Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “Like what? A frizzy-haired fireplug?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “You meant it!”

  Rage clamped his jaw so tight—I’d been right and he knew it—that he barely got out his next words. “Don’t you ever tell me what I mean. And as to being here—do you imagine that you’d have been chosen if you weren’t the exotic hybrid needed to satisfy the mission’s ethnic quota?”

  I attacked him. I’m strong, and my uppercut to his jaw caught him by surprise. I have never regretted anything so much in my life, especially since he did not hit me back. Both of us emerged, shaking, from the volcano of primitive, neutrally hijacked rage, back to our mission selves. We were United States astronauts. We imposed on ourselves icy calm. I had knocked out one of Peter’s front teeth.

  I treated his mouth. Soledad of course noted both his swollen face and the new tooth growing in the organic printer, but she didn’t ask. Seth asked, all sympathetic concern. Peter said he’d slipped and fallen.

  We had both fallen. The pool of dark in each human being, under the thin exterior, can be terrifying. I resolved to never let it take me again.

  * * *

  We get lucky. The probe flies right through a plume, captures a sample, and brings it back to the Herschel. Reuben already has spectrometer data on the plume composition: mostly water vapor and ice crystals, with some volatiles and solids. However, those could have been deposited on the surface ice by comet collisions and then picked by the plume as it ascended.

  More important, Peter and Soledad have a measure of the hydrogen gas in the plume, which gives them an idea of how much energy and heat are being generated at the bottom of Canoe 6’s ocean. There’s more than expected, which sends them scrambling for theories to explain it.

  The sea floor is warm enough for life, or at least this part of it is. It’s also highly saline. The microbes I so desperately hope for would have to be halophiles.

  “Good luck, Rachel,” Soledad says. She touches me briefly on the shoulder as I suit up for the tiny biohazard lab. Seth hugs me. Peter nods briefly, his eyes cold.

  The lab has a decontamination chamber and its own airlock to receive the probe. The equipment is state-of-the-art. But all I would have needed is a simple microscope to make the most stunning discovery of the space age. Me, Rachel Tuitama.

  I send the images to the bridge. My voice is shaky. “Guys—these are complex organics. Multi-cellular. Some of them might be . . . may be. . . . there is life down there. And if these things here turn out to be waste products, which they look like . . . it could be complex life. I’ll know more after I . . . that’s a nucleus in that fourth image . . .”

  Silence from the bridge. Some things are too big for easy words.

  The silence doesn’t last, of course. And of course it’s Seth who breaks it. “Soledad—you have to send down the cryobot!”

  She doesn’t agree—or disagree. She says, “Rachel, send all your images, findings, analyses—whatever you find, even if it’s preliminary. Peter, I want those models of possible subsurface conditions—all three of them—as detailed as you can make them based on Reuben’s data. Seth, run checks on the controlled-crash lander, cryobot, and all remaining probes, plus the decontamination equipment for the first two. Also run the check-up diagnostics on Reuben. We need more information, accurate information, and usable analyses.”

  I stay in the lab until I can no longer keep my eyes open. The surprises just keep coming, until the biggest one of all: the life on Canoe 6 is DNA-based. Or some form of DNA, with a different base substituting for adenine, just as uracil substitutes for thymine in Terran RNA.

  “How?” Seth says. By now we are all punchy from sleeplessness.

  Peter says, “Are you sure you didn’t contaminate the sample with your own DNA?”

  I am too tired to respond to his tone with the first thing that comes to mind: You think my DNA has a foreign molecule in place of adenine? I say simply, “I’m sure.”

  Seth says, “Panspermia? Terra and Luhman 16 were closer together 36,000 years ago!”

  Soledad says, “They were still five light years apart. But—I see three possibilities. Panspermia, yes. Comets hitting both Terra and Canoe 6 with similar pre-organic molecules, which so many comets carry. Or, three, there is only one optimal path for complex life to develop, given the basic building blocks, and this is it. Rachel, leave the lab and get some sleep.”

  “I can—”

  “Leave and sleep.”

  She is the captain. But I need to know one more thing. “Soledad—”

  “Yes. We will send down the cryobot. Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Unlike the Herschel’s Yi drive, the cryobot is unmysterious and well-tested. The Yi drive works by “traversing links between entangled sections of the substrate underlying spacetime,” a phrase that points to a huge amount of theory and mathematics—although not, in my opinion, pointing very clearly. The cryobot, on the other hand, is a nuclear-powered amphibious bathysphere capable of melting through Canoe 6’s ice, descending slowly through its salty ocean, and sending back data as it goes. It contains well-understood instruments to make clearly defined measurements. There was no fight over funding cryobots to explore Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede, Ceres.

  But we have only one, and it is not retrievable.

  The four of us watch the launch, flight, and descent of the ’bot. It lands perfectly on the surface. The melter turns on and we watch the ’bot slowly disappear through layers of ice, sending back pictures and measurements.

  “Clay-like particles in the ice—”

  “Lower salt content than in the plumes—there might be mechanisms similar to Terra’s to maintain saline equilibrium—”

  “Temperature rising . . . minus 2 C . . . plus three C. . . . four—”

  “Madre de Dios!”

  Soledad. But all of us, those exclaiming and those stunned into silence, stare.

  Lights flicker in the darkness. First a few, and then more, and then more and more, until there are enough overlapping and sustained flickers to see them. Data practically screams from our screens, but nobody looks at anything but the visuals.

  Creatures, swimming around the descending cryobot. They look like eels, with elongated, cylindrical bodies. They swim so agitatedly around the ’bot that it’s difficult to get a clear count. Light flickers on and off along the tops of their tiny bodies. Then, abruptly, all of them swim away at once, and the ’bot continues its slow, controlled, majestic descent.

  Soledad, her voice shaky—Soledad!—says, “Rachel?”

  I try to focus on the ’bot data, on the clearest visual freeze-frame, on the information in my memory. “They look like electric eels, but of course they’re not. For one thing, Terran electric eels breathe atmospheric oxygen and they’re predators. These are too small, only six inches or so. I don’t know how they pack that many electricity-generating organs into such a small body. They must eat the equivalent of krill—yes, there’s evidence of multi-cellular biota all through the water. But they have a body-length anal fin, like E. electricus. Obviously they’ve evolved to live in colder and saltier water than Terran eels. . . .”

  Seth says, “Why did they all swim off like that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Soledad says, “Any ideas on how to get them to return?”

  “None. We wait, I guess.”

  We do, analyzing data sent back by the ’bot. Currents indicate that yes, there are thermal vents on the sea floor, plus geologic activity, and additional geothermal energy from residual core radioisotope decay. Plants, or plant analogues, wave fronds grayish in the light from the ’bot. A wealth of information about the ocean, about Canoe 6. But all of it feels anticlimactic, after the alien creatures.

  “They aren’t really eels,” I say for the fiftieth time. “Even on Earth, electric eels aren’t eels. They’re a species of fish.”

  “Do the eels,” Peter asks Seth with an obnoxious emphasis, “sh
ow any pattern?”

  Seth has been using Reuben to search for patterns in the electric flashes. He says, “There are too many to tell. Too much noise-to-signal ratio.”

  Soledad says, “What do Terran eels use their electricity for? Communication?”

  Even Soledad calls them eels. I give up. “No, although they’re capable of varying the intensity of their discharges. Lower voltage for hunting, higher voltage for killing prey or defense. Big ones can produce 800 volts, more if they double up their bodies. They will stun and eat small mammals, even. But we haven’t seen anything here to attack. My guess is that these are herbivore-analogs, although I can’t be sure without dissecting one.” Which is not going to happen. We aren’t equipped to get below Canoe 6’s ice, and the eels—damn it, now I’m doing it!—can’t get up here.

  Soledad frowns. “If they don’t use the electricity for getting food, then why did it evolve?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t such a biological adaptation take energy?”

  “Yes.”

  “But then—”

  Seth says, “They’re back.”

  * * *

  There are no electric eels in Samoa; the genus is South American. Samoa has true eels, five species of Anguilla. And we have Sina.

  Sitting on my father’s lap, skin to his bare chest, my eyes wide as stars as he told the story: “Once there was a beautiful maiden named Sina who kept a pet eel. The eel grew bigger and bigger, and it fell in love with Sina’s beauty. When the eel tried to grab her, she ran away. But the eel followed her, hiding in the village pool until Sina came for water. Sina cried, ‘E pupula mai, ou mata o le alelo!’ But the demon eyes staring at her did not go away.

  “The village chiefs killed the eel. Before it died, it asked Sina to plant its head in the ground. A coconut tree grew there. Now, whenever Sina drank coconut, she was kissing the eel. See, Rachel, the marks on your coconut? Two eyes, and a mouth from which you must drink.”

  I have no coconuts aboard the Herschel, and my father is dead. But I have the memory—growing from danger, the coconut tree that nourishes. A gift from the dying.

  * * *

  This time, only six eels swim around the cryobot. Seth sets the ’bot’s lights to an optimal level for recording. The eels advance, retreat, advance again in patterns too repetitious to be random.

  “They’re dancing,” Peter says, enough awe in his voice to make me briefly remember why I had once wanted him. Briefly.

  “It’s not necessarily an indicator of sentience,” I say. “Bees dance from instinct.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Seth says.

  The dance goes on for about three minutes. Then all six eels swim away.

  “Seth?” Soledad says.

  “Reuben is running the programs now. Wait . . . look.”

  We look. Even I, the non-physicist, can see the pattern displayed graphically on the screen. Each eel advanced to almost touch the ’bot and flash its light, then retreated. Another approach, with two touches-and-flashes. Another, with three. The eels’ approaches were not synchronized; each was acting independently of the others. A swim completely around the strange object on the sea floor, and then the whole thing was repeated at different points on the ’bot.”

  Peter says, “They can count!”

  “Maybe,” says Soledad, always more cautious. “Can this be evolved behavior for any non-sentient reason that anybody can think of?”

  No one answers. My head feels numb, as if my entire skull has been iced down after injury. But this isn’t injury, this is—

  “We need to try to communicate with them,” Soledad says. “When they come back. If they come back.”

  Seth spins around on his chair, tears coursing down his cheeks, carrying the emotion for the rest of us. “We’re not the only intelligent beings in the universe.”

  I stare, dry-eyed, at the screen patterns. A daughter of Nafanua does not cry. Not even if the first-discovered alien life is on a dying moon around a planet drifting into darkness.

  * * *

  When the eels return, we are ready. The cryobot has no display screen—who would have expected to need it?—but we can control much else about it. We flash the ’bot’s lights: one pause two pause three pause, repeat. The eels respond, each with a touch-and-flash. We count by flashes to ten; they return only three.

  Peter says, “‘One-two-three-many’? That’s the counting pattern of some very primitive primates.”

  “Maybe,” Soledad says. “Seth, try primes.”

  First, however, comes another eel dance. Seth, recording and running algorithms, says, “This dance exactly matches the first one. To the centimeter.”

  I say, “Without hands to make tools, it’s possible their culture advanced along biological patterns rather than technological. Like dolphins. But they might have quite sophisticated social and communicative lives. Language, dance, song.”

  Seth says, “I’m not picking up sound waves from them.”

  “Pheromonal, then? Are there patterned chemical shifts in the water?”

  Determining this takes some time, while the eels finish their dance and, just as abruptly as they arrived, swim off.

  “Yes,” Seth says eventually. “Precise chemical shifts between eels. They’re communicating.”

  Peter says, “But why not use sound waves? Less dissipation, and you can cover greater distances.”

  I say, “Maybe they do, but under different circumstances than these. I mean—there might be protocols for greeting strangers that are different from communication among themselves.”

  We try to investigate that, with no success. The eels return every eighty-seven minutes, but we have no idea how they track that time, or what the timing means, or much of anything else. Each time they return to the ’bot, the eels do a different dance; we have no idea what any of them mean. We try flashing a sequence of prime numbers; they do not echo it. We try Fibonacci sequences, spoken words, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in musical tones—all at a risk of emitting soundwaves that might have violated some important eel custom. No response to anything. Meanwhile, plumes of water continue to rise from the same area of the moon, and we gather more physical data.

  Frustration mounts. Soon the Herschel must move on. There’s only so much fuel, so many supplies, so much time before we have to return to the point where the Yi drive will switch on to snatch us back to the solar system. That’s how I think of it, anyway, when I think of anything except the eels. I even dream of them at night. In my dream, eels drift separately in the cold of space, each one with my face.

  When I find Soledad alone, getting another cup of coffee in the tiny ward room, I ask my question. “How long—I know you might not have a precise answer to this, but generally—how long can the eels survive while Canoe 6 wanders away from its star?”

  She takes a long sip of coffee. Something in her manner tells me that she and Peter have already worked this out, and that the answer isn’t good.

  “You already know that sea-floor volcanism is the main source of heat for the moon. Resonance with Canoe 3 also provides some through increased tidal flexing, but that’s going to be lost soon—the data already show a lot of orbital decay in Canoe 3. And the weather on Canoe is getting more violent, spewing out increased radiation on all the moons. Basically, everything is going to go to hell once Canoe gets a certain distance from Luhman, although temperature calculations could vary as the—”

  “Soledad,” I say, “how long?”

  “It’s already getting colder in the ocean. From the historical data Reuben’s been collating.”

  “How long? Best and worst estimates before all the eels die, of cold or anything else.”

  Soledad looks at my face. If she was going to say anything about specie variation in endurance factors, she changes her mind. “Best estimate, fifty Earth years. Worst—ten.”

  Ten years. Enough time. I have to be careful how I present my idea. “We could—”

  “
Oh my God! Come in here, quick!” Seth screams from the bridge. We race along the passageway, joined by Peter from his bunk, wearing only boxers.

  The eels are back, only twenty-seven minutes from their last appearance. This time there are hundreds of them, including juveniles. They swim as a group toward the ’bot, then away, then toward, then away. It doesn’t take an astrobiologist to interpret the message. Seth says, “They want us to follow them! Soledad?”

  She hesitates. It isn’t easy to move the cryobot once it’s settled into mud, and moving it risks damage as temperature and pressure change. Finally she says, “Yes. Go.”

  On my screen, I see the reflection of her crossing herself.

  Seth issues directions to Reuben, who says in its deliberately mechanical voice, “This action may damage this equipment, or parts of it. Confirm?”

  “Confirm,” Soledad says.

  The cryobot rises from the mud and we all hold our breaths—would the legs hold? This is not what the thing was intended for. If the legs do hold, will they travel? The terrain is so uneven, with the equivalent of quicksand areas. How far would the ’bot have to go?

  Not far. Seventeen point eight meters, and the eels stop swimming ahead and cluster around the ’bot. Seth sets it down.

  Peter, seated in his underwear at his console, says, “Not good. There’s a potentially active vent ten meters away, right at the limit of the ’bot’s illumination. If it sends up another plume, the ’bot could be damaged. It—”

  “They’re dancing,” Seth says. “Oh!”

  The entire swarm of eels begins to move, but much differently than before. Their motions are slow, draggy. Then, all at once, every single one of them turns over and floats face down as they extinguish their lights. Only the ’bot illuminates them, a ghostly school of fish miming death.

  They know.

  Peter gasps, “How—”

  I choke out, “I don’t know. Changing water temperature, maybe changes in the magnetic field coming off canoe . . . Terran birds migrate by magnetic field . . .”

  The eels turn over and flash their lights. Now all but one swims to the other side of the ’bot and out of sight. The one swims in the opposite direction and stops, motionless.