Leviathans of Jupiter (16 page)

Mrs. Westfall reclined on the couch behind the coffee table, looking as if she were posing for a fashion 'zine.

Deirdre picked up an aroma of … flowers? There weren't any flowers in the room. Deirdre thought there might not be any flowers anywhere aboard the research station. But when you're rich, she understood, you can have the scent of flowers wherever you go. Or anything else you want.

“Deirdre Ambrose,” Westfall said, from the couch. “I am Katherine Westfall.”

“I recognized you from the news nets,” said Deirdre.

“Please do sit down. Would you like some juice? It's a mix of orange and mango. Quiet nutritious, and very tasty.”

“Thank you.”

When Mrs. Westfall made no move to pour the juice, Deirdre picked up the pitcher and did it herself.

“I'll join you,” said Westfall. Deirdre poured a cup for her.

Katherine Westfall took a measured sip of the juice, then said to Deirdre, “I've heard about your medical condition.”

“Oh?”

“Rabies. Very unusual. It could be troublesome if it's not treated.”

“It could be fatal,” Deirdre said, in a low voice.

Westfall nodded. “Back on Earth there was some rumor about a biology laboratory that developed a genetically engineered form of rabies.”

Surprised, Deirdre asked, “Why would anyone do that?”

Westfall smiled thinly. “Scientists. They're always into something. Like little boys digging in a mud puddle.”

Do I have a gengineered version of rabies? Deirdre wondered.

Westfall's smile faded. “I understand that you accused Dr. Pohan of deliberately infecting you.”

“Oh! Well, I'm not sure it was deliberate. But the only way I could have contracted the infection was from the needle he used for my blood test, when I first came aboard the
Australia
.”

“The accusation upset him terribly.”

Not knowing what else to say, Deirdre murmured, “I'm sorry for that.”

More forcefully, Westfall said, “He'll get over it. The question now is, how can we treat your condition? Especially if it's an artificially mutated form of the virus?”

“I discussed that with the medical staff earlier today,” Deirdre said. “They're developing the necessary vaccine. Dorn has volunteered his blood.”

“The cyborg,” Westfall said, with obvious distaste.

Deirdre nodded.

“Well,” Westfall said, “I want you to know that I am personally looking into your problem. If there's anything you need, anything I can do for you, don't hesitate to ask.”

“Why … that's very kind of you.”

“Not at all.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Westfall.”

Katherine Westfall nodded graciously. Then she said, “Now tell me what your own work is all about.”

Thrown off-kilter by the sudden change of subject, Deirdre confessed, “I don't really know. Not yet. I have a meeting with Dr. Archer in about an hour.…”

Her face hardening slightly, Westfall said, “Do you mean that you've come all this way without knowing what you are expected to do? Or why?”

“It seems strange, doesn't it? We got a message that they needed a microbiologist here at station
Gold
and I was asked to fill the position.”

“But what will you be doing? Why does Archer want a microbiologist?”

Deirdre shook her head. “I don't know. Not yet.”

Her flawless brow wrinkling, Westfall said, “I'd appreciate it if you told me about it, once you find out. As a member of the IAA council, I want to be kept informed about the work going on here.”

“I'm sure Dr. Archer will—”

“Not Dr. Archer,” Westfall said, steel in her voice. “You. I want you to keep me informed on what's going on here. Fully informed.”

“Me?”

“You. And don't let Archer know that you're reporting to me.”

“But I—”

Westfall's cobra smile returned. “Keep me informed and I'll do everything I can to help cure your infection. Do we understand one another?”

GRANT ARCHER'S OFFICE

Her mind still spinning from Katherine Westfall's demand, Deirdre realized as she sat facing Dr. Archer that his beard made him appear older than the rest of his face suggested.

Grant Archer's office looked more like a comfortable sitting room than an executive's headquarters. No desk, just an eclectic scattering of chairs, two of them recliners—which Deirdre instinctively avoided. The walls were glowing, soft gray smart screens.

The station's director was sitting in a slightly tattered old armchair, his feet propped on a round ottoman that looked to Deirdre as if it might originally have been a small oil drum. Now it was covered in putty-gray upholstered faux leather. A little table of clear plastic stood beside his chair; what looked like an electronic remote-control wand rested on it.

“I really appreciate your coming all the way out here on such short notice,” Archer was saying.

“The scholarship you're offering is a very strong incentive,” she said.

Archer shrugged. “It's the least we can do. We're in something of a bind. We suddenly lost the microbiologist who was scheduled to join our staff and—”

“Frieda Nordstrum?” Deirdre asked.

He looked surprised. “From Selene University, yes. Did you know her?”

Deirdre hesitated, then said, “Only by reputation.”

“Her death was a surprise to us all,” Archer said.

“Rabies,” said Deirdre.

He nodded somberly.

“I've come down with it, too.”

“Yes. I saw your medical file. How in the world did you ever contract rabies?”

Deirdre hesitated. “I don't know,” she said. That was the truth, she told herself. The rest is suspicion, guesses.

“Our people here will take care of you, don't worry,” Archer said easily.

Deirdre wondered if she should ask him about Katherine Westfall's mentioning a genetically engineered form of the virus.

Before she could make up her mind, though, Archer brightened and said, “Well now, we ought to talk about what you'll be doing with our team.”

“I was wondering why you want a microbiologist.”

“To tell you the truth, Ms. Ambrose, I'm clutching at a straw. And I have an ulterior motive for asking specifically for you, as well.”

“I don't understand.”

“You've done some work on
Volvox,
haven't you?”

Deirdre replied, “
Volvox aureus,
yes. I did my master's thesis on that.”

“That's why you're here,” Archer said. “One of the reasons, at least. Frieda Nordstrum was the world authority on
Volvox.
”

Blinking with surprise, Deirdre objected, “
Volvox
are colonies of single-celled algae. What makes you so interested in them?”

“The leviathans,” said Archer.

“Those giant whales in Jupiter's ocean? I don't see what they've got to do with
Volvox.
”

“Those giant whales,” Archer said, “are colonies of smaller units. It's hard to believe, but they are actually like
Volvox
and the Portuguese man-of-war: creatures that are composed of specialized independent organisms, living together cooperatively. I believe it's called symbiosis.”

It took Deirdre a moment to digest that idea. Archer was smiling at her. It makes him appear quite youthful, Deirdre thought, gray hair or no.

Mistaking her silence for disbelief, Archer said, “I'm not a biologist of any stripe, but I was hoping that you might use what you know of
Volvox
to help us understand the leviathans.”

Deirdre had to suppress a laugh. With a shake of her head, she replied, “A colony of fifty thousand
Volvox
algae might make a ball about half a millimeter in diameter. Those whales—”

“Leviathans,” Archer corrected.

“Those leviathans are
kilometers
across, aren't they? The size of mountains?”

“And then some.”

“So where's the connection?” Deirdre asked. “How can microscopic algae help you understand those enormous Jovian creatures?”

Archer's face settled into a thoughtful pucker. “As I understand your little bugs—”

“Algae.”

“Algae,” he conceded, with a dip of his chin. “As I understand it, their colonies have some specialized cells: flagella for propulsion, eyespots that sense light, that sort of thing.”

“They have sexual cells, too,” said Deirdre.

“They do? I thought they reproduced by fissioning.”

“Also through sex. But alone. One colony can contain both sexes. They don't have to find a partner.”

Archer rubbed at his beard. “We've seen the leviathans disassembling, coming apart into component units which then bud off new units. And then they all reunite to form two beasts where there's been only one before.”

“You've observed that?”

Without answering, Archer picked up the remote control unit on the table beside his chair and pointed it at one of the wall screens.

“It's very rare,” he said. “We've been studying the leviathans for more than twenty years and we've only seen this once. Of course, we can't get down into that ocean and watch them continuously…”

The screen showed a murky expanse. Deirdre could barely make out several shadowy forms moving through the gloom.

“Leviathans,” Archer said, in a voice that was little short of awestruck.

A tiny red line appeared at the bottom of the screen, no more than three millimeters long, Deirdre judged.

“That scale line represents a hundred meters,” Archer said. “A little longer than the length of an American football field.”

Deirdre blinked. “Then the animals must be…”

“On the order of ten kilometers long. Roughly the size of Manhattan Island.”

“Oh my!”

Archer smiled tightly. “Indeed.”

The picture suddenly cleared considerably. Deirdre could see the nearest animal in some detail now.

“Switched sensors to the sonar. We get better imagery with sound than we do with any frequency of light.”

“How deep are they?”

“This is about seven hundred kilometers below the surface.”

“Seven hundred…” Deirdre began to understand the awe in Archer's voice.

“This was recorded by one of our submersibles. Unmanned, of course.”

Seven hundred kilometers deep, Deirdre thought. No human being could survive at that depth, not even in the best submersible anyone could build. But then she remembered that Max Yeager boasted of designing a sub that could carry a human crew down to the depths where the leviathans swam.

As if he could read her thoughts, Archer said, “We've just about completed a new submersible that will be crewed. Five people, maximum.”

“Dr. Yeager designed it,” Deirdre said.

“That's right. He's come out here to check out the final details of the construction. He was on the ship coming in with you, wasn't he?”

She nodded. On the screen, the massive leviathan seemed to be falling apart. As it swam through the dark sea it began to break up. Deirdre saw bits and pieces of the animal floating off independently. What looked like flippers slipped away first, then broad chunks of the beast's hide and inner parts that she could not identify.

“Disassembling,” Archer said. “This is when they're vulnerable to the sharks. Predators. They're much smaller than the leviathans, but very fast. Big teeth.”

A trio of what had been fins floated closer. Suddenly they began to shudder; the shaking grew more and more violent.

“The waves they send through the water when they bud like that is what attracts the sharks,” Archer said.

They watched for more than an hour as the individual bits fissioned, dividing into two. And then began to unite again, to reassemble.

“Endosymbiosis,” Deirdre murmured.

She stared at the screen, fascinated, as the hundreds of separate units slowly linked together into two complete leviathans and finally swam off side by side into the murky distance. The screen went blank.

“That was a lucky one,” Archer said, sitting up straighter in his chair. “No sharks found them.”

“That's how they reproduce,” Deirdre said.

“But how do they accomplish it?” Archer asked, staring intently at the empty screen. “How do they know when to dissociate? How do the separate units know how to get together to form a new animal? Do both of the new ones share the knowledge, the memories of the original?”

She shook her head. “I still don't see how studying
Volvox
could help you. They're so different.…”

With a smile that was almost shy, Archer admitted, “Well, now we come to my ulterior motive for picking you.”

“Your ulterior motive?” Deirdre asked.

“You have something of a reputation in
Chrysalis II
as a visual artist.”

She felt her jaw drop. “Visual artist? You mean those little murals I've painted?”

“And the digital imagery you've created,” Archer said. “I've seen those, too. You're quite good.”

Confused, Deirdre asked, “You want me to decorate the station?”

“No, no.” Archer laughed. Hunching closer to her, he said, “You see, the leviathans apparently communicate in visual imagery. I thought a woman with your talents for visual imagery might be helpful to us.”

With that, Archer picked up the remote control again. The wall screens on both sides of the office suddenly were filled with images of the leviathans flashing colors at one another: cool green, bright yellow, intense red. It was like being in the dolphin tank again, Deirdre thought. They were surrounded by the immense leviathans, swimming placidly in Jupiter's ocean, flashing colored lights back and forth.