Many Moons

by Scott Azmus

  “Transition in five minutes. Are you comfortable, Mia?”

  She snapped her jaws at the hydrophone pickup. Trilled a burst of song. Voice recognition software relayed the words:

  “Show me the zem zem zem!”

  Lenses cupped each eye. Sixteen target tanks sparkled in virtual landscape. When she slapped the surface, a living zem blossomed in her view. Writhing tentacles. A coiled, chambered shell. Jet siphon. Two lidless eyes. She knew better than to try a ranging pulse.

  “Four minutes.”

  Drifting past the viewing panel, she eyed the new project director. Doctor Ellis had warned her that the man didn’t much care for fins. The man had “an agenda.” Something to prove.

  A human child stepped from the shadows. He was dressed in cutoffs, a faded Woods Hole T-shirt, and scuffed deck shoes without socks. Approaching her port, seeking eye contact, the boy’s small hands framed a freckled face crowned with a mop of copper-colored hair.

  Standing tiptoe, the boy held a plush souvenir-shop dolphin against the clear acrylic. The contents of the doll’s miniature tool saddle rattled against the port’s rim. Manipulating the doll’s tiny flippers, the boy flashed an awkward semaphore.

  Fin sign language. “Good luck.”

  “First positions, please. Two minutes, Mia.”

  As the boy backed away, she transmitted a rasp of clicks. An image formed in her mind. Diving, she took station at the pool’s volumetric center.

  Relax.

  Watch for the zem.

  You’ve done this a hundred times.

  It is easy easy easy.

  Displayed across her underwater touchscreen, Mia’s cortical pattern smoothed. Blood pressure dropped. Her heart rate bottomed out. At jump minus twenty seconds, she spun in the water, flicked the respirator aside, and gave a quick flip of her head.

  A vortex formed. Filled with undulating bubbles, a ring of oscillating silver opened. All 16 target tanks frothed. Though spaced at some distance, each tank’s water level rose half an inch. She was already there, without being there.

  Camera shutters opened.

  Flash disks zipped behind zoomed lenses.

  Zero minutes. Zero seconds.

  The random number generator made its selection. Chutes opened above each tank. The single zem fell.

  Slap!

  Water sloshed from Mia’s tank. Here one instant, there the next, she appeared above the target tank, caught the zem, and sailed through a neat parabolic. Splashing down, the creature’s barbed suckers desperately prying at her jaws, she gave an involuntary squeal.

  The zem’s brittle, glass shell burst against her palate. Teeth gnashing, she savored the creature’s brackish warmth.

  Doctor Ellis launched his enhancement software. The display panel split to show each tank in the final milliseconds before transition. There, in every tank, in the midst of vigorous effervescence: Mia’s shadow.

  In the year’s since Earth’s brief alien visit, tracking satellites had shown individual dolphins vanishing only to pop up several hundred nautical miles distant. They usually appeared near schooling fish or groups of flitting zem. Sometimes, however, whole pods showed up in shallow waters, trapped or even beached. Porpoises and dolphins, Orca and sperm whales—those most inclined to feed on the nautiloids—had all demonstrated this so-called “jump” ability.

  “How close are you to identifying the mechanism?” asked the new director. “A means of application?”

  Ellis reset the flash disks. “You must remember that a fin’s mind has evolved to interpret a vast amount of information in each echo return. As for a mechanism, well that has something to do with the zems. When allowed her preferred diet, Mia’s processing abilities surpass even our most sophisticated computer’s ability to model ocean crosscurrents and density layers.

  “This fin certainly seems more obedient than most. What’s your secret?”

  “We start each day by reminding ourselves that fins are not human beings in wetsuits. That their apparent smiles have more to do with physiology than attitude. That, despite similarities in brain structure, they may not think the way we do. They may not feel emotions in the same way. That they are complex and intelligent social animals.”

  “Please, Doctor. I have earned a two-year appointment to this facility. You may save your politically correct sermons for the general public.”

  He studied a replay of Mia’s jump. “Tell me, what best motivates these animals? Pleasure? Pain?”

  “Bottlenose dolphins do not react well to pain. Like us, they can be willful creatures. They can be aggressive and are also one of the few species that sometimes kill for sport. Most would die rather than submit to any form of coercion.”

  Mia returned to her home tank. As the boy approached, she gave the ranging squeal she knew sounded most like a human laugh.

  The boy clapped his hands and grinned.

  Pushing a float ball over the tank rim, Mia called, “Play catch? Boy know game? Catch catch catch?”

  The ball rolled into a puddle, spun down, and bobbed. Retrieving the ball, the boy scowled at his reflection in its glossy surface.

  “I’m not very good. Dad was going to teach me, but he’s always very busy.”

  Mia snorted. Humans had weird priorities. “Mia teach! Throw ball. Catch ball. Easy easy easy!”

  What points the boy lost for accuracy, he made up in style. He didn’t seem able to catch the ball without first diving for it. When he began to tire, Mia shot the ball through its hoop and swept a sloshing arc to the side of her tank.

  “Sleepy, boy? Tired?” She slopped several gallons over the rim. “Time to dream dream dream?”

  “Stop calling me ‘boy.’ My name’s Todd. Todd Overly. And if you’re so smart, how come you don’t know any other games?”

  She gauged the boy’s blunt grin. It was a challenge.

  “Mia plays another game. ‘Tic-tac-toe.’”

  “Really?”

  She plucked a sea star from its decorative net. She did a tail stand and slapped the echinoderm on one of the square tiles bordering her pool.

  “X! Center square. X. X. X!”

  Climbing to the training deck, Todd plunked down a plastic ring. When the boy forced his first cat’s game, Mia raced to her food bucket and tossed him a herring.

  2062:

  Todd said, “What did you ask?”

  Mia dropped the websites one by one. The casualty figures faded, as did the geophysical data from Hawaii’s Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory. Her blowhole itched. Her temples throbbed. As she turned from the touchscreen’s interface shell, afterimages dogged her gaze.

  “What,” Mya repeated, “was that about extrasolar planets?”

  Sails luffing, he floated alongside her in what likely seemed a completely authentic virtual landscape. Spray needled his cheeks. Wavelets splashed. Flying fish soared. Later, when she left him to discover his way home, she wondered what he would make of the salt crust matting his hair.

  A young man now—a Naval Academy midshipman—Todd’s features had sharpened. He wore the dress white uniform of a company officer, razor-creased but open at the collar. Chubby cheeks and freckles had given way to an even gaze and ready smile. Exposed to an abundance of sun and sea, the boy’s copper hair had lightened to a crew cut the color of crushed amber.

  He dropped sail. Thrust the tiller aside. Called up his homework package.

  “We’re studying the star ‘Epsilon Eridani.’ It’s about eleven light years away and west of Orion. It’s our closest single solar-type star. Now that our probes have charted each of its planets, everyone’s making a big deal about it. I have to plot its habitation zone. The ecosphere of a ‘K2’ orange dwarf.”

  “Show me this star star star.”

  She clacked her jaws. Her pulse rate had increased. There was something here, something about this subject that teased the back of her mind.

  “The math all seemed so easy in class. I even took notes. Photosphere near fif
ty-two hundred Kelvin. Relative mass, point eight. Radius, point seven. Younger than our sun.

  “I know how to describe each planet’s orbit, but my notes stink. I was probably off daydreaming about some stupid, imaginary far-away planet. I’m not even sure where to start these problems!”

  Atop his note slab’s holographic pad, three orbs circled a bright orange spark. Clinging digits indicated mass, period, and eccentricity. The largest world was four times the mass of Jupiter.

  Mia studied the image with growing interest. In Earth’s solar system, the larger the planet the greater the total mass of tenant satellites. Could Epsilon Eridani’s largest worlds harbor a moon that might be wet and warm and capable of harboring life?

  Todd’s fist smacked the sea. Brushing her dorsal fin on the follow-through, he said, “I’m sorry, Mia. I guess I’m not in much of an analytical mood. If it’s okay with you, I’d rather get back to our game.”

  He fingered his touchpad. A branching, three-dimensional lattice spread across the water. Iconic solids hovered in their assigned cells. Curtains of energy shimmered between levels.

  “Your move.”

  Despite his father’s objections, they had progressed from catch, tic-tac-toe and checkers to mahjong and go. This was a new game. To win—to perceive even the least fragment of true jump ability—the boy had to hold the entire playing volume in his head while weaving game pieces through a net of twisting, three-dimensional fields.

  Each time the boy’s drift of focus triggered the usual cascade of failures, Mia’s heart hardened. Were humans simply inept? Unable to master the necessary skills? Catching the boat’s hull at the crest of a swell, she flipped Todd into the sea and forced him under.

  When would he learn that failure, like winning, had its own consequences? Spitting sea water, he would gradually come to his senses back in his stateroom. As with many of her unwitting human candidates, he would find a way to rationalize the salt on his skin, the tang of the sea on his clothes.

  An attacking zem swam out of the sun’s glare. Stinging tentacles fanned, coiled shell gleaming, it rushed to catch Mia unaware.

  The lagoon bubbled.

  Jute appeared.

  As the zem bolted for open water, Jute snagged a tentacle. Pulling, releasing, spinning in the water, he seized the zem across the radius of its shell. Jaws closing, curls of blood and impenetrable ink stained the sea.

  Mia’s emotions swelled. Always her hero, Jute had come into her life during her second year of advanced training. Doctor Ellis had selected him as her exercise partner and mate. While not always kind or candid, Jute was beautiful. Their young would be more than beautiful.

  Approaching against the tide, he broadcast his signature whistle. Flexing his sleek body, tail flukes down, he arched a dominating S-curve.

  She clicked at him.

  A return buzz resonated through her bones.

  As they shared the shredded zem, Jute sang, “Were you able to tell him?”

  “I did not have the heart. I feel as though I have failed him somehow.”

  Jute offered a strand of succulent flesh. “You have done much too much for him. For all humans. They simply will never see the world as we do.”

  Hearing the quiet certainty in his voice, Mia piped a note of injury, followed by, “You should go. I have tasks to complete.”

  “Must you always work, work, work? You of all fins must know—”

  “Must there really be war?”

  “We’re talking about human beings. Of course, there has to be war.”

  She wanted to argue further, but not there. Not where orbiting watch cameras could peer through as much as fifty fathoms of angry sea.

  Perhaps sensing this, Jute pumped his tail and shot into the distance. At the limit of her vision, he turned and raced back toward her. As he swooshed down her side, he caressed her body with his own.

  Swathed in clicks and whistles, his voice rose and fell.

  “Jute. Please. I—”

  “Mia?” More clicks and whistles. The tickle of tiny bubbles. “Mia. Mia. Mia.”

  After a brief, teasing maneuver, she relaxed and joined his song. They swam side by side, belly to belly. Outside the lagoon, where the sea dropped into darkness, they took turns stroking one another. Nuzzling. Touching.

  “Isn’t this better?” Jute asked. “Healthier than wasting time with these children?”

  He rubbed his fluke across her belly. “Your plan will not work. They can not learn to mimic us. On top of that, it is very likely that they will never understand the source of their failure.”

  Abandoning his touch, Mia surged toward the shore. The casual mental shift that moved her from here to there would, as always, frustrate the watchers. So be it.

  Thousands of miles away, she plunged through a column of rising bubbles before drifting to the surface. The moon was a silver smear against the velvet beyond. The surf glowed with lime phosphorescence. The world tasted of kelp, marine diesel, and breezy coastal air, lightly salted.

  She head bobbed her relay monocle into place. Calling up the University of Arizona’s planetary discovery page, she whistled, clicked, and rasped her way through each menu. Less than five minutes in, the latest image from NASA’s third generation Terrestrial Planet Finder spilled into view.

  Tables formed.

  Pictures scrolled.

  Graphs arched, undulated, and spiked.

  There, she studied carbon dioxide pressures. Insolation rates. Orbital eccentricities. Radiation curves.

  Horizontal lines marked radial distance. Asterisks highlighted regions likely to possess liquid water.

  Most of the new worlds had masses in Jupiter multiples. A few showed radio emissions resembling the passage of large conductors through robust magnetic fields.

  Diving deep, she trilled a three-part whistle. Her heart throbbed.

  “Big moons? Wet moons? Moons with air to breathe?”

  Above, the sea settled into an expectant calm.

  2071:

  Mia gazed through sheer, warm waters. Active sonar pinging, the Elliott-class destroyer Romaker had closed to within four nautical miles. Cloaked in sheaths of air, the warship’s supercavitation torpedoes could outrace any living thing in the sea. Targeted from her signal bridge, a sleet of blunt-tipped, water-piercing 76-caliber shells could accurately reach depths approaching twenty feet.

  As the sun heaved above the horizon, Jute took an acoustic bearing. Calculated an intercept.

  “Are you ready, Mia?”

  She checked her relay monocle. A rectangle of floating, inset video held a high-angle view of Hawaii’s Kohala coast. Even from orbit, her pod had foamed the otherwise tranquil waters. Exposed and anxious, they had nevertheless drawn Romaker far from her sister ships.

  “Mia?”

  Feeling disenchanted, but having already expressed her misgivings, she clapped her jaws.

  “Ready, ready, ready!”

  Turning together, they doubled back. The bright plastic bundle under Jute’s jaw trailed the volatile tang of toluene and nitric acid. The net bag carrying their detonating caps and timers cut into Mia’s side with every beat of her flukes. According to their intelligence reports, Lieutenant Todd Overly had taken the post of navigator aboard Romaker. Although their relationship had deteriorated, Mia hoped the boy’s presence might lend the coming clash some sense of restraint.

  Whereas her ancestors had occasionally died in purse seines and driftnets, Mia’s generation had, in some circles, forged a number of mostly economic ties with the human race. Sperm whales hauled icebergs. Pilot whales escorted ships through reefs and mine-laden waters. Orca hunted tuna and delivered luxuries from the sea floor. Most gifted of all, dolphins had participated in academic discussions, offered papers, and taught classes.

  It was in the political realm in which they had failed. Fins, it seemed, had always to choose a “position.” They had to be for this. Against that. While humans polarized every topic, cetaceans had evolved in a wo
rld of few stark contrasts. Sure, there was “sea.” Yes, there was “sky.” But even that opposition faded in a heavy squall. Only Orca claimed any degree of success at marshaling their thoughts along each new spectrum of good versus evil.

  Thus the friction.

  The growing inequality.

  Seeking autonomy, Jute’s freedom fighters had established an area of fin sanctuary. They had declared independence and voiced that they would thereafter view any human incursion as an act of war. One week later, apparently seeking an unambiguous statement of fin will, the U.S. Navy anti-submarine warfare destroyers Romaker, Matlock, and Berning had trespassed sanctuary waters.

  Having set their charges, Mia and Jute jumped clear of each destroyer’s hull. Eel scales rasped against rock and coral. Dueling shrimp popped and snapped. The grind of parrotfish jaws vied with the infrasound gurgle of churning igneous fluids.

  From the USS Romaker: four distinct thuds.

  The shriek of shearing steel.

  A long moan of venting air.

  Carefully placed, Jute’s charges had split Romaker’s keel. Following lines of stress, fracture zones sought her expansion joints. As turbine shards belched from her stacks, the warship’s forecastle snapped along the breadth of her vertical launch cells. The fantail ripped from her flight and missile decks. Fires blazed amidships. Above the waterline, aluminum plating pulled apart as though made of tissue paper. Fracturing safety glass flashed in the golden light of dawn.

  Arching her back, Mia snapped her jaws in frustration. Where was the ship’s motor whaleboat? Her captain’s gig? Hadn’t the humans trained for this sort of thing? Didn’t they have procedures? Protocols? Even with all hell breaking loose, wasn’t the ship’s lowliest deck hand supposed to be able to escape in less time than it took to hunt a meal?

  Signal flags drooped.

  A surface-search radar toppled from its platform.

  The warship’s forecastle rolled. Her gleaming sonar dome tilted skyward. Inch by inch, her bow sank into the surf. The sound of flooding and taste of human panic spilled across the water.