by John Varley
I quickly googled the word, and as I had remembered, it was from Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark.” Mom used to read me to sleep with Carroll.
“I’m presuming it’s not because if you find one, you softly and suddenly vanish away,” I said.
“We don’t know that,” she said, with a smile. “Nobody’s ‘found’ one. We know they’re out there, but only within three miles or so. We haven’t tried to chase one; we don’t have that kind of range yet.”
“So you call them that because they’re elusive?”
“We don’t even know that. Hard to find, let’s say.”
“And you think they’re alive?”
“It makes sense to me, but I’m not an exobiologist. Nobody can prove anything one way or another, yet again. One day we plan to try to chase one down.”
“Nobody knows anything on this damn planet,” Dekko groused. “Even the most basic things. Is it alive, isn’t it alive? You’d think in all this time, somebody would know.”
“Sometimes the most basic questions are the hardest ones to answer.”
So, the mountains themselves, the fairy lights inside them, the boo-jums … all of them might be alive, but no one had demonstrated anything that was conclusively life as we understood it. All of them might be intelligent. Which meant, to most people, that it was simply life as we didn’t understand it, but to most people, like Dekko—like me—that wasn’t a very satisfying proposition.
We were lowered into the sealock, the cables holding us detached themselves, and the lock sealed above us. With a roar that made me jump, water under pressure began to jet into the big chamber. This was Europan water, clear as vodka, so sterile you could use it to clean wounds. I’d drunk many gallons of it, desalinated, back at Clarke. But it somehow looked alien. It was saltier than the Dead Sea, and had more minerals dissolved in it than the pools of Yellowstone. And not a trace of any of the complex chemicals we associate with life.
The doors opened below us. I strained to see between my feet. We really were crammed into a tiny pickle barrel in there, with barely room to turn around.
We started to drop. Somebody turned on the exterior lights. Outside, I could see metal walls moving upward all around us. The pipe was about a hundred feet wide, made of some bright, shiny metal, but encrusted here and there with brownish growths.
“Mineral deposits,” Scott said, shining a light on a large patch of them. “We have to clean it out once a week.”
The walls started moving faster, and I felt myself lifted out of my seat for a moment. Then the vertical metal tunnel ended and things got even brighter. I realized I was seeing ice. The hole we were dropping through was now about twice the width it had been. The ice had an undulant surface. In places it was white, like compacted snow, and in others it was translucent, and bright blue. Around us, at the four points of the compass, heavy cables hung, attached here and there to the surface of the ice. Every hundred yards or so we passed a quartet of what looked like oil drums with rotating yellow lights on top.
“Heaters,” Dr. Land explained. “We melted our way down here at first with a big hot plate sort of thing. If we don’t keep the water above a certain temperature it can freeze back again. We’re like seals in the Antarctic, keeping our breathing hole open by keeping it constantly in use.”
“Yeah, and it’ll take us all day to go down like this,” Captain Scott said. “So hold on to your valuables, I’m going to kick it into high gear.”
He moved the stick forward and the ship nosed down, then he opened up the throttle. I was pressed back into my seat for a moment, then I leaned forward and to the side to get a better view.
If they ever make a movie of my life, they’ll probably spend a lot of time on this part, because it’s a good visual. We were speeding down a narrow tube, the details of which emerged into our lights only as we neared them. I guess we could see about a hundred yards of the ice itself, but the yellow markers of the beacons stretched out quite a bit farther than that before they vanished in the gloom. I knew we had plenty of room, moving down the center as we were, and I knew we wouldn’t hit anything unless the tunnel made a turn, which it would not do. Still, the impression of headlong, reckless speed was pretty strong. I found myself gripping the armrests.
Then the whole ship rang like a gong. I felt it right down to my toes, and braced myself. Captain Scott, that rascal, leaned back toward his passengers.
“Sorry, should have warned you about that,” he said, but from the smug expression on his face I was pretty sure he wasn’t sorry at all. “Compression joint, compensating. We may get a few more before we reach bottom.”
Then, without much warning, we shot out of the bottom of the tube and Scott pulled up on the stick. We leveled out and slowed down quite a bit. Scott angled the biggest lights on the boat to point upward. I looked up there, and gasped.
It was so beautiful!
It was the Emerald City, the Big Apple, Shangri-La, and the Mother Ship from Close Encounters.
And it was all upside-down.
Crystal stalactites that dwarfed the Turtle hung from the ice above us, bigger than the biggest Navy ship, multifaceted, transparent or translucent, in all the colors of the rainbow but dominated by red and green. We cruised slowly below and among them.
“I know every one of these rocks within about two miles of the blowhole,” Scott was telling us. He pointed out some of the highlights. The Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, the Taj Mahal, Ostankino, Burj Dubai, Disney Center, Trylon and Perisphere Joburg Arcology. The Lion, the Witch, the Wardrobe. The Crown Jewels, Kilimanjaro, El Capitan, the Orb and Scepter, Culinan, Bats in the Belfry. Bugs Bunny, Golden Gate, Snow White, Pancakes and Maple Syrup, FAO Quartz, Chutes and Ladders.
All upside-down.
Sometimes I could see the resemblance, sometimes it seemed a bit of a stretch, but the names were magical whether they made sense or not. The water was so clear it might as well not have been there at all and our lights seemed to go on forever, delving into the cold hearts of these fairy structures. It was all still as death until Turtle farted a series of big bubbles that swam like quicksilver up into the maze above us, and vanished.
“All rock, of one kind or another,” Captain Scott said. “Some of that stuff looks soft as a cotton ball when you get up close, but it’s hard. Like needles. Some of those edges are sharp as a razor, too.”
“So you’ve taken samples?” Ambassador Baruti asked.
“Thousands. All perfectly normal minerals. Some of them are combinations that you won’t see much of on Earth, and since the pressure is from water and not from surrounding rock, they can grow a lot bigger than what you normally see.”
“What about quakes?” Dekko asked. “Are those things attached firmly?”
“Pretty well,” Scott said. “But chunks have been known to break loose. If we’re down here when a quake happens, we keep our eyes peeled.”
“Boojum,” Dr. Land said, quietly.
I immediately looked through all the windows I could see.
“Where? Where?” We were all jerking around like crazy.
“About … five and a half miles,” Dr. Land said, dryly. “You really figured you’d be the first to see one with the naked eye?”
They passed a sonar image to our screens, and we all watched as a vague shape appeared, moving left to right, very slowly. It was tapered at both ends, fat in the middle, longer on one end. Like the Loch Ness Monster, only no visible head or flippers. There was a line of bumps down the midline of the side we could see, maybe thirty of them.
“Five miles away,” I said, trying to read the scale on the screen.
“A small one,” Scott said. “About half a mile long.”
A small one.
“It’s moving,” the ambassador said. “Doesn’t that indicate life to you?”
“If they moved faster, sure. But we’ve never observed one moving faster than the currents down here, which never exceed about five miles per hour.
”
“Could simply be something drifting,” Dr. Land said. “Icebergs drift.”
“And the currents are erratic, and chaotic, and they churn up and down as well as laterally, and there’s miles and miles and miles to go down there before you reach bottom. Like I said, we’re just getting started down here. There’s still so much we don’t know.”
“Another one,” Dr. Land said.
This time we didn’t look around. She gave us another display, this one with the Turtle in the center. There were two dots out on the periphery, and the computer drew a vector to show us where they were headed and at what speed.
“Another,” she said. This time she sounded a little excited.
“Is that unusual?” I asked.
“A bit. We’ve never seen more than three at once.”
“Another,” Captain Scott said, quietly. The screen display changed again, the scale shrinking until all four … no, there was a fifth! All five were now on the screen, and headed more or less in the same general direction. Damn. If one had been going in the opposite direction it would have been a lot more interesting, since the computer indicated they were all in the same current.
“Extend those lines,” Scott said. Dr. Land must have done it, because the vectors on my screen extended. The scale shrank again, and now we could see all five lines intersected.
“They’re all heading for Grumpy,” Scott said.
For a moment, everything was silent.
“Is that unusual?” Dekko asked.
“I’d say so. We’ve never seen anything like this.” He put us into an abrupt turn, away from the pod of boojums, if I may call them a pod.
“Flank speed,” he said.
“Flank speed,” Dr. Land acknowledged.
“Hey,” Slomo protested. “They’re back that way!”
“Sir, you will please pipe down, or I will throw you overboard.”
“Can’t do that, Captain,” said Dr. Land. “I’d suggest throwing his cameras overboard.”
“Hey!”
“Even better.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
We all were, for the five minutes it took us to reach the area of the blowhole. A computer announced we were in radio range of the antenna that extended from the bottom.
“NEMO station, this is NEMO-II, returning to base. We’ve got some anomalous boojum activity. I’m sending the data now. I want you to prepare NEMO-VI and NEMO-I for immediate dive. Load ‘em up with all the oxygen they can carry, two crew only. I want them ready for maximum range. I’m returning to base with the tour group ASAP. Please be ready to top up my tanks, as I will be going with you. Over.”
“Roger that, Turtle. This looks real interesting.”
“You said it. I intend to try to overtake. Over.”
“Fine with me. I’ll join you in ten minutes.”
Then we were back into the tunnel, going up much faster than we went down. I kept feeling my ears ought to pop, but of course Turtle kept constant air pressure, like any sensible deep-sea submersible.
We only slowed near the top, and not all that much. We lurched to the surface, were weightless for a moment, and then NEMO crew were swarming over the ship, attaching cables, lifting us, and setting us down, and the doors were opening, and Captain Scott was hustling us up the ladder, out the hatch, and onto the freezing-cold deck. We tumbled down the steps. All around us was frantic activity, with Crocodil already being swung out, ready to be lowered into the pool. I saw two people enter the hatch of Nautilis and heard the hiss of air as it sealed.
“This way, this way, hurry please.”
We did, and soon were back at the bus bay. Our driver, oblivious to what was going on but with a satisfied look on his face, gestured to the bus.
“All ready to go, ladies and gents. I’ll have you back at Clarke in three hours.”
So we all climbed in and settled down and talked to the others about what we’d seen. I was pretty sure I’d just witnessed an historic moment, but damned if I knew what it was.
And I never did find out.
12
THE LONGEST THREE-HOUR bus ride of my life started out uneventfully enough.
We were all pretty jazzed by what had happened at NEMO, all except Cosmo, who was trying to set the record for marathon sulking. We talked about it, puzzled over it, but it was clear we wouldn’t learn much until we got back to Clarke and watched the news reports, if any. Research at Tal-iesen was still a pretty closely held affair, so there might not be much in the way of public pronouncements unless Captain Scott either established communication with a boojum, brought one back alive and hung it up in a gigantic trophy room, or lashed himself to a white one and went down, shouting, “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering boojum; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee!”
That would have to wait. When the driver said he’d have us back at Clarke in three hours, he meant a two-hour slog over the ice to the edge of the no-fly zone, then an easy hop over the frozen cue ball, and home. I curled up in the last row of seats in the back of the bus and soon was sound asleep.
* * *
I WAS AWAKENED by the tremor alarm.
“Strap in tight, folks,” the driver shouted out, cheerfully. “This looks like it might be a big one. Grumpy’s throwin’ a hissy fit again.”
I did as he asked, and waited for it. I looked out the back window, careful not to get my head too close to it so I wouldn’t get banged when the tremor hit.
Then it was there, and it was a lot more than a tremor. We bounced up and down for about ten seconds, then lateral waves hit us and I was shaken like a rag doll.
“Jesus, make it stop!” Cosmo was shouting. It takes a mighty strong ego to think God or natural forces should obey your will.
After about a minute it subsided. Soon we could only hear the residual squeaking of the springs on the tracks as the bus stabilized itself. It was very quiet for a moment, quiet enough that I could hear the driver over the PA, even though he was speaking to himself, in a whisper.
“Holy shit,” he said. I could see him up there, staring at his screens. Then he turned around and looked down the aisle straight at me, sitting there in the middle in the back. His eyes were round and his mouth was open.
I turned and looked. There was a red line edging over the horizon where Grumpy had been a little while ago. A towering white cloud was rising around it, fast enough that I could see the movement. Grumpy was at least twenty miles behind us, which made the clouds … I didn’t do the math, but they must have reached up a hundred miles or more.
“Uh … uh …” The driver was consulting his screen, which was giving him emergency instructions. The overhead racks exploded, and bright yellow emergency suits rolled out. One landed in my lap.
“Declaring an emergency. Clarke Centre, this is Bus 54, declaring an emergency. Passengers … uh, please don your emergency pressure suits at this time.” A short pause, then, “No, wait! Remove your PSU, Personal Suspension Unit, your KYAG, from your person and put it in a suit pocket, okay? Otherwise you won’t be able to reach it if you need it. Then put on your e-suits! Do it! Do it! Do it now!”
I was still looking out the back window. The red line was almost invisible again, and I realized that it was because something was rising up between us and what I had to assume was Grumpy, growing again, and at an unbelievable rate.
I got out of my straps and slipped the damn KYAG box into a suit pocket, then wiggled my legs into the emergency suit while sitting down. Ahead of me, I could see legs sticking out into the aisle as others did the same. Cosmo was standing in the aisle, shouting something I couldn’t hear. I squirmed my arms into the suit, shrugged it on, and yanked the zipper up. When it reached the top the suit sealed itself.
The e-suit was nothing more than a Podkayne-shaped insulated bag, a power pack, and a heater. Now, if we were hulled, if all the air leaked out, I’d at least be able to breathe for a few hours before I froze solid. I
reached up and found the helmet, sealed it, then found the oxygen bottle under the seat. I snapped it in place. I looked up and saw that I was the first one finished.
“Everybody strap in!” I screamed, in a blues shout that would have made Janis Joplin proud. “Strap in! There’s a really big one coming!”
I couldn’t tell if I was making any difference, but I was strapping myself down as I shouted. I looked out the window to my left and saw an amazing thing. The ice was cracking as I watched. An irregular furrow opened up and a lot of snow and loose ice tumbled into it. Just as quickly, the crack closed and sprayed ice all over us. Through the supercold mist I could see the ice on the other side of the crack grind upward, ten, twenty, thirty feet. A big hunk broke off and hit the bus with a clang.
“The hell with no-fly zones,” the driver said. “Preparing for takeoff, please strap in, please strap in, I’m boosting in thirty seconds.”
With a sickening lurch, the slab of ice we were standing on, maybe the size of a city block, tilted to a thirty-degree angle, and we started sliding nose down.
“I’m boosting in ten seconds!” the driver shouted.
We were sluing sideways now, and the view out the left side was just black sky and flying chunks of ice. The driver was going to have a real problem taking off from that angle. Straight up, I tried to reach him, tele-pathically. Straight up, and then a hard, hard, hard yaw to the left, nose up …
We slued right again, and the ice under us tilted almost to ninety degrees. We were plunging headfirst toward a gigantic ice crusher.
“Firing!” the driver shouted. I was pressed back into my seat at about two gees. For once, I wanted more, and the driver apparently heard my plea because we accelerated even harder. He was putting more thrust into the nose than the stern, and we were evening out. Then we were leveling, then the nose was up. We climbed, and I began to think we were going to be okay.
That’s when the flying iceberg hit us. It was a glancing blow, in the front. I saw the forward port-side windshield star crazily, saw the driver lifted out of his seat to smash his head on the bulkhead above him. He had been pulled right out of his straps. He had his e-suit on, but hadn’t had time for the helmet, or he’d forgotten. Then I hit my own head on something, I don’t know what. It rang my bell pretty hard.
