Leviathans of Jupiter (13 page)

Nodding happily as she headed for her closet, Westfall told herself, Keep her frozen and we'll be all right until we reach the
Gold
station. Once we're there, I'll have young Ms. Ambrose revived and totally under my control.

Katherine Westfall smiled at that thought as she began to dress for her dinner with Captain Guerra.

DOLPHIN TANK

Andy Corvus stood disconsolately over Deirdre, who appeared to be dozing as she sat on Andy's big aluminum case, the optronics circlet over her auburn hair. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow and regular, her hands relaxed in her lap.

Standing beside Corvus, Dorn said, “Has she made contact again?”

Andy said nothing, but pointed to the two laptop screens on the deck at Deirdre's feet. Each showed an image of a brain: Deirdre's and the dolphin Baby's. Each image flickered with electrical activity, in close unison.

“Looks that way,” Corvus said forlornly.

“That's good, then,” said Dorn.

With a shrug of his shoulders that seemed to flex his entire arms and his whole back, Corvus replied, “She can't seem to stay conscious while she's in contact.”

Dorn nodded.

“That means she can't tell us what she's seeing, what she's experiencing. Not in real time.”

“She'll tell us when she regains consciousness.”

Shaking his head, Corvus murmured, “Not good enough. All we'll have is anecdotal evidence. She could be making up the whole thing.”

“You don't believe her?” Dorn challenged, a hint of truculence in his voice.

“I believe her, but the scientific community's going to want more than her unsubstantiated word. If she could stay awake and give us a real-time narrative, then we could compare her time line with her brain activity and Baby's. That would be real proof that she's in contact with the dolphin.”

Dorn rubbed the flesh side of his jaw. “Andy, are you interested in making meaningful contact with the dolphins or in publishing a paper that will enhance your scientific reputation?”

“Both,” Corvus answered without a flicker of hesitation.

“You may have to settle for just the one of them.”

“You don't understand,” Corvus said earnestly. “Science depends on publishing your results so others can duplicate them. Every observation, every measurement, every claim has to be subject to test. You publish something new and the rest of the community tries to duplicate what you've done. If they can get the same results you did, your work becomes an accepted part of science. If they can't, if they don't get the same results that you reported, your work goes into the trash bin.”

“But the important thing,” Dorn insisted, “is that she is making meaningful contact with the dolphin. Which means your equipment might allow you to make meaningful contact with the leviathans, once we reach Jupiter.”

“The important thing,” Corvus replied, “is that the scientific community believes that I've done it. I can spend the rest of my life chatting with those giant whales on Jupiter, but if the scientific community doesn't believe I've done it, what good is it?”

“What good is it to who? You personally? The scientific community? The human race in general?”

Corvus rolled his eyes heavenward. “Look, Dorn, my work won't do the human race any good at all if the scientific community says it's doggie doo.”

For an instant Dorn said nothing. Then he broke into a deep, chuckling laugh. “Doggie doo? Is that the technical name for it?”

Corvus grinned back at him sheepishly. “You know what I mean.”

At that moment, both laptops chimed and they turned to look down at Deirdre. She stirred, her eyelids fluttered, then she opened her eyes fully. Corvus realized for the first time that there were glints of amber in her light brown eyes. Beautiful eyes, he thought.

“I fell asleep,” Deirdre said apologetically.

“That's all right,” said Dorn, extending his human hand to help her to her feet.

“You made contact again?” Corvus asked.

Deirdre nodded absently. “Baby's mother told us a story.”

“What?”

“A story?”

“It was kind of strange,” Deirdre said. “Not like a story so much as a … a prediction, I guess you'd call it. Maybe a warning.”

*   *   *

Swimming effortlessly in the tank, Deirdre heard Mother's clicks and whistles as if the dolphin were talking to her.

It seems safe and easy now, Mother was saying, in this water where there are no sharks to threaten us and the fish are always close to our teeth.

But sometime we may find our way out to the true waters again, the waters where our mothers and fathers of old swam and hunted. Waters that are so deep they have no bottom. Waters that have treacherous currents that can carry you far, far away.

The sharks are always there, waiting for a lone dolphin with their sharp teeth. They are always hungry. They never rest.

Baby flipped her tail and rose gracefully to the surface for a gulp of air. Mother followed her while Father swam below.

You must be ready to face the sharks. Ready to swim in the big water. Ready to hunt. Now the fish have nowhere to hide from us. But in the big water the fish can run far, far away.

How big is the big water? Baby asked.

A hundred feedings would cover only a small part of it, Mother replied.

Have you seen this?

Mother said, I have seen bigger water than we are in now, but no, I have not swum in the truly big water. My mother, and her mother, and their mother's mothers have told about it.

Schools of fish that blot out the light, Baby said.

Yes, and sharks that eat baby dolphins.

Baby said, Sharks are bad.

Very bad, Mother agreed. My sister lived in the big water long ago. She was attacked by sharks. The others of the family tried to drive the sharks away but we were too late. They killed her.

Sharks are bad, Baby repeated.

Very bad. Be on your guard against them.

But there are no sharks in this water.

Not now. But they could come to this water. And they like to eat nothing better than baby dolphins.

*   *   *

“The mother was warning Baby about sharks?” Corvus asked.

“Yes,” said Deirdre. “I don't think Baby believed her. At least, I didn't feel any sense of fear in Baby.”

Dorn said, “Perhaps you could check the mother's history and see if she had a sister who was attacked by sharks. That could verify Deirdre's contact, couldn't it?”

Andy grinned brightly. “It might at that.”

INFIRMARY

It was two days later when Deirdre sat on the medical couch in the infirmary waiting for her daily injection from Dr. Pohan, still wondering about how she might have contracted rabies.

Dr. Nordstrum was from Earth, she thought. She worked at Selene, but she could've gone back to visit Earth easily enough; it's only a few hours' flight. Okay, she might have been bitten or scratched by some rabid animal. There's all sorts of wild animals on Earth. Twenty billion people and woods and grasslands and everyplace teeming with bacteria and feral beasts. Earth is like a zoo. A jungle.

But then she reasoned, Still, if Nordstrum was a microbiologist, wouldn't she have recognized the symptoms of rabies? Especially if she'd been bitten by an animal out in the wild. Wouldn't she have taken the precaution of the proper treatment instead of letting the infection grow in her body until it killed her?

Maybe she was so eager to get out to the research station at Jupiter that she ignored the early symptoms. They're not much. Just a rash, according to what the medical files say. Maybe some mood changes; irritability. Maybe that's what made her ignore—

The accordion-fold door to the treatment cubicle clattered open and Dr. Pohan stepped in. Deirdre saw that he wasn't smiling.

“Good morning,” the doctor said flatly.

“I'm ready for my injection,” said Deirdre, pushing up the sleeve of her blouse.

Dr. Pohan shook his head as he commanded, “Computer, display Deirdre Ambrose's record.”

The screen on the partition beside the couch showed a single rising red curve against a grid of thin yellow lines.

“The treatment is not working,” said Dr. Pohan. “At least, it is not working fast enough.”

Deirdre stared at the curve. The virus is growing inside me, she realized. Multiplying.

“What should we do?” she asked, suddenly breathless with anxiety.

Tugging at one end of his mustache, the doctor replied curtly, “Freeze you.”

“Freeze me? Cryonics?”

Dr. Pohan raised both his chubby little hands. “No, no, no. Not cryonics. Not liquid nitrogen. We only have to chill you down enough to slow your body functions sufficiently so that the disease will not grow while we're in transit to Jupiter. A matter of some nine days, that's all.”

“Will I be conscious?”

Shaking his head slightly, the doctor said, “You will be asleep. Your metabolic functions will slow to less than one-third of their normal pace. You will be fed intravenously.”

“I see,” Deirdre said. But she had her doubts about the procedure.

Dr. Pohan put on a reassuring smile. “It will be like taking a long, refreshing nap. When you wake up you will be aboard station
Gold,
where the medical staff has much better facilities for your treatment.”

“I see,” Deirdre said again. But she still felt terribly unsure about the entire matter.

Pohan slid the door back again. Two white-smocked medical technicians were waiting there, both women, both short, slender Asians. The whole crew must be Asian, Deirdre thought idly as they wheeled up a gurney and helped her lie down on it.

*   *   *

Andy Corvus was in his quarters, reviewing Deirdre's last session with the dolphins. Max Yeager was sitting on one of the cluttered room's chairs; he had cleared the junk Corvus had deposited on the chair and simply dumped it on the thickly carpeted floor.

“So you can get Dee to narrate what she experienced and play her words alongside the DBS data,” Yeager was saying.

“That's the best we can do,” Corvus said despondently, “unless we can figure out how to visualize these nerve impulses.”

“It's better than nothing,” Yeager said.

“Not much,” Corvus said.

“You've checked about the sister that was killed by sharks?”

Nodding, Corvus said, “They're checking the files back Earthside, but if it happened in the wild they probably won't have any record of it.”

“Well, you've got Dee's narration.”

“I don't see how—”

Corvus's pocketphone jingled. Yeager thought the tune it played sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it.

Andy flicked the phone open and pointed it at the compartment's wall screen. Deirdre's lovely face appeared. She looked distraught.

Without preamble she said, “Andy, I won't be able to work with the dolphins today.”

“What's wrong?”

“I'm going to be frozen.”

“Frozen?” Yeager and Corvus yelped together.

“To slow down the rabies,” she said. “I'll be kept frozen until we reach Jupiter.”

Leaping to his feet, Corvus shouted into the phone, “Don't let them touch you! I'll be right down there.” Then his brows shot toward his scalp and he asked somewhat sheepishly, “Uh … where are you?”

*   *   *

Yeager went with Corvus. The two men hurried down the passageway toward the elevator, grasping the big aluminum crate between them. They put it down on the deck as they waited for the elevator.

Once the doors slid open they saw that Dorn was already in the cab.

“What's happening with Deirdre?” he asked as Corvus and Yeager tugged the box into the elevator with them.

They swiftly explained. “I can put her under with the DBS equipment,” Corvus said, almost breathless with exertion and excitement. “I don't want them to freeze her if they don't have to.”

Dorn thought about it as the elevator rose toward the infirmary's level. “The brain stimulator can put her into a comatose state,” he said calmly, “but will it slow her metabolic rate?”

“Huh?” Corvus blinked. “No, it won't.”

“That's why they want to freeze her, isn't it? To slow her metabolism so the disease doesn't spread inside her body.”

Yeager looked digusted. “We didn't think of that.”

“We just wanted to save her from being frozen,” Corvus muttered.

Dorn shook his head. “Good intentions. But it won't help her.”

The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Dorn bent down and lifted the aluminum box in one hand while his two friends watched glumly.

INFIRMARY

Dr. Pohan was not happy to see the three of them as they burst into the infirmary, Dorn lugging the aluminum box under his prosthetic arm.

“This is a restricted area!” he snapped at them. “No visitors allowed.”

Before either of the others could reply, Yeager said firmly, “We're friends of your patient and we're not leaving until we see her.”

Pohan tried to glare at them, but he was too small to be intimidating. The three men towered over him. Yeager could see beads of perspiration break out on the doctor's bald pate.

“Very well,” Pohan said, almost in a whisper. “Just for a moment.”

The cubicle was small and felt chilly. It smelled of disinfectant and something with a flat, acrid tang to it. Deirdre was lying on what looked to Andy Corvus like a high-tech couch. Three sides of the bed were surrounded by blinking, beeping electronics gear. Off in the corner a white boxy refrigerator gave off a faint wisp of condensation. Two Asian women in white medical gowns and soft blue masks stood to one side, silent, their dark eyes appraising the trio of interlopers.

Deirdre smiled up at them. “Hi,” she said groggily.