A Darkling Sea

[sawyl]

Another one from the list of things I've been meaning to read for a while, this time in the form of James L. Cambias' A Darkling Sea. Set on the bottom of the ocean on the frozen moon orbiting a distant gas giant, it explores what happens when the ideas and ideals of three very different alien species collide. Each of the species gets a narrative viewpoint — the native Ilmatarans get two, one from each end of the spectrum of civilisation — with humanity represented by Robert Freeman, the visiting expedition's video and drone specialist.

Stuck in a claustrophobic research station deep under the ice and prevented from direct contact with the native Ilmatarans by an interstellar treaty with the Sholen, Henri Kerlerec, showboating media scientist and general egomaniac, decides to use a stealth suit to get closer to the aliens than any other human has yet managed. Having managed to cajole Rob Freeman into assisting him, Henri sets out for a nearby settlement and, trusting to his sonar invisibility, places himself among a party of natives. Unfortunately Henri's very invisibility reveals himself to the Ilmatarans who see him as a moving nothingness and Henri finds himself the victim of accidental vivisection at the hands of a curious native. Forced to watch Henri's demise, Rob is understandably traumatised — more so, perhaps, because he disliked the man — and struggles to come back from Henri's death, only succeeding thanks to the gentle help of Alicia Neogri, who goes out of her way to strike up a relationship with him. As Rob eventually returns to something like normal, the station finds itself at the centre of an interstellar incident: a Sholen ship has arrived to investigate Henri's violation of the non-contact treaty.

The second strand of the story unfolds from the point of view of Broadtail, an Ilmataran scientist and a member of the Bitterwater Company of Scholars — the group responsible for killing Kerlerec. A respected landowner at the start of the book, Broadtail is a effectively a gentleman-farmer able to spend his spare time studying the ancient ruins left by his migratory predecessors. When a chance event sees Broadtail stripped of his lands, he throws himself on the mercies of Longpincer, the landowner of Bitterwater, who agrees to sponsor him on an expedition to investigate a set of deepwater ruins in the hope that they will shed some light on the baffling mystery of Kerlerec, who they believe to have been an unknown species. After a semi-disastrous mission and a brief period as a schoolmaster — the Ilmataran young are non-sentient and swim freely until they are large enough to be captured, educated, and brought to society — Broadtail's path finally coincides with that of Freeman and a handful of his fellows from Hitode Station.

The third thread unfolds from Strongpincer's point of view. An uncivilised bully, Strongpincer and his small gang live outside the rules of Ilmataran society, taking what they want from those they are able to raid and running from the militia when they become the hunted. Strongpincer is wily rather than clever and his behaviour contrasts strongly with Broadtail's — when the latter is accused of wrongdoing, he reviews his recollection of events, confirms that he has broken the law, and accepts his punishment as deserved because he is civilised and because his behaviour shows that he respects the rules of civilisation; but the former and his allies, when placed in similar situations merely jeer and insist that might makes right. Inevitably Strongpincer is the antagonist in much of Broadtail's narrative, with their paths crossing relatively frequently, but he also plays an important if unknowing role in the larger intersteller disagreement between the humans and the Sholen.

The final point of view comes from Tirzhos, a mid-ranking member of the Sholen inquiry into events on Ilmatar. Sent down to the surface with Gishora, the expedition's leader, Tirzhos primary interest is in xeno-biology but she almost immediately finds herself pulled in to her leader's political manoeuvrings. Although Gishora, like Tirzhos, is a member of a liberal faction interested in exploring other worlds, he is pragmatic enough to realise that he must play up the humans' culpability in order to placate Irona, his second in command, who is a powerful member of the Interventionist Tendency — a group who wish to push humanity back to the solar system and possibly all the way back to Earth. Thus the investigation quickly takes on the tone of a witch hunt — not helped by various mutual psychological misunderstandings between the two species — that pushes the humans into passive resistance when faced with the Sholens' demands that they leave the planet.

At the various strands of the story gradually weave themselves together, the similarities between the three species and the significant differences in their psychologies come to play an increasingly important part in the eventual resolution of events.

The humans and the Bitterwater Scholars actually share a great deal in common, despite their physiological differences. Both share a deep curiosity about the world around them that the Sholen, with the exceptions of Tirzhos and Gishora, seem to lack. The Ilmatarans come across as nothing quite so much as Enlightenment scholars, discovering the basic elements of empirical science, rediscovering the languages and ideas of antiquity, and updating Classical ideas about the world in line with recent observations. And it is precisely this engagement with the world around them that lead to Longpincer's precipitous vivisection of Henri Kerlerec — an action Broadtail, when he finally comes to understand the nature of humanity, notes they would not have done had they realised Henri was a sentient creature, let alone something fully self-conscious. Similarly, the humans desire to protect Hitode Station and their own research in the face of the increasingly provocative Sholen echoes the Ilmatarans' instinctive desire to hold their own territory; something which helps Broadtail, whose atavistic reaction to a perceived invader led to his own exile, identify with the Rob and his companions.

The Sholen, who share a similar level of technology with humanity and can at least speak the same language, actually find it much harder to understand those whose actions they have come to judge. Part of this may be down to their institutional lack of curiosity, which has prevented them from forming solid models of human psychological responses to particular triggers, and cultural conditioning which drives them to seek a consensus view on every issue — an attitude which fiery xeno-linguist Dickie Graves, not entirely correctly, equates with human fascism.

It is the Sholen desire for common cause that encourages Gishora to play up the invasive, military aspects of the expedition, in order to produce enough evidence of what he believes the Interventionists expect to see that they will be unable to accuse him of a whitewash whilst at the same time keeping back enough to stop them justifying their desire to push humanity back to its home planet. And Tirzhos, who is able to understand Gishora's logic but who has her doubts about the method, finds it hard to disagree with her leader partly out of a desire to maintain consensus and partly due to the sexual bonding that forms the basis of the Sholen's power structures — something that goes particularly wrong when Irona tries to use his own species' approach to friendship on the humans, leading to an appalling scene where he assaults Vikram Sen, the human head of mission, while all the time believing that Sen will respond in the same way as one of his underlings. Instead Sen, who up to this point had been reasonable and committed to passive resistance, is driven to take more direct measures against his oppressors.

All in all A Darkling Sea is a fascinating and engaging book with a pacy plot that also asks some fascinating questions about what it takes for groups to form a common purpose and how large scale political and philosophical differences can be resolved. Very definitely recommended.