Leviathans of Jupiter

“Who’s laughing at you?” Deirdre asked.

“The dolphins,” said Corvus.

“Laughing at you?”

He exhaled an unhappy sigh. “I’ve been in that tank with them every day, just about all day. Trying to learn more of their language. They swim around me and chatter to each other and I can’t figure out what they’re saying. Even Baby isn’t as friendly as she used to be.”

Deirdre could see the wretchedness on his usually happy face.

Corvus went on, “I mean, they talk to each other but they’re not talking to me.”

“Not at all?”

“Aw, they say hello and good hunting and things like that. But they say a lot more to each other and they’re not letting me know what they’re talking about. I think they’re laughing at me: dumb two-legs trying to learn their language.”

Deirdre reached for her nearly empty teacup as she said, “I don’t think they’d behave that way, Andy. Maybe you’ve just reached a level that’s going to take more work, more effort.”

Suddenly insistent, Corvus asked urgently, “Dee, would you come back to the tank with me? You made contact with them so easily. They like you!”

“They don’t dislike you, Andy.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded, “but I’m up against a stone wall. Will you help me, Dee? Please?”

She saw the pleading in his wide blue eyes, but heard herself say, “I can’t, Andy. I’m working full time on the Volvox, trying to find the chemical signals that trigger their reproduction.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s important, too.”

“Dr. Grant himself gave me the assignment. I report directly to him.”

“What assignment?”

They looked up to see Max Yeager approaching their table. He pulled out a chair and sat between the two of them.

“Hope I’m not too late for dinner,” Yeager said as he sat down. He looked tired, rumpled, unshaven. He smelled unwashed.

“Where’ve you been?” Corvus asked the engineer. “Haven’t seen you for the past two days.”

Yeager scratched at his stubbled jaw. “Down in the control center, waiting for my baby to talk to me.”

“Faraday?” Deirdre asked.

Yeager nodded as a robot waiter glided to their table, the evening’s menu displayed on its touch screen.

“Who else?” he said. “She’s been on her own for more than fifty hours now. Too deep to maintain a link with us. She’s supposed to fire off a data capsule tomorrow.”

“So you’ll know then how she’s doing, right?” Corvus asked.

“Maybe,” Yeager replied. He methodically pecked out his dinner order and the robot trundled away.

“What assignment were you talking about, Dee?” the engineer asked.

“For Dr. Archer. I’m studying Volvox aureus. He thinks it might give us some insights into the way the leviathans reproduce.”

Yeager’s old leer reappeared. “I like the way we reproduce.”

“Oh, Max,” Deirdre said.

“I need Dee down in the dolphin tank,” Corvus told the engineer. “They’ve stopped talking to me.”

Still grinning, Yeager said, “Well, I don’t blame them for preferring our beautiful one to you, Andy.”

Deirdre looked past Yeager’s dark-jawed face and saw Dorn entering the galley. He walked slowly, as if utterly weary.

Corvus saw him too and waved the cyborg to their table.

“How are you?” Deirdre asked as he sat down.

“Fatigued,” Dorn said. “I have been many things in my life. Now I am an experimental animal.”

“Pressure tests?” Yeager guessed.

“Pressure tests,” Dorn acknowledged. “The scientists are very happy with me: I’ve withstood higher pressures than any other subject they’ve ever worked with.”

“They dunk you in that liquid?” Corvus asked.

“Perfluorocarbon. Yes.”

Deirdre suppressed a shudder as Corvus asked, “What’s it like?”

“Not comfortable,” said Dorn. “Not enjoyable at all.”

“I heard it’s cold and slimy,” Corvus said.

Nodding, Dorn added, “And then some.”

“Great,” Corvus said. “I’m going to have to live in that stuff for days on end when I go down on the crewed mission.”

“I’ll be with you, apparently,” said Dorn.

Yeager made a sour face. “First we’ve got to get Faraday back and check out how she performed.”

“Your vehicle is still in the ocean?” Dorn asked.

“Another two days,” Yeager answered.

The waiter came back with Yeager’s dinner tray. Dorn did not order anything.

“I’m too tired to eat,” he said.

“You ought to keep up your strength,” Deirdre said.

He made a noise that might have been a grunt. “The scientists check my physical condition at the start of each day. If they feel I lack sufficient nutrition they pump nutrients into me through an IV tube.”

“Yuck!” said Corvus.

Yeager picked up his fork, hesitated, then looked at each one of them in turn.

“We make quite a quartet,” the engineer said sardonically. “Andy can’t get his dolphins to talk to him. Dorn’s being used as a guinea pig. I’m hanging around like an expectant father in a maternity ward.” He turned to Deirdre. “You’re the only one without a problem, Dee.”

“I have my problem,” she said quietly.

“Anything I can do to help you?” Yeager asked, his usual smirk gone; his expression was almost fatherly.

“Or me?” Corvus said.

“Or me?” added Dorn.

Deirdre smiled at the three of them. “You’re all very kind. But my problem is medical. Rabies.”

“Aren’t the medics helping you?” Corvus asked.

With a slight shake of her head, Deirdre replied, “The immunization shots aren’t working the way they should. The virus is still infecting my nervous system.”

“You’re not showing any obvious symptoms,” said Dorn.

“Not yet,” Deirdre replied.

“Why aren’t the shots working?” Corvus wondered.

Deirdre started to answer, hesitated, then decided to plunge in. If I can’t trust my three friends I’m really all alone, she said to herself.

Aloud, she told them, “The virus might be genetically engineered. I think it is.”

COUNTERMOVE

“Genetically engineered?”

“By whom?”

“What do you mean?”

Deirdre raised both her hands and tried to calm them down, surprised at how angry and distressed all three of them seemed.