Cosmonaut Keep (35 page)

The reflection of the starship's lights smeared across the water like spilt petrol on a puddle. Up close, it was too vast to be strange. It could have been one of the factory ships or the bulk carriers in the harbor, apart from its size, which dwarfed all of them. Water lapped its sides, but it definitely was not floating; if it had been, Gregor vaguely thought, it would have had to be lower down, with a greater displacement. The fields smoothed the sea around it, replacing the waves and swell with complex racing ripples, and made hair prickle and ears hum.

Above the hull's overhang, the occasional skiff flitted in or out of long, narrow rectangular openings, their lens-shapes flashing reflections of the lights within. At one end -- whether fore or aft Gregor could not guess -- a slanted, rounded opening on the lower side gaped like a mouth, partly in the sea and partly just above it. The water around it and below it was brightly lit, greenish, swirling with kraken whose full-spectrum chromatophore communications sent flickering rainbow flashes through the upper levels of the water.

Their own point of entry was more modest: a wide doorway in the lower curve of the hull, with a pontoon of wood and old rubber tires and tubes moored to its sill. The boatman throttled back the petrol engine, hove to and made fast, and the two saurs and four humans climbed off the boat.

"You'll wait for us?" said Marcus, as he paid for the outward journey.

"I'm not going anywhere," the boatman assured them, settling back in the stern and firing up a smoke.

They walked along the swaying planks, Elizabeth and Gregor more confidently than the rest, and stepped over the high threshold into the ship.

Elizabeth glanced downward as they entered, nudged Gregor.

"Barnacles," she said. He grinned back at her.

A young crewman sitting on the mooring, reading a book, glanced up and nodded as they arrived. Behind him, a large receiving-bay, planked with wood and slopping with seawater, was almost filled with crates. Marcus led them past the crewman and turned right, into a corridor along the side of the ship, in the direction of the circular opening they'd passed in the boat.

"We're all related here," he explained, over his shoulder. "Don't stand much on ceremony. This way."

There was no other way. The corridor went on and on, for hundreds of meters, or so it felt. White-painted metal plates with big rivets, caged electric lights overhead, the occasional hatch on their left, and bulkheads every ten meters or so. They might have been in the bowels of any large ship. Or an airship built of steel, Gregor thought, this corridor passing along the space between the outer and inner skins.

After about five minutes they reached the end of the corridor, and stepped out onto a wide, wet metal shelf that rang under their feet. Three saurs stood at a railing about ten meters in front of them. Beyond it, the opening to the sea lay like a small lake, about a hundred meters across, lit from below and from the sides as though for some extravagant festivity. Two krakens floated there, their twenty-meter tentacles extended. From that lake, on their left, a channel fifteen meters wide ran back into the interior of the ship. The sides of the vessel curved up around the pool, to meet a convex floor of glass high above it. Above the glass other lights shone, and two other krakens swam, among darting shoals of fish and drifting weeds. From the far side of that gigantic aquarium, a glass column extended down to beneath the far edge of the pool. Inside the column, a lift -- or the piston of a pump -- was gliding slowly upward, carrying a kraken holding a vertical position, its tentacles curled to its head, its mantle rippling in powerful pulses.

"That," said Marcus, pointing upward, "is the navigator's cabin and bridge, and this is his private mess-hall, where he meets and entertains his guests. Channels and sluices of seawater connect it to other parts of the ship."

He indicated the channel beside them, and then led the way to the railing. Leaning over it, Gregor found himself looking into the largest pair of eyes he'd ever seen. Even thirty-odd meters away, they still seemed uncomfortably close. The thought of the size and complexity of the brain that must lie behind them was even more disturbing to contemplate; apart from the gods,
Architeuthys extraterrestris sapiens
was the largest intelligent species, and almost certainly the largest intelligence, that humanity had ever encountered.

It was also, considered merely as an animal, frighteningly large. The thought that it was a mollusc was not especially comforting.

"Let us consult our navigator," said Lydia.

"How do you know which one it is?" Gregor asked.

"We have to ask," said Lydia. She spoke to one of the ship's saurs, who led them over to the corner between the main pool and the channel where a sloping display-screen and control-panel was mounted on the railing. His long fingers danced across the panel, and complex patterns of light flowed on the screen.

While the saur was doing this, Marcus leaned over the railing and pointed downward. When Gregor and Elizabeth leaned over, too, they could see a much-larger version of the screen, about four meters by seven, shimmering directly below them in the water and obviously repeating the patterns displayed on the screen above. One of the krakens had sunk beneath the surface, and after a minute or two resurfaced, facing in the opposite direction, its tentacles away from them and its broad back toward them. The eyes regarded them as before.

Patterns of light played briefly across its back.

The saur at the screen turned to them.

"That is our navigator."

"Well, that's lucky," said Lydia. She gestured to Salasso. "Please ask your question, as you wish, in your own language. Tharanack will translate it -- and any answers -- into ours, and Voronar here will translate to and from the language of light."

Salasso stepped up and asked his question. Voronar recoiled slightly, glancing over at Lydia and Marcus as though appealing for support. They both nodded firmly. The saur bowed again over the panel, his fingers unsteady at their task.

"Salasso has asked," said Tharanack, "whether the navigators appointed by the gods know if the gods would be angered, and if they themselves would feel at all offended if some of the, ah, hominidae were to take it upon themselves to guide ships between the stars."

The effect of the question, once Varonar had transcribed it into the colorful ideoglyphs and displayed it on the underwater screen, was like lighting a fuse to start a fireworks display. The krakens in the pool, and others now visible in the sea beneath, and those in the overhead aquarium, burst almost simultaneously into rapid-fire exchanges of racing, flashing colored light.

Gregor felt Elizabeth's arm clasp his waist, and clasped hers in response, but more firmly. He felt that they needed to cling to each other to remain on their feet. Lydia and Marcus and the saurs were gazing at the display with almost as much amazement.

"It's rare to see anything like this," said Lydia. "So long, and so intense. The volume of information being exchanged must be enormous."

Eventually, after about five minutes, the lights died down and the navigator's body darkened. Then, quite slowly, a much simpler series of patterns scrolled across his back. Varonar began to speak, and Tharanack translated into English.

" 'The gods are all around us, and care little of such things. It is their felicity to contemplate the universe as it is. Nothing can anger the gods which does not threaten the variety and beauty which they see in it. Others, not the gods, lifted our ancestors from the seas of Earth long ago. These others incurred the anger of the gods, and we lifted the ancestors and relatives of the saurs from the lands of Earth, to escape that anger which destroyed the others. The saurs have lifted the hominidae and other species. Recently some of the hominidae have lifted themselves, and traveled here without us and without the saurs. We must assume that the gods approved of their coming, and will approve of their further traveling.

" 'As to ourselves, we are happy to be navigators, but would be as happy to be passengers. Our home is the great ocean that spans the worlds. If we lost one specialization, we would find others. Species change, the niche remains. If the hominidae can fill our niche at a lower price, we will only gain from it, as will all the other intelligent species. Peace and trade to you.' "

Salasso spun around and embraced his two friends.

"I knew it!" he said. "I knew it!"

"It's not as simple as that," said Varonar, the translator. "The navigator just told you that he and his kind will not fight you, and neither will the gods. But they will compete. And so will we."

Gregor smiled at him over Salasso's head.

"Peace and trade," he said.

He gently disengaged himself from the saur and from Elizabeth, and stepped back and looked at Marcus and Lydia and their crewmates.

"We have a navigator to find," he said.

Marcus said good-bye with a swift handshake and a thin smile, Lydia with a sudden kiss. Then they walked with Tharanack back along the long corridor to the floating pier and the waiting boat.

Tharanack parted from them at the end of the quay.

"I will take the navigator's judgement to Delavar," he said. "By morning it will be all over town. By noon, all over the world. Nothing will change. The humans still have to work things out for themselves."

"Of course," said Salasso. "But at least they will not face ignorant opposition."

"We may hope so," said Tharanack, and left.

Salasso waited until the peacekeeper had disappeared in the crowd, then struck a pose like one of those assumed by the saur dancers. After a moment he stood straight again, and looked away as though embarrassed.

"That was undignified," he said. "But still, it is good news. Better news than Tharanack imagines, but he will soon find out. He'll repeat the judgement word for word, and others of us who are not so concerned about the question of humans will hear a different message in the answer, a message about our past."

"What message?" asked Gregor.

Salasso's nictitating membranes flickered.

"That the gods were not angry with us in the deep past. They never were angry with us, but with others. This is very good news. I feel like climbing onto a roof and shouting it. I will tell it to everyone I meet."

"Don't," said Elizabeth. "Unless you want to end up nailed to a cross."

"Your pardon?"

"Thrown from a cliff," said Gregor, making a guess at the likely mode of saur martyrdom.

"Such a thing has not happened in many thousands of years."

Aha.

"But I'll consider what you say." Salasso dismissed the matter. "Meanwhile we have to decide what to do next. Have you found any of the old crew?"

They told him about Volkov.

The saur's eyes narrowed.

"So Marcus, and possibly others from the ship, are searching for them too. That is alarming."

"It is indeed," said Gregor. "How come the merchants know about the First Crew at all?"

"I told Bishlayan, back at Kyohvic, that some of them were alive. She knew that Athranal, our old teacher, would know where they were. So she took a skiff to Saur City One en route, and asked her."

"Did Athranal tell you this?"

"No," said Salasso. "Bishlayan told me tonight."

Gregor stared at the saur, then shrugged.

"They're probably just hoping to cut them some kind of deal. After all, the original crew must know how to navigate."

"Cut them a deal and cut us out?" said Elizabeth.

"Quite possibly," said Salasso. "I think they may also want them for something much more valuable -- the knowledge of the long life."

"They may not have it," said Gregor. "They have the long life, all right, but that doesn't mean they know how to give it to anyone else."

"They don't need to know," said Salasso. "They carry the information in their bodies. And if there is one place in the human societies that could extract that information, it is in the academies of Nova Babylonia."

Gregor was getting impatient hanging around.

"I doubt it," he said. "Remember what Esias de Tenebre said? That our lab was more advanced than the academies of Nova Babylonia? Let's just go back to the Hot Squid and find Volkov."

"Yes," said Salasso, "and as quickly as possible. You said Volkov arranged to meet Marcus at nine tomorrow. We have to meet him first, or we'll be left out in the cold."

"Marcus could offer an inducement to the old crew that would be enough to make them cut us out?"

"Oh yes," said Salasso. "He could indeed."

But back at the Hot Squid, Volkov and his companions were nowhere to be found. By the time they'd checked all the other likely places along the front, it was well after midnight.

"Let us try to intercept him in the morning," said Salasso. "In the meantime, let us return to our lodging and go to bed."

Elizabeth and Gregor looked at him and at each other.

"What a good idea," said Gregor.

"Yes," said Salasso. "We all need some sleep."

"Yes," murmured Elizabeth, as they followed him out, "but not all of us will get any."

18

____________

Social Engineering

I floated along a dim-lit corridor, propelling myself with occasional touches of my hands or feet against the sides. The green fronds of plants now and then brushed against me. In the spex I kept the view constantly shifting back and forth between the reality in front of me and a three-dimensional diagram of the layout lifted from the station library. The only sounds I could hear were the constant sigh of the air supply, and my own breathing.

Over the past two days I'd explored the station like a scuba diver sounding out an undersea cave system. I didn't make it obvious -- whenever anyone met me, I was plausibly on my way somewhere, or plausibly lost. I was on call all the time, and often had to visit the fabs, in real or virtual space, to help sort out some discrepancy between the plan and the practicalities of construction. The rest of the time my work consisted of rehashing the procedure we'd gone through for the craft, this time for the second project: the engine.