The giant squid had moved in right next to the transparent wall. It placed four long, suckered tentacles against the glass. Rob saw the great body flex with effort. The surface of the panel distorted, just a little, under the strain.
“He’s strong,” Regulo said. “Stronger than you’d believe.”
“But he’s changing color,” said Rob, watching the barrier that separated them from the creature move under the force of the long arms.
“Aye, he’ll do that.” Regulo looked on calmly as the skin of the squid darkened, becoming a uniform black. “That’s the chromatophores in his outer layer — he can change all sorts of different shades. He only goes black when he’s angry, though. I think Caliban hates Joseph more than anything or anyone in Atlantis. He’d just love to get in here.”
“He is an ingrate,” said Morel drily. “By rights he should be more than grateful. He should worship me as his god. I am his Maker. Before we began work on him he was no more than any other cephalopod; brighter than any other of the invertebrates, but no more than that. Now” — he pouted his rosebud mouth, incongruously small in the fleshy face — “in intelligence he exceeds all the creatures of Earth. He should be devoted to me.”
Rob had finally caught his breath. Until reason asserted itself, he could not get rid of the feeling that the great beast beyond the window would tear the shield free, hurl it away, and reach in for them with those muscular arms. And then there would be the savage beak, set in the center of the massive head…
He shook off the feeling. Regulo knew far too much about the strength of materials to permit any such danger.
“Are you implying that Caliban is actually intelligent?” he asked. “That you have created something you are able to communicate with — something that can think?”
“That’s a damned good question.” Regulo had watched Rob’s expression of alarm with apparent amusement. “Obviously, he can’t speak, and in spite of all those arms we’ve never been able to get him to take any interest in writing. I’m not sure if he’s intelligent or not.”
“Regulo is joking.” Morel did not look at all amused. “Caliban is certainly intelligent. Communication with him is naturally a complex procedure. He is electronically connected with Sycorax, the central computer of Atlantis, and receives from it constantly a signal stream. In return, he produces a modulation that returns to the computer. Sometimes that return signal contains significant changes. Sycorax decodes the result, and converts it to message form for our output terminals here.”
“And it’s gibberish, more often than not,” grumbled Regulo. “I’ll never deny that Caliban does something with the signal, and Sycorax gives us an interpreted version of it. But whether it’s Caliban or Sycorax that puts the meaning into it, there’s the real question.”
“Yet you do not deny that the combination displays intelligence,” Morel replied. “It is not human intelligence — how could it be? — and it is not easy to understand. I don’t deny that. I merely assert that Caliban possesses some type of high-order thinking processes. Higher, perhaps, than ours. I was not joking when I suggested that in intelligence he perhaps exceeds all the creatures of Earth.”
“All right.” Regulo waved a hand, unwilling to prolong an old argument. He turned to Rob. “He treats the outputs from that beast like some kind of oracle. When you’ve been here a few times, Merlin, you’ll find that Joseph will never do anything that Caliban doesn’t approve of. Right, Joseph?”
“Exactly right.” Morel’s manner was surly. “It is a pity that we do not all have enough wisdom to follow the same policy.”
Regulo chuckled. “Don’t take any notice of that, Merlin. Joseph is hung up on the fact that Caliban advised against using you on the skyhook project. We never found out why, and after today’s session I’m more convinced than ever that I was right to override that advice. You’re the man to build the beanstalk for us, no matter what Caliban says.”
Rob was still watching the huge form of the squid, hovering motionless now outside the windows. “But where does he live in the aquasphere?” he asked.
“Where?” Regulo rubbed at his cratered face and stared at the great eye, a foot across, peering in at them through the panel. “Don’t you know the old joke about the man with a small apartment who was given a gorilla for a present? `So where does the gorilla sleep?’ `Absolutely any place he wants to.’ That’s Architeuthis princeps out there, the top of the food chain. Caliban is king of the aquasphere, it’s his world and he comes and goes as he pleases.”
“Unless he is called.” Morel patted the communicator that he was still holding in one hand. “Then Caliban admits a master.”
“I don’t think he does.” Corrie spoke for the first time since the beast had appeared outside the windows. “I’ve read about the cephalopods, too, Joseph. They’re big, fast and ferocious, and they don’t come fiercer than that one. You should be careful. Caliban has learned where those shocks come from that force him to come here, or drive him away again. He knows it very well. Look at those eyes.”
The pale yellow saucer next to the window, lidless and glistening, had no interest in anything but Morel. It followed every movement that he made, especially when he put his fingers again on the communicator buttons.
“I hope that he knows me, and knows what I am to him.” Morel’s tone was dreamy, with a hint of something else: an echo of sensual pleasure. He kept his eyes fixed on Caliban, and quietly pressed two more keys on the device in his hand. There was a sudden convulsion of the great tentacles, obscured almost immediately by a cloud of sepia discharge from the ink sac at the end of the trunk. When it cleared Caliban was gone, vanished into the depths of the aquasphere.
“Thus I banish thee,” Morel said softly.
He nodded to Regulo, stood up, and left the room; but the memory of the great squid lingered on for at least one participant in the meeting.
Rob could not get the thought of those giant arms out of his head. The image stayed with him even during his work session with Regulo; all through the hours where they hammered out more details of the beanstalk, working on through the long night, cushioned deep in the warm water bosom of Atlantis; safe, even against the power of the Sun itself.
There would be one more encounter with Joseph Morel before Rob left for Earth and the work of planning the beanstalk tether. He had been wandering the smooth outer wall of the living quarters, marvelling again at the strange flora and fauna of the aquasphere, and hoping for another glimpse of Caliban. He had made his way half-way around the central sphere, past the maintenance areas, and past the exit locks that led from the air-filled interior out into the water-world. He was drawn on by what he thought was the shadow of a great tentacle, winnowing the green gloom, when he found his further progress blocked. A locked door with a red seal around it lay before him.
Rob was standing in front of it, wondering where it led, when Morel appeared, drifting in soundlessly behind him.
“What are you doing here?” Despite his soft voice, Morel’s manner was brusque. Rob turned from the locked door.
“I’m trying to get another look at Caliban before I leave. I can’t get past this point.”
“You shouldn’t be here at all.” Morel was edgy, running his tongue over his full red lips. “These are the labs. They are off limits to everyone except for me and my staff.”
“What are you doing in there, still modifying the salt-water forms? I was wondering how you do that — it’s not something that I’ve seen attempted back on Earth.”
Morel hesitated, opened his mouth to speak, then paused again.
“It’s not easy,” he said at last. “Some of the forms we’ve been using for a long time still need modification. That’s why we keep the labs closed. There’s DNA splicing going on all the time in there. We don’t want a repeat of what happened to Laspar’s group, back in Tycho.”