But the pain in her gut was getting worse.
Deirdre stared in open-mouthed awe at the two leviathans. The enormous creatures were swimming on either side of
Those hundreds of eyes looking at us, she said to herself. Those hundreds of fins paddling along. And the colors! Spectacular splashes of reds and greens, yellows, blues, and phosphorescent white. They
Dorn’s deep voice reverberated through the perfluorocarbon. “I have programmed the computer to repeat the shapes and colors that the leviathans are displaying.”
“Monkey see, monkey do,” Yeager muttered.
Corvus said, “Good. They’ll see that we’ve received their messages and we’re acknowledging them.”
“But what do they mean?” Deirdre wondered aloud.
With a wistful smile, Andy said, “You’re the artist, Dee. You tell us.”
She shook her head. “I wish I could.”
“We’re scheduled to send out a data capsule in fifty-three minutes,” said Dorn. “All of these images will be included.”
“But what do they mean?” Deirdre repeated.
Leviathan saw that the alien was repeating the images it was flashing. For more than a hundred beats of the flagella Leviathan and its replicate had been picturing to the alien the beauties of the Symmetry, explaining to this strange, cold, uncommunicative creature how the Kin dwelled in harmony with the world, feeding on the streams of food that came from the cold abyss above, staying well away from the hot abyss below, avoiding the darters that preyed on individual leviathans when they separated from the Kin to duplicate.
Nothing. The alien simply glided along, dark and silent, its hard round shape as uncommunicative as the tiny swimmers that also followed the food streams. To its replicate Leviathan flashed an image of the alien, a blank spherical shape. The replicate replied with the same.
Why doesn’t it answer us? Leviathan wondered. The replicate drew an image of one of the tiny swimmers. Its meaning was clear: The alien may be a living creature, but it is clearly not intelligent. It doesn’t picture images to us because it can’t. It is dumb, mindless.
But if that is so, Leviathan thought, then how did the alien suddenly appear here, in the world of the Kin? How did it get here? Why is it—
Wait! The alien’s spherical flank suddenly lit up with colors! It can communicate! Or at least it’s trying to.
Nothing but gibberish, flashed the replicate. There is no structure in its images, no meaning.
But it’s trying to say
Imitation, pictured the replicate. That’s not intelligence, it’s merely mimicry. The lowliest swimmers can mimic images better than this hard-shell.
But it’s trying, Leviathan insisted. It’s trying.
“We’re scheduled to release a data capsule in ten minutes,” Dorn announced.
“Well, it’ll have something to show them,” Yeager said.
Deirdre noticed that Andy hadn’t spoken a word in nearly an hour. He merely stood beside her, his feet anchored in deck loops, swaying slightly in their all-encompassing liquid like a strand of kelp on the floor of the sea on Earth, staring raptly at Deirdre’s display screen. But every few minutes he kneaded the bridge of his freckled nose.
“Are you all right?” she asked him softly.
“Huh?”
“Do you feel okay?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Okay? Yeah, sure.”
“No aches or pains?” Deirdre pressed.
He shrugged crookedly. “Got a helluva headache, that’s all.”
She nodded. “It’s the pressure. I’ve got an ache in my chest. It started in my gut but it’s settled in my chest.”
“Yeah,” he said absently, his attention back on the screen.
Deirdre looked at the display again. The leviathans were flashing colors so quickly she could hardly follow them. It was like watching a fireworks display speeded up to a wildly supersonic pace.
She turned slightly and saw that Max was checking out the data capsule on the console beside Dorn. The cyborg had both hands on his control keyboard. Keeping up with the leviathans wasn’t easy: Dorn had to keep the main propulsion system running at nearly full power merely to stay even with them, and the currents generated by their flippers bounced their vessel like a cork in a typhoon.
“The data capsule’s ready,” Max said.
Dorn nodded, then tapped a prosthetic finger on the screen to his left. “Ejection in three minutes.”
Deirdre murmured to Andy, “If only we could make some sense of their messages.”
Corvus said nothing, still riveted to the display screen.
“Nothing but splotches of color,” Deirdre said.
“I don’t see colors,” Andy said, his voice low, his eyes not moving from the screen.
“I forgot,” said Deirdre. “This must be more pointless to you than to the rest of us.”
“Pointless?” Corvus seemed genuinely surprised. “You mean you can’t see the pictures they’re showing us?”
IMAGES
“Pictures?” Deirdre asked.
Corvus nodded and pointed at the screen. “In those gray splotches. Can’t you see the pictures?”
“No…”
“They’re showing images of themselves again. Now it’s changed to an image of us. Round little circle next to the two leviathan shapes.”
“You can see images?” Deirdre strained her eyes, staring at the rapidly shifting contours of color splashed along the sides of the two leviathans.
“Yep,” Andy replied.
“Capsule launch in one minute,” Dorn intoned.
“Wait!” Deirdre shouted. “Don’t send the capsule!”
Yeager turned toward her. “We’ve gotta send the capsule, Dee. It’s on the mission assignment list.”
“Wait,” she insisted. “Andy says he sees images in the leviathans’ displays. They’re sending messages to us!”
Dorn turned halfway from his post to look at her and then focused both his eyes on Corvus. “You see
