contact with the leviathans. Well, that’s what we’re doing. Not the way we planned, but we’ll have to settle for this.”
“If it doesn’t kill us,” Yeager muttered.
Deirdre recalled a line from her classes in ancient history. Spartan mothers told their sons as they headed off to war, “Come back with your shield or on it.” Victory or death.
Which will it be, she wondered.
CONFERENCE ROOM
Michael Johansen sat at the head of the long conference table, but he knew that wherever Grant Archer sat was the true power center of the meeting. Each of the younger scientists who had made presentations on the data returned from Faraday’s capsule had addressed his or her remarks to Archer, seated halfway down the table’s length, not to him.
So be it, Johansen thought, sighing inwardly. Grant’s a natural leader. He’s the one who pushed for this crewed mission, he took all the heat from Westfall and the IAA council, he’s facing all the risks if anything goes wrong with the mission. He’s earned everyone’s respect. Besides, Grant doesn’t play power games, he doesn’t need to boost his own ego at the expense of others.
More important, Johansen told himself, this mission has already succeeded. They’ve made contact with one of the leviathans. They’ve communicated with an alien creature, an extraterres
trial! Those gigantic animals actually are intelligent!
Despite his years Johansen felt a quiver of excitement racing through him. What a discovery! Contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species. Of course, this first attempt at communicating with them was very limited, but it’s just the beginning. They’ll be giving out Nobels for this.
He barely listened to the presentation being made by one of the younger biologists as she earnestly plodded through the video imagery sent by the data capsule.
This is what science is all about, Johansen thought. The thrill of discovery. Opening new frontiers. The excitement of new knowledge. The prestige that comes from breaking through into a new world. My reputation is made. Even if those four amateurs in the submersible don’t come back, this has been a successful mission. Groundbreaking. Historic.
Nobels, Johansen thought, seeing himself in Stockholm, mentally preparing his acceptance speech. If they die down there, he told himself, I’ll throw in a few lines about how scientific exploration requires sacrifices. Martyrs, that’s what they’ll be. Martyrs to humankind’s unending quest for knowledge.
We’ve already succeeded, he repeated to himself. Whatever happens down there doesn’t really matter: We’ve made contact with an extraterrestrial species, proved that they’re intelligent. The rest is just a footnote.
WILD RIDE
Faraday was shaking brutally as it plunged deeper, towed by the massive leviathan like a cork floater on a fishing line that had been seized by a sounding whale. Even in the thick liquid perfluorocarbon Deirdre could feel the shuddering that rattled every bone in her body.
“How deep are we gonna go?” Yeager asked. He was still standing behind Dorn, but he was pressing both his hands against the overhead to keep himself in place.
“We are still within design limits,” said Dorn, his eyes on the control console’s screens.
Yeager pointed out, “But we’re approaching those limits pretty damned fast.”
