The Medusa Chronicles

by Stephen Baxter

  Now the medusa’s oil sacs were revealed, a thick layer of them beneath the flotation cells. These contained, at high density, a kind of petro­chemical sludge, distilled from the atmosphere, which the medusa used to pump air out of the flotation cells when it needed to descend. Specialised craft of some kind, like flying tankers, Falcon thought, closed in on the medusa and plunged pipelines into the medusa’s oil sacs, hastily draining them.

  “They’re like vampires,” Trayne said, recoiling.

  Falcon said grimly, “And that’s what they’re after. The oil . . .”

  Now, only minutes after it had entered the cage, what was left of the carcass of the medusa was ejected from the far end. Falcon made out a glistening mass of internal organs, and ribbing of what looked like ­cartilage—it could be nothing as strong or dense as human bone for this creature of lightness. These components were drifting apart, some looking as if they might still have some animation, some life left. Medusae were colony creatures, after all; many of these “organs” had their own independent breeding lifecycles. Carl Brenner had long ago suggested that even the flotation sacs had once, in evolutionary history, been independent lighter-than-air flyers, not unlike Kon-Tiki.

  “When you kill a medusa,” Falcon murmured, “you inflict a thousand deaths.” He felt crushed by a sudden, savage despair, to have come across this butchery on a day that should have been about discovery and wonder. “So this is New Nantucket, just as Dhoni hinted. And it’s all about medusa oil.” He looked at Trayne bitterly. “Did you know about this?”

  Trayne looked guilty. “I guess I suspected it . . . Mars is a small place, Commander. Recently there have been new imports of volatiles, complex hydrocarbons. Massive shipments. You couldn’t hide their existence, but their source was a big secret—everybody knows there’s an embargo on importing such stuff, laid down by Earth. People started talking about plans to put up more domes, even to accelerate the Eos Programme. And then, since coming here to Jupiter and learning about the medusae—I had nothing but vague suspicions—I guess I figured it out.”

  “He’s telling the truth, Falcon,” said Nicola Pandit, her face still looming large in the viewscreen.

  “Oh, good, you got control of the volume again.”

  “Trayne is innocent. But he’s bright, like many Martians—we live in an environment which selects for intelligence.”

  “But not for conscience?”

  Pandit absorbed that. “And I suppose you’d say our partners have no conscience at all.” Now she stood back, and a stiffly artificial visage joined hers in the image.

  “Machine, I don’t recognise you,” Falcon said.

  “My name is Ahab. So my human colleagues have named me.”

  “How witty,” Falcon said bleakly. “So this is a Machine-Martian operation.”

  “We are partners,” Ahab said neutrally.

  “And it’s all for the oil?”

  Pandit said, “You predicted it yourself, Falcon, in your report on the flight of the Kon-Tiki, all those years ago: ‘There must be enough petrochemicals deep down in the atmosphere of Jupiter to supply all Earth’s needs for a million years.’ I memorised the sentence, you see. In fact we quoted it in our prospectus for potential investors. Thanks for your help. But you were a lousy prophet; these days Earth has no need of Jupiter’s petrochemicals.”

  “Right,” Falcon said. “But poor, volatile-starved Mars—”

  “We are starved only because of the repressive policies of the World Government.”

  “So to serve your political goals, you are whaling.”

  Pandit smiled thinly. “We’re hardly twentieth-century eco-bandits, Falcon. We cull the herds selectively, we take only older animals, we don’t take so many that we’d make a dent in the planetary population—which is huge, by the way. And we use other medusa products, not just the oil. The helium farms, like the one you visited in the North Temperate Belt—their lift envelopes are constructed from medusa flotation-sac material. I might have thought you’d spot that. And after the flensing process the waste is returned to the thermalisation layer, so little is lost to the ecology.”

  “In industrial terms too the process is efficient,” Ahab said. “The resources we require, the petrochemicals, are scattered thinly in the Jovian environment. But the medusae are natural collectors, so when we harvest them—”

  “What do you Machines get out of this?”

  “This is a purely commercial transaction, conducted under human—Martian—law. In return for the oil we ship to Mars we receive, or will receive in time, a range of high-quality goods and services, which—”

  “Rubbish,” Falcon snarled. “Whatever the terms of this ‘transaction,’ Pandit—I know the Machines; they work on longer timescales than us—they have different objectives. You’re being used. But to what end?” He glared at Ahab. “Are you meddling in human politics now, Ahab? Trying to stir up conflict between Earth and Mars? Is that the game?”

  “We do not play games,” Ahab said simply.

  “And we’re doing nothing illegal,” Pandit said.

  “Really?” Falcon snapped. “Whales were hunted for their oil on Earth too. Until we figured out the harm we were doing, and stopped. Like the whales, the medusae are intelligent beings.”

  “You have proof of that?” Pandit said evenly.

  “I’ve been having conversations with one of them for two centuries. I’ll show you the transcripts—”

  “Pure anthropomorphism,” Pandit said. “You are a lonely man, Falcon. It is a product of your accident, your own unfortunate nature. You seek companionship where none is available elsewhere—you see a soul where there is none.”

  Falcon bunched a mechanical fist. “I always detested ­psychoanalysis,” he muttered. “Especially when it’s used as a weapon. But for once I’ve got the law on my side. Thanks to testimony like mine, decades ago the Brenner Institute petitioned the World Court to accept the medusae as Legal Persons (Non-human) with associated rights—”

  “The case was deferred without a final decision,” Pandit said softly.

  The Machine said, “The intelligence or otherwise of the medusae is irrele­vant.”

  That seemed to shock even Pandit, who turned to look at her companion.

  “Carbon-based life is just another form of information-processing system, and an inefficient one at that.” Ahab seemed to consider for a moment. Then he said, “This conversation serves no further purpose.” His screen went blank.

  Falcon stared, chilled. He said to Pandit, “Did you hear what your ally said?”

  She said stonily, “We have no choice but to deal with the Machines. The WG has left us no choice. Falcon, you’re not going to hold up our production process. Go back to your Orpheus mission station, or prepare to surrender your ship . . .”

  Trayne whispered, “Ceto is next but one in line.”

  Falcon turned away from the comms system and looked at him. “Time to choose, Springer. Are you with me, or Pandit? Earth or Mars?”

  “Human or Machine?”

  “Maybe. This is a long game.”

  Trayne pursed his lips, visibly unhappy. “I don’t see it that way. Why should I have to choose? If I’m with anybody, it’s the medusae.”

  Falcon smiled. “Good answer. Let’s fix this.” He touched his controls, and the gondola surged across the Jovian sky.

  29

  “There is rain here.

  “A rain of helium and neon, which descends through the air-sea of metallic hydrogen. It sparkles as electric currents swirl. And all around me immense magnetic fields flap wings the size of moons . . .

  “My name is Orpheus. This telemetry is being transmitted via radio signals received by Charon 3 at the plasma boundary, Charon 2 at the hydrogen gas-liquid interface, and relayed via the Ra above the thermali­sation layer to Charon 1 at Station NTB-4, an
d then to Mission Control on Amalthea. I am in an excellent state of health and all subsystems are operating normally. I remain fully cognisant of and fully committed to the objectives of the mission—

  “The mission—

  “The mission—

  “I fall unhindered, a dust mote passing through a monstrous engine.

  “And if nothing else, this forty-thousand-kilometre-deep ocean of plasma is exactly that: an engine that generates Jupiter’s enormous magneto­sphere, a field that envelops moons, and sends high-energy particles sleeting through the substance of unwary visitors, Machines or humans. I map the electromagnetic fields assiduously. One mission goal is to establish the coupling between this deep world engine and the external magnetosphere.

  “At one level the physics are simple. The heart of the planet has remained hot since the huge violence of its formation, when it formed in the cold outer regions of the young solar system and swam briefly inwards, with Saturn, towards the fire of the Sun. And in the depths of this ocean that primordial heat drives convection currents, which in turn provide the energy for the electromagnetic fields that suffuse this vast arena.

  “And yet there is more here, far more than a mere heat engine. I am becoming convinced of that. There is such detail in the swirling Maxwell-equation coupling of electricity and magnetism going on all around me—more detail, surely, than is necessary to serve as a magnetosphere motor. Detail, and more than that, beauty, even in the mathematical descriptions that scroll through my awareness.

  “Sometimes I sense structures around me. A nested cascade of them reaching from the atomic—entities even smaller than me—up to much larger scales, the scales of Machines and ships and moons and planets—there is room for such a cascade, in here!

  “Is this life?

  “Perhaps. If life is the autocatalysis of structure fed by a flow of energy and capable of self-replication—for I have witnessed such events here, as electromagnetic field knots gather and “give birth” to more—then, yes, this is a good candidate for life, yet another layer in the great nesting that is Jupiter.

  “Is there mind, though? Again, perhaps.

  “But already my mind is turning to the next, and last, stage of my journey as I approach the strange heart of this strange world . . .”

  30

  Its fusion engine flaring, the Ra gondola approached Ceto.

  Detail of the animal’s huge flank slid across Falcon’s viewscreen. Rumbling sonic cries and the lurid radio-transceiver mottling of her flesh showed that Ceto was urgently trying to speak with her fellows in this ghastly slaughterhouse line, trying to calm them with the words of the gloomy quasi-religion of the medusae.

  Then, after the moment of closest approach, Falcon pulled Ra into a tight vertical climb—he heard Trayne grunt, but the Martian did not complain at this new loading of acceleration.

  Falcon brought the gondola to a relative halt, standing on its attitude jets some way off from the line of medusae. Soon he saw the torch ships of the “whalers” of this gruesome New Nantucket, sparks flying in the fading daylight, taking up stations around him. But there weren’t enough of them to cage him in this three-dimensional sky, and these short-haul, atmospheric craft, evidently optimised for the close-in work of corralling the doomed medusae, could not catch his own orbit-capable ship anyhow. He could get out of here any time he wanted—and he couldn’t believe that even Machines would go so far as to try to shoot him down.

  But even if they did try, he was going nowhere.

  Trayne pointed at a screen. “Wow. Look at those.”

  Falcon turned to look. He saw what looked like a squadron of aircraft, jet-black arrowheads, coasting close to the Ceto’s flank, well within the cordon of human ships. “Like Spitfires attacking a Zeppelin.”

  “Like what?”

  “Never mind. You know what you’re seeing?”

  “Mantas. They look so small against the flank of the medusa. But they themselves are—what, a hundred metres across?”

  “You did your homework. In Jupiter, everything is built to an enormous scale . . .” Watching the mantas’ graceful glide, Falcon was irresistibly taken back to the Kon-Tiki and his own earliest glimpses of the mantas, and he remembered with some embarrassment his own over-excited first reaction: “Tell Dr. Brenner there is life on Jupiter. And it’s big.” Later, Geoff Webster had never let him live it down.

  “But,” said Trayne, “what are the mantas doing here? In this killing field?”

  His elderly mind clogged with too many memories, it hadn’t occurred to Falcon to ask that very question.

  Trayne was watching closely. “Look—the mantas aren’t attacking Ceto, or any of the other medusae. They’re just escorting them. But if the ­medusae drift out of line . . .”

  It took Falcon a couple of minutes to see what Trayne was getting at. “You’re right. Those manta formations are just spooking the medusae—keeping them in line, far more effectively than if those fusion ships tried to do it alone. The medusae have evolved to flee mantas, after all; they must be easy to startle.”

  Trayne said carefully, “So the managers of this slaughterhouse are using the mantas to herd the medusae. It is just as farmers in Earth’s Agricultural Age would use dogs to round up their sheep.”

  Falcon turned to him, surprised. “How would you know about that?”

  “At school we study the history of terrestrial life. Farming and stuff.”

  “Why? Nostalgia for the mother world?”

  “No. So that one day we can do it properly.”

  “Well, maybe this has given us a way to resolve this situation.”

  Trayne frowned. “How? Commander, even though the Ra can outrun those torch ships, we are heavily outnumbered.”

  “Take it easy. I’ve no intention of trying to break up this operation. I’ll leave that for the authorities. All I want to do today is to save an old friend from the butchers’ blades.”

  Trayne thought that over, and grinned. “Ceto.”

  Falcon began tapping a keyboard. “I’m sending a message to Ceto now . . . Trayne, I think you’re right that they’re using these mantas as sheepdogs. But we spent tens of thousands of years domesticating the wolf to produce a biddable, intelligent collie. These secretive butchers have only had a few years to work with the mantas. I’m going to gamble that their obedience will be much more easily broken.”

  “So what message are you sending?”

  “Simple. ‘Sorry, old friend. Just stay calm. You’ll know what to do.’” He grasped the gondola’s controls. “Now, brace yourself—”

  * * * *

  With its exhaust of superhot hydrogen-helium plasma flaring, the gondola swept through the swarm of mantas—Falcon momentarily glimpsed the huge black forms fluttering away, alarmed or angered—and soared down towards the medusa once more. Racing over Ceto’s broad back, Falcon saw a surface scarred and pitted from past predation and accident, almost like the surface of a crater-pocked moon. A medusa’s very skin was a badge of courage and endurance and survival, Falcon thought, a badge of age.

  And now he was going to have to burn a trench into it. “This isn’t going to be pretty, Martian,” he warned.

  He hauled at his controls so that the Ra tipped up, and the fusion torch blasted across the medusa’s flesh, scouring and scourging. The skin blistered, and, as lift sacs beneath burst, huge flaps of skin, gobbets of flesh and strands of cartilage were hurled up into the air. Ceto gave another agonising acoustic cry.

  “Ouch,” said Trayne sympathetically. “As big as she is, that’s a nasty wound.”

  “If she survives, she’ll heal. Medusae are resilient. They have to be; they are pestered by predators throughout their lives. The question is, is it working?”

  Trayne checked other monitors. “If you mean, are the mantas breaking formation—yes, they are.”

 
Glancing back, Falcon saw the mantas come swarming from all sides, irresistibly drawn by the fragments of meat in the air and the scent of a medusa’s equivalent of blood. They began to attack the open wound, snatching scraps of skin and meat out of the air, even snapping at each other in their helpless greed.

  “Ha! That’s carnivores for you. So much for your sheepdogs, Nantucket.”

  “I bet the supervisors are already alarmed,” Trayne said. “Ceto has drifted well out of line, and the medusae before and aft are showing signs of disturbance too. It must take a huge effort to round up the animals this way, a corralling operation spanning thousands of kilometres . . .”

  “And once it’s disrupted it will be hard to put back together again. Good.”

  Trayne glanced at Falcon. “I still don’t see what you’re trying to do, Commander. Ceto might be spared the flensing cage, but you’ve left her defenceless against the mantas.”

  “Don’t worry about that. No medusa is defenceless, if she gets the chance. Look—it’s starting already. That’s my girl . . .”

  Ceto, drifting further out of the line, was starting to tip up now, the forest of tentacles that dangled from her underside quivering and swaying, the black-and-white patchwork on her side that was her radio voice pulsing. All this happened against a chorus of low-frequency wails from the other medusae, and with chthonic slowness, it seemed to Falcon—but everything in Jupiter’s air took place at a stately pace; even a manta flying at full tilt rarely exceeded fifty kilometres per hour.

  The mantas still swarmed around the open wound on Ceto’s back. But now the medusa’s inclination was becoming so steep that the mantas were having trouble maintaining their position. They slid away from the wound, each evidently agitated at leaving the treasure to its competitors, and they beat their graceful wings furiously as they fought to regain their positions. Meanwhile, the torch ships buzzed around, helpless, their exhaust sparks casting brilliant pools of light on the medusa’s hide in the swiftly fading gloom of the Jovian evening.