hesitation.”
Good, thought Westfall.
The doctor continued, “I should be able to synthesize enough immunoglobulin to sustain Ms. Ambrose until we reach the Jupiter station. She will still be carrying the rabies virus in her blood system, of course, but she will exhibit no symptoms.”
Perfect, Westfall said to herself. Once we’re at station
LEVIATHAN
The Kin searched for a down-welling current that would carry food particles to them. The Elders directed the Kin toward a new storm that recently had arisen, reasoning that its power would draw food down from the cold abyss above. Leviathan and the rest of the Kin could sense the storm’s turbulence growing even though it was still too far away to see directly. But there was no infall of food to be found at this distance from the storm. The Kin pushed on, directed by the wisdom of the Elders.
Storms were dangerous, but the Elders decided that the Kin had no choice but to seek new currents of down-drifting food particles even if they had to go dangerously near the storm’s turbulent power. Without the food, members of the Kin would starve. As death approached they would dissociate into their separate member parts, never to bud again and generate new members of the Kin.
And there were darters out there, as well, their voracious hunger never satisfied. They would never dare to attack the Kin in all its unity, but when an individual swam off to dissociate, the darters pounced. A lone member of the Kin, dissociating into its separate components, was prey to the darters. Before the components could bud and then coalesce to form a new leviathan, the predators would attack.
It was an ancient dilemma. Without dissociating and budding, new members of the Kin could not be generated. But by going off alone to dissociate, a lone leviathan was prey to the ever-lurking darters.
Leviathan remembered its own buddings, and the narrow escapes it had won from the slashing, insatiable darters. Its battles were painful memories, and the time for a new dissociation was approaching, Leviathan knew.
Time and again Leviathan had pictured the same question to the Elders: Why must a member go off alone to dissociate and bud? Why cannot some members of the Kin escort the individual through its dissociation and budding?
The Elders’ response was always the same horrified revulsion. Dissociating in view of others! Disgusting! The images they flashed said that the Symmetry could only be maintained by continuing the ancient ways, the rituals that the Kin had observed from time immemorial. The darters are part of the Symmetry, they pictured. Accept them as you accept the food that drifts down from the cold abyss above.
Their answer did not satisfy Leviathan, but there was nothing to be done about it. The Kin would go about their lives, feeding, dissociating, budding, and coalescing to create new Kin members just as they always had. And the darters would feast on their weakest.
Unless the flow of food was permanently ended, the Symmetry completely broken. Then the Kin and the darters alike would starve.
The storm was growing stronger. Leviathan’s eye parts could see the faint flicker of lightning far off. Faintly, faintly Leviathan’s sensor parts reported that there were indeed currents of food swirling toward the storm’s churning vortex.
Stationed out on the perimeter of the Kin, Leviathan kept its sensory parts keenly on guard against approaching darters. But it saw nothing. The sea was empty of their threat. Still, Leviathan felt uneasy. They were out there, it knew. Out beyond the range of our sensors, Leviathan reasoned, the darters are waiting for one of us to break away and begin dissociating. Alone.
How close to the storm will we go? Leviathan drew the image of that question on its flank, its luminescent members lighting up in response to the directions from its central brain. The image flickered from leviathan to leviathan, inward toward the core of their flotilla, where the Elders made their stately way.
As it waited for an answer, Leviathan thought again that the Kin who were about to dissociate should be at the Kin’s center, protected from the darters. Yet the Elders regarded his suggestion with abhorrence. Do not attempt to change what has always been, they pictured in harsh blue images. Accept what must always be.
Accept. Leviathan had no choice but to accept the will of the Elders. But it thought that when the time came, many, many buddings from now, when Leviathan itself became an Elder, it would change these ancient ways. It would protect the members who now had to face the darters alone. It would make the Kin safer and better.
For now, though, Leviathan had to accept the Elders’ decision. For now—
Leviathan’s sensor members flashed a shrill warning. Darters! A huge pack of them out there, just on the edge of detection. Moving in the same direction as the Kin, but angling so that they were cutting across the feeble flow of food that was being sucked toward the growing storm.
The darters were placing themselves between the Kin and the needed current of food. This was something new. Leviathan had never seen such a maneuver in all the images the Elders had shown.
The darters were waiting to ambush the Kin. Not satisfied with attacking lone members, they were maneuvering to cut off the Kin from their food.
This was something new. And dangerous.
OBSERVATION BLISTER
As they left Dr. Pohan’s office, Deirdre looked up at the cyborg and said, “Thank you so much, Dorn.”
“It means a lot to me.”
He said nothing.
She felt almost uncomfortable walking beside him along the passageway. She was not accustomed to having to look up at people, and he was almost ten centimeters taller than she, his shoulders broad, his torso like the thick body of a miner’s digging torch. He’s half metal, she kept thinking to herself. Half of his body is a machine.
At last she said, “You didn’t ask what my medical problem is.”
“Does it matter?” he asked. “You need my help. It’s simple enough for me to give it.”
They passed a pair of crewmen in gray fatigues coming down the passageway from the other direction. Both men smiled at Deirdre and glanced furtively at Dorn as they squeezed past the cyborg.
Deirdre wondered, “What happened to you when you tried to make contact with the dolphins?”
For several paces Dorn said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Deirdre said. “I shouldn’t pry.”
“I saw my own past,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
“Your past? That made you go berserk like that?”
His voice heavy with misery, Dorn replied, “It was like all my nightmares at once.”
Deirdre didn’t know how to respond to that.
They walked on for a few more moments, then Dorn asked her, “Did you look up Dorik Harbin’s dossier last night?”
Nodding, Deirdre replied, “Yes, I did.”
“So you know who I was.”
She thought about that for a moment, then said, “But who are you now?”
He looked down at her as they paced along the passageway.
“I mean,” Deirdre explained, “the dossier stopped with the verdict at your trial. Dr. Yeager says you’re some kind of priest. And when did you…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“When did I disfigure myself? When did I become a cyborg?”
