A Darkling Sea (4 page)

“I certainly do not recall reading of such a thing. It seems absolutely unique.”

“Please note as much, Broadtail. My first incision is along the underside. Cutting the hide releases a great many bubbles.

The creature reacts very vigorously—make sure the ropes are secure. The hide peels away very easily; there is no connective tissue at all. I feel what seems to be another layer underneath.

The creature’s interior is remarkably warm.”

“The poor thing,” says Raggedclaw. “I do hate causing it pain.”

“As do we all, I’m sure,” says Longpincer. “I am cutting through the under-layer. It is extremely tough and fibrous. I hear more bubbles. The warmth is extraordinary—like pipewater a cable or so from the vent.”

“How can it survive such heat?” asks Roundhead. “Can you taste any blood, Longpincer?” adds Sharpfrill. “No blood that I can taste. Some odd flavors in the water, but I judge that to be from the tissues and space between. I am peeling back the under-layer now. Amazing! Yet another layer beneath it. This one has a very different texture—fleshy rather than fibrous. It is very warm. I can feel a trembling sensation and spasmodic movements.”

“Does anyone remember hearing sounds like that before?” says Smoothshell. “It sounds like no creature I know of.”

“I recall that other thing making similar sounds,” says Broadtail.

“I now cut through this layer. Ah—now we come to viscera.

The blood tastes very odd. Come, everyone, and feel how hot this thing is. And feel this! Some kind of rigid structures within the flesh.”

“It is not moving,” says Roundhead.

“Now let us examine the head. Someone help me pull off the shell here. Just pull. Good. Thank you, Raggedclaw. What a lot of bubbles! I wonder what this structure is?”

Broadtail takes notes as fast as he can, tying clumsy knots to keep up with Longpincer. He feels elation. This is a fantastically important discovery and he is part of the first company to get their feelers on it. Joining the Bitterwater Company of Scholars is the greatest thing Broadtail can remember happening to him.

He imagines great things in his future.

THE trip back was awful. Rob couldn’t keep from replaying Henri’s death in his mind. He got back to the station hours late, exhausted and half out of his mind. As a small mercy, Rob didn’t have to tell anyone what had happened—they could watch the video.

There were consequences, of course. But because the next supply vehicle wasn’t due for another twenty months, it all happened in slow motion. Rob knew he’d be going back to Earth, and guessed that he’d never make another interstellar trip again.

Nobody blamed him, at least not exactly. At the end of his debriefing, Dr. Sen did look at Rob over his little Gandhi glasses and say, “I do think it was rather irresponsible of you both to go off like that. But I am sure you know that already.”

Sen also deleted the “Death to HK” feed from the station’s network, but someone must have saved a copy. The next day it was anonymously relayed to Rob’s computer with a final method added: “Let a group of Ilmatarans catch him and slice him up.”

Rob didn’t think it was funny at all.

He stayed in bed for about a week after Henri died. At first he was really just exhausted, and then he was depressed, and for the last couple of days he was afraid of what people would say to him. Nobody had liked Henri, but somehow Rob didn’t think they’d want to congratulate him. So he kept to his room, slipping out during night shift to stockpile food and prowl the station.

Dr. Sen and Elena Sarfatti, the medical officer, did insist on visiting him for a few minutes each day. Sen was still writing up a report on the incident and wanted Rob to explain pretty much every single minute of the time between when Henri showed him the stealth suit and his return to the station alone. That was actually more boring than painful, because the worst parts were on video and Sen didn’t need to ask about them.

Dr. Sarfatti was worse, really, because she wanted him to talk about how he felt.

“Can’t I just have the damned antidepressants?”

“Not until we explore why you feel you need them.”

“I need them because I listened to a guy get cut up by aliens!”

It usually took about half an hour of circling around the subject before she’d relent and hand over the pills. Some days it was antidepressants, some days tranquilizers, and once she bullied him into taking a memory enhancer. That was a mistake. For sixteen hours afterward every time he thought about Henri (and there wasn’t much else for him to think about, holed up in his room), he got a complete, highly detailed instant replay of the whole incident inside his head.

After a week he finally started working again, motivated chiefly by sheer boredom. He did rearrange his schedule (with Sen’s implicit consent) to minimize his contact with others. He took to working during night shift, sleeping during the day, and staying in his room until everyone else went to bed. They started leaving meals for him in the galley, ready to heat up. It was just like being in grad school.

BROADTAIL is tired when he gets back to Continuous Abundance. The village is much as he remembers it: a tall mound about two cables across with the main vent at the highest point. A stone dome covers the vent, and each property owner’s pipe leads off to feed a network of smaller channels. The diameter of the pipe is set by law, and interfering with flow rights is a crime and a sin.

The various properties are marked with boundary stones on the lower slopes of the mound and the flat plain beyond. All of them are covered with branching conduits, with different crops growing in different places depending on what temperature and flow speed they prefer.

His own Sandyslope property is on the broad side of the mound where the cold current from the wilderness brings silt. The flavor of the water is comforting and familiar as he passes the marker stones. On his own property, Broadtail finally relaxes. Like all landowners he is only really comfortable within his own boundaries.

As always, he rises up and gives a loud ping to check on the place. The house echoes back sturdy and—sadly—all too clean. The pipe network flows quietly, with no burbling leaks or churning at a blockage.

Broadtail’s pipes are not like the others at Continuous Abundance. He recalls using mathematical models based on the proportions of blood vessels in large animals to adjust the diameter of the branches. His crop yields are bigger than anything anyone remembers Flatbody producing by nearly an eighth part, though that is still less than most of the other tracts at Continuous Abundance.

The house is in the middle of the property, three long halls with vaulted stone roofs for protection. Pipes feed into the house, and downstream the waste-laden water supports a bloom of hardy fronds. Broadtail crosses his boundary, pinging for attention. He reaches the door and sets down his reels and supply bags, then calls again loudly for his apprentices. There is no reply.

Typical. Doubtless they are off idling with other apprentices and tenants, instead of working. Broadtail crawls out of his house again and listens. There is a clamor of many voices coming from the commonhouse in the center of the village, just next to the dome over the vent itself. A meeting? Broadtail doesn’t want to go to a meeting now. But he is a landowner. It is not proper to stay home.

The commonhouse is packed, people jammed in shell to shell. Talk and sonar clicks make it almost too noisy to move about. Broadtail squeezes into the back, working his way to his favorite spot over in the corner, where a slab of porous stone cuts down on some of the echoes. If only that lout Thicklegs 34 Sandybottom just in front of him would stop grinding his palps, Broadtail would be able to hear what the speaker is saying.

Ridgeback 58 Hardshelf is on the lectern, gripping it with all eight legs as if he’s afraid of the audience trying to drag him out. They might actually try it if he keeps ranting on. Everyone is hungry and bored—the hecklers at the back have started pinging in unison, trying to set up a standing wave and drown him out.

“Openwater is common to all! All precedents agree! Everything above the height of a person’s outstretched claws is common water. The catch in tall nets should not belong to the landowner but to the public jars.”

“Nets don’t put themselves on poles!” someone shouts. “If the tall netcatch goes to the public jars there is no reason for us to waste time building tall nets!”

“Then let the town buy some dragnets and put some children to work towing them!” Ridgeback answers. “Share out the catch among all, landowners and tenants.”

That gets a loud response. About half the people in the commonhouse are tenants—netmakers, stonecutters, openwater fishers. The craftworkers love the idea of getting catch for free, so they support Ridgeback loudly. The fishers want the right to drag nets over private lands themselves, so they’re a bit more muted. The landowners hate the whole idea, and say so. The apprentices are just making noise for the sake of noise, hoping a fight breaks out.

Broadtail hates the idea more than most. His Sandyslope property is off at the upstream end of town, exposed to the cold currents, and his pipeflow is cold and thin. His channels produce only slow-growing plants like ropevine and springbranch, and those can’t back many beads. Almost half his food is netcatch, and he has three expensive new tall nets on his land. He waits for the noise to die down and then jumps in before Ridgeback can continue. “How about letting the landowners pay a rent for the right to put up nets? Maybe an eighth of the catch?”

Some of the landowners like that, but most of them just want to be able to put up whatever they want on their own land and eat whatever they catch. The fishers don’t like the rent idea at all, because it sounds too much like the idea of charging a toll on openwater. They fight that notion at almost every meeting.

Ridgeback doesn’t like it either. “Give landowners the right to rent common water and it’s not common anymore! They can trade the rights back and forth, and buy and sell and sublease them. The waters become the property of the richest landowners instead of everyone. I imagine the waters full of nets, blocking navigation.”

That really gets the fishers going. They don’t like anything which might snag a dragnet or tangle a line. And none of the tenants like the idea of the landowners being any wealthier than they already are. Broadtail is momentarily deafened by some angry pings directed at him. When he gets his hearing back, Ridgeback is calling for a vote.

It’s a close one. The tenants are all for the proposal, of course. Many of them vote for anything Ridgeback proposes, as if by reflex. Even the fishers are grudgingly in favor—Broadtail’s warning has only convinced them that the choice is between public dragnets and a tangle of private ones, and this way they at least get a portion.

Then the landowners vote. Each gets one vote as a citizen and then another based on flow rights. Broadtail himself gets only half an extra vote because his flow share is so small, but big owners like Flatfront 6 Ventside have six. As a group, the owners have the bulk of the voting power, and can usually pass anything they wish, but this time they are divided. Big rich owners don’t care much about netcatch and like the idea of feeding tenants and apprentices at no expense to themselves. Some of them want to reassure the fishers and craftworkers that they aren’t trying to monopolize the waters. The small owners like Broadtail are solidly opposed to Ridgeback’s plan, but they just don’t have enough votes. In the end, the motion squeaks by.

The next speaker with a motion is Sevenlegs 26 Archrock, who wants to reapportion flow rights based on pressure instead of pipe size. She brings it up whenever a meeting is called, but her explanation is so complicated nobody can even tell if it’s a good idea or not. Broadtail’s too mad to stay and listen, so he crawls to the doorway, angrily pinging any adults in his way, and shoving apprentices aside.

Outside the quiet is almost shocking, as if he’s gone deaf. Some children are curled up in the pathway asleep, and Broadtail kicks them out of the way with unnecessary force.

He’s tired and hungry, and he needs some stingers to stay awake long enough to get things in order at home. Widehead 34 Foodhouse sells stingers and doesn’t ask any annoying questions. Her shop is just across the public road from the commonhouse, set on a tiny plot with no flow rights at all. The front part of the shop is actually on public land, and only the kitchen and Widehead’s own quarters are behind her boundary stones.

Broadtail goes inside and taps at the shell by the door for service. Widehead comes out promptly and pings the room. “Broadtail? Is the meeting over?”

“The important part is. Ridgeback’s foolish plan to abolish tall nets passed. I need some stingers.”

Widehead brings him a pair of stingers and Broadtail taps the sharp end of the first one with his feeding tendrils. There’s a mild pain, and then a nice tingly numbness as the neurotoxin spreads through his system. It relaxes his muscles but makes him feel much more alert and alive. He taps the second and savors the sensation, then calls for another pair.

After half a dozen stingers Broadtail finds the sound of his own pulse almost deafening. He gropes clumsily in his pouch with one foot and eventually gets out three of his beads for Widehead. He goes homeward, trying to move as quietly as he can, but of course his half-limp legs betray him with every step. Outside it sounds as if the meeting in the commonhouse is breaking up. Broadtail doesn’t linger; he’s tired and hungry and he wants to get home without talking to anyone.

He almost makes it. Nobody stops him until he’s on his own property, going to his own door. He hears a loud ping that makes his shell feel as if it’s shattering. It’s Ridgeback, standing in the public pathway beyond the marker stones. “Broadtail! Come here!”

“What?”

“I am disappointed. You usually vote with me in meetings.”

“You usually have good ideas. This one is terrible. I need my tall nets.”

“But you get your share of the public catch! You can devote your time to other things and still get food!”

“I get more from my own nets. Schoolchildren pulling a dragnet don’t catch much. They slip away, or eat the catch themselves.”

“We can put someone in charge of them.”

“Who needs to be paid. All too costly for my taste.”

“Broadtail, you are too miserly.”

“I am miserly because I have a cold barren plot and can’t afford to waste my time and wealth winning the friendship of a lot of tenants and apprentices!”

“They are useful friends. They balance the power of the big landowners.”

“And small owners like myself are ground up in between.”

“Because you have nobody to protect you. If you were my friend I would help guard your interests. And so would my other friends.”

“By banning my nets? Go away. I need to eat and rest.”

Ridgeback moves closer to Broadtail and lowers his voice. “I am preparing a motion for the next meeting which makes great changes. If you support it you can gain wealth, perhaps even more flow.”

“I do not wish for gain, only to be allowed to use what I have and be left in peace.”

“You are foolish, Broadtail. Everyone calls you the most intelligent adult in the village, yet you waste all your time digging up old stones and trying to read carvings. A landowner should concern himself with practical matters like politics.”

“Get off my property,” Broadtail pings loudly. He’s sick of Ridgeback’s big promises and schemes, and wants to go inside and run his feelers over a good book before sleeping.

“You should not speak that way to me.”

“Go!”

Ridgeback steps forward past the boundary stone and raises a pincer, and in Broadtail’s tired and stinger-addled brain an ancient instinct kicks in.
Invader on my territory
! He charges Ridgeback and shoves him hard. Ridgeback folds his pincers and shoves back. For a moment the two of them strain and push, their feet scrabbling for purchase on the path.

Then one of Broadtail’s feelers gets caught in Ridgeback’s pincer, and a couple of segments at the tip get snipped off. The pain makes him even madder, and he raises one of his pincers and jabs it down behind Ridgeback’s head. Ridgeback isn’t expecting this, and there’s a gap between his headshield and his back carapace. The tip of the claw neatly pierces the soft skin and plunges deep into the flesh beneath.

The two of them stand frozen for a moment. Broadtail’s shocked by what he has done. Ridgeback wiggles his feelers wildly, but the rest of his body is absolutely still. Then Broadtail pulls out his claw and Ridgeback collapses.

“Ridgeback!” Broadtail pings him and tries to pick him up, but the wound behind his head is spewing fluids like a vent and he’s not moving.

Broadtail steps back and bumps against something. It’s one of his marker stones. He listens for a moment to get his bearings and gets another shock. During the fight he must have shoved Ridgeback into the pathway. The corpse is in common territory. Killing on private property is a personal matter, but this is murder.

Broadtail doesn’t know what to do. His body does, though. It’s been far too long since Broadtail last ate or slept, and the fight used up any reserve he might have had. He staggers past the marker stone onto his land and passes out.

BY an unspoken arrangement, Rob took over as maintenance tech on the drones and sensor gear, communicating with Sergei via notes in grease pencil on the door of the workshop. Since Henri had monopolized Rob’s services before dying, everybody was already used to doing their own photography and image processing anyway.

The first one was on the bench in the workshop, a little figure made of swabs and tape with one cotton-tipped arm raised in a cheery wave. Rob figured it was something Sergei had put together in an idle moment, and left it on the shelf when he finished work.

The next day he found two more figures. One was a little dough girl sitting atop the micro wave in the galley, and the second was a wire dancer poised in the middle of his regular table.

Rob spent half an hour that night exploring the station to see if the little sculptures were maybe just a kind of fad. Maybe everyone was making them, just to pass the time and decorate the station. He didn’t find any others, though. In his room during the work shift he lay awake for a couple of hours, reverting mentally to age fourteen and wondering if the little figures were somehow part of a plot by everyone else to make fun of him.

On the third night there were half a dozen of them. One, cut from a strip of scrap plastic, on the sink in the bathroom nearest his room in Hab Two. The second, folded from a sheet of nori, in the galley. The third, molded from caulking compound, on the back of the chair in the workshop. Another origami figure made of foil inside the tool cabinet. And a wire angel posed above the hatch into Hab Two where he’d be sure to see it on the way back to his room.

The sixth figure was sitting on his pillow. It was a girl made of swabs and foil, with her cotton hair colored black and a tiny smile on her little cotton face. She was holding a folded note.