by Jack Vance
“What were they doing?” asked Damon.
“Nothing very much. Drifting near a big monitor which had attached itself to the seaweed. The arm was hanging down like a rope—clear out of sight. I edged the bug in just to see what the deks would do; they began backing away. I didn’t want to waste too much time under the raft, so I swung off north, toward the Deeps. Halfway there I saw an odd thing; in fact I passed it, and swung around to take another look.
“There were about a dozen deks. They had a monitor—and this one was really big. A giant. It was hanging on a set of balloons or bubbles—some kind of pods that kept it floating, and the deks were easing it along. In this direction.”
“In this direction, eh?” mused Murphy.
“What did you do?” asked Manners.
“Well, perhaps it was all an innocent outing—but I didn’t want to take any chances. The arm of this monitor would be like a hawser. I turned the bug at the bubbles, burst some, scattered the rest. The monitor dropped like a stone. The deks took off in different directions. I figured I’d won that round. I kept on going north, and pretty soon I came to where the slope starts down into the Deeps. I’d been traveling about twenty feet under; now I lowered to two hundred. I had to turn on the lights, of course—this red twilight doesn’t penetrate water too well.” Fletcher took another gulp of coffee. “All the way across the Shallows I’d been passing over coral banks and dodging forests of kelp. Where the shelf slopes down to the Deeps the coral gets to be something fantastic—I suppose there’s more water movement, more nourishment, more oxygen. It grows a hundred feet high, in spires and towers, umbrellas, platforms, arches—white, pale blue, pale green.
“I came to the edge of a cliff. It was a shock—one minute my lights were on the coral, all these white towers and pinnacles—then there was nothing. I was over the Deeps. I got a little nervous.” Fletcher grinned. “Irrational, of course. I checked the fathometer—bottom was twelve thousand feet down. I still didn’t like it, and turned around, swung back. Then I noticed lights off to my right. I turned my own off, moved in to investigate. The lights spread out as if I was flying over a city—and that’s just about what it was.”
“Dekabrachs?” asked Damon.
Fletcher nodded. “Dekabrachs.”
“You mean—they built it themselves? Lights and all?”
Fletcher frowned. “That’s what I can’t be sure of. The coral had grown into shapes that gave them little cubicles to swim in and out of, and do whatever they’d want to do in a house. Certainly they don’t need protection from the rain. They hadn’t built these coral grottoes in the sense that we build a house—but it didn’t look like natural coral either. It’s as if they made the coral grow to suit them.”
Murphy said doubtfully, “Then they’re intelligent.”
“No, not necessarily. After all, wasps build complicated nests with no more equipment than a set of instincts.”
“What’s your opinion?” asked Damon. “Just what impression does it give?”
Fletcher shook his head. “I can’t be sure. I don’t know what kind of standards to apply. ‘Intelligence’ is a word that means lots of different things, and the way we generally use it is artificial and specialized.”
“I don’t get you,” said Murphy. “Do you mean these deks are intelligent or don’t you?”
Fletcher laughed. “Are men intelligent?”
“Sure. So they say, at least.”
“Well, what I’m trying to get across is that we can’t use man’s intelligence as a measure of the dekabrach’s mind. We’ve got to judge him by a different set of values—dekabrach values. Men use tools of metal, ceramic, fiber: inorganic stuff—at least, dead. I can imagine a civilization dependent upon living tools—specialized creatures the master-group uses for special purposes. Suppose the dekabrachs live on this basis? They force the coral to grow in the shape they want. They use the monitors for derricks or hoists, or snares, or to grab at something in the upper air.”
“Apparently, then,” said Damon, “you believe that the dekabrachs are intelligent.”
Fletcher shook his head. “Intelligence is just a word—a matter of definition. What the deks do may not be susceptible to human definition.”
“It’s beyond me,” said Murphy, settling back in his chair.
Damon pressed the subject. “I am not a metaphysicist or a semanticist. But it seems that we might apply, or try to apply, a crucial test.”
“What difference does it make one way or the other?” asked Murphy.
Fletcher said, “It makes a big difference where the law is concerned.”
“Ah,” said Murphy, “the Doctrine of Responsibility.”
Fletcher nodded. “We could be yanked off the planet for injuring or killing intelligent autochthones. It’s been done.”
“That’s right,” said Murphy. “I was on Alkaid Two when Graviton Corporation got in that kind of trouble.”
“So if the deks are intelligent, we’ve got to watch our step. That’s why I looked twice when I saw the dek in the tank.”
“Well—are they or aren’t they?” asked Mahlberg.
“There’s one crucial test,” Damon repeated.
The crew looked at him expectantly.
“Well?” asked Murphy. “Spill it.”
“Communication.”
Murphy nodded thoughtfully. “That seems to make sense.” He looked at Fletcher. “Did you notice them communicating?”
Fletcher shook his head. “Tomorrow I’ll take a camera out, and a sound recorder. Then we’ll know for sure.”
“Incidentally,” said Damon, “why were you asking about niobium?”
Fletcher had almost forgotten. “Chrystal had a chunk on his desk. Or maybe he did—I’m not sure.”
Damon nodded. “Well, it may be a coincidence, but the deks are loaded with it.”
Fletcher stared.
“It’s in their blood, and there’s a strong concentration in the interior organs.”
Fletcher sat with his cup halfway to his mouth. “Enough to make a profit on?”
Damon nodded. “Probably a hundred grams or more in the organism.”
“Well, well,” said Fletcher. “That’s very interesting indeed.”
Rain roared down during the night; a great wind came up, lifting and driving the rain and spume. Most of the crew had gone to bed: all except Dave Jones the steward and Manners the radio man, who sat up over a chess board.
A new sound rose over wind and rain—a metallic groaning, a creaking discord that presently became too loud to ignore. Manners jumped to his feet, went to the window.
“The mast!”
Dimly it could be seen through the rain, swaying like a reed, the arc of oscillation increasing with each swing.
“What can we do?” cried Jones.
One set of guy-lines snapped. “Nothing now.”
“I’ll call Fletcher.” Jones ran for the passage to the dormitory.
The mast gave a sudden jerk, poised long seconds at an unlikely angle, then toppled across the process house.
Fletcher appeared, stared out the window. With the mast-head light no longer shining down, the raft was dark and ominous. Fletcher shrugged, turned away. “There’s nothing we can do tonight. It’s worth a man’s life to go out on that deck.”
In the morning, examination of the wreckage revealed that two of the guy-lines had been sawed or clipped cleanly through. The mast, of lightweight construction, was quickly cut apart, and the twisted segments dragged to a corner of the deck. The raft seemed bald and flat.
“Someone or something,” said Fletcher, “is anxious to give us as much trouble as possible.” He looked across the leaden-pink ocean to where the Pelagic Recoveries raft floated beyond the range of vision.
“Apparently,” said Damon, “you refer to Chrystal.”
“I have suspicions.”
Damon glanced out across the water. “I’m practically certain.”
“Suspicion isn�
��t proof,” said Fletcher. “In the first place, what would Chrystal hope to gain by attacking us?”
“What would the dekabrachs gain?”
“I don’t know,” said Fletcher. “I’d like to find out.” He went to dress himself in the submarine suit.
The water-bug was made ready. Fletcher plugged a camera into the external mounting, connected a sound-recorder to a sensitive diaphragm in the skin. He seated himself, pulled the blister over his head.
The water-bug was lowered into the ocean. It filled with water, and its glistening back disappeared under the surface.
The crew patched the roof of the process house, jury-rigged an antenna.
The day passed; twilight came, and plum-colored evening.
The loudspeaker hissed and sputtered; Fletcher’s voice, tired and tense, said, “Stand by; I’m coming in.”
The crew gathered by the rail, straining their eyes through the dusk.
One of the dully glistening wave-fronts held its shape, drew closer, and became the water-bug.
The grapples were dropped; the water-bug drained its ballast and was hoisted into the chocks.
Fletcher jumped down to the deck, leaned limply against one of the davits. “I’ve had enough submerging to last me a while.”
“What did you find out?” Damon asked anxiously.
“I’ve got it all on film. I’ll run it off as soon as my head stops ringing.”
Fletcher took a hot shower, then came down to the mess hall and ate the bowl of stew Jones put in front of him, while Manners transferred the film Fletcher had shot from camera to projector.
“I’ve made up my mind to two things,” said Fletcher. “First—the deks are intelligent. Second, if they communicate with each other, it’s by means imperceptible to human beings.”
Damon blinked, surprised and dissatisfied. “That’s almost a contradiction.”
“Just watch,” said Fletcher. “You can see for yourself.”
Manners started the projector; the screen went bright.
“The first few feet show nothing very much,” said Fletcher. “I drove directly out to the end of the shelf, and cruised along the edge of the Deeps. It drops away like the end of the world—straight down. I found a big colony about ten miles west of the one I found yesterday—almost a city.”
“‘City’ implies civilization,” Damon asserted in a didactic voice.
Fletcher shrugged. “If civilization means manipulation of environment—somewhere I’ve heard that definition—they’re civilized.”
“But they don’t communicate?”
“Check the film for yourself.”
The screen was dark with the color of the ocean. “I made a circle out over the Deeps,” said Fletcher, “turned off my lights, started the camera and came in slow.”
A pale constellation appeared in the center of the screen, separated into a swarm of sparks. They brightened and expanded; behind them appeared the outlines, tall and dim, of coral minarets, towers, spires, and spikes. They defined themselves as Fletcher moved closer. From the screen came Fletcher’s recorded voice. “These formations vary in height from fifty to two hundred feet, along a front of about half a mile.”
The picture expanded. Black holes showed on the face of the spires; pale dekabrach-shapes swam quietly in and out. “Notice,” said the voice, “the area in front of the colony. It seems to be a shelf, or a storage yard. From up here it’s hard to see; I’ll drop down a hundred feet or so.”
The picture changed; the screen darkened. “I’m dropping now—depth-meter reads three hundred sixty feet…Three eighty…I can’t see too well; I hope the camera is getting it all.”
Fletcher commented: “You’re seeing it better now than I could; the luminous areas in the coral don’t shine too strongly down there.”
The screen showed the base of the coral structures and a nearly level bench fifty feet wide. The camera took a quick swing, peered down over the verge, into blackness.
“I was curious,” said Fletcher. “The shelf didn’t look natural. It isn’t. Notice the outlines on down? They’re just barely perceptible. The shelf is artificial—a terrace, a front porch.”
The camera swung back to the bench, which now appeared to be marked off into areas vaguely differentiated in color.
Fletcher’s voice said, “Those colored areas are like plots in a garden—there’s a different kind of plant, or weed, or animal on each of them. I’ll come in closer. Here are monitors.” The screen showed two or three dozen heavy hemispheres, then passed on to what appeared to be eels with saw edges along their sides, attached to the bench by a sucker. Next were float-bladders, then a great number of black cones with very long loose tails.
Damon said in a puzzled voice, “What keeps them there?”
“You’ll have to ask the dekabrachs,” said Fletcher.
“I would if I knew how.”
“I still haven’t seen them do anything intelligent,” said Murphy.
“Watch,” said Fletcher.
Into the field of vision swam a pair of dekabrachs, black eye-spots staring out of the screen at the men in the mess hall.
“Dekabrachs,” came Fletcher’s voice from the screen.
“Up to now, I don’t think they noticed me,” Fletcher himself commented. “I carried no lights, and made no contrast against the background. Perhaps they felt the pump.”
The dekabrachs turned together, dropped sharply for the shelf.
“Notice,” said Fletcher. “They saw a problem, and the same solution occurred to both, at the same time. There was no communication.”
The dekabrachs had diminished to pale blurs on one of the dark areas along the shelf.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” said Fletcher, “but I decided to move. And then—the camera doesn’t show this—I felt bumps on the hull, as if someone were throwing rocks. I couldn’t see what was going on until something hit the dome right in front of my face. It was a little torpedo, with a long nose like a knitting needle. I took off fast, before the deks tried something else.”
The screen went black. Fletcher’s voice said, “I’m out over the Deeps, running parallel with the edge of the Shallows.” Indeterminate shapes swam across the screen, pale wisps blurred by watery distance. “I came back along the edge of the shelf,” said Fletcher, “and found the colony I saw yesterday.”
Once more the screen showed spires, tall structures, pale blue, pale green, ivory. “I’m going in close,” came Fletcher’s voice. “I’m going to look in one of those holes.” The towers expanded; ahead was a dark hole.
“Right here I turned on the nose-light,” said Fletcher. The black hole suddenly became a bright cylindrical chamber fifteen feet deep. The walls were lined with glistening colored globes, like Christmas tree ornaments. A dekabrach floated in the center of the chamber. Translucent tendrils ending in knobs extended from the chamber walls and seemed to be punching and kneading the seal-smooth hide.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Fletcher, “but the dek doesn’t like me looking in on him.”
The dekabrach backed to the rear of the chamber; the knobbed tendrils jerked away, into the walls.
“I looked into the next hole.”
Another black hole became a bright chamber as the searchlight burnt in. A dekabrach floated quietly, holding a sphere of pink jelly before its eye. The wall-tendrils were not to be seen.
“This one didn’t move,” said Fletcher. “He was asleep or hypnotized or too scared. I started to take off—and there was the most awful thump. I thought I was a goner.”
The screen gave a great lurch. Something dark hurtled past, and into the depths.
“I looked up,” said Fletcher. “I couldn’t see anything but about a dozen deks. Apparently they’d floated a big rock over me and dropped it. I started the pump and headed for home.”
The screen went blank.
Damon was impressed. “I agree that they show patterns of intelligent behavior. Did you detect
any sounds?”
“Nothing. I had the recorder going all the time. Not a vibration other than the bumps on the hull.”
Damon’s face was wry with dissatisfaction. “They must communicate somehow—how could they get along otherwise?”
“Not unless they’re telepathic,” said Fletcher. “I watched carefully. They make no sounds or motions to each other—none at all.”
Manners asked, “Could they possibly radiate radio waves? Or infrared?”
Damon said glumly, “The one in the tank doesn’t.”
“Oh, come now,” said Murphy, “are there no intelligent races that don’t communicate?”
“None,” said Damon. “They use different methods—sounds, signals, radiation—but all communicate.”
“How about telepathy?” Heinz suggested.
“We’ve never come up against it; I don’t believe we’ll find it here,” said Damon.
“My personal theory,” said Fletcher, “is that they think alike, and so don’t need to communicate.”
Damon shook his head dubiously.
“Assume that they work on a basis of communal empathy,” Fletcher went on, “that this is the way they’ve evolved. Men are individualistic; they need speech. The deks are identical; they’re aware of what’s going on without words.” He reflected a few seconds. “I suppose, in a certain sense, they do communicate. For instance, a dek wants to extend the garden in front of its tower. It possibly waits till another dek comes near, then carries out a rock—indicating what it wants to do.”
“Communication by example,” said Damon.
“That’s right—if you can call it communication. It permits a measure of cooperation—but clearly no small talk, no planning for the future or traditions of the past.”
“Perhaps not even awareness of past or future; perhaps no awareness of time!” cried Damon.
“It’s hard to estimate their native intelligence. It might be remarkably high, or it might be low; the lack of communication must be a terrific handicap.”
“Handicap or not,” said Mahlberg, “they’ve certainly got us on the run.”
“And why?” cried Murphy, pounding the table with his big red fist. “That’s the question. We’ve never bothered them. And all of a sudden, Raight’s gone, and Agostino. Also our mast. Who knows what they’ll think of tonight? Why? That’s what I want to know.”
