A Darkling Sea (26 page)

There were no corpses. He took a deep breath, then let it out in a powerful sigh as his arm muscles unclenched.

The place was a mess, though. The lab space had been trashed by the fighting when the Sholen came. The walls and floor were covered with patches of mold—real, blue-green Terrestrial mold. Rob’s queasiness returned when he realized it was growing where Isabel’s blood had spattered. Suddenly Rob had absolutely no desire to open his helmet.

He climbed back down into the cool water and turned on the laser link to signal Alicia. No response. His system couldn’t find her. Was she out of line- of- sight? He let himself drop to the sea bottom and tried again. Still nothing.

Sonar wasn’t picking up anything but ocean sounds. Suddenly there was an explosion of noise and activity among the ruins. He heard Alicia shout “Robert! Sholen! Get away!” over the hydrophone. His sonar imaged four indistinct figures struggling together among the sharp stones.

Rob clenched his teeth to avoid calling out a reply. They had her. That much was certain or she would not have given herself away by shouting. She was always very rational under stress. He moved as quickly as he dared, pulling himself along the underside of the Coquille to get it between him and the aliens. Then he pushed off toward an old broken dome.

Why weren’t they shooting? He got behind a wall and paused to listen. There was no deadly little swish of the microtorps. Not even the sound of Sholen swimming after him.

Either they were being ethical and didn’t want to kill anyone else, or they were being clever. “Put a tracer on me so I’ll lead you back to the rebel base, eh?” he said to himself. “Your advanced alien science is no match for our spunky Earthling pop culture.”

But what about Alicia? He had to leave her. She would say the same thing. If he got himself captured trying to rescue her she would be brutally sarcastic. He still couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he was making up justifications for cowardice.

But no—taking on a bunch of armed Sholen with nothing but his utility knife would be courage of the “strap a bomb to your belt and blow up a bus” variety. Rob had vague, lapsed secular Jewish ideas about an afterlife, and martyrdom wasn’t how he planned to arrive there.

Rob took a roundabout way home to foil any trackers. He passed through the ruins, pausing in the shelter of a large standing stone to listen with the hydrophone at maximum. There were the usual noises of Ilmataran sea creatures, and a faint gurgle from the current washing through the ruins. He was safe.

From there he set his course across the open water of the basin toward the camp at Longpincer’s house. It was a long trip, but the impeller’s fuel cells had enough juice. Barely.

He had covered about a kilometer when he glimpsed something moving ahead. Passive sonar barely registered it, and he didn’t want to risk an active ping for fear it might hear and come to investigate. So he turned on his lights and had a look.

It was a
Cylindrodaptes
—one of the largest creatures in Ilmatar’s ocean. Its body was simply a giant tube, open at both ends, with little steering fins around the mouth and another set at the tail. According to Rob’s computer, this particular
Cylindrodaptes
was sixty meters long and nearly eight meters across, cruising past at a leisurely two knots.

Rob switched off his impeller and watched as it approached. The
Cylindrodaptes
was swimming low over the sea bottom, so Rob had a splendid view of its dorsal side as it passed. It was like watching the
Hindenburg
fly beneath him. The thing’s hide was pale gray, with faint ridges running its entire length. At the top of the mouth he could see a tiny bulge, about the size of a human head, which held the
Cylindrodaptes
’s sonar organs and brain.

Cursing himself for an idiot he switched on his camera and started to record it. This wasn’t the first footage of a
Cylindrodaptes
—Henri had managed that shortly after arriving on Ilmatar. But Henri’s images were all of the front end and the mouth, intended to make the beast look as scary as possible for the viewers back home. Alicia would want him to gather better data.

He turned up the gain on his hydrophone again, wondering if he could hear the
Cylindrodaptes
swimming. It made a very faint swooshing as it moved but was otherwise running silent.

Then Rob became aware of another sound: a rhythmic swish-swish-swish, exactly like the sound of a mackerel swimming. Only there were no mackerel in Ilmatar’s ocean. It was a drone.

He checked his sonar display. The drone was coming up from astern at ten knots. How had it tracked him? Some kind of chemical sniffer? No time to worry about that now. Rob gunned his impeller, trying to outrun the drone, cruising low and fast.

Even at full throttle the drone could keep pace with him, and Rob knew that running the impeller flat- out wouldn’tleave him with enough juice to get back to camp.

How to fool sensors? Merge, then separate. But what could he merge with? Rocks?

Rob steered back toward the
Cylindrodaptes
, hoping to get it between him and the drone. The robot mackerel was about twenty meters behind him as he reached the great creature rippling its way through the water. He cruised over its back, close enough to trail his fingers along its skin, then dropped down on the other side and switched off the impeller, matching speeds with the
Cylindrodaptes
by kicking slowly and quietly.

He heard the swish-swish-swish of the drone pass by, and for a second he felt hope, but then the drone swung around and came back, moving more slowly this time. Right now he was silhouetted against the
Cylindrodaptes
, and Rob hoped the drone’s brain couldn’t distinguish them. But then it gave off an active ping and sprinted toward him at close to twenty knots.

Rob twisted the impeller handle viciously, steering under the
Cylindrodaptes
to shelter on the other side. The drone shot past, but then turned again. It could keep this up longer than Rob could. His one advantage was that they were too far from Hitode for a laser link. The drone was autonomous, which meant there was at least a chance of his outsmarting it.

He dove again, ducking under the
Cylindrodaptes
and then forward along the length of the huge creature. The drone passed by and circled, homing in on the noise of his impeller. He reached the beasts’s front end as the drone began another sprint.

Then Rob simply cut his engine and waited.

The mouth of the
Cylindrodaptes
gaped around him, too wide for him to even touch the sides with his outstretched arms. Lining the interior of the creature’s huge body were thousands of filmy fins, beating together in wonderful spiral ripples down its length. The fins drove the beast forward and filtered nutrients from the water as it swam.

As the mouth moved past Rob could hear the drone swish by, searching for him on the far side of the
Cylindrodaptes.
A moment later, it passed again, circling back.

Rob kept station in the center of the
Cylindrodaptes
’s huge body cavity, about three meters back from the mouth. He could keep up with the creature by swimming, and the longer he waited the longer the drone would have to lose him.

After half an hour it still hadn’t found him, so Rob decided it was safe to emerge. He did risk a few seconds of light to get images of the interior, and was amused to notice a couple of fishshaped organisms tagging along among the
Cylindrodaptes
’s fins. Waving farewell to his fellow parasites, Rob stopped kicking and let the beast’s interior flow push him out its back end. When no drone attacked him, he dropped to the sea bottom and let the
Cylindrodaptes
cruise away. Then he switched on the impeller and set a course for Longpincer’s once again.

TIZHOS began searching the memory of the captive human’s computer and quickly realized what a treasure it represented. The woman had so much data stored she hadn’t had time to encrypt it all. Tizhos found hours of video and audio, and pages and pages of notes. Where to begin? The section on animals and plants included spectrographic analysis and even—Tizhos gave an audible bark of delight—fragmentary translations of native Ilmataran studies on them.

This led Tizhos to the language section. She found it very impressive how much the humans had accomplished, even allowing for the fact that the Ilmatarans did much of the work of translation. Very clever of them to use the written form as the basis for communication, rather than trying to analyze and duplicate the sounds.

She did feel frustration along with her excitement. Each discovery raised dozens of questions, and of course the humans had not had the time to investigate any of them. Tizhos found herself wishing she could join them out there, surrounded by fascinating new things.

But she could not. She prepared a rough summary of the data to give Irona, then went to eat in the common room. The Sholen foodmakers now stood next to the humans’ cooking equipment, and she constructed a meal that would relax her.

The new captive, Alicia Neogri, sat with some of the other humans. Tizhos observed them surreptitiously. The four humans shared a large fruit from the garden and ate cooked roots. Their social behavior exhibited some interesting features. The majority of humans in the station had displayed happiness that the new captive had returned unharmed. A handful, however, seemed disappointed at her capture.

Interestingly, her dinner companions all came from that second group. This seemed to contradict normal human reactions to those who broke their rules of behavior. Did this second group represent some kind of variant consensus?

That could create difficulties. At present most of the humans seemed to accept the Sholen occupation, even if they did not necessarily agree with it. They did not cause any problems. But if Alicia Neogri had high status among them, they might want to emulate her behavior by causing disruptions.

Tizhos did not want any disruptions. The station seemed too small, too isolated down here beneath kilometers of icy black water. Conflict could too easily damage something and kill everyone, Sholen and humans alike. During her time in Hitode, Tizhos more and more felt the weight of all that darkness around the station.

With reluctance, she got up from her place in the common room and went to the operations office, which Irona had turned into his private command center. “Irona, I have some interesting new information.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“Two discoveries of note. First, I have reviewed the files in the computer of the new captive. They contain a great deal of value and I would like to send a copy up to the ship at once.”

“As you wish.” She could smell Irona becoming impatient. “Among the files I discovered a large amount of material about communication with the native Ilmatarans. I believe the humans can speak with them. Their vocabulary already includes several hundred concepts.”

A sharp scent of anger. “That strikes me as horrible news. Tizhos, tell me if you think the humans have contaminated the Ilmatarans with alien ideas and information.”

“I consider it likely. Past statements by several of the humans indicate they approve strongly of sharing information with other species.” Irona’s angry scent is mixed with a faint whiff of despair at that news. Tizhos wants to comfort him. “Of course, we have no proof that they have done so.”

“Ask the female about it. And if they have indeed transmitted alien science to the Ilmatarans, we must find a way to control or reverse the contamination.”

“I don’t know what we can do,” said Rob, using number-taps. “They’ve got the station, they’ve got the surface, and even if help is coming it’ll take months. I’m afraid we’re going to have to give up.”

Broadtail was silent for a while. Rob couldn’t tell if he was thinking about what he’d said or if he’d just fallen asleep the way the Ilmatarans did.

“I hold small echoes [of] stabbing,” said the alien. “Many cords I echo sound [of] stabbing twice adults-with-raised- pincers grasping carved stones.”

Rob mulled that over. At times he wondered if he and the alien were having completely different conversations. He looked through the lexicon. “You think we should try to attack the Sholen? Stab them?”

“I sound [of] stabbing twice. Sever many adults-with-raised- pincers outside a wall of ice.”

“Cut them off! I get it! Yeah! Good idea. But how?”

“Many large adults tie cords. Sever the cord tied to food.”

“There isn’t a—you mean the elevator?”

“You and I are a pair.”

“That’s a great idea, Broadtail. I’ll tell the others. If we can figure out how to do it, will you help us?”

“I and many adults swim beside you pincers extended.”

“LOOK,” said Rob. “They can’t have an infinite supply of those drop capsules; even if they’re fabbing up new ones they’ll run out of feedstock eventually. So their only way of bringing in more stuff is the elevator. Cut that off and all of a sudden we’re on nearly equal terms. Broadtail suggested it.”

There was a pause while Josef thought about it. “How will we get back up without it? I want to stay on Ilmatar, but not my entire life.”

Rob waved his hand as if brushing an insect aside. “Trivial. We reconnect the cable later. Forget the cable. If the Sholen haven’t packed up the surface base we can fab a new one out of local matter. The important thing is to steal the elevator capsule itself. Without it the Sholen can’t go up and down at all—and we can use it as another shelter. Heck, it
is
another shelter: same structure, same life support and power. The only difference is that the elevator has a hard- dock adapter instead of legs, and the buoyancy control system.”

When? Elevator weighs tons.”

“We have a sub. If it can carry one of the Coqs it can carry the elevator.”

Josef looked thoughtful. “Is feasible, yes. As you say, load is comparable to a Coquille and elevator is neutrally buoyant. But taking cable is impossible.”

“So we cut it as high up as possible and make sure it doesn’t fall on Hitode. If the Sholen want to go out in suits and impellers to try to reconnect it, bully for them.”

“You forget about decompression. We need elevator to decompress going up. How can we capture it if we explode?”

“Use the sub. That’s my answer for everything. Take it up a kilometer next time the elevator comes down, so we can be in position when it’s on its way back up again. You and I can live aboard for a few days. Plus Broadtail says his people will help.

Next time it goes up, we board the elevator, take control, cut the cable, and skedaddle.”

“Elevator is probably guarded. Sholen are not stupid, you know.”

“I know they’re not stupid, which is why I don’t think they’d do that. A guard going up has to come back down again, which means the whole capacity of the elevator is reduced by twentyfive percent. It’d be simpler to just send up humans and send down more Sholen techs and soldiers. If they want to keep the passengers going up from messing with the elevator, they can just disconnect the internal controls and send them up without suits.”

“Hope the Sholen think the same. Robert, I have question for you. Do you want to find Alicia?”

“Well—kind of. It would make sense for them to get her out of Hitode as fast as possible. But this isn’t hormones talking.

Snatching the elevator makes sense no matter what.”

“Good. Just making sure you know your own motives.”

AND so Broadtail finds himself with Holdhard and half a dozen of Longpincer’s servants, clinging to the back of the swimming shelter like so many juvenile mudcrawlers on their mother. Just ahead of him Builder 1 is speaking to the human inside through a slender cord. Broadtail isn’t sure how they do it, but it seems to work. The alien turns and taps Broadtail’s head gently with one digit. His tapping is still slow and full of false starts.

The shelter starts to move through the empty water. Ahead Broadtail hears the faint echoes of something solid. As they get closer he can make out the echo of the great cable stretching from ground to sky. A few lengths below them an object the size of a small house is clinging to the cable.

Builder 1 pushes off from the back of the ship and swims toward the object. Broadtail wishes he had some cord to take notes on how the aliens swim. Broadtail pings and takes up his spear. He leads Longpincer’s servants down and takes up station beneath the climbing house, where the door is. Their job is to prevent the other creatures from beyond the ice from interfering with Builder’s work. “If anything comes out, count the limbs,” he reminds the others. “Four limbs good, six limbs bad.”

The swimming shelter maneuvers above the climbing house. Builder 1 connects a thick cable from the bottom of the swimming shelter to the top of the house, then moves around to the siphon devices on the sides of the climbing house that drive it upward.

They are making a tremendous amount of noise, which worries Broadtail. If there are enemies about, they are surely aware of what is happening. Broadtail doesn’t remember fighting these Squatters, but Builder 1 and the other Builders seem very afraid of them. He wonders if he can overcome one in a fight. They are as big as an adult, and their thick limbs could be very strong.

He catches a faint, sharp sound like the noise of Builder tools and risks a ping. The door on the bottom of the climbing house is open and a large creature is emerging. It is one of the Squatters! Broadtail summons as much anger as he can on behalf of the Builders. It is
their
climbing house and the Squatters are uninvited intruders. “Attack!” he calls to the others, and swims toward it.

The creature has a hard object in one of its smaller limbs. Broadtail remembers Builder telling him about the swimmingbolt launchers, so he jabs at the limb with his spear, knocking it to one side just as something shoots out of it, faster than bubbles from a hot vent. The thing goes right past Broadtail and strikes Longpincer’s servant Crestback.

There is a sudden very loud noise and Crestback breaks apart into little pieces of shell and meat.

Half- deaf, Broadtail surges forward at the Squatter. It grabs his spear, shoving the head to one side and trying to push him back. Broadtail lets go of the spear and swims forward, pincers extended. It’s pointing the launcher at him. He grabs that limb with both pincers and clamps down. It’s soft, with a hard center, just like the limbs of the Builder he remembers dissecting.

The Squatter hits him with its other limbs, and he can hear it take another hard tool from its harness. It sounds sharp. He squeezes the limb he’s holding until something cracks and hot blood flows into the water. The blood tastes very different from that of the Builders.

He lets go of that limb just as the creature jabs him with the sharp tool. The point grates along his shell without piercing. Broadtail grapples with the Squatter again, clutching with legs and his left pincer, while feeling for the back of its head with the tip of his right. The thing is struggling hard now. It’s very strong. Its sharp tool pokes his shell again, making a small hole. He feels the hard covering on the thing’s head and gets the tip of his pincer under the back edge. The thing twists and struggles, trying to grab his pincer with one limb but Broadtail gets all his limbs around it.

The outer covering is much tougher than what the Builders wear, but Broadtail is well-fed and angry and finally feels his pincer tip punch through. The water around him grows warm and he feels bubbles. The thing gives a last desperate twist of its body, snapping off one of Broadtail’s smaller limbs, but he’s got his big claw into it and drives it deeper into the hot flesh until he feels it grate on hard things. There’s a spot where two hard things inside the flesh join together. He forces the tip between them and the Squatter stops moving.

ROB opened the hatch cautiously, ready to drop back into the water if he saw a Sholen. He pushed it open a few centimeters and looked through the crack. A human hand grabbed the edge and pulled it all the way open, and a moment later Alicia was tearing off Rob’s helmet and half dragging him into the elevator.

“You are a madman! I love you!” she said between kisses. “How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t, I just hoped you were. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“I am well. The Sholen did not harm me. They have moved about half the people from Hitode up to the surface, and they have been bringing down soldiers.”

“Is that Robert Freeman?” said Pierre. Rob finally managed to take his gaze away from Alicia’s face to survey the room. Pierre and Nadia were standing behind Alicia, both wearing the look of patronizing amusement that married people tend to give young couples.

“How did you get past the guard?” asked Pierre.

“We brought some allies. Ilmatarans,” said Rob. “While I was cutting the cable and hooking up the tow line, Broadtail— that’s the one Alicia and I made contact with first—he grabbed the Sholen as he was coming out of the hatch.”

“Is he all right?” asked Alicia.

“Broadtail’s fine. The Sholen’s dead and one of the ’tarans got shot.” Rob’s mouth twisted. “I bet Broadtail’s going to take the body back for dissection.”

The elevator habitat began bobbing and pitching quite a bit as the sub got under way. Rob shut the hatch to keep water from sloshing in.

“The humans have cast aside all rules and are behaving like wild creatures. They have stolen the elevator capsule and cut the cable.”

Tizhos felt a surge of irrational fear.
Trapped!
But it was followed almost immediately by the realization,
more time to work!
Irona continued. “I have a new project for you, Tizhos. I want you to give it your full attention. Ignore everything else.”

“Tell me the nature of this project.” She tried not to sound annoyed.

“I want you to make a complete study of all the human files on Ilmataran language. Create a translation protocol that we can use. I expect you want to do it anyway.”

“That sounds as though you want to speak to the Ilmatarans.”

“I do indeed desire that.”

“Tell me why.”

“Shirozha reported Ilmatarans helping in the attack on the elevator. The humans have made an alliance with some of them, or conscripted them. It hardly matters which. Since they have cut the elevator cable we must fight them with only the resources we have here.”

“I know all that.”

“With a supply line to the surface we could afford to wait them out. No longer. We must end this now. To accomplish that we need allies of our own. Natives who can speak with other natives and find where the humans lurk.”

“I cannot believe you wish to make contact with the Ilmatarans! That goes against the entire purpose of this mission!”

Irona’s scent turned dominating. “When we left Shalina the Consensus ordered us to prevent future contamination of this world by the humans. That remains the purpose of this mission.”

“But you suggest causing contamination of our own!”

“I see no alternative. We must choose between limited, controlled contact—which we can end as soon as we accomplish our mission—and
unlimited, uncontrolled
contamination by the humans. Indoctrinating them into human ideologies, distorting the natural evolution of their society, teaching them harmful practices.”

Tizhos thought it over. Irona had a point. And more importantly—she would get the chance to study Ilmatarans! In person and close up! No matter what purpose Irona hoped to accomplish, Tizhos would see more of the Ilmatarans than any Sholen before or to come.

“I will do all I can,” she said.

THEY towed the elevator back to the Ilmataran settlement, taking a roundabout course and stopping several times to see if the Sholen were following. Rob had hoped it would take them a while to figure out what had happened, but according to Alicia the Sholen guard had reported the attack before going out to get killed.

Pierre questioned the wisdom of camping at the Ilmataran settlement. “Wouldn’t it be better to pick a hidden spot? Make it harder for the Sholen to find us—and keep from involving the Ilmatarans in all this?”

“The ’tarans are already involved. They chose to be. Broadtail and the others who helped with the elevator raid all volunteered. Anyway, it doesn’t make sense to disperse. We need their help to survive, even with the elevator’s life support and supplies.”

A fleet of Ilmatarans rose from Longpincer’s vent farm to greet them as the submarine towed the elevator capsule to the settlement. Broadtail had them tie ropes to the capsule’s support skids, and then humans and Ilmatarans began the complicated process of lowering it to the seafloor.

Because the hatch was on the bottom of the elevator capsule they couldn’t just drop it anywhere. Unless it was properly level water would flood in every time they went in or out.

Josef operated the sub, staying in touch with Rob via laser link. The elevator’s comm system was down, so Alicia had to hang on just outside the hatch, sticking her head inside to relay messages by shouting. Nadia worked the capsule’s buoyancy controls by hand, with only a depth gauge and Alicia’s eyeballs for guidance.

Outside, four teams of Ilmatarans held the ropes and stood braced on the sea bottom, straining to keep the capsule centered above its intended resting place. Broadtail and Rob communicated by clicks, but there was an awful lag.

Rob’s biggest worry was Alicia. Though the elevator’s skids allowed two meters of clearance below the access hatch, they were still pretty flimsy. He was terrified that one of the skids would give if they dropped the capsule too quickly, and Alicia would wind up crushed. When it was finally resting on the bottom, he realized he was holding his breath.

BOSSING a team of Longpincer’s apprentices and tenants as they help the Builders gives Broadtail an odd mix of feelings—as if he is hungry and full at once. It is good to be in charge, or ganizing teams and telling them when to haul as if he is a landowner.

But the work also reminds him of his old home, and the memories make him sad. Whenever he remembers Sandyslope he is startled by how much he still desires the place. If he concentrates he can remember the way the water tasted, the feel of the stones, and the chill of the currents.

With a patch of clear ground he could trace the entire Steepslope pipe system, with all the valves, leaks, and uneven flow spots precisely marked. He can even remember what grows where, and the flavor of the different crops. His jellyfronds always get a sour edge from the sulfur in the stones, but that also makes his spine-beds taller and fatter than any others in Continuous Abundance.

Not his spine-beds. Smoothpincer’s spine-beds. Broadtail wonders if they are even there anymore. He remembers Longfeeler suggesting putting in some fiber plants there, as even good- quality spines don’t fetch as many beads as rope does.