Rob nodded. He was watching Morel’s hands. They were clenched hard, white knuckles showing. “I’d have thought it was much less dangerous here, though. After all, you do have an isolated environment on Atlantis.”
“Less dangerous to the rest of the human race, you mean.” Morel smiled grimly. “I wasn’t thinking of it quite that way. I doubt if Laspar was, either, during that last couple of days before he got the newts and they got him. The welfare of the species as a whole is something you tend to lose sight of if you are personally threatened. Only fools take chances with recombination experiments like the ones that we’re doing here.”
The other man was beginning to relax a little, but he was far too tense for such a casual conversation. What was it that Howard Anson had said to Rob? “Whatever the connection is between those names, it’s something terrible.” And one of those names had been Joseph Morel.
“How long have you been working on these experiments?”
Rob kept his voice as casual as possible, but there was no doubt about it: Morel had tensed again, biting at his lower lip for a long moment before he answered.
“This type of research has been my life’s work. I have been engaged in it for many, many years.” He turned abruptly away from Rob to look out of the window into the still, green shadows beyond. “So. You are interested in Caliban, are you? He is a worthy subject for study. One of my oldest successes. I began to sense his potential more than thirty years ago, back when I was aware of no more than a few unexplained reactions from him in early experiments. We didn’t try for communication for a long time after that. Even at the beginning, I felt that anything we did would probably have to be through a computerized interface — we are too much mutual aliens for any direct communication. Except, one might say, on the basics.”
Morel had pulled the communicator again from his pocket and was holding it close to his chest. He pressed twin buttons on the side of it.
“Are you calling him?” Rob asked.
Morel nodded. “Through Sycorax. It is curious, our work went much faster once we had done the modifications for him to live in a fresh-water environment.” He was staring again out of the window. “Caliban will be at the display screens, out in the aquasphere. He does not like to leave those once he has settled by them. You knew, did you, that Caliban sees everything that we receive through any of the video links? Not just here on Atlantis, but all over the System. I’m drawing his attention now to the screen outside here.”
Morel nodded at the camera set in the wall above their heads. As he did so, Rob recalled other cameras, in Regulo’s office, on the aircraft that Corrie had first used to pick him up, and in the Space Tug. Thinking back, he could not recall a time when they had not been under some kind of surveillance. If Caliban could accept all those inputs, his data-handling capacity must be enormous.
“But how do you get the signals to him?” he asked. “As I recall, radio frequencies don’t pass through water.”
“Quite true. We use ultrasonics, and also communications lasers. The sound signals are received by piezoelectric crystals set into Caliban’s skin and converted to electrical impulses. They are fed straight into his brain. The laser data rates are much higher, but we can send stronger commands through the ultrasonics.” He shrugged. “The whole system is rather primitive. Some day we will no doubt update it — perhaps with design advice from Himself. Come, my pretty one.”
Out in the aquasphere, the dark form of Caliban was approaching, slowly, from the shadow of the screens of vegetation. Despite his size, the movement was graceful and flowing.
“And how does he send messages back to you?” Rob was unable to keep his eyes off the squid as it drifted towards them.
“Through display panels set in the walls of Atlantis. His replies all go through Sycorax, of course, for processing before we get them.” Morel was looking fondly out at the approaching animal. “They are never easy to understand, which is why Regulo calls Caliban my oracle. The way that Caliban and Sycorax think together is not as we think. There are non-Aristotelian elements to it. I believe that any serious student of formal logic would find his time well-spent if he could examine Caliban’s inferential processes for a year or two. Now, do you have more questions?”
It sounded like a dismissal. Rob suspected that Morel would not leave the area as long as he remained there also. He shook his head, and began to move away from the sealed door. “I’m sure I’ll get a chance to study Caliban in more detail, the next time that I am here. He’s quite a monster, isn’t he? I’m sure you are used to him, but I didn’t like the way he was straining at the partition the other night.”
Morel smiled, his first sign of real pleasure since their conversation began. “He becomes, shall we say, excited by my presence. He is very strong, stronger than you can imagine. I would not advise you to go out into the aquasphere with him.”
“I don’t intend to. But presumably someone does. How else can you gather the food from the sea-farms?”
“Caliban is controllable. I can give him shocks from the communicator, directly into the pain or the pleasure centers of his brain. There is no danger to someone in the aquasphere when I am present to manipulate him. I am obliged to use that control sometimes for other things. For instance, when he is reluctant to offer data on problems of interest to me, I stimulate him to answer. He does so, reluctantly. But there is no doubt that he does not like it.”
No, thought Rob. But you do, my friend. I see the expression on your face when you think about it. Right now, you’re gloating over the memory. Thank God you don’t have those electrodes wired into my brain.
He started to leave, heading back to his own quarters in the living area. But his mind remained uneasy with what he had seen, and at the exit he turned. Joseph Morel remained standing by the window, gazing out at the hulking shape of Caliban glaring in from the aquasphere. If Rob was thoughtful, it appeared that Morel was no less so.
CHAPTER 9: “Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain”
“Well, at first sight it doesn’t look like we have much that’s new.” Howard Anson, lean and elegant, was draped lazily over the back of a tall chair. As usual, he appeared to have come straight from some expensive personal grooming service. “Summing it up, you like Regulo, you like Corrie even more, you don’t care at all for Morel, and you had an encounter with an overgrown oyster. I’m not sure what all that will produce from Senta.”
Rob, sitting on the sofa opposite, seemed pale and tired in the golden light of a Rome evening. His eyes were reddened, and there were dark circles under them. The journey back had been a rough one, with little sleep and much to do.
“Oyster be damned,” he said. “If you got one look at Caliban, you’d change your tune. I’ve got a lot of respect for that big squid. The brightest cephalopods are no closer to the oysters than you are to a duck-billed platypus.”
Anson grinned, unabashed. “Both mollusks, aren’t they?”
“They are, and that’s the end of the resemblance. Caliban’s big and he’s fierce. And I’m inclined to agree with Joseph Morel, much as I dislike the man. There’s intelligence inside that decapod’s head. You should have seen the way that he tried to get into the dining area and tackle Morel. I wonder what they had to do to Caliban, so that he could survive in fresh water? Nothing pleasant, that I’ll bet.”
“If you really want an answer to that question, I may be able to find out.” Anson, as usual, found it unnecessary to make any sort of notes. “It might be one reason why Caliban hates Morel. I found out a good deal more about the fellow after you left. That tie to your father looks like a weak one, though I did confirm that Joseph Morel and Gregor Merlin were students at the same time in Göttingen. They studied rejuvenation and life-prolongation techniques together for a couple of years. That’s the only personal connection, though they seem to have kept in touch professionally after Morel left Germany.”