Startide Rising

  I hope she hurries. Being a commander is more complicated than I'd ever imagined. I have to make sure everything is done in the right order and correctly, and all as unobtrusively as possible, without making the fen feel "the old lady" is hovering over them. It makes me wish I had some of the military training Tom got while I was away in medical school.

  Less than thirty hours and we'll reach the Thennanin shell. Suessi says they'll be ready for us. Meanwhile, we have scouts out, and Wattaceti paces us overhead in a detection sled. His instruments show very little leakage, so we should be safe for now.

  I'd give a year's wages for Hikahi or Tsh't, or even Keepiru right now. I'd never understood, before, why a captain treasures a good executive officer so much.

  Speaking of captains. Ours is a wonder.

  Creideiki seemed to be in a daze for a long time, after getting out of sick bay. But his long conversation with Sah'ot appears to have roused him. I don't know what Sah'ot did, but I would never have believed a person so severely damaged as Creideiki could be so vigorous, or make himself so useful.

  When we lifted off he asked to be allowed to supervise the scouts and flankers. I was desperate for a reliable fin to put in charge out there, and thought that having him visible could help morale. Even the Stenos were excited to have him about. Their last bitterness over my "coup" -- and Takkata-Jim's exile -- seem to have dissipated.

  Creideiki is limited to the simplest calls in Trinary, but that seems to be enough. He's out there now, zipping about in his sled, keeping things orderly by pointing, nudging, and setting an example. In only a few hours Tsh't should rendezvous with the scouts we sent ahead, and then Creideiki can come back aboard.

  There's a tiny light on my comm that's been flashing since I returned. It's that crazy Tymbrimi Niss machine. I've been keeping the damned thing waiting.

  Tom wouldn't approve, I guess. But a fem has only so much strength, and I've got to take a nap. If the matter were urgent it would have broken in and spoken by now.

  Oh, Tom, we could use your endurance now. Are you on your way back? Is your little glider even now winging home to Toshio's island?

  Who am I fooling? Since the first psi-bomb we've detected nothing, only noise from the space battle, some of it indicating fighting over his last known position. He's set off none of the message globes. So either he's decided not to send an ambiguous message or worse....

  Without word from Tom, how can we decide what to do, once we enter the Seahorse? Do we take off and try our luck, or hide within the hulk as long as we can?

  It will be Hikahi's decision when the time comes.

  Gillian closed the journal and applied her thumbprint to the fail-safe self-destruct. She got up and turned off the light.

  On her way out of the lab, she passed the stasis-bier of the ancient cadaver they had reclaimed at such cost from the Shallow Cluster. Herbie just lay there grinning under a tiny spotlight, an ancient enigma. A mystery.

  A troublemaker.

  Battered, battle-scarred, Streaker moved slowly along the valley floor, her engines turning over with gentle, suppressed power. A dark, foamy mist rose below her where impellers kicked up the surface ooze.

  The nubby cylinder slid over gloomy black rills and abysses, skirting the edges of seamounts and valley walls. Tiny sleds paced alongside, guiding the ship by sonar-speak.

  Creideiki watched his ship in motion once again. He listened to the clipped reports of the scouts and sentries, and the replies of the bridge staff. He couldn't follow the messages in detail; the sophisticated technical argot was as out of reach to him as last year's wine. But he could sense the under-meaning; the crew had things well in hand.

  Streaker couldn't really shine in this light, dim and blue, fifty meters down, but he could listen -- his own sonar clicked softly in accompaniment as he savored the deep rumble of her engines, and he imagined he could be with her when she flew again.

  : Never Again Creideiki : You Shall Never Fly With Her Again :

  The spectre, K-K-Kph-kree, came into being gradually alongside him, a ghostly figure of silver and sonic shadows. The presence of the god did not surprise, or even bother Creideiki. He had been expecting It to come. It swam lazily, easily keeping pace alongside the sled.

  : You Escaped Us : Yet Now You Purposely Sculpt Me Out Of Song : Because Of The Old Voices You Heard? : The Voices From Below? :

  : Yes :

  Creideiki thought not in Anglic or Trinary, but in the new language he had been learning.

  : There is ancient anger within this world : I have heard its song :

  The dream-god's great brow sparkled starlight. Its small jaw opened. Teeth shone.

  : And What Do You Plan To Do? :

  Creideiki sensed that It already knew the answer.

  : My Duty : He replied in Its own speech.

  : What Else Can I Ever Do? :

  From the depths of the Whale Dream, It sighed approval.

  Creideiki turned up the gain on his hydrophones. There were faraway excited echoes from up ahead -- joyous sounds of greeting.

  Creideiki looked at his sled's sonar display. At the far edge of its range was a small cluster of dots coming inward. They joined the specks that were Streaker's scouts. The first group had to be Tsh't's party from the Seahorse.

  Making sure no one was nearby to take note, he turned his sled aside into a small side canyon. He slipped behind the shadows of a rock outcrop and turned off his engine. He waited then, watching Streaker pass below his aerie, until she vanished, along with the last of her flankers, around a curve in the long canyon.

  "Good-bye ..." He concentrated on the Anglic words, one at a time. "Good-bye ... and ... good luck ..."

  When it was safe, he turned on his sled and rose out of the little niche. He swung about and headed northward, toward the place they had left twenty hours before.

  : You Can Come Along If You Like : he told the god -- part figment of his mind, part something else. The ghostly figure answered in un-words made up from Creideiki's own sonar sounds.

  : I Accompany You : I Would Not Miss This For The Song of the World :

  PART SEVEN

  The Food Chain

  "Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea."

  "Why, as men do aland -- the great ones eat up the little ones."

  -- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  King Richard the Second

  73 ::: Akki

  It was a scream that curdled his marrow. Only a monster could make a sound like that. He fled it almost as hard as he fled the creature that voiced it.

  By noontime Akki realized it was nearly over.

  His exhaustion showed in a laboring heart and heavy breathing, but also in a painful sloughing of the outer layers of his skin. His allergic reaction to the water seemed to be aggravated by fatigue. It had grown worse as he frantically dodged in and out amongst tiny islets. His once-smooth, dynamically supple hide was now a rough mass of sores. His mind felt little more agile than his body.

  Several times he had escaped traps that should have left him meat. Once he had fled a sonar reflection almost into K'tha-Jon's jaws. The giant had grinned and flourished his laser rifle as Akki turned away frantically. It hadn't been by speed or cleverness that Akki escaped. He realized that his enemy was just toying with him.

  He had hoped to flee northward, toward Toshio's island, but now he was all turned around, and north was lost to him. Perhaps if he could wait until sunset ...

  No. I won't last that long. It's time to end it.

  The chilling hunt-scream pealed out again. The ululation seemed to coagulate the water around him.

  A large part of Akki's fatigue had come from the involuntary terror that cry sent through him. What devil was it, that chased him?

  A little while ago he thought he had distantly heard another cry. It sounded like a Tursiops search call. But he was probably imagining things. Whatever was going on back at Streaker, they couldn't have spared anyone to look for him. Even if they ha
d, how could anyone ever find him in this wide ocean?

  He had done Streaker one service, in distracting the monster K'tha-Jon, in leading him away from where he could do worse harm.

  I hope Gillian and Hikahi got back and straightened things out, he thought. I'm sure they did.

  He took quiet breaths in the shadow of a rock cleft. K'tha-Jon knew where he was, of course. It was only a matter of time until he grew bored with the chase and came to collect his prey.

  I'm fading, Akki thought. I've got to finish this while there's a chance to win something from it -- even if it's just the honor of choosing my own time to die.

  He checked the charge on his harness cells. There was only enough for two good shots from his cutter torch. Those would have to be from very short range, and no doubt K'tha-Jon's rifle was almost fully charged.

  With his harness-hands Akki plugged his breather back over his blowmouth. Ten minutes of oxygen remained. More than enough.

  The high scream echoed again, chilling, taunting.

  All right, monster. He clenched his jaw to keep from shivering again. Hold your horses. I'm coming.

  74 ::: Keepiru

  Keepiru raced to the northeast, toward the battle sounds he had heard during the night. He swam hard and fast at the surface, arching and thrusting to drive through the water. He cursed at the drag of his harness, but to drop it was unthinkable.

  Once again he cursed the damnable luck. Both his and Moki's sleds were used up, worthless, and had to be left behind.

  As he entered the maze of tiny islands, he heard the hunt-scream clearly for the first time.

  Until now he could tell himself he was imagining things that distance or some strange refraction in the water had tricked him into hearing what could not be.

  The screeching cry pealed out, reflecting from the metal-mounds. Keepiru whirled, and it momentarily seemed a pack of hunters was all around him.

  Then came another sound, a brave and very faint skirr of distant Trinary. Keepiru swung his jaw about, chose a direction, and swam for all he was worth.

  His muscles flexed powerfully as he streaked through the maze. When a rasping buzz told him his breather was near empty, he cursed as he popped the thing loose, and continued his dash along the surface, puffing and blowing with each driving arch.

  He came to a narrow meeting of channels and swung about in confusion.

  Which way! He swiveled about until the hunt cry echoed once more. Then there was a terrible crashing sound. He heard a squeal of outrage and pain, and the soft whine of a harness in operation. Another faint Trinary challenge was answered by a shivering scream and another crash.

  Keepiru sprinted. It couldn't be far! He dashed, sparing none of his reserves, just as there came a final call of exhausted defiance.

  * For the honor

  Of Calafia ... *

  The voice disappeared under a scream of savage triumph. Then there was silence.

  It took him another five minutes, frantically casting about the narrow passages, to find the battleground. The taste of the water, when Keepiru sped into the quiet strait, told him he was too late.

  He caught up short and stopped just short of entering a small vale between three metal-mounds. Coppery strands of dangle-weed floated overhead.

  Pink froth spread from the center of the tiny valley, with streamers of red in the direction of the prevailing currents. At the center, enmeshed in a tangle of wrecked harness parts, the body of a young amicus neo-fin, already partly dismembered, drifted belly up, teased and tugged at by the red jaws of a giant dolphin.

  A giant dolphin? How, in all the time since they had left Earth, had he not noticed this before? He desperately reattached a fresh breather from his harness, and took gasping breaths while he watched and listened to the killer.

  Look at the deep countershading, he told himself. Look at the short jaw, the great teeth, the short, sharp dorsal fin.

  Listen to him!

  K'tha-Jon grunted contentedly as he ripped a piece from Akki's side. The giant didn't even appear to notice the long burn along his left flank, or the bruise slowly spreading from the point where Akki's last desperate ramming had come home.

  Keepiru knew the monster was aware of him. K'tha-Jon lazily swallowed, then rose to the surface for air. When he descended he looked right at Keepiru.

  "Well, Pilot?" he murmured happily.

  Keepiru used Anglic, though the breather muffled the words.

  "I've just dealt with one monster, K'tha-Jon, but your devolution fouls our entire race."

  K'tha-Jon's derision was a series of high snorts.

  "You think I have reverted, like that pathetic Stenosss Moki, don't you, Pilot?"

  Keepiru could only shake his head, unable to bring himself to say what he thought the bosun had become.

  "Can a devolved dolphin speak Anglic as well as I?" K'tha-Jon sneered. ".Or use logic thisss way? Would a reverted Tursiops, or even a pure Stenosss, have pursued an air breathing prey with such determination ... and satisssfaction?

  "True, the crisis of the last few weeks allowed something deep within me to burssst free. But can you truly listen to me and then call me a devolved dolphin?"

  Keepiru looked at the pink froth around the giant's stubby, powerful jaws. Akki's corpse drifted away slowly with the tide.

  "I know what you are, K'tha-Jon." Keepiru switched to Trinary.

  * Cold water boils

  When you scream

  * Red jawed hunger

  Fills your dream.

  * Harpoons slew

  The whales,

  * The nets of Iki

  Caught us,

  * Yet you, alone

  We feared at night

  * You alone --

  ... Orca.

  K'tha-Jon's jaw gaped in satisfaction, as if he were accepting an accolade. He rose for air and returned a few meters closer to Keepiru, grinning.

  "I guessssed the truth some time ago. I am one of the prized experiments of our beloved human-patron Ignacio Metz. That-t fool did one great thing, for all of his ssstupidity. Some of the others he snuck into berths on Streaker did revert or go mad. But I am a successs ... ."

  "You are a calamity!" Keepiru spluttered, prevented by the breather from using other words more to the point.

  K'tha-Jon drifted a few meters closer, causing Keepiru to back away involuntarily. The giant stopped again; a satisfied clicking emanated from his brow.

  "Am I, Pilot? Can you, a simple fish-eater, understand your betters? Are you worthy to judge one whose forebears were at the top-p of the ocean food-chain? And dealt as judges of the sssea with all your kind?"

  Keepiru was hardly listening, uncomfortably aware of the vanishing distance between himself and the monster.

  "You arrogate t-too much. You have only a few gene splices from ..."

  "I am ORCA!" K'tha-Jon screamed. The cry echoed like a high paean of bugles. "The superficial body is nothing! It is the brain and blood that matter. Listen to me, and dare deny what I am!"

  K'tha-Jon's jaw-clap was like a gunshot. The hunt cry pealed forth and Keepiru, under its direct focus, felt a deep instinct well up, a desire to tuck himself inward, to hide or die.

  Keepiru resisted. He forced himself to assume an assertive body stance and bite out words of defiance.

  "You are devolved, K'tha-Jon! Worse, you are a mutant thing, with no heritage at all. Metz's grafts went bad. Do you think-k a true Orca would do what you've done? They do hunt fallow dolphins on Earth, but never when sssated! The true killer whale does not kill out of spite!"

  Keepiru defecated and flicked it in the giant's direction with his flukes.

  "You are a failed experiment, K'tha-Jon! You say you're still logical, but now you have no home. And when my report gets back to Earth your gene-plasm will be poured into the sewers! Your line will end the way monsters end."

  K'tha-Jon's eyes gleamed. He swept Keepiru with sonar, as if to memorize every curve of an intended prey.

  "Wh
at gave you the idea you were ever going to reportt-t?" he hissed.

  Keepiru grinned open-mouthed. "Why, the simple fact that you are a crippled, insane monster whose blunt snout couldn't stave in cardboard, whose maleness satisfies only pool-gratings, bringing forth nothing but stale water ... "

  The giant screamed again, this time in rage. As K'tha-Jon charged Keepiru whirled and darted into a side channel, fleeing just ahead of the powerful jaws.

  Tearing through a thick hedge of dangle-weed, Keepiru congratulated himself. By taunting K'tha-Jon into a personal vendetta he had made the creature forget entirely about his harness ... and the laser rifle. K'tha-Jon obviously intended to kill Keepiru the way he had finished off Akki.

  Keepiru fled a bare body length ahead of the mutant.

  So far so good, he thought as the sparkling metal hillsides rushed past.

  But it proved hard to shake his pursuer. And the menacing jaws made Keepiru wonder if his strategy had been so wise, after all. The chase went on and on, while the afternoon waned. As the sun set they were at it, still.

  In the darkness, it became purely a battle of wits and of sound.

  The nocturnal denizens of the archipelago fled in dismay as two swift foreign monsters streaked in and out of the inter-island channels, swerving and darting in streaming clouds of bubbles. As they swept by, they sprayed the depths and shallows with complex and confusing patterns of sound -- compounded images and vivid illusions of echoes. Local fishes, even the giants, fled the area, leaving it to the battling aliens.