The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 15

by Gardner Dozois

  “I have gotten a report,” said Too Ziri, arriving next to her. “The water intake tubes have been plugged by ribbons. Hundreds of them, if not thousands. K’r’x will have to dig them out, then cover the tube openings with mesh.”

  “Was something there before?”

  “Covering the tubes? Yes, but obviously it wasn’t fine enough. Some of the crew members say this is a warning. The mat wants us to leave. Dr. J says the mat lacks the resources to want anything.”

  When she awoke the next morning, she could hear the ship’s engines. K’r’x had gone off to rest, she learned in the lounge.

  “In shallow water, his species sleep on the ocean bottom, provided it’s smooth and comfortable,” said Too Ziri. “Out here, he will sleep while floating.”

  The day was overcast and windy, foam streaking the water. None the less, the two doctors decided they could not wait for K’r’x’s return and went to look at the mat. They rode in a small inflated boat driven by a good-sized outboard motor. A crew member went along to manage the outboard. As the boat left, it bounced madly over the waves, tossing up spray.

  Not fun, Lydia thought. At noon, they were back. “Dr. J lost breakfast over the side,” said Dr. Diop as she climbed on board. “Extremely interesting! We had been surrounded by the ribbons, so close to the surface that we had no trouble seeing them, in spite of the cresting waves and foam. When Dr. J’s breakfast hit the water, they vanished. All of them, even those that had not been close to the breakfast. I don’t know if the problem was Dr. J’s enzymes or the scrambled eggs, but the ribbons certainly responded and with surprising speed.”

  Diop stood with legs braced against the ship’s roll, her head back, her face happy. A good sailor, thought Lydia, who was not. “I don’t think the mat is intelligent, still less the ribbons. But they do seem to communicate, and it’s possible that they function as a community.”

  Dr. Johannesburg climbed on board. His black skin had managed to acquire a dull grey tinge. “We’re going to have to use K’r’x. He can swim under the turbulence. If you will, Miss Duluth, I’d like you to go with him.”

  Lydia nodded.

  K’r’x breached late in the afternoon. New clouds had blown in: lower, thicker, and darker than the morning clouds. According to Captain Bombay, a storm was coming from the south-west. “I can’t afford to lose my engines in a storm. My bet is, the new mesh will stop the ribbons. None the less, we’re going to move away from that thing.”

  “Not until we have samples,” said Dr. J firmly.

  Captain Bombay frowned. “I’ll give Miss Duluth two hours. Then we move.”

  Lydia put on her headset. Once again, she was in water.

  K’r’x said, I worked hard last night, pulling ribbons out of those holes in the ship’s hull. They weren’t even edible, and my sleep was uneasy. How could it fail to be? I’m in an unfamiliar part of an alien ocean, with no kin within light-centuries. Now, you tell me, they want me to push sharp instruments into the mat.

  For a couple of hours, said Lydia in reply. Then the captain’s moving us away.

  Oh, very well. An instrument pack descended on a rope. K’r’x untied it and swam.

  The surface above them was like a shattered mirror. Little light came through; the water K’r’x swam through was dim and grey. Lydia thought she could sense the storm’s approach, though this was hardly likely. Maybe he could, in some way she didn’t understand.

  He paused just before they reached the mat, opened the instrument pack, and took out a large syringe with many tubes. I plan to swim under the mat until I’m as far as I intend to go. Then I will turn and take samples on the way out.

  Why? asked Lydia.

  If I’m going to annoy this creature, I want to do it as I leave. He glided forward slowly, the syringe held in one set of fingers. A hooked tentacle was looped around the handle of the instrument pack. No way it could slide free, thought Lydia. The hooks were ten centimeters long, obsidian-black and barbed.

  Do you have a clock? she asked her AI.

  Several.

  Tell me when we’ve been gone an hour.

  As before, the water was full of animals. No bells this time, but ribbons, clumped together, and spheres, organized into clusters or long chains. The only unconnected animals were tiny disks with cilia along their edges. These zipped past at a speed that surprised Lydia. Their motion seemed Brownian.

  Light diminished as K’r’x swam in. Lydia could see little, in spite of the Diver’s excellent vision. At last, he stopped and opened the instrument pack. Something came out; a moment later, a brilliant blue-white beam came on.

  There is a recorder in the rod, as well as a light. They come on together. How ingenious your humans are! How many tools you make! It must be the way you compensate for your lack of tentacles.

  He swept the beam around. Disks shot through it like so many tiny, erratic flying saucers. In the distance was a large, round cluster of spheres. Transparent, they glinted like glass. The Diver lifted the light rod, playing it over the mat’s ventral surface. Nothing new was visible. K’r’x swam on.

  A human hour has passed, her AI announced finally.

  Lydia relayed the information to K’r’x.

  My AI has already told me. We will begin here. The light rod was held by one of his spined tentacles now. He lifted it and shone it on the mat, then used his fingered tentacles to adjust the syringe. How convenient! Three hands!

  More, actually, K’r’x said, and drove the needle in.

  A dark liquid entered one of the instrument’s tubes. It was red-brown in the rod’s light and moved slowly. Thicker than blood, apparently. When the tube was full, K’r’x pulled the needle out. For several moments, the mat did nothing. Then, it began to shudder. The motion traveled out in waves, like ripples from a flung stone. When the waves passed the mat’s grooves, their pattern changed, becoming more complex.

  It has noticed, K’r’x said and swam toward the mat’s edge. After a while he stopped again and twisted the syringe. A new needle popped out, leading to a new tube. Raising the syringe, he held it against the mat, pressing firmly, but not so firmly that the needle entered. The section he touched lifted slightly, as if trying to move It learns, K’r’x said. And what it learns goes from one section to another. Interesting! He pushed the needle in.

  Again, after the needle was withdrawn, the mat shuddered. They kept going. K’r’x had been right to start inside, Lydia thought. The environment here was creepy: the mat above them like a lid, the water dark and filled with peculiar animals. Heading toward daylight, though it might be dim, was reassuring.

  Another stop. K’r’x twisted the syringe and drove it in. A third tube filled. When the needle came out, the mat barely twitched.

  I am not enjoying this, K’r’x said. Though – so far – it’s no worse than the time I swam into the Great Abyss and met a Diver twice my size, luminous, without language.

  He stopped a fourth time. As he tinkered with the syringe, disks settled on his tentacles. He shook. The animals did not come off. He whipped the tentacles back and forth. The disks remained.

  More disks settled on his mantle and fins. Lydia felt a faint tingling.

  Screw this, said the Diver and dove.

  No question K’r’x could move quickly. Cold water pulsed through his body as he went down. His fins beat strongly, and his mind made a deep humming sound. What was it? A groan of fear? Or self-encouragement?

  The tingling changed to a burning sensation.

  Lydia pulled off the headset and ran from her cabin. “The mat has attacked,” she said to the first person she met.

  It was Len. “I warned the captain and the scientists. But would they listen?”

  Shortly thereafter, she found herself telling her story to Jez Bombay.

  “We have to get out of here,” the captain said.

  “Not without K’r’x.”

  Bombay shook her head. “I can’t wait.”

  Lydia paused a moment, th
en said, “My AI says to wait.”

  I did not!

  “That settles the question,” said Dr. Diop. “No person or planet can afford to make the Als angry. I’ll get the sling ready.”

  “Sling?” asked Lydia.

  “K’r’x can live for some time out of water,” said Dr. Diop. “Obviously, he’s not safe in the ocean at the moment, and I need to look at his injuries.”

  “Do you need help?”

  Diop looked Lydia over. “You are covered with sweat and obviously distressed. Calm yourself. We may need to talk with K’r’x.”

  She went on deck. The sky was dark grey, the ocean swell more pronounced. Foam streaked the rolling water.

  But I would have, the AI said.

  Done what?

  Told Captain Bombay to wait. K’r’x is unusual and valuable, and AIs do not willingly abandon one another.

  The headset was around her neck, locked into a collar. She unlocked it and put it on.

  Darkness. Icy water. Pain.

  Back? K’r’x said, his fins beating fiercely. He was no longer heading down, but south toward the Persistent. His – their – skin burned.

  She told him what Diop had planned.

  Good, he said.

  Lydia stayed with him as he swam from the black depths into faint grey light. Then, as he rose toward the Persistent, she took the headset off.

  “Good,” said Dr. Diop. “I need to talk to him.” The doctor put her own radio on.

  Crew members lowered the sling till water washed through it. K’r’x surfaced at one end: a huge pale shape, dark red disks all over him like a pox.

  The sling dropped farther. He pulled himself into it, obviously exhausted. The sling lifted. His fingered tentacles still held the syringe and the light rod-recorder; one hooked tentacle carried the instrument pack. All the rest of his tentacles were wrapped around the sling’s ropes. He was afraid of falling into the ocean, Lydia realized.

  The sling came up and over, then down on the deck. The long, sleek body lay almost still, oddly vulnerable now that K’r’x was out of water. His tentacles relaxed, letting go of syringe and light rod. Too Ziri collected these and disentangled the pack. The two doctors descended, armed with knives and a first aid kit.

  “That’s it,” said Jez Bombay. “We’re getting out.” She left.

  Crouching, the two doctors began to pry off the disks. They came off with difficulty and left behind a round, raw-looking, blue-green welt. “A toxin, I suspect,” said Dr. J. “Combined with enzymes that have begun to dissolve K’r’x’s tissue. The color comes from K’r’x’s blood, which is blue-green. The disks have eaten through his epidermis.”

  The Diver’s great eyes blinked. Had Diop relayed this information to him?

  One by one, the disks came off, going into sample bottles. Diop rubbed salve on the welts.

  “How long can he stay out of water?” Lydia asked.

  “Hours,” said Dr. J. “Though we have to keep him wet. Remarkable animals, like the cephalopods native to our original home. There’s a story about a man who had one of them – an octopus – in a tank. The creature pushed the lid off, climbed out and crawled into the man’s library. When the man found the octopus, it was pulling books off shelves and leafing through them.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Lydia.

  “Is it a true story?” Dr. J asked. “I don’t know, though I found it in an old database, full of information brought from Earth. In any case, it suggests that cephalopods can survive out of the water for some time, maybe not long enough to read an entire book, but long enough to glance through a shelf.”

  Did Dr. Johannesburg have a sense of humor? It didn’t seem likely.

  The ship was moving now, beginning to turn. The doctors finished removing the disks, and a crew member hosed K’r’x down.

  Lydia put on her headset. How are you? she asked.

  Uncomfortable and angry.

  What could she say? She went to him, kneeling and holding out her hand. He took it with one of his fingered tentacles. His skin was rubbery, his fingers obviously boneless, but muscular. She could feel his strength even now.

  What a thing it is to travel to the stars! the Diver said.

  She stayed beside him, till she realized that she was soaking wet and shivering. Apologizing, she rose. The ship had finished turning and was heading south-west, toward a sky full of grey-green storm clouds. Abruptly, the engines slowed. Captain Bombay came on deck, her dark face wearing a furious expression. “The engines are overheating again. Those damn ribbons must have gotten through the mesh. We’re dropping repellent into the water, then sending divers down, since the squid isn’t available at the moment.”

  Lydia went below and changed her clothes. A pity to miss some of the drama, but hypothermia was dangerous.

  When she came back up, the repellent was in the water, and the divers were ready to dive. There were two of them, entirely covered by skintight, black suits. Their masks looked different from the usual kind of diving mask, and they had air packs fastened to their backs, as if they were going into a vacuum. “We decided artificial gills were risky,” said Dr. Diop. “They might not filter out all the toxins. So these fellows are carrying their own air supply. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Toxins?” asked Lydia.

  “The disks used something on K’r’x, and those guns fire a poison. We’ve used it in the past to collect specimens. It’s not as harmful to us as to the local life, but it can cause an adverse reaction.”

  As she spoke, the divers picked up handguns, then flapped their way to the railing and over.

  “They have radios,” said Diop. “The masks can see over a wider range of light than K’r’x. They should be fine.”

  Lydia felt a drop of water.

  “Rain,” said Diop. “The storm has arrived. As William Shakespeare – the deservedly famous European playwright – said, when troubles come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.”

  “Yes,” said Lydia.

  More drops fell; they moved to the lounge. Jez Bombay had a radio there. Messages came from the divers. This time the intake tubes were packed with an translucent sludge, which had apparently managed to ooze its way through the protective mesh. They would suction it out.

  “For God’s sake, get a sample,” put in Dr. Johannesburg.

  Jez Bombay glared at him, but repeated the instruction to the divers.

  Also, the divers said as they set to work, the water around them was full of limp objects. “Like used condoms,” said one diver.

  Dr. J opened his mouth. The captain glared again and said, “You’d better collect some of those as well.”

  “Okay.”

  Time passed. The rain was a downpour now, and the sky overhead was green. Foam covered the ocean. The ship’s motion became increasingly unpleasant.

  Lydia went back on deck. Too Ziri was there with K’r’x.

  There is so much water I can almost breathe.

  After a while, Dr. Diop joined them. “The divers are reporting success. The water around them is clear; apparently the repellent works as hoped. They are almost finished cleaning out the tubes.”

  Good news, thought Lydia, looking out at the water, so streaked with foam that it was more white than green. When the ship rode up over a swell, she was able to see the mat: a dim shape through driving rain.

  “What was the repellent?” Lydia asked.

  “Powdered eggs. The cook believes in laying in large quantities of basic supplies, so we had plenty, and it seemed worth a try. If the eggs didn’t drive them off, we could use poison.”

  Lydia laughed.

  The divers climbed back on board, helped by crew members. It was not an easy task, the way the ship was rolling.

  Shortly thereafter, she heard the engines start, and went down to change into a second set of dry clothes. Was she going to throw up? she wondered as the Persistent pitched around her. Maybe it would be a good idea to stay in her cabin for a while.
She lay down and felt the ship’s motion change.

  The pitching was worse now, and she wasn’t able to hear the engines through the noise the ship made, groaning. Lydia grabbed the headset and ran from her cabin, bouncing off the corridor’s walls several times and almost falling as she climbed the steep stairs to the next deck and the lounge. “What in hell?” she asked as she entered.

  “The screws are tangled in something,” said Dr. J. “It’s big, the captain says, and it’s dragging us, and the damn engines have started to overheat again.”

  “More ribbons?” asked Lydia.

  “I have run out of theories,” replied Dr. J in a grim tone.

  Lydia put on the headset.

  Enough of this, said K’r’x. If I’m going to die, I will die at home.

  He wrapped his tentacles, all of them, around the ship’s railing, pulling himself up, so his head was leaning over water, while his wide muscular fins braced his body. For a moment, he rested there; then he shifted all his grips and pushed with fins and body, while his tentacles pulled. A surge and he was over, falling into foam-white water.

  Lydia stayed with him. The moment he hit water, his fins drove him down, away from the surface turbulence.

  At the ship’s stern was a huge, twisting mass, barely visible in the dim light. K’r’x blinked. The mass was ribbons, wrapped around the ship’s screws and one another. They were not the comparatively small animals she had seen before. Instead, these ribbons were a meter wide and ten or twenty meters long.

  This does not look good, said K’r’x and swam closer, moving very slowly, his mind full of caution and irritation. Clearly, he did not enjoy feeling fear.

  Why should I enjoy fear, if that’s what I’m feeling? I am a top-of-the-food-chain predator. Nothing should frighten me except other Divers.

  The water intake tubes were forward of the screws. As K’r’x approached them, Lydia saw other ribbons, much smaller than the ones at the Persistent’s stern. As far as she could determine, in the dim light, the ribbons had fastened themselves to the mesh over the intake tubes. Were they trying to get through? Or stop the water’s flow from outside? And how could animals without brains have intentions?

  K’r’x paused. His eyes adjusted further, and the light below the ship seemed to brighten. At the same time, several of the ribbons let go. Their bodies – no, their skins – floated in the water like deflated balloons. Whatever had been inside was obviously gone. Pushed through the mesh, Lydia decided. The ribbons were using their own internal stuff to plug the tubes.