Amid the Crowd of Stars

by Stephen Leigh

But once inside the cave . . .

  The water gentled and cleared; even with the wan light entering from the cave entrance, Ichiko could see light within the water itself as her eyes adjusted, glowing as if disturbed whenever the oars Saoirse held swept through the water. Swirls of radiant blue and green drifted behind and around them and the cavern walls were streaked with the same radiance. And when Ichiko looked down . . .

  It was as if they were drifting in azure air over a deep and craggy canyon, and all along the canyon walls there was life and movement: creatures swimming in and out of what were obviously nonnatural structures, buildings with windows and openings that also glowed with the same phosphorescence. It was difficult to discern scale, but to Ichiko it seemed she was gazing impossibly up toward a night sky crowded with stars, but then the image shifted. No, she was looking down from above to a nighttime city, the canyon walls like the flanks of skyscrapers with their windows all alight.

  A city . . . The implications hit Ichiko then, as Saoirse grounded their boat on a rocky ledge at the rear of the cave. Saoirse leaped out and wrapped a rope from the prow around a nearby rock as Ichiko covertly thought to AMI.

  AMI replied. That was as far as AMI got. There was a sound of static in Ichiko’s head and the sense of AMI’s presence vanished, leaving a strange emptiness behind.

  There was no answer. She glanced at her finger: the gleam of the connection to AMI was gone. Ichiko could see Saoirse waiting for her to leave the boat. My bio-shield . . . Suddenly frightened, Ichiko put her hand on the boat’s gunwale, afraid she was going to feel the wet wood there. But she felt nothing, only the pressure of the shield keeping her from actually making contact. She took a grateful breath that, as usual, tasted of canned air. She stood, stepping out of the boat and onto the ledge.

  She felt disoriented and overwhelmed. Saoirse had already told her the arracht had the gift of language, but then many animals—whales, porpoises, apes—also had vocalizations that allowed them to communicate with each other. But this, this underwater city inside the Sleeping Wolf . . .

  There was only one answer to that: the arracht were likely sentient in a very humanlike manner. They were builders and architects; they were technological at least to some degree—the first such species that humankind had encountered. Ichiko remembered classes on alien life that she’d attended prior to leaving on Odysseus. There, the professors had cited four qualities that, according to them, distinguished humankind from animals: 1) the ability to invent words and concepts and thus create entirely new expressions and concepts; 2) the ability to take differing areas of knowledge such as friendship and sex and generate new social relationships and technologies; 3) the ability to use mental symbols like written language as a way to encode and transmit experiences; 4) the ability to think abstractly and thus contemplate things beyond our current range of experience.

  She wondered if this was alien life that fit those parameters and, if so, what that meant going forward. In fairness, she also remembered other professors scoffing at that list of qualities and claiming the qualities cited were too human-centric and that we might not even recognize another intelligent life-form if we came across it.

  Saoirse was staring down into the water from the ledge’s drop-off. “Kekeki’s coming to us now,” she said, pointing downward. Ichiko moved alongside her, following Saoirse’s gesture. She could see one of the arracht rising rapidly toward them. Like many of the Lupusian animals, it had six limbs with a horizontal tail fluke at the rear of its sinuous body. As the arracht breached, Ichiko took an involuntary step backward.

  Water slid in sheets from the shell-like carapace over its head, a saturated ultramarine splashed with yellow-and-green patches of plotch. Twin eyestalks twitched, the several eyes in each—golden with black slits for pupils—moving independently as the creature surveyed them. It continued to rise from the water, towering meters above them. On its underside, lacy red gills waved in long furrows in paler skin. Finally, the two top arms emerged to grasp the rocks of the ledge with the tangle of tentacles at the arms’ ends.

  But there was no AMI to record the sight and send the footage of the arracht up to Odysseus. Ichiko was cut off and alone. Her breath was coming fast, her pulse pounding in her temples. The parrotlike beak below the carapace opened, revealing a blood-colored tongue, and Ichiko heard a loud sequence of clicks and hissing whistles.

  “Aye,” she heard Saoirse say to Kekeki as if answering a question. “That’s Ichiko, and neh, she doesn’t look like any of the Inish.”

  “Kekeki’s talking to you?” Ichiko asked. “And the two of you understand each other? How?”

  “Aye, we’re talking, but the ‘how’ I don’t really understand meself,” Saoirse answered. “I hear Kekeki talking like an Inisher in me head, and I suppose I sound like an arracht in hers.”

  Kekeki simply watched them, one eyestalk appearing to be fixed on Ichiko, the other on Saoirse, making Ichiko wonder how the arracht viewed the world. Kekeki spoke again and Ichiko waited for Saoirse to translate. “Kekeki wants me to tell yeh that they cut the false creature from yeh so that we could talk privately and that yeh shouldn’t be afraid.”

  “Tell her that the ‘false creature’ isn’t a person but just a tool like the boats you Inish use or your nets and fishing gear. It helps me remember things and communicate with our ship.”

  Saoirse repeated the words to Kekeki, who lowered herself briefly into the water and reemerged again with a torrent of clicks and airy tones. “Kekeki says yeh have no idea what that creature in yer head actually is now. She also says yeh’ll have to remember on yer own and yeh can talk to yer ship again after yeh leave here. And she says that, aye, it’s the plotch that allows her to talk to the Inish. She asks if yeh don’t have other living beings that are part of yeh or do yeh only use the false creatures yeh’ve built?”

  Kekeki was still staring at her with the eyes of one eyestalk. Ichiko was shaking her head, not certain how to answer Kekeki’s question or even if she should. Yes, every human harbors other life-forms inside: bacteria in our guts and mouths, demodex mites living in our eyelashes, disease viruses that are active or dormant, and more. She had no idea if that’s what Kekeki meant or how to even start to explain that. She tried to imagine what Nagasi or Captain Keshmiri might tell her. They’d likely give me conflicting advice. All I can do is respond to her as best I can.

  “Tell her that the answer’s both yes and no,” she said to Saoirse, who started to repeat the words to Kekeki. “All humans have symbiotic creatures living on and inside us that interact with us in a mutually beneficial or just neutral way, if that’s what Kekeki means. Bacteria in our stomach and intestines help us digest and get nourishment from what we eat, for example—and the Lupusians have the same. But some of those bacteria and viruses are parasitic or actively harmful. They can also make us sick or even kill us. Tell her that I don’t know enough to give her a good answer—but I could let her talk to someone on our ship who knows much more about this than I do, if she gives me back the ‘false creature’ she took away.”

  Kekeki was answering before Ichiko finished, Saoirse translating. “Yeh don’t understand what she was asking. Yeh can’t hear the words of other species. Yeh have nothing like plotch to create a linkage for yeh.”

  As Kekeki’s beak snapped shut, her nearest arm moved before Ichiko could respond, the fingerlike tentacles at the end wrapping around her head. She felt the impact, making her take a step backward, even though her bio-shield prevented the tentacles from actually touching her. “No!” Ichiko shouted. “You shouldn’t . . .” The bio-shield snapped and crackled, sparks visible in the darkness. Kekeki hissed, and the tentacles slipped away as her arm fell back to the ledge. Kekeki loosed another barrage of clicks and hisses.

  “Yeh hide yerself away inside that false shell,” Kekeki answered through Saoirse. “
No wonder yeh can’t understand. If yeh truly want to know this world, yeh must abandon that shell.” Her eyestalk wriggled as a quick flash of red rippled through her body. “We could strip it from yeh now, if yeh wish,” Saoirse translated. Ichiko could see the distress in Saoirse’s face at saying that.

  Ichiko felt a quick thrill of terror. “No,” Ichiko said, loudly enough that the word reverberated from the cavern walls. “That’s not permitted. There are things in this world that could kill me and my people if I returned with them.”

  “Yeh’ve already said that there are things in yer world that are already capable of killing yeh.” Even through Saoirse’s voice, Ichiko could sense amusement in the statement. “How is that any different? Yer just afraid of this world because yeh don’t know it.”

  “There’s some truth in that,” Ichiko admitted.

  “Kekeki, yeh don’t understand.” That was Saoirse, speaking directly to Kekeki. “There are many of us here who would like to visit Earth or perhaps even return there permanently. But the sky-people—the Terrans—won’t let any of us return to Earth until they know that we’re not bringing diseases from here with us. Those same diseases nearly killed all of us when we first exposed ourselves to this world. That’s why Ichiko wears the ‘false shell,’ as yeh call it. If yeh took it away, that means she might be forced to stay here. It could mean she’d might die as a result.”

  Kekeki’s eyestalks flicked toward Saoirse, uttering a short series of sounds in the arracht tongue. Saoirse glanced over to Ichiko. “She asks if that would be so terrible,” Saoirse said. Then she looked directly at Kekeki and answered. “Aye, t’would be to Ichiko, and I won’t let yeh do it.”

  Again, the arracht spoke, and Saoirse glanced at Ichiko as she translated again. “She says, ‘Yeh couldn’t stop us, but we won’t do that without her permission.’” Saoirse shrugged.

  “Then tell her ‘thank you’ for me,” Ichiko said. Her feeling of panic receded, though it remained lurking at the back of her mind.

  Ichiko heard another burst of the arracht language, and Saoirse looked at her.

  “Kekeki’s asking if I want to go back to Earth?” Saoirse smiled at that. “Aye, I do, and Ichiko already knows that.” The arracht uttered another sequence in its own language. “Kekeki wants to know if yer people have already made the decision about us,” Saoirse said.

  Ichiko hesitated before she answered. “No. Not yet. We’re still studying things.” However, the conversation was drifting into a dangerous direction for her. “Ask Kekeki this: what did she hope to accomplish through this meeting? And you can tell her that I now look forward to telling my superiors on Odysseus that we’ve found another fully sentient race. That’s incredibly exciting news for us.” At least I hope so . . .

  “We wanted to know yeh better,” Kekeki answered through Saoirse. “That’s all.”

  Something in the way Kekeki was speaking had been nagging at Ichiko, and the realization came suddenly. “You keep using plurals when talking about yourself,” she said. “At least that’s how Saoirse’s translating your speech. You speak of ‘we,’ not ‘I.’”

  Saoirse repeated Ichiko’s words to Kekeki. “Then yer like the Inish and the Mainlanders,” Saoirse translated as Kekeki answered. “That’s good for us to know. They, too, consider themselves individuals.”

  “And the arracht don’t?”

  “Not in yer sense. We—or to use yer word, I, though that word makes no sense to us—am simply the Speaker to the Four-Limb Land Walkers—the ‘eki,’ which is what we call your people—and now yeh sky-people, too, since yeh are like Saoirse’s people. The one you call Kekeki is no more than that. Would yeh expect Saoirse to make decisions for the sky-people? No—she, like this one, is simply the conduit through which we can communicate. But we, all arracht, aren’t individuals. We are components of a Jishtal, a gestalt. They can all listen to us now as we talk if they wish to. So tell us, Ichiko, are yeh sky-people more like the Inish and Mainlanders or more like us? Are yer people different enough from the Inish and Mainlanders that we should have another Speaker for yer people? If we asked yeh to make a decision for all Terrans, could yeh do that?”

  Ichiko shook her head, though she doubted that the gesture meant anything to Kekeki, and she wondered at the question itself. “No,” she told the arracht. “I would have to pass your request along to Captain Keshmiri, who commands our ship. She is . . . she is like our Banríon. Depending on what decision you asked us to make, she might first have to consult with her own superiors back on Earth, though that would take over a century in local years—and we can’t remain here anywhere near that long.”

  “Ah, that’s so inefficient. Just as Saoirse would have to ask her mam, and the Banríon might have to ask someone else, yeh also have to ask other individuals. We wondered. We thought that perhaps yeh had brought the Inish and Mainlanders here to this world because they were flawed and yeh wanted us to change them.”

  Ichiko looked at Saoirse and smiled. “They’re not flawed,” she said. “Just look at Saoirse herself. She’s far from flawed.” Saoirse visibly blushed at Ichiko’s smile and the comment. She went silent. “Go on,” Ichiko said to her. “Tell Kekeki what I just said.”

  Saoirse turned to Kekeki and repeated Ichiko’s words, her cheeks still colored. “As we said, if Ichiko and her people ever truly want to understand this world,” Kekeki responded, “they must abandon their shells and embrace the changes that would result.”

  Ichiko shook her head again at that. “That won’t happen,” Ichiko answered. “Your world and ours aren’t compatible. Too many of us would die as a result. And for anyone who did that and survived, that would likely mean a life sentence on this planet.”

  Ichiko didn’t dare look at Saoirse after that last statement, not wanting to see the disappointment in Saoirse’s face, knowing she would understand the implication.

  “One individual’s death or welfare doesn’t matter if it ultimately benefits all,” was Kekeki’s response through Saoirse. “We allowed the Inish and the Mainlanders to kill a few of us until we saw that doing so threatened all those of the Jishtal—not just arracht, but the others who also carry what yeh eki call plotch. We couldn’t allow that, so we killed the other humans in return when they tried to hunt us—though we left the Inish in peace. They’d stopped hunting us on their own when we saved some of them; in turn, they helped to end the Mainlanders’ hunts. But yeh, yeh already know of us and what we are. Would yeh harm us? That’s what we want to know from yeh.”

  The whales . . . My people hunted them for years and years, and even after that was outlawed by the rest of the world, we continued to kill them. “No, I certainly wouldn’t willingly harm you. But I can only make that promise myself, as a single individual.”

  “We know enough of yer people to realize that an individual’s promise means very little since it doesn’t require any other individual to keep that promise.”

  “I’ll speak to my superiors on the ship and tell them what you’ve said. If the captain says she won’t harm you, you can believe her, and she would order everyone from our ship to follow her order.”

  Kekeki sank below the surface of the water again, bubbles rising and popping where she’d been. Ichiko wondered if she were simply breathing or if there was some other meaning she was missing. She started to ask Saoirse, then Kekeki lifted her bulk again from the water, sending a shallow wave across the ledge that swept over Saoirse’s boots but failed to touch Ichiko at all.

  “Then talk to yer superiors and tell us what they say. We’ll wait to hear from yeh before we make our own decisions.”

  “Your decisions about what?” Ichiko asked, but before Saoirse could repeat the words, Kekeki let herself fall back into the water once again. This time Ichiko could see the arracht swimming away, back down toward the starlike lights and movement below.

  * * *

  “A life sentence on
this world.” Saoirse repeated Ichiko’s words as she rowed out from the arracht’s cavern and into the swells of the Storm Sea. She’d said very little after Kekeki’s departure until the prow of the currach began to lift and sway as they left the cave’s protection. She stared at Ichiko, seated in the boat’s stern. “So the decision’s been made, and that’s what we all of us here face: a life sentence on Canis Lupus? Is that what yeh haven’t told me?”

  “There’s still been no final decision as far as I know,” Ichiko said, though Saoirse noticed that the Terran avoided looking directly at her.

  “But . . . ?” Saoirse prodded.

  “I’ve been told that the Lupusians in the isolation ward aboard Odysseus haven’t lost the native viruses and bacteria they carry. We’ve had little-to-no success neutralizing them with our antibiotics. You Lupusians still have the potential of infecting those who haven’t developed a resistance through previous exposure. Therefore, Captain Keshmiri has ordered that all Lupusians must remain isolated from the ship’s environment.” Ichiko’s face suddenly had that faraway look she had when she was listening to the voices in her head, and Saoirse saw her glance at her hand, where one finger gleamed fitfully. “Kekeki kept her promise. My AMI’s back,” she said. “She tells me there’s been no change in any of that, but the captain still hasn’t officially announced anything regarding Lupusian repatriation.”

  “That’s just wonderful, then,” Saoirse said flatly. “I guess I’m still allowed to dream of going to Earth—even if it’s just a stupid, hopeless dream.” Saoirse continued to pull at the oars, dragging them through the long, blue-green swells of the channel between the Sleeping Wolf and Great Inish. Returning to the island was easier, as they were traveling mostly with the currents. In the distance, Saoirse could see several Inish currachs fishing out near the Stepstones. She wondered if her Uncle Angus and Liam were out there with them. Ichiko said very little, often looking behind her toward the Sleeping Wolf. Blue light continued to glow between the fingertips on Ichiko’s lap. Saoirse realized Ichiko was “talking” to AMI and telling it about their meeting with Kekeki.