A Darkling Sea

Nine

Broadtail listens to the creatures constantly, stopping to eat or rest only when his feelers are so tired he can no longer tie knots in his line to make notes. He cannot remember ever being so happy and excited. Not even his memories of becoming the master of the Sandyslope property can compare with this feeling.

Holdhard comes and goes. She listens with him for a time, then goes off to eat or rest. He shows her how he takes notes, and she is fascinated by how he knots the cord to represent words. But she lacks his patience and prefers not to go hungry. When she finds extra food she leaves him some.

The creatures’ behavior is complex. They have a shelter and seem to be using tools. They do not hunt, or gather food, but now and then go inside their structure and return with what sounds like solid material in what must be a stomach. To Broadtail this suggests that they have a food cache, which in turn implies a high degree of planning and forethought.

The creatures communicate. Of that Broadtail is certain. They call to one another often, although Broadtail finds it odd that the calls are only when there is some obstacle between the communicating pair. At close quarters they are silent. The calls are long and complex, with little or no repetition. They are not sending each other echo-patterns; it is more like long strings of simple tones.

Like a reel of knots, he thinks. They are writing with sound. He makes a note, but his feeding tendrils feel thick and clumsy and he falls asleep still holding the cord.

He wakes with a tremendous hunger. He eats a couple of floaters Holdhard leaves for him. The flesh is pulpy and unsatisfying, but better than nothing. He listens. No activity. Perhaps the creatures are resting. He goes over his last notes; he remembers being too tired to think clearly.

“Sound writing,” is what his last note says. He remembers his thoughts now.

And suddenly, as if his mind has molted and is kicking aside the old shell, he understands. The creatures are intelligent beings. Like adults! They build and plan and speak. They use tools, which they either make themselves or get from others. Which implies an entire society!

Broadtail is thinking so fast his tendrils can barely keep up. His notes are little more than place-markers for his ideas. Where do these things come from? Are there any rec ords of them? What do they eat? How does their anatomy compare with any—

He stops, and his excitement turns to fear. He remembers the captive specimen struggling and making noises during Longpincer’s dissection. Longpincer would not do that to an adult, or even a juvenile.

It is not murder, he thinks. He distinctly remembers capturing the creature near an unclaimed vent. A fair fight. And he remembers the dissection taking place in Longpincer’s house, on Longpincer’s property. All legal. That is reassuring. But dissecting a stranger is still a terrible blunder. They may hold grudges, or demand recompense. Broadtail hopes to persuade Longpincer to apologize to them.

He hears a sound from the shelter and listens. One of the creatures is emerging. A second follows. Sounds of hammering and digging.

What is proper behavior? Broadtail imagines several courses. He can pack up his reels and make for Longpincer’s house. Inform Longpincer and the other scholars—and incidentally establish his own claim to this new discovery.

Or he can go hunt for food, to keep himself from getting hungry as he continues his monitoring. After all, his notes are very rough. A complete monograph requires much more information about the creatures. Holdhard can help.

Or… he can approach them. Speak to them. Do they understand the speech of adults? He imagines them vindictive, dissecting him in revenge for the specimen at Longpincer’s, or to protect their property.

He remains undecided. His mind is like a stone held up by the flow of water from a pipe. When he does decide, it is a simple practical matter that determines his course: he has only one empty reel left. He expects it will take a netful of reels—a whole convoy’s cargo of reels!—to record all he wishes to know about the creatures. Getting more means telling Longpincer, and Broadtail discovers that he simply doesn’t want to share the creatures with anyone.

He must approach them. It is the most sensible course.

He rolls up his reel and stows it, then climbs out of the little den he has made among the rocks. Holdhard is sheltered nearby. “Remain here,” he says quietly. “Stay hidden. If you hear fighting, take my reel and flee.”

Broadtail swims toward the creatures’ shelter. He goes slowly and makes no attempt to be quiet. Half a cable away he starts pinging, both to announce himself and to learn as much about the camp as he can in case he must flee a hostile response.

Rob had almost finished getting the heat-exchanger set up when he heard a set of loud, regular sonar clicks. It sounded like a large animal. He flicked on the spotlight and had a look.

Fifty meters away was an Ilmataran, swimming slowly toward him. It was a good-sized adult, festooned with tools and bags of stuff. Its pincers were folded back along its sides. Rob didn’t know if that was a good sign or not.

He controlled his impulse to panic, to flee back to the Coquille—and his second impulse to pull out his utility knife. It didn’t look hostile, and it was alone.

Rob wished someone could tell him how to act. Henri would know what to do. It might be completely wrong, but at least he wouldn’t be standing there like a squirrel in the middle of a driveway watching a car bearing down on it.

Should he call Alicia? If things got ugly he didn’t want her out here. See what the alien wanted, first of all.

Rob took a deep breath, stood up, and turned on his speaker. “Hey!”

The Ilmataran halted in the water about ten meters away.

Well, at least it wasn’t tearing him apart. Yet. Rob took a step toward it. “Hey there, guy,” he said, in the same voice he used to talk to his roommate’s cat back on Earth.

The Ilmataran hovered there a while, then moved forward. Rob and the alien were about six meters apart now. He was closer to an Ilmataran than anyone but Henri had ever been. No stealth suit this time, either. He, Robert Freeman, was making contact with a new intelligent species.

What the hell was he supposed to do? Shake hands? Pat its head? All his training had been about avoiding contact, not how to do it. He turned on his helmet camera so that if he did screw up royally, at least posterity could see what not to do.

The alien made a complex sound, like a green twig snapping. Was it talking to him? According to Dickie Graves they communicated by sending each other sonar images.

Could he maybe use his sonar display to decipher the alien speech? The thought was so exciting that for a moment Rob forgot how nervous he was. It would be pretty damned awesome if Rob Freeman was the one who figured out how to communicate with a whole alien civilization.

He told his sonar software to bypass the signal pro cessor and feed the sound straight into the imaging system. That took a few minutes, during which the alien made some more sounds.

“Okay,” said Rob when he was done. “Try talking to me now.” He knew it couldn’t understand him, but maybe his response would encourage the alien.

It said something else, a long sound pattern like a distant volley of gunfire. Rob looked at his sonar display. Gibberish. A screen full of static. Evidently the Ilmatarans didn’t buy their sonar from the same supplier.

Oh, well. It had been a great scientific advance for about five minutes.

They spent half an hour there, standing a couple of meters apart, trying to talk to each other. Rob couldn’t get his sonar software to make sense of the alien’s sound images, and it was absurd to think it could understand English, no matter how loudly and slowly he spoke.

“I give up,” Rob said at last. “I know you want to talk to me, and I want to talk to you, but we just can’t. I’m sorry.”

Maybe the Ilmataran had reached the same conclusion, for it was silent for a good five minutes. Then it spoke again, but this time it sounded very different. It wasn’t making sonar echo-patterns, it was just making simple clicks. It sounded like a telegraph—click-click-click-click, pause,click-click-click-click-click-click-click, pause, more clicks.

Morse code? Numbers?

Rob took a screwdriver from his tool belt and began tapping it gently against the wrench. Start simple: one tap, pause, one tap, pause, two taps. One plus one equals two. Then he tried two taps, two taps, four taps. Was he getting through?

The alien surged forward until its head was almost touching Rob’s knee. He had to force himself not to flee, and one hand went to the utility knife on his thigh.

It clicked loudly once, then waited. For what? It clicked again. Rob tried tapping his tools together once.

It raised its head then, grabbing for his arm with one of its big praying-mantis pincers, and for a moment Rob thought sure he was going to wind up like Henri. But it put his hand to its head and clicked once.

Rob tapped the wrench once, then patted the Ilmataran’s head. “Okay, so does one click mean you, or your head, or touch me, or what?”

He tried an experiment. He took its pincer and very gently moved it to touch his own chest, then tapped once. But the creature didn’t respond.

Broadtail ponders. What is he to call this creature? There is certainly no number for it in any lexicon. He shall have to give it a name. Something simple. He taps out sixteen: two short scratches, four taps.

This results in silence. Does it not understand? Or is it offended? Broadtail certainly means no insult. The name Builder is appropriate: the creature builds things. Until he knows more about it, that seems the most accurate thing to call it.

Standing this close to the thing, Broadtail learns much about it. He hears a single heart pumping loudly within it. Sometimes it seems to beat more loudly than other times; possibly part of its digestive process? But the creature’s stomach is nearly empty. There is a constant series of clicks and buzzes coming from the back hump, and the creature releases bubbles into the water in a regular cycle that seems to be connected to the noise somehow. He has so many questions! It is extremely frustrating to be limited to simple words.

They are interrupted by a second creature that emerges from the structure. It is similar in size and body plan to Builder, though when Broadtail pings it he can discern some minor variation in its internal organs. Without more of them to study, Broadtail can’t tell which differences are significant and which are simply individual variation. It approaches noisily, then halts about four body-lengths away and calls out to the other one. They exchange calls and the second creature approaches slowly. Its heart is also beating very loudly. The two exchange more calls, then the creature he calls Builder guides Broadtail’s pincer to touch the second being’s body.Broadtail names it Builder 2.

When they finally went back inside the shelter, Rob and Alicia were both exhausted. They’d been up for about twenty hours, and neither had eaten since lunch. They tore into some food bars and each had a bowl of the food-bar soup.

Rob peeled off his damp suit liner and got into the slightly less clammy one he kept for sleeping, then the two of them cuddled up inside one sleeping bag in his hammock.

Neither one could sleep at first. They were both too excited. Alicia had to keep unzipping the bag to get her computer and make notes. “This is magnificent!” she kept saying.“When that guy came up to me I didn’t know what to expect,” Rob told her.

“You handled it very well, Robert. We have established peaceful contact with the species.”

“Well, with one of them. We don’t know if he speaks for anyone else.”

“Do you think it came here looking for us, or was it an accident?”

“That’s a good question. He—”

“Why do you assume it is male?”

“I don’t know. There’s no real difference between the sexes anyway. I guess now that we’ve been introduced I feel kind of weird calling it ‘it.’ Do you want me to start saying ‘her’ instead?”

“No, but I will tease you without mercy if it does turn out to be female.”

“I’ll risk it. So what do we do tomorrow? More trying to learn the language?”

“Yes. I want to find some of Dr. Graves’s notes and try to develop a way to do real-time translations.”

The silences between statements were getting longer as they warmed up and began to relax. “I guess you want to handle that?” Rob asked her.

“I will need you as well. I am no communication expert, and you have spent more time speaking with the Ilmataran than anyone.”

Rob was about to ask if she thought the Ilmataran could really afford to rent an apartment in Houston without credit cards, but then he realized he was dreaming and let himself fall completely asleep.

Broadtail is trying yet again to communicate with the Builder creatures. It is maddeningly difficult—much more so than teaching children. Children can at least speak. This is like teaching the dictionary to someone born deaf. He remembers reading about a case like that at the Big Spring community. Yet the Builders can hear, he is certain of that. They just don’t hear speech.

When he places an object in their hands and taps out its number, the creatures can remember perfectly. But whenever Broadtail attempts to teach them something more complex, they just cannot grasp the meaning. The misunderstandings are almost comical. He remembers using his pincers to demonstrate “upcurrent” and “downcurrent,” only to have the Builders reply with the number for “pincer.” He can’t even say “yes” or “no” to them!“What is that sound?” Holdhard asks suddenly.

Broadtail can hear it also: a sound like water rushing through a pipe, and a chorus of loud hums, and the echo of something big moving through the water. It’s about ten cables away, closing in swiftly.

It’s so big and noisy Broadtail doesn’t need to ping it to get a clear idea of its form. It is shaped like an adult, but vastly larger—nearly the size of the shelter. Like the shelter, it sounds as if it is covered in soft mud. It moves toward them at a steady speed. Holdhard fidgets but does not leave. Broadtail remains where he is, waiting to learn how the Builders react to this new threat.

The two upright creatures do not hide. They have turned to face the thing and are waving their upper limbs. Broadtail cannot tell if that is a threat or a sign of panic. The thing slows and drops toward the sea bottom.

“I think that large creature is tame,” he says to Holdhard. “Much like a towfin or a scourer. Listen: it is slowing as it approaches. A hunter would speed up. If I am wrong, take my notes to Longpincer at the Bitterwater vent.”

The hums get deeper before stopping, and the thing comes to a halt just next to the shelter. Two more of the creatures emerge from beneath the thing. One is about the same size as Builder 1, the second is larger and carries more tools. The four Builders float together, then turn and move toward Broadtail. The huge beast remains absolutely still and quiet behind them.

The beast disturbs Broadtail. How can it eat? The water around the ruins is too cold to support such a large animal. Nor is there a stockpile of food for it.

Then he wonders: is it a beast at all? Now that it is not moving it is completely inert. He can hear no motion, not even the fidgeting of a tethered beast. It resembles a shelter more than any living thing. Within its shell he can hear nothing.

But it is a shelter that can move. How? The upright creatures do not push it as they swim; it would take a vast number of adults to shove something that big.

Another mystery. These creatures spawn mysteries. (The thought leads Broadtail to a brief speculation about how the creatures do reproduce; he resolves to ask them at the earliest opportunity.)

The four of them stop just outside pincer reach and wait. Broadtail says “Greetings!” in the hope that maybe one of the new arrivals can understand him.

“You’ve been talking with them?” said Dickie. “Sort of. We can’t understand their calls or anything, but I think this one’s trying to teach us some kind of simple number code,” said Rob. “At least, he hands us stuff and then taps his pincers together. The number of taps is the same for the same item.”

“That’s great!“ said Dickie. He sounded different. For the first time since—well, since the Sholen had arrived—Dickie Graves didn’t sound angry. “Send me all your notes. I had some tentative correlations from remote observation but this is just wonderful.”

“All we really have is names for things like rocks.”

“That’s a good beginning. Let me just get at my notes—”

Graves started muttering voice commands to his computer.

“Did you make recordings?”

“Of course,” said Alicia. “I am sending them to you now.”

“Super. I’ll need to dig up my analysis software to see if I can identify specific eidophones. Once I can do that, I can start making correlations and try to tease out a grammar. This is so exciting! Oh—” he paused and sounded almost surprised at himself. “I killed a Sholen. I think it was Gishora.”

The creature Broadtail calls Builder 3 makes very rapid progress learning language. The two of them work together, stopping for Broadtail to eat and sleep. When Broadtail returns to work he is startled by the creature’s progress. It seems to be learning even when Broadtail isn’t teaching.

The biggest problem is that the creature learns words like a hungry child eating roe, but has no grasp of how to put them together. It taps out words all jumbled together, so that instead of making a statement like “Builder gives Broadtail the stone” it bangs out “Stone Builder large tail grasp into” or “Grasping stone Builder tail wide.”

Still, they definitely are making progress. Unlike the other Builders, number 3 can actually understand speech and even utters a few echoes, though horribly distorted. As quickly as he thinks the creature can understand, Broadtail starts asking it questions. Some of the answers make sense; others only mystify Broadtail even more.

He rests with Holdhard, tired out from a lot of teaching. She shares some swimmers, caught in one of the nets of the Builders. “What do you speak to them about?” she asks.

“Many things. Where do they come from? What are their tools and shelters made of? What do they eat?”

“Do they answer you?”

“Yes, but—I don’t know if we understand each other correctly. I remember asking where they come from, and hearing the reply ‘ice above.’ I don’t know if that means they are from some shallow place where the ice is only a few cables above the bottom, or something else.”

“I remember you saying Builder 3 gets the words all jumbled up. Could he mean above the ice?”

“There is nothing above the ice, Holdhard. It extends upward without end, growing colder and less dense with each cable of distance.”

“How do you know?”

Broadtail realizes that he doesn’t know. It is something he remembers reading in many books, and accepts because there is no better theory. But what if there is something above the ice? He feels his pincers stiffen as though some huge predator is swimming near. Despite his fatigue, he pushes off from the bottom.

“Where are you going?” Holdhard asks.

“I must find out if you are correct!” he calls back.

Rob spent nearly eight hours seething inside the shelter before he could get Graves to leave the Ilmatarans alone and talk to his fellow humans. “So how the hell did you kill a Sholen?”

“Back at Hitode. I was sabotaging the hydrophone net, trying to set things up for future infiltration. A single Sholen came along and tried to stop me. We fought, I won. Stabbed it with my utility knife.”“Jesus, Dickie, what are you trying to do? You can’t just go around killing people!”

“I didn’t kill any people. I killed one of the Sholen. You know, the ones who killed Isabel.” The anger was back in his voice.

“Yeah, yeah. We’re enemies. I know. But still. Are you sure it was Gishora?” asked Rob.

“Yes. My computer was recording ambient sound at the time, and I’ve compared the noises he made with some old samples of Gishora speaking. When I baselined the phonemes it was a perfect match.”

“I’m going to assume what you just said isn’t complete bullshit,” said Rob. “Okay, so you shanked Gishora. So what? Just randomly killing people—or Sholen—doesn’t accomplish anything.”

“Oh, but it does!” said Graves. “The Sholen put great store in personal loyalty. Leaders and followers develop an intense bond with a strong sexual component.”

“Yeah, we know all about that. The whole bonobo thing.”

“Exactly. With the leader gone, the followers are going to be emotionally devastated and competing for the leadership role. Imagine a human family after a parent dies.”

“Um, Dickie, if someone stabbed my dad I guess my sisters and I might be a little disor ganized, but I’m pretty sure we’d also be kind of pissed off. What if the other Sholen try some kind of reprisals? What if they kill someone back at Hitode?”

“They would not do that!” said Alicia. “The Sholen are—”

“What?” asked Dickie, turning on her. “Nonviolent? Remember how nonviolently they beat Isabel to death.”

Rob felt queasy. Sholen were bigger than humans, and had claws and teeth. He could picture angry aliens rampaging through Hitode, people trying to flee, blood running in the drains under the floor grid. “Jesus, Dickie. Do you want them to kill more people?”

“If that’s what it takes to make the others understand, yes! Everyone here—you, and Sen, and all the others—think this is all some kind of a game. We follow the rules and the Sholen follow the rules and nobody gets hurt. Well, it isn’t a game, and I’m sure the Sholen don’t think it is, either. They brought weapons, which means they’re prepared to use them. To kill us. We have to be ready to do the same.”

Everyone except Josef Palashnik looked uncomfortable, but nobody said anything for a moment. Finally Rob spoke. “I’ve got to ask this,” he said. “Does anyone think we should surrender now? Give ourselves up to the Sholen and try to defuse the situation?”

The other three all shook their heads. “We cannot abandon the Coquille now,” said Alicia. “We’ve made such a breakthrough with the Ilmatarans!”

“Okay,” said Rob. “We’re staying, at least for now. But I think it would be really dumb for us to do any more attacks against Hitode or the Sholen—especially solo missions. If we are going to do anything, we have to agree on it and plan it out in advance. Does that sound good to everybody?”

“I’ll try to come up with a list of objectives in the next couple of days,” said Graves.

“I figured you’d want to spend time with the Ilmatarans,” said Rob, not without a little malicious pleasure.

Dickie’s face was a study in conflict. Finally he nodded. “All right. Good idea. We’ll lie low for a while.”

Broadtail is hungry. The rocks for a cable around are scoured clean, and even with the Builders’ help he and Holdhard cannot catch enough swimmers, unless they do nothing but hunting, which is the last thing Broadtail wants.

He reaches a decision, and finds Holdhard digging for larvae in the soft bottom. “I must go to Longpincer.”

“Your friend?”

“I hope so. I remember him lending me servants and a towfin, and all are dead or lost now. But this discovery of ours is important and must be shared.”

“How can you share the Builders?” she asks. “You do not own them.”

He remembers being surprised several times by her mix of cleverness and ignorance. “Share the knowledge about them. This is the most important discovery I can think of. I imagine dying by accident or violence, and all I know about the Builders lost. I must go to Longpincer.” That is the easy part to say. He pauses before the hard part, then surges ahead. “And I invite you to accompany me as my apprentice.”

She considers the offer. Broadtail knows he is a poor choice for a mentor—no property, no wealth at all but his notes and what is in his mind. Does she understand the value of that?

“Is it far?” she answers at last.

“Yes—we swim across-current to the rift, then follow it to the Bitterwater vent. The first part is hardest, with nothing but coldwater hunting as we go. At the rift there are swimmers and rocks to scour.”

“Here. I have six larvae. We need food for the trip.”

In the morning the Ilmataran was gone. Alicia and Dickie swam out from the Coquille in opposite spirals, but they found no sign of it within half a kilometer. While the two of them were out searching, Rob took the opportunity to have a talk with Josef in the privacy of the submarine.

“I think the Sholen are going to come looking for us,” he said. “It’s a big ocean, but the longer we stay out here the better the odds get that they’ll find us. You’re the Navy guy—what can we expect when they show up?”

Josef stared off above Rob’s head. “Depends on weapons,” he said. “Simplest is knives, maybe spears. Good underwater, easy to make, and Sholen are stronger than humans. We fight by keeping hidden, setting ambushes, and running away before Sholen stab us.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“Possibly firearms. Many Special Forces on Earth have guns modified to work underwater. Very short range, though: only five or ten meters. Also maybe handheld micro-torpedo launchers.”

“Is that those funny guns they have? With the big barrels?”

“Most likely. Microtorps are like little drones with grenadesize warheads. Usually self-guided, not very smart. Can be dodged, but explosions are dangerous several meters away.”

“Jesus! How can we fight against any of that? We don’t have guns or anything.”

“As I said: keep hidden, set ambushes, run away.”

“If we assume they’ve been bringing down more troops by elevator, then there could be at least nine Sholen soldiers at Hitode. It would be dumb to send out all of them, so assume they keep back a third as a garrison. That leaves six who can come looking for us. Even if they don’t have guns or torpedoes I don’t like those odds at all. Sholen are big.”

“You are both right, you and Graves.”

“What do you mean?”

“You say we cannot fight against guns and microtorps. True. He says we must fight. Also true.”

“You sound like the guy in Robot Monster. ‘Must! Cannot!’ So tell me, Great One, what are we supposed to do?” Rob demanded.

“Not sure. First task is survival. For now do nothing foolish. But at some point that changes.”

Longpincer and about half of the Bitterwater Company are gathered in the dining room. Broadtail enters, with Holdhard helping him carry reels of notes. Longpincer makes a sound of dismay as he realizes all that line is from his own store-holes.

“So, Broadtail,” he says, “tell us this amazing discovery of yours. We are all eager to hear you.”

Broadtail seems almost larger than usual. When he speaks there is none of his customary hesitation and overpoliteness. He crawls briskly to the end of the room and begins to speak, occasionally pausing to get a new reel from the pile beside him.

“I announce a discovery,” he says. “A very important discovery. There exist creatures capable of adult speech, the use of tools, and the construction of buildings and waterways. But they are not adults, or children, or any creature known in the world. They come from outside the world. A group of them are camped no more than a hundred cables from here, in the ruins of the City of Shares. These reels record my impressions of them, and some conversations with them.”

“Are you inventing stories?” asks Sharpfrill. “How can something come from ‘outside the world?’ ”

“I recall similar confusion myself. Think of swimming up to the very top of the world, where the ice is. Now think of chipping off some ice. This is something which is done, correct?”

“Correct,” Smoothshell puts in. “In the highlands they use nets filled with ice to lift weights.”

“Now imagine chipping, and chipping, tunneling up and up into the ice. Where does it end?”

“Many reels speculate on that,” says Sharpfrill. “They say the ice extends infinitely far, or that the ice supports impenetrable rock.”

“More to the point,” says Roundhead, “the archives of the Two Rifts Kingdom recount a project to do just what you describe. In the reel the workers tunnel nearly six cables into the ice before abandoning the task as pointless.”

“According to the beings I speak of, the ice extends twenty cables. And beyond it is—nothing. Emptiness, like the interior of a bubble. And that emptiness does extend a great distance. I am not sure how far. Possibly infinite.”

“Then where do these beings come from?”

“Within the vast emptiness are other worlds. They pass through the emptiness in things like moving houses.”

“Broadtail,” says Longpincer. “This is all quite incredible. Have you any proof?”

“Here!” Broadtail takes an object from his belt and passes it to Longpincer. “A tool made by the strangers. Can you even identify its substance?”

“I remember something tasting like this,” says Longpincer tentatively.

“You do! Remember the specimen at the vent? Remember our dissection in this very room? These are the same type of creature. But they can speak! And they make tools! They are adults.” He passes out more objects. “More samples of their work. Can any animal do this?”

“Broadtail, this claim is most extraordinary,” says Sharpfrill. “You are surely aware that it requires more proof than a few strange artifacts.”

“Of course. My studies are by no means complete, and I plan to make another trip to the site. I invite all to come with me.”

“I suppose you must go ahead and prepare?” asks Sharpfrill.

“Not at all. Let us all go at once if you wish.”

“There is no need to rush off unrested and unfed,” says Longpincer. “Let us listen to the rest of Broadtail’s findings—reserving our comments and questions for another time—and let him show us the site after sleep and a meal.”

Broadtail awakens and for a moment is unsure of where he is. Then the flavor of the water reminds him: Longpincer’s house. Someone is standing nearby.

“Broadtail,” says Longpincer. “Come outside with me. We must speak privately.”

Broadtail follows his host out of the house via a small passage, not the grand entrance-chamber he remembers using. Once outside they swim to one of Longpincer’s boundarystones. Neither speaks until they stop.

“Broadtail, your account of the strange creatures worries me.”

“In what way?”

“I have two worries. The first is for you. Are you absolutely certain these creatures are as you describe? They really exist? Intelligent beings capable of speech and the use of tools? You are sure this is not a mistake or a hoax?”

“I am sure. It cannot be a hoax. There are the artifacts, and the creatures themselves—you remember dissecting one. It requires a hoaxer much wealthier than yourself, with experts in all the sciences. The Bitterwater Company cannot create such a hoax. Is there a greater company of scholars with more resources?”

“Perhaps the Long Rift confederation of scholarly companies.”

“And can you think of a reason for them to travel thousands of cables just to trick one landless adult?”

“I cannot,” Longpincer admits. “Well, if you are certain of what you remember finding, then I have no more fear for you. But that leads to my second worry. If—as you maintain—these things are real, and come from someplace beyond the world, why are they here? What do they want?”

“I do not know,” admitted Broadtail. “I propose that we ask them.”

“I recall thinking about this before coming to you,” says Longpincer. “Do you remember them fishing, or quarrying? They are at the Sharers ruins. Is the vent active again? Do they claim the land for themselves?”

“The city vent does not flow,” says Broadtail. “And I do not know if the strangers even need ventwater. You recall the great heat of the specimen at the dissection? Their house gives off warm water. I believe they somehow generate their own heat.”

“Well, they must want something,” says Longpincer. “Otherwise why come here?”

“I do not know. I cannot remember discussing it.” Broadtail feels slightly embarrassed for not thinking of it.

“I suggest you do so at your next meeting with them. Bitterwater is the nearest vent to the Sharers ruins. If these creatures claim territory, I must know of it.”

“I understand.” Broadtail does sympathize with Longpincer’s concern. Even villages fear invasion, and Longpincer’s property is smaller than most villages. He is vulnerable.

“There is one other thing to discuss,” says Longpincer. “I am reluctant even to speak of it, but—what is your attitude toward these beings?”

“I am curious about them, of course.”

“Are you their friend?”

“Longpincer, I remember you taking me in and supporting my studies despite my being landless and outlaw. I am your guest and your ally. I do not imagine that changing.”

“I am glad. Your announcement is so strange it makes me wonder about, well, everything.”

“I remember thinking the same way.”

“I suppose we should rest now, before we eat and travel.” Longpincer leads the way back into the house.

The company dines in Longpincer’s house before setting out. The food, as always, is delicious and abundant. Bags of roe, a rockscraper with the shell removed, and stimulating venomous threads from cold water. Broadtail explains a few more things as they all eat.

“I recall saying the creatures speak. Actually it would be more accurate to say they tap. They know a few dozen words from the dictionary, and can tap out the numbers for them. But they do not seem to understand actual speech. One of them can make out a little, but not reliably.”

“They tap to each other?”

“No, not that I remember hearing. Rather they communicate among themselves with simple howls and grunts, which I believe represent words to them, much the way numbers do in the dictionary.”

Sharpfrill is skeptical. “But to organize words by numbers in order to tie reels—or tap shells—one must have the words in the first place! How can creatures incapable of speech understand that it even exists?”

“I cannot explain it. I only report my own experiences. Come hear for yourself.” But Broadtail wonders: is he tricking himself? Are the creatures no more than imitative animals, repeating his movements and shell-taps? Their narrative could be nothing more than Broadtail’s own brain finding patterns in random noise.

He recalls reading of such things, like Blunthead 40 Hotvent’s famous attempt to decipher ancient carvings by including cracks and growths to produce the desired meaning. Now Blunthead is remembered only for his foolishness rather than his genuine accomplishments.

For just a moment Broadtail is tempted to call it all off; find some excuse to cancel the trip and salvage his reputation. But that passes. He is sure the creatures are intelligent, and if he is wrong, who better than the Bitterwater Company to test his conclusions?

“I am aware of how fantastic my statements are,” he tells the group. “Therefore I beg all of you to be as rigorous as you can in testing what I say and examining all the evidence I present. I prefer to be proved wrong than to live in error.”

There are murmurs of approval from the others. Broadtail decides that it is better to be thought an honest fool than a liar or a crazy adult.