“A fault-line,” said Rorqual. The torn ends of the tube had shifted fifty yards apart as the fault slipped. “It happened a long time ago. There are no bones here. The sea has reduced them to ions. Enter.”
Trilobite followed the lumen, checking ancient wall machines and pipers. Tenuous outlines in the scum suggested bones at a quarter of a mile from the fault. These became gelatinous masses at a mile. He found the first skull two miles further. With these figures, Rorqual calculated the date of the accident from the diffusion gradients.
“Artifacts?”
He ploughed into the black scum. scooping and filtering. Solids were raked back into his body disc, where they were scanned and massed. “Gold.”
“A dental filling?”
He turned it over, sending optics. “No. It is too large. The outer surface is decorated—a symbol—a goat.” Other gold cubes were collected from among the bones. Other symbols indexed: crab, fish, bull, lion…
“Emblems of caste and rank,” explained Rorqual.
He gathered other objects: buttons and loop fasteners, tools, and small cases with organoid circuits. One of the circuits captured energy from his probe. “It awakens, but it has no memory at all.”
“It is simply a communicator—too primitive to help us. Bring it along.”
Trilobite felt heavy, sluggish, when he returned to the surface. Dawn found Trilobite floating belly up in mid-ocean, sunning his ventral plates. His mind rested as his strength returned. More weeks of searching brought him to a strange shoreline: green-black mountains hidden in mists. The thirty-fathom shelf was covered with living domes. Many contained air pockets and hot spots. Excitedly, Trilobite darted in and out of the domes with his chromatograph, sucking air. “Man! I shall smell him—and see his footprints. Remains of his meals are everywhere.”
Rorqual trembled in her grave. “Man? Send me his image—his words.”
Trilobite found three-score domes with shrinking air pockets and studied their contents. Clay bowls, tools of wood and stone, wicker work, and carved bone.
“The raft rides high in this dome. The air pocket is small and foul. Something rots on the raft—something that was a man, but now is dead. Decay has made the dome unliveable and taints the surrounding waters.”
“Man has left these dwellings?”
“Yes, my deity. Even now the air pockets shrink and the spot grows cold.”
“Find him.”
Trilobite surfaced and rode the surf with his tail up, caudal sensors reading the shore.
“Life forms—meck. Several-ton size. Ten meters long. It is tending the vegetation. Here is the technology that means Man.”
Rorqual was not convinced. “No more than you or I. Those Garden Mecks may be tending Man’s gardens just as I toiled his sea. Those recent dome artifacts were clearly Stone Age. Where are my men?”
Trilobite’s small brain did not differentiate between races of men. He would settle for anything with two legs, anything that would give Rorqual a reason for living. Months passed without a human sighting. He cruised the coastline, occasionally venturing out to the damp sand at the high-tide line. The Agromecks filled the air with signals—signals that Rorqual translated as routine meck language. No human vocal sounds. No humour. No music.
“Could they labour for themselves?”
“Possibly, my deity. I will stay and watch this Garden.”
More days of fruitless watching. The signals from Rorqual grew weak.
The eastern sky lightened to a yellow mustard. Tide turned and foamed in over black rocks. A two-meter figure darted from the Gardens and ran along the beach—a biped carrying a lumpy sack and dashing for the incoming wall of water.
“Man!” reported Trilobite from the wave crest. “I’ve found a man—leathery skin, broad shoulders, and adult male genitalia. With furtive movements it enters the water—glancing fearfully over its shoulder. It dives. A melon surfaces.”
“Why does it flee the Gardens?”
“Unknown,” said the Trilobite. “I see the same garden machines—the Agromecks—coming out to tend the crops. There is no sign of pursuit.”
“Now don’t lose the human.”
Trilobite skipped along the waves to the floating melon. He circled and studied the bottom: sand sloping to a rocky six-fathom ledge where an air-filled dome pulsed with life. Diving, he attached his shovel-shape to the top of the dome and scanned. Two humans occupied the raft in the air pocket. They were boiling vegetables in a pot on the hot spot. One was the muscular male from the beach, the other a shaggy elder wearing a tattered robe and a pair of bulky earphones. A web of wires festooned the ceiling.
“That appears to be a listening device. Give me the aerial measurements so I can calculate its wavelength,” said Rorqual.
Using several ancient dialects, Trilobite broadcast a greeting. The old Listener pulled off his earphones and began gesturing wildly. The wet young male stood up quickly. He handed some fruit to the Listener and tied the remainder into a tight sack with a ballast stone. After sipping from the pot of hot soup, he left the dome, towing his sack and swimming strongly. The Listener hunched down under a thick layer of robes and pulled a stout spear onto his lap. He appeared to be waiting. Trilobite cast again. No answer. He ventured down the outside of the dome. Seeing his silhouette, the Listener jumped up, waving his spear menacingly.
“Go on,” encouraged Rorqual. “Your shape probably suggests danger to him. He should react differently after he hears your voice.”
Swirling and splashing, Trilobite surfaced inside the air pocket beside the raft. His resonant voice boomed from his ventral sonic membrane: “Greetings. My name is…”
The spear chinked against his right optic, driving it deeper into its socket. He retreated to the rocky bottom.
“Are you damaged?”
“Minor. A depressed lens. I can repair it.”
Rorqual’s voice trembled—from weakness and from the excitement of finding a man again: “These bipeds read like men. Tour their shelf. Find their leader and tell them of me. If they want me, I will ready myself.”
“Yes, my deity.” He did not mention the fading transmission. Their search had ended. He had succeeded. Blinking his damaged lens back into alignment, he approached the nearest dome. Two swimmers fled at his arrival. Inside he found two cubs and a wide-eyed female. A shower of pottery clanked on his dorsal plates. “I come in peace.”
The mother cried—then screamed. One of the cubs fell off the raft and settled deep in the water. He manoeuvred his disc under the infant and gently rose, putting it back on the raft, unharmed. With a squeal it scampered across the raft, dived in, and swam away. “But, I am your friend.” The remaining cub was clearly too weak from malnutrition to swim. The mother protected it with her body. Both were terrified. Trilobite backed off and checked other domes. A scant dozen water-humans lived together in this loose, starving band.
“Deity, they will not speak to me. Their strong members attack. The weak flee.”
“You are a machine. Perhaps they have reason to fear you. Offer them food from the Gardens. They are obviously in need of sustenance.”
Trilobite’s disc expanded to hold nearly a bushel of produce. He moved cautiously, remembering the fear in the big male’s eyes as he fled down the beach; but the Gardens seemed safe enough. One Harvester did focus on him for a moment, but no words were exchanged.
“They have fled.”
“What?”