“We will need someone to handle Sheena after the surgery, someone whom she will not connect to the medical personnel. A friend, so to speak.”
“Me?”
“You. You will spend at least two hours each day with Sheena. You will bring her fruits and new toys. The toys will be learning games and devices, of course; there is an extensive supply of such in storage.”
“But my studies—”
“This duty will be in addition to your fluid dynamics work, of course. It will take two hours per day from your personal time, no more.”
I don’t have any personal time, Grant grumbled to himself. I spend all my waking hours working on the dratdamned ocean’s dynamics. But he kept his mouth tightly shut.
“Remember, your task is to befriend the gorilla so that she will be able to deal with you as a trusted companion after the brain surgery.”
Wonderful, Grant said to himself. I’m going to get my neck broken by a postoperative gorilla.
If the director sensed Grant’s dejection or fear, he gave no outward sign of it. “Are there any questions?” Wo asked sourly.
Grant steepled his fingers unconsciously, then quickly put his hands down on his lap once he realized it looked as if he were begging—or praying.
“Yes, sir, I do have a question.”
Wo nodded once.
“Sheena … the dolphins … why are we studying their intelligence? I mean, we’re supposed to be investigating the planet Jupiter. Why are we spending time and energy on the intelligence of these animals?”
Wo’s face took on the implacable expression of a teacher who is resolved to make his dull-witted student solve his own problems.
“That is a question that you should meditate upon while you are entertaining Sheena.” The slightest trace of a smile moved the corners of his mouth a bare millimeter.
LEVIATHAN
Cruising through the eternal sea, Leviathan’s sensory members warned of the storm ahead. Its eye parts could not see the storm, it was much too far away for visual contact, but the pressure-sensing members along Leviathan’s immense bulk felt the tug of currents that wanted to draw the whole world ocean into the storm’s voracious maw.
It was a huge vortex, its powerful spiral generating currents that grew stronger and stronger until even creatures as powerful as Leviathan and its kind could no longer resist and would be sucked into a whirling, shattering dismemberment.
Leviathan felt no anxiety about the distant storm, no dread of its insatiable lure. At this distance the storm was too weak to be dangerous, and Leviathan had no intention of approaching it any closer. Yet it felt a tendril of curiosity. No member of the Kin had ever gone close enough to the storm to actually see it. What would that experience be like?
The food that sifted down from the cold abyss above seemed to be concentrated more thickly the closer Leviathan cruised to the storm’s vicinity. The inward-pulling currents generated by the storm’s powerful spinning vortex were sucking in the drifting particles until they became veritable streams, thick torrents of food flooding into the storm’s maelstrom, impossible to ignore and difficult to resist. The Elders should be shown this, Leviathan thought.
Far, far off on the horizon Leviathan’s eye parts detected a faint flickering, nothing more than the slightest rippling of light, barely discernible. Yet it alerted Leviathan to the fact that it was getting close enough to the storm to actually see it. Leviathan felt a strange thrill, a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
Darters! the sensory members warned.
Leviathan’s eye parts focused on them, the Darters were that close. Swift, streamlined shapes, lean and efficient, heading straight toward Leviathan. There were dozens of them, spreading out in a globe to surround Leviathan, intent on pressing their attack home. They would not be content with a quick nip at its outer hide; an armada of this size meant to kill and feast on all of Leviathan’s members.
Escape lay in retreat, but retreat was in the direction of the storm. The Darters had hatched a clever hunting strategy, knowing that if they pursued Leviathan close enough to the swirling storm front, its members would instinctively disassemble and become easy prey for the voracious hunters.
Leviathan estimated the distance to the storm’s towering ringwall of turbulence, tested the pull of the currents plunging into the storm, and planned a strategy of its own. It commanded its flagella members to row as fast as they could toward the ceaseless streaks of lightning that showed where the storm raged. No questions, no doubts came back from the flagella; they were blindly obedient, always.
Now it was a race, and a test of strength. The Darters chased after the fleeing Leviathan, eager to chew through its thick outer armor and puncture the vital organ-members deep within. Leviathan felt the storm’s currents tugging, pulling it closer and closer to the cloud wall. Lightning stroked the clouds, and Leviathan’s sensor members cringed at the storm’s mindless, endless roar. Members sent signals of alarm to Leviathan’s central brain: Soon they would automatically begin to disintegrate; they had no control over their hard-wired instincts.
Darters were close enough now to nip at the thickened dead tissue of Leviathan’s outer hide. Leviathan swatted at them, turning the faithful mindless flagella into brutal clubs that could rupture flesh, crush bone.
Driven to frenzy by the scent of torn flesh, the Darters redoubled their attack. Leviathan felt their teeth tearing into its hide; all its members flashed signals of pain and fear as the ever-growing pull of the storm’s mighty currents dragged Leviathan closer to involuntary dissociation.
Now! Leviathan suddenly shifted course, moving to parallel the spinning currents of the storm, battering its way through the net of Darters surrounding it. The Darters were too close to the lightning-racked storm to be able to resist the inward-pulling currents. Like helpless specks of food they were sucked into the vortex, one after another, struggling futilely against the storm’s overwhelming power, shrieking their death howls as they spun into the raging clouds.
Leviathan struggled, too, straining mightily to slide around the face of the lightning-streaked cloud wall, gradually spiraling away from the storm.
When at last it was free of danger, Leviathan felt drained, exhausted—and hungry. But there was no food here; on this side of the storm the sea was empty, barren. Only gradually did it realize that it had been swept far from its usual haunts, into a region of the all-encompassing ocean that it had never seen before.
Leviathan flashed out a call to the others of its kind. There was no response. Alone, weak and bleeding, Leviathan began to search for food, desperately hoping to build enough strength to swim far from the storm, wondering how it could find its way back to the familiar haunts of the Kin.
SHEENA’S GENTLEMAN VISITOR
Grant considered hiding his new assignment from his friends, but he knew that would be impossible. The station was too small to keep such secrets. Only the mighty Wo, with the inscrutability of the East and the powers of the director, could hold secrets from the staff.
So he wasn’t surprised when Karlstad began ragging him at dinner the very first night after Wo’s announcement of his new duties.
“I hear Sheena has a gentleman visitor,” the biophysicist said archly as he spooned up soup from the bowl before him. He seemed fully recovered from his surgery, back to his old sarcastic ways.
Ursula van Neumann glanced at Grant, then replied, “Oh, really?”
“Who might that be?” asked Irene Pascal, falling into the game. The neurophysiologist was a petite brunette who always wore miniskirted sleeveless flowered frocks over her black leggings. Normally she was quiet and
