The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“We won’t know if it’s worth it or not until we try, will we?” Mina extended a hand. “Look. You’re right in one sense. Chances are pretty good nothing will happen. Normally you have to offer them a gift-a puzzle, or something rich in information. We haven’t got anything like that. What’ll probably happen is we hit the water and there won’t be any kind of biochemical interaction. In which case, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to tell anyone. And if we do learn something, but it isn’t significant-well, we don’t have to tell anyone about that either. Only if we learn something major. Something so big that they’ll have to forget about a minor violation of protocol.”

“A minor violation…?” Naqi began, almost laughing at Mina’s audacity.

“The point is, sis, we have a win-win situation here. And it’s been handed to us on a plate.”

“You could also argue that we’ve been handed a major chance to fuck up spectacularly.”

“You read it whichever way you like. I know what I see.”

“It’s too dangerous, Mina. People have died…” Naqi looked at Mina’s fungal patterns, enhanced and emphasised by her tattoos. “You flagged high for conformality. Doesn’t that worry you slightly?”

“Conformality’s just a fairy tale they use to scare children into behaving,” said Mina. “ ‘Eat all your greens or the sea will swallow you up forever.’ I take it about as seriously as I take the Thule kraken, or the drowning of Arviat. I’m fully aware of the risk.”

“The Thule kraken is a joke, and Arviat never existed in the first place. But the last time I checked, conformality was an accepted phenomenon.”

“It’s an accepted research topic. There’s a distinction.”

“Don’t split hairs…” Naqi began.

Mina gave every indication of not having heard Naqi speak. Her voice was distant, as if she were speaking to herself. It had a lilting, singsong quality. “Too late to even think about it now. But it isn’t long until dawn. I think it’ll still be there at dawn.”

She pushed past Naqi.

“Where are you going now?”

“To catch some sleep. I need to be fresh for this. So will you.”

They hit the lagoon with two gentle, anticlimactic splashes. Naqi was underwater! for a moment before she bobbed to the surface, holding her breath. At first she had to make a conscious effort to start breathing again: the air immediately above the water was so saturated with microscopic organisms that choking seemed a real possibility. Mina, surfacing next to her, drew in gulps with wild enthusiasm, as if willing the tiny creatures to invade her lungs. She shrieked delight at the sudden cold. When they had both gained equilibrium, treading with their shoulders above water, Naqi was finally able to take stock. She saw everything through a stinging haze of tears. The gondola hovered above them, poised beneath the larger mass of the vacuum bladder. The life raft that it had deployed was sparkling new, rated for one hundred hours against moderate biological attack. But that was for mid-ocean, where the density of Juggler organisms would be much less than in the middle of a major node. Here, the hull might only endure a few tens of hours before it was consumed.

Once again, Naqi wondered if she should withdraw. There was still time. No real damage had yet been done. She could be back in the boat and back aboard the airship in a minute or so. Mina might not follow her, but she did not have to be complicit in her sister’s actions. But Naqi knew she would not be able to turn back. She could not show weakness now that she had come this far.

“Nothing’s happening…” she said.

“We’ve only been in the water a minute,” Mina said.

The two of them wore black wetsuits. The suits themselves could become buoyant if necessary-all it would take would be the right sequence of tactile commands and dozens of tiny bladders would inflate around the chest and shoulder area-but it was easy enough to tread water. In any case, if the Jugglers initiated contact the suits would probably be eaten away in minutes. The swimmers who had made repeated contact often swam naked or near naked, but Naqi was not prepared for that level of abject surrender to the ocean’s assault. Nor was Mina.