The Best of Gregory Benford Page 6

  Reginri shuffled uneasily. Sasuke was irritating, but at least he knew how to deal with the man. Vanleo, though…somehow Vanleo’s steady, intent gaze unsettled him. Reginri glanced out at the Drongheda and felt a welling dread. On impulse he turned to Vanleo and said, “I think I’ll stay on the beach.”

  Vanleo’s face froze. Sasuke made a rough spitting sound and began, “Another goddamned—” but Vanleo cut him off with a brusque motion of his hand.

  “What do you mean?” Vanleo said mildly.

  “I…I don’t feel so good about going inside.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “I mean, I don’t know if that thing isn’t going to…well, it’s the first time I did this, and…”

  “I see.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll go out with you two, sure. I’ll stay in the water and keep the cables from getting snarled—you know, the job you were going to do. That’ll give me a chance to get used to the work. Then, next time…”

  “That might be years from now.”

  “Well, that’s right, but…”

  “You’re endangering the success of the entire expedition.”

  “I’m not experienced. What if…” Reginri paused. Vanleo had logic on his side, he knew. This was the first Drongheda they had been able to reach in over two years. Many of them drifted down the ragged coast, hugging the shallows. But most stayed only a day or two. This was the first in a long while that had moored itself offshore in a low, sheltered shoal. The satellite scan had picked it up, noted its regular pattern of movements that followed the tides. So Vanleo got the signal, alerted Reginri and the stand-by crew, and they lifted in a fast booster from Persenuae…

  “A boot in the ass is what he needs,” Sasuke said abruptly.

  Vanleo shook his head. “I think not,” he said.

  The contempt in Sasuke’s voice stiffened Reginri’s resolve. “I’m not going in.”

  “Oh?” Vanleo smiled.

  “Sue me for breach of contract when we get back to Persenuae, if you want. I’m not doing it.”

  “Oh, we’ll do much more than that,” Vanleo said casually. “We’ll transfer the financial loss of this expedition to your shoulders. There’s no question it’s your fault.”

  “I—”

  “So you’ll never draw full wages again, ever,” Vanleo continued calmly.

  Reginri moved his feet restlessly. There was a feeling of careful, controlled assurance in Vanleo that gave his words added weight. And behind the certainty of those eyes Reginri glimpsed something else.

  “I don’t know…” He breathed deeply, trying to clear his head. “Guess I got rattled a little, there.”

  He hesitated and then snorted self-deprecatingly. “I guess, I guess I’ll be all right.”

  Sasuke nodded, holding his tongue. Vanleo smiled heartily. “Fine. Fine. We’ll just forget this little incident, then, eh?” Abruptly he turned and walked down the beach. His steps were firm, almost jaunty.

  III.

  An air squirrel glided in on the gathering afternoon winds. It swung out over the lip of the canyon, chattering nervously, and then coasted back to the security of the hotbush. The two humans watched it leisurely strip a seed pod and nibble away.

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t quit then,” Belej said at last. “Right then. On the beach. A lawsuit wouldn’t stick, not with other crewmen around to fill in for you.”

  Reginri looked at her blankly. “Impossible.”

  “Why? You’d seen that thing. You could see it was dangerous.”

  “I knew that before we left Persenuae.”

  “But you hadn’t seen it.”

  “So what? I’d signed a contract.”

  Belej tossed her head impatiently. “I remember you saying to me it was a kind of big fish. That’s all you said that night before you left. You could argue that you hadn’t understood the danger…”

  Reginri grimaced. “Not a fish. A mammal.”

  “No difference. Like some other fish back on Earth, you told me.”

  “Like the humpback and the blue and the fin and the sperm whales,” he said slowly. “Before men killed them off, they started to suspect the blues might be intelligent.”

  “Whales weren’t mathematicians, though, were they?” she said lightly.

  “We’ll never know, now.”

  Belej leaned back into the matted brownish grass. Strands of black hair blew gently in the wind. “That Leo lied to you about that thing, the fish, didn’t he?”

  “How?”

  “Telling you it wasn’t dangerous.”

  He sat upright in the grass and hugged his knees. “He gave me some scientific papers. I didn’t read most of them—hell, they were clogged with names I didn’t know, funny terms. That’s what you never understood, Belej. We don’t know much about Drongheda. Just that they’ve got lungs and a spine and come ashore every few years. Why they do even that, or what makes them intelligent—Vanleo spent thirty years on that. You’ve got to give him credit—”

  “For dragging you into it. Ha!”

  “The Drongheda never harmed anybody. Their eyes don’t seem to register us. They probably don’t even know we’re there, and Vanleo’s simple-minded attempts to communicate failed. He—”

  “If a well-meaning, blind giant rolls over on you,” she said, “you’re still dead.”

  Reginri snorted derisively. “The Drongheda balance on ventral flippers. That’s how they keep upright in the shallows. Whales couldn’t do that, or—”

  “You’re not listening to me!” She gave him an exasperated glance.

  “I’m telling you what happened.”

  “Go ahead, then. We can’t stay out here much longer.”

  He peered out at the wrinkled canyon walls. Lime-green fruit trees dotted the burnished rocks. The thickening pink haze was slowly creeping across the canyon floor, obscuring details. The airborne life that colored the clouds would coat the leathery trees and trigger the slow rhythms of seasonal life. Part of the sluggish, inevitable workings of Persenuae, he thought.

  “Mist looks pretty heavy,” he agreed. He glanced back at the log cabins that were the communal living quarters. They blended into the matted grasses.

  “Tell me,” she said insistently.

  “Well, I…”

  “You keep waking me up with nightmares about it. I deserve to know. It’s changed our lives together. I—”

  He sighed. This was going to be difficult. “All right.”

  IV.

  Vanleo gave Reginri a clap on the shoulder and the three men set to work. Each took a spool of cable and walked backward, carrying it, into the surf. Reginri carefully watched the others and followed, letting the cable play out smoothly. He was so intent upon the work that he hardly noticed the enveloping wet that swirled about him. His oxygen pellet carrier was a dead, awkward weight at his back, but once up to his waist in the lapping water, maneuvering was easier, and he could concentrate on something other than keeping his balance.

  The sea bottom was smooth and clear, laced with metallic filaments of dull silver. Not metal, though; this was a planet with strangely few heavy elements. Maybe that was why land life had never taken hold here, and the island continents sprinkled amid the ocean were bleak, dusty deserts. More probably, the fact that this chilled world was small and farther from the sun made it too hostile a place for land life. Persenuae, nearer in toward Zeta, thrived with both native and imported species, but this world had only sea creatures. A curious planet, this; a theoretical meeting point somewhere between the classic patterns of Earth and Mars. Large enough for percolating volcanoes, and thus oceans, but with an unbreathable air curiously high in carbon dioxide and low in oxygen. Maybe the wheel of evolution had simply not turned far enough here, and someday the small fish—or even the Drongheda itself—would evolve upward, onto the land.

  But maybe the Drongheda was evolving, in intelligence, Reginri thought. The things seemed content to swim in the great oceans, spinning
crystalline-mathematical puzzles for their own amusement. And for some reason they had responded when Vanleo first jabbed a probing electronic feeler into a neural nexus. The creatures spilled out realms of mathematical art that, Earthward, kept thousands working to decipher it—to rummage among a tapestry of cold theorems, tangled referents, seeking the quick axioms that lead to new corridors, silent pools of geometry and the intricate pyramiding of lines and angles, encasing a jungle of numbers.

  “Watch it!” Sasuke sang out.

  Reginri braced himself and a wave broke over him, splashing green foam against his faceplate.

  “Riptide running here,” Vanleo called. “Should taper off soon.”

  Reginri stood firm against the flow, keeping his knees loose and flexible for balance. Through his boots he felt the gritty slide of sand against smoothed rock. The cable spool was almost played out.

  He turned to maneuver, and suddenly to the side he saw an immense brown wall. It loomed high, far above the gray waves breaking at its base. Reginri’s chest tightened as he turned to study the Drongheda.

  Its hide wall was delicately speckled in gold and green. The dorsal vents were black slashes that curved up the side, forming deep oily valleys.

  Reginri cradled the cable spool under one arm and gingerly reached out to touch it. He pushed at it several times experimentally. It gave slightly with a soft, rubbery resistance.

  “Watch the flukes!” Vanleo called. Reginri turned and saw a long black flipper break water fifty meters away. It languidly brushed the surface with a booming whack audible through his helmet and then submerged.

  “He’s just settling down, I expect,” Vanleo called reassuringly. “They sometimes do that.”

  Reginri frowned at the water where the fluke had emerged. Deep currents welled up and rippled the surface.

  “Let’s have your cable,” Sasuke said. “Reel it over here. I’ve got the mooring shaft sunk in.”

  Reginri spun out the rest of his spool and had some left when he reached Sasuke. Vanleo was holding a long tube pointed straight down into the water. He pulled a trigger and there was a muffled clap Reginri could hear over suit radio. He realized Vanleo was firing bolts into the ocean rock to secure their cable and connectors. Sasuke held out his hands and Reginri gave him the cable spool.

  It was easier to stand here; the Drongheda screened them from most of the waves, and the undercurrents had ebbed. For a while Reginri stood uselessly by, watching the two men secure connections and mount the tapper lines. Sasuke at last waved him over, and as Reginri turned his back, they fitted the lines into his backpack.

  Nervously, Reginri watched the Drongheda for signs of motion, but there were none. The ventral grooves formed an intricate ribbed pattern along the creature’s side, and it was some moments before he thought to look upward and find the pithole. It was a red-rimmed socket, darker than the dappled brown around it. The ventral grooves formed an elaborate helix around the pithole, then arced away and down the body toward a curious mottled patch, about the same size as the pithole.

  “What’s that?” Reginri said, pointing at the patch.

  “Don’t know,” Vanleo said. “Seems softer than the rest of the hide, but it’s not a hole. All the Drongheda have ’em.”

  “Looks like a welt or something.”

  “Ummm,” Vanleo murmured, distracted. “We’d better boost you up in a minute. I’m going to go around to the other side. There’s another pithole exposed there, a little farther up from the water line. I’ll go in that way.”

  “How do I get up?”

  “Spikes,” Sasuke murmured. “It’s shallow enough here.”

  It took several minutes to attach the climbing spikes to Reginri’s boots. He leaned against the Drongheda for support and tried to mentally compose himself for what was to come. The sea welled around him, lapping warmly against his skinsuit. He felt a jittery sense of anticipation.

  “Up you go,” Sasuke said. “Kneel on my shoulders and get the spikes in solid before you put any weight on them. Do what we said, once you’re inside, and you’ll be all right.”

  V.

  Vanleo steadied him as he climbed onto Sasuke’s back. It took some moments before Reginri could punch the climbing spikes into the thick, crinkled hide.

  He was thankful for the low gravity. He pulled himself up easily, once he got the knack of it, and it took only a few moments to climb the ten meters to the edge of the pithole. Once there, he paused to rest.

  “Not so hard as I thought,” he said lightly.

  “Good boy.” Vanleo waved up at him. “Just keep steady and you’ll be perfectly all right. We’ll give you a signal on the com-line when you’re to come out. This one won’t be more than an hour, probably.”

  Reginri balanced himself on the lip of the pithole and took several deep breaths, tasting the oily air. In the distance gray waves broke into surf. The Drongheda rose like a bubble from the wrinkled sea. A bank of fog was rolling down the coastline. In it a shadowy shape floated. Reginri slitted his eyes to see better, but the fog wreathed the object and blurred its outline. Another Drongheda? He looked again but the form melted away in the white mist.

  “Hurry it up,” Sasuke called from below. “We won’t move until you’re in.”

  Reginri turned on the fleshy ledge beneath him and pulled at the dark blubbery folds that rimmed the pithole. He noticed that there were fine, gleaming threads all round the entrance. A mouth? An anus? Vanleo said not; the scientists who came to study the Drongheda had traced its digestive tract in crude fashion. But they had no idea what the pithole was for. It was precisely to find that out that Vanleo first went into one. Now it was Vanleo’s theory that the pithole was the Drongheda’s method of communication, since why else would the neural connections be so close to the surface inside? Perhaps, deep in the murky ocean, the Drongheda spoke to each other through these pitholes, rather than singing, like whales. Men had found no bioacoustic signature in the schools of Drongheda they had observed, but that meant very little.

  Reginri pushed inward, through the iris of spongy flesh, and was at once immersed in darkness. His suit light clicked on. He lay in a sheath of meat with perhaps two hand spans of clearance on each side. The tunnel yawned ahead, absorbing the weak light. He gathered his knees and pushed upward against the slight grade.

  “Electronics crew reports good contact with your tapper lines. This com okay?” Sasuke’s voice came thin and high in Reginri’s ear.

  “Seems to be. Goddamned close in here.”

  “Sometimes it’s smaller near the opening,” Vanleo put in. “You shouldn’t have too much climbing to do—most pitholes run pretty horizontal, when the Drongheda is holding steady like this.”

  “It’s so tight. Going to be tough, crawling uphill,” Reginri said, an uncertain waver in his voice.

  “Don’t worry about that. Just keep moving and look for the neural points.” Vanleo paused. “Fish out the contacts for your tappers, will you? I just got a call from the technicians, they want to check the connection.”

  “Sure.” Reginri felt at his belly. “I don’t seem to find…”

  “They’re right there, just like in training,” Sasuke said sharply. “Pull ’em out of their clips.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Reginri fumbled for a moment and found the two metallic cylinders. They popped free of the suit and he nosed them together. “There.”

  “All right, all right, they’re getting the trace,” Vanleo said. “Looks like you’re all set.”

  “Right, about time,” Sasuke said. “Let’s get moving.”

  “We’re going around to the other side. So let us know if you see anything.” Reginri could hear Vanleo’s breath coming faster. “Quite a pull in this tide. Ah, there’s the other pithole.”

  The two men continued to talk, getting Vanleo’s equipment ready. Reginri turned his attention to his surroundings and wriggled upward, grunting. He worked steadily, pulling against the pulpy stuff. Here and there scaly folds wrinkl
ed the walls, overlapping and making handholds. The waxen membranes reflected back none of his suit light. He dug in his heels and pushed, slipping on patches of filmy pink liquid that collected in the trough of the tunnel.

  At first the passageway flared out slightly, giving him better purchase. He made good progress and settled down into a rhythm of pushing and turning. He worked his way around a vast bluish muscle that was laced by orange lines.

  Even through his skinsuit he could feel a pulsing warmth come from it. The Drongheda had an internal temperature fifteen degrees Centigrade below the human’s, but still an oppressive dull heat seeped through to him.

  Something black lay ahead. He reached out and touched something rubbery that seemed to block the pithole. His suit light showed a milky pink barrier. He wormed around and felt at the edges of the stuff. Off to the left there was a smaller opening. He turned, flexed his legs and twisted his way into the new passage. Vanleo had told him the pithole might change direction and that when it did he was probably getting close to a nexus. Reginri hoped so.

  VI.

  “Everything going well?” Vanleo’s voice came distantly.

  “Think so,” Reginri wheezed.

  “I’m at the lip. Going inside now.” There came the muffled sounds of a man working, and Reginri mentally blocked them out, concentrating on where he was.

  The walls here gleamed like glazed, aging meat. His fingers could not dig into it. He wriggled with his hips and worked forward a few centimeters. He made his body flex, thrust, flex, thrust—he set up the rhythm and relaxed into it, moving forward slightly. The texture of the walls coarsened and he made better progress. Every few moments he stopped and checked the threads for the com-line and the tappers that trailed behind him, reeling out on spools at his side.

  He could hear Sasuke muttering to himself, but he was unable to concentrate on anything but the waxen walls around him. The passage narrowed again, and ahead he could see more scaly folds. But these were different, dusted with a shimmering pale powder.