The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2

by Charles Sheffield

  “Together again. The old team, it’s like a dream.” Tully’s blue eyes filled with tears. “Oh, God, Chan. If I could I would. But I’m no use any more. I can’t go.”

  “You can go, Tully. But first you have to break the Paradox habit.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that? I can’t do it. I’ve tried and tried. I close the door and fix the locks, and even throw the key away. But still I get out every day — and drink the milk of Paradox.”

  He was bent over, weeping hopelessly. Chan patted the thin shoulder. “It will be different this time, Tully. You won’t be alone. You’ll have me to help you, and Deb and Danny Casement. And in a few more days, as soon as I can reach them, Chrissie and the Tarbush will be along, too.”

  “Dapper Dan. Oh, how I’d love to see him again.” Tully was laughing and crying at the same time. “Him and his lady friends. Do you remember how he used to sell them pieces of the Yang diamond?”

  “Tully, he’s still at it. When you see him, he’ll tell you about it. Come on now.” Chan had his arm around O’Toole, lifting him. “We have to do this in stages. First, we go to Deb Bisson’s place. Then you two go on to Ceres.”

  “What about you?” Tully stood up, swaying for balance. “Where will you be?”

  “I told you, I have to find Tarbush and Chrissie Winger. Then we’ll have the old team together, and be all set to go. We’ll be on our way to the stars, Tully. Come on. Deb Bisson’s waiting for us.”

  He led the way to the steep stair and the two of them slowly climbed together, Chan providing extra lift when it was needed. He was afraid that Deb had left, until she stepped forward out of the shadows.

  Tully O’Toole stumbled over to her and draped his tall, gaunt form around her.

  “Deb, I don’t know how to thank you and Chan. When I came here tonight I felt sure I was done, a little while longer and I would be gone. But now there’s hope. We’ll get away from here, and head for the stars. We said we would, we said we could — and now we’ll do it.”

  Deb patted him on the shoulder. “We will, Tully. We will. We have to go to your place first, to get your things, before we go to mine. You lead the way.”

  As Tully started back along the corridor, feeling his way along the dark walls, she held Chan back for a moment and whispered, “While you’re gloating, just remember one thing. I’m not going to Ceres or anywhere else for you. I’m doing it for him .”

  “I know that.” Chan tried to pull free. “You hate my guts. You don’t need to tell me again. As soon as I can make arrangements for you and Tully to go to Ceres, I’ll leave you and head for the Oort Cloud. I have to find Chrissie and the Tarbush.”

  Deb still held him by the arm. “Good luck, then — for Tully’s sake. What do you think your chances are?”

  “With you?” Chan pulled himself away. “Zero. With Chrissie and the Tarbush, excellent. I’ll find them, and I’ll bring them to Ceres.”

  “Cocksure as ever.”

  “It’s all relative, Deb. Compared with the past few hours, anything in the Oort Cloud has to be easy.”

  13: LEARNING FROM THE BUBBLE PEOPLE

  Bony was fascinated by the array of waving bubble arms on the seabed outside. He was also frightened of them, as any rational person was afraid of the totally unknown. How long he might have stood staring was anyone’s guess, but a sudden clatter and a shout of “Rombelle! Rombelle!” brought his attention back to the inside of the ship.

  It was Friday Indigo, dropping from the upper level without using the ladder. He shouted, “Look outside!” and then, when it became obvious that’s exactly what Bony and Liddy were doing, “Why didn’t you dummies wake me up?”

  “We only just noticed them. We were asleep.”

  It was a measure of Indigo’s excitement that he didn’t blister Bony for a failure to keep watch. Instead he crowded with them to the port.

  “I woke up,” he said, “and I noticed it was light, and I went to look outside. And there they were, standing on the sea floor! Waving! Rombelle, they want us to meet with them.”

  That was not news to Bony. He said carefully, “Do you think that would be a good idea, sir? We know nothing about these creatures.”

  “Well, of course we don’t. How could we, this is first contact. You hear me? First contact . No human or alien in the Stellar Group ever encountered these beings before. Of course we have to go out and meet them.”

  Bony should have expected that answer. He sighed, and reluctantly started toward the airlock.

  Friday Indigo said, “And just where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “I was going for a suit — to wear outside.”

  “And who told you to do that?” Indigo moved to Bony’s side. “You don’t seem to understand, Rombelle. This is first contact . A historic event. Naturally, the leader of the party conducts the initial meeting. You can come with me — provided that you stay a few steps behind and don’t open your mouth. All right?”

  Without waiting for an answer Indigo took a suit and allowed it to enclose his body. Bony did not move. At last Indigo said impatiently, “Come on, man. First you’re trying to get out of the ship ahead of me, then you’ve turned into a statue. Get that suit on.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bony knew what he needed to say, but he was afraid that it would offend Liddy. “I was just thinking, if we have people outside the ship, wouldn’t it be really important to have somebody back on board in case there’s an emergency? Someone who knows all the ship’s rescue systems inside and out.”

  He had tried to phrase it tactfully, but tact was an unknown quantity to Friday Indigo. The captain looked at him, then at Liddy.

  “Hm. You think she’s a dumb female who doesn’t know what she’s doing?”

  “Well, I didn’t say—”

  “I agree with you. Liddy has her uses, but handling emergencies isn’t one of them. All right. Change of plan. Rombelle, you stay here. Liddy, you put a suit on and come with me.”

  “Does she need to go outside at all, sir? I mean, what would she do there?”

  “She’ll carry the translation equipment. You don’t think I’m going to lug it around myself, do you, when I’m trying to establish contact with the bubble people? Remember, we’ll be recording this for posterity.”

  If we have a posterity, thought Bony. But the choice was pretty clear: either Liddy stayed here, or he did. And if there was trouble, he had a better chance of saving her than she did of saving him.

  “You’ll need to be able to communicate with the ship, sir, if everything is to be recorded.”

  “Sure, sure. Make arrangements for that while Liddy puts her suit on. You can’t expect me to do everything. And jump to it!”

  Bony jumped to it — but not because Indigo had ordered him to. For Liddy’s sake he wanted the best possible link between the ship and the outside party. The easiest way was to run a cable directly from the ship’s external line tap to the portable translation unit. It would handle only voice communication, but Friday Indigo and Liddy didn’t need to see what was happening to Bony, and he would be able to watch their every move using the ship’s imaging systems.

  As Bony worked he kept an eye on what was happening outside. The Limbics maintained their circle around the ship, but they had backed away and risen a couple of meters above the seabed. Apparently they had some invisible way of varying their buoyancy and could hover at any depth they chose. They had moved beyond the region flattened by the arrival of the Mood Indigo , to where the forest of spears still stood upright. One by one they drifted downward. Bubble arms stretched down, gripped, and broke off the sharp-tipped spikes. Bony watched in amazement as the long spears were lifted and then inserted, sharp end first, into the wide dark slit on the top of the globular body. It was the ultimate sword-swallowing act. Slowly and easily, centimeter after centimeter, the whole long shaft vanished.

  Were they eating the pikes? What else could it possibly be? Bony recalled how the shafts had broken under his s
lightest touch. Like the strange ship that he and Liddy had seen on their trip to the ocean surface, the Limbics were not just alien, they were alien alien.

  “Why the hell are you standing there gaping?” Friday Indigo’s voice was loud in Bony’s ears. “I’m all set to go. Do you have that communication connection ready?”

  “Just a couple more minutes.” Bony bent over the translation equipment and went back to work at maximum speed. He hated the idea of Liddy going out there among those creatures. They had a soft, jellyfish appearance, and they hadn’t done anything threatening so far; but they also had had no opportunity to do so. It was his fault that Liddy was going. Why hadn’t he kept his stupid mouth shut?

  He adjusted a final setting and lifted the translator. It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t heavy. Friday Indigo could have carried it easily enough without any help from Liddy. She was waiting patiently at Bony’s side with her suit helmet ready to close, and he handed the instrument to her. “Here, Liddy. Be careful. It looks safe enough out there, but it may not be. If you see anything you don’t like, don’t wait to find out what it is. Head straight back for the ship.”

  He had spoken softly, but not softly enough. Friday Indigo came over to him, his boots clanking on the deck plates. “How many captains can a ship have, Rombelle?”

  “One, sir.”

  “And who’s the captain of the Mood Indigo ?”

  “You are, sir.”

  “Quite right. Don’t forget it. You don’t give orders, I do. Come on, Liddy.”

  He led the way into the airlock. Liddy, carrying the translator, followed. As the inner hatch closed she gave Bony what seemed to him like a forlorn little wave. It was a long minute before he could see her again on the imaging display, dropping silently toward the seabed with Friday Indigo.

  Their exit from the ship had been noticed elsewhere. The Limbics ceased their grazing on the sea-spears and drifted back toward the Mood Indigo . They formed a compact group, about five meters away from the humans.

  Indigo held up one hand and said loudly, “Greetings, people of this planet. I, Friday Indigo, captain of the Terran ship Mood Indigo , and representative of all Terrans and all species of the Stellar Group, come in peace to your world.”

  There was a silence, during which Bony wondered if the Limbics used sound at all as a means of communication. At last, a pair of slits opened in one of the bubble creature’s rounded sides. After a preliminary few seconds in which the openings pulsed like a bellows, Bony heard a strange mixture of hoots, whistles, gurgles, and hiccups.

  Friday Indigo said, “What the hell is all that? Rombelle, I thought this thing was supposed to be a translator.”

  “It is, sir. But with a language it has never heard before, the translator needs a sample before it can begin to translate.”

  “So what did it do with my message?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t think it did anything. It needs a sample of their speech first.”

  “How big a sample?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s no answer. Why didn’t you warn me, before you let me come out here and make a fool of myself? I want to know about this planet, and all I get are a bunch of nonsense sounds.”

  “Just a moment, sir.” Bony could see the slits on the side of the body opening and closing again. “I believe the Limbics don’t use their mouths for speech.”

  “So what are they doing, farting at us?”

  “No, sir. They use gill slits. One of them is going to talk again.”

  The translator produced another string of gurgles. This time it went on for almost a minute. Gradually the sounds modulated into something with the cadences of human speech.

  “Can you understand that, Rombelle?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Nor can I. Liddy, give me that thing.” Indigo grabbed the translator from her and shook it violently. “Goddam heap of junk. It’s not working. If I could get my hands on the assholes who sold it to me, I’d gut and garrotte them. I paid a lot for this worthless piece of crap.”

  It occurred to Bony that if Indigo’s speech was still being recorded, this was going to make an interesting entry in the annals of first-contact history.

  “It is working, sir. The translator sounded more like human speech toward the end. Just keep talking.”

  “About what? I can’t have a one-way conversation with these stupid blobs.”

  The translator, unexpectedly, whistled and said “Globs of blobs.”

  “Hear that, sir? Greet them again.”

  “Right.” Indigo returned the translator to Liddy, struck a pose, and said, “Greetings, people of Limbo — damn it, the bubble heads surely don’t call their own planet that . It’s your fault, Rombelle, giving this place such an asinine name and getting us all thinking of it like that — anyway, where was I? I, Friday Indigo, captain of the Mood Indigo , come in peace to your world, whatever you call it, and wish you well in the name of humans and whoever. There. That should do it.”

  The Limbics appeared to be listening attentively. Their spokesman’s gill slits opened, and after a few moments of silence the translator gurgled and said, “The second walking makes it new after four braces. Next water will open the lonely day for gold.”

  “Damn and set fire to it, I told you it was a piece of junk. Are you going to tell me that you could understand that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It was gibberish.”

  “Perhaps it needs a larger sample.” But Bony was not convinced. He had seen translation machines perform successfully after unbelievably small samples of languages. Of course, that was for human languages. “Sir, I’m not sure this is going to work.”

  “Of course it’s not working, you dummy. Didn’t you hear what it said?”

  “I mean the translator may never work, no matter how big a language sample we give it.”

  “It was sold to me as a general translator.”

  “Between pairs of human languages. Maybe it even works with Tinker and Pipe-Rilla talk. But no one has ever had to deal with an intelligent marine organism before. The concepts that the Limbics evolved to deal with may be just too strange to translate.”

  Unfortunately, Bony didn’t believe that. The gill slits were moving, and the translator said, “Is it Monday for the flower, or was it the one at the end?” But at the same time, the Limbics as a group were steadily backing away while still facing Liddy and Indigo. The bubble arms were repeating the signal they had given earlier. Come. We want you to come .

  “You’re full of it, Rombelle. I tell you, it’s this crappy machine.” Friday Indigo took the translator from Liddy and dropped it to the seabed. “Concepts too strange to translate, my ass. Look at them. It’s clear enough what they mean. They want us to follow them. Come on, Liddy. And Rombelle, you stay here and look after the ship.”

  “Sir, I don’t think that going with them is a good idea.”

  “Did you hear me ask your opinion?”

  “But we won’t be able to communicate with each other when you’re more than a few meters away.”

  “How awful. Do you think I can’t manage without the benefit of your advice? You’ll find out what we learn when we get back.”

  Liddy spoke for the first time since leaving the ship. “Don’t worry about us, Bony. We’ll be fine.”

  “Enough of the soft talk.” Indigo went to Liddy’s side and took hold of the arm of her suit. “Let’s go. They’re waiting for us.”

  The Limbics had formed into a circle around the two humans. They began a slow and steady movement across the seabed, ushering Liddy and Friday Indigo away toward the undersea ridge. The water was less clear today, and in just a couple of minutes the group of figures was merging into a cloudy blue-green haze.

  Bony watched until they were invisible. He had stayed on board the ship in case an emergency affected the other two and he needed to perform a rescue. But Friday Indigo, coddled from birth, would not recognize an emergency if he saw
one. To know danger for what it was, you first needed experience with fear. Bony had that, if he had anything. But how would he know if an emergency had arisen, with the others out of sight and the water preventing radio contact? He had to put himself in a position where he could save Liddy.

  He gave the command to reel in the cable attached to the translator and tuck it away in a cargo hold, and turned the unit off.

  It was time to try an experiment that he had been thinking about in every free moment of the past twenty-four hours. With the others out of harm’s way, the only person he could hurt was himself.

  * * *

  Bony slipped on a suit, left the helmet open but in a position where he could snap it closed in a fraction of a second, and went across to the main control desk of the Mood Indigo . He already knew that the ship’s fusion drive could not be used underwater. The auxiliary ion thrusters ought to work, though. They could provide thrust for very long periods, but they had low power. They were designed only for small adjustments to position in space, and they could never lift a ship into orbit.

  They might, however, be enough for what Bony had in mind. He knew the total mass of the ship, and he had calculated how much water it displaced. From that he could estimate the average density of the Mood Indigo as about fifteen percent more than the density of water. On Earth, that would mean the auxiliary thrusters would have to lift a lot of weight. Here, however, the heavy-water ocean of Limbo provided considerable extra buoyancy.

  He could have deduced that fact without calculation, from the sedate and gentle descent of the ship in their first arrival. The question remained, just how much extra lift did the denser water provide?

  He had gone as far as calculation would permit. Now he had to make the practical test.

  Bony keyed in the command to provide aft thrust at a minimal level. There was a slight vibration through the ship, the view outside the ports vanished in a cloud of gray silt stirred up from the sea floor, and nothing else happened. The ship’s inertial navigation system showed that the Mood Indigo had not risen a centimeter.