Leviathans of Jupiter (46 page)

*   *   *

Why is the alien here? Leviathan asked itself for the hundredth time. What does it want?

The aliens that had appeared earlier were smaller, and shaped differently. They were silent, for the most part, and when they did try to communicate the signals they flashed were nothing but meaningless gibberish. But this alien is different: bigger, more intelligent. It can speak meaningfully.

Perhaps it is lost, Leviathan reasoned. This is not its usual domain. It doesn't live here, it comes from the cold abyss above. Why doesn't it return there? Why has it invaded the realm of the Kin? Why is it upsetting the Symmetry?

And it is moving deeper. Soon it will be at the level where the Kin are. Perhaps the Elders will know how to deal with it.

Leviathan pondered these questions as it accompanied the alien deeper, down to the warm and pleasant depth where the Kin thrived. Then a new thought occurred to it: The alien wanted to feed off us. Perhaps it is lost and starving.

Leviathan remembered when itself had been lost and hungry, high up on the edges of the cold abyss above. It had battled darters and been caught in the vicious swirling currents of a mammoth storm, thrown far from the realm of the Kin. Starving to the point where its members began spontaneously dissociating, Leviathan had been stalked by a filmy, tentacled monster. In a desperate fight, Leviathan had killed the beast and devoured it.

Perhaps this alien is in the same frantic need, far from its own kind, lost and starving. Perhaps it will dissociate and never be able to recombine again.

KATHERINE WESTFALL'S SUITE

A trick! Katherine Westfall fumed. He tricked me! The two of them, standing there so pompous and self-righteous.

She strode past the startled secretary in the anteroom, through the empty sitting room, and on into her bedroom, seething with fury. The pain in her abdomen was worse, sharper. She stopped before the full-length mirror. Her stomach looked bloated. Not much, not enough to notice, really. As if I'm pregnant, she thought. As if that smug-faced Archer's knocked me up.

Her fists clenched with helpless frustration, Westfall felt a lump in her stomach working its way up her chest. She belched, surprising herself with the violence of it, the disgusting sound, the crudity. Devlin's done this to me, she growled silently. Him and that psalm-quoting Archer.

She realized that she felt better. A little. Got rid of some gas, she told herself. How much more will there be? How much longer? A couple of days, from what Devlin said. I'll have to stay locked away from everyone else until the nanos disable themselves. I can't have anyone see me like this. Or smell me.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Westfall thought, I'll kill them. I'll kill them both. They can't do this to me. Not without paying for it. I'll destroy them!

But then she realized, Archer's no fool. He'll have Devlin on video, telling the whole story. And that nanotech person, Torre, he'll back up Devlin's story. Archer will keep their testimony hanging over me. If anything happens to either one of them the whole story will come out. I'll be ruined.

Worse than that, I'll look stupid. Duped by a damned cook! The council will demand my resignation in a hot second.

She drew in a deep breath, trying to calm herself. And burped again. Damn them! she screamed silently. Damn them both.

Time. I'll have to bide my time. Give Archer what he wants, it's little enough. Get myself elected council chair. Then wait. Sooner or later an opportunity will come up. I'll get Archer and that rat-faced cook. Both of them.

Westfall nodded to herself, satisfied. Patience is a virtue, she remembered her mother telling her. Time heals all wounds. As long as Archer doesn't oppose me for the chairmanship I can afford to be patient.

Then she thought, Of course, if those creatures actually are intelligent, Archer will be the darling of the scientific world. He'll be unassailable. For years to come. Patience, she told herself. Patience. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Suddenly her innards cramped painfully and she practically hobbled toward the lavatory.

DECISION

Leviathan saw that the alien was moving deeper, although it was painfully slow. It is a creature of the cold abyss above, Leviathan reasoned. The warmer regions are not its natural domain.

Then why is it pushing downward? it asked itself. What is it seeking?

It isn't feeding, Leviathan saw. The plentiful stream of food particles drifted down past the alien, who ignored them. It is pitifully small, it thought. It must be hungry. If we offered to let it feed off us, how much could it eat? Not enough to weaken us, surely.

But such a thought stirred revulsion in Leviathan's mind. To let another creature feed off our flesh! Even if it merely devours some of our hide, the inert armor members of our outermost layer, it would be … monstrous.

Leviathan pondered the situation while watching the alien slowly, slowly forcing its way down toward the realm of the Kin, trailing a stream of hot bubbles behind it.

What does it want? Leviathan asked itself again and again. Why is it here?

*   *   *

Dorn floated through the hatch from the sleeping area, flexing his prosthetic hand slowly.

“Max, you may be right,” the cyborg said. “My arm needs lubrication. I think the perfluorocarbon is reacting with the joints.”

Standing before the control console, Yeager shook his head. “Those joints are sealed, aren't they? The gunk can't get into them. Besides, perfluorocarbon is pretty much nonreactive, that's why we chose to use it.”

“Then what is making my arm feel so stiff?”

“Pressure,” Yeager said, tapping the data screen on the right side of the console. “Look at that pressure curve. We're getting damned near our design depth limit.”

Dorn made a sound that might have been a grunt. “Eight hundred and thirty-eight kilometers deep. We still have a long way to go.”

Corvus emerged from the sleep area, a dejected frown on his unbalanced face.

“Your headache?” Deirdre asked.

“Sleeping didn't help,” he said. “If anything, it's worse now than before.”

Taking up his place at the control console, Dorn said, “We are all suffering from the increased pressure. This will get worse as we go deeper.”

“I'm all right,” Corvus said, trying to grin.

“Dee?” the cyborg asked. “How do you feel?”

“I'm all right,” she echoed. In truth, Deirdre's chest pain seemed worse than before. Not a lot worse, she told herself. It's bearable. I can stand it.

“Max,” asked Dorn, “how is your back?”

Yeager grimaced slightly. “I wouldn't want to play handball right now, but it's okay … just kind of stiff.”

“Like my arm,” Dorn said.

“We could both use a lube job,” Yeager muttered.

The four of them stood at their posts. Deirdre slipped her feet into the deck loops in front of the sensor display console, Corvus took his place on Dorn's other side at the DBS station. Yeager floated slightly behind Dorn, scanning the systems status board.

“All systems in the green,” he said to no one in particular. “No, wait. One of the thruster jets just went yellow. Self-repair initiated automatically.”

Anchoring his feet before the control console, Dorn scanned the displays. “Our medical readouts are all within acceptable limits,” he announced.

Yeager quipped, “Acceptable to who?”

“Whom,” Deirdre corrected.

Yeager shot her a mock scowl.

Looking back at her screens, Deirdre blurted, “One of the leviathans is approaching us!”

Corvus twisted around to look at the sensor screens. “Yeah! Look at it!”

Dorn had the same image on his center screen. “It's flashing signals at us.”

“How do you know it's signaling at us?” Yeager demanded.

“Nobody else around,” said Corvus. “The other critter isn't in sight.”

“I think it's trying to tell us something,” said Deirdre.

*   *   *

Leviathan felt maddeningly frustrated. It had swum back to the alien and clearly signed that it would allow the strange little creature to feed off it. But the alien made no response.

It was as if the alien were blind and senseless, as if it were as stupid as the fish that swam dumbly unaware of anything except feeding and reproducing.

No, wait. Leviathan's sensor members saw that the alien was signaling back. Perhaps it isn't stupid after all, Leviathan thought, merely unutterably slow.

But the alien's signals meant nothing. It seemed to be repeating Leviathan's own message, a dull-witted repetition that seemed to be mere mimicry, not true intelligence.

Or is this the way it communicates? Leviathan asked itself. Through mimicry? Could that be possible?

It wasn't mimicking anything we showed it when it displayed that it wanted to feed off us, Leviathan remembered. That wasn't mimicry. It was more like a request. Or perhaps a demand?

Play its game, Leviathan thought. Meet mimicry with mimicry. But go one step farther.

*   *   *

“It's coming awfully close,” Deirdre said, trying to keep her voice calm, keep the fear out of it.

The huge creature was moving nearer, so close that the ship's cameras could no longer display the beast in its entirety. So close that she could feel their ship dipping and jouncing in the currents surging around them from the huge creature's motion. Her sensor screens showed its mountainous flank gliding closer and closer, row upon row of flippers working tirelessly, hundreds of unblinking eyes staring at her, bright splashes of color flickering along its hide.

“It's signaling again,” Corvus called out, needlessly.

Deirdre adjusted the display to remove all color and once again the intricate line drawings appeared, like the blueprints of some vast alien building, huge and bewildering.

“What's it trying to say to us?” Dorn asked.

“Earthling go home,” said Yeager.

“I've got the computer slowing down the imagery,” Deirdre said. “It flashes its pictures so fast I can hardly tell one image from another.”

Her central screen began to display the leviathan's pictures at a slowed pace.

“Earthling go home,” Yeager repeated.

“No! Look!” Corvus wrenched himself free from his foot loops and surged over to Deirdre. Slipping one hand across her shoulders, he pointed with the other. “Look! That's the image we sent out before!”

Deirdre nodded. The leviathan was repeating the picture they had displayed, the image showing the DBS probe emerging from their vessel.

“That's when they took off,” Yeager commented.

“But now one of them's come back,” said Deirdre.

As they watched, the screen displaying the drawings along the leviathan's flank showed the DBS probe connecting with its hide.

“It's telling us it'll let us probe it!” Corvus yelped. In the sound-deepening perflourocarbon his yelp sounded more like the coughing grunt of a stalking lion.

Corvus launched himself back to the DBS console as he cried, “Dorn, reel out the probe! Do it now, before he changes his mind!”

It's not a
him,
Deirdre thought. Nor a her. The leviathans are asexual. No genders. They're all neuters. Or maybe they're like the
Volvox,
hermaphrodites.

She stayed silent as she watched her screens. The thin fiber-optic line of the DBS probe snaked out toward the huge, all-encompassing flank of the leviathan.

“This is it!” Corvus said.

Turning from her screens, Deirdre saw that Andy had already settled the optronic sensor circlet on his shaved head. It looked a little too loose for him, ridiculous, almost, pushing down on his ears. But the expression on his face was taut concentration, eyes wide, mouth a thin slash of a line, hands hovering over his keyboard.

“This is it,” he repeated, in a grim murmur.

Deirdre realized that Andy's entire life was bound up in this moment. His reason for existence was about to come to fruition.

MISCOMMUNICATION

Leviathan watched in growing dread as the alien's feeding arm slowly, slowly snaked toward its flank. Several of the flagella members shuddered involuntarily, ready to dissociate. We must stay together, Leviathan commanded. If the alien's contact is painful, we will move away from it.

The sensor members on that side of Leviathan showed that the alien's feeding arm ended in a small circular mouth. But they could see no teeth in the mouth, only a set of minuscule flat squares arranged in orderly rows.

It took all of Leviathan's self-control to allow that alien mouth to touch its flesh. It made contact with the thick armor of Leviathan's hide, between two of the sensor members. The nearest flagellum froze for a moment, but Leviathan's central brain commanded it to resume stroking, and it did, obedient despite its naked fear.

Leviathan waited for some sensation: pain, discomfort at least. Nothing. The hide members were armored and deadened against sensation, that was their function, their part of the Symmetry, to protect the inner members against the slashing attacks of darters. The alien can't get through our hide, Leviathan realized. It can't feed on us.

*   *   *

Corvus floated in a half crouch, his arms bobbing buoyantly at chest level, his eyes closed. The optronic ring was slightly askew on his head.

“Is he conscious?” Yeager asked.

Deirdre shushed him, but in the perfluorocarbon it came out as a gargling stream of bubbles.

Corvus's soft blue eyes snapped open. “I'm conscious,” he said tightly. “I'm not getting a thing. Not a damned thing.”

“Nothing?” Deirdre asked.

“Nothing!” he cried. “To come all this way, to actually make physical contact with the beast, and then … nothing!” His face showed bitter disappointment, almost despair.

Deirdre suggested gently, “Maybe if I tried…”