Her cheeks flushed with shame, and she said, “Oh fuck. I was trying to show respect. I thought I was being careful.”
—You were asserting dominance.
53.
Lam flooded their displays with hundreds of clips of sunfish interacting with each other.
—Smaller, less intelligent sunfish defer to their strongest members by elevating themselves onto walls or ceilings except during work such as construction, incubating eggs, or attending growth and memorization lessons.
O’Neal nodded. “They’ve maintained that dead-end because going down there is a privilege,” he said.
—Yes.
“What should I have done?” Vonnie blurted. “I couldn’t have held onto the ceiling every time I met them, but if I’d dug my gloves into the wall…”
“Von,” Metzler said.
“If I’d climbed higher…”
“Vonnie, don’t. Any of us would have acted the same.”
“I’m not sure I get it,” O’Neal said. “The top of any cave or fissure must be the better position strategically.”
—In Earth gravity, yes, but the minimal gravity on Europa negates much of any tactical advantage.
“How many times have we seen them pull the roof down on an enemy?”
—They’re capable of shoving up the floor or driving chunks from a wall. Remember, the battles we’ve witnessed were waged against Vonnie’s suit or mecha.
“They thought we were challenging them for their territory or their leadership,” Metzler said.
—Yes.
“But why are they using ‘Top Clan’ as part of their tribe names?” Vonnie said. “If up is bad and down is good…”
—Our interpretation of ‘Top Clan’ was mistranslated. The proximity to the surface is accurate, but not the value. ‘Top’ isn’t a claim of superiority. It’s a name given to outcasts and refugees. There has been war inside Europa for nine thousand years. These are the losers.
“Have you heard them talk about the larger breed? What do they call them?” O’Neal said.
—The smaller sunfish refer to the larger breed as ‘Mid Clans.’
“‘Mid,’ not ‘Low’?”
—There appear to be other lifeforms beneath the Mid Clans, either more successful tribes or different creatures altogether. From the beginning, we’ve dealt with the worst of the sunfish. The Top Clans were founded by the undesirables who escaped being put to death or the unluckiest, least talented sunfish on hunting parties who lost their way.
“Some of those hunters would have been cut off by geysers or quakes,” Metzler said. “Their survival indicates a high level of competence.”
—Yes. Without a steady infusion of robust breeding pairs, the Top Clans might have devolved into a wholly primitive state. But the healthiest, most intelligent sunfish always fight to stay below.
“We’ll have to get through the savages to reach the smart ones,” Johal said. “The carvings might have been left as warnings for barbarian sunfish to keep away.”
“Warnings, or invitations to join,” O’Neal said. “Some of the carvings read like laws and philosophy, remember? If outsiders were able to learn and repeat those ideals, maybe they were allowed into the empire.”
“We’ve seen a few clues that under specific circumstances, the sunfish help other tribes,” Metzler said. He glanced at Vonnie. “The balls of saliva and feces your team found at the top of the ice — those pellets were saturated with biochem like the females emit during their growth lessons. The empire might have seeded the ice with vaults. Maybe they did it for themselves after the volcanic upheaval decimated everything around them. Every vault was a life preserver to help devolving sunfish hold onto their fertility and their intelligence.”
“But they never used it, not the one we found,” Vonnie said.
“Maybe they lost track of it,” O’Neal said. “They couldn’t reach it or they didn’t recognize it when they did.”
“A starving tribe would eat the pellets,” Metzler said. “It works either way. Intelligent sunfish would understand at least the gist of the carvings — and stupid, hungry sunfish would expose themselves to the biochem by tearing into the carvings to feed. Maybe it would help them.”
“We can synthesize those pheromones and anything else they need,” Vonnie said.
“It would take generations to restore their intelligence even if we had the moral right,” Johal said. “Earth will be interested in leaving spies and probes among this tribe, but there may be civilizations further down.”
“We can’t abandon them,” Vonnie said. “Koebsch?”
He didn’t answer. He was locked into his conversations with Earth, so she recorded an alert to his station.
“Koebsch, you need to tell Berlin! Some of our most basic assumptions are wrong. Even the name I gave them, that was as dumb as Columbus deciding the Native Americans were Indians. They don’t care about the sun. They’ll always want to go deeper. They think we’re coming from beneath them, not above.”
“They’re afraid we want to displace them,” Metzler said.
“Yes. If we can’t—”
“I’m here,” Koebsch said, appearing on the group feed. “Good news. Our prime minister is in talks with officials in China, the U.S., and Brazil. A lot of people are impressed with your sims. We have orders to make an attempt to communicate.”
“Thank you, Koebsch,” Metzler said as Vonnie raised her fists in celebration.
“Lam, when will they send out hunters?” Koebsch said. “I’d like to arrange it so you’re with three intelligent sunfish or a small group that’s mostly intelligent.”
—Tom often pairs with Charlotte, who finds him compliant males for construction work outside the colony. He’s partial to members of his former tribe. If I demonstrate loyalty and athleticism, he may choose me.
“I have a better idea,” Vonnie said. “The best sunfish get smarter as they’re groomed by the females, and cooperative behavior is rewarded, correct?”
—Roger that.
His mem files included radar sweeps of the surrounding ice and rock. Vonnie scrolled along the trail Tom’s group had taken to reach the new colony.
“Lam can pretend to remember the scent of eels a few kilometers east from the colony,” she said. “He should ask Tom and the intelligent females to bring a team of scouts. That’s how we’ll get them away from the tribe.”
“There aren’t any eels,” Koebsch said. “What if they kill him for wasting their time?”
“They’ll find something better than eels.”
54.
Six hours later, the ESA crew were back at their stations, watching datastreams of modified sonar and X-ray.
Lam was on the move. He sprinted through a fissure with Tom and six other sunfish, reinvestigating the path they’d taken from their old colony.
The tribe had napped for three hundred and twenty minutes almost to the dot, a peculiar number which Lam’s mem files showed they repeated often. Metzler noted that 5.33 hours was a sixteenth of Europa’s orbital period around Jupiter — and the ocean tides and the bulging in the ice were caused by Europa’s position relative to Jupiter and the sun. Did that mean the tribes were aware of the sun after all, even if their awareness was subliminal or poorly understood?
There were no days or nights inside the frozen sky, much less weather or seasons. It seemed unlikely they’d invented a calendar. Nonetheless, they seemed to have developed a rest-wake-rest-and-wake pattern closely integrated with the physical properties of their world much like lifeforms on Earth had developed biorhythms associated with day and night.