by Ben Bova
She felt too tired to change into a fresh maillot. We’ll be leaving soon anyway, she thought. She hoped.
The alarm buzzer that signaled the end of their sleep period stirred Max. He banged his head as he forgot where he was and tried to sit up. Muttering curses, he slid out of the bunk, rubbing his forehead.
“Whoever designed this bucket ought to have his head examined,” Yeager said, grinning sheepishly.
“Yes, Max,” said Deirdre. “And you should allow more room for crew comforts on the next model.”
“I’ll make a note of that.”
Deirdre slid back the door to the bridge and gasped. Dorn was floating a meter or so above the deck, Andy fluttering helplessly over him.
“He just passed out,” Corvus said, his voice shaking. “Half a minute ago he was fine, then he just slumped over, unconscious.”
Yeager pushed past Deirdre and rushed to the cyborg’s inert body. Deirdre went to her console, but glanced at the life-support readouts on Dorn’s screens. A row of glaring red lights. Flicking to the readouts for the rest of them, Deirdre saw that several of the curves had crossed their redline limits. We’re dying! she realized. The pressure is killing us.
Yeager glanced at the displays, too. “He’s in trouble.”
Corvus said, “I can see that!”
“We’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with him, and fast.”
Stating the obvious, Corvus said, “We’re just down too damned deep.”
“Helluva time for you to admit that,” Yeager growled.
Deirdre saw in her central screen, “The leviathan is lighting up again.”
She was certain it was the one they had met and attached themselves to. It was hard to tell any differences among the mountain-sized creatures, but Deirdre thought the one they had attached to was slightly smaller and sleeker than the others that had gathered around their vessel.
It was lighting up, flashing a set of images against a background of red and yellow. What does it mean? she wondered. What is it trying to tell us?
* * *
Patiently, Leviathan showed the alien that it was going to take its usual place at the outer rim of the Kin, and the alien must come along with it.
The alien remained dark, mute.
How can I make it understand? Leviathan wondered.
* * *
“He’s got a pulse,” Corvus said, gripping the unconscious cyborg’s human wrist.
Yeager squinted at the medical readouts. “Pulse steady but weak. Breathing rate going down. What the hell’s wrong with him?”
Deirdre was feeding the leviathan’s signals through the computer program that slowed them, trying to ignore the pain that was radiating through her body. Maybe I can figure out what it’s trying to tell us if I can look at the images at a slower rate. But she couldn’t help turning away from her screens to glance at Dorn’s unconscious body.
* * *
The Eldest flashed to Leviathan, The alien does not respond.
It’s gone dark, Leviathan agreed.
It doesn’t understand what you are trying to tell it, signaled one of the Elders.
Or it doesn’t want to understand, signed another.
No, it’s too stupid to understand. It’s not truly intelligent, it merely mimics what we tell it.
Leviathan thought otherwise, but kept its opinion to itself. Remembering its encounter with the other alien, long ago, Leviathan decided that there was one way to get the alien to move, whether it acknowledged its message or not.
* * *
“We have to get back up to the station,” Corvus said. “Get medical attention for Dorn.”
For all of us, Deirdre added silently.
Still scanning the medical readouts, Yeager muttered, “Or at least up to a higher level, where the pressure isn’t so bad.”
“Back to the station!” Corvus snapped.
Deirdre saw that Dorn was floating gently in the perfluorocarbon, unconscious, his arms bobbing in the liquid. His breathing seemed deep and slow; his human eye was closed, the prosthetic camera dark instead of its usual red gleam.
“His artificial eye,” she blurted. “It’s off.”
“So what?” Yeager said.
“It never goes off,” she said. “Not even when he sleeps.”
Corvus grasped her meaning. “Maybe it’s the mechanical side of him that’s failed?”
Yeager looked from Corvus to Deirdre and then down at the unconscious Dorn. “Sounds nutty.”
“The medical readouts don’t cover his robotic systems,” Deirdre said. Then she added, “Do they?”
“No, you’re right,” said Yeager. “I’ll pull up the diagnostic program for his prosthetics. Andy, we’ll have to plug him into the main computer. Find the connector cable.”
But as Corvus launched himself toward the hatch of their sleeping area the vessel suddenly lurched and tilted wildly.
“What the hell?” Yeager shouted as he slammed painfully against the main console. Dorn’s inert body glided across the bridge’s narrow confines and buckled against the food dispenser. Deirdre’s feet were wedged into the deck loops but still she swayed so hard that she banged her shoulder against her console. Corvus missed the hatch and rammed into the bulkhead alongside it.
“What’s happening?” Deirdre whimpered.
* * *
As gently as it could Leviathan slid beneath the alien and pushed against it with its back. Once before it had lifted an alien up to safety as it sank down into the hot abyss below. That had been easier, because that alien’s body was flat. Circular, hard-shelled, but flat. It could ride easily enough on Leviathan’s back.
But this alien was round, spherical. It bounced off Leviathan’s back instead of riding smoothly.
Doggedly, Leviathan nudged the alien outward toward the edge of the Kin’s formation, in obedience to the Elders’ decision. The alien bounced along as Leviathan’s flagella members patiently propelled it onward.
Leviathan remembered that the earlier alien had repaid its piggyback rescue by spraying scalding heat against its hide. Then it had shot upward, into the cold abyss above, never to return.
What will this alien do? How will it react to being pushed back to the edge of the Kin?
* * *
Holding on for dear life to her console’s handgrips, Deirdre tried to make sense of the leviathan’s slowed-down message while Yeager and Corvus analyzed Dorn’s cybernetic systems. Yeager was muttering a continuous string of swearing as Faraday lurched and bounced madly.
“Sonofabitch is battering us to death,” Yeager growled, in between choice curses and words Deirdre had never heard before.
“It’s pushing us,” Deirdre said, trying to focus on the display in her central screen.
Corvus had connected the cable that linked Dorn’s mechanical side with the vessel’s main computer. Yeager was trying to trace the cyborg’s systems, but the constant banging and jarring made it almost impossibly difficult.
Between lurches, Deirdre saw that the leviathan had signaled to them that it was going to move away from the core of the creatures’ massive spherical formation, out toward the edge, and they should follow along with it.
“It’s pushing us outward,” Deirdre said. “It wants us to move out to the rim of their formation.”
“Helluva way to make us move,” Yeager rumbled.
“Maybe if we light up our propulsion system we could go more smoothly,” Corvus suggested.
“Maybe,” Yeager agreed.
* * *
The alien suddenly moved off on its own, squirting a spray of heated water behind it. Leviathan was glad that the alien was not resting on its back, remembering the other alien that had scalded its hide.
Swimming alongside the alien, Leviathan again flashed its message that they were heading out to the edge of the Kin. Other leviathans in the formation swung wide of the alien, allowing them to pass through without hindrance.
It does understand, Leviathan realiz
ed. It’s just so excruciatingly slow. Leviathan flashed that message to be passed inward to the Elders.
QUESTIONS
Their ride smoothed out and Yeager stopped his cursing. Corvus hovered over Dorn’s unconscious body while Deirdre reluctantly turned back to her console to examine the messages from the leviathan in the computer’s slowed playback.
Nodding, she reaffirmed, “It wants us to stay here with it.”
Without taking his eyes from the screen showing Dorn’s diagnostics, Yeager asked, “Where’s ‘here’?”
“We’re on the periphery of the leviathans’ formation. They travel in a sort of ragged spherical grouping, it looks like.”
Corvus muttered, “They took us in to the center and now they’ve put us out on the edge. That’s weird.”
“Maybe they’re willing to allow us to stay with them,” Deirdre suggested.
“Not for long,” said Yeager, grimly. “Dorn’s dying.”
* * *
Leviathan had a thousand questions that it wanted to ask the alien. Where did you come from? Why are you here? Do you eat the food that drifts down to us, or something else? Why do you spew out scalding hot water when you move? What is your hard shell made of?
Knowing that the alien’s mind worked very slowly, Leviathan decided to ask one question at a time and repeat it as often as necessary until the alien finally understood and pictured an answer. Then it would go on to the next question.
First question: Where do you come from?
* * *
“He’s dying?” Deirdre was shocked. “But you said his medical readouts…”
“They’re sinking,” Yeager said. “It’s slow, but he’s going downhill.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“The pressure. It’s got to be something connected to the pressure.”
Corvus said, “We’ve got to get him back to the station. Quick.”
“Too bad we can’t send him back in one of the data capsules,” said Deirdre.
Yeager gave her an odd look. “That’s something I should’ve thought of,” he muttered. “Have to add it to the next version of this bucket.”
“But what’s wrong with him?” Deirdre repeated.
Corvus waved a hand at the diagnostic screen. “His mechanical systems have shut down for some reason. Without them functioning, his human side can’t function either, not for long.”
“It must be something in his central computer system,” Yeager said, eyeing the screens as if he could force them to tell their secrets by staring at them hard enough.
“Can you access his computer?” Corvus asked.
With a shrug, Yeager said, “I can try.”
Deirdre turned back to her console and saw that the leviathan was flashing signals again.
* * *
Where do you come from? Leviathan asked patiently, over and over again.
As it asked, it realized that the alien proved that the world was much larger than even the Eldest had realized. Larger and more complex, with strange hard-shelled alien creatures in it. Who knew what else might be in the farther reaches of the world?
Leviathan felt a thrill of curiosity. How big is the world? What other strange creatures might be in it?
* * *
Deirdre frowned with puzzlement as she studied the computer’s playback of the leviathan’s message. The same line drawings, repeated endlessly. The computer display automatically washed out the colorful splashes of pale yellow and brighter orange that made the line drawings difficult to distinguish.
It showed a small circle next to a sketch of a many-flippered leviathan. The circle must be us, Deirdre thought, and the leviathan figure must be him. Then the circle rose above the image of the leviathan, slowly heading away until the leviathan’s image dwindled and dropped out of the picture.
It knows we come from higher up in the ocean, Deirdre reasoned. But then the image of the circle faded gradually until it disappeared altogether. What’s that supposed to mean? she wondered.
“I’ll be damned!” Yeager snapped. “Look at that!”
Turning from her screens, Deirdre saw Max pointing at one of the diagnostic displays on Dorn’s control console.
“Sleep mode?” Andy said, peering at the printout. “What’s that mean?”
“His central computer’s shut down,” said Max.
“Shut down?”
“It’s an old computer programming trick. When the CPU inputs exceed the program’s design limits, the damned computer shuts down its active functions. The geeks used to call that ‘sleep mode.’ It’s from a dozen programming generations ago.”
“Why does it do that?” Corvus asked.
“To protect the core programs, keep them from getting infected or overstressed.”
Deirdre said, “But it’s harming Dorn.”
With a bleak nod, Yeager said, “His human half needs the mechanical systems. He’s got pumps inside him that run his endocrine system and servomotors that power his mechanical parts. His heart is mechanical; its function depends on those systems, too.”
“His heart’s shutting down?”
“It’s slowing,” Yeager replied. “The blood flow to his brain is too little to let him stay conscious.”
“But why’s the computer doing this?” Corvus demanded. “It’s killing him.”
Yeager shook his head. “Goddam bucket of chips is protecting itself and letting his human half die.”
“You’ve got to do something, Max!” Deirdre insisted.
“Yeah, I know. We’ve got to get out of here. But how? Dorn’s our pilot. I’m just his backup. You expect me to run this bucket while he’s unconscious?”
* * *
Leviathan began to wonder if the Elders had been right. Perhaps the alien isn’t really intelligent at all: It merely mimics the images we flash at it.
The vision Leviathan had idealized began to fade from his hopes for the future. The world might be much bigger than we had thought, it told itself, but there are no truly intelligent creatures in it, no one that we can communicate with, no one that we can learn from.
RESPONSIBILITIES
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Corvus repeated.
“I know,” Yeager agreed. His tone sounded tense, almost angry.
“Can’t you pilot this ship?”
Yeager hesitated, then answered, “In theory.”
“In theory?” Corvus yelped.
Grudgingly, Yeager explained, “I designed this bucket, all its systems. But that doesn’t mean I have the reflexes, the skills to actually pilot her.”
“You said it was highly automated,” Corvus said, almost accusingly.
Deirdre piped up, “The ship ran completely automated, all by itself, didn’t it?”
Looking miserable, Yeager said, “Yeah, but to set it up that way means reprogramming its central computer. That could take hours.”
“We don’t have hours,” said Corvus. “We’ve got to get Dorn out of here now. At least up to a higher level, where the pressure isn’t so bad.”
Yeager seemed frozen with indecision. “I know,” he muttered. “I know. But … piloting … suppose I screw it up? I could kill us all.”
“We need Dorn?”
“We need Dorn.”
Deirdre listened to the two men while still focusing her eyes on the figures that the leviathan drew, again and again.
“Andy,” she called, “could you wake Dorn up with your DBS equipment?”
“He’s in a coma, almost.”
“But couldn’t you make contact with his mind?” Deirdre asked. “Get him to wake up? Maybe if he were conscious he could override his computer.”
Corvus bit his lip, glanced at Yeager, then said tightly, “It’s worth a try.”
* * *
Leviathan saw that a message was flashing toward it from the Elders, lighting up the waters in stern blue as it passed outward from one member of the Kin to the next.
Finally the member next to
Leviathan transmitted the Elders’ question: If the alien is truly intelligent it would communicate freely with you. Has it done so?
Fighting down its first instinct to admit that the alien’s intelligence was limited to mimicry, Leviathan replied carefully, Its mind works very slowly. We have asked it where it comes from and are waiting for a reply to our question.
Leviathan could foresee the Elders’ next response, their sneering disdain for this slow, dull alien creature. They are afraid of the alien, Leviathan thought. Behind their scornful belittling is the fear that the alien will upset the Symmetry.
Wondering how it could communicate meaningfully with the alien before the Elders decided to drive the stranger away, Leviathan saw with a flash of grateful joy that the alien was lighting up again.
It’s trying to communicate! Leviathan thought hopefully.
* * *
Deirdre saw out of the corner of her eye that Andy was fitting one of his DBS circlets onto Dorn’s head. Maybe that will work, she thought. Max looks terribly nervous, frightened. If they can’t wake Dorn, Max is going to have to try to fly us back to the station.
It took an effort of will for her to concentrate on the message the leviathan was drawing. The same imagery again. A picture of the leviathan with us beside it. Then it shows us rising above the leviathan, going up farther and farther, until we fade out and dis—
Of course! Deirdre realized. It’s asking where we come from! It knows we came down to this level of the ocean from up above. It wants to know where we originated!
Deirdre worked her keyboard swiftly, calling up the earlier imagery she had shown the leviathan. She patched it together with the leviathan’s question and transmitted it to the lights on the vessel’s hull.
Her imagery showed the leviathan’s original picture of itself with Faraday beside it, then the vessel rising until the leviathan figure dwindled and disappeared. But now, instead of fading away—Deirdre figured that was the leviathan’s way of asking its question—the imagery of their vessel continued upward, out of the ocean, through the clear atmosphere populated by spider-kites and Clarke’s Medusas, on through the wide smear of clouds and out into space. The tiny sphere that represented Faraday moved on away from the planet until the imagery showed Jupiter as seen from space, a flattened sphere streaked with many-colored clouds.
