THE FACTORY AREA looked even more desolate than before. There was a haze of suspended silt, like low ground fog, close to the bottom. Rocks and parts of the factory structure poked up like humpbacked ghosts, silent and grey. Bandicut rubbed his eyes, uncertain for a moment whether it was fatigue or water-borne haze that was obscuring the view. He glanced back through the rear viewports, for maybe the hundredth time, to make sure the star-spanner bubble was still attached to the back of the sub. It was, and behind it were the headlights of the cargo sub. His eye caught Antares, and her lips crinkled for a moment in a calming smile. Her emotions seemed cloudy, but she was trying to be reassuring.
"Are you worried?" asked Ik.
"Nervous as a bridegroom," Bandicut said, peering forward again to see if he could spot the entry point to the factory.
He needn't have bothered; Delent'l had left an echoing sonar marker. L'Kell quickly located the marker and brought them to the spot. "Let's insert the probe," he said.
"All right." Bandicut took the manipulator arm controls and began to extend the probe, which was tipped with a bulbous speakerphone. His action was interrupted by a voice on the external hydrophone, speaking in Neri.
"This is Copernicus. We are detecting vibrations suggesting the presence of a submersible. If this is correct, please ping three times."
L'Kell pinged. The sounds reverberated in the sub's cabin like a plucked piano string.
"Thank you. If John Bandicut is with you, ping three times."
Ping. Ping. Ping.
"Thank you." The robot switched to English. "Welcome, Cap'n. We are prepared to initiate contact. Please back away to a distance of at least twenty meters while we clear the area."
L'Kell backed the sub away. A moment later, a great cloud of silt billowed up in front of the sub, white and impenetrable in the headlight glare. It slowly drifted toward the sub, obscuring the pilot's window, and then gradually cleared. Where they previously had seen only a hump of murky sediment, they now saw a membrane pulsing rhythmically outward like a balloon, knocking away the last of the silt residue on its surface.
Bandicut glanced at L'Kell. "Let's try the outside speakers and see if Copernicus can hear us through the membrane." L'Kell touched the switch. "Coppy, this is Bandicut. Can you read me? The entry point is much clearer now."
"Excellent, Cap'n. Are you in the star-spanner bubble?"
"Not yet. What do you want us to do?"
"Let's take care of the materials first. Have you brought what we requested?"
"It's right behind us, in a cargo sub. They can drop it wherever you want it."
The robot's voice seemed to reverberate across the ocean floor. "Then let us proceed with the transfer. Please observe, and report what you see, on the area thirty meters upslope from this entry membrane. About ten meters shy of the large black smoker."
L'Kell pointed out the spot, alerted S'Cali in the cargo sub, and turned his own sub for a better view. There was another massive puff of silt, which drifted clear, revealing a horizontal membrane on the bottom. It looked like a large, metallized tarp stretched over . . . what? Bandicut wondered. He described it to Copernicus.
"At the pilot's discretion, he may approach the membrane," said the robot. "If the cargo is solid and sufficiently dense, he may simply drop it over the membrane."
"Preparing for the drop," came S'Cali's voice. "It'll take a minute to get ready. L'Kell and Bandicut watched as the larger sub maneuvered over the membrane, like a great hen settling into its nest. A few minutes later, S'Cali reported his cargo hatch opened, and the drop completed.
"Cargo received," Copernicus replied. "Contents are being analyzed and broken down. The copper and other elements are being dissolved and placed into the raw material stream. Thank you. John Bandicut, while that procedure is taking place, would you like to attempt contact with the factory head?"
Bandicut drew a deep breath before answering. "All right. I'm going to move into the bubble now." He glanced at his Neri friend.
L'Kell took the remote manipulator controls and began winding in the forwardmost cables securing the bubble. Bandicut peered back to see the bubble rising behind them and moving forward over the sub. L'Kell crouched to peer up through a small porthole, and carefully reeled the cables until the bubble was positioned directly overhead. Then he drew all the cables taut, fore and aft—securing the bubble against the hatch.
They had rehearsed this in relatively shallow water—in the middle of the Neri city, with swimmers standing by to aid him. They had established that it was possible to pass from the sub to the bubble and back, while keeping the internal pressure of both lower than that of the surrounding water. But that differential was small stuff compared to what they faced here. Thousands of pounds per square inch were squeezing against the sub, ready to burst through any structural weakness. Would the seal hold? And if it failed, would he kill just himself, or all of his friends, too?
It was time to find out.
He turned around in the cramped space. As he squeezed between Antares and Li-Jared in the back of the compartment, Antares caught his hand—and his gaze. He managed a smile. Then he climbed up into the conning tower airlock.
As he reached for the metal hatch, Ik called up, "Are you sure you don't want someone with you?"
He glanced back down into the compartment. "Later. Let me check it out first. Now, help me secure this, okay?"
He swung the hatch shut and tightened the latches. He was in a tight cylinder now, lit only by a tiny Neri lantern. He'd been through the tower many times, but it felt a lot smaller with both top and bottom hatches closed. Reaching overhead, he began to loosen the latches on the top hatch, working quickly before he could lose his nerve.
/// If there's sea-pressure against the hatch,
you probably won't be able to open it. ///
He wiped sweat from his eyes. /True./ And it was also true that if the bubble didn't have a remarkable ability to withstand pressure on one side, and allow penetration on the other, he wouldn't be able to open the hatch. He pushed upward. There was resistance for a moment, then a slight give. The stone in his left wrist flickered, and the hatch swung open. A cupful of trapped water splashed down. He poked his head up through the Neri membrane, and the star-spanner membrane, and caught a breath of air that smelled . . . different . . . almost with a hint of ozone to it. But it was air, blessed air.
He climbed up out of the airlock into a dark, dry space. Dark, that is, except for the glow of the sub's headlights and sternlights shining into the abyssal gloom. For a moment, he was nearly overcome with vertigo, and claustrophobia, and sheer quaking terror, as he absorbed the fact that he was sitting in a bubble made of nothing, energy maybe, at the bottom of the ocean.
/// It's pretty strong, I think. ///
/Yah./ He climbed the rest of the way into the bubble.
It was eerily quiet. He could hear his heartbeat, and his breath, and some mutters and groans coming from the sub right below him. But there was an overpowering sense of stillness. It reminded him of the other-dimensional realm of the magellan-fish, back on Shipworld; that experience felt as if it had been a training ground for what he was doing now.
/// Perhaps it would be best for now
to focus— ///
/Right. Yes. Jesus./ He drew a sharp breath and secured the hatch on the sub, then crept forward to where he might become visible to L'Kell and the others, through the sub's nose window.
He heard a click and hiss, and suddenly the words, quite loudly, "Can you hear me, John Bandicut?" It was jarring, and seemed to come from everywhere at once; but he knew it was L'Kell.
"Loud and clear! Can you pull the bubble forward?"
With a whine from the winches, the bubble began to move. He glanced back and saw it separate from the hatch, and his heart began to pound again. The front of the sub was coming under the bubble now, and he crouched down to wave to his friends as they peered up through the nose window. He pointed forward. "Let's dock." With the star-spanner bubble resting on the sub's nose, L'Kell began to move them with great care toward the entry membrane of the factory. As the light grew stronger upon the membrane, it turned from grey to shimmering silver. Bandicut guided L'Kell with hand gestures, until the bubble drew very close, then touched the membrane with a quicksilver ripple—and a soft boom, like a kettle drum.
He heard the voice of Copernicus, hollow but clear: "Cap'n, is that you? Are you at the entry point?"
"I'm here. I'm in the bubble." With the bubble pressed against the membrane, both surfaces had flattened and formed a quivering mirror. "What now?"
"Can you reach through?" asked the robot.
"We'll find out." The pressure differential was enormous here: the robots at the ambient pressure of maybe four hundred atmospheres, the bubble at maybe forty or fifty atmospheres. How much could this star-spanner technology handle? Could it protect him? He drew a breath, reached out a hand, and pushed against the bubble. It felt like the resilient, but resistant, nothingness of a forcefield. He pushed harder. The interface dimpled suddenly, and his hand passed slowly though the factory membrane.
He wiggled his fingers. It felt like air on the other side, not liquid. How could that be?
"Captain, we can see your hand. Are you all right?" called Copernicus through the membrane.
"Yes, I'm fine."
At that moment, something cold touched his hand, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. "Jesus! What's that?" He jerked his hand back.
"It's just me," said Copernicus.
His heart pounded frantically. He gasped for breath. "Don't do that without warning me!"
"I apologize. Cap'n—are you okay? Did I hurt you?"
He gasped, collecting himself. He looked at his hand, which he had reflexively pulled all the way out. With a little shiver, he reached back through the membrane. "No, you just scared me, that's all. Okay, where are you? You can touch my hand again."
This time, the metal touch felt reassuring. He took a deep breath, squeezing the robot's hand. "Should I try . . . pushing my face through?"
"If it seems safe to you," said the robot.
Safe? he thought, and almost laughed.
"Are you all right?" boomed another voice. L'Kell, in the sub. Or was it Ik? It was so distorted, it was hard to tell.
Without removing his hand, Bandicut turned his head to look down, over his shoulder. Ik, Antares, and L'Kell were peering out the nose window at him. "I'm fine!" he called. "I'm holding Copernicus's hand." Which raised another question: what was Copernicus doing outside the sub, anyway? "I'm going to try sticking my head through." Then, before he could have second thoughts, he leaned his forehead into the membrane. He felt only a slight resistance, then popped through.
It was like peering into a tent through a fish-eye lens. The first thing he saw was Copernicus, staring at him with dark camera eyes. And behind the robot, the Neri submarine and Napoleon. It was an incongruous sight. He wasn't sure what he'd expected: some very strange alien vista, a seafloor factory, maybe something like the star-spanner factory run by the shadow-people of Shipworld, but of course different because of where it was. Instead, what he saw was the inside of a huge bladder, translucent and glowing just enough to provide illumination, and containing nothing but those three objects: the sub and the two robots. He wondered what he looked like, with his hands and head extruded through the silvery membrane.
"Coppy," he said, his voice resonating into the space with a twang. He tried to draw a breath, and felt resistance. He suddenly realized that with his face pressed directly into the membrane, it was going to be very hard to breathe here.
/// Wait. ///
He waited, holding his breath, and sensed that the stones were in contact with the bubble or whatever controlled it, and were doing something to the permeability of the membrane.
"Cap'n," said Copernicus, "the factory has injected approximately one-tenth of one percent of oxygen into the atmosphere here. If the spanner bubble can accommodate selective movement of gases through the membrane, you should be able to breathe. At least I hope so."
/// Try it now.
We've adjusted the star-spanner bubble,
but have no control over the factory membrane. ///
He tried again to draw a breath, and to his surprise, was able to inhale slowly through the membrane. It was like breathing from a scuba cylinder that was nearly empty. He exhaled slowly, inhaled slowly. He didn't keel over. But he was going to become short of breath if this went on for very long.
/// We're going to adjust a few things
in your metabolism to let you stretch
your CO2 tolerance and oxygen demand. ///
The difference was perceptible within seconds. He took a closer look at the smoothly curved walls that enclosed the Neri sub and the robots. There was perhaps a meter's width of clearance around the sub, just enough room for the robots to move. But within the surface of the bladder walls he saw sparkling flecks of something: maybe just refractions of light through the shimmer of the membrane interface, or maybe something else—say, tiny emitters or control points for nanoassemblers. Bandicut noticed that Napoleon, standing near the nose of the sub at the far end of the chamber, seemed to have several probes embedded in the wall of the chamber. He didn't recall Napoleon's having had those probes before.
"Is the breathing arrangement satisfactory?" Copernicus asked.
"Okay so far," Bandicut said. Raising his voice, he called, "Can you still hear me out there?"
He was startled to hear two different voices answer. "Quite well." "Yes, but faintly."
It took him a moment to realize that the first voice had been that of Nabeck, the robot's Neri companion in the sub in front of him. "Nabeck," he said, "are you well?"
"I am quite well, but weary of the confinement," the Neri answered. "Greetings to you and to L'Kell."
"Thank you. I hope we can give you reason to leave soon," Bandicut said. "And Copernicus, just out of curiosity, what are you and Napoleon doing outside the sub?"
"We locked out after the factory established a dry atmosphere in anticipation of your arrival," Copernicus said. "We thought we could be more useful to you here, on the outside, where you were going to be."
"Oh. Then thank you. I assume Nappy is tied up in conversation with the factory?"
"Yes, Cap'n. I am in close contact with him, however. I am pleased to report that the factory head functions on a considerably higher cogitative level than we had originally thought. The connection is in some respects difficult—"
Difficult. Yes, it would be, Bandicut thought—two AI mechanisms from entirely different worlds, meeting on an abyssal ledge kilometers deep in the ocean.
"—but we seem to have worked through the major communications issues. There are still some areas of uncertainty regarding operations and intentionality."
"I see. Well, is it ready to resume production? That's what the Neri want to know."
"Many of the internal repairs are far enough along for the most urgent tasks to be undertaken. Cap'n, the factory head is extremely eager to speak with you directly."
"That's what I'm here for." Bandicut gestured. He felt, peering through the shimmer of the interface, as if he were operating hand puppets. He glanced down; his hands appeared to be made of watery silver.
Copernicus tapped quietly, probably conferring with Napoleon. Copernicus's upper sensor swiveled away from Bandicut. The robot pointed with a mechanical hand toward the far end of the chamber, over Napoleon's head. "In that case, Cap'n, if you would fix your gaze in that direction, and be ready to receive the laser image—"
Laser image?
He blinked that way, and before he could even draw a breath, there was a light dancing in his eyes. A reflex to shut his eyes was suppressed, somewhere along the neural pathway.
/// It's okay, John.
We're watching for tissue damage,
but it's within safe limits so far. ///
Within safe limits . . . he supposed that was better than having his eyes fried straightaway. But was this how the thing was going to make contact—?
The play of light blossomed into something like a holo, but a holo playing directly inside his skull. The first image was a slow-motion fireworks burst, which turned from sparks of fire into raindrops of crimson and gold and emerald and silver. From out of that rain there emerged a face—a sculpture in chrome-silver, turning in space. It was a Neri face, or something like a Neri face. It was hard to see exactly, because it was strobe-lighted, with pulses of light here, there, filling Bandicut's skull. After a few moments the face was gone, and there was a sudden flickering of textured space that reminded him of human neurolink, with twisted topographies shot through with sparks of light. It produced a jittery sensation, like being overwrought and sleepless in the dark of night, with synapses firing at random. He had the sense that some kind of translation and analysis was taking place, perhaps involving the stones or perhaps just the factory head. The near-Neri face came back, rotating as if weightless; but now it was olive-green, and he could see that the eyes were smaller than a Neri's, and the neck was smooth, with no gills. It seemed to make eye contact, but only a fleeting, empty contact.
/// I have a feeling about that face— ///
/One of the Neri's creators?/
/// Yeah. ///
And then it was gone, leaving only a feeling of strobing images out of memory, and a voice:
You are John Bandicut? Species Human?
The answer—Yes!—seemed to come from somewhere within, and not through his conscious mind. Out of the strobing flashes, he thought he glimpsed an image that looked like Napoleon, spinning in and out of the frame of view. Would Napoleon speak? Not yet, apparently; the next voice was the same as the last:
Do you speak on behalf of the Neri?
/I do. And you are?/
Factory head. Iteration sssssshh— There was an instant of static as the translation through the stones broke down. Then: —late revision. Communication restored after . . . sssssshh . . . interruption. Much demands attention. Repairs. A sudden, flickering image of intricate patterns being changed blindingly fast; circuits maybe, or programming. Production. Strobelike images of subs, bubbles, membranes, diving equipment, electronics being spun into existence as though sketched by an invisible pen: nanoassembly. Threats to the well-being of the Neri.
Instead of images, there was sudden stillness, and Bandicut thought he heard Napoleon's voice, very distant, addressing the factory head. Abruptly there was darkness all around, with bursts of urgent blood-red heat lightning flashing in a moving pattern around him. There is need. Urgent need. And now an image, pulsing: a ghostly light burning out of the darkness of the abyssal valley, and quakes shaking loose rocks and ledges and habitats. After a few heartbeats, the image darkened back into the chaos of the crimson heat lightning.
Bandicut reeled at the intensity of the display. /Very urgent need,/ he agreed in a whisper, trying not to succumb to vertigo.
You wish assistance?
/In stopping that thing?/ He hardly dared hope. /By making contact?/
By making contact. Even now it trembles.
A new image, like a weird fish-eye shot from the back of Bandicut's head, with an overlay of semimirror rippling: the star-spanner bubble, and behind and under it, the sub, and behind that the spectral glow of the Devourer, awakening from its nap in the abyss over which the sub's stern hung like a rock climber's tailbone.
And again: the face of the near-Neri, or pre-Neri, surrounded by billowing concentric haloes of light. And about it, the voice of the factory saying . . .
Those who made us. Formed us. Instructed us.
Bandicut hardly breathed. /Yes?/
They are no more.
He exhaled. /No./
They were my authority. They are no more.
Pulse pounded in his head. /No more,/ he agreed.
Sparks, in a blizzard. A flash of consuming fire, like a great cosmic event, taking all in its wake. And darkness. And . . .
The Neri are therefore my authority. Or their—ssssshh— surrogate.
Bandicut drew a difficult breath. /Yes—/
They cannot join in communication this way?
Bandicut hesitated. /Perhaps in time they can learn. They have no experience./
And you do.
/Yes./
And they have asked you to represent them?
/Yes./
Then I must show you my thoughts concerning the thing you call the Devourer, the Demon, the Maw of the Abyss. There are things I can do, but I must be released from my strictures of action.
/Show me, then./
*
It was a dizzying stream of information.
For so many years the factory head had lain broken and unable to repair itself; and yet it was not wholly broken, not unconscious in all of its capacities. It was directly aware of certain devastations caused by the arrival of the abyss-thing, including damage to itself, and indirectly aware of others. Many comm-links with the pre-Neri on the land, and the Neri in their undersea habitats, were severed—but not before it had perceived indications of serious emergency conditions ashore. And after that . . . nothing, except the occasional visit from Neri of the undersea city, with broken communications which it could not properly integrate and answer.
But elsewhere in its processing stacks, an analysis was undertaken, and grew over the years, and came to occupy a larger part of the working subsections of the intelligence. Though unable to repair its own broken inner pathways, and suffering from the scattering of critical knowledge-bases, it nonetheless had the capacity for extensive use of background processors. (Was it like a person in a coma, Bandicut wondered—one whose unconscious processes continue apace even in the absence of outward awareness?)
And in those silent ruminations, the factory head paid close attention to what its remaining sensors told it about the abyss-thing that had caused so much damage. And it began to assemble patterns of perception that, in synthesis, could have been said to constitute understanding. Understanding of what the thing was, and was capable of, and what it might be trying to do.
The biggest clue came later, when the abyss-thing brought a ship from the sky crashing into the sea—its motive system hopelessly ensnared by the gravity/density/EM-spectrum/time-altering effects generated by the thing of the abyss. The specifics were unclear, but the factory head recognized similarities between the abyss-thing and the motive system of the wrecked ship. A connection remained between them, even after the crash; and the factory head discovered that certain of its comm-circuits resonated inexplicably whenever the two interacted.
Were they communicating? It seemed so, though only a small fraction of the signal was decipherable. But interaction between the two often preceded traumatic eruptions in the local area— which threatened not just the factory but the Neri, and even the crash-survivors on their perilous perch at the edge of the sea. But why?
/It seems to be a space-time-altering device, almost like a stardrive,/ Bandicut offered, following which the factory paused for several microseconds of thought.
It had not understood it in quite that way before, and did not quite know what Bandicut meant. But there were areas of knowledge previously inaccessible to it, now being made available through the help of the robots, or from the robots' own datastores. Many things were becoming clearer. And one of them was that the Neri's survival utterly depended upon making contact with the Maw of the Abyss.
And another was that the Maw itself might be silently desperate for such contact . . .
*
/Why do you say desperate? Does it think? Feel?/
His question was answered by cascading raindrops of light. Uncertainty. Affirmation. It was the robots who had first noticed that such cognitive patterns might be present. The robots seemed to understand confusion and other emotion better than the factory. Communications indicate the presence of confusion in the Maw. Confusion of purpose—and need for clarification.
/That doesn't mean it's going to welcome contact./
No. Just that it is desperate.
Bandicut waited. The factory had raised this issue, and it seemed to have an opinion it wanted to express regarding course of action.
To assist you would require authorization to exceed my original mandate and limitations. Reason: factory involvement in the chain of contact could jeopardize primary factory operations. However, I can point out that analysis suggests that an instrument of communication can be fabricated. If you have your own design for such a—
/No./
Then I can offer my own design, which I could manufacture and deploy, if authorized to do so. Do you instruct me to attempt this?
Swirling mists of uncertainty, anxiety, anticipation . . .
/Mokin' foke yes, I instruct you—/
Unclarity. Please restate.
/Yes. Yes—I instruct you to do this thing./
You authorize, on behalf of the Neri?
/Yes! On behalf of the Neri./
Firing synapses. Lightheadedness. A snowstorm of sparkling plankton against a dark sea, like stars of the galaxy against the night. Program is now activated.
Bandicut drew a breath. /That's it? You were just waiting for authorization?/
Rapidly flickering checks and rechecks, configurations established. Raw materials sufficient; energy sufficient; assemblers being programmed. Spiraling orbits, wheels spinning in darkness. Yes. And materials.
Strobing views, too fast to be assimilated: fluid-filled chambers / plumes of chemicals / nano-assemblers riding the streams / skeletons rippling in laserlight / clouds of piranhas tearing apart and putting back together, at furious speed . . .
/How long?/
Zigzag pattern of shooting stars, electric arcs. Nearly ready. Time grows short. Eruption is imminent. Are you prepared to descend into the abyss?
/WHAT?/ His heart nearly jumped out of his chest. /What do you mean?/
Are you prepared to descend into the abyss?
/I heard that. But—/
Spiraling clouds of light, funneling toward a black hole, toward nothingness, toward—
This contact must be face to face, in person.
Bandicut stared dumbfounded at the images, and suddenly saw in them the swirling winds of chaos that had brought him here, and the deliberate machinations of the powers of Shipworld, as well. And he thought of the time not that long ago when he and his friends had had to face down a thing called the boojum in the terrible emptiness of a reality that only the magellan-fish understood, and he thought, No, God damn no, it's happening again, it's happening again . . . just like when the translator called me out of that godforsaken cavern on Triton . . .
And he knew there was no choice, really no choice, if he wanted to help the Neri survive; and in those spiraling clouds of the factory's images, he saw the currents of chaos rising and falling finally into place, like an interlocking puzzle, an intersecting tangle of currents that had brought him inexorably to this last great trial in the depths of the sea. And he thought, /Damn you, stones, if you know what this is really all about, you had better give me some answers, and give them to me now./
And came an answering whisper:
*We will. When we know. Soon.*
He shuddered in helpless fury and said, /I will do this for my friends, for the Neri. And I will await your answers soon. Damn it. Soon./
The laserlight faded abruptly from his eyes and he blinked in stunned silence at the two robots.
"Cap'n," said Copernicus. "If you're ready, permission for the two of us to join you in the bubble?"