A dead yrr could never emit a pheromonal signal like the one coming from this piece of flesh in human form. The message from the dead enemy tells the yrr that the corpse isn't hostile, that the corpse is alive.
KAREN, LEAVE THE SPIDER ALONE.
Karen is only little. She has picked up a book, and is about to kill a spider. The spider is only little too, but it has committed the terrible sin of being born a spider.
Why kill it?
The spider is ugly.
Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. Why do you find the spider ugly?
Stupid question. Why is a spider ugly? Because it is. It doesn't gaze up imploringly with puppy-dog eyes, it's not sweet, you can't love it, you can't even stroke it. It looks strange, and evil – as though it should he killed.
The hook swishes down, splatting the spider.
It isn't long before she regrets it. She sits down to watch The Adventures of Maya the Bee, of which previous episodes have taught her that honeybees are fine. This time there's a spider too, eight legs and a fixed stare, just demanding to be squished. Then the spider's lipless mouth opens and a squeaky childish voice comes out – not to utter terrifying threats of the kind that little girls expect to hear. Oh, no. This spider is as sweet as can be, a dear little thing.
All of a sudden she can't imagine how she could ever kill a spider. Already she knows that the one she has murdered will haunt her in her dreams, reproaching her in its high-pitched voice. Just the thought of it is too horrible for her to bear, and Karen sobs.
That was when she learned respect.
Back then she learned something that years later, on board the Independence, gave rise to an idea. An idea as to how one highly intelligent species could outsmart another while bypassing its intellect. An idea that could buy them time, or maybe even mutual understanding. An idea that requires man, who is accustomed to seeing himself as the template for earthly intelligence, to humble himself and be yrr-like.
What a comedown for creatures created in God's image.
Whichever species that might be.
HOVERING ABOVE HER is an intelligent white moon.
It's descending.
Rubin is reeled in by its tentacles, drawn into the light as a mummified torso swathed in jelly. They pull him inside. The queen is still sinking, descending towards the Deepflight, a mighty presence many times bigger than the boat. All of a sudden the depths are dark no longer. The moon starts to close round the submersible. There is nothing but light. White light pulsates round Weaver as the queen engulfs the boat, absorbing it into her thoughts.
Weaver feels fear returning. She gasps for breath. She has to resist the impulse to start the propeller, even though she's desperate to escape. The enchantment has vanished, leaving her to face the threat. But she knows that a propeller can do nothing against the jelly. It's too resilient and strong. The movement might vex it, tickle it or leave it indifferent, but it certainly won't cause it to retreat. It's pointless to think of escaping.
She feels the boat being lifted.
Can the creature see her?
How could it? Weaver doesn't have the least idea. The yrr-collective doesn't have eyes, but who's to say that it doesn't see?
They hadn't had nearly enough time on board the Independence.
She hopes with all her heart that the jelly can somehow perceive her through the dome. What if it succumbs to the temptation of opening the pod in an effort to touch her? The approach, no matter how well intentioned, would bring things to a deadly end.
The queen won't do that. She's intelligent.
She?
The human mindset takes over so quickly.
Weaver bursts out laughing. It's as though she's issued a signal, and the light around her thins. It seems to be retreating on all sides, and then it dawns on Weaver that the queen, as she's been calling her, is disbanding. The light melts away, billowing around her for the duration of one incredible second, as though showering her with Stardust from the universe when it was young. Small white dots dance in front of the view dome. If each one is a single amoeba, then they're big – almost the size of a pea.
The Deepflight is set free, and the moon coalesces, hovering just beneath her, borne on a disc of blue light extending endlessly in all directions. The boat must have been lifted quite some distance through the water. Weaver looks down at the surface of the disc and can think of only one way to describe what she sees: a confusion of traffic. Multitudes of shimmering creatures swarm over the surface. Chimerical fish emerge from the jelly, bodies aglitter with intricate patterns. Swimming together, they slump back into the mass. Fireworks sparkle in the distance, then cascades of red dots flare up, appearing in ever-changing formations right in front of the submersible, too fast for the eye to keep up. As they sink back towards the white orb they slowly begin to take shape, but it's not until they reach the queen that the truth of their nature is revealed. Weaver gasps. They're not tiny fish, as she'd assumed, but one enormous being with ten arms and a long, slender body.
A squid. A squid the size of a bus.
The queen sends out a glowing tendril and touches the middle of the creature, and the dots of light come to rest.
What's happening?
Weaver can't stop staring. As she watches, swarms of plankton light up like glowing snow, falling upwards through the water. A squadron of gaudy green cuttlefish shoots past, eyes bulging on sticks. The infinite expanse of blue is shot through with flashes of light that fade into the distance where Weaver can't follow their glow.
She stares and stares.
Until suddenly it's too much.
She can't bear it any longer. She notices that the submersible has started to sink again, dropping towards the glowing moon, and she fears that the next time she approaches this agonisingly beautiful, agonisingly alien world she may never be allowed to leave.
No. No!
Frantically she closes the open pod, pumping pressurised air inside it. The sonar tells her that she is a hundred metres above the seabed and sinking. Weaver checks the pod pressure, oxygen supply and fuel. She gets the all-clear. The systems are ready. She tilts the side wings and starts the propeller. Her underwater aeroplane starts to rise, slowly at first, then faster, escaping from the alien world at the bottom of the Greenland Sea and heading towards a more familiar sky.
Soaring back to earth.
Never in her life has Weaver experienced so many emotions in such a short time. Suddenly a thousand questions are racing through her mind. Do the yrr have cities? Where do they create their biotechnology? How is Scratch produced? What has she seen of their alien civilisation? How much have they allowed to see? Everything? Or nothing? Has she seen a mobile town?
Or just an outpost?
What can you see? What have you seen?
I don't know.
GHOSTS
Rising and falling, up and down. Dreariness.
The waves lift the Deepflight and let it fall. The submersible drifts on the surface. It's a long time since Weaver set off from the bottom of the sea. Now she feels as though she's trapped inside a schizophrenic elevator. Up and down, up and down. The waves are high, but evenly spaced. Their crests seldom break, like monotonous grey cliffs in constant motion.
Opening the pods would be too risky. The Deepflight would fill within seconds. So she stays inside, staring out in the hope that the water will calm. She still has some fuel; not enough to get to Greenland or Svalbard, but at least to get her closer. Once the swell drops, she'll be able to resume her trip – wherever it might lead her.