Rescued From Paradise

by Robert L. Forward

  Another gatherfish came toward Clear◊White◊Whistle and squirted another cloud of chemicals from one of its longer tentacles.

  ◊Terrible!!!◊ complained Clear◊White◊Whistle, backing away.

  □Terrible, yes, but this taste is different,□ remarked Strong□Lavender□Crackle. □I think the shark is trying different chemicals until it finds one that either poisons us, or tastes so bad we will leave.□

  ◊Let me try communicating one more time,◊ said Clear◊White◊Whistle. He repeated the integers up to seven again, then tried simple arithmetic. ◊One plus one is t-t-wo-wo, t-t-wo-wo plus one is th-th-th-r-r-r-e-e-e ...◊

  There was no response. Instead the shark released another gatherfish from inside its mouth and sent it toward them. This time, Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion was ready for it. Just as the gatherfish brought forth one of its tentacles and squirted a third noxious cloud, a red pseudopod shot out from Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion's body and grabbed the end of the tentacle, pinching off the orifice. This hold established, other red pseudopods quickly reached out from Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion's body and grabbed the other long tentacles, preventing them from squirting their poisonous loads, while one large pseudopod seized the tail of the gatherfish. With a quick twist, Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion wrung the tentacle-head loose from the tail, tossed the poison-loaded portion away, and proceeded to digest the tail.

  ☼Tasty!☼

  The sonar chirps from the shark now increased in intensity as they were focused on Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion. There was still no modulation in them—no indication of any attempt at communication.

  □The shark is seeing at you! It may attack!□ warned Strong□Lavender□Crackle.

  ☼Let it attack. It is probably tasty, too!☼

  The shark opened its mouth and the five remaining gatherfish emerged. They formed a circle in front of the shark, who advanced slowly toward them, its mouth open to show its rows of sharp teeth. As the ring of gatherfish approached Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion, he was ready for them, with multiple arrays of red pseudopods deployed. The five gatherfish flashed forward to meet the red pseudopods. Their tentacles stretched out before them ...

  ☼AAAGGH!☼ screamed Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion as high-voltage electrical currents burned their way through his flesh. The shark followed up on the attack of its gatherfish by swimming rapidly toward the now limp blob of red jelly. Clear◊White◊Whistle and Strong□Lavender□Crackle started forward to protect their injured comrade, but were driven back by warning jolts of electricity from the gatherfish. They were forced to stay back and watch as the shark took a big bite out of the large blob of flaccid red flesh that was Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion, and then proceeded to stuff the bite into its gigantic maw with the help of its gatherfish.

  ☼Yeow!☼ came a muffled voice from inside the shark. Then the shark went into convulsions as red jelly started to ooze out through its gill slots and between its lips.

  Strong□Lavender□Crackle and Clear◊White◊Whistle took advantage of the shark's distraction to rush in and wring off the dangerous heads of the gatherfish as they had seen Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion do. They experienced some severe shocks in the process, but they were localized to the pseudopod used to grasp the stinging, poisonous head portion.

  The shark was now in severe pain. Its mouth wide open, it was shaking its head, trying to eject the burning red flesh which was attempting to digest the inside of its mouth and its tender gill slots. Soon most of the "bite" the shark had taken of Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion was free and quickly rejoined the main body, but a chunk of the fiercely fighting flesh of the flouwen remained in the shark's stomach, battling to digest the wall of its living prison at the same time the digestive juices of the shark were digesting it. Strong□Lavender□Crackle and Clear◊White◊Whistle rounded up the small blobs of red flesh shaken loose during the battle and added them to the rapidly recovering remainder of Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion. Focused sonar bursts were aimed at the giant shark's remaining eyes, which burst under the intense sonic bombardment. Maimed and blind, with all of its eyefish and gatherfish either destroyed or eaten, the shark headed for the depths.

  ◊That was a fish we have never seen before. A very strange fish with free-swimming eyes and manipulators,◊ mused Clear◊White◊Whistle. ◊The humans will be interested in knowing about it. We must tell them, especially Cinnamon. Her research is the various types of fish and how they might be related.◊

  □The shark is also big enough to eat one of the humans in a single bite!□ Remarked Strong□Lavender□Crackle. □They should all know how big and dangerous it is, so they will be careful when they are in the deep ocean!□

  ☼It wasn't big enough to eat me!☼ bragged Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion.

  ◊If we had not been there to get rid of the gatherfish, they would have stung you again, harder this time, so the shark could eat you before you ate it,◊ chided Clear◊White◊Whistle.

  Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion had to admit to himself that he now massed somewhat less than he used to. Part of him was now inside the shark's stomach.

  ◊Let us swim back to the lagoon and find a human, so we can tell them all about the big fish.◊

  Since the waves were going the wrong way to allow them to surf back, they formed themselves into the snakelike shape that they used for cruising long distances below the surface and sped off for Crater Lagoon.

  INSIGHTFUL Thinker had much time to think. She was on duty in the ventilation shaft of Mother's residence, Green Home. Her dorsal fin was wedged in the crevice that kept her body from moving forward, while she stolidly moved the three sets of fins alongside her body—fin pair after fin pair after fin pair—pulling in fresh water through the ventilation port, then sending it into Green Home with a last powerful flip of her massive tail. She was supposed to be memorizing her multiplication tables, but her mind kept wandering, especially when one of her lookers or grabbers returned with interesting information about what was going on elsewhere in Green Home and outside its thick walls made of blocks of greenish-gray volcanic stone.

  A grabber returned from its long journey to the undersea gravel bed that spilled from the mouth of the large river on the nearby island. Insightful Thinker had sent it there earlier in the tidal cycle with its usual instructions to look through all the pebbles until it found an oval pebble made of blackglass. The grabber had returned early with a candidate pebble in its claws. As the grabber entered her mouth and attached itself to its feeder inside, Insightful Thinker used the suckers on the middle tentacles of her grabber to taste the pebble ... it was pure blackglass! There were no impurity overtones.

  Insightful Thinker shivered her fur all down her body in pleasure. Mother's Jar of 59 contained 58 perfect natural blackglass oval pebbles and one flawed one. With this perfect pebble, Insightful Thinker would be able to complete Mother's set. Another of Insightful Thinker's grabbers returned from inside Green Home with views of the Altar Room. Mother Precise Talker was at the altar. She was Telling 29 while chanting honors to one of her ancestors. There were piles of oval red pebbles on the altar, containing one, three, five, and seven pebbles. One of Mother's grabbers was taking one red pebble after another out of a red jar on the altar and adding them to the last pile until the piles contained one, two, three, five, seven, and eleven red pebbles, the first six prime numbers. There were twenty-nine red pebbles in all—also a prime number.

  Mother's grabbers swept up all the red pebbles from the six piles and put them back into the red jar, then she started Telling 29 again, as she switched her chant to honor another of her departed ancestors. She would do this twenty-nine times before she completed her devotions. The tastes of her chant swirled about them as they exited the altar room.

  "Meticulous Observer, Great Mother of mine, who at great risk to herself, mouthed me into herself, and took me from the lake of ignorance, to the ocean of knowledge ..."

  Insightful Thinker interrogated the memory of the grabber that had found the blackglass pebble.
The grabber had traveled some distance away from Green Home, and many of its soundings would be valuable additions to her surroundview. The soundings the grabber had collected on the way to the gravel bed contained little new, except for a view of Steadfast Defender in her normal slow patrol of the many vent field beds around Green Home. The soundings of the gravel bed were equally ordinary, except for the occasion of the finding of the blackglass pebble. The soundings on the way back, however, contained some strange echoes, and Insightful Thinker extracted the memories from her grabber with care and studied them thoughtfully before placing them into her surroundview.

  At a great distance from Green Home, up slope at the furthest vent bed fields, where the glaring fight from the sky filtered down through the warm surface waters, the echoes back from the pings of the grabber had indicated the presence of three strange creatures. They were large and formless, like a cloud of smoky water emitted by an underwater vent—yet the clouds did not float with the currents, but swam purposefully. The echoes showed no signs of interior structure, either heavy bones or air-filled bladders. Despite their lack of structure, they were living creatures, since they not only swam against the currents but emitted chirps for sounding the water around them, as well as more complex noises. Steadfast Defender must have scanned them, too, for the grabber had seen Steadfast Defender swimming slowly up slope to examine the strange echoes, some of her lookers and grabbers spread out before her.

  Intrigued now, Insightful Thinker sent out a looker to follow Steadfast Defender and to both scan and look at what was going on. After a while, she sent a second looker to replace the first. The two lookers, shuttling back and forth, would keep her surroundview updated, while she continued at her assigned task of ventilating Green Home.

  When the first looker returned, Insightful Thinker pulled out the images, one after the other, and perused them. The light images obtained by the eye of the looker showed that each of the three creatures had a distinctly different color. One was a bright red, one a deep purple, and one a cloudy white—like the tastecloud of a complex multithought expression.

  The looker had approached close to the three strange creatures somewhat behind the lookers that Steadfast Defender had deployed. One of Steadfast Defender's lookers was irradiating the blobby creatures with a directed chirp, and the other lookers collected the returned echoes to form sound images to augment their light images. As before, the echoes showed no signs of internal structure in the creatures—no bones, no air bladders, and no teeth. Since they had no teeth, they certainly couldn't be too dangerous, even if they did seem to be larger than Steadfast Defender. Yet despite their lack of teeth, the echoes returning from inside the red creature showed it had not only captured and torn apart a fishfruit from a ventplant, it had also captured one of Steadfast Defender's lookers and was tearing that apart, too!

  Highly disturbed, Insightful Thinker sent out her looker again, with a caution to stay at a safe distance. Shortly her other looker returned with even more disturbing scenes for her surroundview. The red creature had quickly dissolved nearly all of the chunks of flesh from the fishfruit and Steadfast Defender's looker, then changed its shape and started after the other lookers observing it—including Insightful Thinker's looker. The red creature had caught another of Steadfast Defenders lookers.

  The red creature finally sensed Steadfast Defender slowly rising up from the dark depths and came to a halt. Soon all three blobby creatures were floating next to each other, sending chirp after chirp in the direction of Steadfast Defender.

  SINCE THE three strange creatures were each larger than Steadfast Defender, and were able to capture and eat food without having teeth, Steadfast Defender approached them with caution and respect. She, true to her name, never thought of fleeing—for her job was to protect the ventplants Careful Harvester and the others had planted around Green Home. Instead of attacking immediately, however, she decided to act in a civilized manner and first attempt to communicate with the strange creatures—even though they had damaged her by eating two of her lookers. Steadfast Defender opened her mouth and tasted the incoming water with her grabbers. The strange creatures had a nasty smell like an air-room with a clogged waste pipe. There was no taste of any attempt to communicate on the part of the strange blobs.

  The red creature made a noise. Although it was directed toward Steadfast Defender and her grabber, it was a strangely useless noise—containing much the wrong frequencies for accurate imaging. The white creature also made some noises. These started out simple, and became more complex—but again, certainly the wrong frequencies for scanning. Since the creatures didn't seem to want to talk, Steadfast Defender decided to attempt conversation herself. She inserted a thought into one of her grabbers and sent it out. The grabber dashed quickly up to the red creature, squirted the greeting out of one of its stingers, and dashed back.

  "STOP! Attack-not. Peace, make we."

  Steadfast Defender waited patiently for the creatures to emit their response, but the only taste in the water was the nasty smell of air-room waste. The creatures made more strange noises, only they were directed at each other instead of toward Steadfast Defender. They would have been useless for seeing her anyway.

  She tried again to talk to the strangely uncommunicative creatures. Perhaps her first attempt at communication was too complicated for the simple creatures to understand. This time she sent her grabber to the white creature with a much simpler message.

  "One, two, three, five, seven, eleven," she said, Telling 29.

  It was no use. There was no response, no taste at all, except the terrible stench of their blobby bodies. The loathsome creatures gave off more noises, while Steadfast Defender had to watch her eye being dissolved inside the body of the red creature. Steadfast Defender tried one last time to make peace. She opened her mouth and sent out a grabber with an even simpler message. Even a baby straight from his Mother's mouth should be able to Tell 3.

  "One, two," said the grabber of Steadfast Defender, as it squirted the cloud of two simple chemicals from its stinger. Instead of responding, the red creature shot out a tentacle and seized the stinger. Other tentacles suddenly appeared, grasping the grabber until it was helpless. Steadfast Defender watched in horror as her grabber had its head torn from its tail and the tail swallowed into the interior of the stinking body of the odious blob.

  The time for attempting civilized discourse was over—it was time to fight! Steadfast Defender quickly inserted an attack plan into her five remaining grabbers, opened her mouth wide, and sent them out. They formed a circle in front of her as she advanced, her sharp-toothed mouth wide. As they approached the red creature, it grew a multiplicity of tentacles, which reached out to grab the stingers of her grabbers. Obviously, this creature had never encountered grabbers in attack formation before.

  The red creature gave a scream of pain as the electric shocks from the grabbers coursed through its body. Then the red flesh went flaccid and the ocean stank as the internal fluids of the loathsome red monster leaked into the water. The other two creatures attempted to come to the rescue, but Steadfast Defender had anticipated this response and her grabber fish had assumed the defensive position she had set up beforehand. While they held off the other two, Steadfast Defender took a big bite of the red flesh, her grabbers assisting by pushing in the torn parts. Once the creature was in her belly, she wouldn't have to taste it.

  Steadfast Defender was greatly surprised when the bite of red flesh recovered quickly from the electrical shock and started to yell and struggle inside her mouth. Creatures swallowed whole could be expected to struggle, but this was a bite torn out of a creature! Bites might twitch in your mouth, but they didn't struggle to get out like this one was doing. She mouthed the chunk of red flesh with her sharp teeth in order to kill it, but the more she snapped, the more active it became. Soon she could no longer breathe, as the red flesh forced its way through her gill slits to the outside, digestive acids burning her tender gill feathers as it passed thro
ugh. Her tongue and lips were also burning, and Steadfast Defender went into convulsions as she opened her mouth and tried to shake the torturing red flesh free. Then, more pain came from a new direction as focused sonic shocks from the other two creatures hit her! She fled in panic.

  THE LAST views of the battle brought back to Insightful Thinker by her looker were appalling. The three monsters made short work of Steadfast Defender's five grabbers, ripping their heads from their tails—one after the other. Steadfast Defender was now maimed and dumb. She had no means of manipulating anything—or even talking. The monsters didn't stop there, but circled around their fleeing victim, subjecting her to blast after blast of focused sound that exploded the last few eyes of her lookers in their sockets, killing them and driving the now blind Steadfast Defender into the deep ocean.

  Insightful Thinker quickly sent a grabber off to tell Mother Precise Talker what had happened, and another to Accurate Calculator calling for her assistance in rescuing Steadfast Defender. Abandoning her post in the ventilation shaft, Insightful Thinker swam off, lookers and grabbers viewing hard around her for any signs of the marauding monsters.

  She was joined outside the walls of Green House by Accurate Calculator, where together they found the still-suffering Steadfast Defender, mouth empty of grabbers and eye sockets empty of lookers. Their sonar picked up noises from the burning red flesh of the odious attacker still within Steadfast Defender's belly, feeding like a fungus on her living flesh. Swimming on each side of her, like nursemaids guiding a baby, they led her back to Green Home and Mother. Mother's grabber shot a dense cloud from its stinger as they approached.

  "Steadfast Defender! Baby mine! Speak to me!"

  "Speak, she can-not. Grabbers, she has-not," said Insightful Thinker, adding tastes of sorrow and concern.

  "Speak, she will-not, until new grabber grows," added Accurate Calculator.