Three Times Chosen

by Alan J. Garner

  An innocuous ebony sphere, little bigger than a bowling ball, occupied the exact centre of the otherwise empty room. Supported by a web of spindly, conductor rods fanning outwards from its unreflective surface like a starburst to touch the whitened wall, floor, and ceiling panels, yellow-white pulses of electrical energy coursed along those alloyed dowels like oxygenated blood. This dully black orb was the modest hub of the Ice Station, permanently connected to the complex it controlled, each of the lighted rods a conduit to an individual subsystem. As always to Norton's cyclopean scrutiny, Dog's outwardly inert brain looked spectacularly unimposing.

  Internally, the Central Processing Unit of the revolutionary mainframe was altogether far more impressive. Modelled on the human brain, Dog was the ultimate expression of DNA computing, a radical concept noteworthy for abandoning conventional silicon-based technologies in favour of synthetic components mimicking molecular biology. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and the human brain had evolved into the supreme computer, which Man found largely impossible to replicate using microchips and motherboards.

  This room was key to the Station's workings, operating much like an animal's central nervous system. Dog's globular CPU duplicated the brain, analysing the information uploads from his array of networked sensors. The pervasive mainframe would initiate the appropriate responses via the radial spikes acting in the same capacity as a spinal cord, conveying nerve signals along the artificial neural net of data cabling emulating a biological nervous system. In the broadest sense imaginable then, Ice Station was a living entity: its skin, a wrapping of ice; its skeleton, sturdy plasteel girders; its beating heart, a thrumming reactor core; its blood, whizzing electrical impulses; its brain, a computer fashioned by Man in the mental likeness of a god.

  If permitted by his makers, Dog could have become a proper machine sentience. Not just self-aware, but intellectually empowered to question its own place in the universe, the first machine ever to possess a soul. His designers foresaw the dangerous implications of freeing up a computer mind and deliberately did not incorporate the genetic algorithms that would have used the same survival of the fittest principles of Darwinism, natural selection and mutation, to make their creation a true learning processor. What Dog's creators did not factor into their equations was that all organisms, even a manmade creature, adjust to their ever-changing environs in order to endure. Children have a habit of growing up, as evidenced by the mainframe's fledgling wit.

  Dog waited patiently for Norton to speak. The computer dismissed trying to make sense of the manbot's proclivity for conversing face to face, putting the quirk down to a glitch carried over from his human days.

  The manbot began speaking ... to himself. “If high altitude storms are upsetting telecommunications, that means the mother of all tempests must be brewing,” Abe reasoned aloud. “Is it hurricane season already? I lose all track of time in this ice cube."

  "The current time is—"

  "Shush, Dog!” Norton yelled up at the sensor lozenge overhead. “Never interrupt when I'm talking to myself. It's rude.” Prevented by the fan of neural spindles from pacing meditatively, Norton had to be content with thinking on his unmoving feet. “The fact remains that, storm or no storm, aerial reconnaissance is essential if we are to determine where these blasted Landhoppers live and what evilness they're up to,” he decided. “If it wasn't for the gravity of the situation, I'd be tempted to grab one of these creatures for study. But that's another opportunity missed. My children's welfare comes first. Prep Seeing-eye Dog for launch and calculate flight time to the Peru Basin."

  "That destination is inadvisable. The UAV is not stressed to withstand the seasonal cyclonic force winds endemic to that region."

  "It'll survive long enough to relay the desired images. I'll pilot it myself, as you are going to be occupied with our guests."

  "Monitoring their vitals will hardly require my full computational attention."

  "But running complete medical diagnostics will. I want the works carried out on the girl ... a full spectrum blood test, holographic organ scans, chromosomal analysis. You recall the drill. Pay particular detail to her reproductive system. I need to you to ascertain if she's able to become a viable breeder with fallopian implants. Assuming I haven't lost my touch as a geneticist, I'm confident I can have her producing babies before her childbearing days are at an end. She's probably our best hope to reconstitute “Water Man” if we're too late to thwart their enemies."

  "What of the male accompanying her?"

  "If our eye in the sky fails us, we'll have to resort to a mind probe to try and collect the geographical lore we're after."

  "Collated data results for invasive memory retrieval procedures record a seventy two per cent failure rate, effectively lobotomising the test primates. The percentages do not favour the subject's survivability."

  Norton rotated his upper arm actuators, effectively shrugging his shoulders. “Since it won't be my neck on the chopping block, I'm willing to take that gamble."

  "Ovum requires sperm for fertilisation."

  "I don't need a lesson in biology from you. Human reproduction is my field of expertise."

  "In human terms then, it takes two to mambo."

  "It's tango and you're quite correct. But our sperm donor doesn't need to have his brain intact to father offspring. I can siphon off his seed easily enough."

  "The gene pool will lack the diversity needed to sustain a viable breeding population."

  "I'll improvise. Manipulation of genetic material is what I did best. It'll be good getting my hands dirty again.” Norton regarded his mechanical grippers distrustfully. “Don't forget, her companion isn't the only candidate for fatherhood we can exploit. That's the beauty of luck, Dog. It usually comes in three's and, thanks to providence, we have a younger, more virile male in our possession."

  Chapter Twenty Two

  "Hey, Merking! Aren't we supposed to be going down, not up?"

  Ignoring Dribben's jibe, Lasbow surfaced. Topside was thankfully overcast, the harsh daylight diffused by the lowering clouds into a squalid greyness his lidless eyes found tolerable. Bobbing in the offshore swell, he struggled to get his bearings in the unfamiliar world above the wind-whipped waves. Rotating to his left, he scanned the eastern coastline of the huge northern continent with his weak sight, unsure of what he was looking for, slave to this sudden impulse to spyhop. Squalling rain spattered the greening sea with hails of droplets that blinded his vision. Wiping away the obscuring rainwater with his hand, he spied in the distance a column of rock thrusting defiantly up out of the whitecaps, signalling to him as a lighthouse would an imperilled ship. Staring for the longest time at this finger of stone, etched darkly against the moody sky and seemingly beckoning to him, Lasbow submerged only when certain he had not mistaken his sighting for what it meant to his merpeople.

  "About time we got this lunatic dive underway,” Dribben mumbled sourly, once the Merking rejoined the small party comprising each of a Retriever, scout and Seaguardian, about thirty feet down.

  Even by taking advantage of local surface currents, it had taken the bodysurfing mermen two days of hard swimming from the sheltered bay in which the Cetari had temporarily made camp to reach the dive spot Brost's assigned scout was steering them to. To everyone's bafflement, the Merking had only cursorily inspected the undersea overhang beneath which the shell-shocked searcher for Atlantis was discovered cringing. For Lasbow, there was no real need to pore over the square chunk of ledge to appreciate its unnatural regularity that had likewise struck Brost as looking distinctly alien. Moments after ending his patently brief examination he had acted on his irrational compulsion to ascend.

  "Watch how you speak to the Merking,” rumbled the lone Seaguard, jabbing a chastising finger Dribben's way. The patchy background rain patter had not masked the Retriever's disparaging mutter. “You'd do well to show him the proper amount of respect."

  "It's okay, Dulby,” intervened Lasbow, his words restr
aining the burly merman, ensuring for the diver's sake that his protector did not get physical.

  As the unhappy bodyguard obediently backed down, Dribben needlessly taunted him. “Go on and pull your horns in, you overgrown cowfish. I have more important stuff to do than belittle you.” He began to make ready for his dive to hunt for Atlantis.

  This time, the Merking quickly grabbed Dulby's brawny arm before he could respond. Calming the incensed Seaguard with a stern look, Lasbow patted Dulby on the back of the head and sent him over to join the scrawny merman waiting silently in the wings.

  By far the beefiest amongst Lasbow's former command, Dulby possessed a brain to go along with his brawn, but on occasion let the side down with his infamously short temper. His inclusion in the company had been a compromise on Captain Brost's part. Acting in his newfound capacity as Seaguard commander, the former scout leader wished for a dozen bodyguards to accompany the king on his vital quest. Lasbow had dissuaded him, sensibly arguing that all the elite Fishers were better used safeguarding the Cetari until his return.

  "Yaggle, take Dulby and scout the inshore waters,” Lasbow ordered the slimly built trailbreaker. “There's what looks like a sea stack not too far north of here. We're making for the base of that.” Seeing the hesitation in the big merman's stance, he smiled reassuringly at Dulby. “I'll be right in your wake, along with Dribben."

  Before the pair moved off, Lasbow had the Retriever moaning in his earhole. “Erops said this was the dive site. You dragged me along to make a black water dive."

  "Which you'll get the chance to do, just closer to shore than originally envisaged."

  "The drop off is right below us. Can't you feel the presence of the Deep, its overwhelming nearness baiting you?"

  "Atlantis lies that way,” said Lasbow, waving his sword arm toward the shoreline.

  "You know this for a fact, Merking."

  "I have a strong feeling."

  Scoffing at Lasbow's hunch, Dribben sneered. “Oh, I get it. You gleaned its exact whereabouts from your mystical spot of spyhopping."

  "A friend of mine used to engage in the practice. I didn't fully understand why until now. It clears the mind."

  Watching his companions swim away, the sour-faced Retriever threw in his lot with the departing mermen and joined his king trailing after them.

  Guiding the party shoreward for five or so miles, Yaggle banked northwards and swam parallel to the coast. While predominantly relying on their scout's navigational skills, the other three mermen surreptitiously probed the seas ahead and below with their individual biosonars, constantly on the lookout for danger. Each was struck by the strangeness of these coastal waters.

  A margin of underwater land borders every continent, sloping gently seawards for a distance of some forty miles before falling steeply away to bottom out on the ocean floor thousands of feet below any unsuspecting swimmer. Topped by shallow seas, this broad ledge was boringly unremarkable in shape, providing a stable base on which reefs formed, the polyp colonies in turn supporting a profusion of marine life.

  The continental shelf over which the party of questing mermen glided presented abnormal topography. Bizarre mounds of angular stone, some over a hundred feet high and covering up to eight acres, swelled from a deeply ridged seabed, looking for all the world as if a giant hand had raked enormous fingers along the submerged shoreline, creating the curious furrows. Sediment from two riverine outflows emptying into a nearby estuary fanned seaward over a large area of the shallow seafloor, partially filling some of the troughs.

  The peculiarity of the seascape went unseen by the Cetari, cruising warily about fifty feet below the squally surface. Visibility in the saltier northern waters amounted to less than half of what they enjoyed in the clearer tropics. Combined with the heavy silting from the river mouths, Lasbow could barely see six feet ahead of him. Training his ranging sound-sight directly below him, he was troubled by his inability to detect the bottom.

  "It's deep here, deeper than it ought to be,” clicked Dribben, picking up on the Merking's concern as he pulled alongside.

  A good Retriever developed the knack of guesstimating depths, so Lasbow accepted Dribben's appraisal on face value. “Any indication just how deep?"

  "Enough to warrant wanting my diving skills."

  "Erops put in a good word for you, Dribben. You're here on his recommendation. He went so far to say that you are the bravest diver out of all the Retrievers."

  Turning to face the Merking, Dribben's mouth curled up into another sneer and he gave a callous laugh. “I don't know about that. The stupidest, maybe, for coming along on this daft jaunt."

  "You think this quest is madness?"

  "What I think is of no consequence. This is your show, Merking, not mine. I only do as I'm told."

  "If you have an objection, speak freely of it."

  Dribben locked eyes with the new monarch. “Alright, but don't get snotty if you dislike my point of view. Just remember you're the one who asked for it.” Returning his grim countenance forwards, the Retriever unloaded his perspective. “This notion of yours, of having us take refuge and make a new home in strange seas is crazy. Black water is no place to be taking merwomen and merchildren. The Deep is a dangerous enough region for Retrievers to be swimming in, specially trained mermen no less. And you plan to bring the whole pod down here."

  Masking his offence at Dribben's attitude, Lasbow granted him the concession, “Everybody is entitled to their own belief and to express it. Under Cerdic's rule, the only opinion that ever mattered was his. Any other viewpoints weren't even considered, let alone allowed to be heard."

  "And you plan to be different, Merking?"

  "I'll pay attention. I won't promise not to disregard a stance that I don't agree with, but I will extend to you and anybody else the courtesy of listening first. Cerdic didn't even permit that freedom."

  "King Cerdic would never have hightailed it off Bounty Reef."

  "His pride would've killed us all."

  "Every one of us is doomed to die anyway."

  "Are you always this pessimistic, Dribben?"

  "I'm a realist, King Lasbow. If you don't have high expectations, then life's disappointments stay shallow."

  "It's a wonder Erops can stand being friends with you."

  "Who said he was? Erops is my superior, not my pal."

  "He stuck up for you the way a friend would."

  Dribben looked sideways at the Merking, clearly uncomfortable at the turn their conversation had taken. “Let's just say, Erops owes me. He owes me a lot.” Unwilling to broach that subject, Dribben swam faster and pulled away from Lasbow.

  Like a shark attracted by thrashing prey, Lasbow went after the recalcitrant merman. Dribben was hiding something, avoiding a personal issue, and that aroused the Merking's curiosity. Drawing level with the Retriever, the glower he got from the churlish diver could have curdled sea cow's milk. Deciding not to childishly pit his ego against Dribben's, he prudently dropped back.

  Alone with his thoughts, Lasbow's own problem came to mind. His farewell to Ahlegra had been marred by tension. Mad at him over his stubborn refusal to take a backseat and let others oversee the dive, her goodbye kiss was a passionless peck on the cheek and not a true expression of their deepening love. He regretted the cold formality of that parting, realising belatedly he should have made the effort the night before his departure to dissipate the acrimony between them. Images of the white whale, the Cetari portent of death, flashed unbidden in his memory. It scared him to think he may never have the chance to reconcile with her if mischance intervened.

  Dulby's call for advice thankfully broke his concentration. The returning echoes from his hasty sonar pulse showed him where the others had stopped. Catching them up, he muscled past Dribben to float between Yaggle and Dulby. “What's the problem?” he asked the pair of them.

  As Lasbow expected, Dulby was the one to reply. The skinny scout was more a doer than a talker. “Majesty, there are the ba
ses of two rock towers up ahead, not one. Which pedestal do we explore?"

  Too cloudy to see much of anything, Lasbow fired a stream of discriminating sonar clicks dead ahead and waited. The images he received confirmed Dulby's claim. There did appear to be twin sea stacks rising from the seabed, though a gulf of seawater separated them. Going by the weakness of the reflected sound waves, he judged the furthermost tower to be at the absolute limit of his echolocation capability, some 330 feet away.

  Unsure how to proceed, Lasbow had the others stay put while he surfaced again. Riding the crests of the frothing waves, he gained a clearer picture. When seen from head-on, the scoured stack in the foreground became lost to sight against the sheer enormity of its intact neighbour. Now that he was viewing the scene from the side, Lasbow could distinguish that there were indeed two towers above water. Not that they looked anything alike.

  Eroded almost down to the waterline, the front stack was crumbling away and on the verge of disappearing entirely beneath the unsettled sea. Its monumental neighbour, startlingly symmetrical in shape, displayed less severe but equally plain signs of prolonged weathering. Cracks crazed its steeped faces like wrinkles, stressing the oldness of the stone edifice. Its noticeably perpendicular lines were marred by hollows where chunks had broken away from the seams of softer limestone intermixed with the hardier granite base rock. Despite at some time in its storied history losing its topmost section, the stack nevertheless commanded the vacant skyline, shooting upwards half again as high as Castle Rock to puncture the descending cloud cover with its blunt tip.

  Unconsciously making comparisons with Bounty Reef's freestanding spire, Lasbow gazed upwards in awe, focusing on the underlying oddities its taller northern counterpart could not conceal. Other than stepped portions narrowing its lofty upper elevations, the sides of the tower were uncommonly straight. Its uninterrupted lines, the pockmarks from erosion notwithstanding, blatantly lacked the notched raggedness that marked Castle Rock's naturalness.