Cachalot

  "Four thousand meters." Merced hovered near Cora's shoulders, studying the console.

  An incredible ribbon of pale blue and green luminescence spasmed a path past the thick ports. It seemed endless, though she estimated its length at about twenty-five meters. It was perhaps five centimeters thick save near the bulging jaws that were filled with dozens of thin needle teeth.

  Star-dotted balloons drifted by, avoiding relatives with stomachs larger than mouths. Others possessed more teeth than seemed reasonable for such small creatures, while a couple mooned at the sub with eyes larger than the rest of then- bodies.

  At forty-five hundred meters Cora thought she heard distant antique church bells. At forty-eight hundred meters the ringing had become a steady hum. At five thousand meters it was as if she had people seated on either side of her, whispering frantic nonsense into her ears. The sounds were not words, nor were they spoken by people.

  "Trying to control us, whoever they are," Merced declared. "Irritating, but nothing more. Like listening to loud music for too long."

  "I agree." Mataroreva eased back on his controls. "It's not working for them, though."

  Five thousand six hundred meters.

  "We're practically on bottom here," Mataroreva grumbled. "Our scan's been omnidirectional since we started down. Even if they were hiding in some cave or beneath an overhang, we'd have detected them by now. There's nothing here."

  "That's right," Cora agreed readily, sounding tired. "Whoever they are, they must have fled when they realized they couldn't control us. Might as well surface and try another place."

  "I fear you are both correct." Hwoshien was understandably disappointed. "We gave it a good try. Perhaps other baleens can relocate them for us."

  Mataroreva reached to adjust a control to begin their upward climb. Just before he fingered it, a small hand locked on his wrist. He looked back in surprise at Merced. The little scientist wore a very puzzled expression.

  "Wait a minute, now. Don't you think this retreat is a bit premature? I'd hardly say we're practically on the bottom. We've another several thousand meters below us. Let's go at least another thousand before we give up here."

  Mataroreva regarded him as one would an idiot child. "I said that we're nearly down."

  Merced continued to eye him uncertainly. "'Nearly'?" He used his free hand to indicate the computer picture of the bottom and the figures nearby. "We're at fifty-six hundred. Scanner shows this abyssal canyon drops to eight thousand in places. We're only a little over two-thirds of the way down."

  Mataroreva sounded distinctly irritated. "You heard what I said about our omnidirectional scanners. I say we've already done the best we could. We'd only be wasting time here if we go farther. Better to try another spot."

  Merced looked at Cora. "You feel the same way?"

  "Of course!" She had never liked the researcher.

  His present inexplicable obstinacy increased that dislike.

  "And you, and you?"

  Rachael nodded solemnly. Hwoshien said, "We've done as well as could be expected. If there ever was anything here, it's obviously gone now. We frightened it off."

  Merced let go of Mataroreva, moved carefully toward the rear of the chamber. Cora wondered if his shy control was beginning to crack. She found herself looking around for some kind of weapon.

  " 'If there ever was anything here'?" Merced said, echoing the Commissioner's accent as well as his words. "Not only was there something, but I'll wager it's still present."

  "What the hell are you raving about?" Mataroreva started to get up from his seat. "Listen, I don't know what's going on inside your head, Pucara, but maybe you'd better-"

  From an inside pocket Merced produced a very tiny but efficient-looking gun. "These darts are miniatures of the ones Hazaribagh's people threatened us with, but they'll still put a grown man flat on his back. I'd rather not shoot anyone."

  His right eye was twitching slightly and he looked nervous and worried. What his aghast companions could not know was that the worry stemmed not from Mataroreva's near charge. His nervousness came from something that screamed along his nerves and hammered at his brain, trying to get inside. It promised to soothe him, that voice did, to relax him and take all the burden of the past weeks and throw it blissfully aside.

  "I didn't think you were just a biologist," Cora said tightly. "Though you had me believing that for a little while."

  "I am a biologist," Merced shot back at her.

  To Cora's pleasure, it was Rachael who next spoke angrily to him. "I saw what you did when we first landed here, back at the dock where the toglut attacked us!" Merced's eyes darted quickly back toward Mataroreva, who had moved as if to rise again. "I saw the gun you didn't use then. But I trusted you."

  "And I saw," Mataroreva said quietly, "the hold you used on that man on Hazaribagh's ship, the way you fought." He shook his head. "You don't learn to react that way by making it a hobby. Only a professional works that smoothly."

  Rachael's voice was filled with disgust. "To think that I've been all over you since we landed here!"

  Cora gaped at her daughter.

  "It's true, Mother. I thought for a while he was a pretty nice guy. You know, at first I could hardly get him to touch me, much less anything else." Cora tried to speak, couldn't. She had suspected. But to bear it put so bluntly, from her daughter's own lips...

  "The fighting I couldn't conceal." Merced gasped the words out, emphasizing the first syllable of each as if fighting merely to speak. He glanced at Rachael. "As for the other, I'm sorry. Sometimes it helps to mix business with pleasure."

  Cora slumped back in her seat, overwhelmed by the double revelation of daughter and colleague. "So you've been tied in with these thought-manipulators all along. You were in on the destruction of all the towns, even Vai'oire. Now I can see why you want to go on. Near the bottom, beyond any hope of rescue, you'll lock us in and leak the air supply or something after your friends come to save you. It will be assumed we were all lost. What I can't figure out is how your people managed to infiltrate Commonwealth security to have you, their operative, assigned to this mission."

  "No one has infiltrated Commonwealth security." He was trying to watch them all at once. Under the present circumstances, even Rachael might jump him. He didn't want to have to shoot anyone.

  Instruments protruding from the wall pressed into his back. He forced himself against them. The physical pain helped override some of the mental anguish he was battling.

  "I said I was a biologist. I wasn't lying. I also happen to be a Commonwealth agent. Security assigned me to this to hunt for exactly the kind of infiltration you're talking about," he explained to Cora. He looked anxiously at Hwoshien. "He knows that. He's temporarily forgotten. Something's making him forget."

  The others glanced at the Commissioner. Once secure and serene, he now appeared to be wrestling with his own thoughts.

  "I-I... confusing. I don't know..."

  "Never mind. I don't need your confirmation now."

  "No-wait," Hwoshien burst out. "It's true. I think... yes, it is true," he added more assuredly. "I do remember you now, Colonel Merced." He looked at his companions.

  "Remember when you first arrived I explained that you would explore the biological possibilities and others would work on the chance that humans might be involved?" He nodded toward the still wary Merced. The muzzle of the gun had not dropped. "He is one of those 'others.'"

  "Why make us remain down here, though?" a very confused Mataroreva wondered. Suddenly life had grown complicated, thinking an effort. His thoughts were slow and heavy, much like those of the fins. Uncontrollable opposing masses warred inside his head. "Why stay anyway? Why not go up and start over again? At least this time we'll know exactly what everyone's here for." Again his hand moved for the controls.

  Merced gestured convulsively with the gun. "Touch that and I'll shoot, Captain. And these darts will put you out permanently. I like you. I'd rather not have to do that.
"

  Slowly the big Polynesian's palm moved away from the board. "But why? What's wrong with beginning again?"

  "In the first place, I'm not sure that's necessary," Merced said carefully. "In the second-you really think you're going to send us up, don't you?"

  "What else?"

  "You were going to send us to the surface?"

  "Of course. I-"

  "Take another look, Captain. A close one. But don't move your hands." Mataroreva hesitated, and wasn't sure why he did so. "Go on, look," Merced insisted. "Are you afraid?"

  That challenge appeared to break the lethargy that had come over the submersible's pilot. Like a man in slow motion, he turned back toward the console, keeping his hands from the controls.

  The switch his hand had almost flicked was not the one to drop the ballast-That switch was close by, but not close enough to explain the near error. Instead, his fingers had drifted above a double red switch protected by a snap cover. This was the emergency release used to disengage the gas cylinders in the event of a potentially explosive leak.

  Had he followed through and thrown the double switch, they would have had no way to return to the surface and would in fact have immediately plunged to the ooze flooring the canyon, eight thousand meters below normal air and pressure. Nothing could raise them against that gigantic force save another, similar submersible. None waited aboard the suprafoil above. By the time a second diving craft could be prepared and airshipped out from Mou'anui, the occupants of the submersible would be dead from lack of air. Artificial gills such as those employed in gelsuit masks could not operate at these depths.

  The viscous miasma that had been dulling Cora's mind was abruptly shattered. She looked at her companions as if they had surprised her from a deep sleep, saw that they were regarding her with the same bemused expressions. Only then did Merced relax. But he still held the gun.

  "A very sophisticated bit of mind control, this," he told them. "Contradiction finally broke its grip, just as it did with the surviving baleens that led us here. It was reimposed and finally killed them, but I think we'll be able to stand it better now. I think it varies in intensity and effectiveness proportional to the distance between projector and subject, which says to me that our quarry is still here, close by, just as the baleens suggested." He was getting angry now, sounding nothing like the shy biologist of weeks gone by.

  "This sort of thing is banned by every related Commonwealth law and Church edict. Either someone's managed to break those laws or else we're f acing those who don't care about them. Like the AAnn, or another hostile race that could benefit from Commonwealth expulsion from this world.

  "The controls were put on you all so subtly that even though you were talking about such controls and their possible manipulators, you weren't aware it was actually happening. When you all suddenly agreed that the search was useless and that it was time to return to the surface, I knew what was taking place."

  "How come," Cora wondered, terribly embarrassed at having been so thoroughly invaded and directed, "you weren't controlled?"

  "Even though such devices are illegal, the service still trains us to deal with them. It's a matter of mental gymnastics, a reflex action that commenced working even before I knew what was happening." He sounded a little embarrassed himself. "If there had been a fight,

  I would have risked killing all of you. There's more at stake here now than just thousands of additional lives.

  "I regret having had to expose myself, but at this point I don't suppose it makes much difference." He looked briefly at Rachael and said in an entirely different tone of voice, "Except maybe to you.

  "Do you still feel we should return to the surface? That we're wasting our time here?"

  "No. Of course not," Cora said, shocked that she could ever have thought otherwise. "They must still be hiding here. You say that distance governs the effectiveness of the controls and contradiction breaks them down?"

  "That, and awareness that they exist. Especially after you've been exposed to and then freed from their effect. That's part of our training, along with resisting drugs that have the same effect."

  "I've got something here." Mataroreva had turned his attention back to the instruments. "I suppose it might have been here all along, and whatever's out there blocked it out in my mind?"

  "Possible," Merced agreed.

  Mataroreva moved to adjust the controls, paused, and glanced over his shoulder.

  "It's okay." Merced lowered the weapon. "The fact that you hesitated is further proof that you're your own self again. What kind of submersible is it: mobile or a permanent installation?"

  "Neither," Mataroreva said in a curious voice. "It's organic."

  "Another ribbon fish?" Cora asked, referring to the luminescent giant they had encountered earlier in their descent.

  "No, I don't think so."

  The object continued slowly toward the neutrally buoyant craft. At first it was a distant pinpoint, glowing like a star in the night. The surrounding deep-sea life scattered rapidly and faded from sight Only breathing sounded inside the submersible.

  The star grew larger, split, subdivided into many different stars. All the while it continued to grow, illuminating the darkness as it neared, growing massive beyond expectation, beyond belief. It became so bright that they could see the last lingering sea life race, terrified, past the windows of the submersible, their transparent skins glassine envelopes holding highly pressurized fluids and organs.

  The huge bulk grew beyond imagination, beyond reasonable thought. Cora wondered if Sam had been wrong, if they were being challenged by a machine, albeit no submersible she had ever dreamed of.

  But the instruments were not awed. They did not lie. If the object was a machine, it was made not of metal or stelamic or duralloy but of flesh. As it approached the final meters, it assumed some of the aspects of a machine. It was easier to think of it that way; as a vast, organic machine. It was perfectly spherical. Delicate fluttering cilia in the millions lined much of the epidermis and propelled it rotiferlike through the water. The outer, jellylike shell was perfectly transparent. Only its pale yellow glow revealed its presence.

  Inside, they could make out a veritable metropolis of organs, immensely complex structures that belied that outwardly simplistic shape. There were growths moving freely in strange paths, others swinging like a pendulum, still others rotating about one another or some unseen central axis. Each possessed its own distinct color: faint pink, light green, purple, rose, and more. Most were light pastels. Save for the purple, the only deep colors were occasional sparks of crimson or orange that drifted around the multitude of other specialized internal structures like gem dust in a colloid.

  The headache Cora had once experienced returned, stronger than ever. It thudded remorselessly on her brain, threatening to pulp her skull. She fought back, determined that mere bone would give way before consciousness again surrendered.

  Outside floated something larger than any dozen whales, a ball of something unknown that approached starship-size. It was bright as day around them, for all that they hovered more than five and a half kilometers below the surface.

  Merced, studying readouts, swallowed and managed to say, "According to the scanners, there are six of them out there. Of course, we can only see this one."

  The vast lagoon of Mou'anui could not have held the life that surrounded them. Six creatures do not a galaxy make, Cora told herself, for all their size. She found herself fascinated rather than fearful. Before her drifted the end result of billions of years of coelenterate evolution, a collective organism of unimagined complexity.

  On Terra similar creatures had developed specialized polyps to handle such tasks as digestion, reproduction, and feeding. Why not also polyps grown for mind control, or for other unknown purposes? For all its great size, the creature appeared limited in its locomotive ability. It would need to evolve other means of defending itself. Terran coelenterates had developed specialized stinging cells to gather p
rey and defend. What could be more efficient than the ability to simply order a predator to look elsewhere?

  But ignorant predators would be easy to dissuade. Intelligent cetaceans would be more difficult to handle. Very intelligent ones like the orcas and the catodons might be impossible to control at all but short distances; and humankind, uncontrollable except when dangerously near. An aroused or aware humankind, such as Merced had been and they all were now, might prove uncontrollable under any circumstances.

  Somewhere within that line of thought, Cora suspected, lay the reason behind the manipulation of the baleens and the destruction of the floating towns. She stared into the living universe of organs. One of them, or perhaps many, must form the creature's mind.

  Then Rachael shrieked, Mataroreva cursed, and the submersible was tumbled over and over as the creature bumped into it. A second came around from behind and they began to squeeze. Mental control having apparently failed, they were resorting to a far more basic method of attack.

  A few supporting flows groaned, but the hull of formed duralloy would resist far stronger force than mere flesh, no matter the mass, could bring to bear. The creatures could not damage the submersible.

  They reacted by backing clear. Alternately fading and intensifying, the outer shell of the one before them pulsed in rapid sequence. Crimson fragments of unknown specialized function flared and raced within, a thousand living sunspots inhabiting a transparent sun. Their activity might signify anything from poor digestion to incipient sleep.

  Or it might be a reflection of something as basic and sophisticated as anger.

  Chapter XVII

  Cora picked herself off the floor, found she had suffered nothing worse than a few bruises. Here, then, was the source of the baleens' madness, here the offstage directors of organized murder.

  The headache faded and Cora and her companions received their second surprise. "CAN YOU UNDERSTAND us?"