by Jeff Carlson
“Okay.” Ash’s tone was grim. She unlocked a data packet on her station — a packet she must have designed as soon as Koebsch restricted access across camp. “I can get in,” she said. “I need five seconds.”
What if we’re already too late? Vonnie thought.
Each of the four females took one of Lam’s arms, immobilizing him. Other females gathered nearby. He stopped struggling. They probed his top and underside, roughly sniffing and tasting his body.
“Go,” Ash said, cutting her hand sideways toward Vonnie’s station. The three-stage chain she’d arranged turned green — Lam — rovers — Module 01. Their central AIs joined with him, multiplying his intelligence by a factor of ten.
The transition wasn’t flawless. Lam jerked again as if fighting the sunfish, who yanked at him, splitting his skin twice. Synthetic blood dribbled from his lacerations.
Two females covered his wounds with their arms, drinking the fluid. One of them shuddered, knotting her body, increasing the torque on Lam’s arm and causing a sudden tug-of-war between herself and the others.
The sunfish screamed.
His blood isn’t right, Vonnie thought. They can taste the preservatives we used or the hormones are wrong or the oxygen content. It’s over. Nothing we’ve done was good enough to solve the differences between our race and theirs…
“Look,” Ash said.
Lam bent his torn arms, offering his injuries to the females. It wasn’t an act of submission. It was a purposeful, confident gesture. At the same time, he amended his cries. He stopped echoing the harsh melodies of the pack. He introduced a new song, slower and reassuring.
One of the females let go of him, then another. They coupled their pedicellaria with his, exchanging complex ripples.
When he spoke in English on the radio, his voice was different. It held the superhuman calm and self-possession of a Level I intelligence, the same self-possession Ash wanted to emulate. He said:
—They’re reaccepting me.
“Christ, I thought you were a dead man,” Vonnie said. Then she laughed awkwardly. Man, machine, she thought.
The females released him. Other sunfish squirmed closer to scent or taste his wounds as the pack settled down again. Most of them returned to their sluggish mingling.
What had Lam done to convince them? To her, it had looked like a few notes of song and gyrations. But for the sunfish, attitude was everything. When he acted abnormally, they regarded him as a contagion and a threat. If his conduct was appropriate, they trusted him again.
“Tell me what’s happening,” Vonnie said.
—They’re resting. Teaching. The females lead each other and the immature males through growth and memorization lessons.
“Growth lessons?”
—Pheromone stimulation is a key, unifying part of their lives. There are intricate query-and-response patterns, some voluntary, most involuntary. Despite my size, they believe I’m a juvenile or a neuter since I’m incapable of emitting healthy biochem.
“Can you talk to us without putting yourself in jeopardy?”
—Yes. I have enough capacity now that I can participate in the tribe’s ritual while I organize and repair my files. My recordings from the past four days are badly fragmented, but you’ll want to see everything.
“Thank you, Lam,” Ash said.
—I’m in your debt, Ash. I also appreciate your help, Administrator Koebsch.
“What?” Vonnie whirled to look behind her, but Koebsch hadn’t entered Lander 04. He was still in Module 01, where he’d covertly monitored their link until Lam detected his presence.
A red frame appeared on their displays, indicating an encrypted frequency. The frame opened to show Koebsch, whose square face was both stern and amused. “I told you weeks ago,” he said. “Nothing happens on our grid without my knowing it.”
“Sir, I…” Ash said.
Koebsch stopped her with a shake of his head. Then he turned to Vonnie. “You’ve been insubordinate since the beginning,” he said. “You’re reckless. You’re dangerous. You incited mutiny among your crewmates.”
Vonnie didn’t deny it. Koebsch could see Lam’s sims. He would either be intrigued or he wouldn’t.
He shrugged and said, “You’re also lucky as hell.”
She felt her eyes lighten with relief. “Is that why you didn’t stop us?”
“You’re not out of the woods yet. By now, our datastreams reached Earth. They’ll formulate an emergency response. Whatever their instructions, I’ll forward Lam’s newest files to them first. That might be worth another twenty minutes while our transmissions go back and forth, but I’m not optimistic. Dawson sent formal complaints to everyone he knows. He also notified Ribeiro, who’s communicating with his own superiors. Those generals will urge our government to get our crew under control.”
“They can’t take everyone off the mission,” Vonnie said. “If we stick together…”
“I’ll suspend you myself if they let me keep my job,” Koebsch said. “Think about it. Do you want Dawson in charge? At least I can minimize our involvement with Ribeiro. I can protect Metzler and Frerotte. Obviously they’re involved. I don’t want to remove you or Ash, but if you can’t come up with something convincing, they’ll insist on punishing you. Lam may be terminated. Then they’ll use his coordinates to go after the sunfish.”
“Shit.”
“Good luck.” Koebsch shut off his connection.
“Oh shit.” Vonnie held her fist out to Ash, who smacked their knuckles together, a wordless pact to see things through.
She would miss her career if she was sent home in disgrace, but if their mecha fought another battle with the sunfish, neither the sunfish nor humankind would recover mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. One domino followed the next. If men and sunfish caused more harm to each other, they’d never reverse course. The fighting would intensify.
The real sin was that some people wanted to continue the violence. Kill codes could take care of Lam. Lock-outs would prevent Vonnie and Ash from accessing any data/comm.
If they silence us, they win, she thought. We might have twenty minutes to save this world.
50.
“Lam, were you listening?” she said.
—Yes.
“We need your files whether they’re clean or not. Transmit now and tell us everything you can.”
—Yes.
On her display, Lam nestled with two females and another male, forming a quartet which swiftly doubled to eight, then broke again into two foursomes with different partners.
The sunfish roamed, singing and stroking. Vonnie was fascinated by the choreography, but she knew it wouldn’t persuade anyone who’d decided the sunfish were animals. At a glance, the slithering pile looked like an orgy. They looked like sex-crazed worms.
Her attention swung to Lam’s mem files as data stuttered across her display in a senseless jumble.
“Whoa,” Ash said. “What’s this?”
—During my weeks in the FNEE grid and the last four days pursuing the sunfish, then joining them, I recorded thousands of hours of data with all sensors combined. Unfortunately, I lacked sufficient memory. In my limited state, I deleted or overwrote most of my records.
“So we’re screwed,” Ash said.
His files were fragmented, duplicated, and intermixed. Audio tracks were separated from visual telemetry. Data analysis wasn’t paired with the data analyzed. Worse, most of his time stamps had suffered the same corruption. A logical program would have deleted its oldest files to make room for its newest, but he hadn’t been acting coherently.
It was useless for two people to sort through tens of thousands of randomized clips. Vonnie tried anyway. First she copied everything and passed the enormous mess to another AI for independent analysis. Then she and Ash both waded into the imagery, opening one clip after another.
The first was seven seconds long. The next lasted three, then five, then one. None showed more than ice or rock or sunfish leap
ing through open catacombs. There was nothing she could use.
Vonnie took a deep breath and centered herself, checking the progress of the central AI. It estimated it needed eight minutes to complete the task of organizing Lam’s files, so she asked him the same question. “How long before you can categorize these clips by subject or background?”
—I’ll have a preliminary index in ninety seconds, full reconstruction in six minutes.
“That might barely save us,” she said, looking at her clock. “Walk me through everything you recall. Are there sunfish inside the FNEE grid?”
—Unknown. My earliest records are the most fragmented.
“Tell me what you can about Tom’s group.”
—The survivors belong to Top Clan Two-Four, Pods Four, Eight, Two-Four, Two-Eight, and Six-Six. Three days ago, I delivered myself to them. ’Deliver’ is an approximation of their body shape for the process of an outsider joining a tribe. Deliver. Provide. It’s an act of demonstrating skill and health while swearing total fealty and submission.
“Show us,” she said. The first inklings of a plan were forming in her mind.
On her display, Lam created an image of a sunfish flattened against a rock surface, all arms out, muscles loose, defenseless. This wasn’t a file of his actual encounter. It was a simulation. He added a transcript as the sunfish shifted and flexed: I am alone but capable / Nameless but strong / I am lost / I deliver myself to your clan.
“How did you know what to do?”
—Trial and error. They allowed me to approach, chased me when I failed, then allowed me to approach again. I’m certain each tribe develops a unique vocabulary, but because their languages are mostly shape-based, like interpretive dance, outsiders should be able to improvise and adapt. The ability to conform was a fundamental part of the test.
“Then sunfish from different regions can talk to each other even if they’ve never met.”
—Yes. Two days ago, we proposed a treaty with this colony, which is Top Clan Eight-Six. ’Treaty’ is very different from ’Deliver,’ a joining of equals or near equals rather than the act of a refugee merging with a tribe. Negotiations were brisk. Tom’s group was communicating with the new colony at a rudimentary level in minutes. Two days later, they’re wholly fluent.
“How did Tom’s group know where to find them?”
—Unknown. The maps I retained of our journey are insufficient. The two tribes may have had previous encounters or the scouts of Top Clan Two-Four found the spoor of Top Clan Eight-Six in the past."
“But they meet outsiders all the time.”
—Yes. Tom’s group was understandably wary of me after confronting our other probes, yet they allowed opportunity after opportunity for me to prove myself. Presumably they thought I was an outcast or a lone survivor, and I believe solitude is an extremely stressful state for any sunfish. They were patient in rehabilitating me.
“They took care of you.”
—They treated me like I was schizophrenic, but they accepted me anyway. After the blow-out, they needed all the assistance they could get. Otherwise they might have killed me.
“Compassion, foresight, organization,” Vonnie said. “We already have enough to make a substantial case to Earth.”
—Von, the sunfish accepted me because Dawson is correct.
His words felt like a knife in the stomach. Unconsciously, she dropped her hand to her mid-riff, protecting herself. “I don’t understand,” she said. She didn’t want to understand, but Lam continued in his cool, inflectionless voice:
—Many of the sunfish have regressed. Unfavorable mutations took root among their species many, many generations ago. At least sixty percent of their population consists of individuals who are mentally deficient or suffer from internal or external deformities.
“That’s why they didn’t reject you for having the wrong smell and fake body parts, isn’t it?” Ash said.
They’d built their probes with gills, lungs, and a genital slit, but while the probe could convincingly inhale and exhale, it could not generate pheromones, sperm, or more than its minimal reserves of synthetic blood and saliva.
“They think you have birth defects,” Ash said.
—Yes. Many of them are handicapped, insane, or infertile. Others are forcibly spayed or neutered.
“Who makes those decisions?” Vonnie said. “It sounds horrible to us, but if they’re evaluating their offspring to maintain or improve their species’ viability, isn’t that more proof they’re sentient?”
—Yes and no. Much of it is instinctive. From what I’ve seen, a tribe operates as a group consciousness led by consensus, not a single matriarch. No individual rules absolute. There is always give-and-take based on the composition of the tribe and their need for hunters, scouts, and mating pairs, however crippled.
“Oh God,” Vonnie said.
—Metzler is correct, too. There’s a genetic imperative to adopt newcomers, because inbreeding furthers the mutations. Sickness increases sickness. Mental impairment, deafness, malformed cartilage, and stunted arms run rampant among the sunfish.
Sudden fury clashed with her grief. “If that’s true, why haven’t we seen any of these monsters?”
—Because the tribes practice murder and infanticide on their undesirables, then freeze the corpses until needed. Von, they eat them.
51.
A window blinked on Vonnie’s display. It was Koebsch. His sober gaze shifted from her face to Lam’s datastreams, where the sunfish flexed in their self-absorbed dance.
“I have orders from Berlin,” he said. “They want me to lock down all systems and take you and Ash into custody until further notice. I’ll protest, but it will have more weight if I can show them something — anything — like a conversation between Lam and the sunfish.”
“We don’t have it, sir,” Ash said. “Not yet.”
“There must be something.”
“No,” Vonnie said, and Koebsch stared at her, clearly puzzled by her dispassionate tone.
“They won’t transmit kill codes from Earth,” he said. “Too many things can go wrong. But they want me to shut you down. I’m running out of excuses.”
“Give us as much time as you can, sir,” Ash said before he cut his link.
Vonnie sighed, fending off a sense of resignation. How could she have been so wrong? Lam, the real Lam, had seen the fatal truth when they first discovered the carvings at the top of the ice. We’re too late, he’d said.
Thousands of years had passed since the rise and fall of the sunfish empire. The tragedy wasn’t that huge numbers of them had died. It was that by now, today, their potential had faded.
Vonnie remembered what Dawson had said about the increasing demands on the sunfish. They’d adapted to both water and atmosphere environments, consciously breathing through their gills or their lungs, but the same versatility that aided their survival had also doomed their intelligence. Dawson said they could only use one hemisphere of their brains at a time. One half rested, moderating some involuntary functions like heartbeat and digestion, while the other controlled their movements, their breathing, and their cognitive abilities, however limited those thoughts had become. Too much of their neural tissue was dedicated to scent, taste, sonar, and spatial awareness.
Vonnie’s eyes were downcast as she whispered, “So it’s over. They’re just animals.”
—Yes.
She pressed her hand tighter against her belly, feeling hollow. More than anything, she felt like she’d failed Pärnits and Collinsworth. They’d died for nothing.
Lam said:
—It would be inaccurate to classify a majority of the sunfish population as any more self-aware than wolves or cats. Some are even less intelligent. But not all.
Vonnie glanced up.
—I’ve reconstructed my files. Look at this.
He opened a sim of four females scratching at a sheet of ice. They held rock chunks and groped at each other’s work with their pedicellaria, screeching and
clumping together. Were they trying to scrape through the ice to something inside?
Lam enlarged several images, zooming on their tools. Some weren’t made of rock. Hidden in the muscular coils of the females’ arms were crudely honed blades of metal — the light, durable alumalloy from Probes 112 and 113. One female also held a nub of ceramic armor from an ESA spy.
“Tom’s group brought the wreckage with them,” Vonnie said with new hope.
—They considered it more valuable than anything else. In fact, they carried very little food, choosing to keep the metal, plastic, and ceramics they’d scavenged. They made gifts of the best pieces to the colony.
“That won’t convince anyone,” Ash said. “Monkeys and birds like shiny junk.”
—No. Look. They’re writing.
He replayed his sim of the four females etching at the ice. They’d drawn curls and lines like bent arms, not complete sun shapes, merely arms. It was a written language unlike the carvings, and Vonnie shouted, “Lam, you beautiful son of a bitch! Where did this come from!?”
—Yesterday. It was recorded inside the colony.
Ash grinned as Vonnie banged on her station. “Koebsch!” she said. “Koebsch! I’m sending you a new file!”
—There’s more.
She was jubilant. “We’re sending you more!” she said, but Koebsch didn’t reply, preoccupied with his messages from Earth.
—I have EEG scans showing some of the sunfish using both hemispheres of their brains simultaneously. The most gifted are exclusively female, although there are also a few males capable of waking both hemispheres. They do this in regular councils of the strongest individuals of both sexes.
He added ten new sims to Vonnie’s display. The first two showed the same quartet of females sketching on fresh surfaces of ice. The other sims were a conglomeration of ’sound bullet’ medical imaging, EEG, and infrared scans of four- and eight-member groups surrounded by dozens of normal sunfish.