CHAPTER 42.
One day.
The thought kept coming back, and Helen kept chasing it away, even while she flashed the light in a simple pattern One flash. Pause. Two flashes. Pause. Three flashes. Pause. Four flashes. Pause. One long pulse of light. Pause. One flash…
The oceanic Bemmie—for she could not honestly prevent herself from thinking of it that way, although she was convinced it was really no more related to the original Bemmius Secordii Sapiens than human beings were related to Troodon—hung not more than three meters from the window, pulsing with faint light. It was clearly interested in what she was doing, but so far she didn’t see understanding.
One day.
Once more she drove that thought backwards. It doesn’t matter! I will do everything I can in that day. If I’m not coming back, I will record everything I can. They’ll finish salvaging Zarathustra even if we die—they’ve come this far, they’re not going back without our bodies if they can help it.
And that means that everything I record now will live on, even if I don’t.
That meant a lot. It meant more than she could easily describe. Two pulses. Pause. Three pulses. Pause.
Suddenly the creature backed away, with an almost convulsive movement, seeming to run back to the larger creature…which, Helen now guessed, might be the equivalent of a horse, or—given the size—a riding elephant. “Oh, please, don’t run away.” What caused that? she wondered. The most obvious explanation was that a large predator had just showed up, but looking around she saw nothing, and there were no sudden movements in the water suggesting something big nearby.
A few moments later the oceanic Bemmie—Bemmius Pelagica Sapiens Sutter, maybe?—slowly eased back towards Zarathustra. It seemed no longer bothered by Athena’s rumbling but constant racket; this time it made no effort to stay on the far side of the rover.
“How’s it going there, Helen?”
“Well, he ran off suddenly just a little bit ago, but he’s coming back.”
The creature stopped where it had been before, tentacles waving in a more agitated fashion. I hope I haven’t somehow made it—
The whole animal flared a lovely blue-green for a moment. Then it was dark. Then it flared again, twice in succession. Dark. Three flares.
A chill of awe went down her spine, a shiver of triumph combined with disbelief, even as she shouted “YES! Joe, he understands, he understands, Joe, we are communicating!”
Joe dropped down as quickly as possible, to see the beautiful aqua color spark out one long flare and then fade…followed by a single flash. Then two. “I’d cross myself if I were Catholic. I can’t believe it.” He bounced back up to the controls and she heard him telling the others.
She flashed back once. Then a long flash.
A pause, then it flashed twice, followed by a long flash.
She gave it three.
It suddenly did a triple loop in the water, and then flashed four, then five, then six, strobing so fast she could barely count, then spun around, bobbing and weaving and she was suddenly laughing, tears starting from her eyes, because despite the alien, almost monstrous face, despite the tentacles waving in a black abyss a hundred kilometers deep, tentacles surrounding a tripartite mouth that could have ripped her to shreds, she saw something else, a young being exploring a frontier who suddenly realizes it had found something completely unexpected, something so wonderful that it could not contain the excitement. “It’s excited too, Joe, we’re not dealing with something that can just count, it can feel. Just like us. I’m absolutely sure of it. It’s doing the equivalent of jumping up and down in joy.”
What now? I can’t waste this time. She had given this some thought, but now that the moment had come, it took a moment to figure it out.
The helmet lights were, like most lights, arrays of LEDs. Normally they were on or off with varying levels of brightness…but you could make them project patterns. And she was sure that Bemmius Pelagica could see patterns; it was generating very complex ones on its skin at the moment.
Two flashes. A plus sign. Two flashes. An arrow. Four flashes.
She started the pattern repeating, and the Europan Bemmie stared, obviously trying to figure out what in the ocean this strange thing was up to now.
Joe was watching her. “You know, there aren’t going to be any Earth math books where he comes from. Meaning no offense, but what the heck makes you think he’s going to know what a plus sign means?”
She smiled. “I don’t think he knows now. I’m wondering if he can figure it out.”
After a few more repetitions, she changed the pattern. Now it was one flash, the plus sign, two flashes, the arrow, and then three flashes.
She did one more—adding two and three to make five—and cycled through all three patterns for a while.
“I think I’ll call him Nemo.”
“He doesn’t look much like a clownfish.”
“What? No, not that old movie. I mean because I actually have no name for him, which is what ‘Nemo’ meant in Verne’s novel.”
The newly-named Nemo was still watching; not entirely to her surprise, she saw flickers on its hide that looked like attempts to replicate the two symbols.
With abruptness that startled her again, it flashed brightly, a single long pulse. I think its saying “stop, wait”—I was ending the other sequences with a long flash. She paused the cycle, waited.
“Nemo” hovered, motionless, as though concentrating. Then he produced one flash. Slowly, a reasonably clear plus sign materialized on his back. Then another flash, followed by a slowly-developing arrow, and Helen found herself holding her breath, chest so tight with tension it ached.
One flash. Followed almost immediately by another flash.
“Yes!”
She sent a single flash followed by a long pulse; she hoped that would be a good symbol for “yes”; she’d already used it that way once.
Nemo spun like a top for a moment, then stopped, flashed three flashes, a plus, then seven flashes, quick as blinking—and then a long flash.
“Oh, oh, you are so very smart, you are smarter than I am, I think,” she said, half-babbling. “You want to see me solve your problem.” She sent back ten flashes, using the suit’s circuits to make them as quick and clear as Nemo’s own.
The tentacles flashed wide open and a wash of rainbow colors went over Nemo. Helen looked around the cabin, thinking. I want to get past just these number games. We’ve established we can think, that we understand each other wants to talk. But I don’t have time.
Zarathustra wasn’t built all that different from Thoat in many ways, and it was meant as a fairly long-term exploration vehicle. There was a small table, bunks, various devices for displays, conferencing, a lot of food and food wrappers, drinking containers—
That’s it.
She grabbed up some of the wrappers, found one of the utility knives.
“What’s up?” Joe asked apprehensively.
“Faster communication,” she said briefly. “You’re not an expert with paper folding or anything like that, are you?”
Joe shook his head, puzzled. “Um…no. Why?”
“Models. I think—I hope—he can see in here, and he’s got to be able to recognize shapes. I think.” Helen was cutting furiously, grabbing a drinking container and squashing it down flatter. Thank god I used to fake up models and sketches all the time in my field work. Been a long time since I used those skills, but I’m not trying for accuracy here. She paused and turned her helmet light towards the port, set it to do a subtraction sequence. She was pretty sure it wouldn’t take long at all for Nemo of Europa to catch on, given that they were already on math.
Sure enough, it only took two repetitions for Nemo to recognize the sequence and produce a similar problem. By then, she had a crude model of Nemo; it was an elongated, flattened shape with a set of three tentacles in front (which were then ended in a bunch of narrow cut pieces—she hadn’t even attempted to replicate the full branching design), and three slender ones at the back. She moved to the port and placed the little model in the center of the rear port, shining her light directly on it.
“Oh-ho, I see what you’re up to,” Joe said. “I might be able to do stuff like that—engineers make models too, you know. What do you want next?”
“Zarathustra, about to scale with that. Use one of those bottles as the body.” She was rolling a ball out of some of the paper available. Make a body…
Seeing that the light was focused on something, the creature she’d named Nemo came closer. It was clearly much less cautious; the session of communication had made it feel that whatever this strange thing was, it wasn’t trying to hurt him. Now the sea-dwelling native was within a meter of the viewport, holding its spear well away, and all three eyes focused on the tiny model. Already, Helen thought she could read something in its body language; it was puzzled. Probably at least partly because it can see into Zarathustra, something you didn’t encounter with most creatures. And most creatures don’t generally draw attention to their insides, either, she thought.
“Here,” Joe said.
She was startled. Joe had put removable caps along the sides of the moderate-sized bottle, using quick-seal from one of the small repair kits, and they looked quite like wheels. A couple of straws, bent, were the manipulators, and some transparent plastic stuck on both ends showed where the ports were. “Better than I would have done. You’re fast.” She took the tiny doll-like paper figures and stuck them inside.
“You were staring at Nemo longer than you think. I also heard you muttering some anatomical notes to yourself.”
She did vaguely remember that; her xenopaleontological brain was obviously continuing on autopilot. “Anyway, thanks!”
She put the second model next to the first, and turned the Nemo model to face Zarathustra at a short distance. The creature tilted itself sideways, seemed to be considering what it was seeing from all angles.
“How’s the leak?”
“Not too bad yet. It hasn’t really hit the growth phase.”
She watched some of Nemo’s “fingers” brush curiously at the port, near the models. “Joe…if the hatch does give way…Well, I was thinking. Our suits are mostly carbonan, and that’s awfully strong. Isn’t it possible they’ll survive, if we’re not in the way when the hatch itself goes?”
“Possible? Yeah, I think so. Especially if we stay toward the top; it’ll have to compress the air down, and there might even be a bubble of reasonable size left when it’s done. But if we do, that only gives us a few more hours.”
“The suits are charged up pretty—”
“That’s not the problem. Right now Zarathustra’s reactor’s doing the work for us, but if we get immersed, our suits have to keep us warm—and that’s not a major design consideration for a spacesuit, where usually you’re more worried about how to get rid of excess heat.”
“Oh.” She did not relish the idea of dying of hypothermia, and recognized that Joe’s scenario was all too likely. “How’s progress up top?”
“They’re making progress…but it’s awfully slow. It’s hard to chop through ice when you need to make a pretty damn big hole.” Joe did not look optimistic.
Oh no. “It’s still getting thicker, isn’t it?”
“Not terribly fast…but every millimeter it’s thicker is that much more they have to take off the top.”
A flash caught her attention. She saw Nemo, almost rigid in the water, motionless, starting to sink slowly. Before she could decide if that meant something bad or not, it relaxed slightly and moved up, stretching out one single tendril-like finger and touching the glass exactly opposite the clumsy model that represented it.
Then its arms curled in, and out, covering its own body. It reached out the single tendril, pointed, did the same gesture.
Me. This is me!
She flashed once, then a long flash. Yes.
Nemo flashed colors, then zipped up, pointing to the larger model, then reaching out, brushing all of Zarathustra that it could reach. You?
Yes.
Fingers shaking, she picked up the model, opened the one end and took out one of the tiny figures, putting it between the Zarathustra model and the Nemo model.
Then she moved her whole body across, into full view of the alien creature. She pointed with her finger to the tiny doll-like shape, then used her arms and hands to cover all of herself.
Nemo seemed to almost understand. But he was clearly also puzzled, and she couldn’t blame him.
“Here,” Joe said, and she found herself holding another Bemmie-like model, much larger than the first. “That’s what you need.”
“Wh…oh, of course.”
She took the larger model and put it on the far side of Nemo. Then, making sure the creature was watching, she moved the Nemo model (having to reattach one arm at one point) over to the larger creature, putting Nemo on top of the bigger one. She then put the doll-figure into Zarathustra.
She repeated this several times, until suddenly Nemo spun around, flashing once, then a long flash, a pause, one flash, long flash. Yes, yes!
Nemo streaked up to the port, closer than it had been before. One arm pointed directly at Helen, and then pointed at itself. One of the others, simultaneously, was spreading, touching Zarathustra, then pointing off into the deep at the hovering larger Europan creature.
These things are the same. You and me. Zarathustra and my riding beast.
She laughed for the sheer joy. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Nemo seemed to feel the same thing, and Joe laughed as well, watching the creature go through a gem-sparkling dance. Then Nemo zipped around, moving away from the window, surveying the Zarathustra. She could see it dodge away quickly when it approached the radiators too closely. Didn’t have to learn that predator’s lesson; he felt the heat and avoided it. It came to the front window, touched the manipulators very gently, brushed the front port, tugged cautiously at the rope that tethered them. Nemo seemed very interested in that, enough so that both Helen started to wonder if Joe needed to make him back off. If he decided we’re somehow stuck, he might try to help by cutting the line. I don’t know if he could break that stuff, but we sure as hell don’t want anyone trying.
But just as Joe started slowly reaching for the manipulator controls, Nemo backed off, flickering with many colors in patterns similar to the ones she’d seen in his earlier “thinking” moments. He drifted cautiously, very slowly, towards Athena, and his extended tentacles began to riffle in the disturbed water.
The alien backed away very quickly, then came back to the rear port and hovered there, waiting, or thinking.
Helen was trying to think of what else she could communicate. Damn. We never expected in our wildest dreams that we’d end up in a…a “first contact” situation. I know people have devised all kinds of programs and plans for this, but none of that was loaded on Zarathustra…and we haven’t got the bandwidth to transfer much of anything. What else can I say to him with what little we have?
Nemo’s arm reached out, encompassed itself, then pointed into the depths. Then it reached farther, touched Zarathustra…
…and pushed the craft up slightly.
She stared. The creature repeated the motions twice.
Nemo’s figured it out. Maybe from Athena’s presence. Maybe from the way we’ve clearly been fastened to something that goes up through the ice. But Nemo has it.
The gestures were clear. I come from down below. You come from up above?
Yes, she sent.
She could only imagine what the Bemmie-like creature must be thinking. The spear showed some level of civilization, but there must be limits; here was a being on, at best, the level of one of Earth’s most ancient civilizations, discovering an entirely new order of life, one that lived above the roof of the world. As great a shock as an ancient Inca or Roman encountering a fallen spaceman—perhaps even more, because while many religions taught that the heavens were a bowl over the world, the limits of that bowl were not obvious and tangible, cold and indestructible.
Whatever else it was thinking, it seemed curious now about the ice above. It drifted up, and pulsed, and flinched several times. “What is Nemo up to now?”
Joe rubbed his chin. “I really don’t know.” He watched the creature move along above them, occasionally twitching sharply. Joe stiffened. “Hold on a sec…”
He touched the controls, brought up the record of the cameras on that side, played it back. Suddenly she understood. “The digging sounds. It’s flinching whenever the ice is getting hit heavily.”
“Yep. You told me these things would probably be sensitive to sound and vibration, and between Athena and our friends with the power tools, it must sound like a factory on overload around here.”
Nemo of Europa swam quickly back to the viewport, made multiple gestures; pointed to them, pointed up, pointed to himself, and down, then opening its tentacles wide, finally moving the expanded arm up. It repeated that sequence twice, then flashed yes. Yes.
That enigmatic communication finished, Nemo moved swiftly off and hooked himself to his patient steed. An instant later, the larger creature lunged downward and disappeared into the gloom.
First contact was over.
But what have we started?