Leviathans of Jupiter (42 page)

Yeager shrugged. “Maybe they're into abstracts. Like Picasso or some of those other painters. Try changing the color.”

Deirdre shifted from blue to green, and when that got no response from the leviathans, she went to bright red, then a softer pink.

“Nothing,” Yeager mumbled.

“Not exactly nothing,” said Dorn, from his console. “Their images are changing.”

“It's all gibberish,” Yeager said. “They're just making dumb displays, like octopi do back Earthside. They change colors all the time; it doesn't mean diddly-squat.”

Deirdre asked, “Dorn, are we recording all this?”

“Yes,” he replied. “And copying it for the data capsule we're scheduled to launch in … two hours and seventeen minutes.”

“Maybe the scientists at the station can make some sense out of this,” she murmured.

It's all so frustrating, Deirdre thought. They're trying to communicate with us, I k
now
they are. But what do those splotches of colors mean? How can we speak to them? How can we understand them? The knot in her chest twisted tighter. She grimaced from the pain.

CATS AND MOUSE

I should've seen this coming, Rodney Devlin said to himself as he hurried along the dimly lit passageway. I should've known she'd want to shut me up for good.

Devlin knew every nook and cranny of station
Gold.
Seldom seen outside the galley and its kitchen, the Red Devil still managed to roam through the whole station, every level, every passageway, every office and laboratory and workshop—usually late at night when almost everyone else was asleep.

No virtual reality tours of the station for him. Devlin walked the passageways, poked into compartments, tapped out security codes to unlock doors, and examined everything from Grant Archer's office to the immersion tank down in the third wheel. In person, in real time. More than once, over the years, he had slipped into someone's compartment, like a sneak thief. More than once he had stayed when the sleeper was a desirable and willing woman.

This night he knew he needed every scrap of knowledge he possessed about the station's layout. Three of Katherine Westfall's bully boys were looking for him. Devlin felt like a frightened little mouse being chased by three very large and determined cats.

He had been finishing up his menus for the coming day, shortly after midnight, when he saw them come into the kitchen from the galley, three muscular young men in dark suits with faces made of granite. They're not here to invite you to a party, Devlin told himself. As the three hunters searched along the kitchen's counters, stoves, ovens, Devlin slipped behind the silent row of oversized food processors and out the back door.

Once in the passageway that ran behind the kitchen, he hesitated briefly. Where to go? It'll take them a few minutes to search the kitchen and figure out that I'm not there. Then they'll try my quarters. In the meantime I've got to find a safe hideout.

Where? And for how long? Till morning, at least, he realized as he started jogging down the passageway, his softboots making practically no sound on the tiles of the deck.

Once they see I'm not in the kitchen, they'll probably go to the comm center and check the surveillance screens. Crikey! Maybe they've already got somebody at the comm center who can see me right now!

He hurried along the passageway, glancing at the tiny red lights of the surveillance cameras set up near the overhead every fifty meters or so. It's no good, he said to himself. They can run the surveillance chips and see wherever I go. There's no place to hide. Unless …

*   *   *

Nikki Gregorian sat tensely at her desk in the station's communications center. Chewing on her lip, she stared at the digital clock on the wall. It seemed to be stopped. Time was standing still. All the surveillance screens were dark. None of the station's cameras was functioning, and they would not come on-line again for another two hours. She was alone in the center, halfway through her duty shift, and all the screens were as dark and dead as corpses.

It was a risk, deliberately turning off the cameras, but the money was worth it. A breathtaking amount of money. Keep the cameras off for three hours, the handsome young man had told her. No one will know. And even if they figure it out and fire you, you'll have enough money to return to Earth and retire.

She didn't ask why he wanted the cameras off. She knew he worked for Katherine Westfall and the money he was willing to transfer to her account back Earthside was enough to allow her to retire comfortably before the year was out. Good-bye to station
Gold
and its cramped, sterile confines. Back to Earth to live in style.

Still, she wondered what they were up to. What were they doing, that they wanted all the station's surveillance cameras turned off?

*   *   *

Katherine Westfall could not sleep. She lay on the king-sized waterbed of her suite, dressed in lounging pajamas of emerald green, trimmed with gold, wide awake, waiting for her security team to report.

They should have found him by now. This station isn't that large that he can hide from them. They've shut down the surveillance cameras, of course; there will be no record of what happened to Rodney Devlin. But even without the cameras, they should be able to find the man. Why haven't they reported to me?

It seemed simple enough to her. Find Devlin and toss him out an airlock. Neat and clean. In the morning he'll have disappeared. Archer and his people can search the station from top to bottom and they won't find him. Devlin won't be able to tell anyone about the nanomachines.

Then when the
Faraday
doesn't come back from its mission, Archer will be disgraced, and Devlin's disappearance forgotten. Four people killed, and it will be all his fault. Devlin, too. That will end Archer's career. He'll never be able to challenge me for the IAA chairmanship. He'll be finished.

But why haven't they reported? she asked herself for the hundredth time. They should have found Devlin by now and gotten rid of him.

She realized that she was perspiring slightly. And her stomach hurt. Nerves, she said to herself. You've got to get rid of Devlin. You can't have him here, knowing about the nanomachines. He'll hold that over your head. He's the type who'd blackmail you, threaten you, bring you down. Once they don't come back from the ocean, once he realizes what I've done, he'll have that over me for the rest of my life.

I can't let him do that. It's either him or me. And it's not going to be me!

Still, her stomach ached. A dull, sullen pain, as if she'd eaten too many sweets. Nerves, Westfall told herself. Steady on. They'll find Devlin and deal with him. Then you'll be safe. Then there will be no one who can threaten you.

But the pain in her gut was getting worse.

FARADAY

Deirdre stared in open-mouthed awe at the two leviathans. The enormous creatures were swimming on either side of
Faraday,
flashing messages—she
knew
they had to be messages—along the lengths of their flanks.

Those hundreds of eyes looking at us, she said to herself. Those hundreds of fins paddling along. And the colors! Spectacular splashes of reds and greens, yellows, blues, and phosphorescent white. They
mean
something. They've got to mean something. They can't just be simple displays. They're trying to speak to us.

Dorn's deep voice reverberated through the perfluorocarbon. “I have programmed the computer to repeat the shapes and colors that the leviathans are displaying.”

“Monkey see, monkey do,” Yeager muttered.

Corvus said, “Good. They'll see that we've received their messages and we're acknowledging them.”

“But what do they mean?” Deirdre wondered aloud.

With a wistful smile, Andy said, “You're the artist, Dee. You tell us.”

She shook her head. “I wish I could.”

“We're scheduled to send out a data capsule in fifty-three minutes,” said Dorn. “All of these images will be included.”

“But what do they mean?” Deirdre repeated.

*   *   *

Leviathan saw that the alien was repeating the images it was flashing. For more than a hundred beats of the flagella Leviathan and its replicate had been picturing to the alien the beauties of the Symmetry, explaining to this strange, cold, uncommunicative creature how the Kin dwelled in harmony with the world, feeding on the streams of food that came from the cold abyss above, staying well away from the hot abyss below, avoiding the darters that preyed on individual leviathans when they separated from the Kin to duplicate.

Nothing. The alien simply glided along, dark and silent, its hard round shape as uncommunicative as the tiny swimmers that also followed the food streams. To its replicate Leviathan flashed an image of the alien, a blank spherical shape. The replicate replied with the same.

Why doesn't it answer us? Leviathan wondered. The replicate drew an image of one of the tiny swimmers. Its meaning was clear: The alien may be a living creature, but it is clearly not intelligent. It doesn't picture images to us because it can't. It is dumb, mindless.

But if that is so, Leviathan thought, then how did the alien suddenly appear here, in the world of the Kin? How did it get here? Why is it—

Wait! The alien's spherical flank suddenly lit up with colors! It can communicate! Or at least it's trying to.

Nothing but gibberish, flashed the replicate. There is no structure in its images, no meaning.

But it's trying to say
something,
Leviathan pointed out. It's displaying the same colors that we have used.

Imitation, pictured the replicate. That's not intelligence, it's merely mimicry. The lowliest swimmers can mimic images better than this hard-shell.

But it's trying, Leviathan insisted. It's trying.

*   *   *

“We're scheduled to release a data capsule in ten minutes,” Dorn announced.

“Well, it'll have something to show them,” Yeager said.

Deirdre noticed that Andy hadn't spoken a word in nearly an hour. He merely stood beside her, his feet anchored in deck loops, swaying slightly in their all-encompassing liquid like a strand of kelp on the floor of the sea on Earth, staring raptly at Deirdre's display screen. But every few minutes he kneaded the bridge of his freckled nose.

“Are you all right?” she asked him softly.

“Huh?”

“Do you feel okay?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, then blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Okay? Yeah, sure.”

“No aches or pains?” Deirdre pressed.

He shrugged crookedly. “Got a helluva headache, that's all.”

She nodded. “It's the pressure. I've got an ache in my chest. It started in my gut but it's settled in my chest.”

“Yeah,” he said absently, his attention back on the screen.

Deirdre looked at the display again. The leviathans were flashing colors so quickly she could hardly follow them. It was like watching a fireworks display speeded up to a wildly supersonic pace.

She turned slightly and saw that Max was checking out the data capsule on the console beside Dorn. The cyborg had both hands on his control keyboard. Keeping up with the leviathans wasn't easy: Dorn had to keep the main propulsion system running at nearly full power merely to stay even with them, and the currents generated by their flippers bounced their vessel like a cork in a typhoon.

“The data capsule's ready,” Max said.

Dorn nodded, then tapped a prosthetic finger on the screen to his left. “Ejection in three minutes.”

Deirdre murmured to Andy, “If only we could make some sense of their messages.”

Corvus said nothing, still riveted to the display screen.

“Nothing but splotches of color,” Deirdre said.

“I don't see colors,” Andy said, his voice low, his eyes not moving from the screen.

“I forgot,” said Deirdre. “This must be more pointless to you than to the rest of us.”

“Pointless?” Corvus seemed genuinely surprised. “You mean you can't see the pictures they're showing us?”

IMAGES

“Pictures?” Deirdre asked.

Corvus nodded and pointed at the screen. “In those gray splotches. Can't you see the pictures?”

“No…”

“They're showing images of themselves again. Now it's changed to an image of us. Round little circle next to the two leviathan shapes.”

“You can see images?” Deirdre strained her eyes, staring at the rapidly shifting contours of color splashed along the sides of the two leviathans.

“Yep,” Andy replied.

“Capsule launch in one minute,” Dorn intoned.

“Wait!” Deirdre shouted. “Don't send the capsule!”

Yeager turned toward her. “We've gotta send the capsule, Dee. It's on the mission assignment list.”

“Wait,” she insisted. “Andy says he sees images in the leviathans' displays. They're sending messages to us!”

Dorn turned halfway from his post to look at her and then focused both his eyes on Corvus. “You see images?”

Andy nodded vigorously. “Don't you?”

*   *   *

Linda Vishnevskaya stared at the screen in the center of her control console. Blank. She glanced at the digital clock display to the right of the screen: 0600 hours.

They're launching the first data capsule, she said to herself. We should pick up its radio beacon in half an hour, as soon as it breaks out of the ocean.

She waited impatiently, fingers fidgeting in her lap. This early in the morning, the mission control center was manned only by Vishnevskaya herself. She didn't need any of her team simply to monitor the emergence of a data capsule. The capsule was programmed to climb out of Jupiter's atmosphere and establish itself in a circular equatorial orbit. From there it would beam the contents of its memory core to the communications satellites in stationary orbit around Jupiter, which would relay the data to the receivers aboard station
Gold.
In less than two minutes after the capsule popped out of the ocean they would begin receiving its signal.