The Frozen Sky

45.

Vonnie glanced outside as Ash walked Metzler to the lander, where his mecha set the emergency bubble on the deck. Talking to him on a private channel, Ash tugged at his arm, urging him to walk into the air lock. He shook her off and marched back toward Koebsch and Module 03.

“Where is Lam in relation to the smaller sunfish?” Vonnie asked.

“He’s close,” Frerotte said.

“That’s why he wasn’t obliterated,” O’Neal said. “Either he lucked into running from the FNEE in the right direction or he heard Tom’s colony evacuating and realized he’d better move with them.”

“Let me see your diagnostics. I need your transcripts, too.”

Vonnie’s evaluation was quick. She didn’t listen to the conversations between Lam and Frerotte, not yet. She uploaded their files to an AI along with Lam’s involuntary, partial responses to Frerotte’s diagnostic, then added her own gut hunch to the AI’s conclusions.

When Lam transferred from the FNEE digger to Probe 114, he’d reassimilated at an integrity rate of seventy to eighty percent.

“Crap,” Vonnie said. “Given the probe’s limitations, I’d say the lower score is accurate. Lam won’t reach human equivalence again until we can give him more capacity. He’s smart, but he’ll lack imagination or intuition.”

“How about a remote link?” O’Neal said.

Vonnie tensed. Using remote memory to augment their probes with the central AIs in camp had been Pärnits’ idea. “We don’t have enough relays or spies left,” she said. “Lam would need to dig his way closer to us, then stay there, which doesn’t do us any good if we want him to approach the sunfish. We have to fix him. Did Ash show you where she stores her back-ups?”

Frerotte touched a menu on his display. “Yes.”

“If we can feed him corrective sequences, he might rise to ninety percent. Why didn’t you try it?”

“I told you. He’s erratic. He’s spooked. We only got in a few words before he shut off his data/comm.”

“It’s been four hours since you heard from him?”

“We didn’t want to fake your voice. You two have a lot of history. We couldn’t be sure what he’d ask. What if there was a personal reference we missed? He refused to talk to anyone else, and you were in surgery.”

“You should’ve woken me sooner.”

“Von, some of your procedures were significant. Did you see your notes?”

“No.” She hadn’t had the courage to read her summary in detail. She suspected that her left foot and the bones in her calf were transplants from the clone stock preserved in their medical bins. Those organs, limbs, packets of marrow, and sheaves of skin had been vat grown on Earth and were immunologically nonresponsive, which meant her body had a strong chance of accepting the foreign tissues. It meant she wasn’t her anymore. She was a frankenstein.

Among Earth’s spacefaring nations, only the FNEE didn’t equip deep-space missions with extra parts grown from stem cells. Even in the twenty-second century, a majority of Brazilians were Catholic. They permitted emergency measures and nanotech, but not clone stock. If one of their astronauts lost a leg, he could be fitted with a cyberthetic, but physical therapy and rehabilitation might take weeks.

Vonnie would walk again tomorrow, albeit with a limp. The low gravity was a blessing. It allowed her nerve and muscle grafts to adapt to her real body without strain.

“Let’s get ready,” she said. “I want menu options on voice command.”

“You got it.”

Five minutes passed as Vonnie, O’Neal, and Frerotte arranged for an AI to transmit any corrective sequences it deemed necessary. Lam would operate at speeds beyond human comprehension. Vonnie preferred a manual option to adjust or abort, but in all likelihood, the exchange between their AI and Lam would be over before she noticed any complications.

Outside, their macabre salvation efforts continued. On the lander’s deck, inside the temporary tent, Johal warmed Pärnits’ disfigured corpse without removing him from the emergency bubble.

The bubble could be deflated. It would become his shroud. They couldn’t afford to thaw him inside the ready room and attempt to reform his skeleton and internal organs before burial or cremation. If he spilled, the smell would permeate their air conditioning and someone would need to clean the mess. Koebsch had been firm. They’d treat their dead with as much respect as possible under the circumstances, but they could not contaminate what remained of their living quarters.

Forty meters from the lander, on the ice, Ash stood with Metzler and Koebsch beside Module 03 as their mecha labored to separate Beth Collinsworth from a snarl of torn wiring.

“Koebsch, there’s another aftershock building in the pit,” Frerotte announced. “You have fifteen minutes.”

“We’ll be done,” Metzler said.

“We won’t,” Koebsch told him. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”

“We’ll be done,” Metzler said.

Vonnie ached for him. She wanted to sit and hold him. She wanted to make him forget. But she stopped herself from breaking into the radio chatter. She thought some of Metzler’s anguish rose from the bond he’d shared with Pärnits as competitors for her love. Their rivalry made them brothers of a kind, which meant her voice would increase his torment. That was why he’d ignored her earlier.

“Ben, get inside,” Koebsch said. “The module is tethered to 05. We’re a long way from the pit in any case. We’ll come back in half an hour.”

“I’m not taking off my suit,” Metzler warned them.

“None of us will,” Ash said. “I promise. Let’s just get inside the air lock.”

“Johal, you need to carry the bubble into the ready room,” Frerotte said on her individual channel. “We don’t want Ben to see it.”

“Roger that,” Johal said. “I need two minutes.”

“Negative. They’re moving toward you now.”

“He won’t bend, Frerotte. The body’s frozen.”

“I, uh… I’m sorry. See what you can do.”

“Shukriya,” Johal said scornfully. Vonnie’s station translated the word as Thank you in Johal’s native Urdu. The mild rebuke was as close to acting impolitely as the matronly British national had ever been.

In the ready room, the air lock opened as Johal entered with their makeshift body bag. Outside, Metzler and Ash were approaching with Koebsch, who should have gone to the other lander. He obviously didn’t want to leave Ash alone with Metzler, but the three of them would barely fit, and Vonnie couldn’t let him see her display.

“If Koebsch comes inside, I need to blank my station,” Vonnie said to Frerotte. As the lander’s pilot, safety protocols barred her from using a privacy screen. “Can you keep him on the deck?” she asked.

“What would I say? We’re taking off.”

“He’ll be okay if he clips onto a tether. We don’t have room for three people in armor, and we need to signal Lam. Every aftershock could drive him farther away. We don’t know if the rock’s stable down there or not.”

“Koebsch will hear your broadcasts.”

“Distract him. Ask him to call the Americans.”

“About what?”

“Christ, Henri, I don’t know! You’re the spy. Come up with something.” Vonnie glanced at Frerotte with growing anxiety. He hadn’t been himself since she’d woken up. He’d been indecisive. He must feel as defeated and worn as Metzler and Ash, whereas she’d gained a fair amount of rest.

“I’ll fill Koebsch’s helmet with data requests,” he said finally. “Can you fly and call Lam at the same time?”

“Yes.”

Their sensors indicated Ash, Metzler, and Koebsch were on the lander’s steps. Frerotte said, “You two wait in the air lock. Sir, can you stand by on the deck? We’re crammed tight. I’d also like to call the Americans again as soon as you’re secure.”

“Roger that,” Koebsch said.

Ash led Metzler into the air lock. They braced their gloves and boots against the ceiling and floor, preventing any chance of banging together during airborne maneuvers.

Outside, Koebsch said, “I’m secure.”

“Lift off in four, three, two.” Vonnie eased their craft up from the ice, keeping note of Lander 05, which was a hundred meters to starboard.

“Von, it’s great to have you back,” Koebsch said.

“You hold onto that tether, sir.” She let her sincerity show in her voice. Koebsch was a lunkhead, but he meant well.

What would happen if they told him what they were doing with Lam? Would he insist on transmitting his kill codes? Or, if he saw the majority of his crew acting in concert, would he reevaluate their situation?

Frerotte gave Vonnie a thumbs-up before he raised his privacy screen and linked exclusively to Koebsch’s helmet, distracting him with updates.

Vonnie nodded, then turned to O’Neal. “Less than three minutes before the quake.”

“Corrective sequences ready,” he said.

Vonnie raised her hand to a subset of encrypted frequencies on her display and closed her eyes, feeling as if she was sifting through the blackness. “Lam?”

Nothing.

She upped the gain even though she was afraid doing so would attract Koebsch’s notice to her transmissions.

“Lam?” she said.

His response was immediate:

—Von, listen. Don’t close me down again, please.

Her eyes opened wide as her adrenals spurted, poisoning her body with an old, insidious terror. It was the same plea he’d repeated again and again during their first hours together.

They’d come full circle. All that remained of him was the fragmented personality she’d constructed after Bauman died with the real Choh Lam.

46.

“I won’t hurt you,” Vonnie said as she gestured for O’Neal to launch their corrective sequences. “You and I are friends. Remember?”

—Yes.

A low hiss of static crackled through his broadcast. Lam was far away, separated from her by unknown lengths of ice and rock. “Are you somewhere safe?” she said. “There’s going to be another quake in forty seconds.”

—How many?

“Thirty-five seconds. Are you safe? Rock should be more sturdy than ice. High ground is better than low.”

—I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.

Vonnie frowned at the non sequitur. “I can help you determine where you are, but you need to upload your transcripts,” she said.

—Negative. If I increase my bandwidth, your SCPs will get through.

Vonnie muted her station and looked at O’Neal. “He’s on to us,” she said. “Did we make any headway?”

“None of our sequences are complete.”

She reopened her microphone. “Those weren’t SCPs, I swear it. I can help you. We have your original mem files.”

Silence.

The ice rumbled. Outside, below, Vonnie watched as Module 03 trembled and slid. Their mecha clung to the surface. Inside the frozen sky, two of the beacons shut off, crushed by blocks of ice. Another reported a new flow of slush and water as a river broke open above it.

Frerotte leaned out of his privacy screen, murmuring to Vonnie and O’Neal. “Looks like that was it. There may be another quake in ten minutes. Koebsch wants to stay in the air, okay? We need more time to back-and-forth with NASA and the FNEE.”

“Okay.” Vonnie kept her eyes on her display, looking for another transmission from the ice. “Lam?” she said.

—I want to talk, but I can’t let you overwrite my core. Don’t shut me down again, please.

“No tricks. Tell me what’s going on.”

—I want control of Relay 021.

“Why would…?”

021 was among the buried mecha and devices. Currently it was acting as the primary link between Lam and her lander. If he owned it, he could use it like a firewall, screening their broadcasts for anything that might affect him. Or there was another explanation. It seemed less likely, but Vonnie knew Frerotte would warn her against the possibility. After co-opting the relay’s encryptions, Lam might initiate a counteroffensive against them if he was irrational.

She thought he was all right. Yes, he sounded intense. That had always been true. He was brilliant. But his brilliance was why she couldn’t allow him an opening.

What if he hated them for banishing him to the violent dark?

Vonnie tapped at her display, exempting Relay 021 from their grid. O’Neal shook his head but didn’t say anything, confirming her changes. They left 021 segregated and defenseless. Lam assumed control of it in seconds.

“What next?” she said. “Are you safe?”

—Yes. I’m shadowing and observing the sunfish.

“Where are you?” The mistrust she felt evaporated in a wave of anticipation. Lam had retained enough of himself to keep to their mission. Despite everything, he was lucid and committed. She wanted to ask a million questions. Which breed of sunfish had he found? Was it Tom’s colony? But his next words tempered her excitement.

—They know I’m tailing them. They’ve made two overtures, screeching into the tunnels. I want to respond. In fact, I may have done so already. I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.

“I can help you,” she said before she muted her station and turned to O’Neal. “He sounds like he’s inside a fin mountain. Can we triangulate his signals?”

“Not without 021. It’s the only relay close enough to hear him. Even then, the reception is bad. I’m trying to analyze what we have, but the best I can tell you is he’s west or southwest of us, ten kilometers max.”

Vonnie wanted to rely on Lam. Her emotions went beyond her desire to reach the sunfish. She wanted to work together like they’d done in the beginning. She wanted to make him part of their crew again. He could never replace Pärnits and Collinsworth, but he could honor them like he’d honored Bauman, Vonnie, and himself by carrying their first recordings of the sunfish up from the frozen sky.

Why hadn’t he answered?

She reopened her mike and said, “Lam? I have your original mem files. With better signal strength, I can help you restore yourself with corrective sequences.”

—I need to verify your intentions.

“Tell me how.”

—Give me control of Relay 027.

“Ah, shit,” O’Neal whispered. “Don’t do it. He’s playing you. He’s trying to replicate.”

She held her finger to her lips. “Then what?” she asked Lam. “You already have 021 as a firewall. Koebsch won’t let me keep giving away our mecha.”

—027 can crawl free of its position if it moves downward. I’ll bring it closer to me…

“…and that will increase our signal strength,” she said, finishing the thought out loud. “All right. I’m trusting you. Here’s 027.”

—Roger that.

At his response, her mouth curved with a smile. It was such a normal thing to say.

Below the ice, 027 wriggled a few centimeters, then fell into a cramped fissure, tumbling less than a meter before it became stuck again. Relays weren’t designed for brawn or speed. 027 would need hours to dig itself further into the pit, much less to reach an open space and pursue Lam. Could she predict his location from its movements?

“Tell me about the sunfish. Are you following Tom’s tribe?”

—Yes. There are twenty-one of them. Given their pace and their decisiveness, I believe they know where they’re going. We’ve been moving steadily since the assault.

“Where?”

—Unknown. We’re outside any of the areas mapped by the ESA or the FNEE.

“You have FNEE records?”

—Partial records, yes. I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.

His behavior was reminiscent of flesh-and-blood people with head trauma or Alzheimer’s disease. He used repetition to conceal his illness. The decay of his core files meant he couldn’t be sure where he’d traveled or what he’d done. He might not even be able to explain his interest in the sunfish.

As an AI, Lam had limited volition. He was an ESA probe designed to study Europa. It was his primary function. He would observe the sunfish even if he didn’t know why.

“Don’t get too close,” she said. “If they attack…”

—I believe it’s been three hours and seventeen minutes since they last set a trap for me. Twice they placed a foursome in hiding. Twice they prepared avalanches. I circumvented both ambushes but tripped one of the rock slides. If those were trials, three out of four may have been a passing grade.

“They were testing you.”

—Yes. After the fourth trap, they began to call into the tunnels. It sounded welcoming.

“Play it back for me. Our database is larger than anything in your mem files, and we have a full day of new analysis. You’re operating on old data.”

—Negative. Our connection will be voice-only until I verify your plans. You tried to kill me.

“Those mecha were Brazilian, not ESA. Lam, you saved my life. I’ve done everything I can to save yours.”

Silence.

“Where are the sunfish now? Can you still hear them?”

—The tribe is one point two kilometers above me. First they went laterally, then downward until they reached liquid water, not the ocean but a fresh water sea suspended in the rock. They swam two point seven kilometers, then reentered the mountain, moving laterally again. More recently, they’ve ascended each time they found routes leading up toward the surface.

“Lam, we’re predicting another aftershock in two minutes. After that, we’ll restart our recovery efforts. I can’t just sit here and talk.”

—I’ll contact you when 027 is ready.

“Listen to me. By tomorrow, I might not be in range. We’re relocating to safer ground.”

—You won’t leave, not with so many mecha entombed in the ice. The larger breed also had a tribe nearby. You’ll search for them. I can lead you to Tom’s group, and there must be fifty dead sunfish in the pit. You’ll stay to dig them out.

“Yes. But it might not be us.”

—Explain.

Vonnie had tapped the group feed. “I’m looking at our orders right now,” she said. “Berlin proposed combining our people with the FNEE. Brazil accepted to make amends. We’ll share their camp and their entrances into the ice.”

—Then I’ll contact you later.

“Lam, I don’t have permission to talk to you. Frerotte established contact on his own, and we’ve hidden this link from Koebsch. Hunting you was the rationale for sending FNEE gun platforms toward Tom’s colony. They wanted to be attacked.”

Silence.

“The bigger atrocity is they’ll never admit they’re wrong. They can’t. They spent too much money. The political shit storm will be even worse. They can’t say it was for nothing, so we’ll extract our mecha and the dead sunfish and then we’ll start the hunt all over again.”

Silence.

“We need to show Earth you’re okay,” she said. “More than that, we need you to talk to the sunfish. Break the language barrier. I know I’m asking a lot, but we’re close. We’re very close. All the pieces are there. We need the sunfish to communicate.”

—I’m experiencing skips in my short-term memory.

“Goddamn it,” she said, trying to rub the exhaustion from her eyes. “If you won’t let me help you, my guess is you have about five days before the FNEE manufacture new gun platforms and go back into the ice.”

47.

Four days passed.

Four long days.

As the ESA rebuilt their camp at the FNEE site, Vonnie, Ash, and Metzler took turns listening for Lam, juggling their other responsibilities so at least one of them was always monitoring the link they’d established. Frerotte couldn’t assist. Koebsch had transferred him from Lander 04 to 05 with Dawson and Gravino, partly to relieve crowding, mostly because Koebsch needed support with data/comm.

Losing Frerotte meant less sleep. It made the search for Lam more demanding. Occasionally they broadcast signals through the ice under the guise of coordinating the sensors and data/comm of the mecha trapped in the pit, but there was no reply.

Johal kept their secret, although she’d written off Lam as another loss. “We can’t wait for your AI anymore,” she said on the second day as she and Vonnie installed new airco screens in Lander 04.

“I think we have to,” Vonnie said.

“Why haven’t you heard from him? He malfunctioned and wandered off somewhere. He’s gone.”

O’Neal was more pessimistic. “Lam is a threat,” he muttered to Vonnie and Ash during a jeep ride between their lander and Module 01. “You watch. He co-opted those relays. That’s why we can’t find them. We need to advise Koebsch before Lam tries to piggyback into our grid.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ash said.

She’d reverted to the obstinate girl she’d been in her first days on Europa, showing little emotion and less patience. Everything she did now was with robotic precision, as if that could prevent more bloodshed.

“Lam doesn’t have the warfare pods or the spare mem to infiltrate our systems,” Ash said.

“We need to tell Koebsch.”

“Just wait.”

Theirs was a slow-motion conspiracy. Metzler said O’Neal had spoken to him, too. Privately, Vonnie and Ash reworked the corrective sequences they intended to send to Lam, reducing the file sizes and transmission times required.

Her romance with Metzler also felt like it was frozen in time. Except for a few quick, stolen kisses, they’d had no opportunity to enjoy their newfound romance. She remained interested. He was hardworking and loyal, sweet with her, furious with Koebsch and Dawson, and a loud, vocal influence on O’Neal, Gravino, and Johal. But they were too busy to do more than touch hands or nod or whisper.

Rarely, they ate and rested. Most of their hours were swamped with dire needs like hull repairs on 01; sensor replacements on 02 and 04; salvaging food, AI cards, and gear from 03; running checks on Vonnie’s transplants; starting the excavation to find their mecha buried in the pit; assembling new mecha; setting beacons and listening posts; and integrating their hardware with the FNEE grid.

The Brazilians labored on their own projects. Sergeant Tavares touched base with Vonnie and Ash constantly, loading codes into a shared database.

Both sides were constructing fresh squads of mecha. On the second night, the wreckage of Module 03 was reduced to scrap to meet their needs for copper, alumalloy, and plastics. Too easily, Pärnits and Collinsworth’s home became a memory.

On orders from Earth, Vonnie and Ash were forging GP mecha and more sunfish-shaped probes.

The FNEE were building gun platforms.

A new incursion into the ice was imminent… and yet the unified ESA/FNEE crews weren’t unified at all. That the ESA team had parked their flightcraft and modules among the Brazilian structures added more difficulties to their search for Lam. At close range, hiding an open channel was impossible. Instead, they buried their link among the standard torrent of electronic countermeasures and false data, which Koebsch told them to limit to avoid offending their hosts.

“I’ve had a complaint from Colonel Ribeiro about our signals disrupting his grid,” Koebsch announced on the third day. “I want everyone to remember we’re guests here. We’re partners. I know a lot of our AIs are designed to add chatter to everything they do, but nonessential data/comm should be shut off.”

“That’s hilarious,” Ash said later without a trace of a smile. “Koebsch is generating most of our chatter himself. He must have had fifty private talks with Berlin.”

Meanwhile, Vonnie argued with anyone who would listen, Koebsch, Dawson, their administrators on Earth, and the media. She tried to reach Ribeiro, too, but he denied her calls, and she wasn’t allowed to drive across camp and search for him among the FNEE modules.

Her message was simple: “The sunfish are intelligent. They used four-stage logic, real tactics, and engineering to defend themselves.”

On the second day, hundreds of news feeds played her sims and interviews. A famous chat show host featured the sunfish as his lead subject. Science programs strived to boost their own ratings by analyzing the violence.

The battle was too easy for people to interpret however they wanted. Were the sunfish smart? Stupid? Many shows also manipulated Vonnie’s position by editing her sims. Business analysts centered on her remark, “It’s been a waste,” which she meant as wasting the progress they’d made in communicating with Tom and Sue, not a waste of people, fuel, and mecha. Political commentators turned her words into anti- or pro-government bluster depending on their own views, either condemning or supporting any investment in the missions to Europa.

Amateur media was the loudest. Millions of people choked the nets with accusations, opinions, and more. Groups of every flavor established petitions and polls; medical; scientific; religious; animal rights. Even the education and entertainment lobbies weighed in.

They were only spinning their wheels. The number of citizens who suggested aiding the sunfish or leaving them alone was equal to the amount who wanted the ESA and FNEE crews to mount reprisals. Their motives varied. The infirm and the retired wanted miracles from new gene smithing. The politicians needed to cement the agreements between Brazil and the E.U., while their militaries and the civilian agencies refused to back off of any gains in space, fleet commitments, or valuable claims on extraterrestrial real estate.

Dawson basked in his role as a poster boy for the groups advocating their return to the ice. He wore gauze bandages on his head and a sling for his arm. The wounds made it easy for him to project steely determination. “This was a terrible set-back,” he said in his most popular sim, “but men have always risen above our tragedies.”

Vonnie could have socked him. Maybe it was fortunate he’d stayed in Lander 05. She hadn’t seen him in person since the blow-out, and she didn’t learn about his declaration until the recording was hours old.

Even his enemies played it repeatedly, using the sim to debate with him on Earth. A few people mocked his melodramatic style. More condemned his arrogance, but his air time increased with each rebuttal, and he looked like everyone’s grandfather — a fit, attractive, educated grandfather who’d faced death and regained his feet without shying from his beliefs.

Vonnie forced herself to speak of him respectfully. She disagreed with him at every chance, yet she always gave Dawson his due when urged to respond to his statements.

She’d become a hero again herself, albeit one who played to a different demographic than Dawson’s supporters. For the first time, she felt like Europa wasn’t so far from home. The systemwide debate brought Earth to her. Even with assistance from Koebsch and Ash, she struggled to prioritize tens of thousands of personal calls and requests.

Then it stopped.

On the fourth day, Koebsch moved his seat of operations from Lander 05 back into Module 01, which housed their central AIs and data/comm. He’d been able to access those systems from Lander 05, but his job was better done from the command module.

He rescinded most of his crew’s data/comm privileges, beginning with Vonnie. She was the sole crew member at her station. Except for O’Neal, who slept in 04’s living quarters, her friends were outside in pressure suits and armor, conducting tests on their new listening posts. It was a superb time for Koebsch to restrict access. He called Vonnie first and almost caught her listening to the channel they’d dedicated to Lam.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been told to route all media responses through headquarters. We can’t afford this kind of distraction.”

“Distraction!?” she said. “You mean the truth.”

“It’s not our job to set policy.”

“Koebsch, what’s happened to you? You’re not like Dawson. I haven’t forgotten what you told me. We volunteered to come here because we’ve dreamed about finding aliens since we were kids.”

“I wish things were different. What else do you want me to say?”

“Help me! It’s not too late to stop the FNEE from sending down another war party.”

“That’s not our decision.”

“Who should I talk to? The director?”

“No one wants to talk. They want to move forward. They want to honor Pärnits and Collinsworth.”

“Pärnits would never say we needed revenge!”

“Von, public support for developing our presence on Europa and increasing gene corp access is polling near sixty percent in most of our member nations.”

“’Increasing gene corps access.’ What a bucket of shit. How do you think it would poll if they asked people if we should shoot more sunfish?”

“The prime minister is personally involved. So are leaders of the senate and every boss you have in the ESA. This is larger than you think. It’s not only Berlin. There’s support in Washington and Tokyo. Sydney. Jerusalem. Rome.”

“The pope should want to save their souls.”

Koebsch managed to shrug, parroting a line she’d heard repeated among the most devout of the religious feeds. “Animals don’t have souls,” he said.

He didn’t mean it, but Vonnie sneered again. “Three hundred years ago, that’s what a lot of churches said about Africans and Native Americans. They said it because it was good business, taking slaves and taking land. They said it because it made them feel holier than any subhuman mongrel. Is that the kind of small-minded dogma we want to bring with us to the stars?”

“Christianity and Islam have a lot of clout on Earth.”

“Koebsch, I know there are religious leaders calling for peace. I’ve talked to them.”

He reached to shut off their connection. “I don’t have time to fight with you. There are two hundred requests on my station that won’t wait—”

“What about your soul?” she asked. “Are you going to be able to live with yourself?”

When he met her gaze, his eyes were livid. “Why do you think you’ve had such a free hand with the media until now?” he said. “I stepped over the line for you. I sent the best media contacts to your station, and I made sure they received every sim you’ve put together. I’ve held off Berlin as long as I could. I probably would have lost my job by now except there isn’t anyone else here. They can’t fire me.”

“I…” She spread her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“You have to realize, Beijing hasn’t suspended their operations. Our government is concerned China’s ahead of us in developing the genetic applications Dawson’s talked about. Unless the sunfish change their behavior, until they can prove they’re not just wild predators, we’ll go ahead as planned.”

Vonnie kept her mouth shut, studying Koebsch’s face and his blazing eyes. He was being recorded, of course. As their administrator, he’d never been allowed to speak from his heart, not personally, not professionally.

“Thank you,” she said, curious if he’d reveal more.

He nodded. “Let’s get back to work. We both have a lot to do.” Then he signed off.

Was he encouraging her to stop the FNEE? If so, one of her crewmates must have told him about Lam… or he’d detected their signals and kept quiet.

’We’ve dreamed about finding aliens since we were kids,’ she thought, trying to forgive him.

They needed conclusive evidence that the sunfish were sentient. With it, Koebsch could make a stand. The political, business, and religious leaders on Earth might start to rearrange their positions, however slightly.

The balance of power was close. If a few senators changed their views, if more of the top pundits spoke differently, the prime minister might instruct the ESA crew to stand down. They could withhold their mecha. That should be enough to delay the FNEE, who expected ESA support. Emergency negotiations could begin between the new partners on Earth, followed by discussions in the Allied Nations… but what would be unshakeable proof? Recent carvings? A city?

Vonnie didn’t believe they would ever find a tidy metropolis with roads, stores, and a ruling class. Maybe the sunfish were too alien. Many people seemed incapable of viewing them as anything except monsters.

Some of the most strident voices on the net were demagogues who warned that the sunfish might overrun the human camps, raping and disemboweling everyone. The worst of these delusional attention-seekers shouted that the sunfish would invade Earth. They were either unwilling or unable to conceive of the distance between their worlds or Earth’s crushing gravity.

Nice guys finish last because bad people cheat and steal, Vonnie thought. What does that make me?

Lam, the real Lam, had no problem breaking the rules to protect Europa. I’ve been doing the same, but now it comes down to his ghost.

I need his help. I need it soon.

Her display held ten in-progress reports for the mecha they were building. Sweeping aside these datastreams, Vonnie examined the limitations Koebsch had established on her ability to receive and transmit.

Traffic with Earth was prohibited. Internal signals were restricted, too, but Lam’s frequency remained active among her mecha links.

“Okay,” she said to herself.

For the next few minutes, she ignored her assigned duties to craft a new, less understated, more basic slavecast.

Like Johal had said, they couldn’t be sure where Lam had gone. Vonnie intended to amplify her slavecast through their mecha in the pit. Koebsch would notice the activity, but she thought he’d look the other way.

Did I misread him? she worried. If I’m wrong, he’ll kick me off the team. I’ll serve meals and fix suits for a year while they hunt sunfish…

She broadcast her signals into the ice.

48.

The machines beneath the surface were a helix of active sensors and data/comm. Their formation had changed little in four days. The mecha above the ice regularly altered their positions, burrowing into the pit — but below, the few machines with any range of motion tended to be imprisoned in small holes or crevices. One mecha had rescued a listening post and a rover, bringing them into the shaft it was patiently digging upward. Two beacons had also united in another gap.

Vonnie watched intently as all of them responded to her commands. There was a single outsider among their grid.

Trapped near the bottom of the pit was Relay 021, one of the two transmitters she’d surrendered to Lam. Since then, 021 had remained inactive. It was visible on radar and X-ray, but as far as they could tell, it had been passively monitoring their datastreams. Lam must have reprogrammed it to wait for his authorization, which never came.

The other relay she’d surrendered, 027, crept off days ago. It had chipped its way through a sheet of ice, located a chasm, and disappeared after its master.

Could she find him by connecting the dots?

All mecha were designed to resist cyber assaults, but 021 wasn’t a FNEE or PSSC device. They’d built it themselves. Vonnie found a toehold by causing 021 to ping back when the other machines peppered it with false nav alerts. Collision avoidance systems were autonomous in lesser mecha. Lam had scrambled 021’s encryptions, writing his own command codes, but he hadn’t been able to subvert its base components.

The toehold became a foothold. Vonnie’s slavecast invaded 021. Moments later, it belonged to her again.

In unison, 021 and the other mecha turned away from the pit. Their individual sensors became a larger array. First they oriented themselves west, the heading in which Tom’s colony had evacuated. There was no response, so Vonnie angled them downward. The silence continued. She rotated them to the southwest at the same steep angle.

Contact. Her false nav alerts provoked another response. The signal was faint but recognizable.

It wasn’t Lam. It was 027. Vonnie felt like she was running through the dark on a maze of stepping stones. If Lam realized she was stalking him, he might move or shut himself down — she might miss him — but she needed to leap again.

“Priority One CEW lists, authorization Alexis Six,” she said. The electronic warfare codes allowed her to initiate maximum strength transmissions among their mecha in the pit. If necessary, they would draw on non-vital power sources such as their engines and weapons systems, shutting down everything except their sensor arrays.

Simultaneously, Vonnie hijacked four rovers on the surface. She sent them racing toward 027’s position beneath the ice as they synchronized with the other mecha, adding to the transmission of her slavecast.

Her actions didn’t go unnoticed.

Metzler, Ash, Johal, and Dawson appeared on her display. Her three friends wore pressure suits or armor, so they were in close-up, whereas Dawson stood at a camera inside Lander 05.

“Von!” Ash said. She sounded scared.

“What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing?” Dawson interrupted. “Administrator Koebsch, this is William Dawson in 05. Some sort of rogue operation is underway at—”

“Oh, shut up, Dawson,” Metzler said. “Von, what did you see? Are there sunfish?”

“She found two more of our relays in the ice,” Johal said, her gaze skimming back and forth across her visor. “They’re both damaged. One is close by. The other looks like it was taken six point four kilometers by the flood.”

Vonnie nodded, cherishing the warmth she felt. Her friends were trying to cover for her, but the lie wouldn’t hold up. Ash was right to be scared. Their careers were on the line. Lifetimes of education and service would boil down to whether or not Vonnie could reach Lam, fix him, and lead him to evidence that no one else had found. It was a long, shaky bridge to cross.

“Those are CEW codes,” Dawson said. “Why would you launch cyber attacks on our own mecha?”

“You’re a gene smith,” Ash said. “You don’t know how this works. 027 is nearly out of range. She’s trying to reestablish control before it—”

“You’re sabotaging our own grid!” Dawson said. “Why? To keep us from finding your precious fish? I suppose you’re trying to drive a wedge between us and the FNEE.”

“Leave her alone,” Metzler said.

She reached Lam. He appeared as a blip labeled Unidentified Mecha, which told her more than a non-engineer might understand.

“What is that?” Dawson said.

Her slavecast had elicited the barest response. Lam involuntarily answered with a single radar pulse, enough for Relay 027 to place his general vicinity, but no more. The ESA grid regarded him as a foreign construct.

He was fighting her — hiding from her — resisting her slavecast in a turbulent battle with himself.

I need to pin him down, she thought. But how?

027 was six kilometers west of the pit. Lam had traveled in the same direction, angling down from the surface, but he could be five kilometers beyond 027 or as much as eight.

He was inside a field of crumbling rock islands that stretched away from a mountaintop. Based on previous rover and satellite readings, they believed the mountain was dormant. Any volcanic activity had petered out decades ago. The complication now was that the rock would shield him. It interfered with her slavecast. Vonnie hoped to encircle Lam from above, but even accelerating at breakneck speeds, the rovers wouldn’t close on him for nine minutes.

“Administrator Koebsch!” Dawson said. “Administrator!”

“Here,” Koebsch said, joining the group feed.

“Vonderach is causing noise and cave-ins at the pit. She’s trying to scare off any sunfish in the area.”

“I need a minute, Dawson. I’m in discussions with Colonel Ribeiro. Von, you’d better have a good explanation for this,” Koebsch said. Then he muted his link with them, although his window scrolled with ESA telemetry, which he was delivering to Ribeiro as evidence that none of their abrupt signals were aimed at the FNEE.

He’s covering for me, too, Vonnie thought as the rovers sped over the ice. Their wheels jarred and bounced.

“You won’t get away with this,” Dawson said. “You—”

“What can we do?” Ash said. Outside in her suit, she’d started to run, hustling toward Lander 04.

“Got it!” Metzler said. Unlike Ash, he stood motionless in his armor, his visor leaping with data. He pulled three files and sent them to Vonnie’s station. “These are our best charts of the area, radar, tidal, and thermal analysis,” he said.

“Thank you.” Vonnie forwarded the sims to her rovers, rerouting them into a spread formation. Since she wasn’t sure of her target, several weak signals were better than one focused source. It was critical to keep Lam off-balance even with the most trivial scratch or nudge at his defenses. If she could transmit through clean ice beneath the surface, slanting her broadcasts past the thickest rocks and gravel fields…

…if Lam hadn’t shut himself down…

Where are you? she thought, acutely aware of each ticking second. Too much time had passed. There should have been another response.

“I’m turning the rovers ten degrees south,” she said.

“Make it twelve.” Metzler’s voice was low and taut as he highlighted the ice on the rovers’ left flank. “It’ll be tough hunting down there. If Lam gets beneath enough rock, he can wall himself off from us.”

“Ben!” Ash said. She’d entered the lander’s air lock, but stopped to yell at Metzler. He’d been popping stims again, trying to work eighteen-hour days.

The drugs made him careless.

“This mecha you’re pursuing contains the mem files of Choh Lam?” Dawson asked, snapping at the words like a snake. On their group feed, the crafty old man glanced between Metzler and Ash. “How did you know it’s him? Is he inside Probe 114?”

“We think so,” Vonnie said.

“You didn’t activate our standard countermeasures.”

“Lam isn’t near the pit, much less our new base. We’re trying to reach him, not the other way around. We need all the mecha we can get.”

“This is just another recovery effort,” Ash said.

“No,” Dawson said. “I don’t believe you.”

Vonnie ignored him. Behind her, Ash stepped into the ready room, heavy in her armored suit. Mecha assists clanked on her shoulders and hips, securing her weight before she unsealed her collar assembly.

“I have something,” Vonnie called over her shoulder.

Three of the rovers had focused on one peculiar blip among the rubble in the ice. It looked like metal.

Dawson jabbed his fingers at his display. “This is Doctor William Dawson,” he said. “I’m making a full record of actions taken by Engineer Vonderach and an indeterminate number of the crew including Sierzenga and Metzler.”

Vonnie cut her group feed. It had been four minutes since she’d initiated her slavecasts. That meant she had about seven minutes before Earth saw her datastreams, eleven more before new orders could travel back to Europa. Koebsch was the immediate hurdle. How long would he look the other way? Not long.

A new radar pulse swept up from the ice.

“Lam, it’s me,” Vonnie said, adding her voice to the barrage from her mecha. “If you’re hearing this—”

Another pulse.

The rovers changed course, veering toward a single point like bloodhounds or piranha.

“Don’t fight me,” Vonnie said. “Please.”

The rovers’ telemetry jumped with an empty datastream. There were no more erratic radar pulses. Lam hit them with a squeal of white noise. If the blaring static was intended as a defense, it was useless. The rovers continued to triangulate his position as he crawled away, twitching and jerking through a short five meters. Maybe it was all he could manage.

Vonnie suffered with Lam, praying for him as she blasted him with patches and rewrites — not demolishing his personality but adding to it — reforming it — kneading him like a hand squeezing a hundred irregular hunks of dough into a single ball.

Beneath the ice, he writhed, distorting their transmissions with more white noise. Then there were two words:

—Von. Stop.

“I won’t. These are your own sequences. It’s who you are.”

—Don’t make me Lam again. Not any more than I am now.

Ash charged past Vonnie’s chair and threw herself into the next station, activating her display. “Don’t listen to him,” Ash said. “It’s nonsense. He’s fighting the only way he can.”

—You’ll ruin everything.

Vonnie stared at her reports. “What are you talking about?” she said. He was almost whole again. But when the white noise dropped away, it transformed into a dense, overlapping feed of sonar calls.

—I’m inside a sunfish colony. Two days ago, they adopted me as a member of the tribe.

“They think you’re a real sunfish.”

—Yes. Yes.

“Oh shit. And we’re changing him,” Vonnie said to Ash. “Is there any way we can recreate his mental state before our transmissions?”

As Lam grew more coherent, improving from a deranged AI to a Level II intelligence, her display came alive with new datastreams. He added holo imagery modified from radar signals. He added infrared and X-ray.

He was surrounded by sunfish. Dozens of them clung to a rock slope below and beside him. They filled a narrow crevice where the lava had been worn smooth by years of use. Radar showed an opening in its highest corner. Otherwise the crevice appeared to be a dead-end.

Why would the sunfish constantly visit this place? The rock was dead and cold. There were no bacterial mats, no bugs, no fungus.

The pack clustered in a warm mass. They rubbed at each other and crooned and sang. Lam had been one of them, voicing the same contented harmonies. They’d accepted him as a natural part of their mild, sluggish dance. But when his mind was altered, so was his body.

As he resisted Vonnie’s slavecasts, his spasmodic movements had alarmed the nearest sunfish. Then a subtle difference fell over him as her corrective sequences took hold.

Five individuals shrank back from him, their voices sharpening in pitch. Familiar tones of surprise and challenge rose among the tribe. Their song ended. The group turned on Lam with bared, open beaks.

—Help me.

Their screeching grew louder. It became a war cry.

Top Clan Eight-Six Map

49.

“Ash, I need an open link to our mainframes!” Vonnie said.

“Then you’d better call Koebsch,” Ash said. “He’s blocked everyone from—”

On their displays, a female sunfish slapped at Lam with two arms. Although he weighed more due to his alumalloy frame and internal sensors, she was bulkier. Females had more size than males in both breeds of sunfish. Her slaps were like roundhouse punches to his ears as the pack warbled and shrieked.

Lam screamed, repeating their harmonies. That seemed to be the wrong answer. The female sunfish wrapped an arm tip around one of his arms. She used herself like an anchor while three more females encircled him.

He screamed again, frantically signing with his free arms.

“Please.” Vonnie clutched Ash’s wrist, unconsciously mimicking how the sunfish had snared Lam.

Ash flinched and pulled away. “I can’t link him to our central AIs, not without checking him first,” she said.

“If they kill him, our next step is helping the FNEE kill them. This is everything we’ve worked for.”

Vonnie saw one solution. They couldn’t restore Lam to the irrational state in which he’d somehow befriended the sunfish, but they could transform him into a hyper-fast Level I intelligence, combining their master databases with everything he’d learned during the past few days. He also needed more processing power. Given remote access to their central AIs, Lam should be capable of reproducing the same behavior that had let him fool the sunfish.

“Okay.” Ash’s tone was grim. She unlocked a data packet on her station — a packet she must have designed as soon as Koebsch restricted access across camp. “I can get in,” she said. “I need five seconds.”

What if we’re already too late? Vonnie thought.

Each of the four females took one of Lam’s arms, immobilizing him. Other females gathered nearby. He stopped struggling. They probed his top and underside, roughly sniffing and tasting his body.

“Go,” Ash said, cutting her hand sideways toward Vonnie’s station. The three-stage chain she’d arranged turned green — Lam — rovers — Module 01. Their central AIs joined with him, multiplying his intelligence by a factor of ten.

The transition wasn’t flawless. Lam jerked again as if fighting the sunfish, who yanked at him, splitting his skin twice. Synthetic blood dribbled from his lacerations.

Two females covered his wounds with their arms, drinking the fluid. One of them shuddered, knotting her body, increasing the torque on Lam’s arm and causing a sudden tug-of-war between herself and the others.

The sunfish screamed.

His blood isn’t right, Vonnie thought. They can taste the preservatives we used or the hormones are wrong or the oxygen content. It’s over. Nothing we’ve done was good enough to solve the differences between our race and theirs…

“Look,” Ash said.

Lam bent his torn arms, offering his injuries to the females. It wasn’t an act of submission. It was a purposeful, confident gesture. At the same time, he amended his cries. He stopped echoing the harsh melodies of the pack. He introduced a new song, slower and reassuring.

One of the females let go of him, then another. They coupled their pedicellaria with his, exchanging complex ripples.

When he spoke in English on the radio, his voice was different. It held the superhuman calm and self-possession of a Level I intelligence, the same self-possession Ash wanted to emulate. He said:

—They’re reaccepting me.

“Christ, I thought you were a dead man,” Vonnie said. Then she laughed awkwardly. Man, machine, she thought.

The females released him. Other sunfish squirmed closer to scent or taste his wounds as the pack settled down again. Most of them returned to their sluggish mingling.

What had Lam done to convince them? To her, it had looked like a few notes of song and gyrations. But for the sunfish, attitude was everything. When he acted abnormally, they regarded him as a contagion and a threat. If his conduct was appropriate, they trusted him again.

“Tell me what’s happening,” Vonnie said.

—They’re resting. Teaching. The females lead each other and the immature males through growth and memorization lessons.

“Growth lessons?”

—Pheromone stimulation is a key, unifying part of their lives. There are intricate query-and-response patterns, some voluntary, most involuntary. Despite my size, they believe I’m a juvenile or a neuter since I’m incapable of emitting healthy biochem.

“Can you talk to us without putting yourself in jeopardy?”

—Yes. I have enough capacity now that I can participate in the tribe’s ritual while I organize and repair my files. My recordings from the past four days are badly fragmented, but you’ll want to see everything.

“Thank you, Lam,” Ash said.

—I’m in your debt, Ash. I also appreciate your help, Administrator Koebsch.

“What?” Vonnie whirled to look behind her, but Koebsch hadn’t entered Lander 04. He was still in Module 01, where he’d covertly monitored their link until Lam detected his presence.

A red frame appeared on their displays, indicating an encrypted frequency. The frame opened to show Koebsch, whose square face was both stern and amused. “I told you weeks ago,” he said. “Nothing happens on our grid without my knowing it.”

“Sir, I…” Ash said.

Koebsch stopped her with a shake of his head. Then he turned to Vonnie. “You’ve been insubordinate since the beginning,” he said. “You’re reckless. You’re dangerous. You incited mutiny among your crewmates.”

Vonnie didn’t deny it. Koebsch could see Lam’s sims. He would either be intrigued or he wouldn’t.

He shrugged and said, “You’re also lucky as hell.”

She felt her eyes lighten with relief. “Is that why you didn’t stop us?”

“You’re not out of the woods yet. By now, our datastreams reached Earth. They’ll formulate an emergency response. Whatever their instructions, I’ll forward Lam’s newest files to them first. That might be worth another twenty minutes while our transmissions go back and forth, but I’m not optimistic. Dawson sent formal complaints to everyone he knows. He also notified Ribeiro, who’s communicating with his own superiors. Those generals will urge our government to get our crew under control.”

“They can’t take everyone off the mission,” Vonnie said. “If we stick together…”

“I’ll suspend you myself if they let me keep my job,” Koebsch said. “Think about it. Do you want Dawson in charge? At least I can minimize our involvement with Ribeiro. I can protect Metzler and Frerotte. Obviously they’re involved. I don’t want to remove you or Ash, but if you can’t come up with something convincing, they’ll insist on punishing you. Lam may be terminated. Then they’ll use his coordinates to go after the sunfish.”

“Shit.”

“Good luck.” Koebsch shut off his connection.

“Oh shit.” Vonnie held her fist out to Ash, who smacked their knuckles together, a wordless pact to see things through.

She would miss her career if she was sent home in disgrace, but if their mecha fought another battle with the sunfish, neither the sunfish nor humankind would recover mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. One domino followed the next. If men and sunfish caused more harm to each other, they’d never reverse course. The fighting would intensify.

The real sin was that some people wanted to continue the violence. Kill codes could take care of Lam. Lock-outs would prevent Vonnie and Ash from accessing any data/comm.

If they silence us, they win, she thought. We might have twenty minutes to save this world.

50.

“Lam, were you listening?” she said.

—Yes.

“We need your files whether they’re clean or not. Transmit now and tell us everything you can.”

—Yes.

On her display, Lam nestled with two females and another male, forming a quartet which swiftly doubled to eight, then broke again into two foursomes with different partners.

The sunfish roamed, singing and stroking. Vonnie was fascinated by the choreography, but she knew it wouldn’t persuade anyone who’d decided the sunfish were animals. At a glance, the slithering pile looked like an orgy. They looked like sex-crazed worms.

Her attention swung to Lam’s mem files as data stuttered across her display in a senseless jumble.

“Whoa,” Ash said. “What’s this?”

—During my weeks in the FNEE grid and the last four days pursuing the sunfish, then joining them, I recorded thousands of hours of data with all sensors combined. Unfortunately, I lacked sufficient memory. In my limited state, I deleted or overwrote most of my records.

“So we’re screwed,” Ash said.

His files were fragmented, duplicated, and intermixed. Audio tracks were separated from visual telemetry. Data analysis wasn’t paired with the data analyzed. Worse, most of his time stamps had suffered the same corruption. A logical program would have deleted its oldest files to make room for its newest, but he hadn’t been acting coherently.

It was useless for two people to sort through tens of thousands of randomized clips. Vonnie tried anyway. First she copied everything and passed the enormous mess to another AI for independent analysis. Then she and Ash both waded into the imagery, opening one clip after another.

The first was seven seconds long. The next lasted three, then five, then one. None showed more than ice or rock or sunfish leaping through open catacombs. There was nothing she could use.

Vonnie took a deep breath and centered herself, checking the progress of the central AI. It estimated it needed eight minutes to complete the task of organizing Lam’s files, so she asked him the same question. “How long before you can categorize these clips by subject or background?”

—I’ll have a preliminary index in ninety seconds, full reconstruction in six minutes.

“That might barely save us,” she said, looking at her clock. “Walk me through everything you recall. Are there sunfish inside the FNEE grid?”

—Unknown. My earliest records are the most fragmented.

“Tell me what you can about Tom’s group.”

—The survivors belong to Top Clan Two-Four, Pods Four, Eight, Two-Four, Two-Eight, and Six-Six. Three days ago, I delivered myself to them. ’Deliver’ is an approximation of their body shape for the process of an outsider joining a tribe. Deliver. Provide. It’s an act of demonstrating skill and health while swearing total fealty and submission.

“Show us,” she said. The first inklings of a plan were forming in her mind.

On her display, Lam created an image of a sunfish flattened against a rock surface, all arms out, muscles loose, defenseless. This wasn’t a file of his actual encounter. It was a simulation. He added a transcript as the sunfish shifted and flexed: I am alone but capable / Nameless but strong / I am lost / I deliver myself to your clan.

“How did you know what to do?”

—Trial and error. They allowed me to approach, chased me when I failed, then allowed me to approach again. I’m certain each tribe develops a unique vocabulary, but because their languages are mostly shape-based, like interpretive dance, outsiders should be able to improvise and adapt. The ability to conform was a fundamental part of the test.

“Then sunfish from different regions can talk to each other even if they’ve never met.”

—Yes. Two days ago, we proposed a treaty with this colony, which is Top Clan Eight-Six. ’Treaty’ is very different from ’Deliver,’ a joining of equals or near equals rather than the act of a refugee merging with a tribe. Negotiations were brisk. Tom’s group was communicating with the new colony at a rudimentary level in minutes. Two days later, they’re wholly fluent.

“How did Tom’s group know where to find them?”

—Unknown. The maps I retained of our journey are insufficient. The two tribes may have had previous encounters or the scouts of Top Clan Two-Four found the spoor of Top Clan Eight-Six in the past."

“But they meet outsiders all the time.”

—Yes. Tom’s group was understandably wary of me after confronting our other probes, yet they allowed opportunity after opportunity for me to prove myself. Presumably they thought I was an outcast or a lone survivor, and I believe solitude is an extremely stressful state for any sunfish. They were patient in rehabilitating me.

“They took care of you.”

—They treated me like I was schizophrenic, but they accepted me anyway. After the blow-out, they needed all the assistance they could get. Otherwise they might have killed me.

“Compassion, foresight, organization,” Vonnie said. “We already have enough to make a substantial case to Earth.”

—Von, the sunfish accepted me because Dawson is correct.

His words felt like a knife in the stomach. Unconsciously, she dropped her hand to her mid-riff, protecting herself. “I don’t understand,” she said. She didn’t want to understand, but Lam continued in his cool, inflectionless voice:

—Many of the sunfish have regressed. Unfavorable mutations took root among their species many, many generations ago. At least sixty percent of their population consists of individuals who are mentally deficient or suffer from internal or external deformities.

“That’s why they didn’t reject you for having the wrong smell and fake body parts, isn’t it?” Ash said.

They’d built their probes with gills, lungs, and a genital slit, but while the probe could convincingly inhale and exhale, it could not generate pheromones, sperm, or more than its minimal reserves of synthetic blood and saliva.

“They think you have birth defects,” Ash said.

—Yes. Many of them are handicapped, insane, or infertile. Others are forcibly spayed or neutered.

“Who makes those decisions?” Vonnie said. “It sounds horrible to us, but if they’re evaluating their offspring to maintain or improve their species’ viability, isn’t that more proof they’re sentient?”

—Yes and no. Much of it is instinctive. From what I’ve seen, a tribe operates as a group consciousness led by consensus, not a single matriarch. No individual rules absolute. There is always give-and-take based on the composition of the tribe and their need for hunters, scouts, and mating pairs, however crippled.

“Oh God,” Vonnie said.

—Metzler is correct, too. There’s a genetic imperative to adopt newcomers, because inbreeding furthers the mutations. Sickness increases sickness. Mental impairment, deafness, malformed cartilage, and stunted arms run rampant among the sunfish.

Sudden fury clashed with her grief. “If that’s true, why haven’t we seen any of these monsters?”

—Because the tribes practice murder and infanticide on their undesirables, then freeze the corpses until needed. Von, they eat them.

51.

A window blinked on Vonnie’s display. It was Koebsch. His sober gaze shifted from her face to Lam’s datastreams, where the sunfish flexed in their self-absorbed dance.

“I have orders from Berlin,” he said. “They want me to lock down all systems and take you and Ash into custody until further notice. I’ll protest, but it will have more weight if I can show them something — anything — like a conversation between Lam and the sunfish.”

“We don’t have it, sir,” Ash said. “Not yet.”

“There must be something.”

“No,” Vonnie said, and Koebsch stared at her, clearly puzzled by her dispassionate tone.

“They won’t transmit kill codes from Earth,” he said. “Too many things can go wrong. But they want me to shut you down. I’m running out of excuses.”

“Give us as much time as you can, sir,” Ash said before he cut his link.

Vonnie sighed, fending off a sense of resignation. How could she have been so wrong? Lam, the real Lam, had seen the fatal truth when they first discovered the carvings at the top of the ice. We’re too late, he’d said.

Thousands of years had passed since the rise and fall of the sunfish empire. The tragedy wasn’t that huge numbers of them had died. It was that by now, today, their potential had faded.

Vonnie remembered what Dawson had said about the increasing demands on the sunfish. They’d adapted to both water and atmosphere environments, consciously breathing through their gills or their lungs, but the same versatility that aided their survival had also doomed their intelligence. Dawson said they could only use one hemisphere of their brains at a time. One half rested, moderating some involuntary functions like heartbeat and digestion, while the other controlled their movements, their breathing, and their cognitive abilities, however limited those thoughts had become. Too much of their neural tissue was dedicated to scent, taste, sonar, and spatial awareness.

Vonnie’s eyes were downcast as she whispered, “So it’s over. They’re just animals.”

—Yes.

She pressed her hand tighter against her belly, feeling hollow. More than anything, she felt like she’d failed Pärnits and Collinsworth. They’d died for nothing.

Lam said:

—It would be inaccurate to classify a majority of the sunfish population as any more self-aware than wolves or cats. Some are even less intelligent. But not all.

Vonnie glanced up.

—I’ve reconstructed my files. Look at this.

He opened a sim of four females scratching at a sheet of ice. They held rock chunks and groped at each other’s work with their pedicellaria, screeching and clumping together. Were they trying to scrape through the ice to something inside?

Lam enlarged several images, zooming on their tools. Some weren’t made of rock. Hidden in the muscular coils of the females’ arms were crudely honed blades of metal — the light, durable alumalloy from Probes 112 and 113. One female also held a nub of ceramic armor from an ESA spy.

“Tom’s group brought the wreckage with them,” Vonnie said with new hope.

—They considered it more valuable than anything else. In fact, they carried very little food, choosing to keep the metal, plastic, and ceramics they’d scavenged. They made gifts of the best pieces to the colony.

“That won’t convince anyone,” Ash said. “Monkeys and birds like shiny junk.”

—No. Look. They’re writing.

He replayed his sim of the four females etching at the ice. They’d drawn curls and lines like bent arms, not complete sun shapes, merely arms. It was a written language unlike the carvings, and Vonnie shouted, “Lam, you beautiful son of a bitch! Where did this come from!?”

—Yesterday. It was recorded inside the colony.

Ash grinned as Vonnie banged on her station. “Koebsch!” she said. “Koebsch! I’m sending you a new file!”

—There’s more.

She was jubilant. “We’re sending you more!” she said, but Koebsch didn’t reply, preoccupied with his messages from Earth.

—I have EEG scans showing some of the sunfish using both hemispheres of their brains simultaneously. The most gifted are exclusively female, although there are also a few males capable of waking both hemispheres. They do this in regular councils of the strongest individuals of both sexes.

He added ten new sims to Vonnie’s display. The first two showed the same quartet of females sketching on fresh surfaces of ice. The other sims were a conglomeration of ’sound bullet’ medical imaging, EEG, and infrared scans of four- and eight-member groups surrounded by dozens of normal sunfish.

What differentiated the few from the many was the bioelectric force in their brains, which spread through both hemispheres, unlike the unihemispheric activity among the majority of the tribe.

“Tom is one of them,” Vonnie said.

—In retrospect, that’s probably why he survived the amputation of his arm. He’s been able to outthink the savages and continually prove his worth.

“Why would the smart ones let you listen while they were developing their strategies?” Ash said.

—The sunfish do everything in the open. Sex. Defecation. Sleep. Murder. Mostly I believe that’s due to their group nature, but they can write or hold council in front of their weakest members because those individuals are deaf or insane. Any sunfish incapable of participating in higher logic may as well not be listening.

Vonnie highlighted a quartet of single-brained sunfish in one sim. “This is interesting,” she said. “These four are trying to form their own council. They’re joined in the same way, but their arm movements aren’t as rapid, and they’re emitting less than thirty percent as many sonar calls.”

—If you study their electroencephalographic activity, those are four of the most intelligent single-brained members of the tribe. They’re mimicking the others’ behavior even if they’re unable to comprehend why.

“That’s awful,” Ash said. “It’s pathetic.”

Vonnie shook her head. “They’re trying their best. They want to live like any of us.”

Ash made a harsh, mocking sound. “Von, I want to prove they’re intelligent, too. That might keep us out of jail. But you’re never going to make me feel warm and fuzzy for these disgusting little freaks.”

“Fine.” Vonnie spoke to Lam instead. “You think the smart ones influence the tribe.”

—As much as possible, yes. I’m still trying to assess how thoroughly they’re undermined by the majority.

“Let’s identify them. I want a file. Break down their movements and sonar calls, too. If we’re going to communicate with anyone, it’s them.”

—Roger that. Shall I assign numbers or names?

“The smart ones get names. We can use numbers for the rest until we have more time.”

Lam opened a new file with images of three female sunfish, identifying them by EEG scans of their brain activity. He also used detailed radar exams of their bodies, their scars, and any tendencies they favored in their individual shapes and postures.

—These are Annette, Brigit, and Charlotte. Annette is approximately fifteen Earth years. She’s one of the ranking females, although she’s physically debilitated due to age. Brigit and Charlotte are younger. I…

Koebsch reappeared on Vonnie’s display, hurrying through Lam’s datastreams. He began to smile. “What are the sunfish writing?” he said.

—Unknown. The samples are too small. It appears to be a mode of shorthand derived from the full body carvings. They may be counting their supplies or the new, combined size of the tribe.

“Some of them are intelligent after all.”

—Using both hemispheres, they may be smarter than the average human being.

Koebsch paused at that. For an instant, his eyes were troubled. He said, “I’m forwarding your data to Berlin. Keep working. Let’s get all hands on deck. I’ve ordered Metzler and Johal back to your lander. Somebody wake up O’Neal. He’s the best linguist we’ve got now. Frerotte and Gravino are standing by to help with our mecha.”

He didn’t mention Dawson, and Vonnie didn’t ask. “What about the FNEE? They’ll trace our signals to the colony.”

“Yeah. Ribeiro asked for access to our grid, but I told him I need permission first.”

“Can we jam their spy satellites?

“Not without risking all of the promises and agreements we’ve made. I won’t do it, Von. They’ve already seen our rovers above Lam’s position.”

“I gave the colony away,” she said.Damn it, she thought.

52.

Ash woke O’Neal as Metzler and Johal reached the air lock. They would enter the ready room in moments.

Lam continued naming the sunfish and creating individual files while Vonnie watched them end their dance. Two of the intelligent females left the pack first, including Charlotte. Others noticed their separation and followed them, two here, a foursome there, until the entire group skittered up toward the funnel-like aperture in the rock. They bounced into the hole.

Lam kept himself in the middle of the pack as O’Neal and Ash took seats on either side of Vonnie. “How the hell did…” O’Neal said, blinking at his display.

“Lam, where are you going?” Vonnie said.

—Too many in the group are hungry. The females ended their lessons before there was any fighting. Watch. We’re approaching the heart of the colony.

“It’s warmer.”

—As far as I can tell, there have been no geysers or magma eruptions in this region for decades, but the sunfish have tapped a network of gas vents which raise temperatures enough for liquid water to form around some of the rock islands.

As the pack’s speed increased through the tunnel, their shrieks and cries brought answering calls from above. More sunfish were waiting.

Vonnie heard Metzler and Johal emerge from the air lock. They clattered into the ready room, murmuring as they helped each other remove their pressure suits.

“I’ve seen four retaining walls and a section that looks like it was cemented with feces and gravel,” Vonnie said to Lam. “Why would they invest so much effort in maintaining this gap if it leads to a dead-end? Why go there at all?”

—Habit. Routine. Most of the sunfish probably don’t know why they make this trek every day. For the intelligent few, there’s real purpose. The dead-end is rich with years of biochem. It’s small and enclosed. The smell calms the agitated and the insane. They enjoy it. They become more receptive.

“The intelligent females have addicted them to that dead-end,” O’Neal said.

—Yes. There’s an element of sexual gratification in the lessons. Both males and females who perform well are more likely to be nursed to pubescence.

“They control their endocrine glands so well?” Johal asked, striding through the hatch from the ready room.

—There is a high failure rate. Many undesirables reach puberty on their own, then mate. In two days, I’ve seen four males neutered and one female spayed as Top Clan Two-Four merged with Top Clan Eight-Six.

Metzler appeared behind Johal. He stopped at Vonnie’s chair and touched her shoulder. Without looking, she set her fingers on his hand.

—The needs of the tribe changed with their consolidation. Their lives are one adjustment after another. They have their instincts and their traditions, but the best of them are always ready to improvise. They expect problems and surprises.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Vonnie said. “They might forgive us if we can make reparations. Food. Tools.”

—Opening a dialogue may be easier than that.

Lam’s pack swarmed into a larger space, leaving their tunnel for a low, tilting cavern. Most of the sunfish jumped to the ceiling and divided themselves into quartets. The intelligent females scuttled across the cavern floor, where they greeted more sunfish. Some of those sunfish held bits of metal.

The cavern was thirty meters across, yet only three meters tall where Lam’s pack had emerged. Other sunfish shrieked in holes hidden in the ceiling. Water dripped from two seams in the rock. Farther away, ice bulged through a cave-in, welding boulders and dust into a frozen wave of rivulets.

Closer, the tribe had erected a reservoir wall, protecting the tunnel down to their lesson place. Beneath the dripping water, the puddles were disturbed by eight splashing males.

“Lam, run your X-ray over the deepest parts again, please,” Metzler said. “Are those eggs? The sunfish look like they’re incubating a mesh of small objects with their bodies.”

—Incubating and harvesting, yes.

The puddle floors were laden with fibrous, round pouches. Dozens upon dozens of eggs crowded the black water.

Inside each pouch, a yolk sac attached to the embryo nurtured it as it developed. At least half of the eggs held twins or triplets. As Lam examined the pools, the males prodded and tasted the pouches, especially those with multiple embryos. The eggs that were tasted four times were pushed into the shallow, frost-rimmed edges of the pools.

The intelligent females bustled into the water, screeching. Vonnie thought they were protecting their eggs. She began to smile. But the females were correcting males’ choices. They shoved the males away from one batch and demonstrated how to reap another, older set of eggs.

“They’re culling their young,” Metzler said.

—The tribe has become too large to require a significant new generation. The more immediate need is balancing their food supply and adding to it.

“Yuck,” Ash said as the females shrieked at Lam and the other sunfish gathered on the ceiling.

They sprang down to the discarded eggs. Lam pretended to feast. He wrestled with his comrades and snapped at the eggs he won, coating his beak in pale goo, yet leaving the mashed eggs for others to eat.

The stupid, savage sunfish didn’t notice his deception. One of the intelligent females grabbed him and rubbed curiously at his underside. Then she returned to feeding herself.

Inside Lander 04, most of the ESA crew were silent, their faces set with awe and apprehension.

“How long do the eggs take to develop?” Metzler asked.

—Unknown. In comparison to human pregnancies, it’s a short duration. I estimate no more than two months. They hatch quickly, grow quickly, but mature slowly in regard to cognitive function and speech. Hence the growth and memorization lessons. Their young represent a constant drag on the average intelligence of the tribe.

“Look, this is interesting,” Ash said, “but sims of them chewing up their babies won’t help. We need to prove they’re not psychotic killers.”

The tribe finished eating. They nestled together to drowse as they digested the eggs.

It was a restless slumber. They formed quartets, many of which overlaid each other for comfort or warmth, although their arms snarled and clenched as they settled in, tugging at their neighbors, causing each other to cry out. Lam imitated them, taking position near the top of their loose pile.

Among the single-brained majority, his sensors recorded a phenomenon like automatic street lights winking off and on during a cloudy day on Earth. The electroencephalographic activity dimmed in their conscious hemispheres. Then similar readings began in the opposite halves of their brains.

“They’re switching over,” Johal said. “I wonder if it affects their personalities.”

—Unknown.

The intelligent females and males were circumspect in creating foursomes exclusively of their own kind. They rejected the few savages who bumped and sniffed at them, sending those individuals to nap with other single-brained members of the tribe. Then two of each foursome of the intelligent sunfish remained fully awake as their partners drowsed.

“You see what’s happening?” Metzler asked. “The gifted sunfish take turns guarding each other from their own tribe.”

“No,” Johal said. “They’re protecting them from themselves.”

Dreams came swiftly. The sleepers’ EEG readings spiked. One of the intelligent females tried to rise, screeching. Her comrades held her down. They soothed her with their arms and voices, forcing her to rest.

“When they’re somnolent, the intelligent sunfish revert to a single hemisphere,” Johal said. “They’re no smarter than the others in this state.”

“This is our chance,” O’Neal said. “Lam should approach the intelligent females who are awake and communicate with them alone. We don’t want a repeat of the group hostility in the lesson place.”

“Lam, what do the sunfish think is happening with the mecha and our probes?” Vonnie asked. “Do they have any idea?”

—Tom has held council with the other intelligent sunfish to discuss our probes and spies. They also know about your scout suit, which means they either crossed paths with you or absorbed the survivors from the tribes who did.

“They might have better long-range communications than we think,” Metzler said.

“What are you suggesting, messengers or sonar conduction through the rock?” O’Neal said.

“Both. I’ve been analyzing our data from the blow-out, and I wonder if Tom’s group didn’t summon the larger sunfish as reinforcements. What if the two breeds work together in a crisis?”

“I don’t buy it,” Ash said.

“They might have a universal sign for truce like the way Lam delivered himself to Tom’s group or Tom’s group proposed a treaty with the new colony,” Metzler said. “Lam, what else can you tell us about their councils?”

—Tom’s group conveyed a sense of the FNEE mecha to the new colony. There’s a combination of body shapes they use to describe what they heard, which was terrible strength. But they’re undecided if the FNEE mecha, our probes, spies, and Vonnie’s suit are related to each other. As far as they’re concerned, the probes may have been running from the FNEE mecha like the sunfish fled themselves. Their councils have speculated that the spies, the mecha, and Vonnie’s suit may be different species new to this region of the ice.

“Then they’re not so smart after all,” Ash said.

“In some ways, they’re more accepting than we are — less judgmental,” Vonnie said. “They’re used to meeting bizarre enemies. Remember the shell-eater NASA found. Where did it come from? The sunfish have experienced First Contact before.”

“Our probes never did anything to scare them.”

—Our probes’ conduct was incorrect. We always took the lower position.

“What do you mean?”

Lam opened a sim of Probe 112 in the catacombs with Tom, then another of 110 and 111 confronting the sunfish.

—From the beginning, our worst mistake has been applying a human frame of reference to Europa. The sunfish look inward, not upward. Their social hierarchy is bottom-to-top instead of top-to-bottom like ours. Lower is safer, warmer, wetter, with greater prospects for oxygen and food. They regard the ocean as the center of everything while the frozen sky represents the lowest reaches of their universe, where existence ends.

Vonnie’s heart roared in her ears as she stared at his sims. The ESA probes invariably stayed on the ground while the sunfish hopped to the walls or ceiling. During her own encounters, she’d knelt as close to the cavern floors as possible.

Her cheeks flushed with shame, and she said, “Oh fuck. I was trying to show respect. I thought I was being careful.”

—You were asserting dominance.

53.

Lam flooded their displays with hundreds of clips of sunfish interacting with each other.

—Smaller, less intelligent sunfish defer to their strongest members by elevating themselves onto walls or ceilings except during work such as construction, incubating eggs, or attending growth and memorization lessons.

O’Neal nodded. “They’ve maintained that dead-end because going down there is a privilege,” he said.

—Yes.

“What should I have done?” Vonnie blurted. “I couldn’t have held onto the ceiling every time I met them, but if I’d dug my gloves into the wall…”

“Von,” Metzler said.

“If I’d climbed higher…”

“Vonnie, don’t. Any of us would have acted the same.”

“I’m not sure I get it,” O’Neal said. “The top of any cave or fissure must be the better position strategically.”

—In Earth gravity, yes, but the minimal gravity on Europa negates much of any tactical advantage.

“How many times have we seen them pull the roof down on an enemy?”

—They’re capable of shoving up the floor or driving chunks from a wall. Remember, the battles we’ve witnessed were waged against Vonnie’s suit or mecha.

“They thought we were challenging them for their territory or their leadership,” Metzler said.

—Yes.

“But why are they using ‘Top Clan’ as part of their tribe names?” Vonnie said. “If up is bad and down is good…”

—Our interpretation of ‘Top Clan’ was mistranslated. The proximity to the surface is accurate, but not the value. ‘Top’ isn’t a claim of superiority. It’s a name given to outcasts and refugees. There has been war inside Europa for nine thousand years. These are the losers.

“Have you heard them talk about the larger breed? What do they call them?” O’Neal said.

—The smaller sunfish refer to the larger breed as ‘Mid Clans.’

“‘Mid,’ not ‘Low’?”

—There appear to be other lifeforms beneath the Mid Clans, either more successful tribes or different creatures altogether. From the beginning, we’ve dealt with the worst of the sunfish. The Top Clans were founded by the undesirables who escaped being put to death or the unluckiest, least talented sunfish on hunting parties who lost their way.

“Some of those hunters would have been cut off by geysers or quakes,” Metzler said. “Their survival indicates a high level of competence.”

—Yes. Without a steady infusion of robust breeding pairs, the Top Clans might have devolved into a wholly primitive state. But the healthiest, most intelligent sunfish always fight to stay below.

“We’ll have to get through the savages to reach the smart ones,” Johal said. “The carvings might have been left as warnings for barbarian sunfish to keep away.”

“Warnings, or invitations to join,” O’Neal said. “Some of the carvings read like laws and philosophy, remember? If outsiders were able to learn and repeat those ideals, maybe they were allowed into the empire.”

“We’ve seen a few clues that under specific circumstances, the sunfish help other tribes,” Metzler said. He glanced at Vonnie. “The balls of saliva and feces your team found at the top of the ice — those pellets were saturated with biochem like the females emit during their growth lessons. The empire might have seeded the ice with vaults. Maybe they did it for themselves after the volcanic upheaval decimated everything around them. Every vault was a life preserver to help devolving sunfish hold onto their fertility and their intelligence.”

“But they never used it, not the one we found,” Vonnie said.

“Maybe they lost track of it,” O’Neal said. “They couldn’t reach it or they didn’t recognize it when they did.”

“A starving tribe would eat the pellets,” Metzler said. “It works either way. Intelligent sunfish would understand at least the gist of the carvings — and stupid, hungry sunfish would expose themselves to the biochem by tearing into the carvings to feed. Maybe it would help them.”

“We can synthesize those pheromones and anything else they need,” Vonnie said.

“It would take generations to restore their intelligence even if we had the moral right,” Johal said. “Earth will be interested in leaving spies and probes among this tribe, but there may be civilizations further down.”

“We can’t abandon them,” Vonnie said. “Koebsch?”

He didn’t answer. He was locked into his conversations with Earth, so she recorded an alert to his station.

“Koebsch, you need to tell Berlin! Some of our most basic assumptions are wrong. Even the name I gave them, that was as dumb as Columbus deciding the Native Americans were Indians. They don’t care about the sun. They’ll always want to go deeper. They think we’re coming from beneath them, not above.”

“They’re afraid we want to displace them,” Metzler said.

“Yes. If we can’t—”

“I’m here,” Koebsch said, appearing on the group feed. “Good news. Our prime minister is in talks with officials in China, the U.S., and Brazil. A lot of people are impressed with your sims. We have orders to make an attempt to communicate.”

“Thank you, Koebsch,” Metzler said as Vonnie raised her fists in celebration.

“Lam, when will they send out hunters?” Koebsch said. “I’d like to arrange it so you’re with three intelligent sunfish or a small group that’s mostly intelligent.”

—Tom often pairs with Charlotte, who finds him compliant males for construction work outside the colony. He’s partial to members of his former tribe. If I demonstrate loyalty and athleticism, he may choose me.

“I have a better idea,” Vonnie said. “The best sunfish get smarter as they’re groomed by the females, and cooperative behavior is rewarded, correct?”

—Roger that.

His mem files included radar sweeps of the surrounding ice and rock. Vonnie scrolled along the trail Tom’s group had taken to reach the new colony.

“Lam can pretend to remember the scent of eels a few kilometers east from the colony,” she said. “He should ask Tom and the intelligent females to bring a team of scouts. That’s how we’ll get them away from the tribe.”

“There aren’t any eels,” Koebsch said. “What if they kill him for wasting their time?”

“They’ll find something better than eels.”

54.

Six hours later, the ESA crew were back at their stations, watching datastreams of modified sonar and X-ray.

Lam was on the move. He sprinted through a fissure with Tom and six other sunfish, reinvestigating the path they’d taken from their old colony.

The tribe had napped for three hundred and twenty minutes almost to the dot, a peculiar number which Lam’s mem files showed they repeated often. Metzler noted that 5.33 hours was a sixteenth of Europa’s orbital period around Jupiter — and the ocean tides and the bulging in the ice were caused by Europa’s position relative to Jupiter and the sun. Did that mean the tribes were aware of the sun after all, even if their awareness was subliminal or poorly understood?

There were no days or nights inside the frozen sky, much less weather or seasons. It seemed unlikely they’d invented a calendar. Nonetheless, they seemed to have developed a rest-wake-rest-and-wake pattern closely integrated with the physical properties of their world much like lifeforms on Earth had developed biorhythms associated with day and night.

The rapid cycle from active to relaxed to active again allowed the sunfish to maintain high levels of vigilance and stamina. Among those capable of sentience, regular lulls also aided their mental health.

Vonnie should have rested herself, but she was too busy, too thrilled, and her leg ached where her muscle grafts and ankle joint needed exercising. Metzler had brought her soup; Ash had increased her next round of antirejection meds and painkillers; and Koebsch let her participate in their data analysis.

During the wait, Koebsch had also mediated discussions between his crew and officials in Berlin. Dawson was the only one to abstain. Vonnie wanted to believe he was licking his wounds, but she suspected he’d elected to continue his talks with the gene corps in private.

Heading the Earth-based leaders had been the deputy prime minister, eight senators, four generals, and a bevy of division chiefs from the ESA. Their turnout was imposing. Two months ago, Vonnie might have felt intimidated. Instead, she’d rejoiced at the attention, because if these men and women were personally overseeing the mission, they wanted results.

But where was the finish line? How did anyone define success in this case? Politically, opening relations with a tribal alien species was an expensive boondoggle with no end in sight.

“I’d like to be sure our objectives are clear,” Koebsch had said. “What do we want from the sunfish?”

It was a loaded question. The radio delay should have allowed his crew to express positive opinions before anyone on Earth weighed in, but Johal condemned the tribe. She wasn’t fussy like O’Neal, but she was neat and polite, and the behavior she’d seen apparently didn’t sit well with her.

“I’m not sure we want anything from the Top Clans,” Johal had said. “We can continue our surveillance, but given what we’ve learned, I think we have a better chance of communicating with Mid and Low Clans.”

“We’ll get to the other sunfish eventually,” Koebsch said. “We’re here now. We have an asset inside their colony. Very few of us think it makes sense to walk away.”

Johal raised her hand. “I vote we walk away.”

“Top Clan Eight-Six can teach us more of their language,” Vonnie said. “They might act as guides and translators as we move deeper into the ice. What matters is building relationships with them and learning to work together.”

“So we’re looking for a formal contract of some kind,” Koebsch said. “Do they look at writing the same way we do?”

“Probably not,” O’Neal said. “But they seem to honor their agreements.”

“Okay,” Koebsch said. “Then we want a truce or, better yet, an alliance. We want pledges for mutual aid and safe passage.”

The response from Earth was less definitive. Four of the senators had been heavily involved in the negotiations with Brazil. There were currency and trade considerations on the table as well as the new defense treaty. They’d scheduled a hearing to review the events on Europa.

It was a delaying tactic.

Fortunately, public opinion had swung vigorously in favor of protecting the sunfish. Lam’s sims had been leaked onto the net by ESA and government staffers.

In the media, Brazilian and E.U. officials blamed each other for causing the deaths of two astronauts and a hundred sunfish. Privately, Vonnie was sure, both sides knew how to come up smelling like roses. Damage control began with securing what they’d always wanted: a supply of tissue samples and more reasons to work together. People like Dawson wouldn’t quit. The senators needed to bluster and the generals needed to issue sage pronouncements. Then the prime minister would meet again with Brazil’s president, reaffirming their partnership.

Koebsch had also spoken with Ribeiro. “My team is on standby until further orders,” Ribeiro said curtly. Jealousy and admiration shone in his eyes; jealousy for seeing Koebsch taken off the leash; admiration for the ESA crew, who, although they were rivals, had achieved a difficult goal.

In her soul, Vonnie knew she wasn’t done resisting Dawson’s schemes or Ribeiro’s guns.

Meanwhile, the ESA crew was all systems go.

Vonnie looked up from the maps and rover feeds on her station when Lam said:

—We’ve left hearing range of the colony.

“Keep running,” Koebsch said. “Let’s double that margin if possible.”

—Yes, sir.

The selection of the hunting party hadn’t gone as well as they hoped. Lam was a lesser male. When he’d approached Tom and Charlotte, claiming to remember the scent of eels, Charlotte had responded cautiously, requiring Lam to describe the eels’ location four times as she groped at him, tasting his mouth and ears.

Was it possible that sunfish could lie? O’Neal said no. Their shape-based language would betray any untruth. Every one of them was a natural polygraph machine, zealously attuned to each other’s blood pressure, pulse, and respiration.

Despite their skill at laying ambushes, it seemed improbable that sunfish were capable of deceiving each other in speech. There could never be traitors among them sent by other tribes… and yet many of the sunfish might be prone to delusions and fantasy. They were smart enough to go insane, which Vonnie thought was a uniquely human trait.

Lam’s certainty won them over. The needs of the colony might have caused Tom and Charlotte to give him a chance no matter what, but they’d seemed to temper their enthusiasm. They assigned another intelligent female to go with them — it was Brigit — then added four savage males to the pack.

Maybe they always brought an imbalance of stupid brutes. If they met enemies or prey, the idiot sunfish would attack, providing the intelligent sunfish with a few seconds to decide whether they should retreat or support the assault.

The worry on Earth and among the ESA crew was that the savages would swarm Lam as soon as he revealed himself. Koebsch’s decision had been to let the hunting party move away from the colony, then wait until they paused to orient themselves in the catacombs. He wanted Lam to speak to Tom, Charlotte, and Brigit when the pack wasn’t moving at top speed with all senses heightened to the extreme.

It’s like waiting for the eye of a hurricane, Vonnie thought. Violence is never far away, but if we can catch them at just the right instant when their guards are down…

Tom led the hunting party with Lam by his side. Charlotte and Brigit kept to the nucleus of the group as the savage males bounded ahead and behind. Maybe they were protecting the females. Maybe they were demonstrating their fitness and bravery.

When the pack stopped with cat-like suddenness, scouring the ice for spoor or tracks, it was in an ordinary stretch of tunnel no different than any of the fractures or holes around them.

It was where their future would be decided.

55.

Lam pretended to join the pack in searching the ice. He sniffed at the walls as he eased away from the savage males, positioning himself near Tom and Charlotte. Then he leapt onto the ceiling, intending to flatten his body into a submissive stance above them.

The slick ice was nearly his undoing. He slipped, bringing Tom’s attention before he was set. Worse, sunfish regarded clumsiness as weakness.

“That was close,” Metzler said as Vonnie whispered, “Hush.”

On her display, an AI superimposed a transcript of the conversation among the sunfish, interpreting their cries and body shapes:

LAM: Wait and listen / I deliver myself to you.

CHARLOTTE: You are Top Clan Eight-Six.

ALL SUNFISH: Eight-Six / We are Top Clan Eight-Six.

LAM: I deliver myself to you.

CHARLOTTE: Are you ?

LAM: I have great strength and unlimited food.

MALE SUNFISH #4: Food / Where is food?

TOM: We are hunting eels.

CHARLOTTE: Hunting eels / Remember the scent?

LAM: Yes / This is different food / More food / Air / Tools / I can give these things to you / Listen.

MALE SUNFISH #2 and #4: Danger / He is danger!

ALL MALE SUNFISH:

CHARLOTTE: No / Do not attack / Wait and listen.

TOM: Do not attack.

LAM: I am not Top Clan / I deliver myself to you / I offer truce.

CHARLOTTE: Deliver or truce?

LAM: Truce / I am no danger to you / I want to help / We are from a place unknown to you.

MALE SUNFISH #2 and #4: Sickness / Attack!

LAM: My tribe wants guides and teachers / We bring great strength / Great food / We offer truce.

CHARLOTTE: Where is your tribe / How many in your tribe?

TOM AND BRIGIT: How many / Where / How many in your tribe?

ALL MALE SUNFISH: Attack / Attack!

Lam dropped from the ceiling and landed brazenly among them, causing the intelligent sunfish to scuttle back. Their bodies obstructed the savage males.

“He’s doing well,” Koebsch said.

“He needs to capitalize on his advantage,” Johal said, but Vonnie said, “No, it’s too soon.”

“Tell him to show them who he really is,” Johal said.

“Koebsch, don’t,” Vonnie said. “They’re barely starting to think he’s not insane. If he startles them, Tom and Charlotte won’t be able to stop the males from striking at him.”

“We’ll wait,” Koebsch said as Lam moved closer to the pack, using shapes like an equal now.

LAM: My tribe is larger than yours / Larger and far away / Friends / Truce / Strength / We are many eights and many eights and many eights.

MALE SUNFISH #1 and #4: Danger!

LAM: We are no danger / Truce / Food / Truce / We want scouts and teachers.

CHARLOTTE: Where is your tribe?

BRIGIT: Where / What is your name?

LAM: I do not want to surprise you / Listen / We are unknown to your tribe / Not sunfish.

TOM: Your tribe is not a Top Clan?

LAM: We are not sunfish.

The savage males could not contain their agitation. Two of them shrieked, then all four. If their instinct was to arouse their packmates and incite them to kill Lam, it almost worked.

The three intelligent sunfish responded to the war cry. That impulse was deeply rooted in them — and yet Lam brought the pack to a halt by screeching louder than any sunfish. Unlike their normal cries, his scream covered their entire spectrum of hearing. By deafening them, he limited their senses to smell and touch. It also must have hurt.

The sunfish cringed, ducking to shield their ears. Charlotte stood her ground, but she clasped her arms over six of her ears, limiting her ability to defend herself. In their efforts to retreat, two of the savage males climbed backwards up the walls of the pocket in the ice, which brought them above Lam into the position of lesser sunfish.

“Now,” Johal said. “He should show them now.”

“Koebsch, don’t,” Vonnie insisted. “Lam has the situation under control.”

“He could take command,” Johal said.

“That’s not what we want,” Vonnie said before Metzler added, “We don’t need slaves. We need allies, and we’re about to overwhelm them in a million ways with knowledge and technology. Let’s minimize the culture shock.”

“They’ll never be our equals,” Johal said.

“We should let them try,” Vonnie said. “That’s the right thing to do. We can afford to be generous with them.”

“Watch out!” Ash shouted.

The savage males raised their undersides, screeching and clacking with their beaks. Their challenge seemed to be aimed at Charlotte, Tom, and Brigit as well as Lam. They couldn’t understand the curiosity of the intelligent sunfish, so they intimidated them, too.

MALE SUNFISH: Eight-Six / We are Top Clan Eight-Six!

CHARLOTTE: Wait and listen.

MALE SUNFISH: This is our home / Danger!

CHARLOTTE: Wait.

They swarmed Lam, nipping at Brigit’s body and Tom’s arms as they passed. Tom lashed against one of the savage males, altering his trajectory. Brigit snapped at another male and missed. She and Charlotte coiled themselves to jump into combat.

Lam ended the fight with mecha speed and power. He slapped the first two males in their beaks, then clubbed the third male on top of his body.

The errant male who’d been bumped by Tom was the last to confront Lam. Faced with the bruised, inert forms of his comrades, he demurred, assuming a meek posture as he completed his arc. Lam could have slaughtered the helpless male. Instead, he caught him, then nudged him toward the ceiling, where the male clung obediently.

The other males were shaking off the blows they’d sustained. They joined their friend above Lam with stances of wariness and respect. At the same time, Charlotte, Brigit, and Tom also sprang lightly into the air. They had taken measure not only of Lam’s might but also his self-restraint.

CHARLOTTE: These ones are immature / They are stupid and easily frightened.

LAM: My tribe does not fight / We offer truce.

TOM: You are strange.

ALL SUNFISH: Strange / You are strange / Where is your tribe / What is your name?

LAM: Far away / Great distances and great size / Great age / Great places / I need your patience to explain.

TOM AND CHARLOTTE: You are sunfish / You are not sunfish / What is your name?

CHARLOTTE: You are the Old Ones?

ALL SUNFISH: Far away / Distant greatness.

LAM: We are not sunfish.

On a radio frequency to the ESA, he said:

—They’re using some of the shapes we found in the carvings. They’re talking about the empire.

“Should we pretend to be some remnant of that civilization?” Metzler asked.

“We can’t lie,” Vonnie said.

“It might help them make sense of us,” Koebsch said. “How else are we going to account for our maps or radar or the food we can bring?”

“Once we start down that road, we’re committed to deceiving every colony we meet. Either that or we betray this tribe as soon as someone better comes along. We’ve already made so many mistakes. Do we really want to keep lying?”

“It would be for their own good.”

“It’d be for our convenience.”

While they argued, the sunfish began to screech and undulate. The intelligent trio led the dance, the four savage males aping their movements and cries, yet there were segments in which the males acted in harmony with Charlotte, Brigit, and Tom. They repeated one sequence again and again like a backbeat or a chorus as Lam observed from below.

CHARLOTTE: Old Ones / We remember / Mothers and mothers.

ALL SUNFISH: Mothers ago.

CHARLOTTE AND TOM: Stronger than the ice

ALL SUNFISH: The Old Ones / Home / Great and safe.

CHARLOTTE: Top quakes took us from you.

ALL SUNFISH: Top quakes / Wind / Freezing death.

CHARLOTTE AND TOM: Old Ones / We remember home.

“This is something they’ve learned by rote,” O’Neal said. “It may be a favorite song.”

“It’s a creation myth,” Metzler said. “We have Great Flood stories from the ocean levels falling with every Ice Age and rising again when Earth warmed. They have cycles of decreased or increased volcanic activity.”

“Listen to them!” O’Neal said. “They’re talking about the empire like they think they’ll find it.”

“Or like it’s paradise,” Vonnie said. “Maybe they believe in an afterlife.”

Koebsch sighed heavily. “Lam, tell them you’re not from the empire,” he said, but O’Neal shouted, “First let them finish! This kind of oral history could tell us a lot of what they know about their neighbors, or if they have religion, or how much they know about planetary science.”

“All right,” Koebsch said. “Let them sing.”

“I think we’re playing with fire,” Vonnie said. “Lam can’t sit and watch while they praise him.”

Charlotte broke from the dance, signing questions of her own as the other sunfish continued. Then they lost the thread of their group song and joined her in quizzing Lam with new animosity.

CHARLOTTE: You are silent / You disapprove?

ALL SUNFISH: Old Ones / We belong to you.

CHARLOTTE: We are strong!

LAM: Strong / Yes / Good and worthy.

CHARLOTTE AND TOM: Old Ones / Take us home.

LAM: My tribe is not the Old Ones / We are younger / From far away / I need your patience.

Their arms writhed slowly, repeating Lam’s shapes as if internalizing his explanation. Among the savage males, the body language was sharper and foreboding, like a brewing storm. They were already forgetting the trust he’d established.

Charlotte maintained control over the males by signing at Lam, using her own belligerence to satisfy them.

CHARLOTTE: Safety / Take us home.

LAM: You are unintelligent / My tribe is far away / Listen / I will give you food now / My tribe comes later.

MALE SUNFISH #2 and #4: Food / Where is food?

MALE SUNFISH #3: Eels / Food.

TOM AND CHARLOTTE: You will show us eels?

LAM: I will give you new food / Great nutrition / New food and new tools.

CHARLOTTE: Show us.

“Okay, here we go,” Koebsch said to Vonnie and Frerotte.

“My boards are green,” she said. Frerotte nodded. The two of them cross-checked the mecha feeds on their displays, verifying their preparations as Lam led the sunfish from the pocket in the ice.

He entered a wider chasm studded with loose gravel. Below, his sonar revealed several nubs of rock. Tom shadowed Lam as the savage males ranged ahead and above, reforming their pack with Charlotte and Brigit at its center. But there was an obvious difference from before. Now the females keyed on Lam instead of Tom, altering every trajectory to keep Lam — not Tom — in reach. If they met an enemy or if they discovered prey, their strategy would stem from his reaction. The intelligent sunfish seemed willing to rely on Lam, accepting his strange conduct and speech in exchange for the riches he’d promised.

He ducked up and sideways through the holes in the ice, which became rock, then ice again. The male sunfish paused abruptly, detecting scuff marks and traces of fresh moisture in the air.

MALE SUNFISH #2 AND #4: Something passed through here before us / Life / Unknown / No scents / Beware.

TOM: Listen! Listen!

CHARLOTTE AND TOM: Silence / Listen!

LAM: No danger / Stay with me.

He stopped, signaling for the sunfish to direct their senses beyond him. The pack resisted, bunching in a defensive knot. When nothing happened, Tom crept forward while the savage males dispersed around Charlotte and Brigit, shielding them, screeching threats into the dark.

Four vacuum-sealed metal containers rested on the ice. Each weighed less than ten kilos — smooth, rounded, alumalloy shells with lateral seams.

Lam stayed back, letting the sunfish familiarize themselves with this treasure. They shrieked in delight, using the same body shapes to describe the containers as they used to name the crude metal tools they’d scavenged days ago. They recognized the substance. They thought they could smash it into chisels and blades.

TOM: Tools / There are tools!

LAM: Tools and food / Not danger / Food.

CHARLOTTE: I smell no food / Only metal / How did you cause metal to wait for us?

LAM: My tribe is strong / Listen and wait.

He scuttled toward the containers, advising the sunfish that there would be noises and smells. As he hit each metal shell, it popped open. The air was drenched with the coppery scent of raw meat.

Vonnie and Ash had taken every last ounce of synthetic tissue from their vats to fill two of the containers with cloned blubber, cartilage, and blood. The organic material had been intended for their next round of sunfish-shaped probes. Instead, they’d activated two probes that lacked any disguise, then raced the skeletal, naked mecha into the ice while the colony slept.

Probes 116 and 117 had carried their payloads to the border of the tribe’s territory, leaving a radio beacon for Lam. Afterwards, the probes moved away and found a hollow where they’d hidden themselves.

Twenty kilos of meat wouldn’t serve as more than one or two meals for the tribe, but easy, extra calories were an unlikely gift in the frozen sky.

The other two containers held pliers, screwdrivers, and hammers. These tools weren’t fitted for sunfish. Vonnie hadn’t had time to develop new equipment, and she’d imagined the sunfish would celebrate steel of any shape.

The pack’s cries were a shrill wail. They stroked Lam in elation as they examined the containers. Brigit, Tom, and Charlotte reached for the tools. The savage males swarmed the containers of blood and gore.

Suddenly they hopped apart. Among their many arms, Tom and Charlotte lifted three screwdrivers and a hammer like weapons.

“What is it?” Koebsch said. “What’s going on?”

“The meat could smell wrong or they recognized one of those tools as something on Vonnie’s suit,” O’Neal said. But the sunfish were searching the blackness. Lam’s telemetry flared, analyzing their new postures.

“Some of those body shapes are welcoming,” Vonnie said. “Look at the males. They recognize whatever’s out there.”

Lam said:

—There are new sonar calls above us. The voices belong to four of the intelligent females in Top Clan Eight-Six.

“Von, they’re moving toward our probes,” Frerotte said as her station lit up with alarms.

“They shouldn’t know we’re there,” Koebsch said. “I thought the rest of the tribe was inside their home.”

Vonnie glanced at Metzler. “You said they might have long-range communications we haven’t figured out yet. Is it possible they have better hearing than our mecha?”

“Absolutely not.”

—The sonar calls are increasing in volume and multitude. There are male voices mixed with the female. I estimate a large contingent.

“Christ. Radar shows twenty to thirty contacts,” Frerotte said. “They brought the whole tribe.”

“Can you move our probes?” Koebsch said.

“Where?” Vonnie asked. “Check your radar. They sent two foursomes to encircle the area from behind. Unless we cause avalanches on all sides and trap the probes in the middle, the sunfish will catch them.”

56.

The tribe was unlikely to react well to fake metal sunfish. Tom’s stories of the earlier probes and FNEE mecha were litanies of fear and bloodlust.

Would they connect Lam with the machines and attack him?

In the nervous quiet of Lander 04, Vonnie narrowed her eyes when the opposite thought struck her. What if they connect him with the probes and adopt them into the colony, too?

“Lam, you need to intercept the tribe before they reach our probes,” she said.

“I think he should run,” Johal said.

“He’ll never evade the foursomes of scouts. His best chance is to explain. We can give him control of the probes, let them submit to him where the sunfish can see it, then demonstrate their capabilities. The tribe will want superpowered hunters.”

“Okay, go,” Koebsch said.

—I’m on my way.

Lam screeched and signed, urging Brigit, Tom, and Charlotte to bring their new weapons. The savage males bolted ahead of the pack to join the larger tribe in the catacombs above.

The tribe’s sonar echoed capriciously, fading and reappearing as he flitted through ice. Soon there were other noises. Lam heard thudding arms, the clack of beaks, and a rushing sound like birds in flight.

The eight sunfish in his pack screamed. They were answered with the same malevolent cry from thirty mouths. Then the song was repeated on two flanks by their scouts. All four groups of sunfish were on a collision course with the probes.

Lam redoubled his speed, passing the savage males. He signaled danger / wait, but that caused Tom and Charlotte to lag briefly, robbing him of their participation. The males raced to keep up. If he’d sensed a new foe, they wanted to attack.

He entered a new fissure and swung to meet the tribe before they slithered from a gap in the ice, clawing at the faint marks left by the probes.

The rest of his pack shot into the fissure. They blended seamlessly with the tribe like rain magnifying a river as it rolled and crashed downhill. Only one thing stopped their momentum toward the hollow where the probes were hidden.

Lam. He blocked their way, holding onto the floor in postures of supremacy and disagreement.

Like a river colliding with a dam, the sunfish spread apart. They swept up the walls, then washed together again and pushed toward Lam. At the same time, Charlotte, Tom, and Brigit became other disturbances within the tribe, resisting its flow by signing and crying in shapes and tones similar to Lam’s grinding dance. They conveyed what they’d learned from him even as he reiterated those promises himself.

LAM: My tribe is strange and powerful / Far away / We offer truce / Tools / Food / We are no threat to you.

CHARLOTTE: They bring metal!

ALL SUNFISH: Intruders hide behind him / Strange life / Smell of metal / Why?

LAM: I have more to offer you.

TOM AND BRIGIT: He is strong / He brings food.

ALL SUNFISH: He stands against our tribe / He stands with them / He challenges us.

CHARLOTTE: Wait and listen.

ALL SUNFISH: We are Top Clan Eight-Six!

Twelve savages moved to attack, causing the rest of the tribe to snap and feint reflexively. Lam emitted another unnatural howl, deafening the sunfish with his volume.

The stalemate ended when the two probes emerged behind him. Their arms clattered on the ice. The sunfish pulsated with the horrified shapes they’d used to describe the FNEE mecha, but the intelligent females called for discipline and tolerance.

CHARLOTTE: Listen! Listen!

LAM: My tribe has also fought with / We are not them / We can protect you.

ALL SUNFISH: Enemies / Metal enemies.

LAM: Not your enemy / These metal creatures belong to me / They are tools / They obey me.

CHARLOTTE AND TOM: Listen and wait.

LAM: Listen / They obey me.

MALE SUNFISH #1 and #4: We obey you.

“He’s getting through to them!” Vonnie said.

“Lam, let’s show you’re in control of the probes,” Koebsch said. “We might be close to establishing a truce.”

—Yes, sir.

His data analysis agreed with the central AIs. The tribe was flustered and anxious, yet their mood was rising. They were expectant. Vonnie felt the same emotions. She saw pleasure and satisfaction in Metzler, O’Neal, and Koebsch.

Lam rippled his arm tips in the sunfish gesture for welcome or yes as Probes 116 and 117 mimicked his clockwise shimmy. With perfect synchronicity, the trio continued to sign together like three musicians in an orchestra.

LAM AND PROBES: They obey me / Obey us.

CHARLOTTE: They are metal!

LAM AND PROBES: My tribe creates them like children / They never tire / Never eat / Great strength / They serve me and they can serve you.

Vonnie thought he’d seal the promise of an alliance with the sunfish. They respected endurance and might above all else, but an odd hesitation passed among the tribe. It began with a gesture, then a scent. Lam’s sensors pinpointed the change as originating with Charlotte, although it spread instantly to Brigit. Their arms squirmed with bewilderment and a more intense feeling that Lam found difficult to identify.

Like the probes, Charlotte impersonated him, repeating a few hints of information he’d betrayed with his body shapes… an insinuation of human thinking… a perspective outside the ice…

She coiled and screeched in revulsion. Then the tribe erupted.

CHARLOTTE: You are from above the Top Clans?

ALL SUNFISH: Death / Only death above / Close the ice / Close the tribe!

TOM: Kill him.

CHARLOTTE: It’s a trap.

“Oh shit, here we go again,” Koebsch swore as Vonnie said, “They just figured out where he’s really from! They should be scared. We would be, too.”

He tried to soothe them, repeating the same assurances in a steady, sturdy loop.

LAM: There is more than death beyond the ice / Great age and places / I offer truce / Tools / Food / My tribe brings great tools and safety like the Old Ones.

Inevitably, they swarmed him. Four of the savage males lunged in a frontal assault. The others swept up the side of the fissure like a corkscrew. This was not the dual formation of intersecting waves. This was new. In pairs and foursomes, the sunfish launched themselves in eight different angles despite the meager space, peppering Lam with separate attacks.

He told the probes to shield him. As the probes leapt forward, all three of them howled. Their voices shook the ice.

Dazed, the tribe flailed ineffectively. Many of them tangled with each other in the air. They bounced awkwardly, filling the tunnel and hindering the rest of the tribe.

Lam and Probe 117 swatted four males into the ceiling, then clubbed the next pair to arrive. He howled again. Like a tsunami, the sound brushed the sunfish back. Quivering, they scrambled to the upper sections of the ice with attentive postures. The battered males were less alert but utterly silent.

Inside Lander 04, Metzler grinned. “If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em,” he said, earning a look from Vonnie. She wanted to be irritated with him, but she couldn’t stop herself from grabbing his hand and laughing. Dealing with the sunfish was like dealing with bureaucrats on Earth. Sometimes it was necessary to smack them over the head repeatedly to make them see.

“Lam?” she said. “We have one last card to play.”

—Roger that.

Charlotte and Brigit were the first to sign again, snaking their arms uncertainly. Another intelligent female replied, then three more, then Tom and other males.

The sunfish turned their attention inward. Those on the edge of the group remained mindful of Lam, ready to defend the tribe, but at their center, their tempo escalated. They moved faster than human eyes could determine, seeking consensus about ideas that had been inconceivable before his arrival.

As the tribe squirmed and cried, Lam piped at them, a single, clear, harmless shriek.

They turned.

He held up three arms and mutilated the center arm tip, peeling the cartilage down to his alumalloy frame.

The sunfish screamed. They bared their undersides, but their beaks didn’t clamp or bite. They tasted the thin air, absorbing the scent of Lam’s flesh. Their sonar calls inundated him, comparing his bloody metal arm with the probes’ bare frames.

LAM: I am not sunfish / My tribe is great.

CHARLOTTE AND TOM: You do not hurt / There is no smell of fear / No pain / Your tribe is great.

LAM: We can be powerful allies.

CHARLOTTE: You offer food and tools and more like you?

LAM: Yes / Truce.

As she questioned him, the other sunfish continued their debate. Their frenzy reached its climax. Then they swung on Lam as one, issuing their judgment. It was more than truce. It was a proposal to merge and bond with “Lam’s tribe.”

ALL SUNFISH: Treaty / We deliver ourselves to you / Equals / As equals / Our strength is yours and yours is ours / We offer a treaty with you.

“We did it,” Vonnie breathed. Her excitement was too immense to feel all at once. It percolated through her chest like a geyser, lifting and spreading inside her.

LAM: Yes / Treaty / Yes.

57.

His conversation with the sunfish became more intimate. They engulfed him, sniffing, rubbing. The ritual was similar to their memorization lessons, a method of consolidating Lam and the probes with the tribe by learning each other’s bodies and scents.

Vonnie stood up and glanced at her crewmates, those beside her in Lander 04 and those on the group feed in Lander 05. Koebsch. Frerotte. Johal. O’Neal. Metzler and Ash. They’d developed varying degrees of friendship and trust, but they were united now — united forever — by what they’d accomplished.

It was the beginning of peace between Top Clan Eight-Six and the ESA. It was a mutual step forward for humankind and the lifeforms inside Europa. Helping the sunfish, teaching them, would require years or even generations, but the two species were finally on a path to the common good.

“Congratulations, people,” Koebsch said. In Lander 05, he clapped Frerotte on the shoulders, then gave a thumbs-up to everyone in 04.

Vonnie met Koebsch’s gaze as the men and women around her exchanged smiles and handshakes, chatting too loudly. If Dawson was watching them, she hoped he got an earful. “We couldn’t have done this without you,” she told Koebsch.

“You worked harder than anyone.”

“No, sir. I don’t think so.”

Nearby, Ash hugged Metzler and pecked his cheek, her hazel eyes relaxed and bright for the first time since the blow-out. It didn’t matter that she’d also kissed O’Neal. Feeling a twinge of possessiveness, Vonnie decided to interrupt before Ash grew any more physical with Metzler. First it was important to express her gratitude to Koebsch.

“I’m sorry for everything,” she said.

“I’m not,” Koebsch said.

“Pärnits and Collinsworth…”

“They’d appreciate what we’ve done, Von. You should be proud.”

“Thank you.”

Vonnie left her station and elbowed Ash with a sisterly nudge, not too rough, not too soft. The young woman opened her mouth to protest. “Hey!” Then she laughed and walked to O’Neal and Johal, hugging them.

Metzler beamed. His dog-ugly face was handsome with victory, and, for once, he didn’t have a rude comment or a joke. He merely shook his head and grinned.

Vonnie embraced him as she spoke the sunfish shape out loud, relishing it.

“Treaty,” she said.