Cachalot

  Foster, Alan Dean - Commonwealth 27 - Humanx 06 - Cachalot (v1.0)

  Cachalot by Alan Dean Foster.

  Chapter I

  Mustapha sat on the end of Rorqual Towne and was not seasick. There was nothing any save an outsider would have found remarkable in this. Mustapha had lived all his long life on Cachalot, and those who are born to that world know less of seasickness than a worm does of Andromeda. All born on Cachalot rest in two cradles: their nursery, and the greater nursery of the all-encompassing Mother Ocean. Those who arrived on Cachalot from other worlds did not long remain if they proved susceptible to motion sickness.

  It was a great change, wrought by history and accident, Mustapha thought as he let his burl-dark legs dangle over the side of the dock. They moved a meter or so above the deep green-black water. His ancestors had come from a high, dry section of Earth, where the sea was only a tale told to wide-eyed children. And here he lived, where most of the land was imported.

  His ancestors had been great players of the game. That was his only regret, not being able to carry on the tradition of the game. For where on Cachalot could one find fifty fine horsemen and a dead goat? Mustapha had settled for being a champion water polo player, having mastered that game and its many local variants in his youth. Compared with the game of his forebears, all had been gentle and undemanding.

  Now he was reduced to experiencing less strenuous pleasures, but he was not unhappy. The old-fashioned fishing pole he extended over the water had been hand-wrought in his spare time from a single piece of broadcast antenna. A line played out through the notch cut in the far end, vanished beneath the surface below the dock. The antenna had once served to seek out invisible words from across the sky and water. Now it helped bun find small, tasty fish at far shorter distances.

  Mustapha glanced at the clouds writhing overhead, winced when a drop of rain caught him in the eye. The possible storm did not appear heavy. As always, the sky looked more threatening than it would eventually prove to be. Thunder blustered and echoed, but did not dislodge the elderly fisherman from his place.

  Behind him the town of Rorqual rested stolidly on the surface. The nearest actual land, the Swinburne Shoals, lay thirty meters beneath. For all that, the town sat motionless on the sea. A vast array of centerboards and crossboards and complex counterjets held it steady against the rising chop. Held it steady so as to provide its inhabitants with a semblance of stability, to provide old Mustapha with a safe place to fish.

  The dock was empty now, the catcherboats and gatherers out working. The long stretch of unsinkable gray polymer disappeared beneath a warehouse, the dock being only one of dozens of such supports for the town.

  But there was no counterjet or centerboard to hold the dock completely motionless. Four meters wide and equally thick, it bobbed gently to the natural rhythm of the sea. That was why Mustapha chose to fish from the dock's end instead of from one of the more stable outer streets of the town. When he was playing with the ocean and its occupants, he preferred the feel of their environment. It was a cadence, a viscous march that was as much a part of his life as his own heartbeat.

  The rain began to pelt him, running down his long white hair. He ignored it. The inhabitants of Cachalot's floating towns had water next to their skin as often as air. Here near the equator the fat drops were warm, almost hot on his bare upper chest. They rolled down from his bald forehead and itched in his drooping mustache.

  The pole communicated with his fingers. He lifted it. A small yellow fish wriggled attractively on the hook, its four blue eyes staring dully into the unfamiliar medium in which it now found itself.

  Mustapha debated whether to unhook it, decided the fish would serve him better as bait for larger game. He let the fresh catch drop back into the water. An electronic caller would have drawn more food fish than he could have carried, but such a device would have seemed incongruous functioning in tandem with the hook and line. Mustapha enjoyed fishing in the traditional way. He did not fish for food, but for life.

  An occasional flash of awkward lightning illuminated the dark underbelly of the storm, forming drainage systems in the sky. The flare made candle flames of the wave crests. He knew there was more heat than fury in the discharges. Their frequency told him the storm would not last long. Nor was it the season of the heavy rains.

  Occasional drops continued to wet him. He was alone on the dock. Thirty minutes, he thought, and the sun will be out again. No more than that. Perhaps then I will have more luck.

  So he stayed there in his shorts and mustache and waited patiently for a bite. Some thought the pose and activity undignified for the town's computer-planner emeritus, but that did not bother Mustapha. He was wise enough to know that madness and old age excuse a multitude of eccentricities, and he had something of both.

  A few deserted gathering ships, sleek vessels wide of beam, were secured two docks away from him. A couple of magnetically anchored skimmers bobbed off to his right. Their crews would be on their week of off-duty, he reflected, home with family or carousing contentedly in the town's relaxation center.

  An affectionate but uncompromising type, Mustapha in his early years had tried life with two different women. They had left more scars on him than all the carnivores he had battled in the name of increasing the town's catch.

  His reverie was interrupted by a new, stronger tug at the line. His attention focused on where it intersected the surface. The tug came again, insistent, and the antenna pole curved seaward in a wide arc, its far end pointing like a hunting dog down into the water.

  Mustapha held tight to the metal pole, began cranking the homemade reel. There was a lot of line, and it was behaving oddly. It was almost as if something were entangled in the line itself, not fighting the grip of the hook.

  A shape was barely visible down in the dark water. Whatever it was, it was moving very quickly. It came nearer, growing until it was altogether too large. The old man's eyes grew wide above the gray mustache. He flung away the pole and the laboriously fashioned reel. The rod bounced once on the end of the bobbing pier before tumbling into the water.

  Mustapha ignored it as he ran toward the town. His raised voice was matched by the sudden cry of the town's defense sirens. He did not make it beyond the end of the pier. As it turned out, it would not have made any difference if he had.

  Two days later the first of Rorqual Towne's wandering fisherfleet returned, a gatherer loaded several heads high with the magical Careen plant and many crates of sleset-of-the-permanent-spice. The wealth the cargo represented was now rendered meaningless to the men and women of the ship's crew by what they did not find.

  Though they crossed and recrossed anxiously and tearfully above Swinburne Shoals, they found no sign of Mustapha Ali. Nor did they find their families or sweethearts, not a single one of the eight hundred inhabitants of Rorqual Towne.

  Shattered bits of household goods, a few scraps of clothing, fragments of homes, and pieces of families mixed in with chunks of gray-white eggshell polymer, were all that remained of the town. These, an enigma, and the memory of once happy lives.

  And for some on the woe-laden boat, the worst of it was the knowledge that this was not the first time...

  Far, far above the scrap of green sea once occupied by Rorqual Towne, a vast, quiet shape rested silently in a much more diffuse ocean. The occupants of the bulbous metal form were divorced by time and distance from that oceanic tragedy and its cousins.

  A comparatively tiny, sharp shadow of the gleaming hulk detached itself from the great stern and dropped like a silver leaf toward the atmospheric sea immediately below. Though it displayed the motions normally indicative of life, the shadow was but a dead thing that served to convoy the living, a shuttlecraft falling from the KK drive transport that dwarfed
it like a worker termite leaving its queen.

  The argent arrowhead shape turned slightly. Its rear exuded puffs of white, and the craft began to drop more rapidly, more confidently, toward the world below, a world of all adamantine blue-white, a great azurite globe laced with a delicate matrix of cloud.

  A full complement of twelve passengers stared out the shuttle's ports as the vessel curved into its approach pattern. Some stared at the nearing surface expectantly, thoughts of incipient fortune percolating through their minds. Others were more relaxed. These were the returning inhabitants, sick of space and land, anxious once more to be on the waters. A few regarded the growing sphere with neither anticipation nor greed. They were full of the tales of the strange life and beauty that slid tantalizingly through the planetary ocean.

  Only one stared fixedly at the surface with the gaze of a first-time lover, youthful exhilaration mixing with the calm detachment of the mature scientist. Cora Xamantina kept her nose pressed against the port. An air release below prevented her breath from fogging it.

  Intense reflected light from Cachalot's star made her obsidian skin appear polished behind the glassalloy. It shone on the high cheekbones that hinted at Amerind heritage, on the delicate features almost eclipsed by those protruding structures. Only the vast black eyes, coins of the night, stood out in that heart-shaped face. They darted excitedly from one section of the globe to another. Her hair, tied in a single thick braid that ran to her waist, swung like a pendulum with her movements.

  Physically Cora Xamantina was in her midforties. Mentally she was somewhat older. Emotionally she was aged. She was no taller than an average adolescent and slim to the point of boyishness. A surprisingly deep voice, coupled with a vivacity that was anything but matronly, was all that kept her from being mistaken for a child.

  Even when she was quiet, as she was now, her bands and shoulders seemed always in motion, her body language elegant and personal. She came from stock that included both slaver and slave, both of whose destinies had been molded and sacrificed to the recovery of the sap of a certain tree. Slavers and slaves were part of history long past now. For the most part, sadly, so were the trees.

  She commented frequently on the beauty of the world they were steadily approaching. Her descriptions were intended for the younger woman seated next to her. For the most part, they were accepted with an air of helpless resignation by the taller, far more voluptuous shadow of herself. Where Cora's movements were frequent and full of nervous energy, those of the younger woman were all languorous stretchings and physical sighs. She cradled a peculiar and very special musical instrument in her arms and made no attempt to appear anything other than bored.

  "Isn't it beautiful, Rachael?" Cora leaned back in her deceleration lounge. "Here-lean over and you can see, too." The enervated siren made no move to peer outward. "Don't you want to see? We're going to be living down there, you know."

  "Only temporarily." She sighed tiredly. "I know what Cachalot looks like, Mother. God knows how many tapes of it you've made me study since you found out we were being assigned there. Maybe I have got a year's work left to finish at the Institute, but I still know how to do homework." Her eyes turned to study the narrow aisle running down the center of the shuttle. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get back to Terra and the better I'll like it!"

  "Is that all you can think of to say, girl? We're not even down yet and already you can't wait to leave?"

  "Mother... please!" It was a warning.

  "All right." Cora made calming gestures with mannequin hands, the long fingers fluttering restrainingly. "I'm not asking for commitment until we've been down there for a while. You're only my special assistant on this assignment, just as it says in the directive. The fact that you're also my daughter is incidental."

  "Fine. Suits me fine."

  "Just try to keep an open mind, that's all."

  "I'll try, Mother. I've said that for six years now. Another few months seems fair."

  "Good. That's all I ask." Cora turned her attention back to the port, the view drawing her insistently, soothing her, massaging away the concern she felt for her daughter's future. And the guilt.

  She had been pushing, cajoling, Rachael for three years of advanced work in extramarine biology. The girl's reports were good, her work was good-dammit, she was good! She has all the tools, Cora thought. More than I do, and without bragging, that's saying something. She lacks only one thing, a single ingredient that keeps her from embarking on a brilliant career in the same field as mine: enthusiasm.

  Cora had gotten that from Silvio. Ah, Silvio... "Keep an open mind, Cora," he had always told her. And she had kept an open mind. She had kept it so open that she lost him to another woman. To a string of other women. And then he had died, his enthusiasm for life and loving having proved incapable of finally saving him.

  No, she told herself firmly. He lost me. Not the other way around. She still missed him, from time to time. Brilliant he had not been. Nor had he been especially handsome, or rich, or a sexual magician. What he had been, she thought, startled at the sudden knot that had formed in her chest, was enthusiastic. About everything. And comfortable. He had been oh so comfortable. Like her battered old Nymph underwater camera, the fraying Elatridez Encyclopedia of Commonwealth Marine Life, the voodoo necklace her great-grandmother had given her on her second birthday-which she still wore, incongruously, around her neck-Silvio had been comfortable.

  She missed having him around, just as she would have missed the encyclopedia or the necklace. Lots of other women probably missed him also. She had kept an open mind, though. Each time. Until after Rachael was born. The funny thing was, Silvio never truly understood the reason behind her fury. He liked everyone and everything-too much. But then he had died. The hurt had died with him. Now she was only occasionally plagued by a hurt of a different kind.

  As it kissed the outer fringe of atmosphere, the shuttle lurched slightly. Below was the culmination of a dream, of twenty years' hard work. She had performed well for the various companies that had employed her, even better when the government services called on her expertise. Twenty years of choosing exploitable salt domes. A year on the anthology of poisonous Riviera system marine life. Four years of arduous work among the seallike natives of Largesse, then back to still more dull, boring government research. Always she had kept up with the latest techniques, the latest developments and discoveries. Always wishing for something that could carry her to the mecca of all marine biologists: Cachalot.

  Now that goal had been realized. The ocean world lay close beneath her, shining with nacreous beauty, awaiting her with promises of wonder and a mystery yet to be solved. If anything could ignite the genius that Cora knew lay hidden inside her daughter's head, it would be Cachalot.

  Though she continued to press against the port and search hard with those huge and sensitive eyes, she could not locate any of the widely scattered islands that were the only land on Cachalot. Nor were the isolated islands formed of rock or stone. On Cachalot, the eternal war of wave and cliff had long ago been decided in favor of the wave. Tiny creatures called hexalates left behind their hard exoskeletons, building atolls and reefs much like the corals of Earth.

  There was nothing that could be called a continent, though in places the oceans were quite shallow, if never for any great extent. All that showed above water from Cora's present position were the bright mirror-white patches at opposite poles, ice packs tense on the water. They were far smaller than those of Earth.

  Cora pointed them out to Rachael, who responded by picking indifferently at the strings of her neurophon.

  "Stop that." Cora frowned at her. "You know better than that."

  Rachael wrinkled her brow. "Oh, Mother... I've got the projection matrix turned off and the power way down. I can't possibly bother the shuttle."

  But Cora had experienced a telltale if fault tingle along her spine. "Your axonics are lit. I felt it. You might disturb the other passengers."
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  "I haven't heard any complaints," Rachael said softly. But she touched several contact points on the chordal dendritics, cut final power. She plucked petulantly at one string. It produced a normal musical tone that drifted through the cabin. Several passengers turned back to look at her.

  Cora's nerves did not respond. Satisfied, she returned her gaze to the port.

  Rachael was sharp enough to find nonverbal ways to show her unhappiness. Cora told herself that her daughter knew damn well that playing a neurophon in an unsealed room on board any craft was against all flight rules. It would have been bad enough on board the liner-transport they had just left. In a shuttle, where the descent was a matter of delicate, critical adjustments by pilot and machine, it could have placed them in deep trouble. Rachael was fooling with her damnable toy only to irritate her mother, Cora knew. It would be so much better for her if she would simply disown the instrument. It occupied far too much of her study time. Cora had tried to persuade her to abandon the device. She had tried only once. It had become an obsession with her daughter, and more than that, a surrogate larynx. Rachael knew she couldn't battle her mother with words, so she would sometimes counter an argument by sulking and speaking only with the nerve music. Her daughter was turning into a tonal ventriloquist.

  A polite, slightly tense voice came from the cabin speaker. "Brace for heavy atmosphere, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you."

  Cora made certain her harness was properly secured. She gripped the arms of her lounge and leaned back. For a few minutes there was nothing of note, then a sharp bump. A second, a stomach-queasing drop, and then they were coasting gently through clear blue sky. She eased her grip on the lounge arms and looked out the port.

  The whirlpool of a small cyclone appeared beneath them, raced past and behind. Clouds of all shapes and sizes flew by, and once, only once, she thought she saw a bright flash that might have hidden an island. She hunted through her memory for the details of Cachalot's topography she had force-fed herself, finally decided the brightness had been a low cumulus cloud and not land.