Involution Ocean

by Bruce Sterling

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, the analogy might be worth pursuing anyway,” Desperandum rumbled. “Eighty-seven.”

  I wrote the number down. A complex pattern of clumped and scattered dots appeared on Desperandum’s television screen; he did a quick sketch of the pattern on graph paper in his notebook. “See how many we have in the nets,” he said.

  I crouched to look out.

  “Uh … Captain …”

  “What?”

  “They’re slicing the nets to pieces out there. Their wings are as sharp as razors.”

  Desperandum’s ruddy face turned pale. He looked out the window and grunted, as if he had been struck in the stomach. He looked down with an attitude of intense concentration and touched two switches on his tally box.

  “Three hundred and ninety-three,” he said.

  There was a light metallic thud as a flying fish struck our pillbox. Desperandum flinched. There were more thuds.

  The main body of the swarm was passing over the Lunglance. “One four nine four three,” Desperandum said, sketching frantically. The television screen was alive with swarming dots. “Aren’t we catching any of them?” Desperandum demanded.

  I looked out and flinched myself when a fish struck the window. “No, sir,” I said. “The nets are completely shredded now, they’re just lying on the deck. There’re a few fish on the deck by the mizzenmast, though. Wait a minute. They just flew off.”

  “Five five six two seven,” Desperandum said. The air was growing dark. There were millions of them out there. “No matter,” said Desperandum, recovering his poise. “We’ve still got the radar to analyze their flying pattern. Their spawning grounds are in a bay just behind the Brokenfoot Islands. We can stop there and pick up a few specimens.”

  “That’s a bit of a detour, Captain,” I said. It was an unwise remark.

  “I’ll thank you to remember that I am the captain of this ship,” Desperandum said.

  “I apologize, sir. I was out of line.”

  It sounded like hail on the top of our pillbox; dozens of fish were colliding and rebounding. “Two oh five, eight eighty-three,” Desperandum said.

  Then, suddenly, part of Desperandum’s television screen went dark, a long narrow vertical band on the left side of the screen. Desperandum frowned mightily and touched switches with his thick, blunt fingers. The band stayed dead.

  “They must have sliced the wiring from one of my radar sets,” Desperandum said. “That means I’ll have to multiply the rest of the values by a sixth. Make a note of that. One eighty-five, nine forty-one.”

  I glanced at the screen. White dots were pouring off the live portions of the screen into the dead area. None were re-emerging.

  “What are they doing out there?” Desperandum asked himself. He peered through the visor; three fish, their thin crystalline wings splashed with yellow and crimson, collided with it at once. Desperandum flinched back.

  Another band of the screen went dead. “One oh one three two,” Desperandum said. “Are they thinning out, or are they just flying into the dead areas?”

  I bent and looked out. “It does seem to be getting a little clearer, Captain.”

  “Any in the nets?”

  “No, sir. But there are several dozen by the radar installations. One of them isn’t moving. Its wing seems to be shrivelled. It must have been electrocuted. Now a thick band of them is coming over the rail. They just hit a radar box and knocked it over.”

  I glanced down at Desperandum’s screen. The radar was pointing straight upwards, and its values did not mesh with the others’. There was no longer a coherent image; dots were leaping madly in and out of existence along the zone between the areas on the screen that were covered by the fourth and fifth radar sets.

  “We’re going blind,” Desperandum said.

  “They seem to be attacking the boxes,” I said. Another area of the screen winked out.

  “Yes,” Desperandum said. “They must operate by radar themselves. The signals probably confuse their own flying patterns. That’s why they collide with the boxes. It would be interesting to see how they do it.” Another section of the screen went dead. I looked out the window.

  “Only the first, fourth, and fifth boxes are working, Captain,” I said. “That’s where all the fish are, too. The other boxes are deserted. Hmmm. I was mistaken about that electrocuted fish. Captain. It’s still alive, and trying to fly off. It’s having difficulties though.”

  “I must have one of those specimens,” Desperandum said tightly, shutting off the screen with a snap. The fish rose and fluttered away. “Put your mask on, Newhouse. I’m going to open the door.”

  I grabbed my dustmask. “Don’t do it, Captain. You’ll be sliced to ribbons.”

  “Don’t try to stop me,” Desperandum bristled. “When I aim to find something out, I don’t let anything stand in my way.” He put his arm against my shoulder and brushed me casually out of the way. I slammed into the back of the pillbox and saw stars. Hurriedly I pulled on my dustmask, then reached out and slammed the door shut.

  I heard a flutter. Somehow one of the damnable little beasts had flown inside the pillbox. I grabbed the notebook with both hands and looked around wildly. Something touched my sleeve near the elbow and I saw a red and yellow flash out the corner of my eye. I swung quickly, heard a solid whop and a thud as the fish struck the wall. It slid crippled and thrashing to the ground, leaking ichor from around one of its fiat, lidless eyes. Its dotted wings were broken, but their razor edges still gleamed evilly in the light from the overhead bulb. It did look a lot like a butterfly. I had seen one in a book once.

  I looked at my sleeve. There was a neat two-inch slash just above my elbow, but the skin was untouched.

  I dropped the notebook on the crippled fish, pinning it down, and looked out to see how Desperandum was doing.

  He had seized a whaling spade from somewhere and broken it, leaving a five-foot metal stub with a flat spade at one end, like a flyswatter. The fish were not attacking him. What few were left were evading him with insolent ease and fluttering languidly off to join their brothers in the departed swarm. Desperandum swung at them with all his massive strength, but they floated serenely up and around the edges of the spade.

  Suddenly one dipped and swooped near him. It seemed to miss him, but suddenly a bright red line appeared on the side of his neck. Desperandum bellowed and swiped at the thing with one hand, knocking it to the deck. Blood dripped from his fingers. The creature struggled to rise, but Desperandum leapt suddenly and mashed it to paste under the heels of his boot. Blood was trickling down the side of his neck and into his shirt. A quick feint with the spade and a stab downed another; he swatted it to the deck. It splattered. Then he ran after the retreating cluster of fish and halved one with the spade’s metal edge. Its head flew overboard. Another fish swooped down from nowhere and scored his arm. With astonishing speed Desperandum snatched it in midair and squeezed it juicily, earning more cuts in the process. More splatters of blood marred the deck.

  The few remaining fish were fluttering upward now, gaining height and moving out of the captain’s reach. There was no point in attacking him. It would have taken hundreds of such shallow wounds to drain the gallons of blood in Desperandum’s massive frame.

  The entire flock was gone. I opened the pillbox door and glanced quickly at the receding horde. The last few fish were struggling to regain their positions in the flock.

  Bleeding, Desperandum watched them recede into the distance. Then he threw his bloodied spade aside with a clatter and walked to the pillbox.

  “We have a few specimens now,” he said. “It’s too bad, but I think their heads were all crushed. That would be where they kept their radar equipment. What a shame.”

  He walked inside the pillbox and disconnected a few of the wires from the tally box.

  I pulled my mask off and closed my eyes. “One of the fish flew in here, Captain. I managed to trap it,” I said all in a breath. I pulle
d my mask back on and inhaled. Dust stung my nose. I sneezed and nearly burst my eardrums.

  Desperandum shut the door with a loud clang and turned on the air filters. “Really? Where?”

  I waited for the air to clear, then pulled off my mask and said, “I think it’s still alive. Right under that notebook.”

  “Notebook? Where?” Desperandum looked at the counter. He took a step back and—squish—his large flat foot landed squarely on the book. I winced.

  “Well. What a misfortune,” Desperandum said in a tone of deep regret. He picked up the notebook and gazed critically at the stickily adhering remnants of fish. “Completely ruined. What bad luck. By the way, Newhouse, I’m sorry I snapped at you a few minutes ago. I was overwrought.”

  “I understand, sir. I had it coming, anyway.”

  “No, no, I appreciate frankness. And, as you said, I don’t think the crew would appreciate a detour like that. There aren’t many whales there; they would see it as a waste of time. We don’t want the men getting restless.”

  “Just as you say, sir.”

  “You’re dismissed. Give the men the all clear when you go back to the kitchen. And have our medical officer report to my cabin.”

  “Yes, sir.” I left.

  And that was the last of the incident. But, later I found Dalusa staring raptly at the dried patches of Desperandum’s blood on the deck. I scrubbed it clean with sand that night when no one was looking.

  Chapter 11

  The Cliffs

  Desperandum healed fast, except for his arm. He painted the slash with iodine but refused to cover the ugly black webwork of stitches put in by our first mate.

  We continued to sail northwards and soon passed the halfway mark of our voyage, the Brokenfoot Islands. The settlements here had the best hydroponics labs on Nullaqua. They grow 90 percent of Nullaqua’s tobacco and over half the grain used in brewing beer. We did not land but exchanged greetings with several merchant vessels and a shrimp boat. I bought a new jackknife from an old man in a trading skiff.

  I had lost my first knife to the glue in the false compartment of the Lunglance. I had often thought of confronting Desperandum directly with my knowledge of those hidden stores. It might even be possible that he did not know about the engine, the propeller, and the tanks of oxygen. But I decided against it.

  We killed four more whales and laboriously butchered them. There were sharks here, too. They were a different subspecies from the sharks at the Seagull Peninsula, but they had the same vicious teeth, the same flying pilot fish, and the same disquieting hints of intelligence. Ignoring his wounds, Desperandum attacked the creatures with the rest of the crew, wielding a long whaling spade with extreme viciousness and every ounce of his incredible strength. The sharks attempted to give Desperandum a wide berth, and once a flying fish escaped Dalusa’s nets and bit a small piece out of Desperandum’s right ear, leaving it scalloped.

  Desperandum snatched the fish from midair and stamped it to juice under his boot. After that he went after the eyes of the sharks. Blinded, they responded with suicidal ferocity, ramming the Lunglance‘s sides with their snouts and leaping out of the dust to chew blindly on the railing. When the railing was down they chewed on whatever they could reach.

  So far it had not been crewmen. Seeing the captain’s excessive joy in slaughter, the crew grew nimble with apprehension. And the blinded sharks did not have long to strike. It never took Desperandum more than two seconds to spear his shark-slimed spade into the vital organs.

  By now we were approaching another Landmark.

  There had always been cliffs on the horizon, rugged battlements whose roseate clifflight shed a crescent lunar glow at twilight. But now we were approaching the steepest edge of the Nullaqua Crater, that fifty-mile-long geological phenomenon known simply as the Cliffs.

  The Cliffs are seventy miles high. They beggar description. I believe I could write for hours without conveying the actual visceral impact of seeing something that is seventy miles high. But I’ll try.

  How quickly can a man climb? Two miles a day, perhaps? Two miles, then. Reader, you would be two miles above sea level before you were even over the boulders that have piled at the foot of the Cliffs. After two days of climbing you would find it impossible to breathe. Putting on an oxygen mask you could possibly climb another mile. Then you would have to switch to a spacesuit. The sky would turn black before you were halfway up the Cliffs. After a month you would be climbing rock not disturbed in four billion years. Up there it is old, it is cold, it is dead. There is no wind up there to disturb the slow eons of dust. There are no rivers to carve the rocks, no water to freeze and split open cracks, no bushes or lichen to seek out flaws in the cliffside with clever fingers and patient tenacity. Perhaps, once a decade, a soundless trickle of dust cascades down the ancient rock to the desiccated sea below.

  Eventually, sometime, you would reach the lip of the cliff. You would stand in an airless badlands of tortured, buckled rock, that is the silent, day-long victim of dreadful heat and deadly cold.

  Turn and look behind you, reader. Can you see the crater now? It is wide, round, magnificent; within it shimmers a sea of air above a sea of dust. Almost a million human beings live within this titanic hole, this incredible crater, this single staring eye in the face of an empty planet.

  * * *

  “In less than two months we ought to be docking safe and sound in the Highisle,” I told Dalusa, hugging her through the blanket. She gave a little moan of appreciation, and I grinned in the dimness.

  “You said you wanted to leave Nullaqua,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So do I. And I’ll be coming into a sizable amount of money soon after we dock.” In about four months, I calculated roughly. Long enough to inform the Flare dealers on Reverie of the tight conditions and my last big haul. A few samples of my brain-kicking brew and they would move heaven and earth to get me back. All hope was not lost. I knew chemists on Reverie. Perhaps they could synthesize Flare. Maybe even improve it.

  “Plenty of money. Enough to pay our way off planet, both of us.”

  There was no reply.

  “I know the situation looks hopeless for us,” I said, emphasizing the looks. “But nothing’s impossible with money. You can have your whole body chemistry altered; or, if that’s too difficult, I’ll alter mine. We can live together for years, maybe centuries. Even have children, if you want them.”

  Still nothing. I did not allow the silence to become uncomfortable.

  “I feel that we have something here, a relationship, that could be very strong, very long lasting,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I do love you, I love you very much. So”— I reached under the blanket and pulled out a ring, one of the few that I had brought with me on my voyage. I think I mentioned that I have a fondness for rings. This was one of my favorites, a small Terran amphibious quadruped wrought in silver, one of its long powerful legs stretched in a circlet and touching its chin. I wore it on my little finger.—“I brought you this ring. There is an ancient Terran custom I want to observe that involves it. It’s called betrothal. If you wear it, it symbolizes our emotional dedication to one another and to no other persons.”

  “The ring is very beautiful,” Dalusa said hoarsely. I looked up at her; tears glistened dimly on her face. I was touched, having always thought that “weeping for joy” was only an expression.

  “Don’t put it on yet,” I said hastily. “I haven’t sterilized it.”

  “And when I do put it on, then we will be formally betrayed?”

  “Betrothed,” I corrected.

  Dalusa began to weep aloud. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll hate me, want to cast me out. I think you’ll look at me and wonder how you ever could have wanted me. What will I do when I lose you?”

  “But you won’t,” I said. “I’ll love you as long as this personality exists; I’m sure of that. God knows we’ll change; we’ll both change. But there are decades, centuries a
head-of us both. When the time comes, you can decide what you want to do.”

  “I’m afraid—”

  “I’ll protect you. It’s a promise.” I stirred. “Come on, let’s boil the ring. Then you can put it on.”

  Dalusa stood up and wiped her eyes with one hand. “Where will we go when the voyage is over?”

  “To Reverie. You’ll like it there. It still has wilderness; population control is strict; the climate is very agreeable. I lived there before I came to Nullaqua. I still have friends there.”

  “What if they don’t approve of us?”

  “Then they won’t be my friends any more. I … we don’t need them.” I put a pot on the stove, poured a few ounces of water into it, and set it to boil. I dropped in the ring.

  “Don’t look so downhearted, Dalusa,” I said. “Give me a smile. There’s a good girl. Think of it. Maybe we can arrange an actual Terran marriage, a traditional one. I doubt if there are any Terran religious sects on Reverne, but we can probably find a monotheist of some sort who’d be willing to preside. And after the operations we can live together in a way that approaches normality … except of course that few men are privileged to have a wife so beautiful.”

  She smiled for the first time.

  “Neither one of us can be strictly called normal,” I said, checking the ring in the boiling water. “But that doesn’t mean we have to be miserable. We have as great a right to a life without misery and suffering as anyone else. No more pain, no more blisters or blood—”

  I fished the ring out of the boiling water with a pair of pincers and waved it in the air to cool.

  “Maybe we should wait,” Dalusa said finally, her dark eyes following the movements of the ring. “Maybe after we are on land again, when you have a chance to see normal women, maybe you won’t love me any more.” She seemed almost desperate.

  My face didn’t move but I frowned internally. “I know my own mind. I think the ring’s cool now. Do you want it?”

  She took it.

  Chapter 12