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In Alien Flesh
by Gregory Benford
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Science Fiction

Copyright ©1978 by Gregory Benford

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1978

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

I.

—green surf lapping, chilling—

Reginri's hand jerked convulsively on the sheets. His eyes were closed.

—silver coins gliding and turning in the speckled sky, eclipsing the sun—

The sheets were a clinging swamp. He twisted in their grip.

—a chiming song, tinkling cool rivulets washing his skin—

He opened his eyes.

A yellow blade of afternoon sunlight hung in the room, dust motes swimming through it. He panted in shallow gasps. Belej was standing beside the bed.

“They came again, didn't they?” she said, almost whispering.

“Ye ... yes.” His throat was tight and dry.

“This can't go on, darling. We thought you could sleep better in the daytime, with everyone out in the fields, but—"

“Got to get out of here,” he mumbled. He rolled out of bed and pulled on his black work suit. Belej stood silent, blinking rapidly, chewing at her lower lip. Reginri fastened his boots and slammed out of the room. His steps thumped hollowly on the planking. She listened to them hurrying down the hallway. They paused; the airless silence returned. Then the outer door creaked, banged shut.

She hurried after him.

She caught up near the rim of the canyon, a hundred meters from the log buildings. He looked at her. He scratched at his matted hair and hunched his shoulders forward.

“That one was pretty bad,” he said woodenly.

“If they keep on getting worse..."

“They won't."

“We hope. But we don't know that. If I understood what they're about..."

“I can't quite describe it. They're different each time. The feeling seems the same, even though...” Some warmth had returned to his voice. “It's hard."

Belej sat down near the canyon edge. She looked up at him. Her eyebrows knitted together above large dark eyes. “All right,” she said, her mood shifting suddenly, an edge coming into her voice. “One, I don't know what these nightmares are about. Two, I don't know where they come from. That horrible expedition you went on, I suppose, but you're not even clear about that. Three, I don't know why you insisted on joining their dirty expedition in the—"

“I told you, dammit. I had to go."

“You wanted the extra money,” Belej said flatly. She cupped her chin in a tiny hand.

“It wasn't extra money, it was any money.” He glowered at the jagged canyon below them. Her calm, accusing manner irritated him.

“You're a pod cutter. You could have found work."

“The season was bad. This was last year, remember. Rates weren't good."

“But you had heard about this Sasuke and Leo, what people said about them—"

“Vanleo, that's the name. Not Leo."

“Well, whatever. You didn't have to work for them."

“No, of course not,” he said savagely. “I could've busted my ass on a field-hopper in planting season, twelve hours a day for thirty units pay, max. And when I got tired of that, or broke a leg, maybe I could've signed on to mold circuitry like a drone.” He picked up a stone and flung it far over the canyon edge. “A great life."

Belej paused a long moment. At the far angular end of the canyon a pink mist seeped between the highest peaks and began spilling downward, gathering speed. Zeta Reticuli still rode high in the mottled blue sky, but a chill was sweeping up from the canyon. The wind carried an acrid tang.

He wrinkled his nose. Within an hour they would have to move inside. The faint reddish haze would thicken. It was good for the plant life of northern Persenuae, but to human lungs the fog was an itching irritant.

Belej sighed. “Still,” she said softly, “you weren't forced to go. If you had known it would be so—"

“Yes,” he said, and something turned in his stomach. “If anybody had known."

II

At first it was not the Drongheda that he found disquieting. It was the beach itself and, most of all, the waves.

They lapped at his feet with a slow, sucking energy, undermining the coarse sand beneath his boots. They began as little ripples that marched in from the gray horizon and slowly hissed up the black beach. Reginri watched one curl into greenish foam farther out; the tide was falling.

“Why are they so slow?” he said.

Sasuke looked up from the carry-pouches. “What?"

“Why do the waves take so long?"

Sasuke stopped for a moment and studied the ponderous swell, flecked with yellow waterweed. An occasional large wave broke and splashed on the sharp lava rocks farther out. “I never thought about it,” Sasuke said. “Guess it's the lower gravity."

“Uh-hum.” Reginri shrugged.

A skimmer fish broke water and snapped at something in the air. Somehow, the small matter of the waves unnerved him. He stretched restlessly in his skinsuit.

“I guess the low-gee sim doesn't prepare you for everything,” he said. Sasuke didn't hear; he was folding out the tappers, coils and other gear.

Reginri could put it off no longer. He fished out his binocs and looked at the Drongheda.

At first it seemed like a smooth brown rock, water-worn and timeless. And the reports were correct: it moved landward. It rose like an immense blister on the rippled sea. He squinted, trying to see the dark circle of the pithole. There, yes, a shadowed blur ringed with dappled red. At the center, darker, lay his entranceway. It looked impossibly small.

He lowered the binocs, blinking. Zeta Reticuli burned low on the flat horizon, a fierce orange point that sliced through this planet's thin air.

“God, I could do with a burn,” Reginri said.

“None of that, you'll need your wits in there,” Sasuke said stiffly. “Anyway, there's no smoking blowby in these suits."

“Right.” Reginri wondered if the goddamned money was worth all this. Back on Persenuae—he glanced up into the purpling sky and found it, a pearly glimmer nestling in closer to Zeta—it had seemed a good bet, a fast and easy bit of money, a kind of scientific outing with a tang of adventure. Better than agriwork, anyway. A far better payoff than anything else he could get with his limited training, a smattering of electronics and fabrication techniques. He even knew some math, though not enough to matter. And it didn't make any difference in this job, Sasuke had told him, even if math was the whole point of this thing.

He smiled to himself. An odd thought, that squiggles on the page were a commercial item, something people on Earth would send a ramscoop full of microelectronics and bioengineered cells in exchange for—

“Some help here, eh?” Sasuke said roughly.

“Sorry."

Reginri knelt and helped the man spool out the tapper lines, checking the connectors. Safely up the beach, beyond the first pale line of sand dunes, lay the packaged electronics gear and the crew, already in place, who would monitor while he and Vanleo were inside.

As the two men unwound the cables, unsnarling the lines and checking the backup attachments, Reginri glanced occasionally at the Drongheda. It was immense, far larger than he had imagined. The 3Ds simply didn't convey the massive feel of the thing. It wallowed in the shallows, now no more than two hundred meters away.

“It's stopped moving,” he said.

“Sure. It'll be there for days, by all odds.” Sasuke spoke without looking up. He inserted his diagnostic probe at each socket, watching the meters intently. He was methodical, sure of himself—quite the right sort of man to handle the technical end, Reginri thought.

“That's the point, isn't it? I mean, the thing is going to stay put."

“Sure."

“So you say. It isn't going to roll over while we're in there, because it never has."

Sasuke stopped working and scowled. Through his helmet bubble, Reginri could see the man's lips pressed tight together. “You fellows always get the shakes on the beach. It never fails. Last crew I had out here, they were crapping in their pants from the minute we sighted a Drongheda."

“Easy enough for you to say. You're not going in."

“I've been in, mister. You haven't. Do what we say, what Vanleo and I tell you, and you'll be all right."

“Is that what you told the last guy who worked with you?"

Sasuke looked up sharply. “Kaufmann? You talked to him?"

“No. A friend of mine knows him."

“Your friend keeps bad company."

“Sure, me included."

“I meant—"

“Kaufmann didn't quit for no reason, you know."

“He was a coward,” Sasuke said precisely.

“The way he put it, he just wasn't fool enough to keep working this thing the way you want. With this equipment."

“There isn't any other way."

Reginri motioned seaward. “You could put something automated inside. Plant a sensor."

“That will transmit out through thirty meters of animal fat? Through all that meat? Reliably? With a high bit rate? Ha!"

Reginri paused. He knew it wasn't smart to push Sasuke this way, but the rumors he had heard from Kaufmann made him uneasy. He glanced back toward the lifeless land. Down the beach, Vanleo had stopped to inspect something, kneeling on the hard-packed sand. Studying a rock, probably—nothing alive scuttled or crawled on this beach.

Reginri shrugged. “I can see that, but why do we have to stay in so long? Why not just go in, plant the tappers and get out?"

“They won't stay in place. If the Drongheda moves even a little, they'll pop out."

“Don't make ‘em so damned delicate."

“Mister, you can't patch in with spiked nails. That's a neural terminus point you're going after, not a statphone connection."

“So I have to mother it through? Sit there up in that huge gut and sweat it out?"

“You're getting paid for it,” Sasuke said in clipped tones.

“Maybe not enough."

“Look, if you're going to bellyache—"

Reginri shrugged. “Okay, I'm not a pro at this. I came mostly to see the Drongheda anyway. But once you look at it, that electronics rig of yours seems pretty inadequate. And if that thing out there decides to give me a squeeze—"

“It won't. Never has."

A short, clipped bark came over the earphones. It was Vanleo's laugh, ringing hollow in their helmets. Vanleo approached, striding smoothly along the water line. “It hasn't happened, so it won't? Bad logic. Simply because a series has many terms does not mean it is infinite. Nor that it converges."

Reginri smiled warmly, glad that the other man was back. There was a remorseless quality about Sasuke that set his teeth on edge.

“Friend Sasuke, don't conceal what we both know from this boy.” Vanleo clapped Sasuke on the back jovially. “The Drongheda are a cipher. Brilliant, mysterious, vast intellects—and it is presumptuous to pretend we understand anything about them. All we are able to follow is their mathematics—perhaps that is all they wish us to see.” A brilliant smile creased his face.

Vanleo turned and silently studied the cables that played out from the dunes and into the surf.

“Looks okay,” he said. “Tide's going out."

He turned abruptly and stared into Reginri's eyes. “Got your nerve back now, boy? I was listening on suit audio."

Reginri shuffled uneasily. Sasuke was irritating, but at least he knew how to deal with the man. Vanleo, though ... somehow Vanleo's steady, intent gaze unsettled him. Reginri glanced out at the Drongheda and felt a welling dread. On impulse he turned to Vanleo and said, “I think I'll stay on the beach."

Vanleo's face froze. Sasuke made a rough spitting sound and began, “Another goddamned—” but Vanleo cut him off with a brusque motion of his hand.

“What do you mean?” Vanleo said mildly.

“I ... I don't feel so good about going inside."

“Oh. I see."

“I mean, I don't know if that thing isn't going to ... well, it's the first time I did this, and..."

“I see."

“Tell you what. I'll go out with you two, sure. I'll stay in the water and keep the cables from getting snarled—you know, the job you were going to do. That'll give me a chance to get used to the work. Then, next time..."

“That might be years from now."

“Well, that's right, but..."

“You're endangering the success of the entire expedition."

“I'm not experienced. What if...” Reginri paused. Vanleo had logic on his side, he knew. This was the first Drongheda they had been able to reach in over two years. Many of them drifted down the ragged coast, hugging the shallows. But most stayed only a day or two. This was the first in a long while that had moored itself offshore in a low, sheltered shoal. The satellite scan had picked it up, noted its regular pattern of movements that followed the tides. So Vanleo got the signal, alerted Reginri and the stand-by crew, and they lifted in a fast booster from Persenuae...

“A boot in the ass is what he needs,” Sasuke said abruptly.

Vanleo shook his head. “I think not,” he said.

The contempt in Sasuke's voice stiffened Reginri's resolve. “I'm not going in."

“Oh?” Vanleo smiled.

“Sue me for breach of contract when we get back to Persenuae, if you want. I'm not doing it."

“Oh, we'll do much more than that,” Vanleo said casually. “We'll transfer the financial loss of this expedition to your shoulders. There's no question it's your fault."

“I—"

“So you'll never draw full wages again, ever,” Vanleo continued calmly.

Reginri moved his feet restlessly. There was a feeling of careful, controlled assurance in Vanleo that gave his words added weight. And behind the certainty of those eyes Reginri glimpsed something else.

“I don't know...” He breathed deeply, trying to clear his head. “Guess I got rattled a little, there."

He hesitated and then snorted self-deprecatingly. “I guess, I guess I'll be all right."

Sasuke nodded, holding his tongue. Vanleo smiled heartily. “Fine. Fine. We'll just forget this little incident, then, eh?” Abruptly he turned and walked down the beach. His steps were firm, almost jaunty.

III.

An air squirrel glided in on the gathering afternoon winds. It swung out over the lip of the canyon, chattering nervously, and then coasted back to the security of the hotbush. The two humans watched it leisurely strip a seed pod and nibble away.

“I don't understand why you didn't quit then,” Belej said at last. “Right then. On the beach. A lawsuit wouldn't stick, not with other crewmen around to fill in for you."

Reginri looked at her blankly. “Impossible."

“Why? You'd seen that thing. You could see it was dangerous."

“I knew that before we left Persenuae."

“But you hadn't seen it."

“So what? I'd signed a contract."

Belej tossed her head impatiently. “I remember you saying to me it was a kind of big fish. That's all you said that night before you left. You could argue that you hadn't understood the danger..."

Reginri grimaced. “Not a fish. A mammal."

“No difference. Like some other fish back on Earth, you told me."

“Like the humpback and the blue and the fin and the sperm whales,” he said slowly. “Before men killed them off, they started to suspect the blues might be intelligent."

“Whales weren't mathematicians, though, were they?” she said lightly.

“We'll never know, now."

Belej leaned back into the matted brownish grass. Strands of black hair blew gently in the wind. “That Leo lied to you about that thing, the fish, didn't he?"

“How?"

“Telling you it wasn't dangerous."

He sat upright in the grass and hugged his knees. “He gave me some scientific papers. I didn't read most of them—hell, they were clogged with names I didn't know, funny terms. That's what you never understood, Belej. We don't know much about Drongheda. Just that they've got lungs and a spine and come ashore every few years. Why they do even that, or what makes them intelligent—Vanleo spent thirty years on that. You've got to give him credit—"

“For dragging you into it. Ha!"

“The Drongheda never harmed anybody. Their eyes don't seem to register us. They probably don't even know we're there, and Vanleo's simple-minded attempts to communicate failed. He—"

“If a well-meaning, blind giant rolls over on you,” she said, “you're still dead."

Reginri snorted derisively. “The Drongheda balance on ventral flippers. That's how they keep upright in the shallows. Whales couldn't do that, or—"

“You're not listening to me!” She gave him an exasperated glance.

“I'm telling you what happened."

“Go ahead, then. We can't stay out here much longer."

He peered out at the wrinkled canyon walls. Lime-green fruit trees dotted the burnished rocks. The thickening pink haze was slowly creeping across the canyon floor, obscuring details. The airborne life that colored the clouds would coat the leathery trees and trigger the slow rhythms of seasonal life. Part of the sluggish, inevitable workings of Persenuae, he thought.

“Mist looks pretty heavy,” he agreed. He glanced back at the log cabins that were the communal living quarters. They blended into the matted grasses.

“Tell me,” she said insistently.

“Well, I..."

“You keep waking me up with nightmares about it. I deserve to know. It's changed our lives together. I—"

He sighed. This was going to be difficult. “All right."

IV.

Vanleo gave Reginri a clap on the shoulder and the three men set to work. Each took a spool of cable and walked backward, carrying it, into the surf. Reginri carefully watched the others and followed, letting the cable play out smoothly. He was so intent upon the work that he hardly noticed the enveloping wet that swirled about him. His oxygen pellet carrier was a dead, awkward weight at his back, but once up to his waist in the lapping water, maneuvering was easier, and he could concentrate on something other than keeping his balance.

The sea bottom was smooth and clear, laced with metallic filaments of dull silver. Not metal, though; this was a planet with strangely few heavy elements. Maybe that was why land life had never taken hold here, and the island continents sprinkled amid the ocean were bleak, dusty deserts. More probably, the fact that this chilled world was small and farther from the sun made it too hostile a place for land life. Persenuae, nearer in toward Zeta, thrived with both native and imported species, but this world had only sea creatures. A curious planet, this; a theoretical meeting point somewhere between the classic patterns of Earth and Mars. Large enough for percolating volcanoes, and thus oceans, but with an unbreathable air curiously high in carbon dioxide and low in oxygen. Maybe the wheel of evolution had simply not turned far enough here, and someday the small fish—or even the Drongheda itself—would evolve upward, onto the land.

But maybe the Drongheda was evolving, in intelligence, Reginri thought. The things seemed content to swim in the great oceans, spinning crystalline-mathematical puzzles for their own amusement. And for some reason they had responded when Vanleo first jabbed a probing electronic feeler into a neural nexus. The creatures spilled out realms of mathematical art that, Earthward, kept thousands working to decipher it—to rummage among a tapestry of cold theorems, tangled referents, seeking the quick axioms that lead to new corridors, silent pools of geometry and the intricate pyramiding of lines and angles, encasing a jungle of numbers.

“Watch it!” Sasuke sang out.

Reginri braced himself and a wave broke over him, splashing green foam against his faceplate.

“Riptide running here,” Vanleo called. “Should taper off soon."

Reginri stood firm against the flow, keeping his knees loose and flexible for balance. Through his boots he felt the gritty slide of sand against smoothed rock. The cable spool was almost played out.

He turned to maneuver, and suddenly to the side he saw an immense brown wall. It loomed high, far above the gray waves breaking at its base. Reginri's chest tightened as he turned to study the Drongheda.

Its hide wall was delicately speckled in gold and green. The dorsal vents were black slashes that curved up the side, forming deep oily valleys.

Reginri cradled the cable spool under one arm and gingerly reached out to touch it. He pushed at it several times experimentally. It gave slightly with a soft, rubbery resistance.

“Watch the flukes!” Vanleo called. Reginri turned and saw a long black flipper break water fifty meters away. It languidly brushed the surface with a booming whack audible through his helmet and then submerged.

“He's just settling down, I expect,” Vanleo called reassuringly. “They sometimes do that."

Reginri frowned at the water where the fluke had emerged. Deep currents welled up and rippled the surface.

“Let's have your cable,” Sasuke said. “Reel it over here. I've got the mooring shaft sunk in."

Reginri spun out the rest of his spool and had some left when he reached Sasuke. Vanleo was holding a long tube pointed straight down into the water. He pulled a trigger and there was a muffled clap Reginri could hear over suit radio. He realized Vanleo was firing bolts into the ocean rock to secure their cable and connectors. Sasuke held out his hands and Reginri gave him the cable spool.

It was easier to stand here; the Drongheda screened them from most of the waves, and the undercurrents had ebbed. For a while Reginri stood uselessly by, watching the two men secure connections and mount the tapper lines. Sasuke at last waved him over, and as Reginri turned his back, they fitted the lines into his backpack.

Nervously, Reginri watched the Drongheda for signs of motion, but there were none. The ventral grooves formed an intricate ribbed pattern along the creature's side, and it was some moments before he thought to look upward and find the pithole. It was a red-rimmed socket, darker than the dappled brown around it. The ventral grooves formed an elaborate helix around the pithole, then arced away and down the body toward a curious mottled patch, about the same size as the pithole.

“What's that?” Reginri said, pointing at the patch.

“Don't know,” Vanleo said. “Seems softer than the rest of the hide, but it's not a hole. All the Drongheda have ‘em."

“Looks like a welt or something."

“Ummm,” Vanleo murmured, distracted. “We'd better boost you up in a minute. I'm going to go around to the other side. There's another pithole exposed there, a little farther up from the water line. I'll go in that way."

“How do I get up?"

“Spikes,” Sasuke murmured. “It's shallow enough here."

It took several minutes to attach the climbing spikes to Reginri's boots. He leaned against the Drongheda for support and tried to mentally compose himself for what was to come. The sea welled around him, lapping warmly against his skinsuit. He felt a jittery sense of anticipation.

“Up you go,” Sasuke said. “Kneel on my shoulders and get the spikes in solid before you put any weight on them. Do what we said, once you're inside, and you'll be all right."

V.

Vanleo steadied him as he climbed onto Sasuke's back. It took some moments before Reginri could punch the climbing spikes into the thick, crinkled hide.

He was thankful for the low gravity. He pulled himself up easily, once he got the knack of it, and it took only a few moments to climb the ten meters to the edge of the pithole. Once there, he paused to rest.

“Not so hard as I thought,” he said lightly.

“Good boy.” Vanleo waved up at him. “Just keep steady and you'll be perfectly all right. We'll give you a signal on the com-line when you're to come out. This one won't be more than an hour, probably."

Reginri balanced himself on the lip of the pithole and took several deep breaths, tasting the oily air. In the distance gray waves broke into surf. The Drongheda rose like a bubble from the wrinkled sea. A bank of fog was rolling down the coastline. In it a shadowy shape floated. Reginri slitted his eyes to see better, but the fog wreathed the object and blurred its outline. Another Drongheda? He looked again but the form melted away in the white mist.

“Hurry it up,” Sasuke called from below. “We won't move until you're in."

Reginri turned on the fleshy ledge beneath him and pulled at the dark blubbery folds that rimmed the pithole. He noticed that there were fine, gleaming threads all round the entrance. A mouth? An anus? Vanleo said not; the scientists who came to study the Drongheda had traced its digestive tract in crude fashion. But they had no idea what the pithole was for. It was precisely to find that out that Vanleo first went into one. Now it was Vanleo's theory that the pithole was the Drongheda's method of communication, since why else would the neural connections be so close to the surface inside? Perhaps, deep in the murky ocean, the Drongheda spoke to each other through these pitholes, rather than singing, like whales. Men had found no bioacoustic signature in the schools of Drongheda they had observed, but that meant very little.

Reginri pushed inward, through the iris of spongy flesh, and was at once immersed in darkness. His suit light clicked on. He lay in a sheath of meat with perhaps two hand spans of clearance on each side. The tunnel yawned ahead, absorbing the weak light. He gathered his knees and pushed upward against the slight grade.

“Electronics crew reports good contact with your tapper lines. This com okay?” Sasuke's voice came thin and high in Reginri's ear.

“Seems to be. Goddamned close in here."

“Sometimes it's smaller near the opening,” Vanleo put in. “You shouldn't have too much climbing to do—most pitholes run pretty horizontal, when the Drongheda is holding steady like this."

“It's so tight. Going to be tough, crawling uphill,” Reginri said, an uncertain waver in his voice.

“Don't worry about that. Just keep moving and look for the neural points.” Vanleo paused. “Fish out the contacts for your tappers, will you? I just got a call from the technicians, they want to check the connection."

“Sure.” Reginri felt at his belly. “I don't seem to find..."

“They're right there, just like in training,” Sasuke said sharply. “Pull ‘em out of their clips."

“Oh, yeah.” Reginri fumbled for a moment and found the two metallic cylinders. They popped free of the suit and he nosed them together. “There."

“All right, all right, they're getting the trace,” Vanleo said. “Looks like you're all set."

“Right, about time,” Sasuke said. “Let's get moving."

“We're going around to the other side. So let us know if you see anything.” Reginri could hear Vanleo's breath coming faster. “Quite a pull in this tide. Ah, there's the other pithole."

The two men continued to talk, getting Vanleo's equipment ready. Reginri turned his attention to his surroundings and wriggled upward, grunting. He worked steadily, pulling against the pulpy stuff. Here and there scaly folds wrinkled the walls, overlapping and making handholds. The waxen membranes reflected back none of his suit light. He dug in his heels and pushed, slipping on patches of filmy pink liquid that collected in the trough of the tunnel.

At first the passageway flared out slightly, giving him better purchase. He made good progress and settled down into a rhythm of pushing and turning. He worked his way around a vast bluish muscle that was laced by orange lines.

Even through his skinsuit he could feel a pulsing warmth come from it. The Drongheda had an internal temperature fifteen degrees Centigrade below the human's, but still an oppressive dull heat seeped through to him.

Something black lay ahead. He reached out and touched something rubbery that seemed to block the pithole. His suit light showed a milky pink barrier. He wormed around and felt at the edges of the stuff. Off to the left there was a smaller opening. He turned, flexed his legs and twisted his way into the new passage. Vanleo had told him the pithole might change direction and that when it did he was probably getting close to a nexus. Reginri hoped so.

VI.

“Everything going well?” Vanleo's voice came distantly.

“Think so,” Reginri wheezed.

“I'm at the lip. Going inside now.” There came the muffled sounds of a man working, and Reginri mentally blocked them out, concentrating on where he was.

The walls here gleamed like glazed, aging meat. His fingers could not dig into it. He wriggled with his hips and worked forward a few centimeters. He made his body flex, thrust, flex, thrust—he set up the rhythm and relaxed into it, moving forward slightly. The texture of the walls coarsened and he made better progress. Every few moments he stopped and checked the threads for the com-line and the tappers that trailed behind him, reeling out on spools at his side.

He could hear Sasuke muttering to himself, but he was unable to concentrate on anything but the waxen walls around him. The passage narrowed again, and ahead he could see more scaly folds. But these were different, dusted with a shimmering pale powder.

Reginri felt his heart beat faster. He kicked forward and reached out a hand to one of the encrusted folds. The delicate frosting glistened in his suit lamp. Here the meat was glassy, and deep within it he could see a complex interweaving network of veins and arteries, shot through with silvery threads.

It had to be a nexus; the pictures they had shown him were very much like this. It was not in a small pocket the way Vanleo said it would be, but that didn't matter. Vanleo himself had remarked that there seemed no systematic way the nodes were distributed. Indeed, they appeared to migrate to different positions inside the pithole, so that a team returning a few days later could not find the nodules they had tapped before.

Reginri felt a swelling excitement. He carefully thumbed on the electronic components set into his waist. Their low hum reassured him that everything was in order. He barked a short description of his find into his suit mike, and Vanleo responded in monosyllables. The other man seemed to be busy with something else, but Reginri was too occupied to wonder what it might be. He unplugged his tapper cylinders and worked them upward from his waist, his elbows poking into the pulpy membranes around him. Their needle points gleamed softly in the light as he turned them over, inspecting. Everything seemed all right.

He inched along and found the spot where the frosting seemed most dense. Carefully, bracing his hands against each other, he jabbed first one and then the other needle into the waxen flesh. It puckered around the needles.

He spoke quickly into his suit mike asking if the signals were coming through. There came an answering yes, some chatter from the technician back in the sand dunes, and then the line fell silent again.

Along the tapper lines were flowing the signals they had come to get. Long years of experiment had—as far as men could tell—established the recognition codes the technicians used to tell the Drongheda they had returned. Now, if the Drongheda responded, some convoluted electrical pulses would course through the lines and into the recording instruments ashore.

Reginri relaxed. He had done as much as he could. The rest depended on the technicians, the electronics, the lightning microsecond blur of information transfer between the machines and the Drongheda. Somewhere above or below him were flukes, ventral fins, slitted recesses, a baleen filter mouth through which a billion small fish lives had passed, all a part of this vast thing. Somewhere, layered in fat and wedged amid huge organs, there was a mind.

Reginri wondered how this had come about. Swimming through deep murky currents, somehow nature had evolved this thing that knew algebra, calculus, Reimannian metrics, Tchevychef subtleties—all as part of itself, as a fine-grained piece of the same language it shared with men.

Reginri felt a sudden impulse. There was an emergency piece clipped near his waist, for use when the tapper lines snarled or developed intermittent shorts. He wriggled around until his back was flush with the floor of the pithole and then reached down for it. With one hand he kept the needles impacted into the flesh above his head; with the other he extracted the thin, flat wedge of plastic and metal that he needed. From it sprouted tiny wires. He braced himself against the tunnel walls and flipped the wires into the emergency recesses in the tapper cylinders. Everything seemed secure; he rolled onto his back and fumbled at the rear of his helmet for the emergency wiring. By attaching the cabling, he could hook directly into a small fraction of the Drongheda's output. It wouldn't interfere with the direct tapping process. Maybe the men back in the sand dunes wouldn't even know he had done it.

He made the connection. Just before he flipped his suit com-line over to the emergency cable, he thought he felt a slight sway beneath him. The movement passed. He flipped the switch. And felt— —Bursting light that lanced through him, drummed a staccato rhythm of speckled green—

—Twisting lines that meshed and wove into perspectives, triangles warped into strange saddle-pointed envelopes, coiling into new soundless shapes— —A latticework of shrill sound, ringing at edges of geometrical flatness—

—Thick, rich foam that lapped against weathered stone towers, precisely turning under an ellipsoid orange sun— —Miniatured light that groaned and spun softly, curling into moisture that beaded on a coppery matrix of wire—

—A webbing of sticky strands, lifting him— —A welling current—

—Upward, toward the watery light—

Reginri snatched at the cable, yanking it out of the socket. His hand jerked up to cover his face and struck his helmet. He panted, gasping.

He closed his eyes and for a long moment thought of nothing, let his mind drift, let himself recoil from the experience.

There had been mathematics there, and much else. Rhomboids, acute intersections in veiled dimensions, many-sided twisted sculptures, warped perspectives, poly-hedrons of glowing fire.

But so much more—he would have drowned in it.

There was no interruption of chatter through his earphone. Apparently the electronics men had never noticed the interception. He breathed deeply and renewed his grip on the tapper needles. He closed his eyes and rested for long moments. The experience had turned him inside out for a brief flicker of time. But now he could breathe easily again. His heart had stopped thumping wildly in his chest. The torrent of images began to recede. His mind had been filled, overloaded with more than he could fathom.

He wondered how much the electronics really caught. Perhaps, transferring all this to cold ferrite memory, the emotional thrust was lost. It was not surprising that the only element men could decipher was the mathematics. Counting, lines and curves, the smooth sheen of geometry—they were abstractions, things that could be common to any reasoning mind. No wonder the Drongheda sent mostly mathematics through this neural passage; it was all that men could follow.

After a time it occurred to Reginri that perhaps Vanleo wanted it this way. Maybe he eavesdropped on the lines. The other man might seek this experience; it certainly had an intensity unmatched by drugs or the pallid electronic core-tapping in the sensoriums. Was Vanleo addicted? Why else risk failure? Why reject automated tapping and crawl in here—particularly since the right conditions came so seldom?

But it made no sense. If Vanleo had Drongheda tapes, he could play them back at leisure. So ... maybe the man was fascinated by the creatures themselves, not only the mathematics. Perhaps the challenge of going inside, the feel of it, was what Vanleo liked.

Grotesque, yes ... but maybe that was it.

VII.

He felt a tremor. The needles wobbled in his hand.

“Hey!” he shouted. The tube flexed under him.

“Something's happening in here. You guys—"

In midsentence the com-line went dead. Reginri automatically switched over to emergency, but there was no signal there either. He glanced at the tapper lines. The red phosphor glow at their ends had gone dead; they were not receiving power.

He wriggled around and looked down toward his feet. The tapper lines and the com cable snaked away into darkness with no breaks visible. If there was a flaw in the line, it was farther away.

Reginri snapped the tapper line heads back into his suit. As he did so, the flesh around him oozed languidly, compressing. There was a tilting sense of motion, a turning—

“Frange it! Get me—” then he remembered the line was dead. His lips pressed together.

He would have to get out on his own.

He dug in with his heels and tried to pull himself backward. A scaly bump scraped against his side. He pulled harder and came free, sliding a few centimeters back. The passage seemed tilted slightly downward. He put his hands out to push and saw something wet run over his fingers. The slimy fluid that filled the trough of the pithole was trickling toward him. Reginri pushed back energetically, getting a better purchase in the pulpy floor.

He worked steadily and made some progress. A long, slow undulation began and the walls clenched about him. He felt something squeeze at his legs, then his waist, then his chest and head. The tightening had a slow, certain rhythm.

He breathed faster, tasting an acrid smell. He heard only his own breath, amplified in the helmet.

He wriggled backward. His boot struck something and he felt the smooth lip of a turning in the passage. He remembered this, but the angle seemed wrong. The Drongheda must be shifting and moving, turning the pithole.

He forked his feet into the new passageway and quickly slipped through it.

This way was easier; he slid down the slick sides and felt a wave of relief. Farther along, if the tunnel widened, he might even be able to turn around and go headfirst.

His foot touched something that resisted softly. He felt around with both boots, gradually letting his weight settle on the thing. It seemed to have a brittle surface, pebbled. He carefully followed the outline of it around the walls of the hole until he had satisfied himself that there was no opening.

The passage was blocked.

His mind raced. The air seemed to gain a weight of its own, thick and sour in his helmet. He stamped his boots down, hoping to break whatever it was. The surface stayed firm.

Reginri felt his mind go numb. He was trapped. The com-line was dead, probably snipped off by this thing at his feet.

He felt the walls around him clench and stretch again, a massive hand squeezing the life from him. The pithole sides were only centimeters from his helmet. As he watched, a slow ripple passed through the membrane, ropes of yellow fat visible beneath the surface.

“Get me out!” Reginri kicked wildly. He thrashed against the slimy walls, using elbows and knees to gouge. The yielding pressure remained, cloaking him.

“Out! Out!” Reginri viciously slammed his fists into the flesh. His vision blurred. Small dark points floated before him. He pounded mechanically, his breath coming in short gasps. He cried for help. And he knew he was going to die.

Rage burst out of him. He beat at the enveloping smoothness. The gathering tightness in him boiled up, curling his lips into a grimace. His helmet filled with a bitter taste. He shouted again and again, battering at the Drongheda, cursing it. His muscles began to ache.

And slowly, slowly the burning anger melted. He blinked away the sweat in his eyes. His vision cleared. The blind, pointless energy drained away. He began to think again.

Sasuke. Vanleo. Two-faced bastards. They'd known this job was dangerous. The incident on the beach was a charade. When he showed doubts they'd bullied and threatened him immediately. They'd probably had to do it before, to other men. It was all planned.

He took a long, slow breath and looked up. Above him in the tunnel of darkness, the strands of the tapping lines and the com cable dangled.

One set of lines.

They led upward, on a slant, the way he had come.

It took a moment for the fact to strike him. If he had been backing down the way he came, the lines should be snarled behind him.

He pushed against the glazed sides and looked down his chest. There were no tapper lines near his legs.

That meant the lines did not come up through whatever was blocking his way. No, they came only from above. Which meant that he had taken some wrong side passage. Somehow a hole had opened in the side of the pithole and he had followed it blindly.

He gathered himself and thrust upward, striving for purchase. He struggled up the incline, and dug in with his toes. Another long ripple passed through the tube. The steady hand of gravity forced him down, but he slowly worked his way forward. Sweat stung his eyes.

After a few minutes his hands found the lip, and he quickly hoisted himself over it, into the horizontal tunnel above.

He found a tangle of lines and tugged at them. They gave with a slight resistance. This was the way out, he was sure of it. He began wriggling forward, and suddenly the world tilted, stretched, lifted him high. Let him drop.

He smashed against the pulpy side and lost his breath. The tube flexed again, rising up in front of him and dropping away behind. He dug his hands in and held on. The pithole arched, coiling, and squeezed him. Spongy flesh pressed at his head and he involuntarily held his breath. His faceplate was wrapped in it, and his world became fine-veined, purple, marbled with lacy fat.

Slowly, slowly the pressure ebbed away. He felt a dull aching in his side. There was a subdued tremor beneath him. As soon as he gained maneuvering room, he crawled urgently forward, kicking viciously. The lines led him forward.

The passage flared outward and he increased his speed. He kept up a steady pace of pulling hands, gouging elbows, thrusting knees and toes. The weight around him seemed bent upon expelling, imparting momentum, ejecting. So it seemed, as the flesh tightened behind him and opened before.

He tried the helmet microphone again, but it was still inert. He thought he recognized a vast bulging bluish muscle that, on his way in, had been in the wall. Now it formed a bump in the floor. He scrambled over its slickness and continued on.

He was so intent upon motion and momentum that he did not recognize the end. Suddenly the walls converged again and he looked around frantically for another exit. There was none. Then he noticed the rings of cartilage and stringy muscle. He pushed at the knotted surface. It gave, then relaxed even more. He shoved forward and abruptly was halfway out, suspended over the churning water.

VIII.

The muscled iris gripped him loosely about the waist. Puffing steadily, he stopped to rest.

He squinted up at the forgiving sun. Around him was a harshly lit world of soundless motion. Currents swirled meters below. He could feel the brown hillside of the Drongheda shift slowly. He turned to see—

The Drongheda was splitting in two.

But no, no—

The bulge was another Drongheda close by moving. At the same moment another silent motion caught his eye. Below, Vanleo struggled through the darkening water, waving. Pale mist shrouded the sea.

Reginri worked his way out and onto the narrow rim of the pithole. He took a grip at it and lowered himself partway down toward the water. Arms extended, he let go and fell with a splash into the ocean. He kept his balance and lurched away awkwardly on legs of cotton.

Vanleo reached out a steadying hand. The man motioned at the back of his helmet. Reginri frowned, puzzled, and then realized he was motioning toward the emergency com cable. He unspooled his own cable and plugged it into the shoulder socket on Vanleo's skinsuit.

“—damned lucky. Didn't think I'd see you again. But it's fantastic, come see it."

“What? I got—"

“I understand them now. I know what they're here for. It's not just communication, I don't think that, but that's part of it too. They've—"

“Stop babbling. What happened?"

“I went in,” Vanleo said, regaining his breath. “Or started to. We didn't notice that another Drongheda had surfaced, was moving into the shallows."

“I saw it. I didn't think—"

“I climbed up to the second pithole before I saw. I was busy with the cables, you know. You were getting good traces and I wanted to—"

“Let's get away, come on.” The vast bulks above them were moving.

“No, no, come see. I think my guess is right, these shallows are a natural shelter for them. If they have any enemies in the sea, large fish or something, their enemies can't follow them here into the shallows. So they come here to, to mate and to communicate. They must be terribly lonely, if they can't talk to each other in the oceans. So they have to come here to do it. I—"

Reginri studied the man and saw that he was ablaze with his inner vision. The damned fool loved these beasts, cared about them, had devoted a life to them and their goddamned mathematics.

“Where's Sasuke?"

“—and it's all so natural. I mean, humans communicate and make love, and those are two separate acts. They don't blend together. But the Drongheda—they have it all. They're like, like..."

The man pulled at Reginri's shoulder, leading him around the long curve of the Drongheda. Two immense burnished hillsides grew out of the shadowed sea. Zeta was setting, and in profile Reginri could see a long dexterous tentacle curling into the air. It came from the mottled patches, like welts, he had seen before.

“They extend through those spots, you see. Those are their sensors, what they use to complete the contact. And—I can't prove it, but I'm sure—that is when the genetic material is passed between them. The mating period. At the same time they exchange information, converse. That's what we're getting on the tappers, their stored knowledge fed out. They think we're another of their own, that must be it. I don't understand all of it, but—"

"Where's Sasuke?"

“—but the first one, the one you were inside, recognized the difference as soon as the second Drongheda approached. They moved together and the second one extruded that tentacle. Then—"

Reginri shook the other man roughly. “Shut up! Sasuke—"

Vanleo stopped, dazed, and looked at Reginri. “I've been telling you. It's a great discovery, the first real step we've taken in this field. We'll understand so much more once this is fully explored."

Reginri hit him in the shoulder.

Vanleo staggered. The glassy, pinched look of his eyes faded. He began to lift his arms.

Reginri drove his gloved fist into Vanleo's faceplate. Vanleo toppled backward. The ocean swallowed him. Reginri stepped back, blinking.

Vanleo's helmet appeared as he struggled up. A wave foamed over him. He stumbled, turned, saw Reginri.

Reginri moved toward him. “No. No,” Vanleo said weakly.

“If you're not going to tell me—"

“But I, I am.” Vanleo gasped, leaned forward until he could brace his hands on his knees.

“There wasn't time. The second one came up on us so, so fast."

“Yeah?"

“I was about ready to go inside. When I saw the second one moving in, you know, the only time in thirty years, I knew it was important. I climbed down to observe. But we needed the data, so Sasuke went in for me. With the tapper cables."

Vanleo panted. His face was ashen.

“When the tentacle went in, it filled the pithole exactly, Tight. There was no room left,” he said. “Sasuke ... was there. Inside."

Reginri froze, stunned. A wave swirled around him and he slipped. The waters tumbled him backward. Dazed, he regained his footing on the slick rocks and began stumbling blindly toward the bleak shore, toward humanity. The ocean lapped around him, ceaseless and unending.

IX.

Belej sat motionless, unmindful of the chill. “Oh my God,” she said.

“That was it,” he murmured. He stared off into the canyon. Zeta Reticuli sent slanting rays into the layered reddening mists. Air squirrels darted among the shifting shadows.

“He's crazy,” Belej said simply. “That Leo is crazy."

“Well...” Reginri began. Then he rocked forward stiffly and stood up. Swirls of reddish cloud were crawling up the canyon face toward them. He pointed. “That stuff is coming in faster than I thought.” He coughed. “We'd better get inside."

Belej nodded and came to her feet. She brushed the twisted brown grass from her legs and turned to him.

“Now that you've told me,” she said softly, “I think you ought to put it from your mind."

“It's hard. I..."

“I know. I know. But you can push it far away from you, forget it happened. That's the best way."

“Well, maybe."

“Believe me. You've changed since this happened to you. I can feel it."

“Feel what?"

“You. You're different. I feel a barrier between us."

“I wonder,” he said slowly.

She put her hand on his arm and stepped closer, an old, familiar gesture. He stood watching the reddening haze swallowing the precise lines of the rocks below.

“I want that screen between us to dissolve. You made your contribution, earned your pay. Those damned people understand the Drongheda now—"

He made a wry, rasping laugh. “We'll never grasp the Drongheda. What we get in those neural circuits are mirrors of what we want. Of what we are. We can't sense anything totally alien."

“But—"

“Vanleo saw mathematics because he went after it. So did I, at first. Later..."

He stopped. A sudden breeze made him shiver. He clenched his fists. Clenched. Clenched.

How could he tell her? He woke in the night, sweating, tangled in the bedclothes, muttering incoherently ... but they were not nightmares, not precisely.

Something else. Something intermediate.

“Forget those things,” Belej said soothingly. Reginri leaned closer to her and caught the sweet musk of her, the dry crackling scent of her hair. He had always loved that.

She frowned up at him. Her eyes shifted intently from his mouth to his eyes and then back again, trying to read his expression. “It will only trouble you to recall it. I—I'm sorry I asked you to tell it. But remember"—she took both his hands in hers—"you'll never go back there again. It can be..."

Something made him look beyond her. At the gathering fog.

And at once he sensed the shrouded abyss open below him. Sweeping him in. Gathering him up. Into— —a thick red foam lapping against weathered granite towers—

—an ellipsoidal sun spinning soundlessly over a silvered, warping planet— —watery light—

—cloying strands, sticky, a fine-spun coppery matrix that enfolded him, warming— —glossy sheen of polyhedra, wedged together, mass upon mass—

—smooth bands of moisture playing lightly over his quilted skin— —a blistering light shines through him, sets his bones to humming resonance—

—pressing— —coiling—

Beckoning. Beckoning.

When the moment had passed, Reginri blinked and felt a salty stinging in his eyes. Every day the tug was stronger, the incandescent images sharper. This must be what Vanleo felt, he was sure of it. They came to him now even during the day. Again and again, the grainy texture altering with time...

He reached out and enfolded Belej in his arms.

“But I must,” he said in a rasping whisper. “Vanleo called today. He ... I'm going. I'm going back."

He heard her quick intake of breath, felt her stiffen in his arms.

His attention was diverted by the reddening fog. It cloaked half the world and still it came on.

There was something ominous about it and something inviting as well. He watched as it engulfed trees nearby. He studied it intently, judging the distance. The looming presence was quite close now. But he was sure it would be all right.

Afterword

Once when I was scuba diving I saw a shark. It was about a hundred yards away but the water was so clear that it looked like it was right beside me. White, sleek, stately, beautiful.

Other things were happening at the same time—I was carefully coming up on some fish I wanted for lunch, keeping clear of my diving mates, wondering why my mask was fogging a little ... and then there came that slowed-time reflex you get in an auto accident, when there is all the time in the world to think about what you're going to do next.

This was off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula, in 1967, about forty feet down. Adrenaline enlarges everything, throws it into stark relief, but still—this shark was big. The long, white form coasted lazily over a ridge of stones, looked toward us for what seemed like forever, and turned majestically our way. Those goggle eyes seemed both blazingly angry and stupefyingly dumb at the same time, but the important fact was that they seemed to be looking right at me.

I can remember thinking, with that speed-freak energy, that the thing looked alien. As though it was out of place, shouldn't be there, wasn't natural, couldn't even be in the same ocean with me. It was so implausibly huge. I could easily fit inside....

I'd like to say that I did something brave, like moving to defend the others, but the fact is that I kept swimming as rhythmically as I could, and angled down behind some other rocks I don't even remember looking at the other divers.

The shark was a great white, all right, and it swam majestically by, about fifty yards away, and then coasted off with smooth indifference, into the far hazy mist.

I remembered that when I started thinking of this story. In fact, my stunned judgment that the great white could probably swallow me whole without great bother was probably the germinating impulse behind this story.

A lot of the stories in this collection deal with the alien, in one way or another. Strange creatures, or else the process of making things strange, alienation.

There are a lot of kinds of aliens in sf. The most common is the human in a Halloween suit, like the vegetable man in the 1951 version of The Thing. In that great old lumbering Howard Hawks movie, everything's a symbol. The alien stands for godless communism. The soft-headed scientists who try to make contact, despite obvious hostility, symbolize the liberals. And the U.S. Air Force, of course, symbolizes the U.S. Air Force. The alien is completely understandable.

Then there's the alien who stands for a part of our own history. The Galactic Empire motif, with its equation of planet = colony, aliens = indians, is really replaying the past. (Sometimes the indians even win.)

For me, the unexamined alien is not worth meeting. Yet the most compelling aspect of aliens is their fundamental unknowability. The best signifier for this, I think, is language. In Ian Watson's fine novel The Embedding, aliens come to barter with us for our languages, not our science and art, because these are the keys to a deeper sensing of the world. Each species’ language gives a partial picture of reality.

The technical problem a writer faces in depicting alien languages is how to convey any information and yet be convincingly strange. If it's just gibberish, you gain nothing and look funny, too. Broken English won't do, and the usual sf cliche of awkward frog-speak is boring.

I don't have any theoretical solution to this problem, just some particular attempts. This story is one such; my novels try it at greater length. In a way, rendering the alien is the Holy Grail of sf, because if your attempt can be accurately summarized, you know you've failed.