Read The Godwhale (S.F. Masterworks) for Free Online Page B

appeared.
    ‘Derelict,’ reported Trilobite. ‘Looks like the body of one of your sister Harvesters.’ Later on he passed over the snake-ribbed remains of an undersea tubeway. Detailed images were sent back to his sand-locked deity. Weeks dragged by. Endless choppy surface waters stretched under empty skies. No fauna. No electromagnetic clues to Man’s presence.
    Trilobite swam cold Arctic waters. His meter-wide body pulsed and listened – charting echoes. Beneath the creaking translucent icepack he found cloudy eddies and took a reading. ‘Life forms in the micron range.’
    ‘Just bacteria. Move on to warmer waters.’
    A black, tropical island dozed silently in the sun. Monotonous surf carried sterile foam on to a white beach. Trilobite drifted offshore with his meter-long tail protruding into the air. The cluster of caudal sensors studied the warm sand and naked soil. Nothing moved. He circled the island, then moved off along the bottom. The sand blended into larger fragments of broken coral and bone, all white, and all being reduced by wave action. Farther out he saw the large humps of dead coral: its empty pits and tunnels stared vacantly like the eyeless sockets of millions of small skulls.
    ‘Deity?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘May I share your memory of this reef when it lived?’
    As Trilobite watched, Rorqual embroidered the stark coral polyps that spangled the chalky bottom. Green ribbons unfolded. Stripes and neons darted about. He enjoyed the vibrant mirage. It had been a long time. His memory cells were too small to hold visuals from when the sea lived. He quickly filed this one before transmission faded and the dull blacks and browns of reality returned.
    ‘Life form!’ called Trilobite. A microvolt potential attracted him to a translucent dome on the sea floor. It sat like a giant jellyfish, thirty yards in diameter, its circumference of stubby legs anchored in the silted bottom. He settled down on its skin, reading the organoid circuits. ‘It lives.’
    ‘It sleeps,’ corrected Rorqual . ‘It is an ancient Rec dwelling. Go under its rim and swim inside. Search for molecular clues of recent Man.’
    The little shovel-shape slid down the dome to the sandy bottom. Scanning, he found old objects under several feet of silt – tools and bone artifacts – but nothing recent. The dome held no air pocket. Its raft rode high against its ceiling. Its hot spot was cold. He sucked and tasted, but his chromatograph found no residues of Man.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Continue searching seaward of the reef.’
    More domes were found. Some slept with their protective potentials. Others had died and lost their translucency as bacterial ooze shrouded their skins. An undersea conduit entered the cluster of domes like a stem to a bunch of grapes. Its shroud of scum told of its death.
    ‘Check the conduit.’
    Trilobite skimmed along the outer skin, vibrating away the sticky opaque debris. Inside he saw a black and white clutter of furniture and intact skeletons, undisturbed by currents. ‘Remains, humanoid – about a meter and a half in length.’
    ‘Follow the tubeway. Try to enter and examine these remains more closely.’
    ‘Yes, deity.’ He charted the conduit along the ocean floor, checking air locks and way stations. It ended in a shaggy tangle of wreckage. The rocky bottom showed a long, straight crack that crossed the tube at right angles, as if a huge knife had sliced tube and floor alike.
    ‘A fault-line,’ said Rorqual . The torn ends of the tube had shifted fifty yards apart as the fault slipped. ‘It happened a long time ago. There are no bones here. The sea has reduced them to ions. Enter.’
    Trilobite followed the lumen, checking ancient wall machines and pipers. Tenuous outlines in the scum suggested bones at a quarter of a mile from the fault. These became gelatinous masses at a mile. He found the first skull two miles further. With these figures, Rorqual calculated the date of the accident from the