Exile-and Glory (18 page)

It was many shades of blue, and green, and red, and yellow, all boiling up blue-white in the center of each patch and then the colors spreading outwards in great streaks. Most of Dansworth is under water, so those enormous color patches were all I could see.

The plane circled lower as the stewardess, still not looking at me, gave her little spiel about seat belts and having a pleasant trip. There was an airstrip floating in the water. It wasn't very wide, but over 3000 feet long, and there were buildings along its sides at the lee end. A dirigible mooring mast floated on its own platform not far away. The plane rolled to a stop at that end of the runway.

A regular grid of concrete domes dotted the sea around the airstrip, and further away were big floating docks. A couple of newly painted ocean-going ships were alongside. The whole place was clean and bright, different from any city I'd been in recently. Somehow the new planned cities, the "arcologies," never seem to look this bright and new; but we're getting there. We have to.

Dark kelp patches grew between the isolated domes, and the water was so clear that I could see platforms about fifty feet below the surface. Silvery torpedo shapes flashed through the kelp, and sailboats cruised among the domes, their bows throwing up white spumes as they raced with the wind. They didn't have the look of yachts. Just a means of transportation.

Dr. Peterson himself was there to meet me. I strutted a bit for the benefit of the other passengers, and the stewardess looked worried, as she should have. Ignoring passengers who rate a planesides meeting from the civilian director could get her in a lot of trouble, and jobs are pretty scarce. She wasn't wearing any rings, so she was reasonably safe from the new "One Job Per Family" program, but I understand the Federal Employment Commission is looking into that, too. Married women voters don't appreciate single girls who have jobs when there are still many families with no job at all . . . .

Peterson wasn't wearing anything but a pair of shorts and a wide-brimmed hat, and he looked at my lightweight drip-dry suit with sympathy. I've worn it on so many assignments that it seems like an old friend, and even in hot weather I'm comfortable in it. I thought I'd lost it once when Hertzog's blood spurted all over me, but it washed out all right. I've never got any of my own on it, maybe that's why I like it. A good luck charm.

I was surprised at how cool it seemed here in the tropic midafternoon. The sun was high and bright overhead, the sky impossibly blue with only tiny white fleecy clouds scudding across. I haven't seen a sky like that since I last went hiking in the Sierras. Yet, despite the hot sun, the west wind was cold.

Peterson had a tan like old leather. So did everyone else moving around the floating airstrip. It made me feel that I must look like something that had crawled from under a rock. A part of me said that might not be too bad a description, and I thrust it away. It's bad enough getting doubts in the middle of the night; I can't afford them in bright daylight. I wondered if that was what happened to the man I'd come to see.

Dr. Peterson had a funny habit of brushing his beard with the tips of his fingers, the way a man might test a wall to see if it had fresh paint. He had no mustache, and I found out later that few people at Dansworth do, although beards are common. Mustaches get in the way of your diving mask. They cause leaks.

I shook hands with Peterson and walked over to the edge of the airstrip to look down into the kelp. I hadn't expected anything like that in the middle of the Pacific, and I said so. "It only grows in cold, shallow water, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Right." Peterson seemed pleased that I knew that much. "That
is
cold, shallow water, Mr. Starr. The kelp's anchored to platforms below the surface, and the water's pumped up from the deep bottom. The kelp is brought in from all over the world so we can experiment with different varieties. The stuff right here comes from the Los Angeles area."

I couldn't look away. The water was clear, and millions of fish swam in the thick kelp beds. There were long, thin, torpedo-shaped fish with bright blue stripes down their sides, moving dartingly in schools, every fish turning at precisely the same instant. Each thick clump of kelp held a brilliant orange damselfish warily guarding its territory. There were few sea urchins among the kelp bed, and as I watched, a swiftly moving shape darted past to snatch one—an otter, I thought.

A school of dolphins played among the fish. Two detached themselves from the rest and came over to examine me. One rose high on his tail, lifting himself out of the water to stand there churning while he splashed water on me. I ducked back in alarm, but it was too late. I was dripping wet.

Peterson clucked and whistled, then shouted, "Jolly! That's not nice."

The dolphin whistled something, and then, kind of garbled but clear enough so I could understand it, it said "Sorry, boss." And laughed.

Peterson was still trying to explain when we got to Admiral Kingsley's office.

"They've always been able to imitate speech," Peterson said. "The stories about dolphins talking and singing go back to classical Greek times. But nobody ever took the trouble to systematically teach them before."

"Yeah, well, look," I protested. "We get stories about intelligent fish all the time. Used to take 'em pretty seriously, and I know about how useful the dolphins are. But does that thing understand what he's saying?"

"They aren't fish," Peterson said.

"OK. Cetaceans. Toothed sea-going mammals. They breathe through lungs, and they've never been known to attack a man, and the Navy and fishermen have been systematically using them as messengers and herders since the fifties anyway. I've had the standard briefing, Dr. Peterson. But nobody told me the damned things could talk!"

"Not many can," Peterson said. "At least not so that an untrained man can understand them. Tell me, Mr. Starr, do you speak any foreign language?"

"Yeah." It was safe to admit that. I wasn't about to tell him just how many I could get along in. He wouldn't have believed me anyway.

"And was it difficult to learn it?"

"Sure."

"Well, to a dolphin, any human language is much more difficult. You'd find it easier to learn Urgic or Yakutsk than Jolly did to learn English. Dolphin grammar isn't like any language we speak. Couple that with the fact that he has to suppress over half the frequencies and sounds he normally makes to communicate, and maybe you'll appreciate why so few dolphins ever manage to be understood."

We'd reached the Admiral's office ten fathoms below the surface, and the conversation trailed off. There was a watertight door to the office and a Navy yeoman as receptionist. Admiral Kingsley didn't have a beard, and his tan looked pasty, as if he'd been out of the sun for a while after a long stint outdoors. I was told he'd just come up from a seven-week tour of duty with the deep-mining operation below Dansworth.

The pallor bothered me. I'd had one like that myself after the worst assignment I ever drew. The FBI caught an economic saboteur and put him away at Lewisburg. Our Director decided he knew too much and would probably be exchanged, so they sent me in after him. I tagged him in two weeks, but it took another six to spring me, and by the time I came out I looked like a slug. I felt like one, too. Ever since, I've been sure prisons don't rehabilitate anyone. Problem is, what does?

"This is Gideon Starr," Peterson said. "Admiral Kingsley."

We exchanged pleasantries and Kingsley offered drinks. I took mine and sat in a big government-issue easy chair, the kind they have in the Pentagon, or at Langley. It seemed like an old friend.

"Mr. Starr," said Kingsley, "you've got real pull. We've never had a visitor here with an endorsement from the Secretary like yours."

And if you're lucky you won't again, I thought, but I said, "Well, it's coming up on budget review time. A few enthusiastic articles wouldn't hurt your research appropriation."

He smiled at that, and Peterson practically beamed. "That's a fact," Peterson muttered. "Actually, if they'd just let us keep some of the profits, we'd be all right. How many research efforts actually make money?"

I shrugged. "I'll do my best, anyway."

Kingsley beamed this time. "Well. We're to show you around and then let you direct yourself," he said. "Orientation'll take a while, though. There's a lot here, Mr. Starr. And a lot of ways for a man who doesn't know what he's doing to get killed."

"Yeah." There were a lot of ways for a man who did know what he was doing to get killed, too. Most of 'em had been tried on me at one time or another. "I've got a diver's card, and some underwater experience," I said. "I think I know what to look out for."

"It's a start," Kingsley agreed. "Well, you may as well begin sightseeing." He reached out to his desk console and pushed a button. Curtains opened on the wall behind him.

There were artificial lights as well as the sunlight filtering down this low. Big fronds waved in slow motion, an underwater forest just outside his office. I could barely see the grid that held the kelp below us. There were shelves sticking out of every structure and shaft, and lots of shafts. Coral in bright reds and blues grew from the shelves, and barnacles, and shellfish there and on long lines that dangled down from the surface. Fish darted through the kelp fronds. It was a dynamic color picture that would never come through on a TV screen. I couldn't wait to get out there in it, and I told them so.

They exchanged grins. I expect every tourist says the same thing. If anybody could visit that place and not want to get outside, he was dead or might as well be.

"Yes. Well, perhaps first an orientation tour?" Peterson said. "I really don't know how familiar you are with what we're doing here at Dansworth."

"Not at all," I told him. "I'm primarily an aerospace writer. I've done some diving, but not much serious study of sea power stations. You'd better assume I don't know anything at all."

The nice part about it was I was telling the truth. Not all of it, but no lies.

The admiral hit another button and more curtains opened. There was a 3-D map behind them, a holograph tank, and by manipulating his desk console he could show things at different levels. He started with the bare floor of the Pacific. It was crosshatched with very regular lines, a checkerboard of cracks in the bottom, and about sixteen thousand feet deep. Dansworth Seamount rose steeply from the floor to within seven hundred feet of the surface. It stood there all by itself, with nothing around, at least not on that map.

"Dansworth," Peterson said. "The deep gash next to it is Shatterton Fissure. The geologists are having a field day here."

"Um." I wasn't really interested in the geology. The theories change every year, so what's the point in studying up on them? I like technology, though, and I'm a pretty good writer. I think I could make a living at it even if Langley didn't use influence to get my stuff placed in important magazines. I'll never find out, of course. You don't quit in my job. I didn't want to, anyway.

Kingsley did something to the console and the scale changed to show only Dansworth Seamount and a little area around it. A grid appeared, a 3-D space-chessboard, with part of the grid below the top of the mountain, and the rest above that going on to the surface. "Dansworth Station," Kingsley said. "Our city in the sea."

"Impressive." I meant it. "What's the grid?"

"Corridors, mostly. Concrete cylinders strung together. Labs, quarters, processing plants."

The place was big, and they had color codes on the different structures in the map. It would take a long time to learn everything, but I wouldn't have to. We'd found the traitor after five years, and I wouldn't be here long at all. It seemed a pity, because Dansworth was a very interesting place. I wondered what it would be like to live here.

"Now for your guide," Dr. Peterson said. "I understand you asked for Hank Shields. Any reason why?"

I shrugged. "A couple of sailors in San Diego told the editor he was a good man who knew a lot about Dansworth. Anybody else would do, if it's inconvenient."

"No, nothing like that," Peterson said. "Just that Hank doesn't want any publicity. Something about his wife. He'll be glad to show you around if you won't put him in the story."

"Suits me." I needed to think that one over, and cursed the damn fools who'd asked for Shields in the first place. I like to plan my own operations, and I don't need help from the goddam desk men. I'll take their orders, but I don't need them trying to run my life. "When do I meet him?"

Hank Shields was about five eleven, a good three inches shorter than me, but he weighed nearly as much, a hundred and ninety pounds. He matched the description perfectly: blond, blue eyes, thick matty beard like most people have at Dansworth. Except for the beard he hadn't made any attempt to change his face. The pictures at Langley might have been taken last week, once the artists had airbrushed on the beard.

He looked me over carefully, then we shook hands and stood there sizing each other up. I looked to see anything in his eyes—recognition of my face, or my name, but if he'd ever heard of me he was pretty good at hiding it. That didn't mean anything, of course. So was I. He had a powerful grip, as good as mine, and that figured too. He'd had my job once. Finally we let go and Peterson waved us out of the admiral's office.

"What would you like to see first?" Shields asked.

I shrugged. "Better let you decide, Mr. Shields."

"Hank," he said automatically.

"Fine. I'm Gideon. Where we going? I can't wait to get outside."

"We'll put today in the inside tour and go out tomorrow. OK?"

"Sure." As we talked he was leading me through the maze of corridors. There were watertight doors at intervals, some open, some closed and we'd have to stop and open them, step through, and seal up behind. The corridors were about ten feet high, rounded on top and rough inside. He pointed out different laboratories as we passed.

"How long does it take to learn your way around here?" I asked.