by Ben Bova
Smiling with satisfaction, Deirdre wondered if the leviathan could possibly understand what she was trying to tell it.
* * *
The pictures made no sense to Leviathan. The alien seemed to rise up into the cold abyss above, and then moved on to realms that became stranger and stranger.
Gibberish? Leviathan asked itself. No, it decided. The alien is trying to tell us something, trying to explain where it comes from. Of course it would all seem strange, even senseless, to us. It comes from a different part of the Symmetry. Naturally its realm would seem strange, totally unlike anything the Kin has experienced before.
We were right! Leviathan told itself. The alien is intelligent—and the Symmetry is much larger and more complex than we had ever thought.
It began to signal these new thoughts inward through the Kin, toward the Elders.
* * *
“It’s working!” Yeager said. Then he added, “I think.”
Corvus was linked to Dorn: Both of them had DBS circlets on their heads. Yeager was peering eagerly at the readouts on the diagnostic screens.
“I’m talking with the leviathan,” Deirdre called to them, then added, “I think.”
Dorn’s prosthetic eye began to glow red, feebly, then his human eye slowly opened.
“Dorn!” Corvus said eagerly. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Your central computer’s shutting down. Can you override it?”
“No.”
“But it’s killing you!”
Slowly, obviously in pain, Dorn replied, “It is following its programming.”
“But it’s killing you!” Corvus repeated.
Dorn said, “The prosthetics are protecting themselves. The fact that the flesh is dying is an unfortunate side effect.”
Corvus looked up at Yeager. “Max, you’ll have to pilot us out of here. It’s up to you.”
Yeager uttered a heartfelt “Shit.”
ESCAPE
Deirdre could see that Max was clearly frightened as he orally set up the command console’s navigation program.
“It’s up to you, Max,” she whispered to herself. “Dorn’s life depends on you.” Then she realized that all their lives depended on Max’s ability to pilot their vessel.
The leviathan was flashing signals at them again, the flickering of its glowing hide lighting up her communications screen.
Dorn seemed conscious, but barely so. Floating lethargically in the perfluorocarbon, the cyborg watched in silence as Yeager set up the navigation program.
Corvus unconsciously touched the optronic circlet crowning his head and said to Yeager, “Dorn’s thinking that you’ve got to cancel the buoyancy program. You have to do something called ‘blow negative’ before the vessel can start to rise above this level.”
“Right,” said Yeager, and he resumed murmuring instructions to the central computer’s voice-recognition system.
Deirdre shook her head, wondering if they were going to get out of this alive. Dorn’s too weak to speak now, but Andy’s picking up his conscious thoughts through the DBS link. Max is learning the difference between designing the ship and making it work.
“Dee,” Andy called to her, “you’d better keep your eyes on your screens. Looks like the creature’s signaling again.”
Turning back to her console, Deirdre saw that the leviathan was flashing a different image. She hunched forward slightly, leaning against the deck loops her feet were wedged into. The leviathan was picturing several of its own kind, with a broad swath of tiny dots flowing down toward them. Then the picture abruptly changed to show Faraday in the middle of the little dots, all alone.
Even slowed by the computer, the imagery made little sense to Deirdre. The dots probably represent the organic particles that drift down out of the clouds, she thought. That’s what they eat. But why does he put us into the stream? What’s he trying to say?
“Better tell our friend that we’re going to be heading up,” Andy told her.
Deirdre nodded and began drawing a picture on her touch-sensitive screen with her outstretched finger.
* * *
Leviathan’s sensor members studied the message the alien was drawing. It made no sense.
Leviathan was patiently asking the alien what it ate, but the alien seemed to be ignoring the question and instead showing that it came from higher in the Symmetry, from the cold abyss above.
We know that, Leviathan thought. The alien is stating the obvious. Why won’t it answer our question about its food? Is it refusing to answer? Is it hiding something from us?
* * *
“I’ve got it set to fire up,” Yeager announced, a shaky grin on his drawn face.
“Then go,” Corvus said, without hesitation.
“Ten-second countdown,” said Yeager. “Ten…”
“Wait,” Corvus interrupted. “We ought to get Dorn strapped in before we start jouncing around.”
Yeager nodded. “Yeah, right. Slide him into his sleep compartment.”
“I’ll help,” Deirdre offered.
Together, she and Corvus pushed Dorn’s barely conscious body into the sleep chamber and slid him into his coffinlike bunk.
“He’ll be okay in there,” Corvus said as he fastened the safety web at the foot of the enclosure. Deirdre heard the uncertainty quavering in his voice.
“It’s the best we can do,” she said.
With an abrupt gesture, Corvus waved Deirdre through the hatch back onto the bridge, then followed her. They both slid their feet into the deck loops.
“Fire away, Max,” said Corvus. Then he turned toward Deirdre and winked.
Surprised, she smiled back at him. Andy’s trying to reassure me, she thought. In the middle of all this, he’s trying to tell me not to be afraid. But she was afraid. And so was Andy, she knew. And Max.
“Ten seconds,” Max said stiffly. “Nine … eight…”
* * *
The alien suddenly spurted up on a spray of heated water, heading for the cold abyss above. That’s what it was trying to tell us! Leviathan realized. It’s leaving us. It’s heading home.
For several moments Leviathan considered what it should do. Follow the alien, or remain here with the Kin? Leviathan knew it should ask the Elders for their decision, but there was no time to wait for their deliberation. Without further thought, without asking the Elders for their guidance, Leviathan followed the alien, remaining far enough from it to avoid being scalded by the heat it was pouring out. Like a squid, Leviathan thought. It propels itself with jets of heated water. Of course. How else could it move? It has no flagella members.
The alien was ascending rapidly but Leviathan easily kept pace with it.
How high will it go? Leviathan wondered. How far can we accompany it? Will it have anything else to tell us?
* * *
Pointing to the diagnostics screen, Yeager sang out, “His readouts are picking up! His prosthetics are coming back on-line!”
Deirdre glanced at Max and saw the absolutely joyous look on his face. Andy was grinning, too. Then she turned back to her sensor screens. The leviathan was still alongside them, keeping pace with their ascent, staying off to one side to remain clear of their exhaust of superheated steam.
“All systems in the green,” Max said, with pride in his voice.
“You’re doing it,” Andy said, his grin nearly splitting his face. “We’ll have to start calling you Captain Max.”
The leviathan was signaling to them again, Deirdre saw. She repeated the message she’d been sending: We’re leaving. We’re going home.
* * *
How far into the cold abyss will the alien go? Leviathan wondered, flashing that question as it swam alongside the ascending hard-shelled creature. Fish and squid and other creatures teemed through the chilly waters of this level. No darters in sight, Leviathan’s sensor members reported. We’re too high for darters, Leviathan thought. Still, it’s good to be on the alert for them. They will attack a
solitary leviathan if given the chance.
Still the alien rose.
* * *
The hatch to the sleeping area slid back and Dorn floated onto the bridge.
“Look who’s here,” Yeager announced.
Deirdre thought that Dorn looked weary, strained. Even the metal half of his face seemed somehow haggard, dulled.
“I apologize for my collapse,” the cyborg said.
“No apology needed,” said Corvus. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“My prosthetics are programmed to shut down when they are in danger of exceeding their design limits.”
Yeager nodded. “Don’t worry, pal. We’re getting out of this pressure cooker as fast as we can.”
“The mission?” Dorn asked.
“We’ve got enough data to keep the scooters happy for years,” said Yeager. “Now’s the time to go home.”
Dorn glided to the command console. Bobbing alongside Yeager, he said, “I can take the con now, if you don’t mind.”
Yeager made an exaggerated bow. “You’re welcome to it!”
Deirdre heard herself say, “Do we have to leave right away?”
All three men turned toward her.
Surprised at her own reaction, Deirdre asked, “Can’t we stay at this level, at least for a little bit?”
“Why?” Yeager demanded.
Glancing at her sensor screens, Deirdre replied, “To say good-bye.”
DEPARTURE
Several of Leviathan’s flagella members were quivering with the anticipation of dissociating. We are too high, Leviathan realized, too close to the cold abyss above. If we go higher we will dissociate involuntarily.
But the alien was still rising, still climbing upward. How high will it go?
* * *
“It’s sending another message,” Deirdre said, staring at the flickering images on her central screen. The computer was washing out the colors and slowing down the rapidly blinking drawings.
“Leveling off,” said Dorn, with something like the old strength in his voice.
“We can’t stay here for long,” Yeager warned.
“Why not?” Corvus snapped as he tucked the DBS circlets back into their container bin.
Yeager scowled at him. “We’ll run out of supplies. We’re only fitted out for four days—”
“And we’ve only been here for less than three,” Corvus countered, pointing at the mission time line chart.
“And damned near killed ourselves,” Yeager snapped.
Dorn raised his human hand. “I’m feeling much better now that we’re up at a lower pressure.”
“I’m not,” Yeager growled. “I say we get the hell out of here as fast as we can. Take our data and go home!”
“So we take our winnings and leave the game?” Corvus challenged.
Yeager gave him a tight smile. “You gotta know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em.”
The human side of Dorn’s face frowned. “What does that mean?”
Deirdre said, “The leviathan’s trying to tell us something. Look.”
* * *
The alien understands! Leviathan thought. The strange hard-shelled creature stopped its ascent and hovered in the chill waters, still far from the normal realm of the Kin but at least it wasn’t heading farther into the cold abyss above.
It understands.
* * *
“What’s it trying to tell us?” Corvus asked, hovering beside Deirdre in the perfluorocarbon liquid.
The computer-slowed imagery showed the leviathan rising. At least it seemed to be rising past the tiny shapes and dots sprinkled across the picture displayed on its flank.
“Those must be fish and other smaller creatures,” Deirdre said, pointing. “And that stream of dots, maybe that represents the organic particles flowing downward.”
“Maybe.” Corvus nodded uncertainly.
“And there’s the leviathan himself.” Deirdre pointed. “And us, alongside him.”
“Both rising.”
“Yes.”
Abruptly, the image of the leviathan began breaking apart. Deirdre and Corvus watched as the creature’s image disassembled into hundreds of separate pieces.
“It’s going to dissociate again?” she wondered.
Corvus shook his head. “It just did that a day and a half ago, when we first came down to this level.”
“That was deeper than we are now.”
“But now it’s saying that it’s going to break up again? Does that make sense?”
Deirdre thought she understood. “Maybe it’s saying that it can’t stay up at this level without breaking up! It’s telling us that it’s got to go back to its own level.”
“And we’ve got to go back to ours,” Yeager insisted.
Deirdre stared at the screen. The leviathan was still flashing the same imagery. It’s so huge! she thought. Like a mountain floating loose in the ocean. But it’s got to return to its own place. And Max is right, we’ve got to return to ours.
Reluctantly, she reached out to the touch screen and began drawing a farewell message.
* * *
Holding its members together with sheer willpower, Leviathan saw that the alien was signaling again.
It showed the image of Leviathan itself, diving downward until it disappeared past the lower edge of the image. And the alien, rising upward until it too disappeared from view.
The message was clear. The alien was leaving, returning to its own realm in the cold abyss above, leaving Leviathan to return to the Kin and the Symmetry.
But then the picture changed. It showed the alien returning, with more round little hard-shelled spheres just like itself, all of them swimming amid the Kin down where the Symmetry prevailed.
Leviathan understood the alien’s message. It must leave now, but it will return—with more of its kind.
Leviathan duplicated the alien’s message along its own flank, to show that it understood. You will return, Leviathan acknowledged. And we will be here waiting for you.
* * *
“It’s repeating our message,” Deirdre told the others. “It understands what we’re trying to say.”
“Maybe,” Yeager said. “Maybe it’s just mimicking what you drew.”
Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t think so, Max. It understands us.”
Dorn called out, “Increasing buoyancy. Heading for the surface.”
Corvus stood beside Deirdre and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Heading for home,” he murmured.
Deirdre nodded, her eyes on the sensor screens watching the enormous leviathan swim in a brief circle, then bend its broad back and plunge downward, deep into the depths of the globe-girdling ocean, heading back to its own domain.
“Good-bye,” she whispered, surprised at how sad she was, how downcast she felt to be leaving the magnificent creature. “We’ll come back,” she said, knowing it was a promise she was making to herself as much as the leviathan. “We’ll come back.”
As Faraday rose smoothly through the ocean Deirdre felt the pain in her chest easing. Maybe it’s psychosomatic, she thought. But no, the medical readouts had shown her heart laboring, her lungs straining down at the depths where they had been.
“Broaching surface in thirty seconds,” Dorn announced.
The vessel jolted and shuddered as it bulled its way out of the ocean. Deirdre felt as if the sea was trying to keep them, hold them back, prevent them from getting away.
And then they were soaring through Jupiter’s wide, clear atmosphere, the curve of the planet’s vast bulk barely noticeable even when they were halfway to the clouds. Her eyes glued to the screens’ displays, Deirdre saw a clutch of Clarke’s Medusas drifting placidly off in the distance, colorful as old-fashioned hot-air balloons.
“Entering cloud deck,” said Dorn. The displays showed a dizzying swirl of colors and the vessel buffeted and jittered in the typhoon winds of Jupiter’s racing clouds. Andy gripped her tighter as Deirdre clung to him with
one arm and reached for the console handgrips with the other. She saw that Max and Dorn were also grasping safety holds.
Suddenly the shaking and vibration stopped, as abruptly as a switch turning off, and the display screens showed the eternal black of space. Deirdre told the computer to increase its brightness gain and pinpoints of stars gleamed against the darkness.
“We’re in orbit,” Yeager said, his voice almost breathless with relief.
The curving bulk of Jupiter slid into view, huge, glowing with broad swaths of color. Just above its limb a single bright star glowed.
“That’s the station,” Andy said, relaxing his grip on her just a little. “We’re almost home.”
“But we’ll go back to them, won’t we?” said Deirdre, feeling as if she wanted to cry.
EPILOGUE
For it is a fact that to have knowledge of the truth and of sciences and to study them is the highest thing with which a king can adorn himself. And the most disgraceful thing for kings is to disdain learning and be ashamed of exploring the sciences. He who does not learn is not wise.
—Khosrow I Anushirvan
(Khosrow of the Immortal Soul)
Shah of the Sassanid Empire, Persia, 531–579
DECOMPRESSION
This is worse than being in the ocean, Deirdre thought. She lay in the narrow decompression capsule, unable to move. It was like being in a coffin, an elaborate high-tech sarcophagus, too tight to shift her arms from her sides, its ridged plastic lid too low for her to lift her head. Worse than the bunks in Faraday, she grumbled to herself.
“Stay still,” the technicians had told her. “It’s best if you just lay absolutely still while we bring the pressure down.”
