"That may be a problem for the Deep," Montgomery pointed out. "The Gykr aren't exactly on good terms with the locals."

"Carlyle?" Summerlee said. "Do you have any observations on that?"

"From the Deep's perspective? Nothing hard and fast. I did have the impression that the cuttlewhales have a lot of trouble telling the difference between humans and Gykr. And . . . I gathered that the first Gykr to land opened fire on some cuttlewhales more or less without provocation. That's why the cuttlewhales attacked us, later."

"They can't tell the difference?" Lieutenant Walthers said, chuckling. "Humans, two legs, Guckers, eight or ten or twelve, depending. Can't the damned cuttlewhales count?"

"If you saw something this big," I said, holding up my thumb and forefinger a few millimeters apart, "wiggling and multilegged and squishy looking . . . would you stop to count the legs?"

"Well, I wouldn't just step on it."

"Some people would," Kemmerer said. "And if it was shooting lasers or plasma bolts at you, you might not want to stop and try to have a conversation."

"We know the Gykr have a . . . a tendency to shoot first if they feel threatened," Montgomery observed. "But what do they think about the cuttlewhales now?"

"Right," Ortega said. "Maybe we could pass the Deep and its problems off to them."

"I don't think that would be a good idea," I said. "At least, not from the Deep's point of view."

"Surely a species that evolved in a similar environment-in an under-ice ocean-would be best for dealing with something like the Deep," Ortega said.

"Would the Gykr do anything to help?" Montgomery asked.

"That may not be our problem," Walthers said.

"Well if it's not our problem," I asked, "whose problem is it?" I looked at the skipper. "Ma'am . . . it's in our best interests to help the Deep. Whether it's a life form or some kind of planet-sized organic computer, it has information that spans a billion years! It may have mathematical insights that we can't even dream of, yet! We can't just . . . just turn it over to the Gucks!"

It was a dirty trick, I know, throwing in the human self-interest angle, but it felt like I was losing the group. Some of them were perfectly okay with abandoning the Deep to the tender mercies of the Gucks, and I didn't want to do that. I hadn't exactly promised the Deep that we would help it-at the time, I'd not seen how we could-but now that I knew it was possible, I wanted to see it through.

And there were advantages for the Commonwealth and for Humankind as a whole. I have to admit that in at least a small way I was thinking about my father-a senior vice president of research and development for General Nanodynamics. He'd encouraged me to join the Navy Hospital Corps in the first place because of the chance of my stumbling across something a civilian corporation like General Nan could use . . . something, as he liked to say, that would make us all rich.

I wasn't particularly proud of that thought, though, and I pushed it to the back of my mind. Truthfully, I wanted to help the Deep because doing so was right.

"You had the impression, you said, that the Gykr were afraid of the cuttlewhales?" Summerlee asked.

"They seemed to be associating them with something they called the 'Akr,' " I replied. "I don't know what that is, though. I haven't had time to track that down. But it sounded like the Akr might be something the Gucks really didn't like . . . or something they feared."

"Which was it?" Summerlee asked.

"I'm not sure, ma'am. Maybe both." I frowned. "It's tough reading non-human emotions, y'know?"

"So what the hell is an Akr, anyway?" Ortega wanted to know.

WE HAVE BEEN IN COMMUNICATION WITH THE GYKR ON A MORE OR LESS CONTINUOUS BASIS SINCE THEY ARRIVED, D'deen told us, the words writing themselves across our in-heads. I glanced at the skipper; Walthers had coded the tabletop to repeat his own in-head, so that she could read the M'nangat's words there. APPARENTLY, THEY THINK OF THE AKR IN MUCH THE SAME WAY THAT YOU HUMANS THINK OF 'GOD.'

"Akr is the Guck god?" I said. "Yeah, that makes sense. It sounded like that when we got blasted by the static down there!"

BUT WITH A SINGULAR DIFFERENCE, a different M'nangat, D'dnah, added.

"What difference?" Montgomery wanted to know.

ALTHOUGH WE HAVE ONLY HEARSAY TO GO ON, D'dnah continued, AND ALIEN HEARSAY AT THAT, IT IS LIKELY THAT THE ORIGINAL AKR WAS A VERY LARGE, VERY DANGEROUS SEA CREATURE THAT THREATENED THE GYKR EARLY IN THEIR EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY. IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THEY LEFT THE WATERS OF THEIR PRIMORDIAL SEA, AND TOOK UP RESIDENCE ON LAND-IN DEEP, SUBSURFACE CAVERNS WITHIN THEIR WORLD-IN ORDER TO ESCAPE AKR PREDATIONS.

"They got chased out of the ocean by a fish?" Ortega said.

"If the fish was anything like a cuttlewhale?" I said, grinning. "Two hundred meters long, for a baby one, and hungry? Yeah, I could see that happening."

"These Akr must have made one hell of an impression on the Guckers," Hancock said.

FOR THE GYKR, D'dnah said, THE AKR IS AN ADVERSARIAL GOD . . . A SUPREME BEING TO BE FEARED, A DEITY THAT MADE THEM EVOLVE INTO WHAT THEY ARE BY SEEKING TO DEVOUR THEM.

"Sounds like the vengeful God of some human religions I know," Hancock said. "All fire, brimstone, and holy judgment."

IT IS SIMPLY A DIFFERENT WAY FOR . . . DIFFERENCE FOR . . . DIFF . . .

I waited for D'dnah to complete the thought.

YGHA JSI GDEHG VTFITYFVERT . . .

Word salad, as served by the M'nangat.

"D'dnah?" Summerlee said, looking toward the small group of M'nangat in the far corner, concern on her face. "Are you okay?"

One of the Brocs swayed, suddenly, and collapsed to the deck.

I was already out of my chair and pushing past the other people at the table. The standing Brocs were agitated, their tentacles probing and caressing their fallen compatriot. IT IS HERM'S TIME, D'drevah said. PLEASE! HELP HERM!

I glanced up at the skipper. "You might want to let the Gucks know we have a medical emergency over here," I told her.

"What's wrong?"

"D'dnah is having a baby."

Chapter Twenty-Four.

So why do things like this always happen at the worst possible time?

The hours were trickling away, and in another thirty or so hours we would have to leave Abyssworld . . . or fight for the privilege of staying. At odds of eight to one, this last did not sound like a particularly good choice.

But the alternative-abandoning a billion-year-old super-intelligence to the Gykr-didn't sound all that hot either.

We got D'dnah onto a floater pallet and got herm down to sick bay. On the scanner table, I could see herm's buds . . . three miniature M'nangat that until recently had been growing from the inside wall of the body cavity-literal buds. Apparently, among the M'nangat, the male fertilized the female, and the female passed the zygotes, usually three of them, one of each sex, on to the life carrier, in this case D'dnah. The zygotes attach themselves to the body cavity wall and begin growing, and the life carrier carries the fetus-buds to term.

D'dnah was bleeding internally. I suspect that the emotional stress of the meeting had caused a bud to break free, and maybe that explained why it was happening now, of all possible moments.

Chief Garner had joined me in the sick bay to assist, but I was the doc of the hour, since the M'nangat had requested me, personally, as the attending medic. It was still an honor I would like to have avoided. You see, all the male and female are concerned about is the survival of the newborns. The life carrier is expected to die.

"Does she have to die?" Garner asked.

"Herm," I said, correcting him. "Not she."

I double-checked to make sure that D'dnah had been taken off-line. I didn't want herm hearing the discussion.

A REQUIREMENT? D'deen replied. NO, NOT AS SUCH. THERE ARE LIFE CARRIERS WHO SURVIVE. BUT . . . WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? THEY CAN NEVER CARRY ANOTHER CLUTCH OF BUDS.

"The point?" I said, angry. "How about the fact that D'dnah is a smart, interesting, rational, intelligent being with a right to life?"

WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND . . . 'RIGHT TO LIFE.'

M'nangat attitudes, I was beginning to think, could be compared to those of salmon on Earth. You go through hell to get back to the pond where you were born, you have sex, the female lays her eggs . . . and then there's no reason left to live, so you die. Nature is full of similar examples; after all, what's important is continuing the species, not your quality of life after you give birth. Look at humans . . . as they came in the package, not what we got after we started tinkering with life extension. Like all Earthly animals, they grow up, they reproduce . . . and a few years later, the telomeric time bombs built into human DNA go off, and both the man and woman die.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," I grumbled, "that the M'nangat are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . ."

While I worked, I was injecting a stream of medical nanobots into D'nah's abdomen. I'd done a lot of research on M'nangat anatomy and physiology since that incident in the mining station in low Earth orbit. Their immune system, especially, would tolerate the nanobots okay. Using the table's N-prog link, I programmed them to move in on the bleeders and seal them off. I dispatched another fleet of 'bots to herm's brain. M'nangat pain receptors are different for their nervous system than they are for ours, but my research had suggested that I could cut off the pain signals from herm's body if I could deaden a particular nerve bundle just at the base of the brain. My biggest worry was that in shutting down one set of nerves, I would turn off something really important, like the autonomous neural connections required to keep both of the Broc's hearts beating in synch.

The one bit of good news here was that the M'nangat actually had deoxyribonucleic acid-good old DNA-as a means of expressing genomic characteristics and for controlling cell growth and reproduction. This wasn't as unlikely as it might seem at first glance. We've only encountered a handful of ways of passing on genes or gene equivalents among the extraterrestrial species we've encountered. The Gykr use glycol nucleic acid for the purposeGNA. The Qesh use threose nucleic acid, or TNA, and there are five or six others. A very few, like the Deep, appear not to need genes at all.

But the Brocs use DNA, which crops up a lot as the result of parallel evolution. Because it's flexible and efficient at what it does and comes together naturally and easily from RNA and from nucleotides, its organic precursors. That doesn't mean the Brocs are related to terrestrial life in any way; they just use the same biochemical building blocks as we do.

But the similarity allowed me to fine-tune the nanobots to begin manipulating cells to encourage healing. It also gave me a fair chance of at least dulling the pain D'dnah was feeling right now. I checked the Broc's hearts-beat, and yanked on one tentacle, looking for a response. D'dnah appeared to be unconscious, now, though herm's bodily functions continued to work.

The babies, meanwhile, all three of them, appeared to have latched onto D'dnah's internal organs and were beginning to feed.

I looked up at the two M'nangat hovering nearby. "I'm going to open herm up to get the babies out," I said. "Is there a problem with that?"

D'deen's tentacles writhed helplessly. I DO NOT KNOW. . . .

DO WHAT MUST BE DONE, D'drevah said.

Typical . . . the female in the delivery room cool and calm, the male a helpless wreck.

"I am not going to let D'dnah die," I told them. At least-though I didn't add this out loud-not if I could help it, but I didn't feel that I was on real solid ground, here. I'd had training in human obstetrics-a little, anyway, enough to manage an emergency delivery-but this was a whole new world for me.

SOMETIMES THE LIFE-BEARER LIVES. She said it as if saying that sometimes humans had two heads.

"You just be ready to take the babies when I pull them out. If there's anything you need to do with it to make sure they're healthy, you take care of that. Right?" I certainly wasn't going to give the things a slap to the things' bottoms to get them breathing . . . but if there were other, peculiarly M'nangat rituals to ensure a healthy birth, they would have to do them, not me.

WE ARE READY.

"Is herm ready?"

I BELIEVE THE INJECTION YOU GAVE HERM HAS MADE HERM UNCONSCIOUS.

"That's the idea." I glanced at Chief Garner. "Scalpel . . ."

Chief Garner handed me a laser cutter the size of a pen. Holding it against D'dnah's midsection, I pressed the pressure switch and made a careful slice along the gray-green integument, watching for a physical response. Getting none, I extended the slice, going deeper. We had the sterile field switched on over the table, just to be sure. Despite the similarities in genetics, M'nangat biology is different enough from ours that our bugs shouldn't hurt them and theirs wouldn't hurt us. That's why I was now confident that the nano I was putting into D'dnah wouldn't hurt herm. Still, there would be M'nangat bacteria or other microorganisms on the Haldane simply because they'd been aboard her so the sterile field would protect D'dnah from their bugs now that I had herm opened up.

Black-green liquid welled up out of the incision, copper-based M'nangat blood plus various internal fluids. Garner used a handful of gauze pads to mop the stuff away, but it kept coming. I ordered the nanobots to redistribute themselves, to begin sealing off the new bleeders.

And at that moment, the Haldane lurched violently, there was a crack of thunder, and the sick bay lights winked out.

"What the fuck?" I yelled, pulling back the scalpel. The laser, I noted, no longer had power.

A siren whooped in the darkness, though I wasn't sure what it meant since we already were on full red alert. Then the compartment lights and the laser cutter both came back on. "I'll check," Garner said, closing his eyes. I kept working, opening the incision further. It would have to be large enough for me to get both hands inside. The trouble was the cartilaginous latticework that served as an internal skeleton. I would have to cut through that, or I wouldn't have room to work.

His eyes snapped open. "The Gucks are attacking," he said. "It looks like just warning shots, but I gather that the skipper told them we weren't moving until our medical emergency was over. And the Gykr captain is expressing his displeasure at that idea."

Haldane lurched again. What were they doing, trying to shoot up the ice underneath us? "This would go a lot easier if they wouldn't do that," I said.

There . . . that should be enough. I switched off the scalpel, drew a deep breath, and then reached into the incision with both hands. The cartilage closed in on my wrists. "Retractors," I told Garner.

He used a pair of manual retractors to pull the incision open a bit. I could watch the table's screen, then, watch my hands slip deep inside D'dnah's body and began working their way in toward the first of those damned parasitic babies.

The damned slippery parasitic baby. I could feel it wiggling, but it didn't feel like there was anything convenient to grab and hang on to.

I heard a shrill screech from somewhere overhead, and assumed Captain Summerlee had just returned fire from Haldane's dorsal turret. We were in a bad position, tactically . . . outnumbered eight to one, and we were parked on the ice while the Gykr ships were either in orbit or free to move through the atmosphere at will.

"Uh-oh," Garner said.

"What? Ah! Damn it!" The baby slithered away from my grasp again, tucking its way up behind D'dnah's lower heart. It liked it in there. . . .

"Gykr ground troops. I'm linked in through the ship's outside cameras. I can see a line of those walker tank-things of theirs moving toward us."

There! I had the baby by a handful of tentacles! Holding on with my right hand, I slipped my left farther in, trying to gently untangle the squirming creature from D'dnah's lower heart. I could feel the hearts-rate increasing through my arms. Was herm feeling pain? Or simply reacting to the stress? I didn't know, and couldn't tell.

A sharp, searing pain jolted my right hand and shot up my arm, and I lost hold of the creature. "Fuck!"

"What's wrong?"

"The little bastard bit me!"

From my research, I knew that the baby M'nangat began feeding on the life carrier, drawing blood directly from the interior body wall while they were buds, then breaking free and literally gnawing their way out with a kind of parrot's beak arrangement located among the caudal tentacles. More often than not, they began by feeding on the carrier's internal organs. Usually, the life carrier was dead by the time all three had chewed their way to freedom.

I knew there were some spider species on Earth that exhibited matriphagy-the young eating the mother. Aristotle had written about this charming behavior a couple of thousand years ago, but I'd never expected to see it manifested by sapient species. Nature, however, doesn't much care who gets hurt, so long as the survival of the genes is ensured. And in the case of the M'nangat, of course, it wasn't the mother that was devoured, but the living incubator.

The living, intelligent, self-aware incubator. I shuddered.

I almost pulled out to tend my hand-I was sure I was bleeding-but I was so damned close. I thought I had the knack of it now, and grabbed the writhing bundle of tentacles at the infant's bottom, gently held D'dnah's beating lower heart aside, and pulled. . . .

Again, the Haldane shuddered and the power went down. "They hit the dorsal turret," Garner told me. "We're helpless, now. . . ."