The Medusa Chronicles Read online

  Falcon recognised him. He could hardly not. This was Captain Matthew Springer, conqueror of Pluto: this year’s other hero of space exploration.

  Springer took Falcon’s artificial hand without flinching. “Commander Howard Falcon! And Administrator Webster. Captain, forgive me for interrupting. Commander, I was so pleased to learn you’d be on this cruise . . .”

  Falcon was aware of the camera platform descending, eager to capture this historic encounter, but with its multiple lenses all trained on Springer.

  And Springer was staring closely at Falcon. “Hey—you’re breathing.”

  “So are you,” Falcon said dryly.

  Webster rolled his eyes.

  But Springer seemed immune to irony. “Makes sense, I guess. A touch of humanity. And you can speak more or less naturally. As opposed to through some kind of loudspeaker attachment, right? So what do you use for lungs?”

  “I’ll mail you the specifications.”

  “Thanks. You know, I followed your exploits as a boy. The ballooning stunts. And I have to tell you that of the last generation of technological pioneers, you’re the one I most—” His aide touched his arm, murmured something, pointed to his minisec. Springer held up his hands. “Got to go—drinks with the World President. You jump when called, right, Commander? Catch you later—and please come to my talk about Icarus and my grandfather, which will be in the—” He pointed at Embleton.

  “The Sea Lounge,” Captain Embleton said with good grace, even as Springer retreated.

  “And with that he was gone,” Webster said. “Trailed by his fan club like a comet tail, and by that damn platform.”

  “Not that the camera spent too long looking at me,” Falcon said.

  Embleton laughed. “Well, we wouldn’t want to scare the sea sprites, Commander.” They set off towards the stern again, trailed by Conseil. “I’m sure there are plenty of people on board who’ll be fascinated to meet you. We even have one of the medical team who treated you aboard. But I insist you allow me to give you the guided tour . . . The Shore’s keel was laid at the peak of the last period of real global tension, but the ship never bared its fangs in true anger, I’m happy to say. As a Navy officer yourself you might find elements of the design interesting. Of course, nowadays we’re famous for our world-class passenger facilities.” She glanced over Falcon’s seven-foot-tall body. “I wonder how you’d fare on the ice rink?”

  Webster laughed out loud. “He could skate, if we swapped his wheels for blades. But it wouldn’t be pretty.”

  “Commander Howard Falcon.” The voice was a gravelly growl.

  And—as a group of passengers passed them, drinks in their hands, gaudy as flowers against the Atlantic grey, all no doubt fabulously rich—Falcon stopped and found himself facing a group of chimpanzees.

  There were a dozen, of whom three or four glared at the humans with undisguised hostility. The chimps wore no clothes save for loose stringed jackets heavy with pockets, even though some were evidently shivering with the cold. They huddled down on the deck, their closed fists scraping the metal surface. Their apparent leader was older, grizzled grey around the muzzle, and he stood a little taller than the rest.

  Embleton stepped forward briskly. “I should make proper introductions. You know Commander Falcon already. Commander, this is Ham 2057a, Ambassador to the World Council of the Independent Pan Nation, and another guest of President Jayasuriya.”

  Falcon tried not to stare. This was the first simp—superchimp—he’d seen since the crash of the QE IV. “I’m glad to meet you, sir.”

  “And I you, Commander.”

  “Are you enjoying the cruise?”

  “Missing home in Congo treetops, to tell truth . . .” The Ambassador spoke distorted but comprehensible English, evidently with some effort. One of his aides seemed to be an interpreter, relaying the speech to the others in pant-hoots and gestures. “Know you, of course. To us, Howard Falcon famous for more than Jupiter.”

  “The crash of the Queen.”

  “Many simps died that day.”

  “And many human crew—”

  “Simps! Given slave names, like my own. Dressed like dolls. Made to work on cruise ship grander than this one, Boss.”

  Falcon was aware of Webster flinching at that word. “Well, now, Bittorn’s programme was well intended,” said the Administrator. “It was meant as a way to establish a bridge between cousin species—”

  Ham snorted. “Simps! So damn useful, clambering around space stations in zero G—climbing in airship rigging. And so funny-funny cute in little slave uniforms, serving drinks. Other animals too. Smart dogs. Smart horses . . . Smart enough to know humiliation and fear. All dead now . . .

  “Then, ship crashed. You barely survived. Millions spent saving you. Some simps survived, barely. They not saved. Millions not spent. Simps euthed.”

  Embleton stepped forward. “Ambassador, this is hardly the time or the place—”

  Ham ignored her. “But you, Commander Falcon. Records of crash. No cameras, but forensics, word of survivors. Some simps lasted long enough to tell story. The ship, doomed. You heading down, down to bridge, risk life to save ship, if you could. And you found frightened simp. You stopped, Commander. Stopped, calmed him, told him go, not down, down, but up, up to observation deck. Where he would have best chance. You said, ‘Boss—boss—go!’”

  Falcon looked away. “He died anyway.”

  “Did your best. His name, Baker 2079q. Eight years old. We remember, you see. All simps. Remember them, every one. They were people. Better times now.” He surprised Falcon by reaching up with one hand. Falcon had to lower his upper body to take it. “You come visit Independent Pan Nation.”

  “I’d like that very much,” Falcon said.

  “Climb trees?”

  “I’m always up for a challenge.”

  Embleton smiled. “Not until you’ve tried ice skating, Commander—”

  But a voice cut across her words: “Whale ahoy! Starboard side!”

  Falcon turned with the rest.

  * * * *

  The whales were heading north.

  Looking out over this grey ocean, under a grey sky, the great bodies looked like an armada, a fleet of ships, not like anything living at all. Of course they were dwarfed by the tremendous length of the carrier, but there was a power and purpose about them that no machine of mankind could ever match: a fitness for purpose in this environment.

  Now one tremendous head lifted out of the water not thirty, forty metres from the flank of the Shore, misshapen to Falcon’s untutored gaze, and battered. Pocked and scarred like the surface of some asteroid. But a vast mouth opened, a cave from whose roof dangled the baleen plates that filtered this beast’s diet of plankton from the upper levels of the sea, a thin gruel to power such a tremendous body. And then an eye opened, huge but startlingly human.

  As he looked into that eye, Falcon felt a jolt of recognition.

  He had travelled to Jupiter, where, in layers of cloud where conditions were temperate, almost Earthlike, he had encountered another tremendous animal: a medusa, a creature the size of the Shore itself, swimming in that unimaginably remote sea. This whale had been shaped by evolutionary pressures in an environment not entirely dissimilar to Jupiter’s hydrogen-helium air-ocean, and surely had much in common with the medusae. And yet Falcon felt a kinship of common biology with this tremendous terrestrial mammal that he knew he could never share with any Jovian medusa.

  Ham, the simp Ambassador, was at his side. “There you are, Com­mander Falcon. Another Legal Person (Non-human).” And he pant-hooted with laughter.

  2

  During dinner, the USS Sam Shore discreetly submerged.

  Hatches and service ports were closed and sealed silently. Ballast tanks were opened, the in-rush of water politely muffled so as not to disturb the passengers. T
he dive planes were set for a one-degree descent, barely noticeable even to those guests paying close attention to the level of the drinks in their glasses.

  Falcon noticed, of course. He sensed the angle of the deck, the tilt from one end of a corridor to the next. Through the sensors in his under­carriage he picked up the change in the subsonic frequency coming from the engine, signalling a decrease in the power output, possible now that the ship was moving underwater in its optimum environment.

  Very few things escaped Falcon.

  After dinner, and before Springer’s speech, he and Webster went for a walk.

  The so-called service deck of the Shore, beneath the immense hangar deck, was a cavern of girders and rivets and rails and cranes and rotating platforms, where once fighter planes and nuclear-tipped missiles had been fuelled, serviced, refurbished. Now this brightly lit chamber had been transformed into a combination of shopping mall and upper class hotel—and on an astounding scale, a full mile of it.

  “You should feel at home here, Howard,” Webster was saying. “After all, if the Queen Elizabeth hadn’t crashed, you’d have ended up a cruise liner captain too, wouldn’t you? Of course, nowadays you’d never get a dress uniform to fit . . .”

  Falcon ignored him and inspected the fixtures. For this prestigious cruise the ship’s owners, together with the World Food Secretariat, Marine Division, had used the space to mount an exhibition of the modern ocean and its uses, presumably intended to prompt well-heeled passengers to become investors. Falcon and Webster glanced over exhibits, models and holographic and animated images of various wonders natural and otherwise—although Falcon was unsure if anything about Earth’s oceans could still be called natural. At the close of the twenty-first century a large proportion of mankind was fed by tremendous plankton farms, sustained by the forced upwelling of nutrient-rich materials from the ocean floor. As land-based mineral sources had been depleted the sea bed had been extensively mined too. Of course, in this year 2099, humanity was more than conscious of the needs of the creatures with whom it shared the world—and even, in the case of the uplifted chimps, shared political power. But the whole Earth was becoming a managed landscape, Falcon thought, like one vast park—which was one reason people like himself became hungry to leave.

  They found a panel on career opportunities, and Webster bent to see, curious. “Look at this stuff, Howard. The specialisms you can take on: seaman­ship, oceanography, navigation, undersea communications, marine biology . . .” He straightened up stiffly. “You know, the Bureau of Space Resources uses some sea floor locations for simulation work. You can trial suits designed to cope with the heavy pressures we will ­encounter on Venus, for instance. Shame we can’t go see that during this jaunt.”

  “No,” Falcon said, “this tub is strictly a shallow diver. Just enough to hide from enemy aircraft—”

  “Excuse me.”

  The woman stood alone in the gloom of the gallery: soberly dressed, dark, she looked to be in her mid-thirties. Falcon, at seven feet, towered over her by a good foot and a half. Not surprisingly perhaps, she seemed nervous.

  Webster snapped his fingers. “I remember you. Nurse Dhoni, right? You were at the military hospital, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, when we—”

  “When Commander Falcon was brought in from the Queen Elizabeth, yes.”

  Those days—those years—of recovery still lived in Falcon’s nightmares. He did his best not to recoil. “I don’t remember you, Nurse, I’m sorry.”

  “Actually, it’s Doctor now. I cross-trained. I specialised in neurosurgery at—”

  “Why are you here?” Falcon snapped.

  She seemed taken aback, and Webster glared at him.

  Dhoni said, “Well, because of you, Commander. Once the President’s staff had invited you, they looked around for friends, family and such to make you welcome. And of your medical team from back then, I’m the only one still working in the field. The rest have retired, moved on, or in one case died—Doctor Bignall, if you remember him.”

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  Webster growled, “For God’s sake, Howard.”

  “No, Administrator Webster, it’s okay.” She sounded as if it was anything but okay, but she held her nerve. “I needed to see you, Commander. After your exploits on Jupiter made the news, I did some investigating. It’s been an awfully long time since you had a proper check-up, let alone an overhaul.”

  Suddenly Falcon was suspicious. He glared at Webster. “Did you set this up, you old coot?”

  Webster looked as if he was going to try to bluff his way out, but gave in with good grace. “Well, now, Howard, I knew you wouldn’t listen to me.” He rapped his knuckles on the shell of toughened alloy where Falcon’s chest should have been. “The outside stuff is doing fine. We can switch components in and out with no trouble. But what’s inside was pretty beat up to start with, and isn’t getting any younger. How old are you now, fifty-­five, fifty-six . . . ?”

  Dhoni reached out uncertainly to Falcon, then dropped her hand. “Let me help you. How do you sleep?”

  Falcon set his jaw. “As little as I can.”

  “There are new treatments now, things we can offer you—”

  “Is that why you’re here? To use me as a lab rat, again?”

  That got through the last of her defences. Her mouth worked, and she swallowed. “No. I’m here because I care. Just as I cared then.” She turned and stalked away.

  Falcon watched her go. “She nearly burst into tears.”

  “No, she didn’t, you ass. She nearly knocked your block off, and you would have deserved it. I saw you back then, Howard. I know it was a nightmare. But she was there all the way through, Hope Dhoni. Just a kid. There all the way through.” He seemed to struggle for words. “She wiped your brow. Oh, the hell with you. I need a drink.” He walked off, calling back, “Enjoy Springer’s ego trip. I’ve had enough heroes for now. But when you find that woman again you apologise, you hear?”

  3

  In the USS Sam Shore’s Sea Lounge, Matt Springer stood at a lectern beside an empty, dimly lit stage.

  The room itself was extraordinary, Falcon thought, as he rolled in and discreetly took a place at the back. The Sea Lounge was probably the single most famous, or notorious, feature of the cruise ship this huge carrier had become. It was a place of curves and tangles and sweeping panels, no straight lines, all in the colours of the sea: green and blue and with a mother-of-pearl sheen. The stage itself stood under an apex where sweeping ribs joined, and the audience before Springer was cupped in a shallow basin. Captain Embleton—there in the front row alongside the President—had told Falcon this was experimental architecture. The same technology they used to filter-mine sea water had been put to work sculpting this room, layer by layer—the room had been grown, like a sea mollusc’s shell, rather than built in the traditional fashion. Even the hidden service elements, the ducts and pipes and vents and cabling, had been planned into the carefully computer-controlled process.

  The decor meanwhile looked high Victorian to Falcon, with ­polished tables, high chairs and divans. The tables were set with expensive-­looking glasses, cutlery and porcelain crockery. But Falcon noticed the details—each item of cutlery marked with the motto MOBILIS IN MOBILI, the small flags on each table, black with a golden “N”—that gave away the true inspiration behind this place. Falcon allowed himself a smile. More than two centuries since its launch in the pages of Verne’s great novel, Captain Nemo’s Nautilus still sailed seas of imagination. Falcon ­murmured, “You’d have enjoyed this, Jules.”

  And in this elaborate setting, dressed in a crisp civilian suit, smiling at the passengers as they filed into their seats, Matt Springer looked at ease, welcoming, in control. Falcon envied the man for his human grace in this very human company, while Falcon himself skulked in the shadows.

  But he was not alone for long. We
bster soon found him.

  Falcon murmured, “Buddy, if you’re looking for the water fountain, he’s the good-looking fellow in the other corner.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You showed up in the end, then?”

  “Turns out I have some residual good manners. So what do you think of the Sea Lounge? Quite something, isn’t it?”

  Falcon grunted. “It’s like a huge oyster shell. And Matt Springer is the big fat pearl in the middle of it.”

  That made Webster laugh.

  With a gracious smile, Springer settled his hands on the lectern and, speaking without notes, began the show.

  * * * *

  “Madam President, Captain Embleton, friends. Good evening. Thanks for coming. I’m here to tell you the story of Grandpa Seth—who is the reason my family came by its notoriety in the first place, and the reason I had to go all the way to Pluto to carve out a little piece of history of my own.”

  Sympathetic laughter: immediately he had them eating out of his hand. Falcon seethed.

  “I do need to dispel a couple of myths about him. First of all, although my family always referred to him as ‘Grandpa,’ Seth was in fact my great-great-great-great-grandfather, and he never got to meet even his own grandchildren. But his fame extended far beyond his own lifetime, and he was always a kind of presence for the family, so ‘Grandpa’ he will always be.

  “And second, no, Sean Connery didn’t play him in the 1970s movie.” More laughter. “Connery was in the picture, but in another role. A professor from MIT. Sometimes I watch that old drama over again. Shame the science got left on the cutting room floor, but it is fun! And it was the first attempt to dramatise those extraordinary events.

  “What I’m going to show you tonight is the latest attempt to tell that story. Of course, the whole drama was recorded and heavily scrutinised at the time, and later there was a slew of books, autobiographies, technical studies. So with modern processing of the contemporary imagery, and armed with the screeds of psychological analysis of the principals that followed, we can do a pretty good job of reconstruction—we can see how it was to live through those dramatic days, and even get some sense of what the principals must have been thinking and feeling at the time.