MISCOMMUNICATION
Leviathan watched in growing dread as the alien’s feeding arm slowly, slowly snaked toward its flank. Several of the flagella members shuddered involuntarily, ready to dissociate. We must stay together, Leviathan commanded. If the alien’s contact is painful, we will move away from it.
The sensor members on that side of Leviathan showed that the alien’s feeding arm ended in a small circular mouth. But they could see no teeth in the mouth, only a set of minuscule flat squares arranged in orderly rows.
It took all of Leviathan’s self-control to allow that alien mouth to touch its flesh. It made contact with the thick armor of Leviathan’s hide, between two of the sensor members. The nearest flagellum froze for a moment, but Leviathan’s central brain commanded it to resume stroking, and it did, obedient despite its naked fear.
Leviathan waited for some sensation: pain, discomfort at least. Nothing. The hide members were armored and deadened against sensation, that was their function, their part of the Symmetry, to protect the inner members against the slashing attacks of darters. The alien can’t get through our hide, Leviathan realized. It can’t feed on us.
Corvus floated in a half crouch, his arms bobbing buoyantly at chest level, his eyes closed. The optronic ring was slightly askew on his head.
“Is he conscious?” Yeager asked.
Deirdre shushed him, but in the perfluorocarbon it came out as a gargling stream of bubbles.
Corvus’s soft blue eyes snapped open. “I’m conscious,” he said tightly. “I’m not getting a thing. Not a damned thing.”
“Nothing?” Deirdre asked.
“Nothing!” he cried. “To come all this way, to actually make physical contact with the beast, and then … nothing!” His face showed bitter disappointment, almost despair.
Deirdre suggested gently, “Maybe if I tried…”
Corvus shook his head. “It won’t do any good. There’s no contact at all.”
“Perhaps your probe is placed in a poor spot,” Dorn said.
“Yeah,” Yeager added. “That critter’s brain must be pretty deep inside its body someplace. Your probe doesn’t penetrate deep enough, most likely.”
Corvus’s face went from anguish to anger to misery, all in a moment. He looked close to tears. Bleakly, he asked, “So what do you want me to do, burrow through the bastard, skewer him like Captain Ahab harpooning Moby Dick?”
Yeager started to reply, thought better of it, and simply shook his head. Dorn stared at Corvus wordlessly. Deirdre wondered what she could say, what she might do, to help Andy.
“It’s a failure,” Corvus moaned. “A complete flop. The creature’s too big. We can’t make contact with its brain.”
Out of the corner of her eye Deirdre saw her screens flickering. Turning, she saw images flashing across the leviathan’s enormous flank.
“It’s signaling again!” she said.
The alien’s arm is not for feeding, Leviathan decided. It isn’t cutting at our hide member. It has no teeth to cut with.
Then what is the purpose of its arm? If not for feeding, then what?
A possible answer formed in Leviathan’s brain. The alien is slow and weak, yet it was pushing its way deeper, trying to get closer to the domain of the Kin. But its progress is pitifully slow. Perhaps it is asking our help in going lower. Perhaps it wants us to tow it down to the Kin.
Leviathan remembered the other alien, long ago, who had helped it fight off a pack of darters and been grievously hurt in the battle. Leviathan had lifted that smaller alien on its back and helped it to return to the cold abyss above, from which it had come.
Of course! Leviathan felt that it understood the alien’s request. It has come down from the cold abyss to meet with the Kin, to communicate in its limited way with the Elders. Why else would it be here? It doesn’t feed on the particle streams. It doesn’t feed on our flesh. It isn’t seeking food, it’s seeking contact, communication.
We can’t understand it, Leviathan thought, but perhaps the Elders can.
With that revelation, Leviathan turned and headed deeper, down toward the realm of the Kin, with the strange, hard-shelled alien in tow behind it.
“What the hell was that?” Yeager shouted, steadying himself by grabbing Dorn’s broad shoulders.
“It’s dragging us deeper,” the cyborg said, his normally impassive voice edged with surprise, even fear.
“Disengage,” Yeager snapped.
“No!” said Corvus.
They all turned to Corvus, who was hanging on to the handgrips of his console as the vessel plunged steeply downward. Deirdre saw something close to panic in Max’s wide eyes; even the human side of Dorn’s face looked pasty, unsure. They’re as frightened as I am, she realized. But Andy looked—indomitable, doggedly determined, like a man refusing to back down against impossible odds.
“We came here to communicate with them,” Corvus said, grim as death. “That’s what we’re here to do. Ride it out.”
“But it’s dragging us deeper,” Yeager said, his voice almost cracking.
“Good,” said Corvus.
“How deep can we go?” Deirdre asked.
Regaining his self-control, Dorn said, “We’re nearing our performance limits. Pressure is rising steeply.”
“Can we disengage when we have to?” Yeager asked.
Corvus’s pale blue eyes snapped at the engineer. “The problem is, Max, will the connection to the beast hold? He’s putting a lot of strain on the connection.”
“Where’s it taking us?” Deirdre asked.
“To the rest of its kind, I hope,” said Corvus.
Deirdre felt the pain in her chest burning. Don’t take us too deep, Andy, she begged silently. Don’t follow that beast down so far that we can’t get back.
“Temperature rising,” Dorn called.
“Pressure, too,” added Yeager.
Corvus’s lips curved slightly into a tight smile. “We’re here to make contact with the leviathans. Well, that’s what we’re doing. Not the way we planned, but we’ll have to settle for this.”
“If it doesn’t kill us,” Yeager muttered.
Deirdre recalled a line from her classes in ancient history. Spartan mothers told their sons as they headed off to war, “Come back with your shield or on it.” Victory or death.
Which will it be, she wondered.
