The Godwhale (S.F. Masterworks) (33 page)

‘It was the Hive,’ spat ARNOLD.

‘But the T-scanners were OK, and their own man was in the middle of it.’

‘Well, so were our men, and there were more of them.’

Larry shrugged. ‘Wandee was pretty excited. She thinks we did it. I guess we’d better have our tecks go over that dinghy for clues. Let
Rorqual
search the little boat’s mind too. We might learn something. Meanwhile, I agree that we should get off the shelf. Home, ship!’

The tool-room hatch was open. Sunlight glinted off the dinghy as it sat in the jaws of the Disassembler. Larry walked down the narrow aisle between the workbenches.

‘A good pair of optics,’ said the teck under the dinghy’s sensor housing. ‘Standard fluorite with backups of ultraviolet glass and infrared lead selenide.’

‘Nothing in the brain that looks like deception. We’ll let
Rorqual
soak it all in for analysis later.’

Larry studied the initial reports. ‘Looks like this boat knew nothing of the bomb. I suppose it could have been Clam’s doing. To be fair, I think we ought to send it back to the Hive.’

ARNOLD nodded reluctantly. ‘I agree that an ambassador’s dinghy can’t be treated as spoils of war. What are the flowers for?’

Larry set a thorny rose bush under the seat next to one of Ode’s scorched crutches. ‘Just a little gift for Drum and Wandee. We don’t have a body to send back.’ He suddenly sucked his thumb. ‘Ouch!’

‘Looks like the little dinghy’s memory was small: mostly Sewer Service data with some recent navigation aids,’ said Larry. ‘But the data on the meteor shower has stimulated
Rorqual
’s curiosity.’

‘That must have been nearly twenty years ago. What has that to do with navigation?’

‘The Hive nervous system covers all the major land masses. There was some type of massive disturbance in the Arctic Ocean – a regular holocaust. Several meteor impacts were sensed in the area.’

‘What’s her index of curiosity?’ asked ARNOLD.

‘Zero point seven and rising.’

‘Maybe it would be worth following up. If we have reason to talk with the Hive again, we might ask for more details – maybe offer a few fish for it. I hate to admit it but some of those circuits turned out by the new Labs in the Shipyard were actually serviceable. We could use some of them too, if the Hive is anxious to buy our friendship. We’d be able to speed up the repairs on the mecks and Harvesters.’

Larry nodded. ‘I’m sure they’ll be calling us again after this explosion on the raft is forgotten. They seem determined to rope us into some sort of negotiations.’

Wandee tucked old Drum into his recliner and picked a rose hip for him. ‘Rich in bioflavinoids,’ she said handing him the plum-sized fruit of
Rosa rugosa
. He smiled weakly and gummed for flavours.

‘Those flowers have loaded pistils,’ she noted. ‘Furlong said he’d see if you could keep them long enough to get your strength back – a dietary supplement.’

‘What else has the Chairman planned for me?’

‘The NH treatment, if you want it. A new set of endocrines might pep you right up.’ She smiled.

Drum was irritated. ‘Am I to be the new ambassador to the Benthics? If so, you can tell him I’m too old for deceit. I wouldn’t mind visiting ARNOLD before I die; after all, I did raise him.’

Wandee nodded effusively. ‘Naturally. I am certain ARNOLD will protect you. While you are there you might ask about the raids, but it isn’t necessary.’

‘I know. I know. Talk is cheap, and I’m to do the talking. Well, for me it will be nothing more than a social visit – if ARNOLD will allow it. No tricks.’

‘Fine,’ she said.

Furlong waited in the outer hall. He stood and de-activated the screen as she approached. ‘Thank you, Wandee. You did fine. I knew he would take it better from you than from me.’

Wandee was serious. ‘He will be safe, won’t he?’

‘We’ll be more careful this time,’ he said.

Drum was startled by the sudden appearance of the Clinic Team.

‘When the Chairman says “jump” – we jump,’ they said. ‘Hang on now.’ A Security Squad trotted ahead, clearing the Spiral. The Stretcher Team arrived at the Clinic in less than an hour. Drum saw that they were making preparations to put him to sleep.

‘I thought the neurohumoral axis could be rejuvenated with a mild sedative,’ he said.

‘You’re down for an NH plus an eye plus a hip. It’s a big job. Relax now while the White Meck tubes and wires you.’

Eighteen hours later Drum felt the pains. His eyes were bandaged. His hip ached. When he moaned a hand touched his arm.

‘Easy now,’ said a female.

‘Wandee?’ he asked.

‘They told me about your operations after they were all over. I can sit here and keep an eye on you until your bandages come off. Do you need anything else for pain?’

He thought for a moment. The edge had been taken off the discomfort by something. ‘No. Not now.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I checked your OR sheet. They must have given you a royal treatment. All the teams were there. A dozen embryonic Carbon Copies were taken from your clone at thirty millimetres. The NH infusion contained primordial cells from their ductless glands – pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, testes, carotid body, pineal, and the organ of Zuckerkandl. By now these cells have settled out in your marrow and lung capillaries. They should be producing needed hormones in a few weeks.’

Drum moaned softly. She continued to talk, trying to cheer him up.

‘The hip looks like a good repair job. I saw the X-rays. And the photo of your retina through the new lens is very clear. You’ll be as good as new in a few months.’

Drum thought the speech was familiar. It was the same one given to Ode before his death at the hands of the Benthics. He moaned. ‘Better give me something to help me sleep. I’m not too comfortable.’

A synthetic opiate soothed raw nerve endings.

Wandee called ARNOLD for Drum’s clearance. The pick-up would be at night so the solar radiation wouldn’t harm him. He was to be naked – no packages.

Drum shuddered as he stepped into the outrigger. Gooseflesh covered his exposed epidermis, wrinkled and white in the starlight. ‘There’s a stack of blankets on the front seat,’ called Trilobite. Drum squinted off into the dark, choppy waters where a tow-line disappeared. Leaving the dinghy attached to a buoy, he bundled up and waited as the little shovel-shaped meck pulled him across three kilometres of open Ocean.

‘There’s not a stitch on him – nothing – not even that envelope of pills. Order the chair-lift while I fix him a hot bowl of ragout – thick and well-seasoned,’ said ARNOLD.

‘Right.’

A centaur and Trilobite welcomed the naked Nebish as he stepped on to the deck.

‘ARNOLD is fixing you something hot in the cabin. Come on.’

They walked past the ship’s huge, deep-dish optics towards the aroma of meat and vegetables.

‘I came to warn you,’ said Drum. ‘Don’t have any dealings with the Hive. It can’t be trusted. It just wants to buy time and study you for your weak points – so it can crush you later.’

Larry just smiled. ‘That’s funny, because we feel the same way. Study the Hive for weaknesses, so we can crush it again!’

Abruptly Trilobite danced in front of the little, pot-bellied Nebish and stabbed him in the neck with the tip of his metre-long tail. Blood spurted. Drum slumped to the deck, gasping.

Larry reared up on his hind hooves and stepped in between the old man and the cyber. Drum tried to crawl, but his hands kept slipping in the pools of blood.

‘White Team!’ shouted Larry. ‘My God! What are you trying to do, Trilobite – kill a human?’

‘I saved him,’ said the meck, trying to squeeze out from under a restraining hoof. ‘I cut the trigger mechanism. He’s wired. There’s an optic in his eye and a bomb in his abdomen.’

ARNOLD rushed out of the cabin and cradled his little father-figure in his arms. He applied a pressure bandage to the neck laceration. ‘A bomb?’

‘Yes,’ said the meck. ‘
Rorqual
detected it as he walked past her deep-dish. It took her a couple of seconds to realize what it was. With the T-scan on “truth” she knows that Drum wasn’t aware. When the “destruct” message came from the Hive I had to act.’

The Medimeck replaced the lost blood and sutured the neck wound. Drum regained consciousness and asked for pain medication.

‘What bomb?’ he asked incredulously.

Larry explained. ‘And the electrodes are in your femurs.’

Drum laughed. ‘But you are wrong. I’ve had hip surgery – bilateral prostheses. As for my eye, it is just a synthetic lens. I had cataract surgery. That’s all.’

Larry shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but
Rorqual
doesn’t make that kind of mistake. You have the artificial hips, that’s true; but they were recently packed – silver on the right and lead on the left. Your serum levels of these metals are rising – approaching half a micromole per litre.’

The screen printed out the figures:

‘You’d make a good battery,’ said Larry. ‘Those oxidation-reduction potentials are far enough apart.’

‘Furlong!’ spat Drum. ‘He must have wired poor Ode too. Damn! And I was the one who talked Ode into it.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the giant ARNOLD in an unusually gentle voice. ‘Our White Team will look you over and get that thing out of there.’

‘We’d better move him further aft. He’s pretty close to shipbrain here. If he should blow . . .’

ARNOLD recalled the damage on the raft. A thin-walled shelter was built in a neutral area of the hump. A tough Battle Meck stood by with trays of refreshments while the White Team started their study. The humans grouped in the forward cabin and spoke through the intercom.

‘It’s a bomb all right. We’ll need a Blood Scrubber to get these ions down before surgery. The cardiopulmonary bypass will give us more time.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ said ARNOLD. ‘Be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to him.’

The White Teck didn’t say anything, but he realized that a blast would take him with his patient.

‘Might as well start back to the islands,’ said Larry. He’s much safer with us.’

‘Haul in the dinghy. Every captain needs one,’ shouted ARNOLD.

Images appeared on the screen, hazy and dim.

‘So that’s what that spying camera in my eye is picking up. Why is it so weak? I can see better than that.’

‘You are using two eyes. There is a pterygium over that cornea – a tangle of microscopic vessels. Besides, it is a very small optic – less than twenty-five thousand points,’ explained the Electroteck. He took stills of several sample views. Faces were anonymous masks. Landscapes, simple silhouettes.

‘Those poor Benthics on Ode’s raft . . . I’m sure that Furlong couldn’t tell who they were. He must have seen two or three burly visitors and was hoping that one would be ARNOLD when he pressed the big black button.’

The teck nodded. ‘I’m sure he couldn’t identify anyone from the optics alone, but I am picking up a bit of auditory also. The transmitter is in your right thorax, so your heart and lungs are making most of the sounds I hear. But I think Furlong might be able to understand parts of your conversation too. That plus the optics told him you were near
Rorqual
’s control cabin when he hit your button.’

‘My target: shipbrain. Damn!’

Rorqual
anchored in the shelter of the leeward side of an island while the tests were being run. A series of eight paired vials were located by X-ray. They were anchored to the vertebral bodies, behind the spine, running from the level of the renal arteries down into the pelvis between the prostate and sacrum. The Electrotecks were building a duplicate of the circuitry for study before attacking the actual bomb.

‘Might as well relax, Larry. They won’t be ready to cut until tomorrow. My wives are going ashore for fresh greens. Want to join them? It is pretty rocky and they might need someone to help with the toting.’

Larry nodded. The elevator brought up a bevy of leathery girls, White Belly among them. They carried empty sacks, chatting and laughing, waiting by the rail.

‘Bring the Captain’s dinghy around!’ shouted Larry.

The island was a three-by-one-mile conglomerate of jumbled stone with a few scattered acres of sod. An ancient, pre-Hive edifice marked the high point. North of this lay a two-acre swamp in a circular depression. The dinghy found a protected inlet and anchored itself against a weathered quay. Stone steps led nowhere.

A handful of large raindrops hit the group. ‘Weird weather,’ said Larry, glancing up at the mischievous clouds. ‘Come on!’ His agile hooves carried him to the top of the slope, where he found the first patch of greens – oblong beds that occupied grooves leading back into the swamp. ‘Probably an old irrigation pattern. Whoever lived here must have had a very efficient Agromeck. There’s a good plant survival – parsley, sage, chives, thyme . . . and here’s a wild leek!’ He pulled up the large, mild-tasting garlic,
Allium ampeloprasum
.

White Belly filled two bags with the bulbs and tied them over Larry’s centaur back. ‘I think you just reinvented saddlebags,’ he said, munching on a leek. Roots of cardamom (
Alpinia striata
) were pulled for tea and fish seasoning. As the sacks filled, Larry decided to give the edifice a quick search. He invited White Belly.