Cachalot

  The did neither. Instead, the obsessed dozen vanished with appalling speed. She blinked, wondering if her vision was at fault. Not only were her suitors gone, they all were gone, as if they had never been there. Thirty thousand azure and vermilion globes had disappeared as if cut off by the turning of a single biological switch.

  Chapter XI

  For several long, horrifying moments she was utterly alone, suspended in black limbo save for the penetrating beam of her hand light.

  Then she made out other swimming, yellow forms and their individual hand beams.

  "What was that?" she inquired of everyone in general and no one in particular via her mask broadcast unit. "What happened?"

  "Where did they go?" Rachael asked, sounding concerned.

  "Did we frighten them?" Merced appeared on her right. The five figures came together.

  "Dawn, I thought you said that there are no large predators in here." Predators did seem a likely explanation for the cephalopods' reaction. They would douse their lights and scatter for shelter.

  "I don't think there are, Cora." The girl sounded curious, not defensive, which was why Cora was inclined to believe her.

  They were interrupted by a flash of dull light from overhead. Cora wasn't the only one who experienced an instant of panic before the explanation reached them in the form of a low rumble of thunder, muted by the water.

  "Lightning," she muttered. "Could that scare them?"

  "It's possible," Dawn agreed. "I'm not enough of a specialist to be able to say."

  "Possible perhaps." Cora recognized Merced's thoughtful tone. "But why should other light startle them that way, when they generate such an immense display themselves? Maybe that particular wavelength?..."

  As she listened, Cora was distracted by a peculiar tickling inside her head. It was almost familiar. She had the strangest sensation-Then she felt herself being moved forcefully to one side.

  But no hand had touched her, not even Sam 's massive ones. As enormous volume of water had been displaced somewhere nearby. Yet Dawn continued to insist on the absence of large predators. Maybe the girl was no specialist, but Cora granted her the benefit of local experience, which she knew was often worth much more than theoretical studies.

  But there was something. She sensed it, felt it through her suit. It had moved a mountain of ocean and frightened the milling cephalopods into instant oblivion.

  Another flash from above momentarily lit the translucent water, a second dim rumble echoing forever behind. She briefly saw her companions outlined in light blue. Still no sign of anything else. Only gleaming hexalates and nothing more. Whatever had terrified the cephalopods had done the same to all other local motile life.

  In the center of Vai'oire was a tall, thin building within which was a dense assemblage of the most complex machinery in the town.

  Two men monitored the instruments. They were conscientious and attentive to their tasks. One was presently visiting with a member of the opposite sex in a corridor just off the main chamber. His companion remained behind, until he decided that it was vital he attend momentarily to certain critical bodily demands.

  No one saw the dial on one panel swing from one end to the other. No one saw a fluorescent grid suddenly swarm with electronic pollen. The aural alarms went off seconds later. Alert functions were beyond the immediate reach of the busily occupied man in the corridor. Ignoring pants and awkwardness, his partner in the bathroom rushed for the general alarm. He was also seconds too late, as the general alarm system, the men, the building, and the community of Vai'oire began to disintegrate.

  Cora rested in the water, puzzled by the inexplicable sudden swell. Hasty questions and theories were exchanged by the five swimmers. Before any conclusion could be agreed upon, the water around them fragmented into a dozen arguing whirlpools, accompanied by a continuous, modulated rumble.

  Cora was thrown about like an ant in a storm. She kicked frantically to recover her equilibrium before the turbulence threw her against an outcropping of sharp reef. In the darkness and chaos something locked onto her right arm. Water pulled the opposite way. She felt as if her arm would be torn from its socket and screamed inside the face mask.

  But the grip held her tight. Looking around, she saw the contorted, straining face of Sam Mataroreva behind his faceplate. His other arm was locked around the protruding spine of a hexalate bemmy. Another figure also clung tightly to the formation: Rachael.

  Then Sam had drawn her back to the sheltered side of the growth. The water there was still angry and confused, but the violence that had tossed Cora was greatly diminished.

  As the rumbling continued, rising and falling to no recognizable pattern, Cora thought of a seaquake. She suggested it to Sam.

  "Can't be," he replied, sounding tired and frustrated. "Not that these old seamounts aren't subject to seismic disturbances-they are. But this one's too localized. We would be feeling the effects more where we are right now, more toward the center of the mount and the reef. Instead, the disturbance is offshore, toward the deeps."

  Other figures fought their way toward the three refugees. First Merced, then Dawn, drifted past. Like a hesitant fisherman, Sam swam out to aid first one, then the other. Soon all the swimmers were huddled fearfully behind the protective mass of the bemmy.

  "It's definitely coming from the area of the town," Mataroreva murmured. "I'm going up. Maybe I can see something."

  "Me, too."

  He looked at Cora's glowing, tiny form, said nothing. Then he was swimming surfaceward, keeping safely behind the bulk of the formation. Cora followed.

  As they neared the surface the turbulence increased considerably. Cora had to climb upward, keeping a constant grip on the hexalate protrusions lest the surge knock her from its protective mass. The disturbance did not suggest a storm.

  They broke the surface. This time Cora almost lost her grasp as a huge swell smashed into her. It knocked her face mask askew and she had to fight to clear and reposition it. A fresh flash of lightning lit the roiling waters and unmuted thunder assailed her exposed head. It was raining steadily, but the wind was moderate. The violence of the waves allowed them barely half a minute above the water, which was sufficient to imprint forever on her memory the fantastic images before them.

  Bits and pieces of the town of Vai'oire were floating past and around them. Violent smashing sounds mixed with a few faint, distant screams and the action of wind and wave. All of the town lights had gone out, including those independently powered.

  Four colossal, monolithic forms rose from the water like a piece of the planet's crust. Breaching in unison, the quartet of blue whales fell simultaneously onto what remained of the now exposed central portion of the town. Huge sections of plastic wall and roof exploded in all directions. Something irregular and heavy made a whooshing noise as it flew past Cora's head, to land in the water far behind her. Something smaller wanged metallically off the front of the bemmy. Then Sam was practically dragging her below.

  The rumbles continued to assail the swimmers, reaching their hiding place in the depths. The noise was growing fainter as Cora numbly informed the others, "We thought it was people, but it's been the whales all along. I was so sure a human agency was responsible."

  "Then the catodon lied to us." Rachael treaded water slowly.

  "Lumpjaw insisted he knew nothing. Maybe they don't."

  "Probably not." Mataroreva's face was ashen behind the mask. "What the old one said to us about the baleen whales being incapable of mounting such a coordinated enterprise is damn true. Yet you and I just saw four of them operating in perfect unison. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they were going about it as methodically as any intelligent military group could. I'm pretty sure I had a glimpse of a couple of humpbacks working off to the west. Humpbacks! They're usually as gentle as children. If we'd been able to look around, I suspect we would have found fins and seis and minkes and all the other baleens out there, too.

  "But I didn't see an
y toothed whales, and I was looking for catodons. Until we have proof they were involved, I'm not going to condemn them with their less intelligent cousins."

  Dawn's voice was agonized. "How can you hold the baleens responsible? I'll bet the catodons are controlling them, directing them! It's all!..."

  Mataroreva shook her. "I know this doesn't make any sense. Crazy-it's all crazy. Let's not fantasize, though. Let's stick with what we know."

  "What about our defenses?" she mumbled. "Someone... we should have detected the approach in plenty of time to give the alarm."

  Mataroreva considered. "The whole business was planned perfectly from beginning to end. They knew exactly what they were doing. Probably they hit the defense center first. What went wrong there is something we'll never learn."

  "How could a bunch of dumb baleens know all that?" Dawn moaned.

  "Someone must be telling them. Someone has to, unless..." He hesitated, then went on. "Unless the baleens and the catodons, all of them, have been hiding abilities and desires we know nothing about."

  "That's a pretty far-fetched hypothesis," Cora commented.

  "I'm willing to accept a better one."

  "Could a human agency somehow be controlling the baleens?"

  "I don't see how." But she could see he was seriously considering the idea. "No group of humans could so completely dominate and direct a pod of intelligent whales. Not by any known technique." His hand gestured, a glowing pointer in the water.

  "There must be a couple of hundred cetaceans functioning in chorus out there to generate such total destruction in so short a time. No wonder the other towns never even had time to send out a warning."

  "I think we'd all do well to be silent for a while."

  Merced was looking away from them, around the hexalate tower.

  "Why?" Cora asked.

  He pointed toward the town, to where the reef sloped off into deeper water. "I think I just saw something move."

  They went quiet, huddling together tight against the finger of silicate. The rumbles had vanished, and the water, though still disturbed, was silent.

  Cora couldn't be certain, but she thought she saw a great silver-gray wall sliding past in the blackness. It was only a dim outline on the far boundaries of perception. She cursed then- gelsuits' irrepressible luminescence. The sight reminded her of nothing so much as a shark on patrol, and she shuddered, cold now despite the warming efficiency of the suit.

  The outline faded into the blackness from which it had emerged, but they continued to stay bunched together and silent. With their suits automatically assisting in respiration, they might have slept in shifts, those awake monitoring the regulators of their somnolent companions. They tried to do so, but no one could fall asleep. The gelsuits could modulate air and warmth but could do nothing where fear was concerned.

  Gradually, an eternity later, the water around them began to lighten. The storm had long since moved on. Sunlight was once more turning the water to glass, sparkling off the brilliant reef growths. The day swimmers appeared, poking at crevices in the hexalates for food and amusement. Long, multihued fronds hesitantly unfolded from their hiding places, began to strain the water for microscopic sustenance.

  All was normal save for the presence of thousands of inorganic objects drifting on the surface. Some sank slowly past the five tired swimmers, who made their way carefully to the light. Around them drifted the remnants of the town of Vai'oire, shattered and torn.

  Sections of housing, packages, clothes, and personal effects bobbed eerily on the gentle current. Meter-square hunks of polymer raft dominated the flotsam like miniature icebergs. The superstrong polymer had a breaking point of several tons per square meter, a point which the rampaging cetaceans had handily exceeded.

  Incongruously human in the sea of technological corpses, a doll drifted past. It was half sunk, badly waterlogged already. Its head was bent and hung beneath the surface. Cora shied away from it as if it could poison her through the water.

  They remained next to the crest of the bemmy, hanging onto it as they studied in stunned silence the section of sea where the town had been anchored.

  Considering that all her friends and associates, perhaps relatives as well, had been killed, Dawn was holding together surprisingly well.

  "I'm going to hunt for survivors," Mataroreva announced.

  "What about remaining cetaceans?"

  He started swimming around the bemmy, looked back at Cora. "I don't think so. I don't see any plumes or backs. Not a fin in sight. They finished their work last night."

  Fin... fin... the way he said it made Cora think of something else. Then she had it. There was no sign of either Latehoht or Wenkoseemansa. Yet she had been told the cetaceans did not fight among themselves. The cooperative action of the different whales the previous night proved as much. But the effort itself, the hostile premeditated attack by the herd of cetaceans, was so unprecedented that she wouldn't be surprised to learn that the baleens had killed the two orcas because they had been working alongside mankind.

  Come to think of it, the orcas had been on patrol last night but had sounded no warning. Were they dead, or in league with the baleens? The plankton-eaters had no teeth, nothing to bite or chew with. But a tail weighing many tons could smash the skull of a much smaller orca as easily as it could a section of polymer raft.

  Which survivors was Sam really worried about?

  He searched for some thirty minutes before rejoining them. The current was already dispersing the broken skeleton of the town. In the bright sunlight of morning the remaining fragments took on a surreal aspect. It was as if the town had never been, and something had poured tons of garbage into the waters surrounding this reef.

  "No sign of them," he announced and then, seeing Cora's questioning look, confirmed her thoughts. "Either of them. I called and called. No one responded." He forced himself on. "I didn't spot a single body. What the hell do they do with the bodies?"

  "I can't imagine," Cora said carefully. "The throat of even a blue is too small to pass a whole man, and they've nothing to chew a person up with." Rachael looked ill. "Anyway, why would they suddenly switch, after millions of years, from a diet of krill to much bulkier food?"

  "Then what do they do with the bodies?" Sam muttered again.

  No one had any ideas. At that point, everything caught up with Dawn. They took turns comforting her, calming her. Only Cora stayed aside. She was nauseated by her own thoughts: the wish that Dawn had perished along with the rest of the town. Her reaction was only human, but sometimes the thoughts that cross a human mind can be appalling. How thin is the veneer of civilization.

  Rachael and Merced did a better job of soothing the distraught girl anyway. Cora forced personal matters from her mind by concentrating relentlessly on the problem at hand.

  "We have enough nutrients in our suits to keep us going four or five days." She pulled herself up onto the smooth top of the bemmy, slid aside her mask. "We can rest here without having to swim and can conserve our strength." She looked at Sam. "I'm sure we can find something in the way of local life to supplement our suit diet." She gestured at the surrounding debris. "There should be some useful material among all this, food included. We'd better start looking for it before the current carries it beyond our reach." And, she mused silently, it will give us something to do besides think.

  Even Dawn participated in the search, hiding her sobbing behind her mask. They found a considerable amount of packaged food floating on the surface. Much of it was inedible. Either the vacuum seals had cracked, or it was designed only for use in automatic cooking units. But some was both intact and directly edible.

  A great deal of torn, lighter-than-water cable drifted about like yellow seaweed. These lengths served to tie the packages of food to the tops of several bemmies. The pattern thus formed would also serve to attract high-flying skimmers.

  Merced suggested they employ one or more of the emergency transmitters located in the instrument belt of eve
ry gelsuit. The idea was vetoed by Mataroreva. They still could not discount completely the possibility that a human agency was somehow involved in the attacks. Setting up an emergency beacon might draw visitors to the reef other than those desired. Besides, the lack of communication from the town would draw investigators soon enough.

  Quite unexpectedly, they did come across three closely grouped watertight containers from their own sunken suprafoil. Two contained delicate research equipment for the study of underwater life. That was a laugh, Cora thought. They would be doing nothing but studying undersea life for the next several days, perhaps for weeks, until someone thought to send out a skimmer or a ship to see why the town of Vai'oire was not responding to signals.

  She couldn't decide whether to be pleased or disappointed at the contents of the third container. It was filled with personal effects that were of no use to anyone in the water, and included Rachael's neurophon. Her daughter, of course, was overjoyed. To Cora's relief, however, she wouldn't chance playing the sensitive instrument, much as it would have relaxed her.

  Not that the sealed, solid-state electronics would be damaged by a little water, but Rachael was unwilling to risk dropping the device from the uncertain perch of a bemmy top. It would not float. So she left it sealed in, together with the other two containers, and tied to the top of a silicate projection.

  They spent the next few days examining the rest of the debris as it was dispersed by wind and wave. Mataroreva made longer and longer swims out to sea, disdaining the comparative shelter of the reef. He claimed to be searching for weapons as well as for additional food supplies.

  Cora knew otherwise. She stayed tuned to his broadcast frequency, listening to his plaintive calls. He was still seeking the pair of missing orcas. As the days passed without any reply from the empty sea, he grew more and more morose. Less time was paid to his companions, to eating, to anything other than his muscle-wearying swims. Cora began to feel that his attraction for the two whales was obsessive.