Ben Bova: Leviathans of Jupiter

What will this alien do? How will it react to being pushed back to the edge of the Kin?

Holding on for dear life to her console’s handgrips, Deirdre tried to make sense of the leviathan’s slowed-down message while Yeager and Corvus analyzed Dorn’s cybernetic systems. Yeager was muttering a continuous string of swearing as Faraday lurched and bounced madly.

“Sonofabitch is battering us to death,” Yeager growled, in between choice curses and words Deirdre had never heard before.

“It’s pushing us,” Deirdre said, trying to focus on the display in her central screen.

Corvus had connected the cable that linked Dorn’s mechanical side with the vessel’s main computer. Yeager was trying to trace the cyborg’s systems, but the constant banging and jarring made it almost impossibly difficult.

Between lurches, Deirdre saw that the leviathan had signaled to them that it was going to move away from the core of the creatures’ massive spherical formation, out toward the edge, and they should follow along with it.

“It’s pushing us outward,” Deirdre said. “It wants us to move out to the rim of their formation.”

“Helluva way to make us move,” Yeager rumbled.

“Maybe if we light up our propulsion system we could go more smoothly,” Corvus suggested.

“Maybe,” Yeager agreed.

The alien suddenly moved off on its own, squirting a spray of heated water behind it. Leviathan was glad that the alien was not resting on its back, remembering the other alien that had scalded its hide.

Swimming alongside the alien, Leviathan again flashed its message that they were heading out to the edge of the Kin. Other leviathans in the formation swung wide of the alien, allowing them to pass through without hindrance.

It does understand, Leviathan realized. It’s just so excruciatingly slow. Leviathan flashed that message to be passed inward to the Elders.

Their ride smoothed out and Yeager stopped his cursing. Corvus hovered over Dorn’s unconscious body while Deirdre reluctantly turned back to her console to examine the messages from the leviathan in the computer’s slowed playback.

Nodding, she reaffirmed, “It wants us to stay here with it.”

Without taking his eyes from the screen showing Dorn’s diagnostics, Yeager asked, “Where’s ‘here’?”

“We’re on the periphery of the leviathans’ formation. They travel in a sort of ragged spherical grouping, it looks like.”

Corvus muttered, “They took us in to the center and now they’ve put us out on the edge. That’s weird.”

“Maybe they’re willing to allow us to stay with them,” Deirdre suggested.

“Not for long,” said Yeager, grimly. “Dorn’s dying.”

Leviathan had a thousand questions that it wanted to ask the alien. Where did you come from? Why are you here? Do you eat the food that drifts down to us, or something else? Why do you spew out scalding hot water when you move? What is your hard shell made of?

Knowing that the alien’s mind worked very slowly, Leviathan decided to ask one question at a time and repeat it as often as necessary until the alien finally understood and pictured an answer. Then it would go on to the next question.

First question: Where do you come from?

“He’s dying?” Deirdre was shocked. “But you said his medical readouts…”

“They’re sinking,” Yeager said. “It’s slow, but he’s going downhill.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

“The pressure. It’s got to be something connected to the pressure.”

Corvus said, “We’ve got to get him back to the station. Quick.”

“Too bad we can’t send him back in one of the data capsules,” said Deirdre.

Yeager gave her an odd look. “That’s something I should’ve thought of,” he muttered. “Have to add it to the next version of this bucket.”

“But what’s wrong with him?” Deirdre repeated.

Corvus waved a hand at the diagnostic screen. “His mechanical systems have shut down for some reason. Without them functioning, his human side can’t function either, not for long.”

“It must be something in his central computer system,” Yeager said, eyeing the screens as if he could force them to tell their secrets by staring at them hard enough.

“Can you access his computer?” Corvus asked.

With a shrug, Yeager said, “I can try.”

Deirdre turned back to her console and saw that the leviathan was flashing signals again.

Where do you come from? Leviathan asked patiently, over and over again.

As it asked, it realized that the alien proved that the world was much larger than even the Eldest had realized. Larger and more complex, with strange hard-shelled alien creatures in it. Who knew what else might be in the farther reaches of the world?

Leviathan felt a thrill of curiosity. How big is the world? What other strange creatures might be in it?

Deirdre frowned with puzzlement as she studied the computer’s playback of the leviathan’s message. The same line drawings, repeated endlessly. The computer display automatically washed out the colorful splashes of pale yellow and brighter orange that made the line drawings difficult to distinguish.

It showed a small circle next to a sketch of a many-flippered leviathan. The circle must be us, Deirdre thought, and the leviathan figure must be him. Then the circle rose above the image of the leviathan, slowly heading away until the leviathan’s image dwindled and dropped out of the picture.

It knows we come from higher up in the ocean, Deirdre reasoned. But then the image of the circle faded gradually until it disappeared altogether. What’s that supposed to mean? she wondered.

“I’ll be damned!” Yeager snapped. “Look at that!”

Turning from her screens, Deirdre saw Max pointing at one of the diagnostic displays on Dorn’s control console.

“Sleep mode?” Andy said, peering at the printout. “What’s that mean?”

“His central computer’s shut down,” said Max.

“Shut down?”

“It’s an old computer programming trick. When the CPU inputs exceed the program’s design limits, the damned computer shuts down its active functions. The geeks used to call that ‘sleep mode.’ It’s from a dozen programming generations ago.”

“Why does it do that?” Corvus asked.

“To protect the core programs, keep them from getting infected or overstressed.”

Deirdre said, “But it’s harming Dorn.”

With a bleak nod, Yeager said, “His human half needs the mechanical systems. He’s got pumps inside him that run his endocrine system and servomotors that power his mechanical parts. His heart is mechanical; its function depends on those systems, too.”

“His heart’s shutting down?”

“It’s slowing,” Yeager replied. “The blood flow to his brain is too little to let him stay conscious.”

“But why’s the computer doing this?” Corvus demanded. “It’s killing him.”

Yeager shook his head. “Goddam bucket of chips is protecting itself and letting his human half die.”

“You’ve got to do something, Max!” Deirdre insisted.

“Yeah, I know. We’ve got to get out of here. But how? Dorn’s our pilot. I’m just his backup. You expect me to run this bucket while he’s unconscious?”

Leviathan began to wonder if the Elders had been right. Perhaps the alien isn’t really intelligent at all: It merely mimics the images we flash at it.

The vision Leviathan had idealized began to fade from his hopes for the future. The world might be much bigger than we had thought, it told itself, but there are no truly intelligent creatures in it, no one that we can communicate with, no one that we can learn from.