A Darkling Sea

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

BY the end of his second month at Hitode Station, Rob Freeman had already come up with 85 ways to murder Henri Kerlerec. That put him third in the station’s rankings—Josef Palashnik was first with 143, followed by Nadia Kyle with 97. In general, the number and sheer viciousness of the suggested methods was in proportion to the amount of time each one spent with Henri.

Josef, as the primary submarine pilot, had to spend hours and hours each week in close quarters with Henri, so his list concentrated on swift and brutal techniques suitable for a small cockpit. Nadia shared lab space with Henri—which in practice meant she did her dissections in the kitchen or on the floor of her bedroom—and her techniques were mostly obscure poisons and subtle death traps.

Rob’s specialty was underwater photography and drone operation. All through training he had been led to expect he would be filming the exotic life forms of Ilmatar, exploring the unique environment of the remote icy world, and helping the science team understand the alien biology and ecology. Within a week of arrival he found himself somehow locked into the role of Henri Kerlerec’s personal cameraman, gofer, and captive audience. His list of murder methods began with “strangling HK with that stupid ankh necklace” and progressed through cutting the air hose on Henri’s drysuit, jamming him into a thermal vent, abandoning him in mid-ocean with no inertial compass, and feeding him to an
Aenocampus
. Some of the others on the station who routinely read the hidden “Death To HK” feed had protested that last one as being too cruel to the
Aenocampus.

Rob’s first exposure to killing Henri came at a party given by Nadia and her husband, Pierre Adler, in their room, just after the expedition support vehicle left orbit for the six-month gimelspace voyage back to Earth. With four guests, there was barely enough room, and to avoid overloading the ventilators they had to leave the door open. For refreshment they had melons from the hydroponic garden filled with some of Palashnik’s home-brewed potato vodka. One drank melon-flavored vodka until the hollow interior was empty, then cut vodkaflavored melon slices until one was too drunk to handle the knife.

“I’ve got a new one,” said Nadia after her third melon slice. “Put a piece of paper next to Le Nuke for a few months until it’s radioactive, then write him a fan letter and slip it under his door. He’d keep the letter for his collection and die of gradual exposure.”

“Too long,” said Josef. “Even if he kept it in his pocket it would take years to kill him.”

“But you’d have the fun of watching him lose his hair,” said Nadia.

“I would rather just lock him in reactor shed and leave him there,” said Josef.

“Who are they talking about?” Rob asked.

“Henri Kerlerec,” whispered Alicia Neogri, who was squeezed onto the bed next to him and half drunk on melon.

“Irradiate his hair gel,” said Pierre. “That way he’d put more on every day and it would be right next to his brain.”

“Ha! That part has been dead for years!”

“Replace the argon in his breathing unit with chlorine,” said someone Rob couldn’t see, and then the room went quiet.

Henri was standing in the doorway. As usual, he was grinning. “Planning to murder somebody? Our esteemed station director, I hope.” He glanced behind him to make sure Dr. Sen wasn’t in earshot. “I have thought of an infallible technique: I would strike him over the head with a large ham or gigot or something of that kind, and then when the police come, I would serve it to them to destroy the evidence. They would never suspect!”

“Roald Dahl,” murmured Nadia. “And it was a
frozen
leg of lamb.”

Henri didn’t hear her. “You see the beauty of it? The police eat the murder weapon. Perhaps I shall write a detective novel about it when I get back to Earth. Well, good night everyone!” He gave a little wave and went off toward Hab Three.

This particular morning Rob was trying to think of an especially sadistic fate for Henri. Kerlerec had awakened him at 2100—three hours early!—and summoned him to the dive room with a great show of secrecy.

The dive room occupied the bottom of Hab One. It was a big circular room with suits and breathing gear stowed on the walls, benches for getting into one’s gear, and a moon pool in the center where the Terran explorers could pass into Ilmatar’s dark ocean. It was the coldest room in the entire station, chilled by the subzero seawater so that condensation on the walls froze in elaborate geometrical patterns.

Henri was there, waiting at the base of the access ladder. As soon as Rob climbed down he slammed the hatch shut. “Now we can talk privately together. I have an important job for you.”

“What?”

“To night at 1900 we are going out on a dive. Tell nobody. Do not write anything in the dive log.”

“What? Why tonight? And why did you have to get me up so goddamned early to have this conversation?”

“It must be kept absolutely secret.”

“Henri, I’m not doing anything until you tell me exactly what is going on. Enough cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

“Come and see.” Henri led him to the hatch into Hab Three, opened it a crack to peek through, then gestured for Rob to follow as he led the way to the lab space he shared with Nadia Kyle. It was a little room about twice the size of a sleeping cabin, littered with native artifacts, unlabeled slides, and tanks holding live specimens. Standing in the middle was a large gray plastic container as tall as a man. It had stenciled markings in Cyrillic and a sky blue UNICA shipping label.

Henri touched his thumb to a lock pad and the door swung open to reveal a bulky diving suit. It was entirely black, even the faceplate, and had a sleek, seamless look.

“Nice suit. What’s so secret about it?”

“This is not a common sort of diving suit,” said Henri. “I arranged specially for it to be sent to me. Nobody else has anything like it. It is a Russian Navy stealth suit, for deactivating underwater smart mines or sonar pods. The surface is completely anechoic. Invisible to any kind of sonar imaging. Even the fins are low-noise.”

“How does it work?” Rob’s inner geek prompted him to ask.

Henri gave a shrug. “That is for technical people to worry about. All I care is that it does work. It must—it cost me six million euros to get it here.”

“Okay, so you’ve got the coolest diving suit on Ilmatar. Why are you keeping it locked up? I’m sure the bio people would love to be able to get close to native life without being heard.”

“Pah. When I am done they can watch all the shrimps and worms they wish to. But first, I am going to use this suit to observe the Ilmatarans up close. Imagine it, Robert! I can swim among their houses, perhaps even go right inside! Stand close enough to touch them! They will never notice I am there!”

“What about the contact rules?”

“Contact? What contact? Didn’t you hear—the Ilmatarans will not notice me! I will stand among them, filming at close range, but with this suit I will be invisible to them!”

“Doctor Sen’s going to shit a brick when he finds out.”

“By the time he finds out it will be done. What can he do to me? Send me home? I will go back to Earth on the next ship in triumph!”

“The space agencies aren’t going to like it either.”

“Robert, before I left Earth I did some checking. Do you know how many people regularly access space agency sites or subscribe to their news feeds? About fifty million people, worldwide. Do you know how many people watched the video from my last expedition? Ninety-six million! I have twice as many viewers, and that makes me twice as important. The agencies all love me.”

Rob suspected Henri’s numbers were made up on the spur of the moment, the way most of his numbers were, but it was probably true enough that Henri Kerlerec, the famous scientistexplorer and shameless media whore, got more eyeballs than the rest of the entire interstellar program.

He could feel himself being sucked into the mighty whirlpool of Henri’s ego, and tried to struggle against it. “I don’t want to get in any trouble.”

“You have nothing to worry about. Now, listen: here is what we will do. You come down here quietly at about 1830 and get everything ready. Bring the cameras, and a couple of the quiet impeller units. Also a drone or two. I will get this suit on myself in here, and then at 1900 we go out. With the impellers we can get as far as the Maury 3 vent. There is a little Ilmataran settlement there.”

“That’s a long way to go by impeller. Maury 3’s what, sixty kilometers from here?”

“Three hours out, three hours back, and perhaps two hours at the site. We will get back at about 0300, just after breakfast. They may not even notice we have gone.”

“And if they do?”

“Then we just say we have been doing some filming around the habitat outside.” Henri began locking up the stealth suit’s container. “I tell you, they will never suspect a thing. Leave all the talking to me. Now: not another word! We have too much to do! I am going to sleep this afternoon to be fresh for our dive tonight. You must do the same. And do not speak of this to anyone!”

BROADTAIL is nervous. He cannot pay attention to the speaker, and constantly checks the reel holding his text. He is to speak next, his first address to the Bitterwater Company of Scholars. It is an audition of sorts: Broadtail hopes the members find his work interesting enough to invite him to join them.

Smoothshell 24 Midden finishes her address on high-altitude creatures and takes a few questions from the audience. They aren’t easy questions, either, and Broadtail worries about making a fool of himself before all these respected scholars. When she finishes, Longpincer 16 Bitterwater clacks his pincers for quiet.

“Welcome now to Broadtail 38 Sandyslope, who comes to us from a great distance to speak about ancient languages. Broadtail?”

Broadtail nearly drops his reel, but catches it in time and scuttles to the end of the room. It is a wonderful chamber for speaking, with a sloped floor so that everyone can hear directly, and walls of quiet pumice- stone. He finds the end of his reel and begins, running it carefully between his feeding-tendrils as he speaks aloud. His tendrils feel the knots in the string as it passes by them. The patterns of knots indicate numbers, and the numbers match words. He remembers being careful to space his knots and tie them tightly, as this copy is for Longpincer’s library here at Bitterwater. The reel is a single unbroken cord, expensive to buy and horribly complicated to work with—very different from the original draft, a tangle of short notes tied together all anyhow.

Once he begins, Broadtail’s fear dissipates. His own fascination with his topic asserts itself, and he feels himself speeding up as his excitement grows. When he pauses, he can hear his audience rustling and scrabbling, and he supposes that is a good sign. At least they aren’t all going torpid.

The anchor of his speech is the description of the echo- carvings from the ruined city near his home vent of Continuous Abundance. By correlating the images of the echo- carvings with the number markings below them, Broadtail believes he can create a lexicon for the ancient city builders. He reads the Company some of his translations of other markings in the ruins.

Upon finishing, he faces a torrent of questions. Huge old Roundhead 19 Downcurrent has several tough ones—he is generally recognized as the expert on ancient cities and their builders, and he means to make sure some provincial upstart doesn’t encroach on his territory.

Roundhead and some others quickly home in on some of the weak parts of Broadtail’s argument. A couple of them make reference to the writings of the dead scholar Thickfeelers 19 Swiftcurrent, and Broadtail feels a pang of jealousy because he can’t afford to buy copies of such rare works. As the questions continue, Broadtail feels himself getting angry in defense of his work, and struggles to retain his temper. The presentation may be a disaster, but he must remain polite.

At last it is over, and he rolls up his reel and heads for a seat at the rear of the room. He’d like to just keep going, slink outside and swim for home, but it would be rude.

A scholar Broadtail doesn’t recognize scuttles to the lectern and begins struggling with a tangled reel. Longpincer sits next to Broadtail and speaks privately by means of shell-taps. “That was very well done. I think you describe some extremely important discoveries.”

“You do? I was just thinking of using the reel to mend nets.”

“Because of all the questions? Don’t worry. That’s a good sign. If the hearers ask questions it means they’re thinking, and that’s the whole purpose of this Company. I don’t hear any reason not to make you a member. I’m sure the others agree.”

All kinds of emotions flood through Broadtail—relief, excitement, and sheer happiness. He can barely keep from speaking aloud. His shell-taps are rapid. “I’m very grateful. I plan to revise the reel to address some of Roundhead’s questions.”

“Of course. I imagine some of the others want copies, too. Ah, he’s starting.”

The scholar at the lectern begins to read a reel about a new system for measuring the heat of springs, but Broadtail is too happy to really pay attention.

AT 1800 that night, Rob was lying on his bunk trying to come up with some excuse not to go with Henri. Say he was sick, maybe? The trouble was that he was a rotten liar. He tried to make himself feel sick—maybe an upset stomach from ingesting seawater? His body unhelpfully continued to feel okay.

Maybe he just wouldn’t go. Stay in bed and lock the door. Henri could hardly complain to Dr. Sen about him not going on an unauthorized dive. But Henri could and undoubtedly would make his life miserable with nagging and blustering until he finally gave in.

And of course the truth was that Rob
did
want to go. What he really wanted was to be the one in the stealth suit, instead of Henri. It would be amazing to get within arm’s reach of the Ilmatarans and film them close up, instead of getting a few murky long- distance drone pictures. Probably everyone else at Hitode Station felt the same way. Putting them here, actually on the sea bottom of Ilmatar, yet forbidding them to get close to the natives, was like telling a pack of horny teenagers they could get naked in bed together, but not touch.

He checked his watch. It was 1820. He got up and slung his camera bag over his shoulder. Damn Henri anyway.

Rob made it to the dive room without encountering anyone. The station wasn’t like a space vehicle with round-the-clock shifts. Everyone slept from about 1600 to 2400, and only one poor soul had to stay in the control room in case of emergency. Tonight it was Dickie Graves on duty, and Rob suspected that Henri had managed to square him somehow so that the exterior hydrophones wouldn’t pick up their little jaunt.

He took one of the drones off the rack and ran a quick check. It was a flexible robot fish about a meter long; more Navy surplus—American, this time. It wasn’t especially stealthy, but instead was designed to sound just like a swimming mackerel. Presumably the Ilmatarans would figure it was some native organism and ignore it. His computer linked up with the drone brain by laser. All powered up and ready to go. He told it to hold position and await further instructions, then dropped it into the water. Just to be on the safe side, Rob fired up a second drone and tossed it into the moon pool.

Next the impellers. They were simple enough—a motor, a battery, and a pair of counter-rotating propellers. You held on to a handle on the top and controlled your speed with a thumb switch. They were supposedly quiet, though in Rob’s experience they weren’t any more stealthy than the ones you could rent at any dive shop back on Earth. Some contractor in Japan had made a bundle on them. Rob found two with full batteries and hooked them on the edge of the pool for easy access.