But it—look, we can get there but Madre Dios it’ll take ten minutes minimum and we’ll be moving too fast.
Knobbed joints grumbling with pain, muscles whining, heart thumping dumbly in the converging dark.
“Get—get under me. Then … deploy … a sac.”
Gliding in the soft night. Coasting. What was coming depended on relaxation, reaching out with the senses. He could not tighten up or the frail ol’ muscles would tire before they were needed. He had to let go.
SIX
Decades ago, after Alexandria’s death, Mr. Ichino had said to him, I wish you the strength to let go.
He needed that now. Until he saw the submersible and knew which direction to bank toward, there was nothing productive he could do. Either they would snag him in time, or else he would fall farther in this cold murk, into higher pressures, and his suit would fail. He would squash like a grape.
From the Lancer meeting came
Obviously those goddamn Swarmers started it Yeah the Trojan horse
Dunno how the nukes got going but when those Swarmers started coming ashore what was China supposed to do. Matter of survival if what they say about the Americans is true
Was true you mean—North America’s gone, incinerated
Those high-burst bombs, just one’ll ignite a continent
Asian mainland took less nukes looks like Swarmers are getting pasted good there thank God
Merde je ne
Those flying things—ugly, you see’em, horrible—an’ that on-site report says the Swarmers don’ reproduce usin’ the flyin’ thing at all they’re some kind of add-on
Damn Swarmers musta planned it from ’way back an’ bioengineered themselves
Point is it’s all linked—the Watchers an’ those gray ships an’ the Swarmers—all in it together
He felt the waters rushing by, gurgling and whispering to him. He was without weight and form and felt himself spreading ever wider, as if his legs and arms were detached, a flag filling. Words and sentences and garbled bits came from Lancer and the submersible, but they seemed hollow and distant and finally irrelevant.
He wondered if the huge creatures perceived him, a falling mote, and puzzled over the brilliant bubble that swam to meet him.
Damfino how it all works but it’s plain as the nose on your face
Goddamn Ted we got to do somethin’
Latest says the deepspace net is sending in fragmentation loads, blow them up ten thousand klicks out and try to knock out some of their ships in orbit
Might get some of the small stuff but those big ones
He saw a faint luminous thread of orange to the left, turning and twisting and darting away, and felt at the same moment a long booming note that tolled through the water like a distant bell. It reminded him of the EMs and their song, and as he lazily plunged toward the heart of this ocean world he saw suddenly how this tied together with the Swarmers, all forms of life victimized and beaten down because in the end the machines could not stop life, could not smother it, could not eliminate forever the endlessly burgeoning forms which competed with the machines for resources and space, and so in the end they enlisted some forms of life to stop their worst competitors, the budding technologies.
The machines had known of Earth for a long time, they had fought some titanic battle there millions of years ago and lost—the Marginis wreck was the only mute remaining testament of that—and in the losing had become fearful of simply blasting it with asteroids or doing anything else which could perhaps be blocked by the Marginis wreck or by humans themselves. If they tried bombardment, as they did with Isis, and the humans captured some of their vessels, deciphered where their centers of power were, then the same crushing warfare might reach across the stars and find them in their lairs, unleash the terrible marriage of mind and instinct—which the machines did not have—and destroy all that the patient and implacable cybernetic beings had built up.
No, it was much easier to use organic forms against each other, to divert their attention, to strike at the weak spot all beings who grew out of chemistry had and which was both biological and social in form, and went by many names: cancer, overreactive immune systems, inappropriate response.
There was the key. Far easier to make humans destroy themselves and Swarmers as well. Far easier to feed on the deep and primordial antagonisms all organic forms felt for the outsider, the intruder, the alien.
Goddamnit I say we got to learn something about these things not just shy away from them
What we learn will help Earthside they’ve got the same kind over ’em right now.
Years ago yeah remember the light travel time we’re talking about a crisis that happened nine years back
Doesn’t change the fact that we’re the only ones know much about these things an’ here right here we have a chance to see what it can take
Light. A faint smudge of phosphors. Growing.
Nigel we’ve got the sac deployed below and with the mouth open
He banked left, sensing the currents, hearing a faint strum like a song of deep bass. His ears popped again. Suit pressure too high, overloaded. Pocks had light gravity, so pressure built only a tenth as fast as on Earth, but now he felt his suit creak. Monitor bulbs below his chin flashed angry red.
He’s dropping too fast, we’re too far away Cut the speed damn it he needs a stationary No got to get closer
“Hold your course!”
A ball of yellow and blue and amber. He thought of himself as a wing, turning and riding in the streams. He tried to catch the turn at the right moment, altering his vector to bring himself down at a steeper angle, then using the medfilter pack to cant himself to the right again—now down, now to the side, the bright ball growing and the big floodlights poking fingers through the silted murk. He grunted with the strain of keeping himself rigid, a hydrofoil. His pulse quickened. He was coming in at a good angle now and ahead he saw the filmy wisp of the sac, its mouth yawning, unexploded floaters weighing down its tail.
I’ve got you on the optical ’scope. How are you doing?
“Rilly trif.”
Drop the pack Nigel you’ll have a better chance of making it without that thing
