The Godwhale (S.F. Masterworks) (16 page)

Big Opal glanced around her level-three nest at ten fathoms. The fruit bin was low; there was scarcely enough for her offering to the Deep Cult. She would be the one raiding the Gardens this time. Har’s left knee was still swollen, unable to bear his weight. The effects of the meteor shower had injured a number of Benthics. An astrobleme-induced tsunami had shifted a mountain of debris, trapping him in undersea ruins. His left knee had been badly crushed. Until he could run again, the burden of feeding the family had fallen on Opal’s broad shoulders.

‘I must swim up to the Gardens,’ she said patting her two young children. Clam, her oldest, was now an adult and had left her nest.

Har nodded. He and the young Tads watched her climb down through a toothy rent and swim up past the swaying transparent walls, her pink breasts and buttocks shimmering through the cloudy waters. Since the meteor shower there had been a drop in visibility.

Opal swam leisurely among the scum-shrouded ruins, pausing at living umbrellas for air. At level two she entered the mushroom-shaped Halfway House, bobbing up into the living-room pool.

‘Welcome,’ said the wizened, hairy Listener.

She climbed, dripping, up the ramp to where he sat among the wires. His lap held a bowl. He appeared worried.

‘What do you hear from the surface?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Yet I feel we have seen the harbinger of evil,’ he groaned, holding up a red crustacean. ‘The krill.’ It flipped back into the bowl.

‘The krill have returned?’

He nodded gravely.

‘Why, that’s wonderful!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have seen them in the murals – good food from the seas. Trilobite’s deity has answered our prayers. We’ll soon be able to survive without raiding the Gardens.’

A tear started down Listener’s wrinkled face.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Opal.

He pointed to his web. ‘The Hive will see the krill, too. It will return to harvest the seas again – and drive us out. Our children will have no place to hide – no place.’

Opal was stunned. The Benthics had lived on the shelf for generations. She understood the ruins had been built by the Hive, but that had been a very long time ago. Now the Benthics were here. The Ocean was their refuge – their home. She shook her fist at the ceiling.

‘The Hive will not drive us out.’

Overhead the surf dulled with soupy green and yellow blooms – diatoms, algae, and salps. After one sleep Opal swam up to the Gardens and stole her share of the harvest. Agromecks ignored her. She worked quickly and quietly, tying her melons into a raft and loading sacks of smaller nuts and berries. At dusk she rode the rip currents towards the Halfway buoy. A few stars blinked down at her. The western horizon glowed a faint blue when a silhouette appeared against it – nearly a quarter mile long, low and dotted with trees.

It was right in Opal’s path – an island where no island should be. The current carried her up to the smooth, slightly granular beach. With her raft vine in one hand she examined the trees – jumbled leaves, trunks, and roots – natural enough. She tied her raft and began to explore the shoulder-high brush under a palm canopy. At the end of the beach she came upon a hillock – a heap of boulders that had been hollowed out. Inside, there were glowing ornaments and bright, blinking stones in the walls. The floor was littered with small tools, seaweed, and pinching crabs.

Rorqual
trembled at the touch of bare feet. The huge Harvester tried to speak, but air molecules did not respond. She could make no sound. Her vocal membranes had gone with her long ear. She tried an offering. Chewing cellulose mulch into a hydrocarbon solution the meck polymerized and extruded a small tool. Opal picked it up – curious. Excitedly
Rorqual
formed a small doll in the likeness of the wet, naked guest. It was rubbery and translucent – a tough polymer.

Opal’s curiosity was quenched abruptly by what she saw through the porthole. This island had a wake – it was moving! She cursed and ran, diving overboard without her melons.

Three Benthics huddled in their level-three nest watching the shadow pass over the reef. ‘That’s it. It is looking for me,’ whispered Opal.

‘A floating island?’ asked Har.

Clam shook his head. ‘The Leviathan. I studied them with the Deep Cult. Murals and old ballads speak of such a creature. It is not an island. It is a creature that gathers krill for the Hive – a giant mutation of the finback whale. Did you notice the control cabin?’

Opal nodded. ‘A little room.’

‘Attached to the back of the skull,’ he explained. ‘The Hive designed hookups between machines and the hapless creature’s brain and muscles. A crew could steer it anywhere, ignoring its usual migrations. I’m not sure how they bred them.’

Opal did not like that at all: ‘A sea creature controlled by the Hive.’

Nebish workmen sat around their barracks watching the sewer bouillabaisse simmer. Drum picked up his bowl and decanted a pint of surface fluid with its fat gobbets and flecks of green basil.

‘Don’t you want any of the jointed creatures?’ offered Ode, digging deep with a ladle.

Drum grinned widely, exposing a bad set of teeth; less than half remained in the lower jaw, none in the upper. ‘There’ll be no more chewing for me.’

‘Did you put in a request for a new set?’

‘Along with my usual requests for a lens and a hip joint,’ said Drum. ‘But you know what my priority is.’

Ode sat silently, running his tongue over his own broken set of teeth. He could use a few White Team requisitions himself. The Wet Crew sloshed in and dumped their tithe down the Synthe Chute. They sat down and picked up bowls of hot soup.

‘Your shift,’ they said.

Ode and Drum finished eating and pulled on their boots. The brackish odour was overpowering Sewermeck flashed amber.

‘My sensors indicate a large disturbance. Your shift has been cancelled. Hurry to the outhatch.’

Ode squinted into the darkness of the sump. ‘Flash a light out there. I hear something.’

‘My lights will not read. Hurry to the outhatch.’

‘The waves sound like they’re lapping against something about thirty feet out.’ His belt light pulsed. He caught a glimpse of mottled wet wall.

‘That isn’t supposed to be there,’ said Ode. They scrambled back up the ladder to the barracks.

‘That was quick,’ said Furlong. His manner was unusually pleasant. ‘Did you fellows dump that last load of grit down the Synthe Chute?’

Ode pointed to the Wet Crew members who were lined up at the refresher.

‘Where did you dig this up?’ Furlong asked.

One of the crew, still pink and fragrant from the scrubber, walked over carrying a bundle of crisp issue tissue garments. He glanced at the small, white, pea-sized object. ‘Oh, the fossil otolith?’

‘It’s no fossil ear stone! Look at this report from the Synthe Sorting Meck. No leaching, ion drift, or surface wear. The isotopes are in the contemporary ratio.’

‘Contemporary?’ exclaimed the crew member, dropping his bundle. Ode and Drum jumped to their feet.

‘Yes,’ said Furlong. ‘Half the staff from Bio is on their way down here right now. They want to know where to start digging.’

Ode opened his mouth to mention the sump disturbance when the crowd of Samplers rushed into the barracks. Coils of auxiliary power cables were unrolled in the halls. Arc-lights wheeled up to the hatch.

‘Where?’ repeated Furlong.

‘The delta.’

Arc-lights crackled in the pipes as the teams of Samplers spread out and began netting and digging.

‘Bring those nets down here to the delta.’

‘What’s that smell?’

‘Uh, oh, I don’t think we’ll be needing those nets.’

Attracted by the voices,
Rorqual Maru
cruised down the sump towards the delta. Her hundred-and-fifty-foot beam was half as wide as the sump. Before her drifted a spongy wall of brine-soaked biscuits – her cargo. The Nebishes backed away as her towering, barnacled hull nosed gently into the mud. Baleful optics gazed while the teams nervously filled their pails.

Drum followed the teams up to Bio and watched the Sorting Meck flake up the biscuits. Individual plants and animals were centred on small trays and passed on to the reading stage under the Gene Spinner’s critical eye.

‘Plankton,’ chirped Wandee. ‘Look at this printout. There are over a hundred species here that were thought extinct.’

‘How could it have happened?’ asked Drum. ‘Where did all these creatures come from?’

Wandee shrugged. Spinner considered the question and shared it with the CO – the Class One Meck also had neutral connection with all the continents. In a few hours Drum had his answer.

‘Meteor show,’ postulated the CO. ‘Marine biota reappeared three point two years afterwards. An astrobleme must have opened an atoll or other landlocked body of saltwater where these species had survived.’

Drum nodded.

‘We are lucky that the sea can support life again. Whatever killed it must not be active now.’

‘Doesn’t appear to be. These seem to be flourishing. There must be a lot of food in the seas now.’

‘Who will harvest it?’

The platoon of orange-suited insignia wearers crept into the SS barracks and nudged Ode. As the retired Grandmaster opened his eyes the ensign handed him a captain’s coveralls.

‘Whom do you want?’

‘You – Captain, sir,’ said the ensign curtly. ‘You have been named to command. We’ll voyage on plankton rake
Rorqual Maru
– the whale ship. CO’s orders, sir.’

Ode glanced around at the placid, young faces of his crew – barely mature children. He pulled on the coveralls and thick-soled boots. His belt was wide and ornate. Drum sat up on his cot to watch the drafting of Captain Ode. He shook his head slowly, wondering why a Grandmaster would be commissioned to pilot a rake. Did the reason lie in his military experience on the chessboard – or the simple fact that Ode had been the first to spot the returning vessel?

‘Good luck,’ said Drum sadly.

‘Smile,’ said Ode. ‘It is an honour to captain the first vessel in the Hive navy. It is a turning point. More food for all Citizens. The yards will reopen to build copies of
Rorqual
. We’ll all have a great time.’

‘Be careful anyway,’ cautioned Drum. ‘You are not accustomed to the Outside. No one knows very much about the seas these days . . .’

Captain Ode waved his friend to silence and marched off with his crew.

Priorities were juggled as the Hive attempted to get the Shipyards working again. Meck brains were taken from doors, Dispensers, and every class of machine. They were carted and delivered to the flooded, corroded ruins along the sump. Nebish work crews found their jobs impossible. Ancient crane and lathe robots heaped into rusted masses with the twisted girders, cables, plates and other scrap gear. Everything was too heavy or too sharp for the weak, soft Citizen retreads. A shipyard caste was needed. The project was temporarily suspended while the job qualifications could be drawn up – broad shoulders, thick skin, and the mental capacity of a Tinker or a pipe caste member. It would be many years before a finished copy of
Rorqual
slid down the ways.

Drum’s White Team requests were answered unexpectedly. He reported to the Clinic, where he was given every courtesy. On his first visit they took impressions for new teeth, measurements for a new lens prosthesis, and arthrograms for a new hip. During the work-up they found a list of correctables: a benign colon polyp was plucked out; his diet was changed to include more flavours; an exercise prescription was given to his new Dispenser; the cloudy lens was diced up and sucked out of his eye and a plastic lens inserted.

‘A new Dispenser?’ he asked.

‘Goes with your new status,’ said the clerk, handing him the gold bar.

Drum blinked at the bright yellow metal. His operated eye ached and he saw double.

‘You’re a Leo,’ explained the clerk. ‘Society will feel free to call on you for anything. You will work across caste lines at a supervisory level.’

Drum nodded.

‘This is your new Dispenser. It will follow you back to your room on Mover. When it is hooked up you’ll see how special it is – hot and cold capability with odour control. Your teeth will be ready tomorrow. The next day we’ll do your hip. In a couple of weeks you should feel ten years younger.’

‘A Leo?’ mumbled Drum.

‘Yes. I wonder what your first assignment will be. We were ordered to put you on very high priority.’

Drum didn’t have long to wait. After his various surgeries he was put on a walking program by his Dispenser – two hours on the Spiral twice a day. The checkpoints kept getting further and further from his cubicle in the SS barracks. Furlong had no assignments in the pipes for him.

He had just come back from his morning walk, sweaty and hungry, when Dispenser chuckled: ‘Hot or cold? Today you get your assignment.’

‘Cold and foamy – a long one. What assignment?’

The chute produced two pints of frosty yellow liquid that foamed when he popped the lids. He took a long drink. His new teeth ached sharply. ‘OUCH! That’s cold.’ When half the drink was gone he sat down and waited for Dispenser to continue.

‘Leo Drum, you are to take a detail of men Outside and string the long ear.’

‘Outside?’ Drum shuddered.

‘Your drinks will have ice and your soup will have chunks of meat.’

He nodded.

Drum put his goggles on step-down and ventured cautiously into the Gardens. The suits were Closed-Environment types, maintaining the heat and humidity of the Hive. He felt the elbows and shoulders of his work crew as they crowded together for protection from their ‘Outside fears’ – agoraphobia.

Bright sun glinted off gaudy flowers. Leafy plants absorbed sound, hushing the human voices and screening the men’s views of each other. Three workers – each finding himself alone in such wide open spaces – collapsed and died.

The towers of the long ear stood on a hill and reached up into the sky. Glassy insulators clung to spider-web-thin struts. The structure appeared delicate, swaying in the wind. Half the crew was unable to approach the ladders. Many of those who made the climb lasted less than an hour before freezing to the rungs or dropping to the ground in a heap of fractures. Replacements arrived. Spools creaked at the base of the towers as wires were strung up and down the antennae. Stretcher Teams jogged back and forth with their splinted burdens. Fresh work details were sent out at dusk to spell the survivors. They worked through the night, swaying against a star-strewn sky. Darkness erased most of the landmarks so the Nebish, limited by his helmet light, worked more comfortably.