Each of the barrels was gated by objects—many no longer identifiable, but there were bottles and cans, tools, gears, and machine parts among the detritus shaped into barriers.

“The gash in the hull is big enough to let in predators. Barracuda and smaller sharks. They’re keeping themselves secure.”

But it was about more than security. There were decorative elements as well. Some were almost architectural, suggesting peristyles, arcatures, carefully balanced porticos.

The submersible floated over a collection of dozens of barrels, all of them with signs of habitation. Some had fallen in such a way that they were stacked several high, like multi-unit homes or apartment houses. Others lay separate.

“So many,” Evrim said.

“More than Octopolis or Octlantis, the two sites where group behaviors have been observed,” Ha said. “And in closer quarters with one another. They can’t be defending territory, living packed in these barrel apartment houses. This is a group of cooperative animals. Even if only half the barrels are inhabited, we’re looking at … I don’t know…”

“Seventy-four open barrels in this hold that we have seen,” Altantsetseg said. “Half is thirty-seven.”

“How did you…”

“Done automatically. The submersible can categorize and count similar objects. Moving on?”

“Yes. Let’s see if this hold is open to the rest of the ship. But wait. Did you see—”

“Yes,” Altantsetseg said. “Tracking it. Turning that way now.”

Movement, at the edge of the screen.

For a moment Ha thought it was over: again, there would be the flash of motion, the attack on the submersible, and an end to their observation. But the movement was gentle, and not directed at them.

“Pan right,” Evrim said.

“I saw it, too,” said Ha.

There. Atop a rectangular metal container fully colonized by barnacles, two octopuses. One was larger than the other. An adult and a juvenile? The size difference was substantial. The larger one was at least twice the size of the smaller. The larger octopus was raised up vertically, but not elongated into the threat position.

Across its surface flowed a syntax of shapes—a steady sequence of silhouettes—ringed, scrolled, involuted, whorled. The figures danced on the octopus’s skin. The place the two octopuses had chosen was bathed in light by a beam-angle from the penetrated hull, and the patterns across the larger one’s pale skin reminded Ha of the articulated cut-out figures of a shadow play, moving behind a candlelit cloth. Or an early abstract film, drawn shapes projected on a screen.

“It’s beautiful,” Evrim said.

The octopus’s limbs twined in sympathy to the figuration, sometimes as if on their own and sometimes with more purpose. Not unlike the unconscious but integrated gestures of someone speaking at a podium: incidental, but punctuative. In sympathy with the act of speech, accenting it.