Frozen Sky 2: Betrayed Page 3
VONNIE: Show me trust / My tribe is strong.
TOM: You show fear.
VONNIE: You hurt me / I can help.
TOM: Show fear / Taste good.
VONNIE:
TOM: More tools / More food.
VONNIE: Tools / Food Yes We can give you food and tools / Show trust.
TOM: You show fear.
“He can’t get past it,” Ben said on her display, adding a guarded tone to their dance.
“He can,” Vonnie said. “He will.”
TOM: Many voices / Other voices / Your tribe shows fear.
VONNIE: Show trust / My tribe can help Help you My lover possesses me.
TOM: My tribe possesses me.
VONNIE:
“Oh shit, did you see that?” she asked.
Ben chuckled and said, “Yeah. It’s funny what slips through.”
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not,” Ben said, but she heard the grin in his voice. It made her annoyed and glad, a conflict of feelings that intrigued the sunfish.
TOM: You spurn him Want him Are you fertile?
VONNIE: No / Show embarrassment.
TOM:
VONNIE: He protects me Pleasures me Embarrassment.
“Gah,” she said, struggling with her loss of composure. She wondered how many scientists and administrators would review her transcripts on Earth, but Tom didn’t comprehend her urge for secrecy.
TOM: You show surprise / You don’t know you?
VONNIE: I know / They see Small shame Large pride / My tribe sees shame and failure inside large pride.
TOM: Humans and sunfish / Treaty / Show pride.
VONNIE: Yes / Show pride.
She smiled at Tom’s mental leap. He often found her puzzling or dense, but he’d learned to sift through her surface thoughts. He’d identified the heart of her feelings. Her embarrassment was less important than her conviction or her sense of accomplishment, and he shared her desire to work through their differences.
TOM: Determination and trust.
VONNIE: Yes Show trust I can hide my lover from you.
TOM:
VONNIE: Impatience / Chagrin.
TOM: You are distant from yourself.
VONNIE: No / Show trust.
TOM: I hear distance and chaos in you.
VONNIE: Stop.
Folding her arms in a pose that meant wait, she took a breath. Tom was swift to perceive nuances she’d barely seen in herself. Trying to keep up with him was dizzying. Too often he led her into spirals of negative feedback, pressuring her, digging and gnawing at her like she was a tunnel in the ice.
“Don’t worry about me,” Ben said. “Tell him whatever you want.”
“I shouldn’t,” she said.
“You have to.”
She nodded pensively. “All right.” So she tried to dance about human lust, explaining this side of herself.
Vonnie and Ben hadn’t violated regulations by sleeping together. The ESA knew it couldn’t require adults to live in isolation for years without sexual relationships. In fact, their agency’s leaders had balanced the crew’s genders and ages with the certainty that some of them would pair up, and maybe break up, while others adopted the roles of mediators or rivals or confidants. Healthy people needed romance. The tensions it created were a driving force in any group.
The problem was Vonnie had become a celebrity. How she cut her hair or which books she read during breakfast were the subjects of endless debate. Fan clubs had voted for her to sleep with various men (and women) on Europa.
Her detractors were waiting for a mistake. Offending the sunfish with her sexual activities would serve as the ideal crime for certain politicians and faith-based leaders. Part of her also worried about getting Koebsch in trouble. Would their slight mutual attraction show through?
Mostly she didn’t want to hurt Ben. What if he was humiliated by what she revealed to the world?
She didn’t think she loved him. He felt more like a great friend, good in bed, great at his job, great on the radio and great in their labs. They worked together, so she wanted a little separation from him. The mission came first. But she thought he loved her. He was too protective.
It wasn’t fair for his passion or her softer affection to become public news, so she tried to inject more into her voice and body than she’d genuinely experienced.
VONNIE: Excitement / Satisfaction.
TOM: I hear more voices in you.
VONNIE: Yes / Guilt / Respect.
TOM: You are chaotic and weak.
VONNIE: We are not sunfish.
TOM:
VONNIE: No / Yes.
TOM: Wait.
Vonnie shouldn’t have laughed. For once, it seemed like she’d overwhelmed Tom rather than the other way around. He retreated from her with his arms curled against his sides. Then her laughter stopped. With dismay, she realized he was signaling an end to their session.
She followed him across the module with her arms down, mimicking his shape, shuffling her feet when she could have run to cut him off. “Come back,” she said.
VONNIE: Listen and talk.
TOM: No / Go.
VONNIE: Listen!
TOM: Go.
She knew better than to crowd him, not unless she wanted more wounds. He pounded at a latch installed specifically for him on the floor. It opened a small, customized air lock leading out of Submodule 07.
“Tom!” she said. Then she turned and called, “What did I miss?”
“His last readings seemed positive,” Ben said.
“What if it’s a negotiating tactic?” Koebsch asked.
The AIs translated Tom’s mood as matter-of-fact. The sunfish were never apologetic, but Vonnie thought she sensed sadness. Maybe she was projecting.
Tom entered the lock and closed the door, leaving her by herself in 07.
“Do we have more food for him?” she asked.
“Roger that,” Ben said. “We set another container outside while you were talking. We’ve prepped others, but he can only carry one by himself.”
“He could tell his tribe,” she said. “They’d come back for more.”
“Do you want me to slow the lock or send a mecha around to meet him?”
“No. Don’t slow the lock. He knows how long the cycle takes.”
“The outer door is opening now.”
“Don’t send our mecha, either,” Koebsch said. “He might think they’re a threat.”
“Damn it.” Feeling lost, Vonnie paced away from Tom’s air lock and said, “Cameras. Full grid. I want to see what he’s doing.”
“Get back to the surface,” Koebsch said.
“I will.” She traced her good hand through her display, holographically enhancing the best angles without moving her exterior sensors. If a single lens swiveled or zoomed, Tom would notice. She didn’t want him to feel like he was being hunted.
She wondered if something had happened outside. Were other sunfish calling him?
Watching her display, Vonnie saw nothing unusual. Suspended by its struts and mooring cables, Submodule 07 perched at one end of a man-made cavern in the ice. Above it and alongside it, two steel shafts connected the cavern with the surface. The first was an access tube for people. It opened into Hab Module 06, a new structure they’d built above 07. The second was a larger cargo tube. It led to a staging area for mecha.
At the other end of the cavern, the ice crumbled. Narrow cracks led into an eroding maze where the few open spaces fell toward a larger series of catacombs forty meters below.
Tom had stopped breathing as soon as he left 07 for the toxic air outside. Sunfish hemoglobin was a twisted iron-rich protein, which allowe
d them to retain spectacular concentrations of oxygen. Tom could run two kilometers without another breath. Because he had gills in addition to lungs, he could also endure on puddles if necessary or fully submerged in rivers or seas.
In infrared, he was a graceful star surrounded by the frigid bulk of the ice. Vonnie watched him leap through a short, perfect arc. He sailed to the thirty-kilo metal container they’d left for him.
He grabbed it. He screeched. Then he flung himself across the cavern with his prize. The AIs interpreted his cry as challenging and triumphant, even warlike.
Why?
Fifteen times before, Tom had reported back to his matriarchs. It was conceivable that this meeting—their sixteenth—marked a vital step. The sunfish counted in twos and eights like human beings counted in fives and tens. Vonnie’s crewmates believed his tribe was approaching a decision of some kind, but she couldn’t fathom why Tom had waited until now to press her about Ben.
Days ago, he’d learned every detail of her anatomy in his shameless, unpretentious way. During their first meetings, Koebsch had also allowed Tom to interact with a few types of mecha, which thrilled him more than any human.
The sunfish revered power. They had been stunned to discover people controlled mecha, not vice versa. Understanding the symbiosis of man and machine had led Vonnie and Tom through several discussions about life on Earth. The idea of nations was similar to that of tribes. More alien to him were the concepts of monogamous sex and children born to one couple, especially because human civilization was rife with adultery, divorce, abuse and neglect.
Reporting to his matriarchs, Tom must have shared every trait he’d discerned in Vonnie and the voices of her friends. She hoped his impressions were favorable. The sunfish had enjoyed the ESA’s lavish gifts of tools and food, but they always thought in the short term.
What if they’d decided a few gifts were enough?
Bypassing the nearest gaps in the cavern floor, Tom brought his container to a wider chasm. He disappeared into the maze. Soon he would travel out of range.
Vonnie’s crewmates had seeded the ice with spies, yet they remained blind in thirty percent of the immediate area. Two disasters had cost them hundreds of mecha. They were still building new rovers and probes to meet their needs.
Because they couldn’t afford to lose any resources, they had been cautious to infiltrate while Tom and other scouts were gone. Then the sagging ice in the maze had pinned several of their machines, crushing one of their hard-won mecha and immobilizing four more.
The larger catacombs below Submodule 07 were uncharted territory. Somehow his tribe had identified and destroyed every beacon hidden in the ESA’s containers. Previously, other sunfish had chewed nanotags from their own skin. Now the ESA’s containers were free of devices. The AIs had said her crew was losing Tom’s trust by attempting—and failing—to deceive him.
So much of what we do is false or two-faced, Vonnie thought. She worried that she might not see him again. We may be too complicated for them to accept. We’re so loud in our heads, so convoluted in our social groups.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her words were for Tom even though he was gone.
Both men answered. “You were fantastic,” Ben said.
“Get to the surface,” Koebsch told her. “I don’t like how Tom screamed before he left.”
“The AIs think it sounded like goodbye,” she said.
“It was more than that,” Koebsch said. “There were some aspects of goodbye in his arm movements, but his scream was defiant. It was aggressive. Get to the surface or I’ll pull the whole module.”
“That would ruin everything.”
“Do you remember what happened to Pärnits and Collinsworth? The sunfish don’t need to kill you themselves. If they open another geyser…”
“Our sensors would hear them digging.”
“Not if they’re too far down.”
“Koebsch, they know when I leave the module. If Tom challenged me and I retreat, it demonstrates weakness. Let me stay. We need to show confidence.”
“The sunfish could have caused the tremor. They could be preparing another collapse.”
“Ben, what do your models say?” Vonnie asked.
“His models weren’t predicting a quake and he can’t explain where it originated,” Koebsch said. “Get out. You can go back after we see what happens.”
“What’s happening is I let him down,” Vonnie said. “We need to try harder, not expect them to figure everything out for us.”
“Look. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Koebsch’s voice was encouraging now. “Nobody else is willing to walk in there with a sunfish,” he said. “You’ve been exceptional, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch more of my people die. Get out or I’ll pull the module.”
Vonnie nodded reluctantly as she walked to the escape hatch. “Yes, sir,” she said. Then she opened the locker that held her boots and gloves, delaying as long as possible, wanting to stay and needing to go.
Nothing on Europa was easy.
3.
Jupiter, a gas giant, was almost large enough to have ignited as a dwarf star. It formed a miniature solar system unto itself. It had seventy-one moons in addition to three rings of collisional debris and ejecta. Many of its satellites were mere rubble—stray, dead rocks it had swept up from space—but its four major moons resembled the planets orbiting the sun.
They were as big as Mercury. They had Earth-like molten cores, water, and strange atmospheres.
Unfortunately, they belonged to Jupiter’s busy inner system. Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto circled their father like tormented sisters.
For the most part, Jupiter’s rings consisted of particles finer than smoke, but its rings were unsteady and released vast tendrils of dust. The moons had been sand-blasted for eons. More violently, millions of asteroids swung in and out of the moons’ paths. All of them were scarred by craters with a single exception. Europa. Her salt water ocean, which swallowed her completely, kept her exterior from preserving the damage caused by meteor impacts.
At temperatures of -162° Celsius, Europa’s surface ice was twenty kilometers thick in places. It drifted on the equator and twisted at the poles, buckling, folding. Meanwhile, orbital stresses caused volcanic activity inside her molten core. Magma and gas created soft spots and melts. The smallest meteor impacts vanished rapidly. The largest opened floods.
Europa was covered with ridges and cracks and blemishes. Nevertheless, she was smooth compared to the other moons. Like Earth, she had weather and erosion, although her feeble weather systems varied among the catacombs within the ice. Her true storms existed in her ocean, which no Earth-made probes had ever seen.
Neither men nor mecha had traveled deeper than four kilometers. The ice was too treacherous, and they were still evaluating the sunfish.
They’d designed Submodule 07 because their efforts to coax an ambassador above the surface had failed. First they’d relocated the camp they shared with the FNEE—Brazil’s Força Nacional de Exploração do Espaço—moving to within five kilometers of the sunfish colony. They’d left a handful of sensors in the chasms beneath their old camp, after which they’d required a single day to move everything else because they owned so few pieces of equipment.
Developing the new site had taken longer. Using mecha, the ESA had explored several catacombs. Then they’d needed twelve days to seal the ice with pressure tents, excavate, insert 07 with its access and cargo tubes, and repack the surface. When they were done, they’d spent nine more days and a hundred kilos of food luring scouts like Tom back into the area.
As expected, the noise of their diggers had chased off every bug and sunfish for three cubic kilometers. The biologists had established that even the native fungi released spores as if trying to run when subjected to quakes or severe drops in atmospheric pressure. That was why the ESA hadn’t dug near Tom’s home, a location they’d mapped in detail. His tribe might have fled or declared war. Europan lifeforms
feared blowouts on the surface more than geysers or magma from below. Floods and fire could be survived. The vacuum of space was literally the end of their world.
The sunfish had never imagined anything beyond the ice. Their total lack of curiosity at First Contact had caused many factions on Earth to doubt their intelligence. They simply regarded people as another lifeform. For tens of thousands of years, the tribes had met bizarre creatures from separate ecologies in the ice. Everything was food. Even their unfamiliarity with metal and electronics hadn’t stopped them from attacking.
Later, they’d accepted the mecha as superior beings. In fact, it wasn’t until the mecha demonstrated obedience to Vonnie that Tom had addressed her with the same esteem he gave his matriarchs.
The sunfish understood master-slave relationships. They took prisoners during their wars with each other—but while many prisoners were killed and eaten, others were absorbed into the conquering tribe as mates. Some became matriarchs in time.
Among the sunfish, adaptability came second only to their hair-trigger willingness to fight.
Tom’s tribe, Top Clan Eight-Six, had accepted a treaty with the ESA. The sunfish were desperate for resources. The ESA wanted allies to teach them about Europa’s history; envoys to introduce them to more tribes; and guides to lead them further into the catacombs.
Vonnie believed they’d made substantial progress. Was it enough? Their leaders on Earth were anxious. The mission costs had been steep—and they’d barely gotten started. Establishing peace and exploring Europa were enormous tasks with no end in sight.
The situation was further complicated by the reality that humankind was no more unified than the sunfish. ESA, American, Brazilian and Chinese mecha had explored different regions beneath the surface, and neither altruism nor pure science had been their goals. Earth’s crews had launched electronic attacks against each other as they maneuvered for position and for political gain. Brazilian mecha had engaged three sunfish tribes in combat, intending to secure live specimens until the sunfish tore open a volcanic hot springs like a doomsday bomb.