Involution Ocean

by Bruce Sterling

  “Yes, sir,” I said, testing him. “Old people do tend to get set in their ways sometimes.”

  “True!” he said. Desperandum was deeper than he looked. “I’m a scientist” he said. “No doctorate, maybe, a false name, perhaps, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m here to find out something, and when I aim to find out I don’t let anything stand in my way. Do you realize just how little is really known about this planet? Or about this ocean?”

  “Men have lived here for five hundred years, Captain.”

  “Five hundred years of imbeciles, Newhouse. Have a seat. Let’s talk man to man.” He waved one meaty hand, speckled with blond hairs, at a metal bench by the door. I sat.

  “All the major questions about Nullaqua are still unanswered. The first survey teams—with Academy support, mind you—took some samples, declared the place fit for humanity, and left. Answer me this, Newhouse. Why does everything alive here have water in its tissues, even though it never rains?”

  I reviewed my memories of the books I had read before moving to Nullaqua. “Well, I’ve heard it said that there’s a sort of sludgy substrata, deep beneath the surface … something about aquatic toadstools that float to the surface to spawn. They burst open and plankton absorbs the water.”

  “Not a bad theory,” said Desperandum judiciously. “I want to be the first to prove it. Understand now, I have no objections to making a profit. You’ll get your share of a successful voyage, just like everyone else.”

  “I was never in any fear of that, Captain.”

  “But there are lots of little questions that nag at my mind. What causes currents in the dust? How deep is it? What lives down there, what kinds of scavengers? How do they find their food without sight or echo location? How do they breathe? It’s the very opacity of the. sea that infuriates, that bothers me, Newhouse. I can’t see into it.

  “And another thing. We know that the place was inhabitable when the Elder Culture was here. Why did they build outposts on the airless surface?”

  “I don’t know,” I said facetiously. “Maybe they were afraid of something.”

  “I’m not,” Desperandum said. “But then there’s the crew to think about. They can’t possibly understand what I’m doing; they never have. You’re closer to them than I am; if they start to get restless, tell me about it. HI see to it that there’s a bonus for you when the cruise is done.”

  “You can depend on me, Captain,” I said, humoring him. “You might consider young Calothrick, too. He’s from off world and he’s closer to the crew than I am.” Desperandum’s broad flat forehead creased as he thought about it. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t like him. Don’t trust him. There’s something greasy about him.” That surprised me. Calothrick greasy? I made a mental note to check on him. Perhaps he was having withdrawal symptoms.

  Desperandum continued, “Thanks for the suggestion, anyway. Dismissed. Oh, by the way, birdfish casserole for lunch.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” I left.

  How odd, I thought. Why did Desperandum bother with a dead end like science?

  My reverie was interrupted by a shout from Flack, the first mate. Captain Desperandum had hooked something.

  Desperandum padded eagerly from his cabin. He had attached the end of the fishline to a stout winch and he immediately ordered it reeled in. His impatience was marvelous and two of the crew began cranking the winch at a tremendous rate.

  In and in they reeled. Suddenly the fish broke the surface and exploded. The rapid change in pressure had been too much for it.

  Crestfallen, Desperandum examined the rags of fish left on the hook. Small shiny fish nibbled at the remnants that had been scattered for yards in all directions. There was just enough of a ruptured head on the hook to suggest that the creature was blind. There was no hint as to how it breathed in the airless depths. Perhaps it breathed silicon.

  Desperandum tried again. He rebaited the hook with the head of his new catch and dropped it overboard. Two new crewmembers took the windlass and began unreeling the line. Down it went, a hundred yards, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred.

  Suddenly something took the hook and the windlass began unreeling at an insane speed, nearly fracturing the arm of one of the sailors. No one dared to set the catch that would stop the windlass; it might have taken his fingers off.

  “Cut! Cut!” said the second mate.

  “Ceramic fiber!” shouted Desperandum over the whir of the windlass. “It’ll hold it!”

  Abruptly we were out of line. The entire ship lurched, the deck tilted crazily, and with a terrific screech the windlass was ripped free of the deck, snapping some bolts and ripping others right up through the metal. In a flash, the windlass vanished beneath the surface.

  Thoughtfully, Desperandum leaned on the collapsible rail and watched the dust swirl where the windlass had gone down. Then he turned to stare at the whaling hoists attached to the masts, as if he thought them admirable deep-sea fishing tackle. I saw several crew members exchange significant glances. Then Desperandum returned to his cabin. In a moment came the order to set sail again.

  The two blacksmiths produced their hammers and welding equipment and repaired the holes in the deck that the bolts had made when they pulled through.

  I was about to return to the kitchen when a sudden shadow flickered across the deck in front of me. I glanced up and was shocked to see some kind of winged monster sliding and darting through the air. It stopped, fluttered, and settled neatly inside the crow’s nest. It was Dalusa.

  There came a coded series of blasts from the horns in the crow’s nest. On her scouting flight the lookout woman had seen a dustwhale, two miles to starboard. Desperandum was out on deck at once. At his orders, the Lunglance turned into the wind, in the position known as all aback. Then the foresail lines were rapidly hauled through their winches so that the foresails were almost perpendicular to the wind. For a moment the clew lines hung slack; then the sails filled with a muffled snap and the ship heeled onto a starboard tack. The foresails were straightened and the Lunglance moved sluggishly forward. The Lunglance always moved sluggishly. She was not built for speed, and there was little chance of wind with any force in the 500-mile Nullaqua Crater.

  Soon the whale was in sight. As the ship crept up on the lethargic beast, three of the seamen opened veins in their elbows and collected blood in a beaker. Blackburn, our harpooneer, took the beaker and poured the blood into the central chamber of his piston-equipped harpoon with its four shiny barbed vanes. Then he walked nonchalantly to the starboard harpoon gun and loaded it. There was enough blood left for two extra harpoons if need be.

  It was odd, but convenient, that human blood should be a lethal poison to the dustwhale. But it was no odder than the whale’s production of Flare. Like all good things, syncophine in sufficient quantity is a lethal poison.

  We sailed closer to the creature, and it grew larger and larger. It seemed that no living creature had a right to be that huge.

  Suddenly there was a loud chunk sound from the starboard. The vast bulk in the distance suddenly sprouted a harpoon. The silence was broken by a shrill scream. It was the whale.

  The beast, bewildered, began to swim toward us. Blackburn took the opportunity to sink a second and a third poisoned harpoon into its vast, armored back. With a final frightened squeal the creature sounded, only a few yards from our bow. It was under for less than a minute; then it floated to the surface, dead.

  The dustwhale was a vast flounderlike creature, seventy-five feet long and perhaps thirty feet across. The largest part of its body was its mouth, a huge crevasse bristling with tough baleen. It had teeth in its throat to crush the hard-shelled Nullaquan plankton. It used the large amount of silicon it ingested in this way to build a lough black armor, jointed by strips of gray whaleskin. Such armor is tough, but flexible; if it were rigid, the dustwhale would be forced to molt when it grew. This gave the whale an odd sort of hexagon checkerboard pattern of black and gray on its entire body. One
could tell a whale’s age by counting the growth rings on an armor plate. The rings were not very well defined, since Nullaqua has no seasons and the food supply is constant. But they were there, and it was seldom that one found a whale more than fifty years old. Like all Nullaquan surface fish, the dustwhale is air-breathing and odd-blooded. Dustwhales often travel in pods.

  We cruised to the side of the dead monster. Six crewmen, one of them Calothrick, leapt off the ship onto the creature’s back, carrying huge hooks attached to metal cables.

  The lookout honked her horn twice, sharply. This was the warning signal for sharks. A coded blast off the smaller horn gave their position: three points off the port bow.

  Mr. Grent, the second mate, was overseeing the loading operation. He grew agitated and the crew began to jump frantically, imbedding their hooks as deeply as possible into the flesh of the monster. It was best to snag a rib.

  I had heard much about the Nullaquan shark, so I walked across the deck to see their approach. What a disappointment! Advancing from the west was a small flock of flying fish, their jewellike chitinous wings flashing green in the sunlight. Were these the legendary carnivores, these fluttery creatures little larger than earthly goldfish? But then perhaps there were vast numbers of them, with small, but sharp teeth and a total disregard for their own preservation….

  Then I saw fins split the surface beneath the flying fish and a half-dozen shiny black bodies surged through the dust like advancing torpedoes. It was startling, almost macabre, to see the bulbous tip of each black fin suddenly open to reveal a large, staring blue eye!

  So, then the flying fish were only pilot fish, leading the sharks to slaughter in exchange for tidbits. With their wings they could go much higher and see much farther than the dust-bound sharks.

  Suddenly the third mate, Mr. Bogunheim, thrust a long whaling spade into my hand and yelled at me to help repel the creatures. Nothing loath, I ran across the deck to the rail to join the rest of the crew.

  The sharks were already attacking. The dust roiled like lava, and thick gouts of purplish liquid burst from the lacerated body of the whale. The sailors had finished imbedding their hooks, and they jumped to the relative safety of the deck. There came a loud clanking and clattering from the hoists and triple tackle as the whale was slowly, slowly, hauled on board. The ship began to list. I stabbed downward into the thrashing mass of sharks and felt my spade bite flesh. A sailor moaned through his mask as one of the pilot fish flew on deck and bit him stingingly on the calf. Those fish were small but they had sharp teeth. They fluttered on board to harass the sailors, fell to the deck, then scuttled overboard on their stiff wings like so many monster ants.

  I stopped my attack on the sharks for a moment to stamp on a flying fish. Suddenly the whaling spade was almost wrenched from my grasp. Startled, I pulled up a five-foot metal stub, bitten clean through. I was taken aback. Then I saw a pilot fish flap toward me. Swinging my stub like a bat, I sent it splattered back into the sea.

  Suddenly a swift shape, borne aloft on crooked batwings, swooped past the edge of the ship. It was Dalusa, dragging a metal-mesh net. The fluttering group of pilot fish stopped harassing the crew and quickly sought the safety of the sea.

  The crew moved out of the way as the hoisted whale slowly settled onto the deck. The Lunglance listed and thick purplish blood ran out under the rail and into the sea. One shark, more voracious than the rest, leapt onto the deck after its vanished prey. Flopping and snapping it bit out a final oozing chunk of meat and then rolled overboard again.

  The sharks milled indecisively in the bloody dust. Then they towed their dead comrades out of spade range, devoured them in a leisurely manner, and swam languidly away.

  The crew settled down to the task of butchering the whale. First, the armored skin was peeled off in strips and soaked in a copper tub with a chemical that made it more pliable. Then the meat was efficiently sliced off with spades and axes. Piece by piece, it was fed into a clanking hand-powered grinder and processed for oil and water. Our two coopers sawed through the broad, stavelike ribs and began to machine them into ivory barrels. The smaller ribs and a few of the vertebrae were taken for scrimshaw.

  Under the pretense of getting whale steaks I shoved a few pounds of the intestine into an iron bucket and hid it in the kitchen.

  The crew shoved the remaining offal overboard with shovels and tough metal-bristled pushbrooms. I looked over the side. At the touch of moisture, the parched dust had clumped into a slate gray, doughy mass. Soon, I knew, the crystalline spores of Nullaquan plankton would sense the presence of water and begin to grow, soaking up all the moisture through their tiny pores and biochemically altering the dust into a transparent micalike shell. A strange world, I thought, where a man could lean over the rail and spit emeralds.

  A crude but satisfactory method of extracting syncophine was through processing with ethyl alcohol. So, when the crew celebrated that night, I appropriated a few pints of strong ale and started work.

  The process was about half done when I heard a quick triple rap on the hatch. I took the brew off the range and put it in the oven, then went up the stairs and opened the hatch. It was Calothrick.

  “Holy Death,” he said profanely, walking down the stairs and pulling off his lightning-striped dustmask. There were red indentations from the seal of the dustmask on his temples and across his sparsely stubbled cheeks. “I can’t stand that beer.” He sniffed at the air, then grinned.

  “Knew I could depend on you, John,” he said happily. He zipped open his sailor’s tunic and pulled out a flattened plastic pouch from an inside pocket. There were a few drops of syncophine in one corner .

  “I’ve been saving up,” he said. “Y’want a quick blast?”

  “Why not?” I said. Calothrick pulled his eyedropper out of his belt.

  “I’ve been meaning to come down here and talk,” he said. “You’ve got it pretty soft down here. You don’t have to associate with that stinking crowd of sailors. What a bunch of stooges! I don’t think they know how to talk. I mean, like you or me.” He handed me the eyedropper. “Here, you can go first.”

  I looked at the massive dose of syncophine he had given me through a misplaced sense of generosity. “I’d better sit down for this,” I said.

  Calothrick winked. “Been a while, huh? Boy, the days sure crawl by without it.”

  I opened my mouth and squeezed five drops of Flare out onto my tongue. A metallic-tasting numbness spread through my mouth. My eyes began to water. I handed the dropper back to Calothrick. He shook his bag a few times, then sucked out an even larger dose than he had given me. Suddenly my vision blurred. I closed my eyes.

  “Here’s greasy luck,” said Calothrick cheerfully, giving the dustwhaler’s traditional toast His voice sounded unnaturally loud. Unconsciously I gripped the seat of my stool.

  There was a sudden icy tingling at the base of my spine. Abruptly an overwhelming rush like channelized lightning rocketed up my spine to burst inside my skull. I felt it distinctly. The top of my skull lifted neatly off, and a cold blue flame shot through the center of my head. My eyes shocked open and the flame settled down to an even, steady burning, like the flare of a. welding torch. The stove, the unwashed utensils, Calothrick’s ecstatic face, everything had an unnatural shininess to it, as if every object were suddenly venting energy from some internal reservoir. Electric blue dots and lozenges floated at the edges of my vision. I looked at my hands. I, too, was glowing.

  “How long?” Calothrick said suddenly.

  “How long till what?”

  “How long till you can distill some Flare that’s fit to do up?”

  “I don’t know,” I said with difficulty. “I can finish distilling by tomorrow night if I work at it. But I don’t know how good it’ll be. I won’t know its strength.”

  “Oh, I’m not afraid of its being too strong.” said Calothrick. He giggled.

  I thought about the potful of whale intestine slowly growing cold in the unl
it oven. I felt disinclined to get up and put it back on the stove. It seemed like an immense effort obviously beyond my capabilities.

  “What were we talking about?” Calothrick asked.

  I hesitated. “About how strong it was.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”

  “One of us will have to try it out first,” I said. “There might be impurities. Maybe dangerous. You want to draw straws?”

  “Dangerous,” muttered Calothrick. He seemed troubled. Then he smiled. “Did I tell you about that man, the one who’s been pestering me all the time?”

  “No. Are you being mistreated? Have you told the mates about it?”

  “No, it’s not that, it’s this kid named Murphig. A Nullaquan. It’s his first time out and he keeps asking me questions, you know, about where I’m from and what I’m doing out here. A real nuisance. I mean, I’m not too good at lying.”

  An odd statement, that last one, I thought. If it were a lie, it was very much a lie, because he had told it with an aura of perfect innocence and truth.

  “So?” I said.

  “So, he’s about your build, you know? You’ve seen him, the one with green and white target shapes on his cheeks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, why not try it out on him?”

  I thought it over. “You want me to put Flare in his food?”

  “Why not?” Calothrick demanded. “I’ll do it if you don’t have the—if you don’t want to.”

  The Flare was beginning to wear off. “Yeah, you do it,” I said. I rubbed my left eye, the one with the grayish dead spot; it was beginning to ache. I got up off the stool, took the pot out of the oven, and put it back on the range. I turned on the heat.

  “Pump that primer a few times, will you Dumonty,” I said tiredly.

  “Monty,” he corrected, pumping. “Say, you got lots in there. That’ll keep ’em happy back in the Highisle, huh?”