by Jeff Carlson
—Help me. I can’t keep the tribe in harmony on my own. They’ll divide again.
“What do they want?”
—You.
Vonnie shook her head involuntarily and clenched her fists. She’d boasted to Dawson about meeting the sunfish, but the reality of climbing down into 07 was unthinkable. “Lam, I can’t,” she said.
—You. You. You. You.
She almost shut off communications. Instead, she glanced through her limited display, grieving for him. Her overseer showed no indication of attack, but at best Lam seemed half-sane. He’d retained enough personality to imitate a man. The rest of him had eroded away in the dark.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t valuable. If they captured him, his mem files could provide an intimate look at the tribe’s daily lives. Maybe she could guide his madness.
He’s influencing the sunfish and on some level he’s trying to reach me, too. “I want to help,” she said. “Lam?”
—They’re listening.
“Tell me what to do. Nobody wants to fight, but we don’t understand our translations. The tribe is showing aggression and conquest. They’re weakening the ice near our modules.”
—They’re anxious. They’re eager.
“Why did they come here?”
—You. You. You. You.
She almost told her overseer to immobilize Lam with a slavecast. If they regained control, O’Neal could use Lam’s body to soothe the tribe or lead them back into the ice.
What if the sunfish perceived the change in Lam? Would they hurt him? They were so finely attuned to moods and motivations, reading each other’s souls as easily as she read her datastreams…
‘Your voice is why they listened to you,’ he’d said.
She finally realized what that meant. “Damn it!” she said. Then she rammed her fist into her thigh, punishing herself for her stupidity. I’m so tense, I stopped thinking like a sunfish. To them, what you say is far more than words. Your voice shows your state of mind.
“Lam, are you relaying my broadcasts to the tribe in real time?” she asked.
—Relaying and translating.
“We don’t want to fight!” she yelled to the matriarchs. “We are allies! We hold a treaty with you!”
—Yes. No. Yes. No.
“I don’t understand.”
—We are not Top Clan Eight-Six.
“You’re a new tribe. Of course. Bigger. Stronger. Four two, four two,” she said, speaking faster and faster as she made sense of the phrase. They doubled the number of individuals in their new clan, she thought. ‘Four two’ might also compare the physical size of the larger breed to the smaller sunfish. There are so many nuances… “We offer the same terms to you. Friendship. Power. Tools. Food.”
She pictured Lam among them. He was broadcasting her words among the sunfish even as he called and danced, interpreting her meaning with his sonar and arm movements.
—Food, yes, he said. —Allies, yes.
“We can work together.” Vonnie made it a statement, not a question.
—The matriarchs need to discuss your offer and to determine their positions within the tribe, he said. —The hierarchy of this new clan is in flux.
“Tell them we can provide more than food and tools. We offer knowledge. We offer peace.”
No reply. Were they shrieking through the ice?
Muting her channel with Lam, Vonnie opened a separate link on her display. It was heavily secured, no vision, although she was convinced he’d never intended a cyber attack. “Koebsch, I don’t feel their sonar. Did they stop screaming?”
“Yes,” Koebsch said. “It’s quieted down. Great work. Radar shows them physically conferencing with each other, and I listened to you on my display.”
“Make sure Ribeiro knows what’s happening.”
“He shut down his gun platforms. I have everyone working on our translations or preparing more gifts as soon as it’s safe to bring new mecha into the ice. The AIs are developing their translations, too. What did Lam mean about your voice?”
“Tom heard something right in me,” she said with pride. “Every time we met, he was studying us. He was learning about people, then telling the matriarchs. The questions he asked weren’t just to teach us their language or to get more food. He was testing me. Testing us.”
Koebsch’s voice was perplexed. “You’re not representative of our entire race,” he said.
“I am. Their perceptions run deeper than ours. Tom probably gleaned more about us than our scientists and AIs observed in him. He saw everything in me.”
“That’s scary.”
“They don’t hide anything from each other. Desire. Embarrassment. Jealousy. They probably don’t experience some of our emotions because nothing is secret to them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re aware of Dawson, not him specifically as a man but as a major entity in my life. They know about his greed and his disgust. They know he’ll kill them if he can.”
“Then why would they work with us?”
“They know I’ll protect them. They know I’m ashamed of Dawson, and I have my own reasons to work with them. Because I like the attention. Because it makes me feel important.” Her honesty was liberating, and she said more before she could stop herself. “Koebsch, I want to apologize for teasing you.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’ve flirted with you. I let you think I was interested so you’d listen to me.”
“I think you are interested,” he said, startling her. Had he turned off the low-level AIs who recorded everything for analysis on Earth? If not, he might find himself reprimanded for encouraging her.
“Koebsch, we shouldn’t—”
“I know it’s tricky,” he said. “I’m your boss and you like Ben, too. That doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about you, Von.”
“Oh, uh,” she stammered.
She hadn’t been prepared for him to meet her apology with a confession. As an administrator, Peter Koebsch was adept at steering discussions to the subject of his choice.
She was glad he couldn’t see her face when she blustered on. “I want to do better,” she said. “That’s what Tom saw in me, the right balance of intentions. That’s why he pressed me about Ben. And you. When he asked those questions, you were in my feelings, too, Koebsch, my feelings for you and the knowledge that I could hurt you or help you if I was careful. That’s what the sunfish need from us. They appreciate smart decisions and self-interest if it supports the tribe.”
“We can talk about you and me later,” Koebsch said, managing the topic of their conversation again. “How do we make the sunfish accept a new treaty?”
Relieved, she said, “It depends on the larger breed. We don’t know enough about them. They must be intelligent. From the blood samples we scraped off my suit, they’re also healthier than the smaller sunfish. Maybe they’re not as desperate. What if the biosphere is more stable further down in the ice?”
“They came here when the smaller sunfish told them about us.”
“Yes. That’s promising. Let me call Lam. I also want to see our translations and talk to… O’Neal,” she said.
She’d almost said Ben. She needed Koebsch to reconnect her display to the group feed, and he wasn’t petty. He shouldn’t balk if she used her lover’s name, yet he was human, so she needed to tread lightly.
Koebsch said, “I can patch you to O’Neal and his feeds, but I can’t give you full access, not while you’re communicating with Lam.”
“He’s on our side.”
“I can’t take that risk.”
“Okay, okay. Damn it. I want O’Neal and Ben and Ash,” she said, hurrying over Ben’s name in the middle. “I might need Henri, too.”
“Four channels is too many. You can have O’Neal.”
“I also need biology, geology, and ROM. Koebsch, we need to find out where the larger breed lives. Their environment will influence their vocabulary like the Top Clans are influenced by the upper sections of t
he ice. I also need Henri or Ash to rig a suit for me to walk through the cargo tube.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Nobody’s going to wear it. I’ll send the suit down by remote. We’ll have to tweak a few things, but the sunfish will think it’s me.”
Koebsch might have shaken his head. A soft clatter filled their radio link. “It won’t work,” he said.
“It will. I know what I’m doing.”
He grunted hah like an exasperated laugh. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said as if he was admitting to a bad habit. “Von, be careful.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. I shouldn’t have said ‘sir,’ she thought. I wanted to show respect, but he’ll think I’m putting space between us now that I have what I want. Why can’t I control my mouth?
She glanced at her display as four windows lit up, then a fifth. Koebsch had authorized more feeds than she’d requested, linking her with three of her crewmates, himself, and an AI.
It was good to see them again. She didn’t like being alone, and she drank in their postures and their faces, Koebsch with his handsome square face and blond hair even lighter than her own, Ben with his combative, sardonic gaze, Ash with her hard expression covered in girlish freckles, and O’Neal with his imperturbable calm.
Ben and Ash were working through radar sims. O’Neal had transcripts of the tribe’s activity, which Ben had combined with his mock-ups.
In radar and infrared, the sunfish were a writhing mob. Twelve of them spilled over Submodule 07 like a wave, crawling among its struts and cables. The larger breed held most of the dominant positions near the underside of the group—most, but not all. Lam, and Charlotte were at the center of it. They debated with the larger sunfish.
LAM: Feel the metal / Breathe their scent.
LARGE MALES:
SMALL SUNFISH: Great tools / Great strength.
CHARLOTTE: Their tribe is strong.
LARGE SUNFISH: We hear them Sense them Above the ice!
LARGE MALES: Death / Only death above.
CHARLOTTE: They rule the void / Great strength / They come and go like
LARGE FEMALE #1: They are the Old Ones!?
LAM: They are a new tribe / A strange tribe.
SMALL SUNFISH: Strange life above the ice!
CHARLOTTE: They rule the void We can rule the ice together Their tools / Our warriors.
Brigit struggled to join Charlotte and Lam near the bottom of the pack. She rasped her arms against the larger females, then snapped her beak, challenging them.
BRIGIT: We fight / We win.
LARGE FEMALES: No We hold the balance Mid Clan Top Clan / We hold more weight.
SMALL MALES: We fight!
LAM: Ghost Clan changes weight / Changes balance.
CHARLOTTE AND BRIGIT: We are hardier than you We fight Mid Clan joins Top Clan joins Ghost Clan.
“How old is this transcript?” Vonnie asked.
“It’s happening now,” O’Neal said. “They’ve been repeating the same arguments without a lot of change for several minutes. Only the name ‘Ghost Clan’ is new.”
“’Ghost Clan’ is what they call us?”
“Yeah. Our name was a key factor in how their conversation has evolved. I think the larger breed were skeptical. Even if sunfish can’t lie, they didn’t believe what they’d been told about us until they saw our mecha. They kept referring to us a ‘Top Top Clan,’ which is probably an insult.”
Vonnie nodded. The sterile, upper reaches of the frozen sky were populated by the smaller breed because they were outcasts and refugees, the losers of an ancient war. They’d survived endless tragedies—and she laughed with excitement. “If the larger breed calls itself ‘Mid Clan, not ‘Bottom’ or ‘Low Clan,’ they must be aware of more sunfish further down.”
“More sunfish or something else,” O’Neal said. His words were circumspect, but the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled in pleasure and friendship. “Don’t get carried away, Von. The larger breed uses their own dialect. It’s altered how the smaller sunfish speak to them, and we’re missing some connotations.”
Vonnie didn’t care. “Ash, I need a scout suit.”
“You can’t be that stupid,” Ash said.
“Hear me out. Nobody’s going down there. I just need a suit to act like me.”
Ben wore an approving grin. “Sneaky.”
“Wait,” Koebsch said. “A suit won’t have the right sound or weight without someone inside it. The sunfish will know something’s wrong.”
“We’ll pack it with transplants from the med lab. The clone stock smells human and has the right mass,” Vonnie explained as Ash said, “Oh, gross.”
Koebsch shook his head. “Those transplants are expensive, and it wouldn’t work. Dead meat won’t generate a bioelectric field. Dawson proved the sunfish were able to sense you inside your suit at close range.”
“We’ll rig a few gadgets to produce a weak electrical field and sounds like breathing and a heartbeat.”
“Then we could pack the suit with anything that matches your weight. They can’t smell what’s inside.”
“The suit won’t have the right density unless we use muscle and bone. Their sonar—”
Koebsch interrupted her. “Are you talking about stitching together a corpse from spare parts? The mess would be… You’re asking too much. That would waste most of our clone stock. What if there’s an emergency?”
What if we used Rauno or Beth? she thought.
The bodies of Rauno Pärnits and Beth Collinsworth were also stored in the med lab. There was nowhere to bury them on Europa. Nor was there an easy way to send them home.
Both of her friends probably would have liked the idea of participating even in death. Every crewmember had signed a donor release, a standard provision for deep space missions—but while Vonnie envision pulling Beth from the freezer, she couldn’t suggest it. Ash would yell at her. So would Koebsch. She wondered if she’d spent too much time with the tribes. The sunfish were squeamish about nothing and had no taboos.
“Fine,” she said. “Ben, Ash, let’s rig something without transplants. Call Henri. He can assist. I want to get a human presence into the ice.”
“Roger that,” Ben said. He was standing back-to-back with her in Module 06, and, immersed in their displays, he bent around and scratched her hip.
Vonnie smiled.
“I’m not convinced,” Koebsch said. “You never met Tom in a suit. What if they ask you to climb out of it?”
Ben argued for her. “She has a good plan.”
“This is between Von and I,” Koebsch said. His expression was neutral, but Vonnie heard the flint in his tone.
Koebsch had noticed Ben’s intimate touch on her hip. All of them knew the gesture had been possessive. Ben had deliberately taunted the other man. It made her a little mad at him. It made her mad at herself.
Our social groups are so convoluted, she thought. That’s why we almost nuked the sunfish. We expect everything to be a trick. They merely act. Their tribes are always changing, but they repeat the same arrangements over and over with the matriarchs and the intelligent males leading the rest. We have more variations because we’re separate from each other. We hint and lie and hold ourselves back.
She wanted more sincerity in her life, so she was brisk, chastising both men for wasting time. “If the sunfish realize I’m not in the suit, we’ll admit it. They use expendable males as scouts. That’s how we’ll explain things if they ask. We’ll say we can afford to lose our suits but not our people.”
“All right,” Koebsch said.
Ben lifted his hand as if to touch her again, yet reconsidered.
Vonnie turned away from him, hoping neither man was upset. She loved Ben, and she was fond of Koebsch, and she marveled again that three people could develop so many different relationships—colleague, competitor, lover, boss. “O’Neal, have the matriarchs determined their hierarchy?”
>
“I think they’re waiting for us,” O’Neal said. “Lam is telling stories. So is Tom. They’re describing you. How we approach the new tribe may affect how they choose their leaders. Right now Charlotte and Lam seem to have reached a détente with the larger females.”
“Ben, if you warm up a spare suit in the armory, I’ll install the gear,” Ash said. “Henri’s online. He can run the nanoforge. Von, we need ten minutes.”
“Make it five.”
“Roger that,” Ben said. He opened a ROM program inside Module 01, prepping a suit as Ash left her station.
Vonnie glanced through O’Neal’s transcripts, where his AI had weeded out the most redundant threads. Among the sunfish, information was repeated until every member of the tribe confirmed. They touched and sang in a perpetual loop, reacting to each other as much as they did to other stimuli.
Unfortunately, there was a significant level of meaningless noise in their group mind. Too many of them were animals.
Short-period isotopes contaminated the frozen sky. Lethal veins of sulfuric acid and salt also stained the ice. Even when the Top Clans had enough to eat, their food chain was laced with toxins, and they rarely had unrelated breeding pairs.
The smaller sunfish were nearly clones of each other. They lacked genetic diversity, and it had robbed them of sentience, especially among their males. Dawson estimated the intelligence of many of them was equal to that of wolves.
The savages were a drag on the tribe. They resisted plans that required forethought. When they could be manipulated, they were an asset to the matriarchs, who used them as raiders and front line soldiers, but the sad irony was that other Top Clans were also populated with savages. The sunfish appeared to need berserkers in order to survive their neighbors’ berserkers, a self-perpetuating cycle in which they attacked and were attacked. Yes, the savages used stealth and elaborate formations in combat, but spatial relations were innate to their species. After centuries of war, intelligence had taken a back seat to brutality.
The ESA had observed the matriarchs endeavoring to improve their offspring. They told which pairs to mate. They committed infanticide on children who exhibited obvious birth defects, although hereditary and immunological diseases were less detectable and therefore common. The matriarchs tried to stay ahead of the issue by culling their eggs, but they were undermined by the savages, who bred at will and culled the wrong eggs. The savages preferred eggs with multiple embryos, which often hatched as more savages, and the matriarchs allowed it.