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Thomas blinked. That was so close to his own surmise about how kelp fitted into the sea system that he wondered if Panille had been eavesdropping on his thoughts.
Is Ship talking to him even now?
Panille’s words fascinated Waela. “You think the kelp follows a conscious plan?”
“Perhaps.”
To Thomas, the poet’s words pulled a veil from the kelp domain. He began to sense the sea in a different way. Here was rich living space free of Pandora’s other dangerous demons. Was it right then to rid the sea of kelp? He knew it could be done—disrupt the ecosystem, break the internal chain of the kelp’s own life. Was that the decision of Oakes and Lewis?
“The lights!” Panille said. “Ohhh, yes.”
They had reached the dark zone where the sub’s external sensors began to pick up the flickering lights. Jewels danced in the blackness beyond the range of the dive lights—tiny bursts of color . . . red, yellow, orange, green, purple . . . There appeared to be no pattern to them, just bursts of brilliance which dazzled the awareness.
“Bottom coming up,” Waela said.
Panille, every sense alert, shot a glance at her screen. Yes—the bottom appeared to be moving while they remained stationery. Coming up.
Thomas adjusted the rate of descent—slower, slower. The sub came to rest with a slight jar which stirred sediment into a gray fog around them. When the fog settled, the screens showed a plastering of ripples out to the limits of their illumination. Bottom grazers moved through the ripples—inverted bowls with gulping lips all around the rim. At the extreme forward edge of illumination, the flukes of the sub’s anchor dug into the sediment. The cable sagged back over them and out of light range. Off to the port side, they could glimpse black mounds of rock with kelp tendrils lacing over and through them. Dark shapes swam deep in the kelp jungle—more attendants of the sea’s rulers.
Tiny crawlers already were working their way along the anchor and the cable. Panille knew that the anchor tackle had been made of native iron and steel—substances which would be etched away to lace in a few diurns. Only plaz and plasteel resisted the erosive powers in Pandora’s seas.
This knowledge filled him with a sense of how fragile was their link to safety. He watched the jewel brilliants flickering in the gloom beyond the sub’s dive lights. They seemed to speak to him: “We are here. We are here. We are here . . .”
To Thomas, the lights were like the play of a computer board. Watching holorecords of them had formed this association in his mind. He had proposed it to Waela during one of the sessions when she had been teaching him the ways of Pandora’s deeps. “A computer could crunch far greater numbers, form so many more associations so much faster.”
Out of this had been born his proposal: Record them, scan for patterns and play those patterns back to the kelp.
Waela had admired the elegant simplicity of it: Leap beyond the perilous collection and analysis of specimens, beyond the organic speculations. Strike directly for the communications patterns!
Say to the kelp: “We see you and know you are aware and intelligent. We, too, are aware. Teach us your speech.”
As he watched the play of lights, Thomas wanted to say they were like Christmas lights twinkling in the dark. But he knew neither of his crew would understand.
Christmas!
The very thought made him feel ancient. Shipmen did not know Christmas. They played other religious games. Perhaps the only person in his universe who might understand Christmas was Hali Ekel. She had seen the Hill of Skulls.
What did the Hill of Skulls and the passion of Jesus have to do with these lights flickering in a sea?
Thomas stared at the screen in front of him. What was he supposed to see here?
Aquaculture?
Would Shipmen be forced to exterminate the kelp? Crucify it for their own survival?
Christmas and aquaculture . . .
The play of lights was hypnotic. He felt the silent wonder of watchfulness throughout the command gondola. A sense of revelatory awe crept over him. Here on the bottom was the record of Pandora’s budget, all the transactions which the planet’s life had made. This was more than the bourse, it was the deposit vault where Pandora’s grand geochemical and biochemical circuit of exchange lay open to view.
What do you here, mighty kelp?
Was this what Ship wanted them to see?
He did not expect Ship to answer that question. Such an answer did not fit into the rules of this game. He was on his own down here.
Play the game, Devil.
The pressure of the water around their gondola filled his awareness. They remained here by the sufferance of the kelp. By the kelp’s own tolerance could they survive. Others had come into this sea and survived by careful restraint. What might the kelp interpret as a threat? Those jeweled blinkings in the gloom took on a malevolent aspect to him then.
We trust too much.
In the silence of his fears, Panille’s voice came as a jarring intrusion.
“We’re beginning to get some pattern indicators.”
Thomas shot a glance at the recording board to the left of his console. The load-sensors indicated preparation for playback. This would control the sub’s exterior bubbles to replay any light patterns which the computer counted as repetitive and significant. Any such patterns would be played to the kelp.
“See! Now, we talk to you. What are we saying?”
That would catch its atten
tion. But what would it do?
“The kelp’s watching us,” Panille said. “Can’t you feel it?”
Thomas found himself in silent agreement. The kelp around them was watching and waiting. He felt like the child of that faraway day at Moonbase when he had entered the crèche school for the first time. There was a truth revealed here which most educators ignored: You could learn dangerous things.
“If it’s watching us, where are its eyes?” Waela whispered.
Thomas thought this a nonsense question. The kelp could possess senses which Shipmen had never imagined. You might just as well ask about Ship’s eyes. But he could not deny that sense of watchfulness around the sub. The presence which the kelp projected onto the intruders was an almost palpable thing.
The recorder buzzed beside him and he saw the green lights which signaled the shift to replay. Now, the extruded bubbles on the carrier surface were playing back something, he had no idea what. Exterior sensors revealed only a glow of many colors reflecting off particles in the water.
He could see no discernible change in the light play from the kelp.
“Ignoring us.” That was Waela.
“Too soon to say,” Panille objected. “What’s the response time of the kelp? Or maybe we’re not even speaking to it yet.”
“Try the pattern display,” Waela said.
Thomas nodded, punched for the prepared program. This had been the alternate approach. The small screen above the recorder board began to show what was being displayed on the sub’s hull: first Pythagorean squares, then the counting of the sticks, the galactic spiral, the pebble game . . .
No response from the kelp,
The dim shapes of swimmers among the kelp did not change their movements dramatically. All appeared to be the same.
Waela, studying her own screens, asked: “Am I mistaken or are the lights brighter?”
“A bit brighter perhaps,” Thomas said.
“They are brighter,” Panille said. “It seems to me that the water is . . . murkier. If . . . Look at the anchor cable!”
