Galactic North (34 page)

Grafenwalder’s voice booms into the water, relayed to the creature by floating microphones.

“I know you can hear me, and I know you can understand what I am saying to you. It is very important that you listen to what I am about to tell you.”

His voice appears to distress the creature as much as the bright light. With its other hand it tries to shield the whorl-like formation on the side of its head that is its ear. Grafenwalder doubts that it makes much difference. It must feel his voice in every cell of its body, ramming through it like a proclamation.

That was the effect he was going for.

“You are in no danger,” he says. “Nothing is going to happen to you, and nobody is going to hurt you. The people who would rather you were dead are not going to find you. You are in my care now, and I am going to make sure that you come to no harm. My name is Carl Grafenwalder, and I have been waiting a long time to meet you.”

The Denizen floats motionless, as if stunned by the force of his words. Perhaps that is exactly what has happened.

“From now on, this is going to be your home,” Grafenwalder continues. “I hope that you find the conditions satisfactory. I have done my best to simulate your place of birth, but I accept that there may be deficiencies. My experts will be striving to improve matters as best as they can, but for that they will need your assistance. We must all learn to communicate. I know you cannot speak, but I am sure we can make progress using sign language. Let us begin with something simple. I must know if you find your environment satisfactory in certain details: temperature, sulphur content, salinity, that kind of thing. You will need to answer my experts in the affirmative or negative. Nod your head if you understand me.”

Nothing happens. He judges that the Denizen is still conscious—he still catches the quick animation of its eyes behind the curtain of its hand—but it shows no indication of having understood him.

“I said nod your head. If that is too difficult for you, make some other visible movement.”

But still there’s nothing. He has the lights dimmed again, and slips the assassin’s goggles down over his eyes once more. After a few moments, the infrared smear of the Denizen lowers its arm and assumes an alert but restful posture. Now that it has reacted to the absence of light, he brings the glare back and observes the creature cower against the glare’s return.

“You prefer the darkness, don’t you? Well, I can make it dark again. All you have to do is show some sign that you understand me. Do that, and I’ll bring the darkness back again.”

The Denizen just floats there, watching him through the spread webbing of its upraised hand. Perhaps it has learned to tolerate the light better than before, for its gaze strikes him now as steadier, somehow more reproachful. Even if it doesn’t understand his words, it surely understands that it is his prisoner.

“I will lower the lights one more time.” He does so, then brings them back up, savagely, before the Denizen has had time to relish the darkness. This time he does get a reaction, but it’s not quite the one he was anticipating. The Denizen shoots forward, bulleting through the water with dismaying speed. Just when he thinks the creature is going to use its skull as a battering ram, the Denizen brakes with a reverse flick of its tail and brings its head and upper body hard against the glass, arms spread-eagled, face only a few centimetres from Grafenwalder’s own. Rationally, he knows that the glass is impervious—it’s designed to hold back the pressure of the Europan ocean—but there’s still a tiny part of his mind that can’t accept that, and insists on jerking him back from that grinning mouth, those hateful human eyes. The Denizen sees it, too: it doesn’t need language to know that it has scared him.

Grafenwalder regains his composure with an uneasy laugh, trying to sound as if it was all an act. The Denizen knows better, notching wide the dreadful smile of its mouth.

“Okay,” he says. “You frightened me. That’s good. That’s exactly what you’re meant to do. That’s exactly why I brought you here.”

The microphones in the tank pick up the Denizen’s derisive snort, pealing it in harsh metallic waves around the metal walls of the bestiary. Grafenwalder’s heart is still racing, but he’s beginning to see the positive side of the arrangement. Maybe the fact that the creature can’t talk is all for the best. There’s something truly chilling about that snort; something that wouldn’t come through at all if the specimen had language. There’s a mind in there; one sharp enough to use complex tools in the unforgiving environment of a cold black alien ocean. But that mind only has one narrow outlet for its rage.

It’s going to work,
he thinks. If it has half the effect on the other collectors that it just had on him, Dr. Trintignant will soon be relegated to a nine-day wonder. All he needs to do now is make sure the damned thing is as real as it looks. Not that he has any significant doubts now. Rifugio already had bona fide DNA and tissue samples. Where did that material come from, if it wasn’t snipped from the last living Denizen?

He leaves the creature in darkness, letting it settle in. The next day, his keepers descend into the tank wearing armoured immersion suits. It takes two of them to immobilise the creature while the third takes a series of biopsy samples. With their powered suits, the men are in little danger from the Denizen. But they’re still impressed by the strength and quickness of the specimen; its balletic ease within water. It moves with the sleek, elemental ease of something for which water is not a hindrance, but its natural medium.

Grafenwalder tunes in to Circle gossip again, unsurprised to find that Dr. Trintignant is still wowing the other collectors. It still feels hurtful not to be the automatic centre of attention, but now at least he knows his rightful place will be restored. Ursula Goodglass got lucky with the dismantled doctor, but luck won’t get her very far in the long game.

Later that day, his experts report back with the first findings from the biopsies. At first, Grafenwalder is so convinced of the Denizen’s authenticity that he doesn’t hear what the experts, in their fumbling way, are trying to tell him.

The samples don’t match. The Denizen’s DNA isn’t the same as the DNA that Rifugio gave him, or the DNA that Grafenwalder already possesses. It’s the same story with the blood and tissue samples. The disagreement isn’t huge, and less sophisticated tests probably wouldn’t have detected any discrepancies. That’s no solace to Grafenwalder, though. His tests are as good as they come, and they leave no room for doubt. The creature in his care is not what Rifugio let him think he was going to be buying.

He tries to call the broker, but the contact details no longer work. Rifugio doesn’t get back to him.

So he’s been conned. But if the Denizen is a con, it’s an extraordinarily thorough one. He’s had the chance to examine it closely now, and he’s found no obvious signs of fakery. It’s no mean feat to engineer a biological gill that can sustain an organism with the energy demands of a large mammal. The faked Denizens he’s examined in the past began to die after only a few dozen hours of immersion. But this one shows every sign of thriving, of gaining strength and quickness.

Grafenwalder considers other possibilities. If the blood and tissue samples don’t agree, then maybe it’s because there’s more than one kind of Denizen. The Europan scientists engineered distinct castes with differing linguistic abilities, so perhaps there were other variants, with different blood and tissue structures. They were all prototypes, after all, right up to the moment they turned against the Demarchy. This Denizen might simply be from a different production batch.

But that doesn’t explain why Rifugio provided him with non-matching samples. If Rifugio had the creature, why didn’t he just take samples from it directly? Did Rifugio make a mistake, mixing samples from one specimen with another? If so, he must have had more than one Denizen in his care. In which case, the whole story about the Ultras keeping the Denizen as a pet was a lie . . . but a necessary one, if Rifugio wished Grafenwalder to think the creature was unique.

Grafenwalder mulls the possibilities. Rifugio’s disappearance provides damning confirmation that some kind of deception has taken place. But if that deception merely extends to the fact that the Denizen isn’t unique, Grafenwalder considers himself to have got off lightly. He still has a Denizen, and that’s infinitely better than none at all. He’ll find a way to trace and punish Rifugio in due course, but for now retribution isn’t his highest priority.

Instead, what he desires most is communication.

By nightfall, when the keepers have finished their work, he descends to the tank and brings the lights back on. Not harshly now, but enough to alert the Denizen to his presence; to wake it from whatever shallow approximation of sleep it appears to enjoy when resting.

Then—satisfied that he is alone—he talks.

“You can understand me,” he says, for the umpteenth time. “I know this because my keepers have identified a region in your brain that only lights up when you hear human speech. And it lights up most strongly when you hear Canasian, the language of the Demarchy.”

The creature watches him sullenly.

“It’s the language you were educated to understand, two hundred years ago. I know things have changed a little since then, but I don’t doubt that you can still make sense of these words.” And as he speaks Canasian, he feels—not for the first time—an odd, unexpected fluency. The words ought to feel awkward, but they flow off his tongue with mercurial ease, as if this is also the language he was born to speak.

Which is absurd.

“I want to know your story,” he says. “How you got here, where you came from, how many of you there are. I know now that Rifugio lied to me. He’ll pay for that eventually, but for now all that matters is what you can tell me. I need to know everything, right back to the moment you were born in Europa.”

But the Denizen, as ever, shows no external sign of having understood him.

Later, Grafenwalder has his keepers install a water-proofed symbol board in the tank. It’s an array of touchpads, each of which stands for a word in Canasian. As Grafenwalder speaks, the symbols light up in turn. The Denizen may reply by pressing the pads in sequence, which will be rendered back into speech on Grafenwalder’s side of the glass. Grafenwalder’s hoping that there’s something amiss with the Denizen’s language centre, some cognitive defect that can be short-circuited using the visual codes. If he can persuade the Denizen to press the “yes” or “no” pads in response to simple questions, he will consider that progress has been made.

Things don’t move as quickly as he’d hoped. The Denizen seems willing to cooperate, but it still doesn’t grasp the basics of language. Once it has understood that one of the pads symbolises food, it presses that one repeatedly, ignoring Grafenwalder’s attempts to get it to answer abstract questions.

Maybe it’s just stupid, he thinks. Maybe that’s why this batch was discontinued. But he doesn’t give up just yet. If the Denizen won’t communicate willingly, perhaps it needs persuasion. He has his keepers tinker with the ambient conditions, varying the water temperature and chemistry to make things uncomfortable. He withholds food and instructs the keepers to take further biopsies. It’s clear enough that the Denizen doesn’t enjoy the process.

Still the creature won’t talk, beyond issuing simple pleas for more food or warmer water. Grafenwalder feels his patience stretching. The keepers tell him that the Denizen is getting stronger, more difficult to subdue. Angrily, he accompanies them on their next trip into the tank. There are four men, all wearing power-assisted pressure armour, and now it takes three of them to pin the Denizen against one wall of the glass. When it breaks free momentarily, it gouges deep tooth marks in the flexible hide of Grafenwalder’s glove. Back outside the tank, he inspects the damage and wonders what those teeth would have done to naked flesh.

It’s fierce, he’ll give it that. It may not be unique; it may not be particularly intelligent; but he still doesn’t feel that all the money he gave Rifugio was wasted. Whatever the Denizen might be, it’s worthy of a place in the bestiary. And it’s
his
, not someone else’s.

He puts out the word that there is something new in his collection. Following Ursula Goodglass’s example, he tells the visitors to drop by whenever they like. There must be no suspicion that the Denizen is a stage-managed exhibit, something that can only perform to schedule.

It’s three days before anyone takes him up on his offer. Lysander Carroway and her husband are the first to arrive. Even then, Grafenwalder has the sense that the visit is regarded as a tiresome social duty. All that changes when they see the Denizen. He’s taken pains to stoke it up, denying it food and comfort for long hours. By the time he throws on the lights, the creature has become a focus of pure, mindless fury. It strives to kill the things on the other side of the glass, scratching claws and teeth against that impervious shield, to the point where it starts bleeding. His guests recoil, suitably impressed. After the study in motionless that was Dr. Trintignant, they are woefully unprepared for the murderous speed of the Europan organism.

“Yes, it is a Denizen,” he tells them, while his keepers tend to the creature’s injuries. “The last of its kind, I have it on good authority.”

“Where did you find it?”

He parrots the lie Rifugio has already told him. “You know what Ultras are like, with their pets. I don’t think they realised quite what they’d been tormenting all those years.”

“Can it speak to us? I heard that they could talk.”

“Not this one. The idea that most of them could talk is a fallacy, I’m afraid: they simply weren’t required to. As for the ones that did have language, they must have died over a hundred years ago.”