I do know, however, that the spirit of my great-great-aunt had come to rest in the body of my friend. That she had shown that I was still her favorite descendant by arranging for the money we had prayed for to come to us—in spite of the lottery being rigged. The heart of the Lord of Death had been moved, the Ford Foundation mobilized, continents and oceans traversed: all this so my family’s karma could be fulfilled.
So awed was I by the cosmic grandeur of our personal lives, and so overcome with gratitude, that I fell on my knees in front of my great-great-aunt’s latest incarnation and place my folded palms between Joey Friedberg’s feet. Thank you for protecting me, honored great-great-aunt, I thought, thank you in the name of the Lord Buddha.
“Why the fuck are you doing that?” Joey said, bemused and confused.
“You really don’t know, do you?” I studied his face for any trace of remembrance of that night’s vision. There was nothing, as is proper. The conscious mind cannot suffer the burden of so many past lives, or it would go mad.
“Well, at least my little brother’s treating me with proper respect at last.”
“He sure is.” For once I didn’t mind being called the little brother of a farang. “He sure is.”
ALEXANDER JABLOKOV
A Deeper Sea
With only a handful of elegant, coolly pyrotechnic stories, like the one that follows, Alexander Jablokov has established himself as one of the most highly regarded and promising new writers in SF. He is a frequent contributor to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing, and other markets. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, where he is involved in working on a projected anthology of “Future Boston” stories being put together by the Cambridge Writer’s Workshop; he himself has written several stories set in the “Future Boston” milieu. He has just completed work on his first novel.
Here he unravels an age-old chain of consequences that takes us from the ancient Cretan island of Thera to the chill depths of Jupiter space, and in so doing spins a taut, hard-edged, fast-paced tale of war, intrigue, adventure, betrayal, transformation, atrocity—and the search for absolution.
A Deeper Sea
ALEXANDER JABLOKOV
JUPITER ORBIT, JANUARY 2033
The whale screamed in fear, the complex harmonics of its terror rumbling in the warm water around Ilya Stasov. He hung tensely in the null-g hub of the research space station Jupiter Forward. Stasov had concealed himself in an aquarium with the ecology of a Caribbean coral reef. He hung there, pulling water through his artificial gills, and listened to the whale as it screamed from the cold wastes of interplanetary space. The multicolored fish surrounding Stasov had adapted to the lack of gravitational orientation, and floated with their dorsal fins in all directions, oblivious to the whale’s cry.
The sperm whale screamed again. Stasov tightened himself into a ball, as if to escape the sound, then straightened and twitched a finger, calling on the imaging capabilities of Jupiter Forward’s computer system. The space station orbited in Ganymede’s trailing trojan point, and the whale floated near it. Instead of leaving the tank and going into space to confront the whale, Stasov brought the Jovian system into the water.
Banded Jupiter appeared in the aquarium like a sunken fishing float. A moray eel in a crevice watched it carefully, judging its edibility. Stasov imagined the chill of interplanetary space penetrating the tropical water. Ganymede rolled among the sea anemones like a jetting snail. He sucked hyperoxygenated water through his carotid gill attachments and looked for the cyborg sperm whale.
“Calm,” he murmured through his throat mike, “Calm.” He was linked directly to the whale’s auditory centers.
The whale’s image was still invisible in his view. Another finger twitch, and Jupiter shrank while Ganymede swelled. The water darkened in the tank and the stars peeked through above the coral. The fish ignored these astronomical manifestations and went calmly about their business. The image of Ganymede grew to the point that Stasov felt himself flying over its rough surface. He no longer saw the tank in which he floated.
The sperm whale suddenly breached the surface of darkness and rose up out of Ganymede’s invisible shadow. Fusion rockets burned blue along his length. Sunlight gleamed along the whale’s great ridged bulk and glittered on the tessellations of the phased microwave array on his back.
But where was the goddam dolphin? “Weissmuller,” Stasov said. “Speak to Clarence.” Silence. “The whale needs your words.” A longer silence. “Damn it, Weissmuller, where are you?” His left hand throbbed and he clenched it into a fist, as well as he could.
His only answer was the roaring hiss of Jupiter’s magnetic field and the low murmur of the engineers as they checked the function of the whale’s engines. Stasov keyed in more astronomical data. Ganymede shrank to a marble. The entire Jovian system now floated in the tank, satellite orbits marked, the computer giving him direct perception of their gravity wells sinking like holes in deep perspective. The space station of Jupiter Forward appeared in Ganymede’s trojan point, a bright dot. The computer located the transponder on the dolphin’s space suit and displayed it as a spark. Stasov looked at Weissmuller’s current location and swore.
The dolphin had dived into Io’s gravity well and been slingshot out towards Europa. Jupiter’s plunging gravity well gaped before Stasov’s eyes and he felt as if he were being sucked down into a whirlpool. He fought down a moment of terror. The dolphin’s spark climbed slowly up towards him. Weissmuller always played things close to the edge. It would be hours before the dolphin could get back to Jupiter Forward.
Stasov examined Clarence’s image, wanting to stroke the whale’s back to comfort him. A trigger fish examined the hologram, seemingly surprised to see a sperm whale its own size, then darted away with a contemptuous flick of its fins. The real Clarence, desperately alone in space, of course perceived nothing of this.
Despite the immense modifications to his body, Clarence was still vaguely cetacean, though he now had vast, complex control planes to guide him through the Jovian atmosphere, making him look like a whale decorated with streamers as a float in a parade. Stasov spoke calming words, but he wasn’t an expert in sperm whale dialect. That wasn’t why he was there. The whale continued to send out echo-location clicks in the microwave band, unable to understand how he had lost consciousness on an island in the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, and awoken here, in a mysterious place he had never heard of, a place of no water, no fish, and a dozen featureless spheres.
Irregular bursts of rocket appeared along Clarence’s sides, spinning him. Data streamed into the tank, crowding the fish: fuel use, accelerations, circuit status. Voices muttered technical jargon. Stasov felt as he had when as a child, put to bed early, listening to the intent, incomprehensible adult conversation of his parents’ friends through the closed bedroom door.
“Erika,” Stasov said, keying another comm line.
“Director Morgenstern’s line,” a heavy male voice answered.
“Miller.” Stasov hadn’t expected the Security Chief’s voice. But if he had him … “Why is the dolphin running loose around Io?”
“There’s something wrong with your comm, Colonel. You sound like you’re underwater. You’d better check it.”
Stasov kept one eye on the increasingly agitated whale. “I’m not a colonel,” he snapped. “I hold no such rank. Please give me Director Morgenstern. We can deal with your dereliction of duty later.”
“Dereliction, Colonel?” Paul Miller’s voice had the lazy drawl that Stasov associated with thuggish political policemen and prison camp guards, whether they were American, Russian, or Japanese. “The dolphin wanted to go. My men aren’t KGB officers.” He chuckled. Stasov knew that sound well: the laugh of an interrogator putting a subject at ease before hitting him again. He’d heard it over and over during his months at Camp Homma. It had begun to seem an essential part of torture. “Should we have held him under physical restraint? That would be a treaty violation. Do you wan
t me to order my men to commit a—”
“Damn it, Miller, quit babbling and get me the Director!” Stasov tried to conceal his sudden fear under anger.
“You just watch yourself, Colonel.” Miller’s voice was suddenly cold. “None of us are under your orders. It’s a long way from Uglegorsk. The Director’s busy. I don’t have to—”
“Ilya,” Erika Morgenstern’s voice broke in. “What’s the problem?”
“Cut all of the whale’s systems immediately,” Stasov said tensely. “None of the problems are on the engineering side. He’s not responsible. Weissmuller’s off somewhere around Io and I can’t handle the whale alone. I know it throws the schedule off. And the budget. But do it.”
Morgenstern didn’t hesitate. The hectic flaring lights along the whale’s sides died and it floated, quiescent. “Done,” she said. Subliminally Stasov heard cries of surprise and frustration from the engineers testing the vehicle. The vehicle. Clarence the cyborg sperm whale, hanging in orbit around Jupiter. He was there. Stasov could see him, but still wasn’t sure he believed it. Test levels dropped to zero.
Stasov swam slowly to the tank’s surface and edged out through the enhanced-surface-tension barrier that held the liquid sphere together, feeling the boundary as a line of almost painful pressure on his skin. He floated into the air, globules of water drifting off his body and reuniting with the large, quivering sphere of the fish tank. Once he had detached the carotid oxygenation connections he drew a deep, painful breath of the unfriendly air, re-establishing his ventilation reflexes. His diaphragm contracted painfully, having relaxed during his conditioned apnea.
A tiny fish flopped in the air, pulled out of the water along with him. Stasov shepherded it back to the tank. The cold air gave him goose bumps, and he shivered. He pulled himself over to an actual porthole and peered out at space. Clarence floated, surrounded by vehicles and swarming human beings, afflicting him as had the parasites that had clung to him in the seas of Earth. It would be hours before Weissmuller returned. Something had to be done. Stasov felt a twisting in his belly. It had been a long time since he’d tortured a dolphin. He knew that if he did it again, it would be his last act. But he could see no other way.
* * *
“Ilya,” Erika Morgenstern said in exasperation. “You have to realize what these people think you are. What they call you—”
“The Shark of Uglegorsk,” he finished. “You and I have been through all that. They don’t understand anything.”
Morgenstern stared at him with those efficient brown-green eyes that seemed able to see through both glare and darkness with equal ease. The first time he had seen those eyes they had spelled his salvation. He tried never to forget that. “You’re the one who’s not aware of anything. I have to balance two hundred fifty people from twenty countries aboard this space station, and turn in a job of research to boot. Hatred and fear aren’t imaginary.”
Stasov rubbed his maimed left hand and looked back at her. The room was in half darkness, as she preferred, giving her head, with its flat face and short, graying coppery hair, the look of an astronomical object. She held court in an imperial style which would have dismayed her superiors at the UN Planetary Exploration Directorate—had they been permitted to know about it—guarded by acolytes like Miller, aloof, inaccessible, but aware of everything that went on aboard Jupiter Forward. Stasov was sometimes startled by what had become of her.
“They should still be able to do their jobs,” he said. “Or is your authority over them insufficient?”
She didn’t flush—she had more control than that—but she narrowed her eyes in an expression of authority, to let him know that he’d gone too far. He stared back at her with the pale-blue-eyed absence of expression that let her know that he’d been through worse than she could ever throw at him.
A hologram of Jupiter gave the room what light it had. The planet was sliced apart to show magnetic fields and convection cells, as if Morgenstern could as easily order a modification in the circulation of the Great Red Spot as she could in the air pressure of the storage lockers or the menu in the dining hall.
“We’ve come this far together,” she said. “Since Homma. Now we’re about to drop a cyborg sperm whale into the Jovian atmosphere.” She shook her head. “I’m still not sure I believe it. But I can’t risk the anger of the Delphine Delegation. They provide most of our financing. You know that. Miller’s an idiot, but he’s right. We cannot physically restrain an intelligent cetacean. It violates the Treaty of Santa Barbara.” Her voice still had a trace of an accent from her native New Zealand.
“Articles 12 and 13,” Stasov muttered. “Open Seas and Freedom of Entities. Damn right I know it. Better than anyone else. And dolphins love the letter of the law. They think it’s the stupidest thing they ever heard, but they use it whenever it’s convenient. They can afford good lawyers.”
“Exactly. I can’t jeopardize the project. Not now. Not ever. The Delphine Delegation keeps us on a short enough financial tether as it is.”
“Miller didn’t oppose me because of the Treaty,” Stasov spat. “He did it because he thinks dolphins are wonderful innocent creatures, and because he hates me for what he imagines I did to them. There’s nothing more terrifying than a sentimental thug. By letting him oppose me, you are jeopardizing the project. That’s not just a machine out there. It’s a perceptive being, trapped in a metal shell and hauled to a world he doesn’t understand. He’s going mad. Weissmuller’s already crazy. Even for a dolphin. Look clearly, Erika. The project could end here.”
She looked at him. He didn’t have to say any more. Looking clearly was what she did best. It had taken her from an after-college job as a junior observer on a UN War Crimes commission to one of the most powerful jobs in the UN Planetary Exploration Directorate. And it had been the look behind Stasov’s eyes, in the gardens of Camp Homma, that had given her the first glimpse of the direction to move in.
“All right,” she said, finally. “Do what you have to.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course I do!” she blazed. “I said it, didn’t I? I’m giving you full authority, answerable only to me. Do what you want to your dolphin Messiah and his acolyte. Just get the project moving.”
“Don’t mock me, Erika,” Stasov said heavily. “Don’t ever mock me.” He stood, raising himself up slowly in the low gravity. Director Morgenstern’s comm terminal had been flickering constantly, and there were undoubtedly a dozen crises already piled up while she had chatted with her unpopular and essential Cetacean Liaison. “The project will move.”
She eyed him, suddenly the more uncertain, younger woman he remembered. “Ilya. What do you mean to do?”
“Don’t ask me,” he said, his voice dead. “I’ll only do what’s necessary.”
UGLEGORSK, OCTOBER 2019
“You don’t seem like a man who would be interested in stories, Colonel,” Georgios Theodoros said as he stumbled up the wet stone steps, his long coat inadequate protection against the wind blowing off the Tatar Strait.
Colonel Stasov smiled, the third large star on his officer’s shoulder boards new enough that he still enjoyed the novelty of the salutation, even from a foreign civilian. “It’s not just a story, is it? It’s evidence that what we are doing has been done before.”
“I’m not sure that’s true. It’s all allegorical, allusive.” Theodoros, a dreamy-eyed Greek with an ecclesiastical beard, stopped on one of the landings, affecting to examine the view, but actually to rest. There was little enough to look at. The sea before him was gray, with sharp-toothed waves. The thick clouds lowering over it obscured the boundary between sea and sky. This was nothing like the warm, dark Aegean where he did his delphine research. The island Sakhalin was a rough, hard place. That was why this Russian Colonel with his pale blue eyes was so intense in his work. Though those eyes sometimes shone with the joy of a true discoverer, a look that had automatically led Theodoros to accept the other as a friend.
“No,” Stasov stated decisively. “What humans and dolphins did during the reign of the Cretan Thalassocracy is significant to us here. That’s why we brought you. Not just to hear stories. Thirty-five hundred years ago they developed the mental technology to deal with the problem. I believe you have brought the vestiges of that technology with you to Uglegorsk.” He tugged at the binoculars he wore around his neck.
“They claimed to speak to dolphins,” Theodoros murmured. “Perhaps they did.” For years, no one had listened to his theories, and now that someone was willing to, he found himself somehow reluctant, uncertain of the consequences. The Soviets weren’t interested in mere theories. They meant to act.
The research station at Uglegorsk sprawled out beneath them. Beauty being pointless against the cold rocks of Sakhalin, the station had seemingly striven for extreme ugliness, and succeeded in the Soviet manner. The metal huts, some of WWII Lend-Lease vintage, were rusted and patched. Holding pens crowded the shoreline, their captive dolphins splashing and leaping. The base was dominated by the concrete vault of the dolphin laboratory, built with more recent American aid.
Theodoros’s specialty was human-dolphin interactions during the second millennium BCE, a research topic too vague for delphine researchers and too practical for classicists and mythologists. So he had been surprised when he received an official invitation from the Vladivostok Oceanographic Institute to fly out to Uglegorsk to talk with Ilya Stasov. It hadn’t been simply a polite facility tour followed by an hour talk, either. He’d been questioned intently for three days. A map of the Aegean Sea now hung in the main seminar room, the sites of Cretan cities marked on it, with a big star on Thera, the island that was the remnants of the great volcano whose eruption had brought an end to Cretan civilization. The Soviet researchers gathered in front of it to argue, arms waving, in their loud Russian. He and Stasov spoke English with each other.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection Page 47