wondered. What is it trying to tell us?
Patiently, Leviathan showed the alien that it was going to take its usual place at the outer rim of the Kin, and the alien must come along with it.
The alien remained dark, mute.
How can I make it understand? Leviathan wondered.
“He’s got a pulse,” Corvus said, gripping the unconscious cyborg’s human wrist.
Yeager squinted at the medical readouts. “Pulse steady but weak. Breathing rate going down. What the hell’s wrong with him?”
Deirdre was feeding the leviathan’s signals through the computer program that slowed them, trying to ignore the pain that was radiating through her body. Maybe I can figure out what it’s trying to tell us if I can look at the images at a slower rate. But she couldn’t help turning away from her screens to glance at Dorn’s unconscious body.
The Eldest flashed to Leviathan, The alien does not respond.
It’s gone dark, Leviathan agreed.
It doesn’t understand what you are trying to tell it, signaled one of the Elders.
Or it doesn’t
No, it’s too stupid to understand. It’s not truly intelligent, it merely mimics what we tell it.
Leviathan thought otherwise, but kept its opinion to itself. Remembering its encounter with the other alien, long ago, Leviathan decided that there was one way to get the alien to move, whether it acknowledged its message or not.
“We have to get back up to the station,” Corvus said. “Get medical attention for Dorn.”
For all of us, Deirdre added silently.
Still scanning the medical readouts, Yeager muttered, “Or at least up to a higher level, where the pressure isn’t so bad.”
“Back to the station!” Corvus snapped.
Deirdre saw that Dorn was floating gently in the perfluorocarbon, unconscious, his arms bobbing in the liquid. His breathing seemed deep and slow; his human eye was closed, the prosthetic camera dark instead of its usual red gleam.
“His artificial eye,” she blurted. “It’s off.”
“So what?” Yeager said.
“It never goes off,” she said. “Not even when he sleeps.”
Corvus grasped her meaning. “Maybe it’s the mechanical side of him that’s failed?”
Yeager looked from Corvus to Deirdre and then down at the unconscious Dorn. “Sounds nutty.”
“The medical readouts don’t cover his robotic systems,” Deirdre said. Then she added, “Do they?”
“No, you’re right,” said Yeager. “I’ll pull up the diagnostic program for his prosthetics. Andy, we’ll have to plug him into the main computer. Find the connector cable.”
But as Corvus launched himself toward the hatch of their sleeping area the vessel suddenly lurched and tilted wildly.
“What the hell?” Yeager shouted as he slammed painfully against the main console. Dorn’s inert body glided across the bridge’s narrow confines and buckled against the food dispenser. Deirdre’s feet were wedged into the deck loops but still she swayed so hard that she banged her shoulder against her console. Corvus missed the hatch and rammed into the bulkhead alongside it.
“What’s happening?” Deirdre whimpered.
As gently as it could Leviathan slid beneath the alien and pushed against it with its back. Once before it had lifted an alien up to safety as it sank down into the hot abyss below. That had been easier, because that alien’s body was flat. Circular, hard-shelled, but flat. It could ride easily enough on Leviathan’s back.
But this alien was round, spherical. It bounced off Leviathan’s back instead of riding smoothly.
Doggedly, Leviathan nudged the alien outward toward the edge of the Kin’s formation, in obedience to the Elders’ decision. The alien bounced along as Leviathan’s flagella members patiently propelled it onward.
Leviathan remembered that the earlier alien had repaid its piggyback rescue by spraying scalding heat against its hide. Then it had shot upward, into the cold abyss above, never to return.
What will this alien do? How will it react to being pushed back to the edge of the Kin?
Holding on for dear life to her console’s handgrips, Deirdre tried to make sense of the leviathan’s slowed- down message while Yeager and Corvus analyzed Dorn’s cybernetic systems. Yeager was muttering a continuous string of swearing as
“Sonofabitch is battering us to death,” Yeager growled, in between choice curses and words Deirdre had never heard before.
“It’s pushing us,” Deirdre said, trying to focus on the display in her central screen.
Corvus had connected the cable that linked Dorn’s mechanical side with the vessel’s main computer. Yeager was trying to trace the cyborg’s systems, but the constant banging and jarring made it almost impossibly difficult.
Between lurches, Deirdre saw that the leviathan had signaled to them that it was going to move away from the core of the creatures’ massive spherical formation, out toward the edge, and they should follow along with it.
“It’s pushing us outward,” Deirdre said. “It wants us to move out to the rim of their formation.”
“Helluva way to make us move,” Yeager rumbled.
“Maybe if we light up our propulsion system we could go more smoothly,” Corvus suggested.
“Maybe,” Yeager agreed.
The alien suddenly moved off on its own, squirting a spray of heated water behind it. Leviathan was glad that the alien was not resting on its back, remembering the other alien that had scalded its hide.
Swimming alongside the alien, Leviathan again flashed its message that they were heading out to the edge of the Kin. Other leviathans in the formation swung wide of the alien, allowing them to pass through without hindrance.
It does understand, Leviathan realized. It’s just so excruciatingly slow. Leviathan flashed that message to be passed inward to the Elders.
