Leviathans of Jupiter (52 page)

“I apologize for my collapse,” the cyborg said.

“No apology needed,” said Corvus. “It wasn't your fault.”

“My prosthetics are programmed to shut down when they are in danger of exceeding their design limits.”

Yeager nodded. “Don't worry, pal. We're getting out of this pressure cooker as fast as we can.”

“The mission?” Dorn asked.

“We've got enough data to keep the scooters happy for years,” said Yeager. “Now's the time to go home.”

Dorn glided to the command console. Bobbing alongside Yeager, he said, “I can take the con now, if you don't mind.”

Yeager made an exaggerated bow. “You're welcome to it!”

Deirdre heard herself say, “Do we have to leave right away?”

All three men turned toward her.

Surprised at her own reaction, Deirdre asked, “Can't we stay at this level, at least for a little bit?”

“Why?” Yeager demanded.

Glancing at her sensor screens, Deirdre replied, “To say good-bye.”

DEPARTURE

Several of Leviathan's flagella members were quivering with the anticipation of dissociating. We are too high, Leviathan realized, too close to the cold abyss above. If we go higher we will dissociate involuntarily.

But the alien was still rising, still climbing upward. How high will it go?

*   *   *

“It's sending another message,” Deirdre said, staring at the flickering images on her central screen. The computer was washing out the colors and slowing down the rapidly blinking drawings.

“Leveling off,” said Dorn, with something like the old strength in his voice.

“We can't stay here for long,” Yeager warned.

“Why not?” Corvus snapped as he tucked the DBS circlets back into their container bin.

Yeager scowled at him. “We'll run out of supplies. We're only fitted out for four days—”

“And we've only been here for less than three,” Corvus countered, pointing at the mission time line chart.

“And damned near killed ourselves,” Yeager snapped.

Dorn raised his human hand. “I'm feeling much better now that we're up at a lower pressure.”

“I'm not,” Yeager growled. “I say we get the hell out of here as fast as we can. Take our data and go home!”

“So we take our winnings and leave the game?” Corvus challenged.

Yeager gave him a tight smile. “You gotta know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em.”

The human side of Dorn's face frowned. “What does that mean?”

Deirdre said, “The leviathan's trying to tell us something. Look.”

*   *   *

The alien understands! Leviathan thought. The strange hard-shelled creature stopped its ascent and hovered in the chill waters, still far from the normal realm of the Kin but at least it wasn't heading farther into the cold abyss above.

It understands.

*   *   *

“What's it trying to tell us?” Corvus asked, hovering beside Deirdre in the perfluorocarbon liquid.

The computer-slowed imagery showed the leviathan rising. At least it seemed to be rising past the tiny shapes and dots sprinkled across the picture displayed on its flank.

“Those must be fish and other smaller creatures,” Deirdre said, pointing. “And that stream of dots, maybe that represents the organic particles flowing downward.”

“Maybe.” Corvus nodded uncertainly.

“And there's the leviathan himself.” Deirdre pointed. “And us, alongside him.”

“Both rising.”

“Yes.”

Abruptly, the image of the leviathan began breaking apart. Deirdre and Corvus watched as the creature's image disassembled into hundreds of separate pieces.

“It's going to dissociate again?” she wondered.

Corvus shook his head. “It just did that a day and a half ago, when we first came down to this level.”

“That was deeper than we are now.”

“But now it's saying that it's going to break up again? Does that make sense?”

Deirdre thought she understood. “Maybe it's saying that it can't stay up at this level without breaking up! It's telling us that it's got to go back to its own level.”

“And we've got to go back to ours,” Yeager insisted.

Deirdre stared at the screen. The leviathan was still flashing the same imagery. It's so huge! she thought. Like a mountain floating loose in the ocean. But it's got to return to its own place. And Max is right, we've got to return to ours.

Reluctantly, she reached out to the touch screen and began drawing a farewell message.

*   *   *

Holding its members together with sheer willpower, Leviathan saw that the alien was signaling again.

It showed the image of Leviathan itself, diving downward until it disappeared past the lower edge of the image. And the alien, rising upward until it too disappeared from view.

The message was clear. The alien was leaving, returning to its own realm in the cold abyss above, leaving Leviathan to return to the Kin and the Symmetry.

But then the picture changed. It showed the alien returning, with more round little hard-shelled spheres just like itself, all of them swimming amid the Kin down where the Symmetry prevailed.

Leviathan understood the alien's message. It must leave now, but it will return—with more of its kind.

Leviathan duplicated the alien's message along its own flank, to show that it understood. You will return, Leviathan acknowledged. And we will be here waiting for you.

*   *   *

“It's repeating our message,” Deirdre told the others. “It understands what we're trying to say.”

“Maybe,” Yeager said. “Maybe it's just mimicking what you drew.”

Deirdre shook her head. “I don't think so, Max. It understands us.”

Dorn called out, “Increasing buoyancy. Heading for the surface.”

Corvus stood beside Deirdre and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Heading for home,” he murmured.

Deirdre nodded, her eyes on the sensor screens watching the enormous leviathan swim in a brief circle, then bend its broad back and plunge downward, deep into the depths of the globe-girdling ocean, heading back to its own domain.

“Good-bye,” she whispered, surprised at how sad she was, how downcast she felt to be leaving the magnificent creature. “We'll come back,” she said, knowing it was a promise she was making to herself as much as the leviathan. “We'll come back.”

As
Faraday
rose smoothly through the ocean Deirdre felt the pain in her chest easing. Maybe it's psychosomatic, she thought. But no, the medical readouts had shown her heart laboring, her lungs straining down at the depths where they had been.

“Broaching surface in thirty seconds,” Dorn announced.

The vessel jolted and shuddered as it bulled its way out of the ocean. Deirdre felt as if the sea was trying to keep them, hold them back, prevent them from getting away.

And then they were soaring through Jupiter's wide, clear atmosphere, the curve of the planet's vast bulk barely noticeable even when they were halfway to the clouds. Her eyes glued to the screens' displays, Deirdre saw a clutch of Clarke's Medusas drifting placidly off in the distance, colorful as old-fashioned hot-air balloons.

“Entering cloud deck,” said Dorn. The displays showed a dizzying swirl of colors and the vessel buffeted and jittered in the typhoon winds of Jupiter's racing clouds. Andy gripped her tighter as Deirdre clung to him with one arm and reached for the console handgrips with the other. She saw that Max and Dorn were also grasping safety holds.

Suddenly the shaking and vibration stopped, as abruptly as a switch turning off, and the display screens showed the eternal black of space. Deirdre told the computer to increase its brightness gain and pinpoints of stars gleamed against the darkness.

“We're in orbit,” Yeager said, his voice almost breathless with relief.

The curving bulk of Jupiter slid into view, huge, glowing with broad swaths of color. Just above its limb a single bright star glowed.

“That's the station,” Andy said, relaxing his grip on her just a little. “We're almost home.”

“But we'll go back to them, won't we?” said Deirdre, feeling as if she wanted to cry.

EPILOGUE

For it is a fact that to have knowledge of the truth and of sciences and to study them is the highest thing with which a king can adorn himself. And the most disgraceful thing for kings is to disdain learning and be ashamed of exploring the sciences. He who does not learn is not wise.

—Khosrow I Anushirvan

(Khosrow of the Immortal Soul)

Shah of the Sassanid Empire, Persia, 531–579

DECOMPRESSION

This is worse than being in the ocean, Deirdre thought. She lay in the narrow decompression capsule, unable to move. It was like being in a coffin, an elaborate high-tech sarcophagus, too tight to shift her arms from her sides, its ridged plastic lid too low for her to lift her head. Worse than the bunks in
Faraday,
she grumbled to herself.

“Stay still,” the technicians had told her. “It's best if you just lay absolutely still while we bring the pressure down.”

I have to stay still, she thought. There's no room to move in here. She was still breathing perfluorocarbon, still bathed in the cold, slimy liquid. Eight hours, the technicians had said. Eight hours minimum.

“You'll sleep through most of it,” one of the technicians had said. “Just relax and sleep.”

Wonderful advice, Deirdre thought. Just relax and sleep. Might as well, there's nothing else to do while I'm in here. Sleep. They're injecting a sedative into the perfluorocarbon, she knew. I wonder how they can determine the proper dosage? What if it's not enough? Or too much?

Her thoughts drifted to the leviathans. Those enormous animals. The one in particular that had tried to communicate with them. I wonder what he's doing now? I wonder if he's thinking about us.

Without consciously realizing it Deirdre slipped into sleep, dreaming of the leviathans, floating deep in the Jovian ocean and talking with the leviathan as normally and easily as she would speak to Andy or Max. The leviathan was telling her about himself, what it was like to live in that deep, dark sea, all the secrets of life in—

“Are you awake, Dee?”

Deirdre's eyes popped open and she saw Andy, Max, and Dorn leaning over the edge of her decompression capsule, beaming down at her. The capsule's top had been swung back. And she was breathing normal air!

“I was dreaming,” she said.

“How do you feel?” Corvus asked.

Blinking, she replied, “Okay … I think.”

Dr. Mandrill's dark, puffy face appeared between Yeager and Dorn. “Your life signs are quite good now, Ms. Ambrose,” he said, with a bright toothy smile.

“Now?” Deirdre caught his unsaid meaning. “You mean they weren't before?”

Mandrill's smile narrowed a bit. “There was some damage to the myocardium, very minor—”

“That's the heart muscle,” Yeager interjected.

“My heart?”

“Very minor damage,” Mandrill emphasized. “Caused by the pressure, of course. Stem cell therapy is repairing the damage quite nicely.”

Without asking, Deirdre began to push herself up to a sitting position. Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn all reached into the capsule to help her.

“Do you feel strong enough to stand?” Dr. Mandrill asked her.

“I … think so.”

“How do you feel, Dee?” Corvus asked.

She thought a moment, then replied, “Hungry.”

Mandrill's smile returned to full wattage. “That is a good sign! A very good sign!”

It took more than an hour of sensor scans and long lists of medical questionings, but at last Dr. Mandrill agreed that Deirdre could leave the clinic with her three friends.

“To the galley,” Yeager commanded, pointing like a general ordering a charge. “I want a real steak!”

Her legs felt a little wobbly, but Deirdre went with them toward the elevator that led up to the first wheel and the station's galley. Corvus wrapped his arm around her waist as they strode along the passageway.

“How are you guys?” Deirdre asked. “Dorn, are you okay?”

The cyborg nodded gravely. “My systems are functioning properly.”

“Andy?”

“Fine. No more headache.”

“And you, Max?”

Yeager frowned. “Lumbar stenosis. I've had it for years, from what the medics say. Didn't really bother me until we got squeezed by the pressure down there.”

“Is it all right now?” Deirdre asked.

“It aches. Mandrill says they can work it out with microsurgery.”

As they entered the elevator cab, Deirdre looked into each of their faces. “Then we're all okay?”

“Yep.”

“Pretty much.”

“I'll be fine,” Yeager said, “once I tear into that steak.”

DEBRIEFING

To Deirdre's surprise, Grant Archer was standing in the passageway when the elevator doors opened at the top wheel.

With an expectant grin on his neatly bearded face, he asked the four of them, “Are you ready for your debriefing?”

“Debriefing?” Corvus asked. “Now?”

“Yes, it has to be now,” Archer said, starting along the passageway.

“Can't we eat first?” Deirdre pleaded.

“Yeah,” said Yeager. “I'm hungry.”

Dorn said calmly, “Debriefing is best immediately after the mission, of course, but we haven't had any solid food in days.”

Archer said, “Well, I don't know…” But he was grinning even more widely than earlier, and Deirdre saw a twinkle in his eyes that she had never seen before.

Feeling confused, she walked with the men along the passageway and quickly realized that they were approaching the galley. Deirdre glanced at her wristwatch and saw that it was midafternoon; the galley would be closed. They'd have to settle for prepackaged snacks from the dispensers.