Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (42 page)

 
          
 
"You've got the talent, don't you?"

 
          
 
"If you cannot tell, then I suppose I do
not."

 
          
 
"Well, yeah, I sure can't pick up
anything from you. But—"

 
          
 
"Let us move away from here. The ship
could try again."

 
          
 
They left the flower zone where they had
foraged for a day, supping on thick nectar. Cley did not register a transition
but somehow they came into a region with light centrifugal gravity. This was
not as simple an inner geometry as the Jonah's. Internal portions of Leviathan
spun on unseen axes, and streams flowed along sloping hillsides. The local
gravity was never more than a subtle touch, but it gave shape and order to the
rampant vegetation.

 
          
 
They came into a vast chamber with teeming
platforms, passageways, tunnels, balustrades, antechambers, all thronged with
small animals moving on intent paths. It was a central station for a system of
tubes that seemed to sprout everywhere, even high up the walls. The moist air
above was crisscrossed by great shafts of filtered sunlight rising from sources
near the floor, up to a distant arched ceiling decorated astonishingly—as if to
say that this vault was the fulcrum of all—with a projected view of the
starscape outside. The galactic center glowed brilliantly.

 
          
 
Yet all the busy grandeur of this place did
not intimidate her; it was even inviting. The scurrying animals were
intelligent, in their way, going about swift tasks without giving her more than
a glance. Humans were apparently uninteresting, maybe not even unusual— though
she doubted that many Supras used Leviathans to journey, given their swift
ships.

 
          
 
She did not dwell on the Supra pursuit. The
momentum of events carried her further from her lands, and she had resolved to
plunge forward rather than endlessly fret. Perhaps she could find Ur-hu-mans
somewhere out here, as Seeker had said.

 
          
 
Her hunting skills reawakened as she followed
Seeker in its unhurried but quick foraging. Seeker ate a lot and seemed to
savor the pursuit of small prey for sport, though it devoured mostly plants. It
especially enjoyed ripping big fronds to shreds, picking out packets of ripe
red seeds.

 
          
 
The ferment of tangled life around them,
extending in all three dimensions throughout Leviathan, captivated Cley. It was
so unlike the Supras' carefully tuned projects. As she immersed herself in this
complex wealth she understood what had irked and daunted her about the Supras.
Their air of superiority had been tolerable, but in their grave manner she felt
a cold brush with something she could not name.

 
          
 
Alvin had been even amusing at times, but the
others were leaden and solemn. Seranis had shown Cley their art, and it had
been cloaked with images of decay. Cley knew in her bones that this was a
fashion, even if shaped by the weight of drowsy centuries, not a rule of
nature. Entropy increased, surely, and would doom even the glowing stars. But
without the sun's abundance no light would have kindled life. The biota were
like skilled accountants, living on the flow of energy, paying all required
taxes but never neglecting a loophole. Burning fat in Cley's blood generated
entropy, but she managed to excrete entropy even faster in waste heat and waste
matter—a miraculous, improbable, but perfectly legal dodging of the second law
of thermodynamics.

 
          
 
She, like whole planets, shed excrement and
pollution. But the pollution of one was the meat of another, and she was
beginning to see that this truth worked on the interplanetary scale. Surely it
worked a persistent magic in Leviathan, and would soon enough on Earth. The
Supras had troubled her because they still resonated with the bleak, fixed
compass of Diaspar. Alvin did not know life, that spark which hangs between two
eternities. In a deep sense the Supras were immortal but not alive.

 
          
 
She banished these thoughts with a shiver.
They trekked through the light gravity of this inner vault, eating berries that
swung from animal-snagging palm trees. The sharp fronds could slice off an arm,
but Seeker showed her how to confuse the
tree's
ropy
reflexes long enough to snatch berries. They hiked for two days along a broad
beach.
Seeker catching the yellow fish that thronged the
lake.
Through clouds Cley could see the lake curling over their heads,
kilometers away, describing the vast curve of a rotating cylinder.

 
          
 
"Why do we keep moving so much?"
Cley asked when Seeker marched resolutely on despite gathering gloom. Blades of
sunlight ebbed and flowed in the huge cylindrical vault like tides of light.

 
          
 
"We hide among life."

 
          
 
"You figure the Supras're still looking
for me?"

 
          
 
"They have gone."

 
          
 
"Your own mysterious wisdom tells you
that?"

 
          
 
Seeker showed its sparkling teeth, recently
cleaned by steaks of yellow fish. "The Supras continue outward."

 
          
 
"Great. Let's go back to Leviathan's
skin, then. I liked the view."

 
          
 
Actually she wanted to search for the Captain.
She had glimpsed humans near the transparent blisters and each time they had
seemed to evaporate into the humid jungle before she could pursue.

 
          
 
Seeker did not comment on her desire to find
humans and would not help track them, though she suspected it could sense the
smallest animals which swung or padded through the layers of green. For three
days they worked their way along these lakes, stopping only to swim and surf.
This zone of Leviathan was spinning, yielding curious spiral waves in the lake
that worked up and down the shore.

 
          
 
Two more days, by Cley's inner clock, brought
them to the skin. Again Cley could not sense when they left the region of
spin-gravity. Fogs had hampered their way, blowing into the Leviathan's
recesses, bringing moisture along the paths of the great blades of reflected
sunlight that plunged along wide shafts.

 
          
 
Seeker taught her one of its favorite games.
They perched in one of the translucent bubbles in Leviathan's outer reaches,
waiting. In the utter vacuum outside strange forms glided and worked. Shelled
things like abalone attached themselves to Leviathan's skin. Sometimes they
mistakenly triggered a reflex that made the slick skin double-fold inward.
When one slipped inside.
Seeker would crack it open between
its hard-soled feet and gulp the shell's inhabitant with lip-smacking relish.

 
          
 
Long, black creatures crawled over Leviathan,
grazing on the photosynthetic mats which grew everywhere. Cley could see these
dark algae mottling the carbuncled skin, occasionally puflSng out spores. The
grazers slurped up the brown goo and moved on, the cattle of the skies.

 
          
 
Seeker tried to entice one close to the
translucent layer, whirling and grimacing to attract its attention. The vacuum
cow turned its slitted dark eyes toward this display. Bovine curiosity brought
it closer. Seeker grabbed for it, stretching the tough, waxy wall with its
hands and feet. It managed to hang on to the grazer through the thin skin.
Grunting and growhng, Seeker was strong enough to pluck the strugghng cow
inward against the atmospheric pressure pushing the envelope out.

 
          
 
For a moment Cley thought Seeker would manage
to drag the grazer far enough in to trigger the folding instability and pluck
it through. Seeker yelped with tenor joy. But then the vacuum cow spurted
steam, wriggled, and jetted away.

 
          
 
Seeker gnashed its teeth.
"Devilish
things."

 
          
 
"Yeah, looked
appetizing."

 
          
 
"They are a great delicacy," Seeker
said.

 
          
 
"Pretty resistant, though."

 
          
 
When Clay stopped laughing at the expression
on Seeker's face she glanced to the side—and was startled to find standing
there a human form. But only a form, for this was like nothing she had ever
seen.

 
          
 
The face worked with expression, frowns and
smiles and wild flaring eyes, all fidgeting and dissolving. The thing seemed
demented. Then she saw that she had been imposing her own need to find
expression, impose order. In fact the skittering storms rippled and fought all
through the body. Colors and shapes were but passing approximations.

 
          
 
The form took a tentative step toward Cley.
She bit her lip. The body jiggled and warped like a bad image projected on a
wobbly screen. But this was no illusion. Its lumpy foot brushed aside a stem as
it took another step. The fidgeting skin seemed like a mulatto wash that
blurred and shifted as the body moved.

 
          
 
She realized that she could see through the
thing. Plants behind it appeared as flickering images. She heard a slight
thrumming as it raised an arm with one smooth unnatural motion, not the hinged
pull of muscles at the pivots of shoulder and elbow.

 
          
 
"Aurrouugh," it said, a sound like
stones rattling in a jug.

 
          
 
"It is imitating you, as it did
before," Seeker said.

 
          
 
"What is it?"

 
          
 
"The Captain."

 
          
 
"But—it's—"

 
          
 
"Not
all of the
Captain, of course."

 
          
 
"What does he—does it—want?"

 
          
 
"I do not know. Often it manifests itself
in the form of a new passenger, as a kind of politeness. To learn something it
cannot otherwise know."

 
          
 
The shape said, "Yooou waaanteed by
maaaany."

 
          
 
Cley pursed her lips. "Yes, many want to
find me."

 
          
 
"Yooou musssst lee—
vah
."

 
          
 
"I, I can't leave. And why should
I?"

 
          
 
"Daaaanger.
To meee."

 
          
 
"You?
What are
you?"

 
          
 
The shape stretched its arms up to encompass
all the surrounding growth. Its arms ended in stumps, though momentarily a
finger or two would sprout at the ends, flutter, and then ease back into the
constant flow of the body.

 
          
 
"Everything?
You're everything?" Cley asked.

 
          
 
"Wooorld."

 
          
 
Seeker said, "It is the Leviathan. This
composite intelligence directs its many parts and lesser minds."

 
          
 
Cley gaped. "Every part of it adds to its
intelligence?"

 
          
 
"
Alvin
thought the Phylum Myriasoma was
extinct," Seeker said. "He would be happy to see that he is wrong yet
again."