by Jeff Carlson
“Von! Von! Talk to me!” Ben shouted as Koebsch said in the background, “Pull her up and warn the tribes. Keep our mecha on alert. We can’t—”
“I’m all right!” Vonnie yelled.
“We can’t do this again,” Koebsch said.
“Don’t pull me up. I’m all right.” Vonnie kept her face aimed at the sunfish as she spoke. Holding its compact body against the ceiling, she jammed her elbow into its stomach like a bully taking a cheap shot. “Right!?” she yelled.
The sunfish pulled four of its arms from her torn flesh. Then it rustled its body in a clockwise movement, curling each arm tip.
Vonnie recognized the gesture. She relaxed, and her grin faded. She felt woozy. She needed medical care, but dealing with the sunfish was more important.
She stepped back and let go.
“What are you doing?” Koebsch asked as Ben said, “Von? Are you sure?”
“Yes. It was my fault.” Carefully maintaining her assertive tone and posture, Vonnie clamped her left hand on her wounds.
The sunfish stayed above her. It clung to an unilluminated light panel, bunching its arms in rapid patterns as it emitted its sonar calls.
Vonnie nodded in response. From the very beginning, sunfish had understood human physiology well enough to identify the head as the center of their best sensory organs and their primary source of communication. It answered her nod with another clockwise movement of its arms.
“The quake surprised us both, but I acted wrong,” Vonnie said. “I showed fear. I showed mistrust.”
“You’re injured,” Koebsch said.
She managed to smile. “It won’t be my first skin graft. The AI can handle it.”
“Von, he mutilated you! He was chewing on your arm! What if he gets to your eyes next?”
“It wouldn’t be my first transplant, either,” she said. “Please. Be quiet and let me work.”
Koebsch was eleven years older than Vonnie, more conservative, even fatherly since she’d rebuffed his overtures as a potential suitor. His exasperation with her grew into disappointment. “That woman is a lunatic,” he announced as if speaking to someone else. Vonnie knew the comment was meant for her and for the virtual presence of leaders in Berlin, Washington, Tokyo and Brasilia.
She smiled again. Nine weeks after First Contact, there were less than sixty people on Jupiter’s ice moon Europa, but they were heavily outnumbered by electronic ghosts.
Hundreds of AI proxies had been transmitted from Earth by government bureaucrats, generals, corporate heads and the officials of various space agencies. Homo sapiens always tried to install top-down hierarchies. It was their nature. Her rules of engagement were extensive. Everything she did was monitored. Every day the proxies argued with Koebsch, wasting time, wasting energy, while Vonnie and the other astronauts dealt with the situation in real-time. Earth was too far away to interfere effectively.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Blood dripped lazily from her arm, slowed by Europa’s .13 gravity. She knelt over the red splatter on the floor. Then she gestured with her fingers bent as wide and as far back as possible, an invitation.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s okay, Tom.”
The sunfish was her friend.
2.
Tom leapt down beside her, shrilling. Vonnie’s skin prickled at the sensation. Most of the frequencies he used were imperceptible to human ears, a torrent of sound that she felt rather than heard.
Is he reading me from the angles of my skeleton as well as the tension in my voice? she wondered.
On Earth, searching for prey, bats produced ten to twenty clicks per second, a rate that briefly intensified when they located their targets. Moments before killing their prey, bats’ sonar calls escalated into a “terminal buzz” of two hundred clicks per second. But they couldn’t sustain these screams.
With four air sacs squeezing the same breath back and forth through a corded larynx, sunfish were capable of creating sounds almost without pause. Their talents also went beyond mere echolocation. They used ultra-and infrasound.
Tom could “see” through her. Emitting more than four hundred pulses per second, he screeched again, adjusting many of his cries to wave-lengths that were audible to her. Vonnie recognized the tone. He was questioning her, challenging and probing her.
“We’re okay,” she said. She extended her bare foot. Tom caressed her ankle, then explored her toes. “I need medical,” she said. “You know medical? The machine?”
Tom shrilled again, snarling himself around her leg. Vonnie shivered at his grip, but she did not flinch.
His hellish needs and reflexes were why the ESA biologists had warmed the module. They’d wanted to entice him. Deviously, they’d also planned to calm him. Sunfish loved heat. Most of the time, Tom grew unusually sluggish as he basked in the high, steady temperature.
Vonnie had decided against wearing armor with the same intent, not because the module was hot, but to soothe Tom. Her fingers and toes were an integral part of talking with him. The sunfish communicated mostly by sonar and touch. Her shape was wrong for their body language, and she could never smell or taste right, yet when she rocked her ankle, Tom nestled closer like a child might respond to a tickle or a hug.
She didn’t believe his attack had been meant to kill. Within their tribes, the sunfish were rough on each other. They provoked and intimidated their peers. Their group dynamic was always in flux. Drawing blood during an exchange of ideas or moods was normal—and outside their tribes, they were absolutely savage.
The sunfish were quick to fight, quick to heal, quick in everything except to make peace. They matured quickly and bred quickly. Their lives were short by human standards. After twenty Earth years, a sunfish was elderly, although it was rare for them to reach old age. They also died quickly, either in natural catastrophes like quakes and volcanic eruptions or during their wars with each other.
“Careful now,” Vonnie said. Her mild tone was for the benefit of everyone watching her as well as Tom. “Med systems up. Move at half speed. Don’t upset him.”
“Roger that,” Ben said on her display.
The medical AI would operate with more skill than anyone using manual control, so Ben merely confirmed its decisions as it extended two wire probes from the wall. Nevertheless, she appreciated the comfort of his voice.
Ben was closer to her age than Koebsch. He was forty-three, squat and coarse and sweet. He’d been a hothead when they first met. Weeks later, he’d mellowed in some ways. He was less sarcastic with their crewmates and saved his most biting remarks for Koebsch, harassing him. Ben obviously hoped to widen the distance between Vonnie and Koebsch.
Men, she thought with irritation, trying to suppress the pain in her arm. She shouldn’t have let her wounds unsettle her. Fidgeting in discomfort, she moved Tom closer to the wire probes. He clacked dangerously. Then his arms cinched on her leg like a knot of heavy snakes.
“Watch it,” Ben said.
“Sorry.”
“Let me route the probes away from him.”
“Thank you, Ben.”
Finally, the AI slipped its tools into her flesh, injecting her with trauma meds and nanotech. Vonnie sagged in relief.
“You’re gonna have one long sexy scar,” Ben said.
Vonnie laughed. The noise evoked a new pattern of stroking from Tom, who recognized the joyful sound. Simultaneously, he screeched at the probes.
Was he jealous of the probes’ intimacy with her bleeding arm? Did he feel excluded or threatened?
Vonnie glanced at her display. She’d learned to read Tom with some reliability by herself, but, ironically, she wasn’t always certain what she was saying, so the AIs did more than transcribe Tom’s cries and body language. The AIs also interpreted the totality of her body, voice, and biochemistry as Tom might perceive her.
VONNIE: Wary and hurt / I’m hurt / Determined / I can hurt you if you attack again.
TOM: You taste like fear but you
show patience.
VONNIE: We are friends / You hurt me.
TOM: Friends / Fear.
VONNIE: Show patience.
TOM: Don’t like your fear / Hate your machines Hate your homes Need food and air.
VONNIE: I can protect you from the machines.
TOM: Yes / Protect.
A third probe extended to spray bandages on her arm. Tom’s agitation increased. He recoiled, then screeched at the plastic stink.
TOM: Kill it / Hurt you / Kill it.
VONNIE: Patience.
TOM: Hurt you / Make it go.
The third probe was done. It withdrew. “Shhh, Tom,” she said. “They’re fixing me.”
What did she smell like to him? Her gore must have had an inviting aroma. Now her injuries were sealed beneath the spray. Tom had lost the scent of her blood, and new pain flared through her ankle as he squeezed.
Koebsch is right, she thought. I’m too obsessive.
Not everyone understood the responsibility she felt to help the sunfish. Fewer shared her commitment. Many people, even highly trained astronauts, had difficulty seeing past their own egos.
Two months ago, the same had been true for Vonnie. She’d forced her way into a tunnel carved with hieroglyphics because she’d wanted to be the first explorer inside Europa. Her wish had come true. The cost had been the lives of two friends and uncounted sunfish. Lost in the ice, she’d left a path of destruction through their colonies. She’d killed dozens of them, so she could accept some risk and pain to settle her debt. The main thing was learning to communicate.
I should have waited to deal with my arm, she realized. If I was a sunfish, I would have bled until my tribe stopped it by applying pressure. We could have bonded over the taste and scent.
“Ben, take off my bandages,” she said.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“The nanotech will stop the bleeding,” she said. “Take off my bandages.”
“There are fractures in your ulna and thumb. If I—”
“Don’t use a new probe. Tom is too edgy. The micro clusters in place can do the job.”
“Christ. You’re going to feel it.”
“Not with the meds.”
“I warned you,” Ben said. He sent new commands to the AI. Then the surgical tools in her arm bulged, opening holes like pores through her bandages.
It didn’t hurt. She was numb. But the pressure was abrupt. “Oh!” she cried.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh, fine,” she said, modulating her voice like a song as Tom lifted two arms. He’d scented her wounds. His muscular grip eased on her leg and she crooned, “I’m fine. We’re fine. It’s not bad. Thank you, Ben.”
Tom chirped, his pedicellaria rasping on her skin. Was he happy? Restless? Angry?
He feels all three, she thought before she looked at her display. Her instinct was correct. The translation of Tom’s behavior showed pleasure mixed with belligerence.
The sunfish never let go of their hostility. Europa was far more unstable than Earth. Their decisions were always for the short term, ready to fight, ready to die, and Vonnie enjoyed the challenge of introducing them to larger things. Her ancestors had been problem-solving apes who’d actively sought new mysteries as they spread from jungles to grasslands to mountains to shores. The sunfish possessed many of the same characteristics. They were clever and nomadic and unique. Vonnie didn’t understand people who didn’t understand her excitement or the kinship she felt.
We have every advantage over the sunfish, she thought. Knowledge. Medicine. We can afford to be charitable. What would it say about us if we weren’t generous?
While the probes operated on her arm, she rubbed her left hand on Tom’s bumpy topside, increasing her physical contact. As quickly as his species resorted to violence, they were also mollified by the simplest gestures.
If they had fur, she assumed they’d be more popular. They would seem more like dogs or cats—fuzzy little inferior creatures who were easy to manipulate. Instead, millions of people regarded the sunfish with horror. Many said humankind should leave Europa and abandon the tribes to their dying world. But they were sentient. Once upon a time, they’d created an empire within the ice before it was destroyed by volcanic upheavals. They were capable of philosophy and laws.
Yes, they were vicious. She’d been forced to kill them in self-defense. The sunfish had swarmed her. First she’d crashed through their air locks, their farms, and their hatcheries. How would people have acted if a giant monster stumbled into Berlin?
“Surgery is done in thirty seconds,” Ben said. “Looks good. Your arm will be sore for a few days.”
“If you’re lucky, I’ll share my meds with you.”
“Ha.”
She decided she could do better than joke. “No, I’m serious,” she said. “Take out most of the nerve blocks. I need to use my arm. Don’t immobilize it.”
The AI shut off thirty percent of the numbing agents.
“More. Stop,” she said when it hit fifty percent. She flexed her arm and grimaced.
Silently, the AI extracted its probes. They’d ordered it to communicate with her via data and imagery on her display, which Tom couldn’t see. Originally she’d also used an implant to listen to her crewmates. They hadn’t wanted to frighten Tom by broadcasting disembodied voices into the module, but he’d sensed the murmur of her implant, which confused him because their voices rarely matched her demeanor. Koebsch tended to worry. Ben offered wry humor and encouragement. Meanwhile, crewmates like Ash, Henri, and Harmeet ranged in attitudes of disgust toward the sunfish to bright fascination.
Vonnie had limited her radio channels to two men. She craved Ben’s support, and Koebsch was the boss, so she couldn’t stop him from barking at her when he disapproved.
As the medical AI posted green bars on her display, Koebsch said, “Von, if Tom hurts you again…”
“He might.”
“You don’t have to do this. We should be using mecha for our ambassadors.”
She continued to massage Tom’s topside. “Koebsch, we’ve tried mecha,” she said. “This is better. It’s more productive.”
“You’re too vulnerable in there.”
“It’s necessary. Face to face is how the sunfish approach everything.”
“Nobody wants to see you get killed,” Koebsch said, and Ben added, “Well, some people do.”
Vonnie laughed.
For everyone who called her a hero for her role in the ESA’s breakthroughs with the sunfish, others had condemned her as an idiot, a would-be martyr, or a traitor to the human race.
Fortunately, most of the crew stood in her corner. Sometimes they’d jeopardized their careers to help her, although they had the unusual advantage of being irreplaceable. Their leaders in Berlin could dock their pay or issue reprimands, but at the moment, Jupiter and Earth were nearly on opposite sides of the sun. Radio signals took thirty-eight minutes to travel in one direction. The crew had more independence than Berlin wanted, which put Koebsch in the difficult spot of enforcing his protocols on real-time situations.
“Von, this isn’t funny,” Koebsch said.
“If you die, Koebsch is in trouble,” Ben explained, trying again to make her laugh at the other man’s expense.
Vonnie frowned uneasily at their competition. “We can argue later,” she said. “Please. Let me work. If you look at my display, I’m making progress. Tom and I are closer now. Our fight was actually good for us.”
Koebsch grunted, but he said nothing else. She was correct. The translation AIs had doubled her affinity scores, which calculated her rapport with Tom based on a thousand factors from voice intonations to skin temperatures.
Hour by hour, Vonnie was learning to think more like a sunfish while Tom acted more human.
She eased his weight from her leg, then stood up, keeping her toes in contact with two of his arms. “Sing with me,” she said. “Sing.” Then she danced. “Danach lasst uns alle stre
ben, Brüderlich mit Herz and Hand…”
Tom chirped and swayed, matching her cadence.
“Einigkeit under Recht and Frieheit, Sind des Glückes Unterpfand.”
Three years of clarinet lessons in a Frankfurt elementary school had been Vonnie’s highest musical training. Her singing voice was raw at best. Ben said she sounded like a boy. Tom cared more about emotion than harmony. Resynchronizing the moods of every tribe member after a battle or a hunting party’s return was a sunfish ritual.
They moved together.
The experience was surreal, singing with an alien inside a man-made structure on another world. It was magical. It surpassed her childhood dreams of visiting distant stars at lightspeed.
I may be the luckiest woman alive, she thought, glancing at the cues on her display. She tended to forget the lyrics of trendy songs, which was why she repeated Germany’s national anthem, having memorized it long ago when her mother enrolled her in those clarinet lessons.
Koebsch had urged her to change her repertoire. Politics overshadowed every move they made. Back on Earth, thousands of citizens and hundreds of officials had objected to what they viewed as Vonnie’s nationalism, so she’d varied her play list with the anthems of France, Britain and the U.S., mangling her French but having fun with a mock British accent. Once she’d tried some limericks Ben had taught her.
People got upset about everything. People were self-centered and self-absorbed. The sunfish were selfless. For them, the tribe was paramount. They were maniacal in their devotion to the whole—they went too far—but Vonnie admired their purity.
She believed Tom had been partnered with her for the same reasons he’d served his tribe as a scout. He was remarkably independent for a male, durable and smart. With his severed arm, he was also a cripple and therefore expendable.
The matriarchs of his clan hadn’t expected him to emerge in one piece from Submodule 07. The joke was Vonnie’s superiors had also doubted she would survive.
The greatest similarity between humans and sunfish was that they ruled their respective food chains because they were paranoid, adaptable omnivores. Their greatest difference was that the sunfish did not—could not—lie. They had no modesty. In combat, they’d mastered ambushes and trickery, but their bodies were their language like living Braille. They did not have hidden motives or subconscious thoughts. Their minds were a fluid ballet. Everything they felt, they exhibited in a staccato rush.
