Jupiter's Reef (36 page)

“When they brought him up he didn’t know his own name,” said Alex.

Tony looked at the floor and shook his head.

“Six days.” He looked over at Johnny, whose face peeked out at Tony from under his chair’s virtual hood. “There’s something I want to tell you but I’m not sure how to describe it. I’m not sure even what it is. There was a feeling that I had ... when I was in the reef. I was there. Normal me I mean. But the other me. The inside of me ...was ...”

“Of course. It was terrifying,” said Professor Baltadonis.

“No. More than that,” said Sciarra, shaking his head. “A feeling of rejection ... like I didn’t belong.” Tony shook his head. “I know I’ll never feel like that again. I sure hope not, anyway.”

“Heads up!” shouted Johnny. “Voice o’ god, comin’ up.”

The voice of Harold Stubbs came over the cabin speakers. “Too bad we can’t speak directly but both of us are too impatient to endure the hours it would take between hellos.”

“Ninety minutes or so, round trip,” said Tony.

The Professor stumbled a bit when he reported news of a recent mid-Atlantic conflict. “The hydride miners have been fighting a verbal war for years but no one knew it would result in a sub-crustal nuke. Nobody’s sure how to handle this. They’re so cut off from the rest of us.” Stubbs cleared his throat and pressed on with his monologue, seemingly conscious of time constraints.

“Then there’s the solar flaring. I’m sure Captain Wysor explained the problems. We’ve had to change plans you know. EarthCorp’s insisting we put everything on hold until the sun calms down. That may be some time. How long ... Nobody can say. But the
Cornwall
can’t stay in orbit. There are other ships with better shielding but the ... well, we can’t just put everything on another ship, can we?
Cornwall
has the stuff.. They’ll be back when it’s safe unless you finish your mission first.”

“I guess now it’s official,” said Alex. “We’re on our own.”

“We’ve been all along,” said Tony in a disgusted tone.

Stubbs covered the important ground early. Then he began discussing the tapes he had seen of Tony’s accident. He said that the world had been following the mission ever since Mary and Alex left Earth.

“If you’d stayed at that makeshift spaceport here a few more days you’d have seen how the public has reacted to this,” he went on. “When the news of your accident came out, Tony, I’m told sales of telescopes rose three hundred percent. And now, the scientific community is finally taking notice. Even those guys mucking in the slime beds of Europa are following your mission. They’re radioing updates down to the sub-strata explorers. That or risk a mutiny. Then, of course there’s Mary. I don’t know if there’s time to map out the sensation she’s become. The femme fatale of the mission. The enigmatic Mary, the clone princess, superwoman ... Jesus, you name it.”

Mary giggled.

“So here I am telling you that you’re out in the cold on your own, and at the same time we’re all up here dyin’ to see what comes next. This, believe it or not, is tougher on us than it is on you. Never seen so many phone calls.” Stubbs laughed. “Am I getting this across to you? You’re heroes. All of you. Johnny. Mary, Alex you’re the man who knew the reef was right there in front of us all along, and, of course, Tony; the guy who experienced the reef first hand. They’re making action figures of you!” Stubbs paused a moment, then continued. “Well. That’s as it should be. You are heroes. I just wish I could be there with you. Stubbs to
Diver
, God speed.”

“God,” said Mary. “When things get rough people always talk about God. Can He see us here? When sex is hot they yell, oh God, oh God. Stubbs said God speed. What does that mean?”

Tony looked at Mary and blinked. Alex just smiled and kept the ship moving on the straight course exactly fifty meters above the reef.

“That’s just another way to say he hopes we’ll be okay,” said Johnny. “In answer to your question; I guess if God exists, then He can do most anything. That’s the end of the message.”

Part 10

1
The Stubbs transmission contained more than just his message. It was piggy-backed with mail from Earth and Mars full of congratulations and personal mail for each member of the crew.

The computer separated the data stream into its component parts, then distributed them to
Diver
’s crew.

Johnny reviewed his mail in the privacy of his virtual bubble while Tony used earphones and watched a small monitor attached to his chair’s instrument array.

Johnny volunteered that he had received some messages from his daughter on Mars. He didn’t provide too many details but he didn’t seem happy about them.

Tony reported that one of the messages he received was from his ex-wife, Noreen, asking when he would be coming back to Earth.

“I didn’t even know you were married. How long since you saw her last?” asked Mary.

“Not long enough,” said Tony. He turned back to his instruments without further comment.

Professor Baltadonis laughed. “At least you don’t have to respond to her, Tony. Ex-wives you can be ignore but not daughters,” he said. “Christine’s complaining about having to do everything herself. She’s never run the household for this long a time before.”

“Poor thing,” said Mary, pouting precociously.

As she listened to Johnny, Mary reviewed a few text messages from the other Marys on a small monitor directly in front of the co-pilot’s seat. There was even a message from Mother Mary.

Ordinarily Mary would have gotten those messages via her senses. But here, fifty miles below the clouds of Jupiter, radio static seemed to come from everywhere and it easily overwhelmed her. Mary found it refreshing. Almost like taking a vacation from herself, to have to use normal methods of communications. She smiled as she read news from her sisters, relishing the surprises the messages contained. She read them over and over, savoring the moment, until she noticed her kitten pulling hard on its leash to reach its litter box. She switched off the monitor and climbed out of her seat.

Mary glanced over at Alex and realized that there had been no mail for him. She rose from her chair and slid gracefully into his lap. She put her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. “Do you mind not getting mail?” she said to him.

Alex looked past Mary and kept his hand firmly on the drive stick. “Nawww. If I wanted mail I’d write letters.”

“You’re famous now, Alex. Who knows who you’ll be hearing from?” Mary’s lips brushed his neck.

“Mom’s dead. Dad too, probably,” said Alex, looking around the cabin to see if anyone else was listening. Only Tony was looking at him. His eye settled on Mary’s kitten, still straining at its leash.

“You’re my family now, Mary,” said Alex, as his gaze returned to Mary. “And that kitten is our baby. Right now, your baby needs you.”

Alex gently tossed Mary to her feet. It was easy in lower gravity. Mary didn’t resist. She let the momentum propel her to a standing position and, using her cat-like agility, was walking when her feet touched the cabin floor.

She looked over at Tony who watched her acrobatics with apparent admiration. She smiled back at him.

As Mary Seventeen loosened the kitten’s leash she thought over Alex’s words. Everything he said applied to her, too. The messages she’d gotten from the Marys had been sweet, but they were hollow greetings from sisters who never really understood her.

None of them would ever follow their own star like she did, nor would they seek to abandon their calling. Universally the Marys embraced their genetic calling with a passion that Mary found disturbing and repulsive.

There had never been a case of a biogen shunning the duty they were designed to perform. Such traits were ferreted out early and the mistakes were corrected before they left the nursery. They were regarded as a product, first and foremost, and had to earn their right to life.

Mary’s intelligence allowed her to hide her uniqueness from the researchers, but not from the other Marys. Her secret was safe with them, however, because they all had secrets to share. They could trust each other, and that made them like a real family.

Mary recalled introducing Alex to Mother Mary and a few of her sisters. Oddly, his isolation and his unique life experiences had allowed him to fit in perfectly. He’d left the Mary compound regarded by her sisters as the closest thing to a brother any of them had ever had, and he’d been allowed to take their most guarded secret with him.

She returned to her seat with her kitten and two squeezers of coffee. She handed a coffee to Alex as she settled into in her co-pilot’s chair.

“Thank you, my love,” said Alex. “Check the scenery.”

In front of them, the floor of the reef was alive with light. The lighted worms had occupied a zone that was far behind. Now they had entered a realm where fireflies glittered all around them, flashing red when the ship passed by.

“We’ve never seen any of this before,” said Mary in amazement.

Johnny cleared his throat. “Those flashes aren’t so pretty when you realize we’re killing them. Whatever they are, they’re disrupted by our low-gee. Look at the rear camera view.”

Johnny touched his control panel and an image appeared to float like a round window in the holographic view that surrounded the pilot and co-pilot’s seats. One of the rear cameras had caught a few of the fireflies in its closeup lens just as their red flashes were fading. What remained, illuminated by
Diver
’s rear lights, were writhing creatures that had been ripped apart, floundering in turbulent wake of the ship.

“Dingers,” said Alex. “Our null-gee field’s doing that. Let’s go back to one gee, at least we can give them a break.”

“I think we’ve done that,” said Tony.

Johnny used the computer to freeze the image one of the ruined creatures. It reminded Alex of a dandelion puff, a circle of fibers that radiated from a central point. It had been encased in a bubble whose skin was as insubstantial as a soap film. Remnants of the bubble still clung like cobweb to some of the fibers. The frozen image showed that the red glow they’d seen came from a central mote; a dark fuzzy speck whose light had dimmed almost completely.

Alex slowed the ship and instructed the computer to perform a gradual shift to heavier gravity, the mechanics of which involved heating the helium in the ship’s balloons for additional lift, and applying more power to the ship’s lifters while gradually reducing the power to the null-gee field. The ship did it fairly slowly, which was less stressful for the crew but caused the sensation of accelerating upward.

Alex stopped their forward motion during the minute or so that it took the computer to perform the operation. When it was over Mary was slumped in her seat and her kitten had its claws dug into her leg. Mary shrieked in pain and the kitten dropped to the floor. It rolled over once and wobbled as it tried to stand up. It mewed a plaintive protest and sat down.

“I didn’t say you had to do that,” said Johnny.

“Bugs on the windshield, Alex,” said Tony. “Who cares?”

“All we do is damage things,” said Alex. “We should at least try not to hurt these things.”

Suddenly Alex remembered a recurring dream that he’d had after they’d first visited the reef. In it he was being led through the reef by a group of clicker men. One of them held his hand and asked him how a creature as dense as Alex could exist. And he remembered the soft velvety leather feeling of the clicker man’s wing gripping his fingers. It was like holding hands with a cloud. Merely spreading his fingers would have ripped the clicker man’s wing apart.

Alex hadn’t been able to answer the creature’s question in his dream and he doubted he could answer it now. Because of that, the dream still haunted him.

Once the ship’s systems had adjusted to one Earth gravity Alex pushed on the drive and
Diver
resumed its exploration of the reef floor.

It wasn’t long before they entered another swarm of what Mary now called the fireflies. This time their illumination wasn’t nearly as spectacular and Johnny’s camera work showed that the tiny creatures were surviving passage through the ship’s gravity field.

“I think it’s safe to conclude that in the reef red light is the color for alarm,” said Johnny.

“Or pain,” offered Mary.

Mary knew Alex was thinking about his dream of meeting the clicker men. She remembered when he had it and when he’d talked about it to her on Mars.

Their exploration of the reef was to be an adventure for Alex and Mary, but rather than feeling like explorers discovering new lands they felt like invaders. Mary had seemed to be the target of several clicker men’s radio assaults; times when they clustered around the ship and emitted bursts of radio that Mary knew were aimed at her. Alex had only witnessed those attacks via Mary’s apparent distress. Yet he alone had dreams of guilt and of the clicker men. He was the haunted one.

For the next hour they proceeded without comment. The terrain of reef below gradually changed. Its lumpy surface grew rougher still and hillocks became hills and valleys became gorges and fissures. Here the reef looked wild and unmanaged, without the apparent smoothing or sculpturing evident in the areas occupied by the clicker men.

Johnny noted that the radar images showed none of the tubes and internal structuring associated with the clicker men’s cities, as he called them.

“So you think we’ve found cities?” asked Alex. “That would imply intelligence, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose you could call them hives. Like insect colonies,” replied Professor Baltadonis. “But either way there is a collective at work. That suggests intelligence.”

“Suggests is as far as I’d go, Professor,” said Tony, getting out of his chair. He stretched and flexed his back in the new gravity and smiled. “Feels like Earth,” he said. “I like that.”

“I still feel like we’re rising,” said Mary.

“I like that, too,” said Tony. “Up and outa here.”

A gust of wind hit
Diver
unexpectedly from the side, knocking Tony to the floor. It came in a black cloud that was invisible to the cameras and to the radar. It whirled the ship in circles and wrenched at the balloon package.