Shaman Machine the Mentor Page 7

  To provide a direct view of the ocean floor, Smit rotated the craft until its was positioned, up-side-down and with the nose at a 45 degree angle to the bottom. Initially Danel experienced vertigo, with the ground become the sky. But the alternate orientation proved far superior, particularly because the plane acted as an umbrella against the marine snow; resulting in an unobstructed view. In less than a minute, Danel’s fascination completely superseded his disorientation.

  With his bubble top traveling a short span of only two meters from the silt, Danel could clearly see multiple signs of life. The ooze was littered with faint trails, albeit sightings of actual creatures remained relatively rare. Primarily, they saw piles of albino crustaceans akin to shrimp. On some few occasions, Danel also saw what looked to be lone oversized blood-red crabs with razor sharp thorns protruding from their body armor; while finer cactus-like spines carpeted their monstrous claws.

  Danel told Smit: “Even their color looks poisonous.”

  Sometime later, Smit announced: “Say, Danel, I'm going to pull back a few meters. Check the mapping on your console. Looks like something big coming up.”

  Smit played a spotlight over a mass of dead flesh. It was teeming with feasting critters. A silver cyclone abruptly engulfed the plane, obscuring their view. The storm proved to be a colossal school of hatchet shaped fish.

  Danel: “Smit, let's pull back a little more. I’d like to observe this.”

  Smit: “Absolutely, Waterman, it's your program.”

  Smit set the plane to hover sideways, instead of up-side-down. Under the many spotlights now illuminating the scene, the rotting corpse approximated a toppled tower. The albino shrimp were the primary diners. Watching them swarm over the carcass, Danel wrinkled his nose in distaste, at their cockroach behavior. The prickly crabs were also in attendance, and no longer lonely. There were groups of them waltzing slowly sideways while dipping into the rot; their bristling claws shoveling flesh into their blood red faces. There were also a few sea snakes. These were exceptionally sinister with their menacing jabs and violent tearing at the meatier parts.

  Softening the view were peach colored piles of tiny disks with multiple legs, like fanciful pastel rays from the drawing of a sun by a child. Completing the symphony of indifference was the newly arrived school of silver hatchet fish. These swirled a contracting and expanding formation. Inside their effort, the flesh seemed to melt away in layers. Finally, Danel signaled he was ready to proceed.

  Smit: “In all my time exploring down here, I've never seen anything that massive.”

  Danel: “Amazing. And the size seems appropriate for a planet that's pretty much all water…plenty of room to accommodate wide turns.”

  Smit: “Well, if I see a live one, you can be sure I’ll do the turning.”

  Smit brought the plane back round to its previous orientation, inverted and cruising a couple meters from the bottom. Proceeding along their spiral path for another hour, he and Danel saw only the albinos. While staring at the empty sea floor, Danel’s mind drifted. He thought about the rich variety of data the scanners were sending to the notebooks he’d prepared. The data included pressure, mineral composition, light spectrum; and would be important for site analysis. The information would be particularly pertinent to Pancho when he designed the DNA tile units.

  Danel failed to register the stick protruding from the muck. A small appendage dangled from the tip of it. His drifting thoughts were slowly shifting toward curiosity concerning the object; when the ground erupted. A giant crater vomited up a cloud of sand. In a blink, the crater was gone.

  Smit: “Did you see what happened there, Danel? Now those? Those, I have seen before.”

  Danel's eyes bored into the place beneath the settling sand. On close inspection, he could almost differentiate dark and light stippling. Whatever it was…it was identical, or nearly so, to the surrounding silt. Gelatinous edges seemed to wriggle. But like a figment the harder he looked the more he doubted what he had seen. There was only a stick...with small hanging appendage, reminiscent of a fishing lure.

  Smit explained: “That stick and lure sit just above his mouth. He uses it very like a fishing rod to attract prey.” Smit chuckled. “We're just a mite too big to be eaten. My theory is, they react to our sounding equipment.”

  The invisible fisherman proved to be the final noteworthy sight before they concluded their survey of the bottom. The Eastern Abyssal Plain was a deep, nearly level valley. It was an exceedingly stable environment. The same could not be said for the East-ridge that lay to the west. Danel had read of its looming undersea mountains. It was a volatile environment, with volcanic eruptions, and temperatures reaching upwards of 400 degrees Celsius. It would have been a far more dramatic backdrop for a city. But no place to bet the future. They would go there tomorrow. Danel had requested a trip to the ridge more as a tourist than for professional reasons. But now he realized it would also provide his first glimpse of a naturally occurring concentration of marine life.

  Smit: “Okay, Waterman, how do you want to proceed through the water space?”

  Danel: “Let's do it in circles: first circle at 1,800 meters above the bottom; then another circle every 95 meters. That will give us….” He paused to count silently, “that will give us 15 circles total. How does that work out for us, time wise?”

  Smit: “Okay…say we spend 20 minutes per level…that makes…. That’s about five hours total for the return.”

  Danel: “And that will work?”

  Smit: “Sure. It’s only a 20 kilometers circumference. As you’ve seen, the water is pretty close to empty around here. We can clip along pretty fast but still have enough time to slow down if we come across anything interesting. If, that is, you don’t mind straight line slopes between levels.”

  Danel: “Do it.”

  As the plane climbed, the volume of marine snow gradually diminished. Between the flakes, Danel searched for life. They’d only risen 550 meters from the bottom when he saw the circus of lights.

  Smit: “Las Vegas Jelly ahead, Waterman. Want to watch for a moment?”

  Danel: “Yes, please.”

  Smit: “I'll kill the running lights for 30 seconds.”

  Danel was dazzled. The 15 meter jellyfish was transparent and otherwise invisible, if not for the millions of cilia performing like a neon sign. Rows of cilia blinked on and off in alternating stripes in a dazzling display. Surely, every subtle rainbow hue was presented. Back and forth, the stroboscopic colors raced, from one end to the other, over and over. It was mesmerizing. When the ships lights blared back on again, Danel had to blink his eyes, and shake off the hypnosis.

  At 1,800 meters from the bottom, they began their first diameter. Still swallowed by the dark their visibility remained inside their sheath of running lights. On completing the circle, they made the steep climb to the next level. While navigating circles through three more levels, the sea gave no further glimpse of life.

  While still well below the reach of sunlight, Danel saw it. As frightening as any storybook specter, it was deep red and shaped like an angel fish. But this was no angel. Razor sharp held the mouth permanently open to a malevolent smile. Because the beast was large, Danel felt grateful for the hard skin of his ship. Although for the first time, his head seemed terribly exposed in the transparent bubble top. Happily, the monster showed no urge to move, even with lights scraping along its edges.

  The plane climbed another incline. The marine snow further dissipated. They chanced upon another patient beast with tail pointed down and head facing the elusive sky. Circling past the sea snake, they came to the end of their final orbit. And still the darkness held them captive. Ostensibly late to arrive, the light did eventually sift back into existence. When finally they burst through the membrane of the surface, they discovered the diminishing light of dusk.

  The next day began early with a high speed four hour race to reach the East-ridge. When still an hour away from their destination, Danel noticed a peculiar
sight. A dark mass came spilling into the h-liner’s wake from port side. Very quickly the mass consumed them. Danel watched as the undulating mass stretched and swayed; opened, close and open again. It came to dominate the full measure of their view.

  “What is that?” Danel asked, of no one in particular.

  “That is one giant motherfucking school of fish,” Smit responded.

  Finding this hard to believe, Danel stepped to the handrail and peered overboard. “Are you sure about that?” Danel asked. “That looks like ink.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Saml assured him.

  Agglomerations of fish clumped and scattered, to and from, and in all direction until finally the h-liner was pronounced to have arrived to the rich new location.

  As the plane dipped into the water, the sheer number of each species was beyond anything Danel would ever have imagined. Equally as extraordinary, as the density of life they encountered; were the landforms they encountered, one and a half kilometers below the reach of the sun. The mountain peaks were colossal, rocky and black. The range glowed warmly inside the spotlight, Smit was moving in broad sweeps.

  Danel saw brilliant pink plants (or perhaps they were animals) with branching appendages. They seemed to rise right up out of the rock to wave the plane along. Giant leafless trees rippled colors like breathing rainbows. Delicate, red whips perched precariously on the steep edges of dark rock spires. Chromium yellow sponges that dwarfed the body of the plane occasionally added wholly different texture to the vibrant rolling scene.

  From hot vents on the sides and bases of some of the spires, black smoke poured forth. Shrimp were in such dense attendance at these apocalyptic sites that they formed vivid squirming peach, orange, yellow and white piles. Species of fish too numerous to document swarmed directly into the hot belch of hydrothermal fluid. Life circled and fed. Danel marveled at the magnificent bounty ably drawing life directly from the planet's molten core.

  CHAPTER 13

  The four Levihopi rose up from the darkest waters to the waters near the sky, exclusively to meet with members of the laughing pod. In a vibrato of deep brassy notes, the four elders spoke as a single unified voice. “Your spirit reflects a melancholy, we have not witnessed in your kind since the first of you arrived. Why do you reanimate your sorrow for these cousins from your planet of origin?”

  Chaser did feel less buoyant today; almost weighted with grief. Perhaps he did carry a narrative of irrelevant fear in the story he had come to share. He was a leader of the dolphins, known among the Levihopi as the laughing tribe. The dolphins had come for the Shifting Currents Visit. Annually, a few from each family group would make the long journey to meet with the Levihopi elders. Pod leaders had been meeting with the Levihopi since they’d first arrived to the planet after being forced to flee Earth. Without the help of the Levihopi, the journey from Earth to Varun would have been impossible.

  The dolphins knew the Levihopi to be the most highly evolved species on Varun. Even though they deemed themselves to also be evolved, there was no denying the mastery of the Levihopi. It was said about the Levihopi that their wisdom dwarfed even their prodigious physical presence. Indeed there were many rumors and much speculation circulating among the pods regarding the very mysterious Levihopi. Most among the dolphins believed them to be thousands of years old. Some even held the belief that these four were the original Levihopi, who had never died.

  “These cousins are very dangerous,” Chaser asserted, while swimming a serpentine along the exquisitely tall and mightily wide edifice of Levihopi faces. “Because of their actions, we were forced to flee Earth. Long ago, they abandoned biological evolution in favor of technological control. We fear their disdain for biology; their disdain for systems that are natural.”

  The other dolphins swirled in agreement with Chaser’s assessment. While sharing his fear with the Levihopi, Chaser began to rediscover a buoyancy of spirit. The shift in shared dolphins energy became apparent when Dodger brushed up against Chaser to initiate a game. The game quickly grew to include all of the dolphins. Occasionally, one or some of them would shoot up to the nearby surface, clap their hands, breathe in the air and sing aloud, before returning to the embrace of the receptive water. Meanwhile, the Levihopi remained stationary; their four long silver bodies tapering deep into the distance. The Levihopi were majestic beings whose beauty was embodied in their ability to listen. These inspiring beings could hold every kind of knowledge without experiencing fear.

  The Shifting Currents Visit lasted until every concern had been communicated. The Levihopi departed first. They made a great turning with all four of the faces bending in unison round a point. The rotation had barely begun when the ocean was inexplicably empty of their mass, as if they had dissolved.

  With the Levihopi disappeared, the members of the laughing tribe took their leave. The dolphins headed to a favorite fishing rendezvous, where their extended family was awaiting their return. Chaser and Dodger kept the energy playful, as was in their natures. Dodger was taunting Chaser when they burst into the air. In their cheerful abandon, neither noticed the small vessel bobbing only a few lengths away. Dodger almost crashed into the side of it; turning at the last moment in a flush of surprise. In a nervous response of caution, the two darted below. This withdrawal lasted only long enough for them to gather their friends. As one, all the dolphins surged to the surface, where they loitered at what felt like a safe distance from the boat.

  Seeing the dolphins swarming curiously nearby, the h-liner occupants began to wave their appendages while making sounds in their guttural language. Chaser knew these cousins were a destructive race; but they did not seem very dangerous in the ungainly craft. Dodger began to laugh at the strange beings from their home planet. He danced on top of the water and wiggled back and forth, in an attempt at imitation.

  Soon, all of the dolphins were dancing in a wiggle, before falling over to laugh. This silliness morphed into a game of daring, where each dolphin took a turn racing a circle around the craft. In the course of this game, their fear pretty much dissolved. As a last show of bravado, Dodger popped up directly adjacent to the boat, only a tail fin away. Then with a final group laugh, they returned to their pilgrimage.

  CHAPTER 14

  Cady, Solomon and Kris lay sprawled on the deck of their ship to catch their collective breath. Maneuvering through the opening in the reef had been more arduous than usual, thanks to mutual exhaustion from last night's party. The bash had been a surprise celebration, organized by island friends to see them off on their latest excursion.

  Lying on her back, moving only her mouth, Cady said, “I think we should go directly to the East-ridge and follow it for the whole year this time.”

  No one said anything else, for a quarter of an hour, until Kris responded predictably, “We could be all the way to the Aleutians in less than a year.”

  The crew of friends stretched and stirred, but still did not rise from their supine postures while their customized craft continued to churn westward. The constant brush of the wind across their ears formed a kind of quiet that was particular to life on the water.

  Again Kris split the silence. “There cannot be a more perfect fishing zone than the Aleutians. If I were a dolphin, I would definitely go there.”

  Rousing himself, Solomon reached forward and touched his toes. Then he stretched up to the sky. At finding the limit of his reach, his hands dropped back to his lap. No less exhausted but anyway determined, he bent his knees and linked his ankles. Leaning forward, he hinted at impending action.

  “Cady,” he announced, “I'd like to set up the plunge pool. Will you help me? I could use a quick rinse before deck fishing for some lunch.”

  “Sure thing, Solomon.” Mimicking his example, she also performed a series of stretches to bring herself upright.

  Now that they were safely through the reef, out on the open sea, they could set up the boat accessories. The debate between Cady and Kris was temporarily abandoned. After
all, they had every day to discuss, every day to consider, and sometimes even argue, about their destination. Indeed, 'the discussion' was a standard part of life at sea. A typical day was comprised of the breeze, the water, the clouds and 'the discussion'.

  Cady had come all the way to Varun on a quest to study the mammals she had thus far only seen on video. A maritime anthropologist, she had dedicated her research to studying Tursiops truncatus, a species of sea mammal now extinct on Earth. The discovery of a variety on Varun that appeared identical to the long extinct dolphins had presented a mystery too deep to ignore.

  Solomon led the way to an equipment pile where he unburied the Plunge Desalinization Membrane System. Taking up the membrane, he unrolled the shimmering cloth. Beside him, Cady reached down and depressed the power switch on a metallic disk. Using a voice command, she instructed it to stand. Spindly legs telescoped from the disk.

  Looking like a monstrous copper brown spider, the frame followed Cady away from the pile, down the stairs, and into the sunken patio located at the middle of the fore deck. At the center of the patio, she and the frame paused. By tapping into her forearm device, Cady caused a circular panel in the deck to split open, exposing the surface of the sea. Responding to a corresponding voice command, the frame straddled the opening. Plugging the tip of each leg into a matching divot, the framed pinioned itself to the lip of the opening then dipped its body into the water. The spider was now hanging with its legs reaching up. With the frame securely situated, Cady engaged the dilation switch. Like an expanding universe the body disk of the spider spiraled open; its belly arching more deeply and into the water while swallowing its own legs in the process. Once it reached full extension, Cady powered off the frame with the flip of a physical switch.

  “Okay, Solomon, ready when you are,” she called out.

  Solomon drew the feather light cloth by one grommet. With it wafting behind him, he trotted down the stairs to where Cady waited. When he navigated past her with the fabric, she snatched up a grommet on the side opposite from him. Facing each other, they moved into position until the frame opening was adequately centered between them. Bending down, each placed a grommet onto a receiving hook then pressed to engage the connection. Once all of the grommets were attached, they sat down together on the edge, to watch and to wait.