“She’s asleep.”
Karlstad’s whisper cut through Grant’s inner turmoil. He blinked, turned to look at Egon, two consoles away.
It took a few heartbeats for Grant to remember where he was, who he was. With a shudder that was part lost joy, part desperate resolution, he forced the ship’s sensations to a back corner of his mind.
“She’s sleeping,” Karlstad repeated, hiking a thumb past his shoulder.
Grant saw that Krebs’s eyes were closed. She was bobbing gently up by the overhead, still linked but apparently sound asleep. What dreams must she have, connected to the complete ship the way she is? Grant asked himself.
“Now’s the time,” Karlstad whispered, tapping at his console screens.
“Don’t do it!” Grant hissed.
Karlstad shot him a pitying look, his fingers still playing on the touchscreens.
LEVIATHAN
Starving, dying, Leviathan drifted in the cold empty abyss high above its usual level in the ocean. It took an effort of will to hold its parts together, to prevent them from spontaneously disintegrating.
We must stay together, Leviathan kept repeating. If we break apart each component of us will die, whether we bud or not. We will become food for the scavengers who wait below in the hot darkness of the depths. Together we might survive. If we can stay together long enough we might find food.
But the ocean was cold and barren at this level. Legends pictured monsters up in this frigid emptiness, slithering beasts that preyed on each other and any of Leviathan’s kind foolish enough to drift this high.
Leviathan thought that the legends were mere tales, stories flashed by elders to frighten young ones away from climbing too far from the safe levels of the sea.
It is time for us to return to the warmer region, Leviathan knew. But it could not force its flotation members to contract. They no longer had the strength to expel the gas that filled them. It took energy to make their muscles contract, and starving members had no energy to work with.
Cold. Cold and empty. Leviathan could sense its control of its outer members begin to fade. A unit of armored hide peeled away spontaneously. Instead of the promised joy of budding, Leviathan felt a wave of uncontrollable grief wash through its mind. We are disintegrating. We will all die here, alone, never to bud, never to generate new life.
Unbidden, three of the flagella members broke loose, fluttering mindlessly in the frigid current. Leviathan realized that the end was near. Once the vital organ members dissociated, Leviathan’s existence would be finished, without even the knowledge that its parts would generate new buds, create new members that would associate into offspring.
The Symmetry would be disrupted. The eternal cycle of life budding new life would end. It was not meant to be so, Leviathan knew. It had failed to maintain the Symmetry.
A sense organ shuddered, then began to quiver violently, the first step in its dissociation. There was nothing Leviathan could do to prevent it. Not now.
And yet…
The sense organ suddenly stopped fluttering and became still. It flashed a picture to Leviathan’s brain. A monster. A long, flat, many-armed creature was quietly slithering toward Leviathan, grasping its dissociated members in its wriggling tentacles and pushing them into a circular, snapping mouth ringed with sharp teeth.
For a flash of a second Leviathan thought its sensormember was hallucinating, hysterical on the edge of starvation and dissociation. But no, other sensors-members flashed the same picture. The creature was huge, almost as large as Leviathan itself, and it was nearly transparent, difficult to see until it was very close. It glided through the sea with hardly a ripple, making it impossible to detect at long range.
It was one of the mindless beasts that the old legends warned of. It was trailing Leviathan, gobbling up its members as they dissociated and drifted helplessly in the cold abyss.
It was heading for Leviathan itself, tentacles weaving, round tooth-ringed mouth snapping open and shut, open and shut.
Leviathan’s first instinct was to flee. But in its weakened condition, could it outrun this scavenger? The monster slowed as it approached Leviathan, stretched out two of its longest tentacles and barely touched Leviathan’s hide.
Pain! Leviathan had never felt an electric shock before, but the jangling, burning pain of the monster’s touch made Leviathan recoil instinctively. The monster pursued leisurely, in no hurry to do battle with Leviathan. It seemed content to wait until more of Leviathan’s members dissociated. It was more of a scavenger than a predator, Leviathan thought.
Weak, almost helpless, Leviathan studied the monster. Its main body was a broad flat sheet, undulating like jelly. That gaping mouth was on the underside; its top was studded with domelike projections that must be sensory organs. Dozens of tentacles weaved and snaked all around the central body’s periphery. Two of them were much longer than the others, and ended in rounded knobs.
Can all the tentacles cause pain when they touch? Leviathan wondered. Cautiously it backed away from the creature. The monster followed at the same pace, keeping its distance, waiting patiently.
A new thought arose in Leviathan’s mind. This monster could be food. The old legends pictured these beasts eating one another when they had no other food available. It wants to eat my members. Perhaps we could eat it.
But first, Leviathan knew, it would have to kill the monster. And to do that, it would have to avoid those painful tentacles.
If Leviathan had not been weakened and starving, there would be no contest. Its speed and strength would have made short work of this gossamer creature. Except for those pain-dealing tentacles. We must avoid them.
Leviathan conceived a plan. It was part desperation, part cunning. It called for a sacrifice.
Deliberately, Leviathan willed three more of its flagella members to dissociate. Faithful, mindless, they peeled away from Leviathan’s body and began propelling themselves down toward the warmer depths.
The monster immediately dived after them, so fast that Leviathan realized its plan could not possibly work. But there was nothing else to do. It dived after the beast.
The monster’s two longer tentacles touched the first of the flagella, instantly paralyzing it. They passed the immobilized member to the shorter tentacles so quickly that their motions seemed a blur to Leviathan. The tentacles, in turn, relayed the inert flagellum to that snapping, hideous mouth.
The two other flagella were instinctively fleeing, diving blindly toward the warmth of the lower levels of the sea. The monster pursued them single-mindedly. Which gave Leviathan its opportunity.
With its last reserves of strength, Leviathan dove after the beast and rammed into it. Waves of concussion rippled through the jellylike body of the monster; its tentacles writhed in pain.
Quickly Leviathan fastened as many of its mouth parts as possible onto that broad, flat body. The monster’s longer tentacles snaked back and stung Leviathan again and again, searching blindly for the parts where the armored hide members had dissociated and the more vulnerable inner organs were exposed.
Despite the pain that flared through it, Leviathan tore through the monster’s body, its mouth parts crushing the flimsy beast. The monster’s tentacles went limp at last and Leviathan fed on its dead body. It tasted awful, but it was food.
Feeling stronger despite the strangely acid sensation simmering through its digestive organs, Leviathan resumed its course around the great storm, heading for the deeper waters where—it hoped—it would find plentiful food and others of its own kind.
Leviathan had a tale to portray to them.