by Ben Bova
“We might get killed,” he said in a whisper.
“Max says the ship is safe. He’s willing to go along with us, just in case anything goes wrong, but he says it’s as safe as any ship can be.”
“Down in that ocean,” Corvus muttered. “Living in that perfluorocarbon gunk. With those sharks and the leviathans, totally cut off from the rest of the human race, cut off from any possibility of help.”
“It’s like the old-time explorers,” Deirdre said gently. “Columbus was on his own once he sailed into the Atlantic. Peary and those other Arctic explorers were on their own, totally cut off from any possibility of help.”
“A lot of those guys died.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“I don’t want you to die,” Corvus said. He grasped both Deirdre’s hands. “I don’t want you to die!”
She smiled again and leaned her forehead against his. “Andy, I don’t want to die. But I couldn’t stand staying here and watching you leave to go down into the ocean. I couldn’t stand it if I stayed safe here and you got killed.”
“But that doesn’t mean you should get killed, too!”
“None of us are going to get killed,” she insisted. “Max gave me his word. But if anything bad happens, it’ll happen to all four of us.”
He shook his head. “That’s a weird way to make a decision.”
“Remember what you said to Mrs. Westfall, the first night we were here on the station?”
“At Archer’s dinner.”
“You said that if you were prevented from trying to contact the leviathans it would be like chopping off your hands.”
He grunted. “Your memory’s too good. Besides, if you don’t go with me, I’ll still go down there. You won’t be chopping off my hands.” Then he grinned. “Maybe it’d be like chopping off a finger or two.”
Deirdre looked down at their hands. “Not a finger. Not a little pinkie, even. I’m going with you.”
Suddenly it hit him and he felt overwhelmed. She means it! She’s going to risk her life because of me.
“Dee … I … I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say a word, Andy. It’s all settled.”
“But it’s so damned risky!”
“Max says it isn’t,” she repeated. “Besides, there’s an old adage: ‘Behold the lowly turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.’ ”
LEVIATHAN
Deeper than normal in the all-encompassing sea, the Elders found a new flow of food and the Kin sated their hunger. Leviathan’s mouth parts took in the particles greedily as the giant Jovian creature glided along the down-welling current.
Messages of joy and relief were flashing from one member of the Kin to another, bright yellows and greens. Still stationed on the Kin’s outer perimeter, Leviathan’s sensor parts searched the dark water for signs of the darters. None down at this depth, not within detection range, at least.
But that didn’t mean that darters were not out there, farther off. They had feasted on the Eldest when it had sacrificed itself for the good of the Kin. Soon enough they would grow hungry again and seek more prey.
Leviathan remembered its own encounter with a pack of darters back when it had gone off alone, away from the Kin. The ravening beasts had torn at Leviathan’s hide, ripping and slashing to get at the inner organs. If that strange alien creature hadn’t helped Leviathan, the darters would have won the struggle.
The aliens puzzled Leviathan. Who were they? Why had they intruded into the Symmetry? The Elders chose to ignore them, insisting that since they were not truly a part of the Symmetry they had no part to play in the life of the Kin. Leviathan thought otherwise.
Perhaps the aliens have come to destroy the Symmetry. Or perhaps—Leviathan goggled at the thought—perhaps they have come to enlarge the Symmetry. Are the aliens a sign that not even the Elders understand the Symmetry in all its fullness?
These were the thoughts that occupied Leviathan’s mind as it grazed placidly on the food sifting down from the cold abyss above.
But then a new sensation shuddered through Leviathan’s immense bulk. It felt different, strangely insistent. For some time Leviathan pondered over this odd, demanding, prickly feeling surging through its members. At last it realized what the sensation was: Leviathan was about to undergo a budding. It was time to swim away from the Kin and dissociate into its member parts, so that they could bud and then rejoin to form two leviathans where there had been only one before.
Leviathan realized that its budding would replace the number lost when the Eldest sacrificed itself. And it also realized that the darters would be out there waiting, when Leviathan was alone and terribly vulnerable.
GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE
“All four of you?” Archer looked at them wide-eyed, startled.
Deirdre, Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn were sitting in a rough semicircle facing the station director, who was in his favorite recliner. But Archer snapped the chair straight up, suddenly intent with surprise.
“All four of us,” Max Yeager replied.
Shaking his head, Archer pointed at Corvus. “You, Andy, yes, of course. This whole mission is aimed at your trying to make meaningful contact with the leviathans. And Dorn, to pilot the ship. But Ms. Ambrose? And you, Max?”
Corvus spoke up. “Deirdre is much better at linking with the dolphins than I am, Dr. Archer. She’s a natural. Very empathic. If any of us has a chance at making a meaningful contact with the leviathans, it’s Dee.”
Archer turned his gaze toward Deirdre. “Are you willing to go on the mission?”
She lifted her chin a notch as she replied, “Yes, sir, I am. I’ve been in the immersion tank, so I know what that’s like. I don’t enjoy it, but I can put up with it.”
“And the surgery?” Archer asked.
“Surgery?” Deirdre and Yeager yelped in unison.
“They’ll have to implant a feeding port into your neck,” Archer explained. “You can’t eat normally in the perfluorocarbon, so you feed yourself through the port. It’s implanted in your neck, connected to one of your carotid arteries. Like an intravenous drip.”
“It’s removable,” Corvus added. “After the mission they can take it out.”
“Unless you’ll be going back in the near future,” Archer said.
“I didn’t know about that,” Deirdre said, glancing at Corvus.
“It’s minor surgery, really,” Archer reassured her. “I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
Deirdre nodded, a little uncertainly, but said, “It’s all right. I’ll go through with it.”
Archer smiled at her, then turned to Yeager. “Max, I don’t think we’ll have room for you in the ship. You know better than anyone how precious space is aboard Faraday.”
“I have to go,” Yeager said flatly.
“But to take you aboard I’d have to bump one of the scientists who’s been training for this mission for months. It’s bad enough to bounce a scooter to accommodate Ms. Ambrose: At least she has Dr. Corvus’s approval. But you…” Archer put up his hands, palms outward, in a what can I do gesture.
Yeager looked the station director squarely in the eye. “I know. I’m just an engineer. I’m just the man who designed that bird and made it work. Well, if anything goes wrong with any of her systems, who do you think would be better able to take care of it than I?”
“All the systems worked fine when Faraday went into the ocean by herself,” Archer said.
“But suppose something goes wrong?” Yeager challenged. “Down there in that ocean, cut off from communication with the station, what good would I be up here when the ship’s out of contact?”
“But the ship worked fine,” Archer repeated.
“Ever hear of Murphy’s Law?”
Archer bowed his head slightly as he muttered, “If anything can go wrong, it will.”
“So you’ll need somebody who can fix it, whatever it is,” said Yeager.
Archer puffed out a heart
felt sigh. “This is going to raise merry hell with the science staff. Johansen has his teams picked and ready to go.”
Corvus said, “Look, sir, if this mission goes well there’ll be others. The science staff will have plenty of opportunities.”
“And if it doesn’t go well?” Archer riposted.
“Then the scooters who had to stay behind will still be alive,” Corvus said, with a sidelong glance at Deirdre.
* * *
When handed a lemon, make lemonade. Grant Archer remembered his father telling him that time and again when he’d been a child, living in genteel poverty back in Oregon. His father, a soft-spoken Methodist minister who was liked but not respected by their neighbors, had offered that bit of advice to young Grant on many bitter occasions.
“When handed a lemon, make lemonade,” he repeated aloud to his wife. They were getting undressed, preparing for bed after a long day.
Marjorie gave him a puzzled look. “What brought that up?”
Sitting on the edge of the bed as he took off his softboots, Archer said, “Corvus and his Gang of Four. They all want to go on the mission.”
“Deirdre, too?”
“Yes. Even Max Yeager.”
Sitting beside him, Marjorie said, “But if you let them go, you’ll have to bump a couple of the scooters, won’t you?”
Archer nodded. “Yep.”
“How are you going to deal with that?”
With a grin that was almost sly, Archer tapped the tip of his wife’s nose and replied, “Make lemonade.”
She said, “You look positively happy about it.”
“I’m happy about my solution. I’m going to tell Johansen and the scientific staff that this mission is a full-system test. We’re sending four volunteers into the ocean as a final test of the ship.”
“They’ll see through that,” Marjorie objected. “They all know that Corvus is here to try his DBS system.”
Nodding, Archer said, “That’s right. The DBS experiment will be piggybacked on this test mission. That will be my official position.” His grin widened. “I might even get Westfall to bless the idea of proceeding so cautiously.”
Understanding blossomed on Marjorie’s face. “Then the scientists who don’t go on this mission can go on the next one.”
Archer said, “Right. Nobody gets bumped. We’re just adding a test mission to the schedule, for the sake of safety. Everybody gets what they want … more or less.”
“You’re getting to be a devious manipulator.”
He put on a haughty expression. “No, I am utilizing my twenty years of experience as a capable administrator to make a fair, efficient, and productive decision.”
Marjorie laughed.
He reached out and clasped her to him. “But I can be a devious manipulator when I—”
The phone buzzed.
“Drat!” Archer snapped.
“Let it go,” Marjorie said, still in his arms.
But he turned enough to see the data bar on the bottom of the phone screen: Rodney Devlin was calling.
“Red?” Archer muttered. “What’s he want at this time of night?”
Marjorie pulled back slightly and murmured, “There’s only one way to find out.”
KITCHEN
“Sorry to drag you down here at this time o’ night,” Rodney Devlin said.
Looking at the man, Archer realized that the old Red Devil was aging. Gray streaks in his hair. His luxuriant mustache was turning thin and gray, too. Time for rejuvenation therapy, Archer thought. Maybe he doesn’t realize it yet. Or doesn’t want to admit it to himself.
“I imagine it’s something important, Red,” Archer said.
Devlin was standing behind a long table, a row of ovens behind him. Archer thought of the table as Red’s version of a desk, a piece of furniture that established his status. A wooden block on Red’s left held an array of knives. A heavy cleaver lay on the tabletop at his left.
The kitchen was eerily quiet. Archer rarely saw the galley when it wasn’t filled with people, buzzing and reverberating with a hundred conversations, plates and silverware clattering, squat little serving robots trundling everywhere. Now it was dark and quiet, everything at a standstill, a few pools of light scattered through the shadows like lonely islands in a wide, engulfing sea.
“It’s important, all right,” Devlin said. His usual lighthearted toothy grin was gone: He looked deadly serious.
“You’ve decided to leave the station?” Archer guessed.
Devlin’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Leave? Why would I leave?”
Archer shrugged. “Why not? You must have tucked away a considerable nest egg after all these years. Don’t you want to go back Earthside and retire in ease?”
Devlin’s lean face twisted into a scowl. “Earthside? Back to that zoo?”
“It’s home, isn’t it?”
“Do you think of it as your home?” Devlin asked, some of his old smirk returning.
That stopped Archer. He hadn’t been back to Earth for nearly ten years, he realized, and that was just for a brief scientific conference. Both his children lived in Selene; when he and Marjorie visited them they never even thought about hopping across to Earth.
“This is home,” Devlin said, tapping a fingertip on the stainless steel–topped table. “Crikey, the last I saw of Melbourne, the city was half underwater from the bloody greenhouse flooding.”
“But…”
“Grant, I don’t remember much of what they pushed down my throat in school, but I remember one line from some long poem they made me read: ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ This ain’t hell, o’course. But Earth ain’t heaven, either.”
He’s right, Archer admitted to himself. This is home. Puzzled, he asked, “Then just what do you want to see me about?”
“You don’t approve of me, do you? Never did.”
Archer hesitated before replying, “If you mean the extracurricular things you do—”
Devlin laughed. “Extracurricular. Westfall calls it illegal.”
“Mrs. Westfall?”
“She said she could chuck me in jail if she took a notion to.”
“Katherine Westfall threatened you?”
All traces of a smile gone from his face, Devlin replied, “Why d’you think I asked you t’meet me here in the kitchen after midnight? Instead of in your office durin’ regular hours?”
Archer immediately understood. “So she won’t know that we’ve talked together.”
Devlin gave him a sly grin. “Right. That lady’s got spies all over this station. She knows just about everything that goes on around here.”
Archer realized that he had suspected something like that, but apparently Westfall’s tentacles were more deeply entwined in the station’s operations than he had thought.
“And she’s putting pressure on you?” he asked.
Devlin said, “She’s squeezin’ me, Grant. Squeezin’ me hard.”
“What does she want?”
“Nanomachines.”
Archer felt as if an electric shock jolted through him. “What on Earth does she want nanomachines for? What type of nanos?”
With a shrug, Devlin said, “Gobblers, I think you call ’em.”
“Good Lord!”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. They’re dangerous, ain’t they?”
“They could be. Extremely dangerous.”
Very calmly, Devlin said, “If I don’t give ’er what she wants she’ll yank me outta here and send me back Earthside to face a judge and jury.”
“I won’t permit it,” Archer said. “I’ll protect you, Red.”
His knowing smirk returned. “Protect me? How? I’m guilty. You know that, Grant. I’m a smuggler. A drug dealer. A sex procurer.”
“VR sims,” Archer said, weakly.
“She could pile up enough evidence to land me in jail for lots o’ years.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Devlin said flatly. “She’
s got me by the short hairs.”
“Then … what do you want to do?”
“That’s my business, Grant. You don’t want t’know and I don’t aim to tell you. I’ve got it figured out, but I don’t want you gettin’ in my way.”
Archer felt his brows knitting in perplexity. “I don’t understand, Red.”
“I’ll do what I’ve got to do,” Devlin said. “I’m tellin’ you now, man to man, that I won’t do anything to put this station in danger. This is my home, y’know. I’m not goin’ to let gobblers loose and turn the whole place into a gray goo.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Like I said, you don’t want t’know. I just want you to rest easy that I don’t aim to hurt this station or anybody in it.”
Archer couldn’t think of anything to say. Devlin’s been on station Gold longer than I have, for the Lord’s sake. He knows the ins and outs better than anybody, knows the people here. But can I trust him? Can I let him deal with nanomachines? Gobblers?
Looking at Devlin’s taut, rebellious expression, Archer asked himself, Can I stop him? Short of locking him up and tipping off Westfall that I know she’s trying to use him, can I prevent the Red Devil from doing what he thinks he has to do?
Archer knew the answer. No, I can’t.
Devlin saw the fear and distrust in Archer’s face.
Okay, he said to himself, I know you don’t trust me, Grant. I know you never approved of the things I do. For more’n twenty years you’ve looked down your snoot at me. Now you’re goin’ to learn different. Now the shoe’s on the other bloody foot.
NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY
Franklin Torre’s normally genial expression was lost in a puzzled, almost suspicious stare.
“And just what is it you want down here?” he asked Rodney Devlin.