Leviathans of Jupiter (41 page)

As Devlin began to move back toward the kitchen, Torre clutched at the sleeve of his stained chef's jacket.

“Those nanos I gave you … what did you do with them?”

Putting on an innocent expression, Devlin said, “Oh, them? I took 'em myself.”

“Yourself?”

“Yeah. They're harmless, aren't they?”

“Well, not altogether…”

“You mean they're
not
harmless?”

Torre whispered harshly, “I told you they can act on the gastric juices in the stomach.”

“Yeah, yeah, but it'd take them forty-eight hours to show any symptoms.”

“They're not symptoms!” Torre snapped. “Not unless something goes wrong.”

Devlin patted him on the shoulder. “Now what could possibly go wrong, chum? Huh?”

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Deirdre watched, wide eyed, as the sharks seemed to leap closer in her console's central screen. She tapped at the keypad symbols and slaved her sensor display to one of the screens on Dorn's console so he could watch what she was viewing without turning to look at her console.

Andy was frozen in place behind Yeager, who was bending slightly forward, just to Dorn's left.

“Hold on,” Dorn said calmly. “This might get violent.”

Deirdre wormed her bare feet more firmly into the deck loops and grasped the handgrips on her console.

Faraday
was hurtling toward the band of sharks. Deirdre counted six of them on her console screen, bulleting single-mindedly toward the remnants of what had been a huge leviathan.

That's their food, she thought. We're trying to stop them from eating. We're interfering in the natural order of this world. But then she looked again at Andy's face, his soft blue eyes wide, his cute lopsided grin replaced by open-mouthed anxiety. Andy's here to study the leviathans, Deirdre told herself. If we let the sharks eat this one we'll have to go deeper and try to find another.

Max growled, “Get 'em, Dorn. Blast right into them.”

Instead of being wary of attacking the sharks, Max was suddenly belligerent, aggressive.

“Bang into my baby, will you?” Yeager snarled, his voice deepening into an oath of vengeance. “We'll show you!”

Dorn glanced over his shoulder at Yeager and shook his head.

The sharks suddenly seemed to become aware of
Faraday
charging at them. They veered from their course and split up, heading in all directions. Several of them raced out of the screen's view.
Faraday
zoomed past them, then Dorn swerved the ship into a tight turn. Deirdre swayed so hard one of her hands slipped free of the grip on the console's face.

They were heading back toward the sharks, which appeared to be milling about confusedly. Then a pair of them turned toward
Faraday.

“They're going to ram us!” Corvus yelped.

“The hell they are,” Yeager growled, leaning over Dorn's shoulder, his finger extended, ready to press one of the console's keypads.

Dorn slapped his hand away. “I'll handle it,” he said, without looking up from his screen.

The sharks were on a collision course, so close their streamlined bodies filled the screen. Deirdre braced for a crash.

“Now!” Yeager bellowed, and Dorn mashed his prosthetic hand on the keypad that fired the electron guns.

Deirdre's screen filled with a blue-white flash that almost blinded her. Blinking tears away, she saw both sharks thrashing, convulsing.

“That got 'em,” Yeager exulted.

But not for long. The sharks writhed and flailed erratically for a few minutes, then straightened out and began to swim normally again.

“Where are the others?” Corvus asked.

The screen's view widened to show the other sharks gobbling at the dismembered pieces of the leviathan. Deirdre noticed that several of the pieces had come together; the creature was already rebuilding itself.

Without a word Dorn arrowed the ship toward the greedily feeding sharks. They sensed the danger and broke off, splitting up into separate pairs. They run in pairs, Deirdre thought. They never move alone.

Again
Faraday
charged at the confused sharks. This time all four of them converged on the ship, hurtling toward it at frightening speed.

Dorn waited until Deirdre was certain they would collide with the sharks, then hit the electron gun button again. Again the blue-white flash and again the sharks twisted away, dazed.

But only temporarily. Within minutes the six of them had reorganized and were swimming normally once more. Dorn maneuvered
Faraday
between their formation and the reassembling pieces of the leviathan.

*   *   *

Consciousness returned to Leviathan slowly. At first it could sense nothing but the unutterable pleasure of fissioning. No organized thoughts, no memories, no fears: nothing but the sensual delight of creating two from one.

Then recombination. The ancient rhythm of joining, of coming together, of connecting. Brain and gills. Mouth parts and inner organs. Sensor members and strong, steadfast flagella.

Almost complete. Leviathan remembered who it was, remembered the Symmetry and the Kin and—the darters.

Another member of the Kin swam nearby. It was Leviathan also. They flashed recognition images to each other, orange and pale yellow. The Symmetry had been preserved. The budding was complete. Now there were two where only one had existed before.

But what of the darters?

Like awakening from a dream, Leviathan began to search about itself. The darters were moving in when the dissociation began. We were in danger. How…?

Leviathan and its replicate sensed the darters out there, close enough to stir the water with their thrashing. And something else.

The alien. That strange spherical hard-shelled alien was charging at the darters. At them! It was between the pack of darters and the Leviathan and its replicate, attacking the predators. Or were the darters attacking the alien? Leviathan saw harsh blue-white sparks flash in the water and the darters raced away from the alien, one of them convulsing wildly as the others backed off.

The alien is protecting us! Leviathan realized. But now the darters were attacking it. The alien needed protection now.

Without needing to communicate with its replicate, Leviathan drove straight at the darters, its replicate at its side. Simultaneously they bawled the undulating note that rose and fell in perfect unison, the bellowing overpowering profoundly deep bass note that reverberated through the water like the voice of doom.

CONTACT

“What the hell is that?” Yeager bellowed as the deep thrumming sound reverberated through
Faraday
's cramped bridge.

Deirdre clapped her hands over her ears. The sound was painful.

Dorn ran his fingers across the electronic keyboard of his main console. “Turning off the sonar and the exterior microphones,” he muttered.

Deirdre could barely hear him through the overwhelming blare. The sound undulated through the bridge, rising and falling, an impossibly deep bass pulsation that rattled the bones and shook the insides of the four humans. Deirdre felt as if her lungs were about to burst.

Corvus pointed a quavering finger at Dorn's central screen. Deirdre saw his lips moving but she couldn't make out his words. Looking at the screen, she saw that the sharks were swimming away as fast as they could, fleeing the overpowering sound.

“It's coming from the leviathans,” Deirdre said, barely able to hear her own voice. She felt as if her head was stuffed with thick goo, as if she were going deaf.

Max was wincing with pain, Andy had clamped his hands over his ears and was shaking his head in misery. Dorn remained stolidly at his post before the main control console. The noise didn't seem to be affecting him as much as the others, Deirdre thought.

Abruptly the sound shut off. Deirdre felt it rather than heard it. The pressure inside her head suddenly disappeared, although her ears were throbbing with the pain of it.

“They're gone,” Dorn said. She heard his perfluorocarbon-deepened voice as if through a pair of pillows stuffed against her ears.

The sharks had left the area. Dorn's central screen showed no sign of them, only the two massive leviathans. Deirdre read the numbers from the ranging laser displayed across the bottom of the screen: The creatures were twelve kilometers away, but still so huge that they loomed like a pair of giant monsters.

“They drove the sharks away,” Corvus said, with awe in his voice.

Max Yeager rubbed at the bridge of his nose with both index fingers. “Damned near split my skull,” he muttered.

Their voices were still muffled in Deirdre's ears, but she could hear them well enough now.

Dorn said, “They're coming closer.”

*   *   *

Leviathan and its replicate edged closer to the alien. Strange, thought Leviathan, the replicate does exactly what we do. Then it thought, Of course. It is us. A duplicate of us. Or are we a duplicate of it? Which of us is the original, which the replicate?

It didn't matter. In time the two leviathans would change as they faced different life experiences. It is all part of the Symmetry, Leviathan told itself. We begin as a unity but diverge as we learn and grow.

The alien seemed quiescent now. It floated before them, inert and seeming almost dead except for the narrow beam of light that lanced from its skin and splashed against the hides of the two leviathans, first one and then the other.

It's not dead, Leviathan realized. But it is strangely dark.

It was perfectly spherical, although studded with finlike appendages, Leviathan's sensor parts reported. Its skin was hard, unyielding; it echoed back the sound waves the sensors beamed at it with no absorption at all.

It must be intelligent, Leviathan thought. It attacked the darters when we were dissociated and vulnerable. It protected us. Why?

Leviathan flashed questions to the alien. Who are you? Why are you here?

The alien remained dark, except for that one narrow beam of light.

*   *   *

“I wish we had bigger screens,” Deirdre said.

Yeager nodded, his eyes fastened on Dorn's central display as the leviathans swam closer. “I should have plastered the whole interior bulkhead with screens,” he said.

The gigantic creatures were coming so close that the screens could no longer show all of their enormous bulk. Deirdre saw that their massive bodies were studded with oarlike appendages. And eyes! Those must be eyes, she realized. Hundreds of them running the length of their bodies. And all of them looking at us. It made her blood run cold.

Suddenly the flanks of both leviathans lit up with a display of bright colors: red, yellow, green, bright periwinkle blue.

“Wow!” Corvus goggled at their display.

“That's not false color from the visual subprogram,” Yeager shouted. “That's real!”

“Activating the visual cameras,” Dorn said. Even his voice trembled a little.

The images shifted, changed, colors coming and going, shapes altering, transforming before their staring eyes.

“They're showing off for us,” Corvus said.

Deirdre suddenly understood what was happening. “No,” she said, feeling a trembling excitement. “They're trying to talk to us!”

COMMUNICATION

“Talk to us?” Yeager asked, incredulous.

“That's the way they communicate with each other,” Deirdre said. “Visually. Through images.”

“That's why we have the display panels on the outer hull, isn't it?” Corvus said.

“Yeah,” Yeager admitted. Somewhat grudgingly, Deirdre thought. “But are those images supposed to mean something? They look like gibberish to me.”

“You don't speak Jovian, Max,” said Corvus.

“Should I light up the panels?” Dorn asked.

“Yes,” said Deirdre. “And could you give me control of them on my console? Please?”

“Done.”

Deirdre had to enlarge the view from the outside cameras to see the entire display flashing from the leviathans' flanks. With trembling fingers she traced an outline of the huge creatures and displayed it on the ship's light panels.

Both leviathans immediately changed the images they were displaying. The colored shapes flickering across their flanks turned to a mixture of various shades of yellow and pale lavender.

“Look!” Deirdre shouted. “We've made contact with them!”

Max Yeager, leaning over her shoulder, said sourly, “Contact my hairy butt. They're just flashing colors, that's all.”

“But it must mean something!” Deirdre insisted.

“Yes,” said Dorn. “But what?”

*   *   *

Leviathan could see that the alien was flashing images, but they made no sense. Mere gibberish. Its replicate swam around the strange spherical creature, asking it where it came from, why had it come to their domain. Leviathan was trying to thank it for keeping the darters at bay while it was budding.

The alien obviously was trying to picture something for them, but its images made no sense. Splashes of color without form, without inner structure, without meaning.

Bring it to the Elders, the replicate suggested just as Leviathan itself thought of that possibility. But how can we make it understand that it should follow us back to the Kin? Leviathan wondered.

*   *   *

“It's nothing but gibberish,” Yeager said, still standing so close behind Deirdre that she could feel the ripples in the perfluorocarbon when he moved. Andy had come up at her other side, staring intently at her screen.

“I've displayed an image of the two of them,” Deirdre said, feeling frustrated. Her chest was beginning to knot again.

“Maybe the color has something to do with it,” Max suggested. “Maybe they can't see that shade of blue.”

“But that's the color of their hides,” Deirdre said.