A Darkling Sea (20 page)

Another mystery. These creatures spawn mysteries. (The thought leads Broadtail to a brief speculation about how the creatures do reproduce; he resolves to ask them at the earliest opportunity.)

The four of them stop just outside pincer reach and wait. Broadtail says “Greetings!” in the hope that maybe one of the new arrivals can understand him.

“YOU’VE been
talking
with them?” said Dickie. “Sort of. We can’t understand their calls or anything, but I think this one’s trying to teach us some kind of simple number code,” said Rob. “At least, he hands us stuff and then taps his pincers together. The number of taps is the same for the same item.”

“That’s
great
!
“
said Dickie. He sounded different. For the first time since—well, since the Sholen had arrived—Dickie Graves didn’t sound angry. “Send me all your notes. I had some tentative correlations from remote observation but this is just wonderful.”

“All we really have is names for things like rocks.”

“That’s a good beginning. Let me just get at my notes—”

Graves started muttering voice commands to his computer.

“Did you make recordings?”

“Of course,” said Alicia. “I am sending them to you now.”

“Super. I’ll need to dig up my analysis software to see if I can identify specific eidophones. Once I can do that, I can start making correlations and try to tease out a grammar. This is so exciting! Oh—” he paused and sounded almost surprised at himself. “I killed a Sholen. I think it was Gishora.”

THE creature Broadtail calls Builder 3 makes very rapid progress learning language. The two of them work together, stopping for Broadtail to eat and sleep. When Broadtail returns to work he is startled by the creature’s progress. It seems to be learning even when Broadtail isn’t teaching.

The biggest problem is that the creature learns words like a hungry child eating roe, but has no grasp of how to put them together. It taps out words all jumbled together, so that instead of making a statement like “Builder gives Broadtail the stone” it bangs out “Stone Builder large tail grasp into” or “Grasping stone Builder tail wide.”

Still, they definitely are making progress. Unlike the other Builders, number 3 can actually understand speech and even utters a few echoes, though horribly distorted. As quickly as he thinks the creature can understand, Broadtail starts asking it questions. Some of the answers make sense; others only mystify Broadtail even more.

He rests with Holdhard, tired out from a lot of teaching. She shares some swimmers, caught in one of the nets of the Builders. “What do you speak to them about?” she asks.

“Many things. Where do they come from? What are their tools and shelters made of? What do they eat?”

“Do they answer you?”

“Yes, but—I don’t know if we understand each other correctly. I remember asking where they come from, and hearing the reply ’ice above.’ I don’t know if that means they are from some shallow place where the ice is only a few cables above the bottom, or something else.”

“I remember you saying Builder 3 gets the words all jumbled up. Could he mean above the ice?”

“There is nothing above the ice, Holdhard. It extends upward without end, growing colder and less dense with each cable of distance.”

“How do you know?”

Broadtail realizes that he doesn’t know. It is something he remembers reading in many books, and accepts because there is no better theory. But what if there is something above the ice? He feels his pincers stiffen as though some huge predator is swimming near. Despite his fatigue, he pushes off from the bottom.

“Where are you going?” Holdhard asks.

“I must find out if you are correct!” he calls back.

ROB spent nearly eight hours seething inside the shelter before he could get Graves to leave the Ilmatarans alone and talk to his fellow humans. “So how the hell did you kill a Sholen?”

“Back at Hitode. I was sabotaging the hydrophone net, trying to set things up for future infiltration. A single Sholen came along and tried to stop me. We fought, I won. Stabbed it with my utility knife.”

“I didn’t kill any
people.
I killed one of the
Sholen.
You know, the ones who killed Isabel.” The anger was back in his voice.

“Yeah, yeah. We’re enemies. I know. But still. Are you sure it was Gishora?” asked Rob.

“Yes. My computer was recording ambient sound at the time, and I’ve compared the noises he made with some old samples of Gishora speaking. When I baselined the phonemes it was a perfect match.”

“I’m going to assume what you just said isn’t complete bullshit,” said Rob. “Okay, so you shanked Gishora. So what? Just randomly killing people—or Sholen—doesn’t accomplish anything.”

“Oh, but it does!” said Graves. “The Sholen put great store in personal loyalty. Leaders and followers develop an intense bond with a strong sexual component.”

“Yeah, we know all about that. The whole bonobo thing.”

“Exactly. With the leader gone, the followers are going to be emotionally devastated and competing for the leadership role. Imagine a human family after a parent dies.”

“Um, Dickie, if someone stabbed my dad I guess my sisters and I might be a little disor ganized, but I’m pretty sure we’d also be kind of
pissed off.
What if the other Sholen try some kind of reprisals? What if they kill someone back at Hitode?”

“They would not do that!” said Alicia. “The Sholen are—”

“What?” asked Dickie, turning on her. “Nonviolent? Remember how nonviolently they beat Isabel to death.”

Rob felt queasy. Sholen were bigger than humans, and had claws and teeth. He could picture angry aliens rampaging through Hitode, people trying to flee, blood running in the drains under the floor grid. “Jesus, Dickie. Do you
want
them to kill more people?”

“If that’s what it takes to make the others understand, yes! Everyone here—you, and Sen, and all the others—think this is all some kind of a
game.
We follow the rules and the Sholen follow the rules and nobody gets hurt. Well, it
isn’t
a game, and I’m sure the Sholen don’t think it is, either. They brought weapons, which means they’re prepared to use them. To kill us. We have to be ready to do the same.”

Everyone except Josef Palashnik looked uncomfortable, but nobody said anything for a moment. Finally Rob spoke. “I’ve got to ask this,” he said. “Does anyone think we should surrender now? Give ourselves up to the Sholen and try to defuse the situation?”

The other three all shook their heads. “We cannot abandon the Coquille now,” said Alicia. “We’ve made such a breakthrough with the Ilmatarans!”

“Okay,” said Rob. “We’re staying, at least for now. But I think it would be really dumb for us to do any more attacks against Hitode or the Sholen—
especially
solo missions. If we are going to do anything, we have to agree on it and plan it out
in advance
. Does that sound good to everybody?”

“I’ll try to come up with a list of objectives in the next couple of days,” said Graves.

“I figured you’d want to spend time with the Ilmatarans,” said Rob, not without a little malicious pleasure.

Dickie’s face was a study in conflict. Finally he nodded. “All right. Good idea. We’ll lie low for a while.”

BROADTAIL is hungry. The rocks for a cable around are scoured clean, and even with the Builders’ help he and Holdhard cannot catch enough swimmers, unless they do nothing but hunting, which is the last thing Broadtail wants.

He reaches a decision, and finds Holdhard digging for larvae in the soft bottom. “I must go to Longpincer.”

“Your friend?”

“I hope so. I remember him lending me servants and a towfin, and all are dead or lost now. But this discovery of ours is important and must be shared.”

“How can you share the Builders?” she asks. “You do not own them.”

He remembers being surprised several times by her mix of cleverness and ignorance. “Share the knowledge about them. This is the most important discovery I can think of. I imagine dying by accident or violence, and all I know about the Builders lost. I must go to Longpincer.” That is the easy part to say. He pauses before the hard part, then surges ahead. “And I invite you to accompany me as my apprentice.”

She considers the offer. Broadtail knows he is a poor choice for a mentor—no property, no wealth at all but his notes and what is in his mind. Does she understand the value of that?

“Is it far?” she answers at last.

“Yes—we swim across- current to the rift, then follow it to the Bitterwater vent. The first part is hardest, with nothing but coldwater hunting as we go. At the rift there are swimmers and rocks to scour.”

“Here. I have six larvae. We need food for the trip.”

IN the morning the Ilmataran was gone. Alicia and Dickie swam out from the Coquille in opposite spirals, but they found no sign of it within half a kilometer. While the two of them were out searching, Rob took the opportunity to have a talk with Josef in the privacy of the submarine.

“I think the Sholen are going to come looking for us,” he said. “It’s a big ocean, but the longer we stay out here the better the odds get that they’ll find us. You’re the Navy guy—what can we expect when they show up?”

Josef stared off above Rob’s head. “Depends on weapons,” he said. “Simplest is knives, maybe spears. Good underwater, easy to make, and Sholen are stronger than humans. We fight by keeping hidden, setting ambushes, and running away before Sholen stab us.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“Possibly firearms. Many Special Forces on Earth have guns modified to work underwater. Very short range, though: only five or ten meters. Also maybe handheld micro-torpedo launchers.”

“Is that those funny guns they have? With the big barrels?”

“Most likely. Microtorps are like little drones with grenadesize warheads. Usually self-guided, not very smart. Can be dodged, but explosions are dangerous several meters away.”

“Jesus! How can we fight against any of that? We don’t have guns or anything.”

“As I said: keep hidden, set ambushes, run away.”

“If we assume they’ve been bringing down more troops by elevator, then there could be at least nine Sholen soldiers at Hitode. It would be dumb to send out all of them, so assume they keep back a third as a garrison. That leaves six who can come looking for us. Even if they don’t have guns or torpedoes I don’t like those odds at all. Sholen are big.”

“You are both right, you and Graves.”

“What do you mean?”

“You say we cannot fight against guns and microtorps. True. He says we must fight. Also true.”

“You sound like the guy in
Robot Monster.
’Must! Cannot!’ So tell me, Great One, what are we supposed to do?” Rob demanded.

“Not sure. First task is survival. For now do nothing foolish. But at some point that changes.”

LONGPINCER and about half of the Bitterwater Company are gathered in the dining room. Broadtail enters, with Holdhard helping him carry reels of notes. Longpincer makes a sound of dismay as he realizes all that line is from his own store-holes.

“So, Broadtail,” he says, “tell us this amazing discovery of yours. We are all eager to hear you.”

Broadtail seems almost larger than usual. When he speaks there is none of his customary hesitation and overpoliteness. He crawls briskly to the end of the room and begins to speak, occasionally pausing to get a new reel from the pile beside him.

“I announce a discovery,” he says. “A very important discovery. There exist creatures capable of adult speech, the use of tools, and the construction of buildings and waterways. But they are not adults, or children, or any creature known in the world. They come from
outside the world.
A group of them are camped no more than a hundred cables from here, in the ruins of the City of Shares. These reels record my impressions of them, and some conversations with them.”

“Are you inventing stories?” asks Sharpfrill. “How can something come from ’outside the world?’ ”

“I recall similar confusion myself. Think of swimming up to the very top of the world, where the ice is. Now think of chipping off some ice. This is something which is done, correct?”

“Correct,” Smoothshell puts in. “In the highlands they use nets filled with ice to lift weights.”

“Now imagine chipping, and chipping, tunneling up and up into the ice. Where does it end?”

“Many reels speculate on that,” says Sharpfrill. “They say the ice extends infinitely far, or that the ice supports impenetrable rock.”

“More to the point,” says Roundhead, “the archives of the Two Rifts Kingdom recount a project to do just what you describe. In the reel the workers tunnel nearly six cables into the ice before abandoning the task as pointless.”

“According to the beings I speak of, the ice extends twenty cables. And beyond it is—nothing. Emptiness, like the interior of a bubble. And that emptiness does extend a great distance. I am not sure how far. Possibly infinite.”

“Then where do these beings come from?”

“Within the vast emptiness are other worlds. They pass through the emptiness in things like moving houses.”

“Broadtail,” says Longpincer. “This is all quite incredible. Have you any proof?”

“Here!” Broadtail takes an object from his belt and passes it to Longpincer. “A tool made by the strangers. Can you even identify its substance?”

“I remember something tasting like this,” says Longpincer tentatively.

“You do! Remember the specimen at the vent? Remember our dissection in this very room? These are the same type of creature. But they can speak! And they make tools! They are adults.” He passes out more objects. “More samples of their work. Can any animal do this?”

“Broadtail, this claim is most extraordinary,” says Sharpfrill. “You are surely aware that it requires more proof than a few strange artifacts.”

“Of course. My studies are by no means complete, and I plan to make another trip to the site. I invite all to come with me.”

“I suppose you must go ahead and prepare?” asks Sharpfrill.