“She got to the technician on the midnight shift,” Archer said, clear distaste on his bearded face.
“She can get to just about anybody, one way or th’ other.”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” said Grant Archer.
He tapped his phone console’s miniature keyboard and saw Katherine Westfall marching along the passageway like a conquering empress. At least the surveillance cameras are back on, he thought.
Turning back to Devlin, Archer pointed as he said, “Red, get into the lavatory there. I’ll call you when I want you.”
The Red Devil looked positively grateful as he hurried to the little room. He’s frightened of confronting Westfall, Archer thought. Can’t blame him; I’m not looking forward to this myself.
DEEPER
Andy Corvus glided over to Dorn’s side. “Can you send them a picture about my DBS probe?”
The cyborg looked up from his console screens. “If you draw the picture for me I’m sure that I can run it on the outer hull’s display lights.”
Nodding somewhat nervously, Corvus slid through the perfluorocarbon liquid to the console built into the curving bulkhead on Dorn’s left. Deirdre disengaged her feet from the floor loops at her console and made her way past Max Yeager to stand at Andy’s side.
“Can I help you?” she asked softly.
Corvus nodded without taking his eyes from his console’s central screen. His attempt to draw a picture looked ragged to Deirdre, childish and uncertain.
“Here,” she said. “Let me.” She leaned across his lanky frame and poised her fingers above the arrow keys on his board. “What do you want to show?”
“I want them to understand that we’re going to fire a probe into the hide of one of them.”
“A harpoon.” Yeager snickered. “They’ll love that.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Corvus said, with some heat. “That’s what this mission is all about. Remember?”
“We’ve already made contact with them,” Yeager countered. “We don’t need your brain probe.”
“We sure do! If it works we can get inside their minds and
“If it works.”
Dorn said mildly, “If the leviathans accept being harpooned.”
And if the DBS actually records their brain functions, Deirdre added silently. She didn’t say it aloud because Andy had enough opposition to deal with from Max.
“There,” she said, nodding toward Andy’s screen. “Does that show what you want them to see?”
Leviathan saw that the alien was repeating the message it had flashed. Deep in its central brain Leviathan pondered the meaning of this. Could this alien be intelligent? It signaled the replicant, asking its opinion.
The replicant signed the same sort of puzzlement that Leviathan itself felt. Of course, Leviathan reasoned. The replicant has not had enough experiences to deviate much from our own thoughts.
Leviathan reviewed what it knew about the alien. It was larger than any of the other aliens that had invaded their domain. It gave no sign of feeding on the particles drifting down from the cold abyss above. It had attacked the darters when Leviathan was replicating and helpless. That is a sign of intelligence, the willingness to help another.
Leviathan remembered another alien it had encountered, long ago. It too had fought a pack of darters and been hurt in the battle. When it was sinking into the hot abyss below, Leviathan had tried to help it, actually carried it on its own back upward, away from the cruel heat and crushing pressure of the depths. The alien had repaid this kindness by scalding Leviathan’s wounded hide with searing heat. Then it fled up into the cold abyss, never to be seen again.
Now this new alien had appeared. It was much larger than the earlier one, but like it, this alien was hard- shelled, cold, unlike any of the Kin or the darters or any other creature Leviathan had seen in the ocean.
And it is trying to communicate, Leviathan saw. At least it is repeating the message I showed to it. Mimicry? Not true intelligence but dumb mimicry?
The alien had gone dark. It glided through the waters between Leviathan and its replicant, silent, cold, and dark.
Suddenly its flank lit up. Brilliant red, shifting to orange and then green. The colors must mean something to it, but they were nothing but empty displays to Leviathan.
Then pictures began to form. Leviathan saw itself and its replicant displayed, with the alien between them.
Now the imagery showed an arm growing out of the alien’s curving hide. Thin and undulating, like the tentacles of the filmy beast Leviathan once encountered in the chill waters high above.
It’s trying to speak to us, the replicant signaled.
Leviathan flashed a swatch of yellow to show it agreed.
In the alien’s imagery the thin, flexible arm reached out from its own hide and touched Leviathan’s. There it remained, while pulses of color raced along the arm, running from Leviathan to the alien.
It wants to feed on us! the replicant signed, in agitated hot white.
Leviathan watched, fascinated and horrified, as the alien clearly showed that it wanted to attach a feeding arm to its hide and devour some of Leviathan’s flesh.
No! blazed the replicant.
Leviathan, too, felt the instinctive fear and revulsion. A part of its mind wondered why the alien seemed to be asking permission to feed off its flesh. Because it is so small and weak? Leviathan asked itself. The alien showed no teeth, no mouth parts at all. Its hide was smooth and hard.
And then a small mouthlike opening appeared in that hard smooth hide and a feeding arm began to emerge from it, snaking toward Leviathan.
Without another thought, Leviathan and its replicant both dived down toward the warmer, safer waters where the Kin dwelled in all their numbers.
“They’re going away!” Corvus yelped.
“Diving deeper,” said Dorn.
“Your probe scared them, Andy,” Deirdre said, feeling almost heartbroken with disappointment. “We were so close…”
Yeager simply shook his head and asked, “So what do we do now?”
Dorn replied, “Release the data capsule. And then go down after them.”
“Deeper?”
“Deeper.”
“How far down can we go?” Corvus asked.
“The ship’s designed for a thousand klicks,” Yeager replied. “Deeper than that and the pressure could become a problem.”
“A problem?” asked Deirdre.
“He means it could crush us,” Corvus said.
Deirdre looked at Yeager and saw that that was exactly what he meant.
Dorn’s hands were already playing across his controls. “Data capsule released,” he announced. “Following those leviathans now.”
