Ocean Under the Ice

by Robert L. Forward

  “Your tunnels are like roots!” concluded Cinnamon. She hesitated after the word, but the translation was apparently acceptable to Gray-Mote. “Your root tunnels gather the water and minerals and send them to your carpet, which uses photosynthesis to put them together to form more tissue. Just like a plant on Earth.”

  “Out here in the country, where there is plenty of unworked ice, our bodies have no difficulty growing and spreading farther, with all the nutrients coming from the ice and with the light from Barnard.”

  Meanwhile, Yellow-Star had finished playing his ballad for Katrina, and they now moved slowly back to the others, where Katrina joined in the conversation about the under-ice tunnel structure of the aliens.

  “That’s fascinating, Cinnamon!” said Katrina. “And in addition to being a plant, it’s an animal too, because it gathers and eats other plants and animals. It’s marvelous how these icerug bodies are made!”

  “They are ideal,” replied Gray-Mote solemnly.

  “We cannot, however, travel wherever we please, as the humans seem to be able to do,” remarked Yellow-Star. “We are bound by our root system to the ice of Ice, while the humans can travel from world to world, seeing strange things that we will never see.” Sam could almost sense a wistful tone as the normally booming voice quieted to nearly a mumble, as Yellow-Star realized the limitations that its ice-bound body placed on its soaring spirit.

  “I still think it’s marvelous,” replied Katrina cheerfully. She turned to look again at Yellow-Star. “But there’s something interesting that happened — when we were over there…” she pointed a short distance away. “My friend Sam accidentally stepped backward onto your carpet while you were singing your ballad to me. I saw him, but you did not, since your eye was looking at me. But, although you did not see him, your eye instantly blinked when he stepped on you, and you turned to look in that direction. Did you sense that pressure?”

  “Of course.”

  Katrina turned to look at Cinnamon to explain why she thought the incident was interesting. “The distance was nearly twenty meters and the eye response was instantaneous.”

  “Pretty fast reflex action,” murmured Cinnamon, thinking.

  The voice of Thomas came over the imp link from Victoria. “I’ve had Josephine pull back from memory that segment of Katrina’s helmet video record. In one frame, I can see that Sam’s heel has not yet touched Yellow-Star’s carpet, while in the very next frame it has touched it, and — Yellow-Star’s eye has already started to blink.”

  “The reaction time is less than one video frame!” said Cinnamon.

  “One sixtieth of a second — seventeen milliseconds,” added Thomas. “Way faster than a human.”

  “Then it can’t be ionic conduction,” said Katrina. “It must be electron conduction. I must remember to make an electrical conductivity measurement on the tissue samples once I get them into the microscope.”

  Katrina, carefully patient, soon coaxed small samples of flesh from Blue-Stare, to compare with the samples of the others she had collected yesterday. Again, she had her biopsy punch out, but it wasn’t needed. The icerug just budded off a small portion of flaccid flesh, which Katrina popped into a sample bag.

  “We want to thank all of you for the tissue samples, and Gray-Mote in particular for answering all my questions,” said Cinnamon. “We have learned a great deal about your physiology.”

  “Certainly,” replied Gray-Mote. “And now, may I ask some questions of my own about your bodies?” Then, Gray-Mote asked a brief series of probing questions regarding human physiology; what their internal structure was, what they ate, how they disposed of waste, why they were wearing protective suits; their answers were brief but accurate, and the alien accepted them politely.

  “I noticed there were no questions about reproduction,” added Cinnamon. “It must not be a polite subject to discuss with strangers.”

  “I’m also glad that they didn’t ask us to reciprocate by giving them a sample of our flesh,” said Katrina. “I wouldn’t mind missing some hair and fingernails, or even a little blood, but that’s it!”

  Meanwhile, Sam was using his geologist’s pickaxe to chop yet another fragment of stone free from the ice, and talking simultaneously to the alien and the rock. “All right. Out you come, you sparkling little bit of…” He paused to look at it carefully. “…granite, aren’t you.” He tapped it with the point of his pickaxe. “Hardness about six, I’d say.” He handed the stone to Splish, who turned it around and around in front of its video eyes to obtain a good record of its appearance, and then extended its manipulator over its back to deposit the find in its cargo hold. “Do you find a lot of stones lying about, Blue-Stare?”

  “Yes, especially after big eruptions, when there are many new rocks thrown out by the water. Those that don’t fall on us, sink quickly down through the new snow to the hard ice below, so we look for useful bits as soon as the eruption is over.”

  Sam looked up at the sky. Through the thinning clouds he could see that Gargantua was approaching the full-moon phase and the shadow spot of the moon they were on had started its nightly trek across the gigantic globe that filled a fifth of the sky. “The night is nearly half-over. It’s time for me to take shift duty and let Thomas come outside and play explorer,” he said. He added another curious bit of glinting rock to the crawler’s storage bin. “Splish and I will take this assortment back to the lander,” he decided. “Give me something to analyze while I’m monitoring the comm console.”

  Katrina interrupted. “If you don’t mind, Sam, I’d like to take the next comm shift duty on Victoria. I’m really anxious to put these samples of icerug flesh under the tunneling array microscope. I’ll take your bits of stuff for you. Come along, Splish!” Quickly, before Sam could object, she marched off, stepping carefully over the ragged drifts of snow.

  Sam, glad that he would be able to continue talking with the icerugs, turned to look at the aliens, who were gathered around Cinnamon, talking. He grinned. Cinnamon’s gift for listening appeared to exercise a universal attraction.

  Gray-Mote was speaking. “It is only our usual local association meeting held between night-middle and day-start every fourth-day, and there is nothing momentous we plan to discuss. However, you are most welcome to attend with us and observe.”

  Thomas, busily donning his suit back on Victoria, heard the icerug comment and muttered to Sam over the imp link, “Right. Out of the sky come — simultaneously, mind you — ‘The Jelly Blobs from the Planet Rocheworld’ and ‘The Two-Eyed Stilt-Walkers From Outer Space’, and they have ‘nothing momentous to discuss.’”

  Cinnamon bowed slightly at the invitation — Reiki had showed her this most formal acknowledgement of equals — and said, “We would be most interested in attending your local association meeting, and will come as soon as soon as the third person in our party, Thomas, arrives.” It didn’t take long for Thomas to cycle through the airlock, scramble down the Jacob’s ladder in the low gravity, and trot past Katrina and Splish on their way back to the lander.

  As Thomas arrived at the intersection where the areas of the three icerugs met, panting slightly under the weight of the cameras and equipment bags he was carrying, Yellow-Star glided away on its jade carpet, following the boundary between it and Gray-Mote. “I’ll see you at the entrance to the association meeting hall.”

  “You three can come with us,” said Blue-Stare, opening a narrow path on the ice between its azure carpet and Gray-Mote’s turquoise carpet. The humans hurried along the path in single file, running awkwardly in the effort to keep up, while the nodes of the two icerugs slowed their pace to stay with them. Sam wished suddenly for his skis — he’d not thought of them in years, but probably the Christmas Bush could construct something for him.

  “Where are we going?” panted Thomas.

  “It’s a meeting, of some sort. Find out when we get there, I guess,” was Cinnamon’s breathless reply. After traveling a hundred meters or so, they came to an i
ntersection of six icerug bodies of various different blue-green hues. Nodes of four other icerugs were there to be introduced to the humans.

  “This is Smooth-Brown, the teacher for the area,” said Blue-Stare, introducing a heather colored node with an eye of deep, dark brown with almost no streaks or flecks in it. “This is Lavender-Blue, my apprentice; Green-Ring, the butcher; and Five-Arm, communicator between our local association and the next one leeward.” Further ahead, the humans could see the more of the alien nodes in a procession through the light snow-storm toward a depression in the ground at the further vertex of Smooth-Brown’s heather carpet. One of them was the recognizable jade-colored node of Yellow-Star, traveling along the far side of Smooth-Brown’s area.

  As the three humans and the six icerugs traveled together down the path along a boundary between Smooth-Brown’s heather carpet and Lavender-Blue’s teal one, the humans slowed to study the curious fashion in which the nodes of Blue-Stare, Green-Ring, Five-Arms, and Gray-Mote traveled after they had left their own home carpets. Along the meter-wide path of open ice between Smooth-Brown and Lavender-Blue, lay four narrow trails of carpet, about ten centimeters wide, each connected back to the vertex of the individual’s triangular area; azure for Blue-Stare, moss for Green-Ring, spruce for Five-Arms, and turquoise for Gray-Mote. There was a twenty-centimeter wide path of clear ice left for the humans to walk on. The pedestals of each icerug moved smoothly along its trail of similarly-colored flesh, which widened to accommodate the pedestal as it went past, while the neighboring trails automatically shrank in width, when touched, to make room. The nodes of Lavender-Blue and Smooth-Brown, of course, traveled on their own carpet bodies which bordered the path. Cinnamon stopped to bend down and look closely, and then she walked on with the others.

  “They get very close,” she said. “But none of them touch each other.”

  “What happens at intersections?” wondered Sam. All three paused at the next intersection, and peered closely at the multicolored trails as they met, some of them crossing each other. “Look, the spruce colored one tunnels down into the ice to go under the others,” said Thomas, his gloved finger pointing to the reappearance on the other side of the path of the spruce strand. “But it still manages not to touch them.” He quickly photographed the curious tangle of colored trails. The answer to the unasked query of how a two-meter-high node could pass through a tiny tunnel, was answered as the spruce pedestal of Five-Arms, following its spruce trail along the path, simply picked up its leading edge, and in a flowing motion “stepped” over the intervening trail of a different color and resumed its glide along its own trail on the other side of the crossing tunnel.

  “The flesh just disconnected from the trail and connected again on the other side!” said Cinnamon in amazement.

  “‘Pears to me these things have a skin like the flouwen,” said Sam. “More like a liquid than a membrane. Sure is different from our skin, which is flexible enough, but not so loose you can tear it off and then fasten it somewhere else whenever you want to.”

  The humans, after watching Five-Arms pass, raced to catch their guides, who had stopped to wait for them at the underground entrance to the meeting hall.

  “It will be pleasant to be indoors, out of the snow,” remarked Blue-Stare to Sam, casually, “Although it will cost us some energy since we must provide our own light.” A concave depression formed itself in the head portion of Blue-Stare’s node and began to emit a blue glow, which shone in the direction the eye was looking.

  The humans slowed their steps, seeing ahead of them an oval opening in the side of an ice bank, into which a number of icerug nodes were gliding and disappearing. As each icerug node started down the tunnel that led underground, their bodies too began to emit a glow from the head portion of their node to illuminate the path before them. With senses alert, the humans followed them into the tunnel, unhooking permalights from their belts to light their own way. Since the tunnel was tall enough to admit the icerug nodes, it was taller than the humans, and smoothly sided with solid ice. The angle of the floor sloped downwards steeply, and the booted feet of the humans began to slide. Trying not to step on the multitude of colored trails leading downward, Cinnamon lost her balance, clutched vainly at the hard-frozen walls, and sat down hard in the center of the path. She gasped, and the two men beside her grabbed her arms and attempted to lift her to her feet. In the process they all fell and began to slide helplessly down the tunnel. They finally arrived at a level surface in a headlong tumble, and looked around.

  From their undignified position, they were able to see that they were in a large cavern, whose walls and ceilings were apparently made of dressed stone arches supporting blocks of carved ice, which had been arranged into geometric designs made up of triangles and hexagons. Light from the nodes of two dozen icerugs illuminated a scene of quiet peace, as the strange alien eyes were turned in mild curiosity towards the untidy little heap of humanity.

  Sam’s long legs felt as clumsy as a colt’s as he struggled to his feet. Once more upright, Cinnamon felt her breathing slow, and she looked about her with amazement. Thomas’s camera was in action again, and he walked without hindrance through the crowd of aliens, stepping carefully over any of the colored trails that he saw. Sam and Cinnamon followed, with growing confidence as they observed that even an inadvertent step directly upon a trail seemed to cause no distress to any of the nodes. Sam, conscious of his duty as nominal commander of the home base party, put in a call to the lander.

  “Katrina? Josephine? Can you hear me?” A reassuring reply came quickly back.

  “I have been monitoring you constantly,” came Josephine’s cool reply. “You really should have checked with me before you went underground, you know.”

  “How is the connection?” asked Sam, properly chastened.

  “Perfect,” replied Josephine. “The signal strength is down about six decibels, but I have thirty-two in reserve. The ice, being well below freezing, transmits the radio channels from your suit quite well — even the video images from your helmet cameras are noise-free.”

  “And very interesting they are, too,” added Katrina.

  With their communications secure, the beauty of the room began to fascinate the humans; the constantly shifting lights on the icerug bodies, and the light reflecting from the large glistening icerug eyes, glittered from the icy faceting of the walls like a pastel kaleidoscope and was mirrored in the ceiling curving above them. Around them, the murmurs of icerugs to each other was like the familiar murmur of any congregation, benign and soothing, but deep in tone, like a group of pipe organs talking softly to each other. In approximately the center of the room was a raised area. Judging from the number of icerug nodes who glided up and down from it steadily, it was not a position of honor as much as a platform for convenience in being seen while addressing the group. As each icerug left the platform, it retracted the trail which it had laid on its way up.

  Thomas slowly scanned the room, counting. “Twenty-four,” he finally concluded. “Just exactly the number there should be.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Cinnamon, puzzled over Thomas’s certainty.

  “When I was looking at the panoramic views that I took from the top of Victoria, I realized that the triangular bodies of the icerugs ‘tile the plane’. They aren’t perfect triangles by any means, but close enough so that their overall pattern has a long range hexagonal symmetry. So, at each vertex of its body, an icerug has five neighbors to speak to — for a total of six — as we saw when Blue-Stare and Gray-Mote introduced us to Green-Ring, Five-Arm, Lavender-Blue, and Smooth-Brown. Since this meeting hall is at a vertex, there are six icerugs that are nearest to the meeting hall, and eighteen icerugs that are next-nearest, for a total of twenty-four — just the number that are here.”

  Their physician acquaintance, Gray-Mote, now glided to the center of the raised platform and spoke, its resonant voice reaching easily to the edges of the big room. The murmur of voices ceased, but Cinna
mon noted with interest that throughout the ensuing discussion, interruptions were frequent, brief, and apparently not resented. Although Gray-Mote was the leader of the gathering, it did not dominate the discussion, but acted more as a moderator in a discussion where all the speakers held equal status.

  Gray-Mote introduced the human visitors with kindly oratory and several eyes rolled to survey the newcomers briefly. Thomas lowered his camera and stood, slightly abashed at being the object of public scrutiny, while Cinnamon and Sam turned slightly to be back to back. They all felt relieved, if somewhat humbled, when it became apparent that their presence was of no real interest. These creatures were very much concerned with their own affairs, and proceeded with them in orderly fashion.

  There was a brief and amicable discussion of some shift in territorial arrangement between several icerugs, followed, to the surprise of the humans, by a song, led by the bard Yellow-Star on its harp-drum, but joined in by all the others. The vibrations of the blended voices filled the hall with almost tangible sound. Cinnamon, at first transfixed by the beauty of the song, quickly made sure that her suit imp was making a stereo recording that she could play back later. The icerugs seemed to enjoy their own concert immensely, and Thomas was able to catch with his camera some of the gentle swaying of several nodes in apparent rhythm. The sounds of the song were allowed to die away fully, before another node glided to the center of the dais. It was Five-Arms, whom Blue-Stare had introduced as the “communicator” with the leeward local association. Judging from Josephine’s literal translations, Five-Arms was reporting on the activities and decisions of another icerug community, some distance away, but of which the speaker was also a part. The report consisted mostly of numbers, growth statistics, and shipments of flesh to the city, and was listened to attentively and with evident approval.